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^ It DID effect you though when you were playing Diablo, whether you like to admit it or just ignorant. Do you not remember when SOJs, the rarest item in the game, was worth the same as 40 chipped gems, because it had been duped to all hell? Blizzard even addressed this by making it in order to encounter a boss (Uber-Diablo), people on the server had to sell their duped SOJs, which meant non-dupers had to simply wait until dupers sold SOJs, while dupers could simply call uber-Diablo whenever they wanted.
But I guess it didn't effect you right? Because you just 'found' SOJs all the time on diablo?
Or how about the fact nothing you found was worth anything, even epics, because they weren't perfect defense with perfect stats, due to all the duping?
So it did affect you. With the RMAH, duping will be more controlled because blizzard now has a vested economic interest in making sure the in-game economy isn't ruined like it was in D2, while keeping it so you don't have to pay monthly like you do in WoW. Also, now players can actually have the best gear without A) being a hacker or B) spending cash money. This also means that less-than-perfect gear will have value, whereas in D2X people only cared about the most perfect gear.
Even in Diablo hardcore, where people's characters were erased upon dying, no one gave a shit about a perfect Death's Fathom, but would care for a perfect *Ethereal * Deaths fathom, even though ethereal did absolutely nothing to increase stats for casters (ethereal means it will eventually break if you melee enough with it and then the item is forever broken, but it had increased melee damage/defense) but looked cooler.
Like how fucking ridiculous was that.
edit: I personally didn't even dupe, because eventually it wasn't even worth my time to dupe anymore because items were so worthless. I found botting a much better way to get money, by finding rare items with crazy stats or finding items that didn't exist on our small server yet because no one had found them yet (ie perfect stats ethereal nightwing)
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The real issue with the RMAH is botting and goldfarming. These are the biggest problems I see with the system in practice. It just leaves so much incentive for private developers under whatever motivation to create detection proof bots, sell them, distribute them, and run them for ridiculous profit margins...thus enticing them to repeat the cycle
What's worse is, if they're making money, they will continually just have the spendable income to buy new accounts once theirs eventually gets banned. Banned again? LOL i made 200+ dollars in a day of botting whatever, i'll just buy a new one and bot until they ban me, repeat.
I'm willing to bet my 200 dollar estimation is either low on the dollar side, or the time side. One of the two, from what people are reporting they actually made from this process in diablo 2.
I've spoken to several WoW players and they've pretty much convinced me that it takes far too long, and is too ineffective for Blizzard to really police this practice in any effective manner either.
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^ They could do that before with d2jsp and other trading websites, like ebay even. All this does is give an economic incentive for blizzard to make sure duping isn't an issue, and that the in-game economy remains stable. I made hundreds of dollars myself with D2 and there wasn't any RMAH back in d2.
Botting and goldfarming will always be issues, but this definitely does something to address it.
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Cash to buy in-game items business model: All of you will never understand how popular and widely used by almost ALL online MMORPG game companies throughout China and Asian regions. The fact that Blizzard does not sell in-game items shows that Blizzard is not as greedy as you claimed.
For whatever reasons out there, RMAH is going to be successful whether you like it or not, and then you will start seeing other western game companies doing the same in future.
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On August 09 2011 01:36 Belial88 wrote:Show nested quote +But they do not have to do it in a greedy fashion, like the RMAH and the many expansions for sc2. I doubt they have any lack of funds, but I am in no way surprised to see the opinion that they should maximize profit in every way, since it will clearly give us much better games. That is just naive. That's kind of ridiculous. Blizzard is a business, they don't be 'less greedy' or 'more greedy' than any other company in the world. They sell a product, and do their best to maximize profits. Hopefully, they are selling a product where maximizing profits and pleasing people come together - this becomes true given the consensual nature of business, ie consumers buying what they want. They don't lack funds only because they make smart business decisions, and thinking that "oh businesses can spare $100" is completely naive.
If you watch some interviews with Mike Morhaime, the guy gets it. He's a gamer and he's got an acute awareness of how Blizzard has become a recognizable brand in the industry, and anything that sullies the good-name, or diminishes that brand in any way will lead to a catastrophe for the company as a whole. If they release a dreadful game, they'll lose all of their momentum and have that much more work to do to regain that trust. I think you'll be hard-pressed to point at any Blizzard game and say it's a straight-up money grab. The quality of every single one is heads-and-shoulders above the competition. Ultimately, releasing good games means more profit. Releasing bad games might be profitable in the short run, but leads to an enormous loss of traction for the next release and is not conducive to any long-term survival strategy. Yet, you see countless companies doing exactly that, game after game, and wondering why their sales keep shrinking.
