**OFFICIAL** Diablo 3 Thread

[darkewaffle]

I have just the opposite view point. In Diablo 2, you got rewarded for going out and killing mobs with gold and treasure. Sometimes just gold, but always with something. In diablo 3, gold hardly ever drops in any significant amount. And nothing sells for any amount at all unless you use the auction house. Yet still you are dealt reversers in terms of having to pay to upgrade the blacksmith and the jeweler and even your storage space. They went from (maybe) giving too much gold to giving none at all, yet requiring you to have it.

A key difference between the two games is that Diablo 2 actually gives you rewards for progressing. Diablo 3, not so much. Since you unlock the same skills as everyone else, getting to be the next level has significantly less uniqueness and therefore less value. And since the rewards you do get are almost purely EXP and whatever drops you can find (which are borked in yet another attempt to coerce you to go to the auction house), the anticipation value is almost non-existent.

As for gold having any value in Diablo 3, it only has value in terms of the auction house. and that is purely ephemeral. You have virtual property which has no actual value outside the game, yet can be sold within the confines of the game. That market is going to tank as soon as people stop playing the game. Considering the relatively limited scope of the game, that shouldn't be very long. 10 years from now, people aren't going to still be auctioning Plate of the Bear (or whatever) from Diablo 3 because no one will care about it.

Yeah, gold may have been a bit too plentiful in Diablo 2, but it had value as a form of reward system that Diablo 3 seriously lacks.

And if Blizzard/Diablo 3 is trying to act like a virtual federal reserve bank, they are doing an even poorer job than the US Federal Reserve bank is doing.

Sure it does, anyone in Inferno finds 500-1000+ gold drops quite regularly. Even in hell finding piles of a few hundred gold is not uncommon; and prior to Hell repair rates have increased by exactly zero gold.

You treat the AH like a burden instead of a tool; which seems backwards for someone so concerned with having 'options'. Nobody's forcing you to use the AH, it in itself is an option; a playstyle even. If you don't like the in-game costs then save your extra drops, make backup sets, prioritize "Indestructible" items or items with gold find or magic find, only use item level 53 or below items if you really want; in short, adjust.

But if you do use it, now when you actually find a good item, you can get gold truly relative to it's power. Charsi didn't care if your item was top tier unique or perfect rare or not; you're getting 3261 gold for it regardless. Now, you can sell it on the AH and you can actually get the hundreds of thousands or even millions that it's power correlates to. So the average reward is less, but the potential reward is infinitely greater (both in magnitude and purchasing power).

Drops are not borked. Drops are random. Playing D2 as strictly a 'scavenger' could be just as rewarding or just as frustrating as D3.

Rewards are a matter of opinion. Gold may feel more rewarding in D2 but at no point in D2's history was D2 gold even remotely as valuable as D3 gold. Gold in D2 would be like vast piles of platinum coins dropping from each enemy D3 but not being allowed to trade them or spend them. It would look neat, it would feel neat, but it would have no value.

Gold's value being related to the activity on the auction house is precisely the point. If D2 had an auction house, D2 gold would probably have actually been worth something even. The idea is that it provides people a place to actually spend gold and use gold which is why they feel it is worthwhile; without the AH, gold is essentially bitcoins, allegedly valuable but with no application.

Of course it won't last forever but that's no fault of the currency (or any currency); as people inevitably play the game less, demand falls. As demand falls, so does faith in the currency; but for the time being (and for probably quite a bit of the forseeable future) it does exactly what it's supposed to and it does what D2 gold never did nor ever could; it facilitates trade and it holding its value. I find it to be a far more useful and valuable reward than D2 gold ever was.

 

[flexy]

Drops are, in a way, borked.

* First, the chance whether a rare drops AT ALL is random
* Second, the stats on the rares, IF they drop, as well as their ilvls etc. are random as well.

According to math and logic, this means that the chances of you getting a rare which is useable, fits your class and is actually an update is EXTREMELY small.

Calculate the odds to get a drop which fullfills your requirements, say plenty of INT, crit chance, resist all....and you will realize that chances for this are ALMOST zero.

The worse,the drops are so bad and stats so randomly, idiotic distributed that most rares you cannot even sell on the AH.

