Hi all,

I wanted to discuss something about the 1.0.4 (and possibly 1.0.5) patch.

we all wished for better loot and we got it.
we all wished for a better AH, so we can search more than 3 criteria, and cancel auctions anytime, and we got it.

what did we end up with?
people undercutting each others left and right, AH flooded with good gear, and it's now much harder to sell anything.

before, after upgrading, I used to sell my previous gear for no (or little) loss, and often a benefit.
now, when I buy something, I can pretty much write off the cost.
prices drop quickly and constantly and what I bought for 1Mio few weeks ago won't even sell for 50k.

I am not really unhappy about this: I finally managed to afford 80k DPS on my DH, can faceroll Act I, farm Act II, and clear Act III/IV. Good gear is really cheap nowadays.

But it's funny that no matter what Blizzard does (so far), the AH is distorting the game and makes it hard to improve the loot quality.
I hope they address this differently next time, perhaps with gear that is tied to your account.

Gear is easy to get because there is nothing else to do. Just farm and farm and farm. The extra MF helps with that too...

If peopple would have something else to ocupy their time, like PvP, things should be better. I hope.

It would help even more if the PvP would NOT have any material rewards (Gold, items).
Just colors, wings, banners and achievments.
It would help even more if dying in PvP would affect your items (durability loss). It would make for a great gold sink.

And crafting kinda sucks now, because you need to click and click and click and die.. :))

how is PvP fun?
it's a real question, I never played D2 or D1 :)
was it really fun back then?

People just like to bash each other over and over again.
The human race is very... brutal.

A lot of people have been complaining about wanting to duel. From what i understand in the Pvp patch (1.1 i think), there will be an arena time Pvp system. 2 teams of 4 battle for a certain amount of time and the one with the more kills wins. I think. Feel free to corect me on this.

I'm not a big fan of PvP, but this would bring a lot of people back to Diablo and would diminish the time people spend farming as they will be busy cracking skulls.

Posted by Venoom at 09/17/2012 02:06 AM

how is PvP fun?
it's a real question, I never played D2 or D1 :)
was it really fun back then?

PVP in D2 was epic. Always trying to find a way to one up the better geared players was fun. Yes, there were a$$holes that sat outside of town not letting you recover your body but, it was still very challenging and added another dimension to the whole experience.

@Venoom

perhaps with gear that is tied to your account

Nah, I want to make money off of people. D3 is essentially a pearl farming game. You dive and farm pearls to keep for yourself and your friends/loved ones or to sell. You train harder so you can dive deeper. You sell pearls so you can get a better boat to go where other divers can't get to. Thats essentially the game in a nutshell.

@venoom PvP is the life blood of Diablo. It is what kept this game running previously for upwards of 8 years after its release, and probably about a year and a half after the last time it was patched. It's about killing your friends and feeling good about it. Its about comming up with a build that no one else can kill because its so ridiculous. PvP man. Just fuckin' PvP.

I've said the same repeatedly on the bnet forums -

With the game's lag rubberbanding, lack of keyboard movement, and imperceptibly wide hitboxes, D3 PVP is going to be a total joke. Having no precise way to move, position, attack, and evade is OK in the normal game because you eventually figure out how to work with it. For PVP, it will just be a sloppy and infuriating mess.

I play D3 to hunt for loot and smash monsters with friends. I have no interest in PVP and will never play it.

PVP is the only true end game this game will have. At some point, gold will have little meaning, all of the great items will become common, and everyone will have 100k DPS and be able to kill Inferno Diablo in 30 seconds. Why would anyone buy gold/items at that point?

Even if PVP is terrible and one-dimensional, there will always be some people interested in it. I remember playing a custom Marine Wars type of map in SC2 and I thought to myself, hmm, a lot of these heroes/units are pretty bad. There's really only one good unit and one good strategy. I executed it with success a couple of times and thought, well, this is pretty stupid. It's easy, boring, whatever you want to call it. But I still kept playing off and on. There were always full lobbies for the game. Why? Because people want to interact and beat others at something. It's life-affirming and thrilling, even if the game is actually pretty unbalanced/simplistic.

So even when everybody has Immortal King's/Inna's/Natalya's/PL 100, people will still want to play PVP simply for the sake of beating someone else. I mean, people still play Monopoly even though the game involves essentially no skill.

Posted by Metta at 09/18/2012 04:26 PM

I mean, people still play Monopoly even though the game involves essentially no skill.

And is over 80 years old.

Posted by Baldy at 09/18/2012 04:30 PM

Posted by Metta at 09/18/2012 04:26 PM

I mean, people still play Monopoly even though the game involves essentially no skill.

And is over 80 years old.

There is skill. Google monopoly world championship :)

Well, there is an optimal strategy (because you use the sum of two dice, a sum like 7 is going to appear more often than say, 12). I believe you can use Markov chain analysis to "predict" where the game is going based on the first roll. A game where the first person rolls a 6 is going to be very different from a game where the first person rolls a 12. After that, it's just child's play (buy houses, buy hotels, block people from making hotels).

I think this generalized method is still weak though. The strongest "strategy" would be to look at each roll or "state" discretely. In this case, I would say, yes, mathematics would qualify as strategy and it would OWN. A basic computer could probably beat an unassuming human 9 times out of 10. I don't think this is the case when two people play Monopoly and that's what I was looking at. Even a statistics guru would be at the mercy of dice rolls. I guess there is some "skill" involved (in developing a basic strategy as opposed to random house buying), but I think the importance of luck on dice rolls overshadows it so greatly that it doesn't really matter; to wit, it is "essentially" non-existent.