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On June 01 2011 14:01 Pangolin wrote:
Anyway... let's get that ugly business behind us. The facebook 1 million Diablo likes was passed and there had been a lot of wild speculation about what Blizzard would do in return for that. Turns out it's a few wallpapers... yay?
In fairness, people expecting anything actually substantial were probably fooling themselves. Still, I find myself even less interested in these than I was the random screens and concept art that they had been revealing for getting more likes.
Bashiok said it wouldn't be anything groundbreaking, but the fact that the wallpapers were literally nothing new is extremely disappointing. Oh well, the fact that they revealed runestones makes me happy enough though (maybe they should have waited to reveal that for the 1 million likes).
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I posted a while back regarding how blizzard is planning on making gold valuable...and I'm still not sure how it's goin to work out.
Firstly, the only elements in RPGs that have real value are ones that change and improve the players character. That means items/runes in a diablo game. Gold has no actual intrinsic value to the player, it's only worth as a standardized currency is to serve as a way for the player to obtain these items. In diablo 2 there was no ingame method to turn gold into items that were worth anything (aside from rare cases of gambling), thus the currency became trade based and gold worthless.
The easy solutions to this are:
1. NPC shops that accept gold and sell actually good weapons
2. Standardized game-run auction houses that only accept and return gold.
3. introduction of a huge crafting system whose component can be bought w gold
There are big issues I see with all of these.
1. It's pretty clear to me that NPCs selling top tier items is a bad idea. Firstly it isn't fun or interesting to just buy gear. In a diablo style rpg player are devoting 90% of their time or more to getting items and improving their characters. When doing this the game designer wants then to be out in the world killing monsters and doing quests and actually playing the game, not sitting in a shop window and reloading until they can click on some picture. It's about 19876x more fun to do runs of bosses and other areas (especially if they make them tricky), than to just pick items up. Borderlands is a great example of a game where the best items come from opening chests in town hundreds of times and not actually running a boss or having fun...it's absolutely terrible and mind-numbing.
2. The auction house is a somewhat better idea, but it also has pitfalls. The most basic one is that it's primary effect is to remove player-player interaction, which is typically exactly the opposite of what you want in a multiplayer RPG. Whereas in D2 players would get together and haggle and trade together directly, now you are putting a big fat automated and impersonal system between them. All a player has to do is farm a bit, throw those items intone auction and hope someone goes for it. You could literally play successfully without speaking to a single other person. Large auction houses also do a great job at flattening and normalizing commodity prices. If everyone can see the amount of a good being traded and what 8000 other people have paid for it, they are extremely likely to follow the trend. While this sound like a good idea for preventing noobs from getting ripped off, it also seriously hurts the impact that a players cleverness and skill at merchanting can have on their success. I'm never going to be able to talk someone into a great trade or spend hours searching for that desperate guy who NEEDS my item ASAP in order to make a windfall profit. There is no point in setting up a huge web of game connections to always have a buyer if the auction house is king. The only thing that really kept the D2 community going for as long as it has is the economy, and the auctionhouse just flattens that skill cap. Getting rich in D3 should be more than just time in= money out.
3. Crafting is sort of a halfway compromise between having top items be sold and havin them drop. While collecting components and then putting them together is a bit more entertaining than just drag n drop, it's still never going to be nearly as fun as the monster slaying part...so this solution as still plagued by the same issues as #1.
I just can't really see a way to implement gold as they seem to want without hurting the general enjoyableness of the game. I'm not even sure why exactly a standardized currency is so desirable in a game like Diablo. Did anyone actually find trading terrible and onerous? The only obnoxious parts were the grappling you had to do with the ancient and nonfunctional trade interface (making hundreds of games to advertise your junk). It seems to me they should just make that process as smooth as possible and forget about the gold.
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If you think the auction house eliminates merchanting you're extremely naive. The best merchants know how to utilize how items on an auction house rise and fall and buy and sell when it's best for them to do so. It's certainly not linear time in=money out and there's no skill or activity involved. The auction house is for lazy people so they can quickly buy and sell whatever they need.
From what I've heard about the crafting (source being mainly Diablocast), the crafting is there so that if you don't ever find a good chest that you need, you can dismantle all the garbage you found and make something that isn't the best, but good enough to get you by. The latter levels of artisans might be the best equipment; and speculating on it, your guess is as good as mine.
I think you're thinking too much into this though. Almost every item in the Diablo 2 market was worth a certain number of high runes. Now those high runes are gold. I don't see it as much of a difference. There will still be variance in prices. Gold is a much easier standard to keep track of and define prices so I like it better.
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On June 01 2011 14:49 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:
If you think the auction house eliminates merchanting you're extremely naive. The best merchants know how to utilize how items on an auction house rise and fall and buy and sell when it's best for them to do so. It's certainly not linear time in=money out and there's no skill or activity involved. The auction house is for lazy people so they can quickly buy and sell whatever they need.
From what I've heard about the crafting (source being mainly Diablocast), the crafting is there so that if you don't ever find a good chest that you need, you can dismantle all the garbage you found and make something that isn't the best, but good enough to get you by. The latter levels of artisans might be the best equipment; and speculating on it, your guess is as good as mine.
I think you're thinking too much into this though. Almost every item in the Diablo 2 market was worth a certain number of high runes. Now those high runes are gold. I don't see it as much of a difference. There will still be variance in prices. Gold is a much easier standard to keep track of and define prices so I like it better.
There is a relatively huge difference between HR/Soj's and gold as a currency, which is that they both hold actual value for the player while gold does not. Each HR was priced based on how rare they were and how in demand they were for creating top-tier runewords that were commonly needed (look at the comparative cheapness of zods), Soj's are a relatively rare component of many completed character builds. There was never any danger of vexes suddenly losing their value, or a "run" on soj's, which is why the community felt safe using them.
