Reaper of Souls General Discussion - Page 21

On August 15 2013 10:20 dAPhREAk wrote:
hmmm...




http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6317360/6317360#dropratesah

"The auction house obviously provides an incredible service to allow for very easy trades between characters, and essentially blows out the wide range of items you could have available to you at any one time. So, in fact, the AH has to be a factor in how we drop items. On one hand you have a huge benefit because you can buy and sell items very easily, as opposed to having to post up WTS threads in the old USEast trading forums, but on the other end it does impact the item pool economy with the inherent ease at which you can trade items. If the AH existed but wasn't a factor at all into how items dropped/rolled, the economy would be completely tanked within a matter of weeks."

The auction house has absolutely no effect on drop rates. There are conspiracy theories and misunderstandings, but I do want to re-iterate: there is NO interaction whatsoever. Bashiok mentioned earlier that we took the AH into account, so let me expand a little bit on that.

The drop rates were tuned for a player who would never use the Auction House. For the majority of internal development, we didn't have an Auction House, and we all played using our own drops only. I've personally leveled multiple characters from 1 to 60 internally before the game came out using only drops that I found -- we all did.

What I said, and what is true, is that with far more players and an increased proliferation of item trade, we have to factor in how many items are being found by players and how quickly a player can gear up by 'sourcing' items from others through trade and the convenience of the gold auction house.

On August 15 2013 10:20 dAPhREAk wrote:
hmmm...




http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6317360/6317360#dropratesah

On August 15 2013 10:34 SheaR619 wrote:


He never once mention Inferno not that it really matter cause the original post before this one explained everything.

Either way, It doesnt really matter in the end. If they didnt change the drop rate and added an auction house, they are stupid. If they change the drop rate and added an auction, then people will get pissed. It a lose lose situation honestly because in the end they are forced to change the drop rate and lied that it isnt change to appeased both side. A game that doesnt have an auction hall must have increase drop rate and vice versa if there are no easy way to trade item. Take their word if you want but this is just simple logic.

On August 15 2013 10:39 dAPhREAk wrote:

he mentioned inferno.

the issue is not AH and drop rates--those have to be linked. the issue is whether you can play the game without using the AH, which i have yet to see anything showing that you cant. indeed, the developers are specifically saying they beat inferno without AH.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5150764997?page=3#49

That's not what was said or implied at all, sorry if it was confusing. The AH doesn't have any affect on the literal drop rates of items depending on what's available.

What I said, and what is true, is that with far more players and an increased proliferation of item trade, we have to factor in how many items are being found by players and how quickly a player can gear up by 'sourcing' items from others through trade and the convenience of the gold auction house.

If we say "a player should have X power in Y amount of time through drops" and completely ignore that the time factor can be reduced by simply having access to more drops through trading and the auction house, players would be gearing up far quicker than we've determined they should. It has nothing to do with the auction house per se, but the general ease at which players have access to more items than they would without it and us needing to keep that in mind while balancing drops. It would be rather poorly thought out if we balanced drops completely ignoring all of the ways players can gear up, and trading is certainly one of them.

Obviously everyone wants the best gear possible as quickly as possible, and us attempting to mediate that through design that takes all factors into account is not always going to be a popular notion.

On August 15 2013 10:39 dAPhREAk wrote:

he mentioned inferno.

the issue is not AH and drop rates--those have to be linked. the issue is whether you can play the game without using the AH, which i have yet to see anything showing that you cant. indeed, the developers are specifically saying they beat inferno without AH.

On August 15 2013 10:50 Parametric wrote:
And for the inferno difficulty thing the phrase they mentioned was that "we doubled everything at launch" which is why inferno was horribly tuned at release.

And for the people who "beat diablo" by corpse walking to one of the easiest boss fights of the game... when killing diablo on inferno only gave you achievement points since bosses don't drop anything worthwhile in D3... please you're better than that.

Inferno Ghom was disgustingly harder than "Big D" for 3-4 months when Blizz let him stay bugged so he'd fill up 99% of the room with gas against ranged characters, people tailored builds to beat him with burst damage when doing so would drop all their NV stacks. Even Belial was harder then diablo since his explosions 1shot most people and were completely random. I remember beating Belial before any nerfs came through to inferno, I got every single achievement for that fight the first ime I beat him because everything he did would one shot my DH, even the snakes before he goes all Ninja Gaiden would 2 shot me. And it wouldn't have been so hard if the game didn't lag so much XD

On August 15 2013 10:55 dAPhREAk wrote:

as i recall, they intentionally made inferno near impossible to force people to grind and grind, not to use the AH. they removed the difficulty because of the unsurprising backlash.

