I miss Diablo III's Real-Money-Auction-House

[Razorice]

It was good fun. Would post all kinds of crap and people would buy it!

[Sevyvia]

You and like 7 other people, I'm thinking. The game is much better these days.

[Deleted]

Yes, instead of playing the game and then complain there's nothing to do. It's not trading itself to be wrong, but how convenient it is. SInce in D3 farming is already at the lowest level ever conceived, trading would just be redundant.

Well, people tend to do a lot of things that are not logical, but anyway i am sure there would be people willing to pay money for a traveller´s pledge socketed, 10% crit, 100%crit damage, and 20% desired ele damage (3 out of 4).
And believe it or not, a lot of people would be incentivised to play the game just for trying to get one of those for making a bunch of bucks.
Besides it is not game breaking, you do not really need a perfect traveller´s pledge for anything in the game, but still i bet there would be a market for such items.

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You and like 7 other people, I'm thinking. The game is much better these days.

Yep, sure it is, but it has nothing to do with the RMAH or AH, it is because post ROS, they did tamper with the drop rates.
Do you think the game would be better if they just had removed RMAH and AH, but leaving the drops as they were pre ROS?

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It's not trading itself to be wrong, but how convenient it is.

Yeah, true, because they made trading not just convinient, but mandatory.
But if trading were just about selling perfect drops, that as i said are not needed, or even consumables that anyone can get just by playing, the gameplay would not be broken.
I am looking for two ramalhandi´s, i will eventually get them, but i do not think my gameplay would be over if i were able to just buy them, or a bunch of emeralds.
Now if the only way of getting R gifts, or the emeralds, is buying them, then yes, trading would go back to being an abomination.

[Coldkil]

Well, people tend to do a lot of things that are not logical, but anyway i am sure there would be people willing to pay money for a traveller´s pledge socketed, 10% crit, 100%crit damage, and 20% desired ele damage (3 out of 4).
And believe it or not, a lot of people would be incentivised to play the game just for trying to get one of those for making a bunch of bucks.
Besides it is not game breaking, you do not really need a perfect traveller´s pledge for anything in the game, but still i bet there would be a market for such items.

Agree. Though if the biggest incentive for playing a game is the chance of getting some bucks, then there's something fundamentally flawed in it. I mean, it's the same with D2 or PoE, but a) it's not officially supported and b) i think it's against the ToS/EULA. Plus, trading is pretty inconvenient in those games so volumes are naturally lower than RMAH times.

I'm not against trading in loot-based games if the balance is kept on place. D3 was and awful mess because AH/RMAH was too convenient to use and loot was basically mostly crap for the exception of a really small subset that was immensely powerful in comparison. Add to this that Inferno Diablo was reachable only if you had that kind of gear byou could have been easily screwed by RNG for no reason whatsoever.
I'd sacrifice trading all the times in favour of a more balanced and enjoyable playstyle. Now i'm not going into the major issues the game has now because it's not the thread topic.

AH/RMAH was a bad idea all around for multiple reasons. Trading needs to be structured in a good way to be something that has an inner value and not just a way for people to get something outside of the game. But unfortunately i also think there's no way to separate the two things, since as you said there's always someone willing to pay to skip ahead and "win" at the game (even if there's no actual winning).

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Do you think the game would be better if they just had removed RMAH and AH, but leaving the drops as they were pre ROS?

Was not directed to me but whatever

I think that part of the issue was itemization per se and endgame structure that lacked basically everything meaningful. With an itemization rework, old drop chances and a D2-like trading system, i think the game would have worked better. Hell, even GRs would have worked better because you actually wanted to run the higher possible (in decent times) because they gave a small boost in % for each level.

Now since everything drops 1000x it's not even meaningful to climb GRs because why you should do it. You can farm the same stuff at GR20 or Torment 1, and not even that slower.

[Alvito]

I miss the RMAH for 1 reason and it is selfish. I made a few hundred dollars just playing the game. Now with the token in WoW I can easily save money playing, which is nice. Making money just playing the way I was going to anyways was nice while it lasted. It is amazing some of the nonsense items people bought with cash.

[Deleted]

Agree. Though if the biggest incentive for playing a game is the chance of getting some bucks, then there's something fundamentally flawed in it.

No, i do see it more like an extra, not the main incentive, but you know, the game makes it easy for a short 5-6 Grifting sesion, the number would just go a little higher because of the extra motivation, in a healthy average player of course, we do all know that there are people who can take an innocent feature like this and take it to the extreme.

