Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014 • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by ChuckMcM » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 10:30 PM UTC

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…

This is so spot on. Someone asked me when we would run out of oil, my answer, "Never". "Never?!" they spat out, but look at how quickly we use it, look at how finite a resource it is, Etc. And I replied, as it gets rare, the price will go up, as the price goes up other things will be substituted, as they are substituted the demand will go down. Demand goes down and the time to exhaustion stretches out. Long tail curve, we never hit zero. It just gets so expensive that nobody uses it any more.

Systems do react, and that reaction is why you can never predict system behavior with extrapolation.

Neil Stephenson posits a more rational economic system for WoW (and presumably Diablo 3) in the novel Reamde. What is perhaps most interesting is how he deconstructs the flow of 'value' in the economy, trickling in from gold creation and trickling out with taxes and purchases. To bad Blizzard didn't read that first.

That said the notion of a 'no levels' RPG where everything is trained/earned is more like Everquest (nobody wants to go back to skinning 6,000 rabbits, trust me) but it is the place where the next big breakthrough will be made. And it will make the people who discover the recipe very wealthy indeed.

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

#82

Post by lackbeard » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 10:41 PM UTC

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…

How do you know that Blizzard's reasons for making the "game inhibiting decisions" you list are a result of their desire to monetize with the RMAH?

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

#83

Post by bcbrown » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 10:42 PM UTC

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…

>The lesson, applicable to games, startups, governance, and indeed systems engineering in general, is that systems react.

A great humorous look at how systems react is: http://www.amazon.com/The-Systems-Bible-Beginners-Guide/dp/0...

I found it very insightful, and very relevant to software engineering, too.

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

#84

Post by thefreeman » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 10:48 PM UTC

pdenya wrote: post #9

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 you 100% and I'm coming from a similar situation. The question is, are you going to play again once it's removed? I almost definitely won't give it another shot. Still play D2 on occasion though.

If you liked D2 You should try Path of Exile. It retains a lot of the great things from D2 while bringing some unique twists of its own, like "currency items" rather then a gold based economy and gigantic passive skill trees.

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

#85

Post by thefreeman » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 10:51 PM UTC

scragg wrote: post #43

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.

A problem with that solution is that the loot system was so garbage that you could likely go through multiple playthroughs without finding a single decent item for your character. At least when I played, most uniques were completely inferior to highly rolled magic items from the end game.

It was basically at the point where your only real choice end game was to grind gold to buy items, it wasn't even worth it to try to search for items.

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

#86

Post by thefreeman » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 10:52 PM UTC

Fuck Blizzard. I will never forgive them for the cashgrab they called D3 I don't care how they change it.

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

#87

Post by GoodIntentions » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 11:07 PM UTC

alex_c wrote: post #45

ordinary wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

>> it powers all Blizzard games

I could see that forcing a proper test cycle to take longer than implementing a change.

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

#88

Post by cclogg » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 11:07 PM UTC

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…

I agree with this. I also believe removing the AH doesn't solve the problems with D3. It's D3's item/stat/skill systems that lead to the issues with the AH. Everyone was desiring the same items (using their class's 1 OP build).

In lieu of no Auction House the game will definitely need named-games or some sort of trading post where people bid on items with their own items. I hope they understand that Diablo was always about trading too, not BoA like WoW. We will see I guess! Good luck Blizz :)

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

#89

Post by lackbeard » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 11:10 PM UTC

cheald wrote: post #22

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.

Which is fine, IMO. Removing the AH as a crux of gameplay design is the important thing here. Trade isn't inherently bad, but building the entire game around trade (and more specifically, trying to build the game around incentivizing people to trade through your system for real currency of which you get a cut) is a really crappy thing to do to a loot grinder.

Do you have any sources which confirm that Blizzard built the game around AH monetization? I see this claim made frequently, but I've never actually seen anything that wasn't pure speculation.

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

#90

Post by listic » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 11:14 PM UTC

programminggeek wrote: post #7

Wow, this is a surprising reversal of trends as far as user generated content and micro-transaction based economies go, but the auction house really did change the core mechanics of Diablo 3. As a player I really did kind of like the auction system during the initial grind from level 1 to 60, but when there was no more level progression and the only progression was item progression, it just stopped being fun because…

> The auction house mechanic might work on a MMO style game, but Diablo 3 isn't a MMO

What's the meaningful difference? I mean, what specifically makes auction house work in an MMO, but not a game like Diablo?

I thought auction house as a feature either works, if done right, or it doesn't. I thought auction house as an idea is great, and now this... I haven't played Diablo 3 yet; I played a little World of Warcraft back in the day and I liked the way I can sell unneeded gear and buy exactly what's right for me instead (buth some pretty cool items are Soulbound and cannot be sold!). I thought an auction house in a game like original online Magic the Gathering is pretty fabulous: auctions there are full of player-run trade bots which are tolerated by administration, and all this in a game that didn't start out with game currency to begin with (they appropriated tournament tickets as a de facto game currency). I can't play the game itself, unfortunately: interface is just too clunky for me.