Some interesting insight into the game.

Here it is...

thanks for the link.

My very opinionated comments.

a) on loot2.0. I really don't see how decreasing the drop rate, and making all drops better changes ANYTHING in terms of AH usage. The problem (as they state it) is that people don't want to grind for hours to find an upgrade when they can just click and buy. Having less drops makes the AH even easier, and, because of reduced overall item drops, more expensive. That being said.... i think the AH is a good thing.

b) on always online. I really wish I could sit these damn developers down on my pc, and MAKE them play with the 400 - 600 ms latency I have during normal play. With 2s spikes not being uncommon. And 250ms being the absolute best I have ever seen. Heck... I know HC players who refuses to play when their latency goes over 200 because of the risk.

a) It's my understanding that the lvl 70 items (best in slot) will be bind on account. I believe the gear you have altered by the Mistic will also be BOA. Taking this into consideration, the need to rely on the AH will be greatly diminished.

b) I'm with you on that one.

in additon to @Bort s b) ... I know HC players ...
It's really annoying that most of the time the latency bar turns yellow/red after the spike. And if you are in the middle of a fight and see the bar changes colour you need good gear/skill choice to survive this as well.

Posted by yoyo at 09/11/2013 11:25 AM

a) It's my understanding that the lvl 70 items (best in slot) will be bind on account. I believe the gear you have altered by the Mistic will also be BOA. Taking this into consideration, the need to rely on the AH will be greatly diminished.

That's as much of a public admission as we'll get that the AH was a mistake. The thing is, it has to be bringing in revenue and the expansion would provide an enormous shot in the arm for the RMAH again.

I wonder if the ladder will have a RMAH. That would certainly serve as a way to replace much of the income lost from having the very top levels of gear no longer being available for auction.

No AH will also dramatically change the top-geared characters and emphasize playing multiple classes. A single fabulous WD Legendary weapon could change your preferred class instantly. I'm also going to be able to clear out much of my inventory since practically any good rare level 70 ring will blow away anything I have now. That isn't to say I don't want 5 times the inventory space I have right now. :D

I'm curious, though, what if there had only been a RMAH? What if they had only allowed Gold auctioning? Seems like there would have been far fewer players using the auction houses, but would have also given people a white market avenue for purchasing Gold if they were interested.

I think the AH would have been a perfectly fine addition to the game if two things were different.

1.) No RMAH, so people couldn't just drop a bunch of money into the game to instantly become godly.

2.) A cool down period of a couple days between when you could buy something on the AH and when you could re-sell it, this would deter flipping which artificially drives up the prices of items.

These mechanisms existed in D2 except back then people used ebay, paypal etc... and a lot of people got screwed over or cheated in the process.

At this point the AH isn't going anywhere but I think adding some viable alternatives that are BOA will at least mitigate what is currently an absolute need to use the AH in order to compete. I'd prefer not to have to use the AH but the odds of me stumbling across an upgrade for my current gear is pretty low. Some of my best gear at this point is crafted so at least I was able to get upgrades that way rather than having to come up with half a billion gold for even a slight upgrade.

"We developed this as a co-op game from day one," Kevin says. "We didn't add co-op in. It's not a value added feature. It is the ideal.

Is this true without using the AH? As it is now, there's nothing co-op about Diablo 3. There's very little synergy between classes and very much of the opposite. There is absolutely no way someone could have designed the Archon skill while thinking D3 was a co-op game. If you can't keep up with a Barb constantly Sprinting, you can't play with them. The DH has very good support skills ... except there's no reason to support anyone, because everything's either dead before it matters or resists CC effects so heavily they don't matter.

To be a co-op game, the game has to have some or many builds that are specifically better or outright viable only in a multiplayer setting. The only build I can think of where that's the case is the permafreeze wizards. Sooooo, one build. One solitary piece of evidence that D3 is a co-op game.

They encourage co-op play by making the monsters die faster, given more experience and drop better things. That is not a co-op game. That is a solo game you can play with other people. Encouraging multiplayer with some artificial exogenous system does not make it a co-op game. If that's your compelling reason to make it always-online, you're a f***ing idiot. It's preventing piracy. That's it. Say it. We all know it. Stop bullsh***ing us already. We're not stupid and at this point it's patronizing.