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On August 09 2011 01:47 Belial88 wrote:
Even in Diablo hardcore, where people's characters were erased upon dying, no one gave a shit about a perfect Death's Fathom, but would care for a perfect *Ethereal * Deaths fathom, even though ethereal did absolutely nothing to increase stats for casters (ethereal means it will eventually break if you melee enough with it and then the item is forever broken, but it had increased melee damage/defense) but looked cooler.
Ethereal also made the stat requirements lower (str/dex/etc.) ... so, that's the main reason.
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Diablo 3 looks amazing, with the auction house and everything. I have no problems, and I plan on playing hardcore mode anyways. So excited!
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Of course if they wanted to do away with all of it, they could just make all items worth having BoP.
But for one reason or another that's not how they did it in D2 and now it's ingrained in the community.
I say if they're going to have an essentially mercantile item trading system, they might as well go all out on it. Instead of having people slog their way towards crappy items.
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RMAH gets too much attention compared to the recent news about PvP.
More than removing the ladder and making it all cuddly and all Jay Wilson's unprofessional "over my dead body" and "shut up PvP" statements which surely implies we can all forget about competitive PvP of some sort for the whole remainder of Diablo 3's life.
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On August 09 2011 02:54 papaz wrote:
RMAH gets too much attention compared to the recent news about PvP.
More than removing the ladder and making it all cuddly and all Jay Wilson's unprofessional "over my dead body" and "shut up PvP" statements which surely implies we can all forget about competitive PvP of some sort for the whole remainder of Diablo 3's life.
Good, balancing a pve game around pvp is what ruined wow... making everything "arena friendly" and removing big class definining yet "imbalanced in arena" moves.
I sincerely hope they don't give into the whiners and start balancing everything around pvp like the arena kiddies made wow. Essentially making every class have the same type of moves, nothing too strong etc etc. PvP should be random fun and not e-sporty at all.
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On August 09 2011 03:09 Pufftrees wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2011 02:54 papaz wrote:
RMAH gets too much attention compared to the recent news about PvP.
More than removing the ladder and making it all cuddly and all Jay Wilson's unprofessional "over my dead body" and "shut up PvP" statements which surely implies we can all forget about competitive PvP of some sort for the whole remainder of Diablo 3's life.
Good, balancing a pve game around pvp is what ruined wow... making everything "arena friendly" and removing big class definining yet "imbalanced in arena" moves. I sincerely hope they don't give into the whiners and start balancing everything around pvp like the arena kiddies made wow. Essentially making every class have the same type of moves, nothing too strong etc etc. PvP should be random fun and not e-sporty at all.
100% agree, Diablo is about PvE
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I wonder how the auction house will work
Will you be able to buy a fully geared character on the first day from blizzard, or will you have to wait for items to be found/popularized before they become available, or will it simply be player controlled, as in players supply the demand. The latter of the three seems likely, but wont this just cause inflation again, as some items are clearly in higher demand than others (runes?)
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On August 09 2011 03:13 Overpowered wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2011 03:09 Pufftrees wrote:On August 09 2011 02:54 papaz wrote:
RMAH gets too much attention compared to the recent news about PvP.
More than removing the ladder and making it all cuddly and all Jay Wilson's unprofessional "over my dead body" and "shut up PvP" statements which surely implies we can all forget about competitive PvP of some sort for the whole remainder of Diablo 3's life.
Good, balancing a pve game around pvp is what ruined wow... making everything "arena friendly" and removing big class definining yet "imbalanced in arena" moves. I sincerely hope they don't give into the whiners and start balancing everything around pvp like the arena kiddies made wow. Essentially making every class have the same type of moves, nothing too strong etc etc. PvP should be random fun and not e-sporty at all. 100% agree, Diablo is about PvE
not to diverge too much but WotLK was an amazing expansion for balance of pvp and pve. it's basically a textbook example of what to do RIGHT in an rpg.
simply put, pve encounters were incredibly accessible to players of all skill levels, challenging and super competetive to the top tier, (and before 3.2 the ambience, art styles and atmosphere were all really good.)
as for PVP, barring some comp imbalances towards the beginning, arena and BGs had not been more fun. the new [breakneck] pace of PvP was exciting and interesting.
