What's changed for the better/worse since release?

[Kelimbror]

My brother comes back to the game after not playing for a year, and I can't even give him any help other than by personally boosting him through all the content. I can't give him any of the excess gear I've got laying around, can't give him any recipes for craftables, any materials, any gems... not even any gold.

Oh noes! You can't simply give him the 'win' in the game. It's so terrible that you have to actually play the game with your brother. It's a travesty!

646 posts in the D3 subforum, and you still don't even vaguely understand why people dislike BoA gear?
I'm almost impressed.

Oh I understand completely. I think it's completely vapid and ridiculous. I also don't think you understood the context of my post at all, but hey. Also: appeal to post count is a tacky forum strategy as an extension of ad hominem. It doesn't really do anything for you. *shrug*

[Deleted]

The BoA thing does not hurt that much, because you can trade with people you play with - but I certainly do understand that looting for value can be as fun as looting for usefulness, especially because the value is not granted.

What bothers me is the ignorance of PvP (the game has pretty good framework for good PvP) and rather bad level creation - honestly the presets repeat so often that the game is simply way too repetitive. I'd rather have big pool of very random levels, than about 10 repeating presets, with varying walls inside.

Also quite can agree with difficulty, but I'm not yet sure how'll 2.1 work. The problem here is that the difficulty is only in increasing damage/health, so that you usually get bored by dealing too little damage, or die too fast to things that are hard or impossible to dodge. I'd rather have more things like those double boss fights.

[BenBos]

The BoA thing does not hurt that much, because you can trade with people you play with - but I certainly do understand that looting for value can be as fun as looting for usefulness, especially because the value is not granted.

What bothers me is the ignorance of PvP (the game has pretty good framework for good PvP) and rather bad level creation - honestly the presets repeat so often that the game is simply way too repetitive. I'd rather have big pool of very random levels, than about 10 repeating presets, with varying walls inside.

Also quite can agree with difficulty, but I'm not yet sure how'll 2.1 work. The problem here is that the difficulty is only in increasing damage/health, so that you usually get bored by dealing too little damage, or die too fast to things that are hard or impossible to dodge. I'd rather have more things like those double boss fights.

Oh what a very good post and sentence in bold there !

It described what I sensed as EPIC in Diablo 3. I grinded, crafted and sold all this leveling gear in a hardcore economy. It was fantastic and since everyone died somewhere you kept selling those Cain sets endlessly (and hunted mats to craft them).

And apparently some in this thread still do NOT know your hardcore economy was pure GOLD only in the game btw. No need to "cheat" there with real money.

So it took weeks/months to advance in that hardcore game, it was epic and I fully agree with your statement: Looting for value was as fun as looting to advance usefulness.


---------- > With the new Loot system they could have kept the Gold AH's only perfectly ... and now as they DID go the BOA route, they could have included it in a much smarter way: like make ALL loot FREE ... until you traded (sold) it ONCE , after which the new owner only would have the BOA version.

This mechanic could have turned into an extra motivation even: I am full dressed self found, while the BOA equiped guy would have bought his gear.


So many good things wasted to have a nice PR stunt and appeal to the youngsters: "Diablo is a pure loot game". Nope it was FAR more than that in D3 vanilla.

Far more.... So sad

I played video games for 36 years already and I don't remember ANY one other game that changed so much for the worst to please another kind of player and had a cheap PR stunt.

It didn't even make sense, as they could have kept the AH versions on seperate servers even.

I do think that Pardo never accepted this direction and it could be an extra reason why he quit.

Diablo 3 vanilla sold 16 million copies: the PS3/Xbox AND RoS expansion combined hardly 4 million.

[Deleted]

Their problem is that they butcher whatever they don't like and immediately implement new experiment in place. I believe that they could have already have much better game if they constantly followed "best of each world" approach.

The trading system lacked multiple gold sinks and risk moves, while also snowballed rewarded players and thus increased prices for unlucky ones. With the way they butchered trading, they also removed value from rare-quality items - in fact it was moved to "blank" legendaries - which resulted in weird value of legendary materials and made most of legendary crafting recipes useless. They response to this was butchering crafting...

But the new "world" also have it qualities - with locked loots, item sets are now better and arguably much more fun, people get to see a lot of very strong item affixes - and loot changing play style is also very fun (which is something that D2 already proved with runewords).

I think what old auction missed was direct item trade, where you would offer items directly for other items, which could allow Blizzard to "tax" (again D2 had some sort of gold limit) somewhat gold hoarders and make prices potentially more bearable for starters.

[Kelimbror]

I think what old auction missed was direct item trade, where you would offer items directly for other items, which could allow Blizzard to "tax" (again D2 had some sort of gold limit) somewhat gold hoarders and make prices potentially more bearable for starters.

