Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Why I think D3 needs Gold AH!
First of all, I would like to say that I play MMO's since around 12 years ago.
My first MMO was Runescape. From my point of view, RS is the best sandbox game , even in does days.
Anyway, in RS there was no AH, so if you wanted to sell or buy something, you should have stayed in Varrock ( if I am not mistaken ) and spam the chat with your selling or buying message. Spam I mean something like this :
This is actually from RS 2 with improved graphics then RS Classic, but you got the .. picture ( chat picture ) .
So in the end, if you were a pretty active player and had like 4 hours of game time sesion a day, at least 1+ hour you kinda needed to not play the game and stay to sell/buy things you earned. I remember staying with hours , just to sell and buy things.
My second MMO was MU Online. Same as RS ( and other games from that time ) , it didn't had an AH. So the only way to sell/buy things, was to trade with other players = spam THAT chat .
But we evolved and trade spam chat with WTS, WTB, WTT is a think of a past. You may say that those are actually MMO's where Diablo 3 is not. Well, that's true, but we are discussing just the trade option ,hence chat spam. Also, keep in mind that D3 is an action combat game, where you actually depend on every second in combat, to kill the mobs. Now picture yourself playing D3, with bunch of mobs near you and then you see an !WTS line on the chat log , with an item which you need it. How cool is that, to hurry and kill the mobs, then find a "safe spot" , just to PM the seller. Or more so, maybe you will try killing mobs and chat in the same time. Oh, yes! You may die ( big chances if you play on high MP ) and then i'll be sorry ... about your keyboard. Or more so, ok , let's say you will just find a way to chat and kill mobs, or tele to town and speak with the seller. Good , good , but ... what happens if you and the seller, have 5 stacks of nephalem? Who's gonna invite and who's gonna accept?
The point is D3 needs the Gold AH. I 100% agree about the removal of the RMAH, but not with the gold one. Diablo 3 is a game where when you start a run, you kinda can't really stop and "do'da'trade" . The AH was doing the ... selling thing for us, while we were killing hordes monsters, which helped a lot.
The removal of the Gold AH ( beside the RMAH ) , can be because most of the powerful items will be BOP. If that will be the case, then i'll not play D3 anymore as getting drop in D3 and selling them, it is a feature I enjoy a lot ( and not only in D3 ) .
All in all , I think Blizzard should re-consider their plans when it comes to Gold AH.
We will surely be seeing more news about D3 , including the trade system at Blizzcon, but still ... the removal of the Gold AH will be there on March 2014.
If the trade system starting March 2014 will be ala D2, then happy .... killing/trading/typing/typing/!WTS/!WTB/!WTT .....etc "job" 
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy?
Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
Comments
O.o
no
Nice reply. Thank you.......
No, why?
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy?
Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
The RMAH if I may correct you, is ruining the .. spirit of the game. Not the gold one.
However, I might agree ( and also wanted to add in my post ) that Trade Forums for Blizzard means more website traffic, hence, more money for them somehow.
I already see PS3 and XboX 360 posts about trading items on their website, but not so many because they are playing on the consoles and they might be lazy to connect to the PC and post a thread. But imagine the forum flood when PC gets the new expansion.
What really (will) ruin the game, will be the "breaks" from the runs , just to try selling that nice item you got, or buying then one you need. Yes...that's my point of view about this..."problem"
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy?
Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
Yep...definitely your point of view. If this is what makes you leave, then i hope the hundreds of trolls on the official forums do the same and pack up. The gold AH is convenience, nothing more, and taking that away will bring back the spirit of the game. You folks will be upset the day its gone. Sorry about that, but it's happening. Period.
I think you are reading to much in my posts or something. The only phrase of "quitting" was if D3 will have the best items BoP = Bind on Pickup .
I never played D2 past the single player experience, just because I couldn't (at that time) , playing online and interact with other players , trading, party etc. ( yes, at that time, trading was a trend ) , but saying that AH is ...convenience and nothing more, then I invite you to start trading with other player in games you play right now, just the way I said in my original post, then come back after 1 month and tell me how that feels.
Spamming in trade channel to sell one or more items should be .....optional ( just the way is now ) , and not the only way to interact with other players when it comes to ... trading.
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy?
Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
I trade like that everyday, No invitation needed. I have never needed the gold AH because i am able to trade, like many, many others. I would like it if they had a trading platform once RoS goes live where we could trade and socialize in a more user friendly manner. The gold AH and RMAH suck the soul out of the game and never should have been implemented. Blizzard having the stones to rip this cancer out of the game is a great sign of things to come.