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On August 09 2011 03:13 Overpowered wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2011 03:09 Pufftrees wrote:On August 09 2011 02:54 papaz wrote:
RMAH gets too much attention compared to the recent news about PvP.
More than removing the ladder and making it all cuddly and all Jay Wilson's unprofessional "over my dead body" and "shut up PvP" statements which surely implies we can all forget about competitive PvP of some sort for the whole remainder of Diablo 3's life.
Good, balancing a pve game around pvp is what ruined wow... making everything "arena friendly" and removing big class definining yet "imbalanced in arena" moves. I sincerely hope they don't give into the whiners and start balancing everything around pvp like the arena kiddies made wow. Essentially making every class have the same type of moves, nothing too strong etc etc. PvP should be random fun and not e-sporty at all. 100% agree, Diablo is about PvE
Why so angry about a portion of the game that doesn't even interfere with PvE?
1. They don't need to balance it. They announced the ladder last year, what was the big change of heart now? Not like they didn't know about potential balance issues back then.
2. PvP is already completely seperated from PvE. Its like multiplayer vs single player in SC2. You don't see people into the campaign complaining about the multiplayer aspects of SC2 or vice versa.
Frankly I really don't get the whenever PvP is up for talk instead of "how can PvP be better in Diablo 3" people come to the forum and just want the discussion about PvP go away. What is the big fear, I'm really curious?
Is it that PvP will affect PvE?
I swear even if Blizzard made seperate servers for PvP people would still complain "Diablo 3 isn't PvP, please remove those servers and force those players come play the game like we like playing the game".
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On August 09 2011 03:25 papaz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2011 03:13 Overpowered wrote:On August 09 2011 03:09 Pufftrees wrote:On August 09 2011 02:54 papaz wrote:
RMAH gets too much attention compared to the recent news about PvP.
More than removing the ladder and making it all cuddly and all Jay Wilson's unprofessional "over my dead body" and "shut up PvP" statements which surely implies we can all forget about competitive PvP of some sort for the whole remainder of Diablo 3's life.
Good, balancing a pve game around pvp is what ruined wow... making everything "arena friendly" and removing big class definining yet "imbalanced in arena" moves. I sincerely hope they don't give into the whiners and start balancing everything around pvp like the arena kiddies made wow. Essentially making every class have the same type of moves, nothing too strong etc etc. PvP should be random fun and not e-sporty at all. 100% agree, Diablo is about PvE Why so angry about a portion of the game that doesn't even interfere with PvE? 1. They don't need to balance it. They announced the ladder last year, what was the big change of heart now? Not like they didn't know about potential balance issues back then. 2. PvP is already completely seperated from PvE. Its like multiplayer vs single player in SC2. You don't see people into the campaign complaining about the multiplayer aspects of SC2 or vice versa. Frankly I really don't get the whenever PvP is up for talk instead of "how can PvP be better in Diablo 3" people come to the forum and just want the discussion about PvP go away. What is the big fear, I'm really curious? Is it that PvP will affect PvE? I swear even if Blizzard made seperate servers for PvP people would still complain "Diablo 3 isn't PvP, please remove those servers and force those players come play the game like we like playing the game".
he's merely referring to the fact that players fighting monsters together requires much different balancing than players fighting players together.
you would naturally assume they are different entities from a starcraft 2 perspective where each map has it's own balance, but if you played an MMO, where a consistent world and mechanics are a necessity, it would be a cause for concern.
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On August 09 2011 03:23 Holcan wrote:
I wonder how the auction house will work
Will you be able to buy a fully geared character on the first day from blizzard, or will you have to wait for items to be found/popularized before they become available, or will it simply be player controlled, as in players supply the demand. The latter of the three seems likely, but wont this just cause inflation again, as some items are clearly in higher demand than others (runes?)
You can only buy what other people put on there, you can't buy from Blizzard directly.
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On August 09 2011 03:25 papaz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2011 03:13 Overpowered wrote:On August 09 2011 03:09 Pufftrees wrote:On August 09 2011 02:54 papaz wrote:
RMAH gets too much attention compared to the recent news about PvP.
More than removing the ladder and making it all cuddly and all Jay Wilson's unprofessional "over my dead body" and "shut up PvP" statements which surely implies we can all forget about competitive PvP of some sort for the whole remainder of Diablo 3's life.