In reality this means, unlike in WoW, its entirely pointless to play the game in the hopes for a good drop, eg. if you have a certain build in mind requiring certain stats.

After 1.03, the repair costs seem also to be higher than the actual gain from looting/selling the "rares" - short, i dont seem to make money at all, actually losing it if i would not OCCASIONALLY make a sale on the GAH.

It is very, very clear that the game is tuned so people NEED TO play the AHs, selling/buying etc...but its made extremely, extremely difficult due to the idiotic loot in game. Needless to say, i am convinced this is intentional.

 

[DrunkenSano]

It was the same way in D2. That's what makes a good rare actually rare. That's basically the whole point of playing Diablo games.

 

[thespyder]

Sure it does, anyone in Inferno finds 500-1000+ gold drops quite regularly. Even in hell finding piles of a few hundred gold is not uncommon; and prior to Hell repair rates have increased by exactly zero gold.

In diablo 2, Nightmare you would get hundreds or more for every monster drop, and sometimes thousands. In NIGHTMARE. In Diablo 3 for the equivalent, you maybe get 100 gold and usually significantly less. See the difference? A factor of X10 at minimum.

You treat the AH like a burden instead of a tool; which seems backwards for someone so concerned with having 'options'. Nobody's forcing you to use the AH, it in itself is an option; a playstyle even. If you don't like the in-game costs then save your extra drops, make backup sets, prioritize "Indestructible" items or items with gold find or magic find, only use item level 53 or below items if you really want; in short, adjust.

No. I treat the AH like the device that they engineered the game towards use. Having it is fine. Making it Almost mandatory to use, is just wrong on so many levels.

And it isn't a play style so much as you are heavily incented to use it in order to compete. Every word you type reinforces that.

But if you do use it, now when you actually find a good item, you can get gold truly relative to it's power. Charsi didn't care if your item was top tier unique or perfect rare or not; you're getting 3261 gold for it regardless. Now, you can sell it on the AH and you can actually get the hundreds of thousands or even millions that it's power correlates to. So the average reward is less, but the potential reward is infinitely greater (both in magnitude and purchasing power).

I don't know what game you are playing, but I routinely sell wands in diablo 2 for 10k. Armor and weapons as well. Not sure what Charsi's prices are, but most of the vendors buy for a LOT more than 3261. Not to mention the fact that 3261 vs 10. Hmm, which is more?

Drops are not borked. Drops are random. Playing D2 as strictly a 'scavenger' could be just as rewarding or just as frustrating as D3.

My definition of borked is that they are random and specifically skewed to be lower power than you can buy in the auction house and use at your level. In other words, if you don't use the auction house, you can't compete with those who do. And once you get to 60 and Inferno, all I have read suggests that if you don't have AH level equipment, you ain't gonna survive. That's Borked to me.

Rewards are a matter of opinion. Gold may feel more rewarding in D2 but at no point in D2's history was D2 gold even remotely as valuable as D3 gold. Gold in D2 would be like vast piles of platinum coins dropping from each enemy D3 but not being allowed to trade them or spend them. It would look neat, it would feel neat, but it would have no value.

Gold in D3 is exclusively tied to AH. Without it, gold is no where near as valuable as in D2 precisely because you will never get enough gold in D3 to buy anything of significance without the AH.

Gold's value being related to the activity on the auction house is precisely the point. If D2 had an auction house, D2 gold would probably have actually been worth something even. The idea is that it provides people a place to actually spend gold and use gold which is why they feel it is worthwhile; without the AH, gold is essentially bitcoins, allegedly valuable but with no application.

And again the focus is to "Entice" you to go AH (and by extension RMAH). It's a racket.

Of course it won't last forever but that's no fault of the currency (or any currency); as people inevitably play the game less, demand falls. As demand falls, so does faith in the currency; but for the time being (and for probably quite a bit of the forseeable future) it does exactly what it's supposed to and it does what D2 gold never did nor ever could; it facilitates trade and it holding its value. I find it to be a far more useful and valuable reward than D2 gold ever was.

My point was, Diablo 2 is still being played 12 years later. Diablo 3 won't be.

 

[micaturbo]

And where do you think the gear on the AH comes from?

