Decline Auction House Online: The Game (Diablo 3) is a MASSIVE decline

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for sure it would be a better game and i am all for interesting char development but who the fuck expected that?! there's still enough customization, imo more than in d2.

As much as I agree with everything you've said, I think there's another reason why they went the way they did. It has to do with their ambition to have competitive PvP in the game, and their experiences with both WoW PvP and SC2 multiplayer. To make a long story short, SC:BW was a great competitive game, because it focused on providing players with a lot of tools and options, therefore facilitating real strategic development. There is a recorded period of more than two years of Protoss being statistically weak against Zerg at the highest level of play, and it was eventually solved with a strategic breakthrough (aka, a build that allowed Protoss players to do what was previously thought impossible), and not a patch.

Thing is, trying to balance WoW PvP, instead of convincing Blizzard that variety and diversity are indeed the way to go, has made them think that homogenization and streamlining is what they really need. You can look at the history of SC2 patching, and especially their developer blog commenting upon the changes, to see that what they really want, is for the game to be played the way they envisioned it. "This does not work the way we intended it to." is their primary explanation for nearly every change. Instead of focusing on creating a great system, and letting players take advantage of it, they begin with their intended gameplay, and design the system to encourage it. This is a good way to design single-player games with very tight gameplay mechanics, but awful for multiplayer.

And so, in their mind, the simpler D3 character customization is, the easier it'll be to balance for their precious PvP. A skill causing trouble? Just nerf the skill or appropriate rune, it doesn't affect anything else. The skills are so neatly compartmentalized and independent of each other, it's extremely easy to manipulate them for balance reasons.

Their stance on PvP has been the same since they announced it and they repeat it once in a while. It will NOT be competitve.
It's really simple, the way D3 is built you have only one option when the game starts being too hard for your char, getting better gear, which for most players would translate into AH (aka $$$$$$$$$$$ for Blizzard). You can't doubt your build, no real gamer would ever doubt his skill so it must be the gear.

It's so not competitive that they have several PvP-exclusive maps and a matchmaking system? I always read that as a preemptive excuse, in case it's terribly balanced.

And if it's not competitive, then what's up with the delay? Is it that hard to implement the same matchmaking they have in every game they've made since WC3?

You know when I played .hack I said, it's just a parody on MMORPG, in real MMORPG it would be disaster. Getting skills only from your equipped items...

Then in .hack you have choice. Create stuff by transformation into better, and hope for best results, or get it from NPC around by trade. Surprissingly authors thought every player would be abusing bastard, nobody would roleplay, thus when they gave that free level item, or was it invicibility item, they looked like they expected everyone to cheat and use it. Of course just before a large battle I though, well the first boss was really big problem, thus considering I bit ironmanning it would be wise to use it before combat doesn't matter on consequences with admin. The result was a bit surprise. So tactic that depende on that stuff working as it should failed...

Luckily some NPCs are boneheads, and to get proper items from them is HARD TM. So ultimatelly it ends in hacking (and transforming), or grinding (to get items for trade), or really grinding (when you want these items as drops). I doubt MMO D3 players would be as bonehead as NPCs from .hack. Money talks which ultimatelly would kill D3 item system, and because these items have strong effect on character exactly the same as in .hack, it would maul D3.

Perhaps they wanted to make profit from this trading, but there is a line where ends a game and begins something else. I wouldn't call it online poker like stuff, I would compare it to banking system. Which however means D3 should be subject to the same regulations as banks, stock markets, and lending organization. The highest restriction from each of them.

While Blizzard has some tradition so bank like level of state intervention will not be a problem, I doubt they would be happy to be subject of the same regulations as stock markets.

That sounds really interesting, actually. Can you explain a little bit more, or at least give me something I could google? I was never that into SC (in a filthy betrayal of my Korean heritage), so I've never heard of this.

I didn't get enough of a feel on how D3's loot tables, item design and skill progression would work just from the beta. I was struck by the fact that even on 1-player normal, drops seemed to be less frequent and spectacular than D2, which isn't quite what you'd expect given what they seem to be doing with stats and builds. I also had a lot of hopes on runes compensating for the loss of other build flexibility options, and it does make 'lower level' skills viable later, but the runes themselves are levelled/tiered, too, and you get everything automatically anyway. I just can't imagine why they would remove any and all investment of player choice - you just swap out items and skills. There's no need to respec because there's nothing to 'spec' to begin with.

The thing that will be interesting with D3 is how the real world money auction house will work for players.

Blizzard will be charging a flat fee for a player to list an item, and it sounds like the item will only be listed for a set amount of time. This isn't a real auction house where people bid for items, but where the player selling the item has to set a price.... and people either buy it or not.

Each account will get some free listings, but once those are used up I wonder how eager people will be to actually list their items when they have to pay a flat fee to do so.

A player could easily go into debt trying to sell their items, and lots of players will do exactly that and then they will never list anything ever again.

There will probably be a class of players that essentially are role-playing a merchant. They will have to find good items, pay attention to current trends in prices and item demands, and price their items in an attempt to make money but also to avoid having an item not sell and thus incur a fee.