I think the AH was only necessary because of how the loot system works. You basically never get anything good for the character you are playing, but a lot of stuff for other classes.
Now, with Loot 2.0 on the horizon, much more tailored towards your current character, the need for the AH vanishes. I can finally play my barb again and find those phat drops for him, rather than farm gold so I can buy them off the AH. The latter is just a lot less.....adventurous.
You see, problem with AH is the overall feel it gives to the game.
Naturally, in this kind game (loot-based progression with randomly generated items), quality of item increases with greatly reduced chance to drop. So, its very easy to get "shit" item, it takes some time to get "good" item, and you're really lucky if you get "great" item, while "superb" item is something that drops one-in-a-million times.
If you have no AH in the game, people will only ever bother to sell the most rare items, because they value their time.
So, the only thing you can buy is the absolute best item, which would probably cost absolute shitload of gold, or another absolute best item (barter trade). Therefore, you have to equip yourself.
This in turn means that there is much more loot in the game that is actually useful. Anything that is better at least by +1 in some stat than your current gear is useful to you! Your progression of items is not a stupid 2-stage one (buy a bargain best-in-slot -> buy ultimate best-in-slot) but rather you have many-many-many stages for every slot! (you keep finding items that are a bit better than what you wear, while sometimes you find something seriously better than what you wear).
So, the loot keeps being interesting to you. Of course, the further you go in the loot progression, the less loot is useful to you because you are better geared, but while you're going there, you keep getting and getting drops that are good for you. The situation "Hey, an item that's better than what I wear has dropped" happens a LOT. And actually, the worse drops you got, the more enjoyment you actually get out of your game, because more items are "wow, better item" to you (you got +1 item, then +2, then +3,. then .... up to ultimate +100, and all of those were a good drop for you!).
Therefore, looting stays fun and satisfying for longer time.
Now, if you have AH in the game, people will sell everything they get that is of ANY use to a player. Therefore, there will be just an increasing price for an item depending on item's quality. A medicore item costs X$, a good item costs Y$ and best-in-slot costs Z$. Now you know the absolute value to your item. You know that almost everything that drops to you is ABSOLUTE CRAP. It's like 100 times inferior to best-in-slot. Instead of enjoying the feeling of progression, you just keep getting crap,crap,crap drops and you're really demotivated and depressed. The chance of you actually getting a good item diminishes greatly, because now the plank for "good" item has risen way higher than before.
What's even worse is that you can actually shorten your item progression by just buying stuff. So, instead of an intruguing "hey what cool stuff will drop for me next" feeling when you're about to kill a boss or loot dropping guy, you get this boring "I need to farm these jars for 3 hours to get my next item".
The point of the game is destroyed. Looting becomes constant frustration and gear progression gets eliminated by grind.
What is even worse is balance. In game w/o AH you can balance the game against the fact that average player will not have best-in-slot gear in every slot. Some very dedicated people will probably, but most people will have average gear that will progress at decreasing rate (because the better your gear gets the less chance there is to get an upgrade). Therefore, in order to down a boss on highest difficulty you don't actually have to farm for hours to get your "Inferno bargain set", you just naturally are able to do it, because the game does not expect you to be so good equipped.
However, with AH you have to expect people to be able to gear better. You don't have to cater for those who get unlucky with drops, because everybody can get an upgrade from AH. Otherwise, a sizable dedicated population will be bored with too easy game. So, the game becomes frustratingly difficult, with normal players hitting a wall and having to farm for hours to get their gear off AH to stand a chance.
Finally, games like RS (I played it, I know what it is like to trade in that city) and other MMORPGs are fundamentally different, because they have non-random gear. Those games are pretty much based on you grinding for gear one way or the other - there is a set levels of item progression (in RS, that's material from which items are made, in WoW, that's blue->epic_instance_heroic->epic_raid_normal->epic_raid_heroic. In those games, it makes sense to have an AH, because most of the item drops are either fluff crap or bind-on-pickup. There is very little items you can actually get off a corpse that are useful to you (at max level). Most of the time you loot either vendor trash or reagents for crafts. Absolute majority of items that you wear that are not bind-on-pickup, as well as all item upgrades, all come from crafting by other players. Therefore, it makes sense to make an AH.
The rhythm of the game certainly will change. But with better drops, who knows?
I will try it out first. I can see a more dungeon crawl + loot upgrade can work better than 30% dungeon crawl and 70% AH trading.
BTW, they have to take both away. If there is only the gAH, chinese gold farmers will be rampant.
However, I might agree ( and also wanted to add in my post ) that Trade Forums for Blizzard means more website traffic, hence, more money for them somehow.