 

[Fallengod]

And where do you think the gear on the AH comes from?

Jesus?

 

[thespyder]

And where do you think the gear on the AH comes from?

Players of higher level who found it and are selling it to lower level characters because the lower level characters can't find it at their level.

And the level 60 stuff from people who farm for dozens (and perhaps more) hours going over the same ground over and over and over AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER the same ground until they find that one single item to sell or use.

 

[Adrenaline]

There is no trade off. It's simply a question of are you farming and need magic find? And how much magic find can you equip and still stay alive and kill things. People typically do not equip magic find when progressing through the game. I have 3 sets of gear. Regular gear for progressing through inferno. A magic find set for farming butcher. A gold find set for farming lower difficulties of gold.

My magic find set typically has at least str or vit on it, but I'm not super picky how much. I just want a piece that won't totally gimp me. My gold find set is simply the most +gold find I can get on a particular slot, and hopefully some gold/glove +radius pickup. As I typically gold find in lower difficulties, it is all pushover anyway, I don't care about other stats.

If you are looking for magic find, simply make sure one of the three fields in the searching the auction house have magic find as an option, and then find the best piece of gear you can afford that also has magic find. I found a lot of my magic find gear as I'm not super picky.

Once you get to the inferno difficulties and want to farm act III etc, good pieces that also have magic find are few and far between, and can fetch a fair bit of gold/money. While leveling, I wouldn't worry about magic find at all.

My DH chest piece has:
100+ Dex
100+ Vit
3 Sockets
+8 Disc
12% MF

It was 2.6 million on the AH when I got it a while back. The next closest one was like 5+ million and did not have the same amount of Disc and MF.

 

[darkxshade]

And where do you think the gear on the AH comes from?

Basements of mothers around the world.

 

[Fallengod]

for some reason all my AT friends got removed from my list, if anyone wants a pretty decent meat shield add me. pantlegz#1355

I could use a meat sheild to party with doing some mf runs if you wanted. Ill add you.

 

[Rage187]

Upgraded my 6 year old computer with a SSD. Incredible improvement. No more loading times or stuttering.

 

[micaturbo]

Players of higher level who found it and are selling it to lower level characters because the lower level characters can't find it at their level.

And the level 60 stuff from people who farm for dozens (and perhaps more) hours going over the same ground over and over and over AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER the same ground until they find that one single item to sell or use.

So what's the problem? That's the point of the game. It's not some Blizzard conspiracy to make you use the AH. You are free to use it as an alternative to mindless farming.

The AH gives you a safe and convenient way of offloading good pieces of gear that your character has no use for, and in turn purchase gear from other players who found something that they have no use for. And if your luck really sucks and you don't find anything good after farming, you can use the gold you've earned along the way to buy something useful.

The AH also serves to act as a gold sink with the cut it takes from each successful sale. Otherwise, you end up with a scenario like D2 where gold is nearly worthless. The increase in repair costs is another gold sink that also acts as a deterrent for corpse running.

It's perfectly possible to play through the game all the way to inferno without buying a single piece of gear on the AH. Heck, I didn't even stop to farm gear or experience at any point while leveling from 1-60, I just played straight through the game without any issues.

Inferno was meant to be a challenging difficulty where you were expected to farm better gear in order to progress through it. If farming isn't your cup of tea, then you're welcome to buy gear from the AH, or just don't bother doing inferno.

 

[thespyder]

Drops are, in a way, borked.

* First, the chance whether a rare drops AT ALL is random
* Second, the stats on the rares, IF they drop, as well as their ilvls etc. are random as well.

According to math and logic, this means that the chances of you getting a rare which is useable, fits your class and is actually an update is EXTREMELY small.

Calculate the odds to get a drop which fullfills your requirements, say plenty of INT, crit chance, resist all....and you will realize that chances for this are ALMOST zero.

The worse,the drops are so bad and stats so randomly, idiotic distributed that most rares you cannot even sell on the AH.

In reality this means, unlike in WoW, its entirely pointless to play the game in the hopes for a good drop, eg. if you have a certain build in mind requiring certain stats.