Good, balancing a pve game around pvp is what ruined wow... making everything "arena friendly" and removing big class definining yet "imbalanced in arena" moves. I sincerely hope they don't give into the whiners and start balancing everything around pvp like the arena kiddies made wow. Essentially making every class have the same type of moves, nothing too strong etc etc. PvP should be random fun and not e-sporty at all. 100% agree, Diablo is about PvE Why so angry about a portion of the game that doesn't even interfere with PvE? 1. They don't need to balance it. They announced the ladder last year, what was the big change of heart now? Not like they didn't know about potential balance issues back then. 2. PvP is already completely seperated from PvE. Its like multiplayer vs single player in SC2. You don't see people into the campaign complaining about the multiplayer aspects of SC2 or vice versa. Frankly I really don't get the whenever PvP is up for talk instead of "how can PvP be better in Diablo 3" people come to the forum and just want the discussion about PvP go away. What is the big fear, I'm really curious? Is it that PvP will affect PvE? I swear even if Blizzard made seperate servers for PvP people would still complain "Diablo 3 isn't PvP, please remove those servers and force those players come play the game like we like playing the game".
They do need to balance, as long as they treat it as an alternative, as a competitive format. It's not like SC2 at all, where the focus is clearly multiplayer. If D3 PvE receives the same treatment as the SC2 single player, you can be sure it will not be good enough. PvP in WoW is also separate from PvE and they both affect each other quite a bit. By removing the competitive aspect of it, Blizzard is saying they won't waste resources at it, they could not just throw a ladder and not care about it, because then people would complain that they introduced the ladders and now don't care about them.
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On August 09 2011 03:31 jimmyjingle wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2011 03:25 papaz wrote:On August 09 2011 03:13 Overpowered wrote:On August 09 2011 03:09 Pufftrees wrote:On August 09 2011 02:54 papaz wrote:
RMAH gets too much attention compared to the recent news about PvP.
More than removing the ladder and making it all cuddly and all Jay Wilson's unprofessional "over my dead body" and "shut up PvP" statements which surely implies we can all forget about competitive PvP of some sort for the whole remainder of Diablo 3's life.
Good, balancing a pve game around pvp is what ruined wow... making everything "arena friendly" and removing big class definining yet "imbalanced in arena" moves. I sincerely hope they don't give into the whiners and start balancing everything around pvp like the arena kiddies made wow. Essentially making every class have the same type of moves, nothing too strong etc etc. PvP should be random fun and not e-sporty at all. 100% agree, Diablo is about PvE Why so angry about a portion of the game that doesn't even interfere with PvE? 1. They don't need to balance it. They announced the ladder last year, what was the big change of heart now? Not like they didn't know about potential balance issues back then. 2. PvP is already completely seperated from PvE. Its like multiplayer vs single player in SC2. You don't see people into the campaign complaining about the multiplayer aspects of SC2 or vice versa. Frankly I really don't get the whenever PvP is up for talk instead of "how can PvP be better in Diablo 3" people come to the forum and just want the discussion about PvP go away. What is the big fear, I'm really curious? Is it that PvP will affect PvE? I swear even if Blizzard made seperate servers for PvP people would still complain "Diablo 3 isn't PvP, please remove those servers and force those players come play the game like we like playing the game". he's merely referring to the fact that players fighting monsters together requires much different balancing than players fighting players together. you would naturally assume they are different entities from a starcraft 2 perspective where each map has it's own balance, but if you played an MMO, where a consistent world and mechanics are a necessity, it would be a cause for concern.
True, that is a good point that PvE has its own balance and I agree that it would suck big time if the balance would be like in WoW, where arena has huge effect on the PvE part of the game.
But they have matchmaking already in place and will use it. Even if they didn't use matchmaking I believe, because the community never seize to amaze, the community will "figure out" what is balanced or not balanced for PvP eventually.
With the matchmaking in place I believe that process will go even faster where "it will be obvious" which are the top players and who are not.
I don't believe the crying and "OMG THIS IS OP" is going to be less because they decide to not place me in a ladder. Ok maybe a bit less but still the vocal minority or majority will make themselves heard.
Anyway I'm not suggesting "balance this around PvP" ,I'm just curious on what happened that Blizz removed the ladder along the way.
EDIT: I just read poster above and you are probably right. If they give the ladder Blizz do need to give a shit about balance. Thanks for explaining. *crying like a baby and screaming I still want my PvP ladder* 
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On August 09 2011 03:23 jimmyjingle wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2011 03:13 Overpowered wrote:On August 09 2011 03:09 Pufftrees wrote:On August 09 2011 02:54 papaz wrote:
RMAH gets too much attention compared to the recent news about PvP.