That is kind of interesting.

I can see all sorts of issues developing with that. I actually find this the most interesting aspect of D3, and I don't mean that as a snide criticism. I honestly find this quite interesting, and how it works is probably the most revolutionary thing about D3. If it works and players don't grow to hate it then it will change many things about the way these persistent on-line games work.

Haha, Blizzard takes both a flat fee for listing and a percentage of the final sale price? They're going to make a killing from this. They've essentially set themselves atop the entire Chinese farming market, which is huge business... in a contained market that they've created themselves. They can manipulate it any way they please, from creating artificial shortages of certain items, adding new items altogether, etc. It's fucking brilliant from a business standpoint.

I guess with D2 there were 3rd party websites that did the same thing, so people were going to buy/sell items for real money in D3 regardless. I remember D2 items selling on Ebay as soon as the game launched. I agree that it will be very interesting to see how this all pans out. The first thing that will come to everyone's mind is that Blizzard themselves will create rare items to sell straight from the company, and since everyone is going to rage and over it and believe they're doing that no matter what, they might as well do it.

I can envision some extremely butthurt people arising from this new system. I'm not sure what measures they have in place to avoid kids using their parents' credit cards, and it seems like it will be a magnet for people trying to fish accounts. Steal account -> buy item -> join game with secondary account -> drop item, pick it up on secondary.

They must be very confident that server issues aren't going to drop people's bought items into a black void either. Then again, you probably forfeit your right to hold Blizzard liable for any lost items when you accept the terms of the marketplace.

*Of course* they are more flexible - that's exactly what you get by removing RPG elements (no matter how modest they might be) from a game - if everybody can do everything, and there is no need, or even way to specialize.

There is no doubt that Fallout character would have far more flexibility if you could have 10 in every SPECIAL attribute and 200% in every skill.

There is no doubt each character and the entire party in BG would be far more flexible if every character had 18 in every stat, and all abilities of every class, 5 stars in all masteries, while advancing in all classes at the pace of single class character.

There is no doubt that similar would apply to *every* RPG, crawler and H&S out there.

There is also no doubt that this change alone would make all those games suck, remove last vestiges of RPG mechanics they otherwise have, and greatly lessen the depth of gameplay and any character system they have.

*Of course* that if choices don't stick, then there is less choice.

Choice is measured by its effect on the gameplay, if you can backtrack from any choice at no cost - not even wasted opportunity one, then there is no choice.

What's next?

Defending oblivion as pinnacle of choice in cRPG?
Citing biowarian choice as best kind of choice to ever grace cRPGs?
Claiming that doom is an RPG?
How about CoD?

Moron.

Also:

The smell of derp surrounds me.

So, by this logic Call of Duty has builds, because you can only carry and use two weapons at a time.
More so, switching to different weapon combination requires actually picking those weapons up, meaning more persistence of builds in CoD than in D3.

Clearly, CoD = best arpeegee evar!!!1

But it is not, so it is not.

Seriously, kill yourself.

Preferably like this guy here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_gunshot_suicide#cite_note-3

I don't think I've ever witnessed this much fuelled by sheer idiocy before.

1. There are plenty of rad removing artefacts.
2. In SoC there are diverse side effects, not just radiation.
3. In no STALKER there is any artefact that increases damage.

precisely the reason why the game has been retooled to be all about equipment
not just with the redesign, with the accessibility toned up now blizzard has an army of potential auctioneers out there

imagine the mad scramble when an expansion pack with new uniques is released

shit why not add investment firms in there that give money to various vendors in return for 7% monthly return

There is one positive thing to this new system, however.

The final difficulty levels will be HARD. They have said they will be the hardest ever for this sort of game, and that could actually be true. If they want players to buy and sell items then the items must matter. The one way to assure that is by making the final difficulty levels very, very hard. All the characters will be exactly the same other than equipment, so it would be folly for a character with marginal equipment to do well at the higher difficulty levels. Much like how free2play games on Facebook try to wear away at your patience in an attempt to get you to spend, D3's difficulty should be so intense that you are forced to either find or buy really good equipment. That does work as kind of a plus for those that want a challenge, assuming that the finally difficulty levels are challenging.

If you are buying and selling items for real money then you will have a small savings account with Blizzard. Much like PayPal for instance. So while you are making a joke about the investment firms, they could in fact add things like NPCs that convert your savings account to a money market account. That would be pretty funny. Blizzard will be holding your money, just as PayPal does, so if the $$ volume increases I assume they could start offering the same sort of services that PayPal offers... and eventually I can see Blizzard having to dole out MISC-99 forms to the larger accounts in the USA just like PayPal does.

I guess you can google the Bisu build. You won't find any win percentage graphs, because the BW community doesn't care about them, but I'm fairly certain it was over 2 years of Zerg winning more than 55% games against Protoss. If it were SC2, there would've been a patch for that shit after 3 months.

I'm not even going to respond to the strawman shit because I refuse to defend an argument I wasn't even trying to make.