If the only goal was to improve that aspect, then yes...you would be right. But they also deftly removed the black market in one fell swoop. These decisions are for a larger impact than you give them credit for. There's really no way to implement trading and prevent 3rd party activity which results in increased account compromises, increased bot activity, and generally a lower standard of play. Despite nostalgia, D2 was not a better way of doing things. 3rd parties still make money illegally off of that game. Not really a great standard to set.

[Deleted]

Diablo 3 vanilla sold 16 million copies: the PS3/Xbox AND RoS expansion combined hardly 4 million.

You can't argue this as an arguement in favor of what you are saying. As far as we know, the 12 milions difference was because of the trading or lack of or bad graphics or exploding cows or whatever. It could also be because vanilla d3 sucked or caused burned out or simply anything. You really need to have more concrete data from blizzard (for example: 92% players with >100 hours bought RoS etc) in order to analyze the drop in sales.

I also feel you are wrong with what you are saying about trading in general. Fixing the AH with a arbital rule of "you can only trade it once" is a little off. Even with a "trade once" rule you still have to account for item inflation in softcore and item accessibility. Even with 85% smart loot i still found tons of stuff for other classes and let's not talk about how many "ok" mirrorballs etc i found for wizards.
Yes trading in SOME form would be a good addition to the game but not as an AH nor as channel spamming or soulbound items etc.

For example trading could be implemented along with more advanced crafting and hunting for specific things like materials or runes but without being able to trade for drops.

The AH as it was only worked in one scenario as you yourself have said: hardcore. Unfortunately you can't dismiss softcore. Things like "make a server only for hardcore WITH trading" and thus splitting up your playerbase is a horrible design choice, similar to things like "make a vanilla wow server" etc. It might work for YOU but from a company's PoV it's like shooting yourself in the foot. Fixing the game is the solution, not spliting the game into 10 different modes for 20 different types of players.

If the only goal was to improve that aspect, then yes...you would be right. But they also deftly removed the black market in one fell swoop. These decisions are for a larger impact than you give them credit for. There's really no way to implement trading and prevent 3rd party activity which results in increased account compromises, increased bot activity, and generally a lower standard of play. Despite nostalgia, D2 was not a better way of doing things. 3rd parties still make money illegally off of that game. Not really a great standard to set.

3rd parties, black market, bots etc definitely affect the game in a negative way but you can't dump down your game just to deal with chinese farmers...

[announced]

d3 vanilla only sold 16m copies because of the hype that it had from all the advertising, and the success of the popular D2 Lod. people expected the god of video games when they bought D3. it was alrite, but nothing close to everyones expectations. afterwards im sure many were hesitant to buy Ros, resulting in its only 4M copies sold.

d3 ros keeps getting better and better, with more build diversity and stuff coming in 2.1

[Deleted]

one thing i would like to see them do is enable trading completely on Seasonal.. The problem with doing it in normal softcare is that the market will be flooded with BiS legendaries, while on seasonal it gets reset every 2-3 months

[Kelimbror]

3rd parties, black market, bots etc definitely affect the game in a negative way but you can't dump down your game just to deal with chinese farmers...

I think you're missing the part where these things you so easily dismiss ruin the game to the core. The AH functioned no differently except Blizzard and players were reaping the rewards in addition to the shady sources. Removing gameplay from the game is ultimately what causes a game to fail. When you can buy your way out of playing, or simply have the need to play removed from a generous donator, then there is no game. You don't hear people talking about their work/career of winning the lottery right? It's a shortcut to the end goal. That's not a game. That's pure tiger blood, pure winning.

[Deleted]

I think you're missing the part where these things you so easily dismiss ruin the game to the core. The AH functioned no differently except Blizzard and players were reaping the rewards in addition to the shady sources. Removing gameplay from the game is ultimately what causes a game to fail. When you can buy your way out of playing, or simply have the need to play removed from a generous donator, then there is no game. You don't hear people talking about their work/career of winning the lottery right? It's a shortcut to the end goal. That's not a game. That's pure tiger blood, pure winning.

I didn't dismiss them, i just disagree with solutions that take it out on the game instead of the problem. In the end of the day, if X customer isn't for example botting, why should he experience a dumped down game because Y customer bots?
It's the same thing with various nerfs that happened in the game: people farmed purple mobs to farm legs? purple mobs no longer drop legs. Because some people farmed the hell out of them, purple mobs are now useless to the rest of us.
While some problems are quite difficult to tackle as a company (for example hacking), some solutions just don't sit well with some of us.

In the other hand i agree that the AH needed to be taken out. Trading in general ain't a bad thing, but not with the model they originally implemented it.

