Yeah, I think BoA is an item sink. Personally, I think it's something they needed from the get go, even if BoA isn't the best.
Now that they're dropping the AH (which is a pity, IMO, as other trading method is...terrible), I don't think they really need a BoA or something to denote self found. Even if you do trade for it, that probably means you found something of near equal value.
You just said it yourself, other means of trading are terrible. And I think it's already been established that the AH was also terrible in its own way. That's why they added BoA - to kill trading entirely and focus the game around the most fun way to find loot, which is self-found. If they didn't, some third party site would build something comparable to the AH and we would eventually be right back in the same position, with self-found players being second class citizens compared to those who traded for exactly what they wanted. We had that in D2 and it was awful.
Wow, you REALLY don't understand the complaints SF people have about the current game, do you?
To everyone that shares this man's opinion, get it right once and for all: we're not upset because traders are 'ahead' of us in terms of gear. We are upset because gearing up SF takes so long and the loot is so bad. In a game balanced around playing SF, traders would still be ahead of me, but I wouldn't care any more, because playing SF would be fun.
I don't understand why you think that. Today, self-found play is perfectly viable thanks to Monster Power - gearing for MP1 is easy, and that's all you need to be playing Inferno like everybody else. If you really didn't care about other people being ahead of you, you could just be happy with that. "Bad loot" is entirely relative.
The problem is that people who use the auction house are playing as effectively as you at MP6 or something, and you know that. So they are the ones who set the standard for "good loot", a standard which you can never possibly reach. If they just buffed loot across the board and left trading intact, this situation would not change. They would probably have to add more MPs to compensate, so now you're playing at MP6 and the other guys are playing at MP11. Same deal. This psychological effect is the real problem with the AH, and trading in general.
The removal of the AH and BoA Legendaries are probably the two things I'm most excited for in RoS. Despite what others are saying I think that trading has always been a disaster in all three Diablo games, and I'm thrilled that Blizzard is committing their full attention to making the self-found game as good as it can be. Finding loot is simply more fun than trading for it, and the only way to make certain that trading doesn't take control of the game again(as in vanilla D3) is to kill it entirely.
Yeah, I think BoA is an item sink. Personally, I think it's something they needed from the get go, even if BoA isn't the best.
Now that they're dropping the AH (which is a pity, IMO, as other trading method is...terrible), I don't think they really need a BoA or something to denote self found. Even if you do trade for it, that probably means you found something of near equal value.
You just said it yourself, other means of trading are terrible. And I think it's already been established that the AH was also terrible in its own way. That's why they added BoA - to kill trading entirely and focus the game around the most fun way to find loot, which is self-found. If they didn't, some third party site would build something comparable to the AH and we would eventually be right back in the same position, with self-found players being second class citizens compared to those who traded for exactly what they wanted. We had that in D2 and it was awful.
Personally I think Ladders would be more fun as a limited time thing. Like once a month they have a week-long Ladder season, and if you participate you get a bunch of exp/loot at the end of the season for your main characters. But I don't want to completely sacrifice my long-term progression by playing Ladder characters all the time.
I just don't understand when people decided that trading was such a fundamental component of Diablo. Trading in Diablo 2 was absolutely awful. And it certainly wasn't any good in Diablo 1, i.e. "I'll drop my hacked sword over here, you drop your duped gold over there".
D3's auction house was clearly inspired by WoW's auction house, but they left out an incredibly critical detail: everything in WoW is Bind on Equip, and the really good stuff is Bind on Pickup. Turns out, that has always worked just fine for WoW, which is a loot game at its core not so different from Diablo. I don't know where the pushback is coming from. Unrestricted trading in Diablo has always been bad from the very start - why defend it?
This expansion seems light on content compared to LoD(only one class and Act 5 the same length as Act 2), but then again there are Loot Runs, the existing classes are also getting new skills and all the game systems are getting big sweeping changes. I'm probably most excited about the prospect of a fresh economy, this time with the benefit of all the lessons learned from vanila. They've been very vague on how they plan to diminish the importance of the AH, but at least they're saying straight out that that's what their goal is. My guess is it will be a combination of personalized loot and the Mystic making items account bound, which is both a top-tier gold sink and a way to remove items from the economy.
When you purchase something on the auction house it underlines that items values might change over time, which is a safety measure to be able to make changes, big or small, without getting sued. If the level cap gets increased and therefore new item introduced or that the whole game gets wiped because both will result in a collapse of value with current items, but the first one will only strain the AH servers more than they ever have for a silly unreasonable reason.
I would understand the uproar if the expansion was announced tomorrow and told to me coming out in a week, but because that won't happen the players with super gear will have time to get their money back and spread the 'devastation' over the course of 10 players instead of them taking the hit alone.