The fact is that there are far more skills in total, and probably viable skills, than D2. If you even read the discussion at that point, that was the topic. I even agreed in the post that you quoted, and conveniently left out, that I agree that lack of permanence is bad.

And besides, if we're going to talk about BG or any other D&D1/2 computer game, outside of dual-classing it's not exactly the most customizable of character systems. Every priest is going to have the exact same spells, every mage is going to have the exact same spells, and guess what: you pick and choose from a certain selection of them that you'll have access to at any given time, just like Diablo 3. And hell, 95% of players are going to have the same equipment at any given part of the game. On top of that, stat points mean absolutely nothing outside of combat, so no one but larpers are going to roll sub-optimal stats; most everyone puts 18 in their main stats.

I wish D3 had more user-customization in regards to stat points and emphasizing certain skills, but whatever. I think it will be fun for what it is. If it's not, then I wasted $60.

However games are not about flexibility, they are about restrictions.

So would you like to play FF VII instead?

Of course you won't respond to strawman shit, because the only strawman shit here is your mischaracterization of my points as strawman shit.

GTFO.

I for one took pleasure in making odd, flawed Diablo2 builds. And WoW builds - until they took that away.

YOU PRE-ORDERED YOUR GW2 YET, FAG?!

Since we are talking about DnD.

You've never heard about 1) wizard specialists - which prohibits you from using spells from opposite school BUT is viable because you gain more spells from chosen school AND also bonuses for favourite school.
2) priest elemental spheres, priest choice of patron god and priest alignments, all 3 of them change spell choice.

3) Also failing to mention sorcerors, who have to choose skills they use and its hard to change choice (1 spell per lvl starting from lvl 5 if i remember right).
4) Faling to mention Metamagic feats, which are optional and there is plenty of them.

Get a clue about what you are talking about, DnD creators do understand that a choice that can be reversed in no time is not real choice at all.

D&D2 in general might have that, but Baldur's Gate doesn't nor do very many of the D&D computer games at all that I know of. And I meant "cleric" and not priest, which isn't even a class, at least not in BG. BG clerics get all spells as they level up and there are no elemental spheres or gods. BG doesn't have sorcerers either, but BG2 does. Yes, there are specialist mages, I'll concede that, but again I believe BG is one of the few that does this. Metamagic feats, I'm pretty sure this is D&D3+ or at the very least it's not in BG or any D&D 1/2 game I can think of.

My mistake was saying "all D&D 1/2 computer games" because there's probably no 2 games that follow the rules the same way. I have no idea what the PnP D&D rules are exactly, I just know the implementations in some of the computer games which have turned into a random mash of mixed information in my brain. And seemingly yours too, because you're mixing up rules from various games and versions of D&D.

I have to ask: Is regular trading still in? If so I expect a massive boost in non-Blizzard sanctioned item selling. Paying just to list an item is insane. Websites for D3 item trading without Blizzard taking a huge cut off the top are going to spring up quick, and average players aren't going to be adverse to using them like in D2 because item selling is determined to be a morally clean activity in D3.

I expect they'll still be looked down upon, at least by the majority, fanboys and so on.

In Eve Online you can buy a 30 day game card, convert it into an ingame item called a PLEX and sell that for in game funds (ISK) but there is no way to convert PLEXs back into real money, at least none sanctioned by CCP. The people I played (even those that funded their characters using GTCs/PLEX) with generally didn't agree with bots or black market websites selling ISK or items because of the shady things those websites do to get their stock that may impact on our gameplay. But whether or not the people I played with used them the market was still there, perhaps because they were cheaper although it wasn't by much.

There was already a lot of places that sold D2 equipment and I'm not really sure that will increase in D3 solely due to the RMAH.

We want to have the audience of CODW.
We want to have the audience of Skyrim.
We want to have the audience of Diablo 3.

There is more than one pattern here people.

To elaborate on the Bisu build: prior to it Zerg were able to safely mass expand in the early game, putting them at an economic lead. Protoss had no reliable counter to this. Until the bisu build was invented. The Bisu build uses mass corsairs to chase away overlords (the only mobile detection Zerg has) in conjunction with dark templar to punish greedy Zergs by harassing them to death if they spread themselves too thinly, across too many expansions.

Looked down upon for what? Conducting the exact same activity that Blizzard is offering without giving the most profitable gaming company in the world more money?

Bots are going to be selling the exact same shit through Blizzard's trade store. If anything they will be more likely to use Blizzard's store than a player store because with their bulk it's much more easily detectable. Paying Blizzard their bribe money to ignore the botting is a good idea.

Whether or not it's true Blizzard/CCP make it known, and in some cases you can experience these yourself in WoW and Eve, that these black market companies use spamming, hacking accounts, cheating/exploiting and botting to make money, some of which is said to damage the game's economy and others ruin some player's game experience. In the case of the PLEX and RMAH you're also 'potentially depriving' the company that made the game of money if you use black market sites in a similar way that video game copyright infringement does.[/quote]