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I'm not against trading in loot-based games if the balance is kept on place. D3 was and awful mess because AH/RMAH was too convenient to use and loot was basically mostly crap for the exception of a really small subset that was immensely powerful in comparison. Add to this that Inferno Diablo was reachable only if you had that kind of gear byou could have been easily screwed by RNG for no reason whatsoever.

Agreed, that was exactly the problem, it was not just convinient, it was mandatory, and therefore it killed the gameplay, and ultimately the game itself.

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It is amazing some of the nonsense items people bought with cash.

It is not anymore, see the throng of youtube videos debating about lootboxes, and about Shadow of Mordor and SW battlefront 2.
Seriously, after watching a bunch of these, i think i will not be again amazed by people purchasing decisions in videogames.

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Now since everything drops 1000x it's not even meaningful to climb GRs because why you should do it. You can farm the same stuff at GR20 or Torment 1, and not even that slower.

No, it is not, specially because it means saying goodbye to the builds you enjoy as you push for higher and higher grifts, unless you happen to enjoy one of the maximizing builds.
Man if you saw the monk build i am currently using, it is a disgrace in terms of min maxing, but i am enjoying it a lot, for whatever the reason i do really enjoy playing with it, i do not care that i am stuck at t10 and gr45, and that even with perfect loot it will not climb much higher, but i absolutely love it.

[Coldkil]

No, it is not, specially because it means saying goodbye to the builds you enjoy as you push for higher and higher grifts, unless you happen to enjoy one of the maximizing builds.
Man if you saw the monk build i am currently using, it is a disgrace in terms of min maxing, but i am enjoying it a lot, for whatever the reason i do really enjoy playing with it, i do not care that i am stuck at t10 and gr45, and that even with perfect loot it will not climb much higher, but i absolutely love it.

Yeah, last patch brought some fresh air in terms of "enjoyable" builds and i plan to play it sometime when i have some spare time, but i'm pretty burned by the game since i played all the seasons pretty much hardcore until i had finished the journey.
Honestly i'm not even looking forward to do so. I'm just waiting for what the new Diablo game is going to become. And think two times before buying it then preordering the collectors edition .

[Deleted]

Diablo is better then ever now.

RMAH was bullcr*p

Its not really though tbh.

Its a different game now then its ever been before. The RPG elements of leveling and exploring is gone. The gear grinding is pretty much just gets your best set as fast as you can. Anything but specific items are useless because they dont buff a specific skill that you need to use with a specific build

Edit:

I'm not saying its all bad. The gameplay is definately good. Really good. As is Blizzards trademark. But its very monotome(as was d2, but this is a much newer game).

Feel like the game could really use a rune system like in d2. Some hard to get items in there that took grinding

[Mormolyce]

I made $2.50 out of the RMAH and by God I love that $2.50.

Honeslty, people had a massive aneurysm about it when it was released but I actually thought it was fine. You didn't have to use it.

[Temp name]

I made $2.50 out of the RMAH and by God I love that $2.50.

Honeslty, people had a massive aneurysm about it when it was released but I actually thought it was fine. You didn't have to use it.

But the best way to gear up being to throw money at a screen instead of playing yourself kinda sucked.

[The One Percent]

RMAH almost completely destroyed the game

[Coldkil]

I made $2.50 out of the RMAH and by God I love that $2.50.

Honeslty, people had a massive aneurysm about it when it was released but I actually thought it was fine. You didn't have to use it.

Give how itemization was, yes you pretty much were forced to use it. It was literally like in the mobile games where you can technically reach the highest difficulties via farming but since item level was tied to monster level you either spent an useless amount of time doing trivial stuff with very small chance of lucking it out or you just bought the stuff in AH/RMAH.

PoE trade works because a) all content is doable in a resonable time without trading, because character power is more tied to your build and correct stat choices and b) because concluding trades is difficult enough to make people less attracted by it. In D3 we had the completely opposite situation.

[Gadzooks]

I made $2.50 out of the RMAH and by God I love that $2.50.

Honeslty, people had a massive aneurysm about it when it was released but I actually thought it was fine. You didn't have to use it.