Same thing goes for paragon levels. I'm not disagreeing that the concept is great and always rewards players even if they get no items to sell, but to stabilize the economy you can't have people who know how to play the system have a overkill magic find edge and a motivation to get back on top asap without having the game come back to it's current inflated state with warp speed.
I said it before and i'll say it again, there is no NICE way to fix this game so you better pray the new refreshed devsteam has the guts to do the necessary changes and make a game with great potential.
If you have comebacks, please don't just express what paragon levels might morph into and instead tell me good reasons why its necessary to keep the current paragon levels?
On one hand you say the concept of PLs is great, and on the other you say it breaks the game to give long time players an MF bonus? The problem has nothing to do with how quickly people are farming, it really is two problems:
1. Absence of gold sinks. Gold appears out of thin air and then trades hands forever in the AH with only a small fee, so of course the gold supply becomes inflated.
2. Absence of item sinks. Great items are never destroyed, they merely get traded back and forth in the AH while new and greater items are continually being generated. This results in the item supply becoming inflated. This is partially counterbalanced by #1, but the end result is that increasingly great gear can be found for trivially cheap and all the real money is spent on godly gear that is absurdly expensive.
In short, the problem is the auction house. As we know, their top priority right now is coming up with ways to relegate the AH to obscurity in favor of natural loot and crafting. The new crafting recipes they added are both a gold sink and a source of non-tradeable items, addressing both problems. We can expect this trend to continue. If they are successful, the AH will no longer be such a driving force for inflation in the game. Then they'll release the expansion with a new level cap and a gear "reset", wiping clean the current economy. If they're successful, the AH will be on a much tighter leash this time and the game's inflation should be under control. In this case I do not think it is a problem if players keep their paragon levels going forward. They'll still have to gear up all over again in a fresh economy which is the real work - even if their PL was reset it's not like it would take them that long to farm it back up again.
Personally I dont think its necessary. WD/WIZ/DH are ranged characters. We dont need that much LS. Besides adding that much LS on a 1 hander and still allowing them that offhand would be OP imo. These classes arent designed to tank, though some builds can, but to hit and move.
1
I don't understand why you think that. Today, self-found play is perfectly viable thanks to Monster Power - gearing for MP1 is easy, and that's all you need to be playing Inferno like everybody else. If you really didn't care about other people being ahead of you, you could just be happy with that. "Bad loot" is entirely relative.
The problem is that people who use the auction house are playing as effectively as you at MP6 or something, and you know that. So they are the ones who set the standard for "good loot", a standard which you can never possibly reach. If they just buffed loot across the board and left trading intact, this situation would not change. They would probably have to add more MPs to compensate, so now you're playing at MP6 and the other guys are playing at MP11. Same deal. This psychological effect is the real problem with the AH, and trading in general.
1
1
You just said it yourself, other means of trading are terrible. And I think it's already been established that the AH was also terrible in its own way. That's why they added BoA - to kill trading entirely and focus the game around the most fun way to find loot, which is self-found. If they didn't, some third party site would build something comparable to the AH and we would eventually be right back in the same position, with self-found players being second class citizens compared to those who traded for exactly what they wanted. We had that in D2 and it was awful.
2
1
D3's auction house was clearly inspired by WoW's auction house, but they left out an incredibly critical detail: everything in WoW is Bind on Equip, and the really good stuff is Bind on Pickup. Turns out, that has always worked just fine for WoW, which is a loot game at its core not so different from Diablo. I don't know where the pushback is coming from. Unrestricted trading in Diablo has always been bad from the very start - why defend it?
4
1
5
1
On one hand you say the concept of PLs is great, and on the other you say it breaks the game to give long time players an MF bonus? The problem has nothing to do with how quickly people are farming, it really is two problems:
1. Absence of gold sinks. Gold appears out of thin air and then trades hands forever in the AH with only a small fee, so of course the gold supply becomes inflated.
2. Absence of item sinks. Great items are never destroyed, they merely get traded back and forth in the AH while new and greater items are continually being generated. This results in the item supply becoming inflated. This is partially counterbalanced by #1, but the end result is that increasingly great gear can be found for trivially cheap and all the real money is spent on godly gear that is absurdly expensive.
In short, the problem is the auction house. As we know, their top priority right now is coming up with ways to relegate the AH to obscurity in favor of natural loot and crafting. The new crafting recipes they added are both a gold sink and a source of non-tradeable items, addressing both problems. We can expect this trend to continue. If they are successful, the AH will no longer be such a driving force for inflation in the game. Then they'll release the expansion with a new level cap and a gear "reset", wiping clean the current economy. If they're successful, the AH will be on a much tighter leash this time and the game's inflation should be under control. In this case I do not think it is a problem if players keep their paragon levels going forward. They'll still have to gear up all over again in a fresh economy which is the real work - even if their PL was reset it's not like it would take them that long to farm it back up again.
3
diablo 3 is its own april fool's joke am i right
oh snap
oh sick burn