More than removing the ladder and making it all cuddly and all Jay Wilson's unprofessional "over my dead body" and "shut up PvP" statements which surely implies we can all forget about competitive PvP of some sort for the whole remainder of Diablo 3's life.
Good, balancing a pve game around pvp is what ruined wow... making everything "arena friendly" and removing big class definining yet "imbalanced in arena" moves. I sincerely hope they don't give into the whiners and start balancing everything around pvp like the arena kiddies made wow. Essentially making every class have the same type of moves, nothing too strong etc etc. PvP should be random fun and not e-sporty at all. 100% agree, Diablo is about PvE not to diverge too much but WotLK was an amazing expansion for balance of pvp and pve. it's basically a textbook example of what to do RIGHT in an rpg. simply put, pve encounters were incredibly accessible to players of all skill levels, challenging and super competetive to the top tier, (and before 3.2 the ambience, art styles and atmosphere were all really good.) as for PVP, barring some comp imbalances towards the beginning, arena and BGs had not been more fun. the new [breakneck] pace of PvP was exciting and interesting.
Blizzard have never achieved balance within a single aspect of the game (PvP nor PvE), let alone simultaneously between them and under the same set of rules. They still haven't. There's just too many variables. I could go on to cite a hundred pieces of anecdotal evidence on the imbalances I've witnessed throughout my WoW career (I started to do so in this post, until I thought better of it), but it wouldn't lead anywhere. Suffice it to say that balancing PvE and PvP under the exact same set of rules just isn't possible. Blizzard did the absolute right thing with SC2 by saying "Here's the single-player campaign (PvE), with tons of fun, crazy, overpowered and interesting stuff, and here's the multiplayer (PvP), with a tightly balanced set of units under a completely different set of rules".
Thus, we have Diablo 3, with an even CRAZIER assortment of classes, abilities and wildly varying levels of gear, and an admission that PvP balance is simply impossible to reach under that system.
PvP will exist, no doubt. PvP was never supported in Diablo 2 beyond allowing people the capacity to duel one another, and let rip, and yet it happened. It'll be something that's managed by the players themselves, not by Blizzard. Consider it enough of a blessing that they're going to bother with a matchmaking system to allow you easy and reasonably fair matches at the drop of a pin, rather than sitting in some obscure channel spamming away until you find someone willing to go up against your DEATHDEALERSWORDOFULTRADEATH.
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On August 09 2011 03:23 jimmyjingle wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2011 03:13 Overpowered wrote:On August 09 2011 03:09 Pufftrees wrote:On August 09 2011 02:54 papaz wrote:
RMAH gets too much attention compared to the recent news about PvP.
More than removing the ladder and making it all cuddly and all Jay Wilson's unprofessional "over my dead body" and "shut up PvP" statements which surely implies we can all forget about competitive PvP of some sort for the whole remainder of Diablo 3's life.
Good, balancing a pve game around pvp is what ruined wow... making everything "arena friendly" and removing big class definining yet "imbalanced in arena" moves. I sincerely hope they don't give into the whiners and start balancing everything around pvp like the arena kiddies made wow. Essentially making every class have the same type of moves, nothing too strong etc etc. PvP should be random fun and not e-sporty at all. 100% agree, Diablo is about PvE not to diverge too much but WotLK was an amazing expansion for balance of pvp and pve. it's basically a textbook example of what to do RIGHT in an rpg. simply put, pve encounters were incredibly accessible to players of all skill levels, challenging and super competetive to the top tier, (and before 3.2 the ambience, art styles and atmosphere were all really good.) as for PVP, barring some comp imbalances towards the beginning, arena and BGs had not been more fun. the new [breakneck] pace of PvP was exciting and interesting.
If by accessible to all skill levels you mean the encounters were trivial as long as you had the correct gear and a brain stem then yes.
PvP only had an illusion of greatness. If you really looked at it, most of the abilities across most of the classes were the same but had a different name and some different art. Arenas and BGs were fun but they were never balanced in the sense that any composition was viable (BGs to a lesser extent than arenas).
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I'll say this now: Blizzard has never made a less than "great" game before, or at least not with it's major titles since like 1997. I think Diablo III is going to break that - it's going to be a dumbed down game with cartoonish graphics. Worst of all, it won't even have the depth of Diablo II, a game that came out on 3 CD-ROMS in 2001.
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EPT