After 1.03, the repair costs seem also to be higher than the actual gain from looting/selling the "rares" - short, i dont seem to make money at all, actually losing it if i would not OCCASIONALLY make a sale on the GAH.

It is very, very clear that the game is tuned so people NEED TO play the AHs, selling/buying etc...but its made extremely, extremely difficult due to the idiotic loot in game. Needless to say, i am convinced this is intentional.

It is more than clear that it was intentional. Some refuse to see it, but it is as blatant and obvious as a a big stake dinner in the middle of a vegetarian buffet.

I am not saying that you 'Can't' play the game without the AH, but it was clear that the entire framework of the game was designed around those who do, and to entice those who don't want too to cave in and use it anyway. It is a core mechanic of the game design.

 

[thespyder]

So what's the problem? That's the point of the game. It's not some Blizzard conspiracy to make you use the AH. You are free to use it as an alternative to mindless farming.

The AH gives you a safe and convenient way of offloading good pieces of gear that your character has no use for, and in turn purchase gear from other players who found something that they have no use for. And if your luck really sucks and you don't find anything good after farming, you can use the gold you've earned along the way to buy something useful.

The AH also serves to act as a gold sink with the cut it takes from each successful sale. Otherwise, you end up with a scenario like D2 where gold is nearly worthless. The increase in repair costs is another gold sink that also acts as a deterrent for corpse running.

It's perfectly possible to play through the game all the way to inferno without buying a single piece of gear on the AH. Heck, I didn't even stop to farm gear or experience at any point while leveling from 1-60, I just played straight through the game without any issues.

Inferno was meant to be a challenging difficulty where you were expected to farm better gear in order to progress through it. If farming isn't your cup of tea, then you're welcome to buy gear from the AH, or just don't bother doing inferno.

My problem isn't with the existence of the AH. nor with Farming per say. But with the fact that the entire game development was designed around the AH. The economy is clearly set up to be significantly easier to play the game if you use the AH. Finding items is a LOT harder without the AH. And Farming gets you almost no value unless you plan on selling the items you don't use on the AH. There are huge money sinks in the game, but very little actual cash flow in the game unless you use the AH. It permeates every layer of the game.

And the reason isn't to make the game more approachable from buying and selling things, but so that if you don't have the gold to go to the AH, you can go to the RMAH and buy it. And make money for Blizzard.

True, it is not "NECESSARY" to do AH, but it is heavily incentivised to do so. So much so that elements of the game were broken (or nearly so) just so that you had to either suffer a far inferior gaming experience or go to the AH.

maybe i have worked in marketing too long, but I can spot rube bate a mile away. I guess not everyone is so adept.

 

[Fallengod]

Anyone wanna coop some goober mf runs?

 

[uhohs]

I'd argue that it's basically impossible to beat the game in all four difficulties without the AH. No one will find, on their own, all the gear required to survive/win in Inferno.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

You might argue that. You might also argue that it's impossible to break the sound barrier. Neither are wise ideas though, as both have been done.

Heck, a guy streamed himself beating Inferno Diablo - on hardcore - with a 1.02 barbarian - using only stuff he had found - the night before 1.03 dropped.


The "Entire game was designed around the auction house" argument has two huge problems, named "Diablo" and "Diablo 2" respectively. Neither had auction houses, and both had their loot system functionally identical to this one.

When there was no auction house, 99.9% of all drops sucked completely, and of those .1% that didn't, .08% sucked for your class. That's just how the series is designed.

You can say it sucks, sure, but don't fool yourself into believing it's about the AH. This his been the series modus operandi since day 1. The AH is just a way to make trading more viable with less worry about scams.

 

[shortylickens]

I would get a really powerful item and then record myself dropping it on the ground in single player mode just to be a dick.

 

[JamesV]

Looking for a gold/mf partner.

32k dps Wizard that can easily solo A2 inferno, and can slowly solo A3 til Heart of Sin. If you can do both A2/3 similarly, then lets team up and burn through it. I actually prefer A2, because I can fill my inventory with 10+ rares 3 times in A2 in the same amount of time I can fill it once in A3 - and I've found stuff like 1200 dps weapons and don't have a huge repair bill.