Posted by tsukiyomi at 09/13/2013 11:31 AM

1.) No RMAH, so people couldn't just drop a bunch of money into the game to instantly become godly.

This isn't going to solve the problem. You'd be able to buy gold on third party sites for $, then buy all the items you need in the Gold Auction house. I think you need to have both.

Flipping actually causes more accurate pricing. Higher volume corrects prices faster, and flippers create volume. Prices wouldn't fall as fast without flippers either. If no one is willing to pay, the flippers go out of business.

Posted by nuhertz at 09/13/2013 12:08 PM

This isn't going to solve the problem. You'd be able to buy gold on third party sites for $, then buy all the items you need in the Gold Auction house. I think you need to have both.

Less people would do it though, its more of a hassle to go through a third party site and you have the possibility of being ripped off by scams. With it being official and an actual feature in the game itself it not only makes it significantly easier but you're guaranteed to get what you pay for.

Posted by nuhertz at 09/13/2013 12:08 PM

Flipping actually causes more accurate pricing. Higher volume corrects prices faster, and flippers create volume. Prices wouldn't fall as fast without flippers either. If no one is willing to pay, the flippers go out of business.

I disagree. If someone is willing to sell at 10mil and someone buys that not because they want but only to sell it at 100mil I don't consider that "more accurate pricing".

People tend to base the price of what they sell on what other people are selling it for, so a bunch of people throwing up items for 100mil+ is going to drive the price of similar items up that high and out of the reach of many of the players in the game.

Posted by Bort at 09/11/2013 08:11 AM

thanks for the link.

My very opinionated comments.

a) on loot2.0. I really don't see how decreasing the drop rate, and making all drops better changes ANYTHING in terms of AH usage. The problem (as they state it) is that people don't want to grind for hours to find an upgrade when they can just click and buy. Having less drops makes the AH even easier, and, because of reduced overall item drops, more expensive. That being said.... i think the AH is a good thing.

b) on always online. I really wish I could sit these damn developers down on my pc, and MAKE them play with the 400 - 600 ms latency I have during normal play. With 2s spikes not being uncommon. And 250ms being the absolute best I have ever seen. Heck... I know HC players who refuses to play when their latency goes over 200 because of the risk.

a) I think it can then, finally, provide some players a viable option to not use the AH at all, and loot their own gears (improved smart drop) which can be useful and powerful. They probably wouldn't want to loot all their GG gears overnight, hence some reduced in drop rate is desired. Certainly, players with lots of gold and want to hand pick gears of their desire from the AH can still do so, and possibly relying more on AH to keep their toon the best as it can appear.

b) Yea I don't like to play HC when the latency goes over 200.

1) I actually avoided the AH almost entirely while leveling my DH to 60 when I first started. But once I hit Inferno, I discovered that it was pretty much impossible to get decent enough gear to survive w/o using the AH. Even to this day, I think I've only gotten a *single* good drop that was actually usable by my character class; every thing else on my hero was obtained from the AH. I wonder if Loot 2.0 will somehow take into account the hero that you're playing. Cause a slightly better drop that isn't usable by my class & that can no longer actually be "sold" on an AH so that I can buy a piece of gear my DH would actually use, probably doesn't help things very much...

I wonder if there hadn't been a connection between the AH & RMAH if things would have been better...? Don't know, does anyone remember the period when the two were totally separate & you couldn't "buy" gold w/ real money yet? (Cause like I said, I wasn't really using the AH at that point...) Just wondering if being able to arbitrage between the two was actually a bigger factor in how the (RM)AH hurt the game...

2) I would definitely prefer an offline mode. There have been so many times when I was free to play the game, but didn't have Internet access, or the Blizzard servers were down for maintenance... :-(

I believe the plan for Loot 2.0 is that you either won't find out-of-class class-specific items or find very few of them. No Mighty Belts with your DH and a lot more quivers. They're also eliminating or reducing the chance of off-class affixes on class-specific items. No more +200 Strength Quivers.