[Kelimbror]

dumped down game

I'm not sure what you actually mean by this, so I'm just going to assume this is some phrase for lesser quality that I've never heard. That's where we fundamentally disagree and so does the concept of gameplay. So even on objective design principle I'd strongly feel the game is designed better without any form of that. You obtain rewards by playing the game. To trade with players, you have to play with them. Really that's the fundamental issue it comes down to. Would people be satisfied with trading only existing in games if they made group smart loot? Example: smart loot works individually as is, but when you are in a group everyone has a chance to get loot for their party. This means people can same class to game it (just like now) or can have as many different ones as possible to have the widest loot net. Anyone can trade anything with their party during that game. This way you can trade, but you have to directly use gameplay as the mechanism for trade. To me that both solves the only problem and reinforces the values they do currently.

[Dilbon]

Fuck trading, it's the scourge of online games.

[Djuntas]

Fuck trading, it's the scourge of online games.

Maybe for some people, but I enjoy it. Inn my example from Diablo 2: I finished a new character/build inn about 1 week, helped all by trading....Cause a) ladder runeword witch can only be traded b) no chance you'll ever get the items to drop yourself

trading inn ARPGs are needet period. Some of you people just suck at trading, and got scammed once, and then hate on it...

[Faesroll]

No it's not, I want to play the game instead of spamming /trade "LF WITCHING HOUR WITH STR X AND VIT Y" whole day.

[Kelimbror]

Some of you people just suck at trading

By that logic I guess everyone who loves trading just happens to suck at playing the actual game, eh?

I want to play the game instead of spamming /trade "LF WITCHING HOUR WITH STR X AND VIT Y" whole day.

Unfortunately all the pro traders/ah people just want to 'win' the game instead of playing it. Seriously one of the best arguments that can be presented is that they can't just give their friends all their legendaries...but the thought of actually helping their friend get that by playing is so absurd they are insulted.

[OrcsRLame]

Maybe for some people, but I enjoy it. Inn my example from Diablo 2: I finished a new character/build inn about 1 week, helped all by trading....Cause a) ladder runeword witch can only be traded b) no chance you'll ever get the items to drop yourself

trading inn ARPGs are needet period. Some of you people just suck at trading, and got scammed once, and then hate on it...

Not everyone hates trading because they suck at it. I played Path of Exile, which is quite a bit more hardcore than Vanilla D3 I might add. You're never gonna get wealth in that game through self found drops. I enjoyed the fuck out of the game, but as I got to more difficult content and progressed to higher levels, I found that I was spending more and more time spamming trade chat, browsing trading websites, and setting up my own shop on the official forums. The more wealth you got, the more necessary this became, as you may need to spend the equivalent of 40 or more Exalted Orbs to upgrade a single piece of gear, but well, I had multiple characters over level 80, I've seen 3 Exalts drop ever.

The busywork of trading just fucking obliterated my enjoyment of the game. I never got scammed, I always made a profit and I sold things in a reasonable amount of time. And I fucking loathed every second of it. The gameplay was pretty sick though, minus the desynch issues.

[Djuntas]

Okay, thanks for replies all then.

Why trading is epic inn ARPG's:

1. Another thing to do (Just like playing the AH inn WoW can be another mini-game within the game). I also play the game sure, but if I want gear I trade. I have earned over 100 high rune's inn my time off playing Diablo2 trading...you think I found all thoes hr's myself :P? I could play for centuries botting....Actually I only found 1 high rune inn Diablo2, and Ive made maany characters, higheste level 90, lowest 80. My current account is 6 years old soon, with 2 other mule accounts also having some age.

2. Don't haft to relay on luck. You can controle your drops abit.

3. Makes you motivated to try new builds, or classes knowing you have a chance to finish the build cause off trading.

....Could maybe list few more reasons, but thats the biggest 3.

[OrcsRLame]

In RoS, I feel like it's pretty easy to get the gear to try a build. Doesn't take that long unless you're going for a top rarity legendary like Wand of Woh or Cindercoat. And there's not a lot of those.

[Djuntas]

In RoS, I feel like it's pretty easy to get the gear to try a build. Doesn't take that long unless you're going for a top rarity legendary like Wand of Woh or Cindercoat. And there's not a lot of those.

Funny how you mention Wand of woh, an item that made me stop playing...Trading....please...

[OrcsRLame]

Funny how you mention Wand of woh, an item that made me stop playing...Trading....please...

Wand of Woh made me switch mains lol. Getting a Darklight and 6 piece Akkhan's way WAY easier than getting that fucking thing. It's actually the only item in the game that I can think of that is a true build enabler that is also a super rare. I mean, Cindercoat's really godly for a lot of builds, but I don't think I've ever seen a build that benefits from it that can't function without it. Woh is just a stupid item. Should probably be as rare as most build enablers.