Hak#1547

Usually on late EST.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

I would get a really powerful item and then record myself dropping it on the ground in single player mode just to be a dick.

Hardcore has it's own auction house, and a much smaller player base. Even if he was inclined to do that, the pool of items available is much, much smaller.

 

[Fallengod]

Looking for a gold/mf partner.

PM'd.

 

[DAGTA]

Anyone else getting severe lag tonight? Trying to figure out if it is my ISP or D3.

 

[waterjug]

I think I'm done with this game. I defended it earlier, but wow. They really fucked up the endgame here. I played Diablo 2 for years, and never really got bored. This is ridiculous. I'm a barb; doing 20k+ damage, all resists at least 350%, 30k life. It's taken hours of farming to get the stuff I have, numerous auctions etc.

I get to Act II. Everything can one or two hit me. I died at one point 15 times in 7 minutes. Yeah, really fun. So back to farming for gold etc. I find an auction for a really nice weapon that'd increase my damage by about 30%, bid on it...try increasing my max bid since I figure it may go for higher...I get an error. Try again...error. There's no buyout, and the auction is set to last for another day I believe, or at least several more hours. Same thing happens no matter how many times I log in/out, reboot, etc. Weapon is just sitting there and for some reason not even my original bid shows on it. Auction ends and i don't get the weapon. Kind of deflated me.

I don't want to farm the same fucking quest over and over and over, especially when Act I inferno guys still can one hit me in a couple instances. I'm barely breaking even with how often I die thanks to the latest fucking patch. So I can't progress any further in Act II because I die if anything hits me. I can farm Act I, and hope that after the 30K+ in repair costs every few deaths that I can net about 10k gold, and do this 100-200 times and try to get to 1 million gold, or just quit. All my items are at 0 durability, I have about 20k in gold, so I can't even repair all my stuff. Plus I'm getting hit by some bug, half the time I try and do a butcher run, the butcher isn't there so I do all that work, for nothing.


I think I'm done. What a piece of shit this game turned out to be.

 

[thespyder]

You might argue that. You might also argue that it's impossible to break the sound barrier. Neither are wise ideas though, as both have been done.

Being able to be done and being able to be done by 90% or more of the players is another thing. But I agree, it can be done. It is significantly harder by design to do so, which is my point.

Heck, a guy streamed himself beating Inferno Diablo - on hardcore - with a 1.02 barbarian - using only stuff he had found - the night before 1.03 dropped.

One outlier does not prove a point.

The "Entire game was designed around the auction house" argument has two huge problems, named "Diablo" and "Diablo 2" respectively. Neither had auction houses, and both had their loot system functionally identical to this one.

Manifestly Diablo 1 and 2 were NOT the same as Diablo 3. Check out above comments about the difference in treasure and loot drops. Diablo 1 and 2 were designed to not have an auction house, so the loot drop system is quite different. Play the games sometime and see.

When there was no auction house, 99.9% of all drops sucked completely, and of those .1% that didn't, .08% sucked for your class. That's just how the series is designed.

In diablo 1 and 2, I would disagree. In diablo 3, I would 100% agree. By design. So that, although you could play without AH, it was SIGNIFICANTLy easier to do it with AH.

You can say it sucks, sure, but don't fool yourself into believing it's about the AH. This his been the series modus operandi since day 1. The AH is just a way to make trading more viable with less worry about scams.

If you can't see the fundamental differences between the three games, I would suggest that you haven't played the first two. Or at minimum not recently. It is clear as day to those of us who have.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

I've read your comments on money above. I simply ignored them because they struck me as crazy.

You're actually angry that money in Diablo 3 is being used to allow people to trade with each other via the auction house.

Allowing for easy exchanges between parties is the whole point of money in every economy everywhere.

And 'never getting enough money to buy anything useful without selling on the auction house' run dead smack into the little problem of there not actually being anything worth buying if you don't use the auction house.

As I recall, D1 and D2 both had the same problem. What vendors sold was universally junk once you got past nightmare, tops.

And looking back at D2....well, the community there stopped using gold as a currency for actual transactions in what, 1.01? 1.02? Gold was so fundamentally valueless that it stopped being used as a medium for transaction by anything that wasn't a robot. That's a pretty hard fail for a currency.