Sure, you didn't have to. I didn't. And I think I had all of two legendaries after over a month of playing it. Playing D3 self found was a overly-difficult experience, with reward being far and few between. It sucked. And the prices skyrocketed so fast, that you would have to grind for hours to afford the weakest stuff on there. It went against the very spirit of the game, Diablo 1&2 were dungeon crawler slot machines - pick a zone, see what falls out. The only people who enjoyed it were botters - sure, they were making decent money with their bots, but people like me, who just wanted to play Diablo, it fucking sucked. I quit D3 for good because of it, and only came back when I read the patch notes about loot 2.0, and saw they'd fixed it.
'
The game's drive right now is those golds and greens. That's it. And I don't want to play a game that requires those items, but there's a distinct possibility, if not guarantee, that I'll grind for 6 hours and never see one. Fuck that noise. I want Diablo, not a bot feeding frenzy. I paid for a game, not for a way for cheaters to make money.

[Mormolyce]

Give how itemization was, yes you pretty much were forced to use it. It was literally like in the mobile games where you can technically reach the highest difficulties via farming but since item level was tied to monster level you either spent an useless amount of time doing trivial stuff with very small chance of lucking it out or you just bought the stuff in AH/RMAH.

PoE trade works because a) all content is doable in a resonable time without trading, because character power is more tied to your build and correct stat choices and b) because concluding trades is difficult enough to make people less attracted by it. In D3 we had the completely opposite situation.

No you just had to accept that the game was going to be harder as a result of your decision.

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But the best way to gear up being to throw money at a screen instead of playing yourself kinda sucked.

I mean, define "best". It's a single player game and all buying gear did was make the game get old faster. You were basically only cheating yourself.

Technically the best way to play DOOM was to turn the invulnerability and infinite ammo cheats on.

[Coldkil]

No you just had to accept that the game was going to be harder as a result of your decision.

Yes and no. In PoE you can play SSF and do everything at a slower pace depending on the upgrades you find. But progression is steady and over time balanced.

In Vanilla D3 since act 1 inferno had all monsters at level 61, the chance to drop ilvl 62 or 63 was abysmal. Act 2 was monster level 62 and the monsters were able to shot you in no time, making it literally impossible to progress if you didn't lucked out. If RNG was against you, you could never drop the items needed.

That's an enormous difference.

[Mormolyce]

Yes and no. In PoE you can play SSF and do everything at a slower pace depending on the upgrades you find. But progression is steady and over time balanced.

In Vanilla D3 since act 1 inferno had all monsters at level 61, the chance to drop ilvl 62 or 63 was abysmal. Act 2 was monster level 62 and the monsters were able to shot you in no time, making it literally impossible to progress if you didn't lucked out. If RNG was against you, you could never drop the items needed.

That's an enormous difference.

Yeah launch D3 Inferno was definitely a merciless bitch, but then the idea for it originally was more like Hell difficulty was the endgame like in D1 and D2, while Inferno was an ass-reamingly difficult grind that would last a really long time because of how unfair it was. Like a sadistic new game+ rather than an actual endgame. I sort of enjoyed it as that for a while when it was first out.

Of course, that model wasn't super popular. And I think that ultimately swapping the Inferno system out for Torment was a huge improvement. But at launch I was like, well it's supposed to be hard because you're not really supposed to finish it. Not in any sane time scale.

[Coldkil]

Yeah launch D3 Inferno was definitely a merciless bitch, but then the idea for it originally was more like Hell difficulty was the endgame like in D1 and D2, while Inferno was an ass-reamingly difficult grind that would last a really long time because of how unfair it was. Like a sadistic new game+ rather than an actual endgame. I sort of enjoyed it as that for a while when it was first out.

Of course, that model wasn't super popular. And I think that ultimately swapping the Inferno system out for Torment was a huge improvement. But at launch I was like, well it's supposed to be hard because you're not really supposed to finish it. Not in any sane time scale.

Yep. With the rework in diffculties and Paragon the game had taken a better route - but the problem was the long term damage AH did at the beginning. Game was far more balanced but lots of players was already decked in stuff that made them breeze through torments. I did a Paragon 100 DH and had quite some fun, but i was the excpetion at that point. RoS manages to shake everything up big time and was again good at the beginning, but the went the complete opposite route with rain of legendaries and sets and the way you build characters couldn't be more on rails. The game got stale in a very short time.

[Temp name]

I mean, define "best". It's a single player game and all buying gear did was make the game get old faster. You were basically only cheating yourself.

Technically the best way to play DOOM was to turn the invulnerability and infinite ammo cheats on.

The game is about getting better gear. The most efficient way to do that was to buy it.

[Mormolyce]

The game is about getting better gear. The most efficient way to do that was to buy it.

And then the game is complete. You just paid to not play a game.

[Milchshake]

Was mostly ambivalent about the RMAH. All it really did was point out how shitty gear and drop-rates were. Playing hellmode for rare chances at mediocre loot was just not a fun experience.