I already see PS3 and XboX 360 posts about trading items on their website, but not so many because they are playing on the consoles and they might be lazy to connect to the PC and post a thread. But imagine the forum flood when PC gets the new expansion.
What really (will) ruin the game, will be the "breaks" from the runs , just to try selling that nice item you got, or buying then one you need. Yes...that's my point of view about this..."problem"
No, the AH period ruins the spirit of the game. The "spirit" being running many times for your loot and earning it. Most people don't earn it if you can just buy it with gold. I don't feel accomplished if I play a game and can buy all of my gear from AH, I want to earn it just like in D1 and D2. I don't agree with your post in the least. Sorry but this game is awful with the AH and this is a great change in my opinion.
The auction house was not a necessity because of how the loot system worked.
The loot system worked the way it did to encourage people to use the auction house.
It was all for greed. It's no coincidence the change to the auction house is happening just before they launch the expansion, lots of people hated the d3 auction house.
How is that applied to the gAH?
Every piece of gold needs to be earned before used in the AH. You "earn" it as much whether you are buying it from the AH, or get it from a drop.
The RMAH ruins the spirit of the game, not the gAH.
The gold AH combined with crap loot because of the AH ruined the game for me. Sorry, but it did.
Manual trades should only be for good items that justify the time to make the trade.
D3 hardcore without the excellent Gold AH in hardcore is DEAD.
Sorry but I don't want to grind to just look for +++ green stats on my gear, for my spec, for my class.
That kind of game died already 10 years ago when MMORPG's went into success mode.
Dull.
Blizzard XXX up big time with D3 and they will feel the pain by the complete lack of interest by the time the expansion strikes.
I predict 1.5 million sales, a far cry from the 12 million on the version WITH trading.
1 the expansion pack will no doubt be full price like with starcraft
2 lots of long time diablo fans hated d3 BECAUSE of the auction house, loot system geared around it and the always online, and already moved on to Torchlight 2, path of exile or grim dawn. It's no coincidence they are dropping the auction house just before the expansion hits.
Also if the ah Is soooooooo important,how come the ps3 version without all the moneytization crap is so popular.
That's the catch, the console version got better "user" reviews (got trolled less), but it sold peanuts...
600k for a Blizzard game is a laugh.
But more importantly, no one plays the console versions anymore. Why even? You can't trade... Just try to find a game on line on the PS 3. Not in 6 hours even.
Which shows the hype for the AH's was extreme at launch. By deleting the AH' D3 is just another ARPG with slightly better engine.
A genre that is only played by a few 100K people, even distrubuted for FREE or at 15 dollars.
Garbage bin products.
That is because most have played D3 on the PC already.
We will see how RoS sells .. that will be more accurate a read on whether the market wants a AH.
To you .. may be not a factor .. but obviously Blizz made a big deal out of "no more AH" .. so i think the RoS is a good barometer of that decision.
As for pricing .. lucky for me, i sold most of my stuff in the RMAH when they announced RoS (pretty obviously all gear is going to be worthless by the expansion), so it is going to be free for me. In fact, D3 is great ... i made enough to pay for MoP, and RoS.
However, I might agree ( and also wanted to add in my post ) that Trade Forums for Blizzard means more website traffic, hence, more money for them somehow.
I already see PS3 and XboX 360 posts about trading items on their website, but not so many because they are playing on the consoles and they might be lazy to connect to the PC and post a thread. But imagine the forum flood when PC gets the new expansion.
What really (will) ruin the game, will be the "breaks" from the runs , just to try selling that nice item you got, or buying then one you need. Yes...that's my point of view about this..."problem"
No, the AH period ruins the spirit of the game. The "spirit" being running many times for your loot and earning it. Most people don't earn it if you can just buy it with gold. I don't feel accomplished if I play a game and can buy all of my gear from AH, I want to earn it just like in D1 and D2. I don't agree with your post in the least. Sorry but this game is awful with the AH and this is a great change in my opinion.
you earn gold by playing the game and then buy stuff with it lol
i don't think you understand his point at all.
personally, i agree its kind of strange they don't keep the gold AH and just get rid of the RMAH.
then again, we don't know exactly how the new loot system will work. if i don't need to trade anymore then yeah a GAH is not needed.
i kind of doubt that though, i am sure people will have to spam chat or go to third party websites to trade the items they have rather than just sell them on the GAH, which seems a lot easier and less time consuming.
i spent a lot of time spamming trade chat in D2 and haggling with people. sure it was good for the community but it was also very time consuming as well.