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Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

arstechnica.com

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Re: Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

#41

Post by ordinary »

alex_c wrote: post #38
josh2600 wrote: post #8

So, I have a bit of a personal episode here I'd like to share. I played a lot of Diablo 2, more than I care to admit, and so the launch of Diablo 3 was a really big deal to me. I pre-ordered it on day 1, I pre-installed the game weeks before launch and I read every piece of information about the game. When the game came out, I initially loved it; just an absolute pleasure to play. It was great, until I found the auct…

I agree with your experience, but I disagree with your conclusions re: cause and effect. Specifically: * Penalizing players for dying for longer and longer periods of time * Penalizing players for playing in groups I suspect these were simply misguided design decisions aimed at making the game "challenging". Difficulty was entirely out of whack at launch across the entire game (yes, partly because the developers vast…

There have been public complaints from Blizzard employees about Battle.net. Community managers and developers both have stated that improvements to Battle.net are far harder to push through than changes to the games proper. Why exactly this is, I'm not sure. My guess would be that it's either seriously understaffed or drowning in bureaucracy.

Re: Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

#42

Post by meerita »

Best news ever. I wrote extensively on the spanish forums about how bad the game was with the RMAH and the AH itself. They claimed many things like "good economy" and nice balance between real money and virtual, but it was all a lie. In fact, the same became dull really fast.

This is a wonderful news for the Diablo fans, who really love to trade char by char, using items. Diablo is that, an itemfinder game, trade items for items, not for realmoney. But well, you can sell them outside the game anyways, people did it even with the current AH.

Re: Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

#43

Post by scragg »

josh2600 wrote: post #8

So, I have a bit of a personal episode here I'd like to share. I played a lot of Diablo 2, more than I care to admit, and so the launch of Diablo 3 was a really big deal to me. I pre-ordered it on day 1, I pre-installed the game weeks before launch and I read every piece of information about the game. When the game came out, I initially loved it; just an absolute pleasure to play. It was great, until I found the auct…

I played for a bit, not as much as you. Couldn't they have made items "bind on equip" and/or "bind on pickup" similar to WoW instead of dropping the AH all together? Seems like dropping the AH will just create 3rd party marketplaces and trading instead.

Re: Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

#45

Post by alex_c »

ordinary wrote: post #41
alex_c wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your experience, but I disagree with your conclusions re: cause and effect. Specifically: * Penalizing players for dying for longer and longer periods of time * Penalizing players for playing in groups I suspect these were simply misguided design decisions aimed at making the game "challenging". Difficulty was entirely out of whack at launch across the entire game (yes, partly because the developers vast…

There have been public complaints from Blizzard employees about Battle.net. Community managers and developers both have stated that improvements to Battle.net are far harder to push through than changes to the games proper. Why exactly this is, I'm not sure. My guess would be that it's either seriously understaffed or drowning in bureaucracy.

I can see it being more difficult to modify, since it powers all Blizzard games. That also raises another option - it's a technical mess that no one wants to touch...

Re: Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

#46

Post by thoughtpalette »

cromwellian wrote: post #10

All this will do is make users use external auction houses. As long as they keep in-game trading of rare and legendary items, people will just take it to eBay or some other site, and then arrange the swap in-game. It makes it less instant gratification, but won't stop the buying of items.

I don't know why you're being down voted as that's the direct response to come out of the hardcore player-base.

Spamming will grow and third-party sites will flourish.

Re: Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

#47

Post by oconnor0 »

rholdy wrote: post #21
tieTYT wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious as someone who has never played the game: What else do they need to fix? I've only heard complaints about the auction house

Also, the gear progression is very linear. On every gear slot you are looking for the same affixes.

Affixes?

Re: Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

#48

Post by JTon »

tieTYT wrote: post #6
debacle wrote: post #5

This is a good and smart move, but it's only one step towards fixing the nature of the game.

I'm curious as someone who has never played the game: What else do they need to fix? I've only heard complaints about the auction house

One of my favourite complains is rooted in the lightning and colour palette choices of D3 when comparing to D2.

http://www.diablowiki.net/Art_controversy

Re: Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

#49

Post by enraged_camel »

FD3SA wrote: post #30
josh2600 wrote: post #8

So, I have a bit of a personal episode here I'd like to share. I played a lot of Diablo 2, more than I care to admit, and so the launch of Diablo 3 was a really big deal to me. I pre-ordered it on day 1, I pre-installed the game weeks before launch and I read every piece of information about the game. When the game came out, I initially loved it; just an absolute pleasure to play. It was great, until I found the auct…

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." D2 was just complex enough to be extremely interesting. The incredible diversity in skills, items and stats allowed an immense variety of viable builds, leaving players to hunt for specific legendary items which totally changed the gameplay experience (teleporting barbarians, whirlwhind assassins, etc etc). D3 is the complete antithesis to this desig…

Tying ability damage to weapon DPS was the worst mistake they made, in my opinion. Not only did it make zero sense but also made all character classes feel the same in terms of itemization.

Re: Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

#50

Post by josh2600 »

jerf wrote: post #23
josh2600 wrote: post #8

So, I have a bit of a personal episode here I'd like to share. I played a lot of Diablo 2, more than I care to admit, and so the launch of Diablo 3 was a really big deal to me. I pre-ordered it on day 1, I pre-installed the game weeks before launch and I read every piece of information about the game. When the game came out, I initially loved it; just an absolute pleasure to play. It was great, until I found the auct…

The lesson, applicable to games, startups, governance, and indeed systems engineering in general, is that systems react . You can not look at an existing system, then say "Ah, this system is doing X, so I shall do Y which will cause the result Z, and nothing else ." In this case, you can't look at the D2 community, and say, "Ah ha, I shall inject this system for extracting money, and therefore it shall be exactly lik…

I'd argue the difference is how the complex ecosystems handled parasites.

On the one hand, Blizzard enabled balance-breaking monetization, and TF2 enabled costume-breaking monetization. Blizzard could've made just as much (or a lot more really) money just by enabling cosmetic rewards instead of gameplay rewards.

I feel like I quote this once a week [0] but Cory Doctorow makes a ton of great points on this and related subjects in the linked essay.

[0]http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt

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