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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

#111

Post by PhasmaFelis »

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…

People occasionally wonder why I'm so into indie games these days, even the ugly ones and the pretentiously arty ones and the three-minute-long ones.

It seems to me that that indies are passionate about making games. They don't always have the skill or resources to reach their potential, but you can feel that passion even in something banged together for a 24-hour jam. It's refreshing.

The big studios, or at least the people who call the shots at the big studios, are passionate about making money, and they're not a bit shy about throwing out great gameplay for more money. Every "monetization" decision beyond "here's our game, it costs $umpty" is an exercise in making your game worse on purpose and then charging to bring it back up to baseline. Occasionally, these decisions are made with enough care and subtlety that the overall experience remains almost as good as it could've been...but not usually.

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

#112

Post by thefreeman »

d3gamer wrote: post #103
vacri wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because to get to that level of difficulty, you have to run through the game on 'stupid dumb easy' first. I don't really understand complaints of difficulty when you've already experienced the game several times, and then when you pick the 'really, this is crazily hard' setting, it's too hard.

Yeah, the first three difficulties were really easy. Inferno was like a wall that you run into the first time you try it. I remember kicking Diablo's ass in Hell difficulty and then replaying Act 1 but in Inferno. Came across the first zombie in New Tristram and promptly died in two hits.

Does that make the game "good"? That they created an impossible gear wall in Inferno Act 2 that only certain classes could get past? The game creators admitted to never even playing the game on inferno difficulty pre launch. It's just more of the same.

Well, this game is super dumb and easy... let just crank the last 3 acts by 2000% to make up for it.

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

#113

Post by thefreeman »

shadowmint wrote: post #100

While I broadly speaking applaud this move, I do feel a little bit like the guys from blizzard need to eat just a little bit of humble pie. 'this is really exciting for us'? really? how about, 'we're really sorry we took a franchise you loved and set fire to it, and are now really concerned about the viability of the expansion we're making' Too late; I'll play torchlight thanks. You have a nice diablo romp over there…

Thanks for putting it way better then I could have. Substituting Torchlight for PoE

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

#114

Post by alan_cx »

diminoten wrote: post #96
thefreeman wrote: post #86

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

How is this attitude rational? I can't understand how people react like this. Is it left over anger from when the situation was in the undesirable configuration? Can they not see how their opinions have had an influence in something they're passionate about? I can't see how someone who wanted this to happen would consider Blizzard to be still in the wrong.

Why should it be rational? Who cares if you understand it or not? Frankly, no one has to.

Fact is people do end up feeling that way, and it costs sales. Worse still, it costs loyalty. So know it exists, the accept it as a reality to deal with.

Lastly, ever had a boy/girl friend who cheated? Were you still interested after the other person was dropped? Did all return to normal? Is that rational?

Some people are still human, with human emotions, and no, they are not rational.

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

#115

Post by adwf »

cheald wrote: post #95
macspoofing wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you kill the boss 84 times, and he finally drops the thing you've been looking for. The reward is tangible and exciting. It feels exciting. Grinding the same boss 84 times. Where do I sign up?

That's loot grinders. If you don't like grinding for loot, then the genre probably isn't for you.

Except that at least Diablo 1+2 were for everyone. I remember playing those for the story and the gameplay. The loot and levelling were a means to an end for me - finishing the game.

The whole repeating the game again on harder difficulties, requiring better loot and grinding was very much an added bonus.

Diablo 3 decided to throw those who were there for the gameplay and story out the window, and was purely targeted at the grind. I finished the game in 2 days and still had half my characters skills left to unlock. What kind of RPG is that?

The Action RPG genre used to be about more than JUST loot grinding. It used to be about so much more, that welcomed players who were looking for all sorts from the game. Some people liked fast twitchy action mechanics, some liked the RPG story elements, some liked endlessly tweaking character builds and some liked loot grinding. But Diablo 3 is almost entirely focused on the last, with little room for the rest.

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

#116

Post by jshen »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #81
jerf wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 curv…

I agree with you, but the energy example is flawed in that it assumes we will find alternatives that aren't very expensive. We won't run out of oil, but we may very likely run out of cheap energy.

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

#117

Post by Volpe »

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…

> There probably is a way to "monetize" the Diablo community more successfully

I think this is a solved problem: Player contributed Hats.

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

#118

Post by diziet »

Reduce search by stats flexibility of the AH. Allow only one item per account. Make custom games with custom names available and browsable. Make chat channels relevant by placing everyone in one and having it take a lot of the screen estate.

You can still have the AH for one-off items, but reduce the volume by a large margin.

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

#119

Post by yannyu »

diziet wrote: post #118

Reduce search by stats flexibility of the AH. Allow only one item per account. Make custom games with custom names available and browsable. Make chat channels relevant by placing everyone in one and having it take a lot of the screen estate. You can still have the AH for one-off items, but reduce the volume by a large margin.

>Reduce search by stats flexibility of the AH.

Why would you intentionally cripple your UI unless you just wanted to frustrate your users?

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

#120

Post by Steko »

mehwoot wrote: post #102
Steko wrote: post #61

The AH wasn't really the problem for D3. The problem was the basic stat balance issues created huge lottery items. At launch for a Monk basically there were a handful of god stats (attack speed, life on hit, dex, all resist, your specific resist, magic find), a handful of ok stats and a large number of garbage stats. Now even a good stat can be worthless because of the large value ranges. Back of the envelop numbers:…

And this is different to D2? D2 was even worse, with the amount of time you needed to spend to get that perfect item.

To me the itemization was far and away better in D2. A decade of MMO popularity may have changed player expectations as well. And yes, circling back to the linked article, the AH exposes the poor itemization in a way that D2 didn't have so even if D3 itemization is the same as D2 it needed to be better.
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