On August 15 2013 10:55 dAPhREAk wrote:

as i recall, they intentionally made inferno near impossible to force people to grind and grind, not to use the AH. they removed the difficulty because of the unsurprising backlash.

On August 15 2013 10:53 Parametric wrote:


http://www.vg247.com/2012/05/07/diablo-iii-inferno-mode-twice-as-difficult-as-internal-testers-approved/

They never actually beat inferno, they beat the nerfed version.

Edit: Jay Wilson even said that playing in a group would make inferno easier

On August 15 2013 10:55 dAPhREAk wrote:

as i recall, they intentionally made inferno near impossible to force people to grind and grind, not to use the AH. they removed the difficulty because of the unsurprising backlash.

On August 15 2013 11:13 S1eth wrote:


Players were supposed to grind Inferno Act 1 to get gear for Act 2, grind Act2 for Act3, Act3 for Act 4.
Which was supposed to take many months.

What really happened is that a few people exploited their way to Act 4. In Act 4 exist chests which you can open without encountering even a single enemy. So you had these people (and bots) who ran chests in act 4 24/7 and sold those items to the crowd. And as i turned out, those Act 4 items were pretty much required to beat Act 2 and Act 3.

So can you beat D3 without the AH? Look at the first Hardcore Diablo kill. It took many months of mindless (i.e. NOT FUN) grinding with a full team of people farming the same treasure goblin over and over again. At that point, you might as well run a bot instead of playing yourself. It's like those pay-to-win games where you can THEORETICALLY get the best items without paying by playing for a few hundredthousand hours, but nobody would ever do that. When your game becomes work, there's truly something wrong with it.

Actually, Inferno is not "difficult". It doesn't take any more skill to complete than Normal difficulty. Inferno is a "gear check". You must have grinded for at least this many months to get past here (or pay 10 bucks if you don't want to)

On August 15 2013 11:07 TheRabidDeer wrote:

People before the game:
"Man, it is going to be easy. I don't believe them. I want a HARD game!"
Blizz: "We made it REALLY hard. You WILL die. We basically did all we could, then doubled it. Trust us."

People after the game:
"WTF this is HARD! Make it easier!"
Blizz: "..."

The original design intent of inferno was to make that be the endgame. Beating inferno diablo was supposed to be like "I finally beat the game." It was in no way broken, it just took a LOT of farming to get the right gear. They didnt intend for inferno to be for everyone like it is now. Though I do like the current setup a lot better.

On August 15 2013 11:13 S1eth wrote:


Players were supposed to grind Inferno Act 1 to get gear for Act 2, grind Act2 for Act3, Act3 for Act 4.
Which was supposed to take many months.

What really happened is that a few people exploited their way to Act 4. In Act 4 exist chests which you can open without encountering even a single enemy. So you had these people (and bots) who ran chests in act 4 24/7 and sold those items to the crowd. And as i turned out, those Act 4 items were pretty much required to beat Act 2 and Act 3.

So can you beat D3 without the AH? Look at the first Hardcore Diablo kill. It took many months of mindless (i.e. NOT FUN) grinding with a full team of people farming the same treasure goblin over and over again. At that point, you might as well run a bot instead of playing yourself. It's like those pay-to-win games where you can THEORETICALLY get the best items without paying by playing for a few hundredthousand hours, but nobody would ever do that. When your game becomes work, there's truly something wrong with it.

Actually, Inferno is not "difficult". It doesn't take any more skill to complete than Normal difficulty. Inferno is a "gear check". You must have grinded for at least this many months to get past here (or pay 10 bucks if you don't want to)

On August 15 2013 10:20 dAPhREAk wrote:
hmmm...




http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6317360/6317360#dropratesah

What I said, and what is true, is that with far more players and an increased proliferation of item trade, we have to factor in how many items are being found by players and how quickly a player can gear up by 'sourcing' items from others through trade and the convenience of the gold auction house.

If we say "a player should have X power in Y amount of time through drops" and completely ignore that the time factor can be reduced by simply having access to more drops through trading and the auction house, players would be gearing up far quicker than we've determined they should. It has nothing to do with the auction house per se, but the general ease at which players have access to more items than they would without it and us needing to keep that in mind while balancing drops. It would be rather poorly thought out if we balanced drops completely ignoring all of the ways players can gear up, and trading is certainly one of them.

Obviously everyone wants the best gear possible as quickly as possible, and us attempting to mediate that through design that takes all factors into account is not always going to be a popular notion.

On August 15 2013 01:49 Plansix wrote:

They have openly said several times that it was a mistake and an idea that looked good on paper, but did not do what they intented. I'm not sure if they will keep it or not. Maybe they will just make a "classic mode" that does not allow the AH to be used. That would be a good middle of the road route.