I'm not saying that an auction removes all effect of skill, but that it reduces it. You are never going to make as much money percentagewise from exploiting a slight market cycle as you would in a good 1on1 trade. Economies and business in the real world and ingames both operate by exploiting asymmetry of information and goods. Auctionhouses simply reduce this fundamental imbalance.
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I completely agree about the auction house making trading less viable as a means of income. But to be fair, we are assuming the items will be exactly like they were in Diablo 2.
In Diablo 2 it was easy to say how much an item was worth, because the exact same item has been in circulation before. I'd like it if there was more randomness with Uniques/Set Items in D3. Rares were always more fun than uniques just because it was practically impossible to find the same item twice.
It would be nice if they made it so that uniques came with a unique characteristic, like penetrating arrows for Buriza or massive Magic Find for the Gull, but make the rest of the modifiers more random, kind of like rares except with one or two static modifiers. I think this would make the trading be less of a science and more like window shopping if you get what I mean.
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Where are these new wallpapers you speak of Bairemuth? Looking forward to spicing up my desktop with new D2 swag 
As far as the auction house goes, I find it was quite complicated in trading your items. Less experienced players did not know what certain items were worth (I basically stole an old rare raven frost, traded it for 30+ soj's later) You had to join a game, sit and wait, or look for trading games yourself, join channels, use 3rd party websites to sell items. During all of this time you are not playing the game. Blizzard wants you to play the game, wants you to enjoy the game, so you stay with the game. The auction house is a tool you can use that will allow you to play the game. As with any in-game market, the prices over time will manage themselves. Supply and demand will dictate price, but in the future there will be inflation. The auction house is just a good way to sell items in an MMO, and although d2 is an RPG, it's still an online game and features like the auction house make sense on a platform like battle.net 2.0. It allows more hardcore and experienced players to make coin off the AH, and it allows newer players the means of getting average deals for the items they want to get rid of or acquire.
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I feel like sound effects and overall audio is one of the most important core parts of a good game. Almost all good games have exceptional sound quality. BW, D1 and D2 had it, its lacking a bit in SC2 imo. But what I've seen so far about D3, the sound feels badass
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On June 01 2011 19:50 gosublade wrote:
I feel like sound effects and overall audio is one of the most important core parts of a good game. Almost all good games have exceptional sound quality. BW, D1 and D2 had it, its lacking a bit in SC2 imo. But what I've seen so far about D3, the sound feels badass
Yeah, the depressing feel the music had in the previous games really added to the atmosphere. The Tristram music from the first game makes you feel you really don't want to be there, that is, if you weren't a demonslaying warrior 
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On June 01 2011 14:32 sob3k wrote:
1. It's pretty clear to me that NPCs selling top tier items is a bad idea. Firstly it isn't fun or interesting to just buy gear. In a diablo style rpg player are devoting 90% of their time or more to getting items and improving their characters. When doing this the game designer wants then to be out in the world killing monsters and doing quests and actually playing the game, not sitting in a shop window and reloading until they can click on some picture. It's about 19876x more fun to do runs of bosses and other areas (especially if they make them tricky), than to just pick items up. in D3 should be more than just time in= money out.
Why not have new kind of merchant that have some powerful items that don't randomly change but that just have high price? The merchant that you level up could be like that, you would see that he have sword of uber awesomeness that cost 10x more then you have, that would give you a reason to gather more gold, and make it more interesting (add extra reason to grind it will be items + gold not just items like now).
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On June 01 2011 20:13 Polis wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2011 14:32 sob3k wrote:
1. It's pretty clear to me that NPCs selling top tier items is a bad idea. Firstly it isn't fun or interesting to just buy gear. In a diablo style rpg player are devoting 90% of their time or more to getting items and improving their characters. When doing this the game designer wants then to be out in the world killing monsters and doing quests and actually playing the game, not sitting in a shop window and reloading until they can click on some picture. It's about 19876x more fun to do runs of bosses and other areas (especially if they make them tricky), than to just pick items up. in D3 should be more than just time in= money out. Why not have new kind of merchant that have some powerful items that don't randomly change but that just have high price? The merchant that you level up could be like that, you would see that he have sword of uber awesomeness that cost 10x more then you have, that would give you a reason to gather more gold, and make it more interesting (add extra reason to grind it will be items + gold not just items like now).
The problem a solution like this would create would be that everyone would be farming gold for these items, which means no one will be buying the stuff you are selling.
It could work for awhile when people sell their lower level items to lower level players, but when everyone starts hitting the higher levels it wouldn't work anymore.
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On June 01 2011 20:23 kuresuti wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2011 20:13 Polis wrote:On June 01 2011 14:32 sob3k wrote:
1. It's pretty clear to me that NPCs selling top tier items is a bad idea. Firstly it isn't fun or interesting to just buy gear. In a diablo style rpg player are devoting 90% of their time or more to getting items and improving their characters. When doing this the game designer wants then to be out in the world killing monsters and doing quests and actually playing the game, not sitting in a shop window and reloading until they can click on some picture. It's about 19876x more fun to do runs of bosses and other areas (especially if they make them tricky), than to just pick items up. in D3 should be more than just time in= money out. Why not have new kind of merchant that have some powerful items that don't randomly change but that just have high price? The merchant that you level up could be like that, you would see that he have sword of uber awesomeness that cost 10x more then you have, that would give you a reason to gather more gold, and make it more interesting (add extra reason to grind it will be items + gold not just items like now). The problem a solution like this would create would be that everyone would be farming gold for these items, which means no one will be buying the stuff you are selling. It could work for awhile when people sell their lower level items to lower level players, but when everyone starts hitting the higher levels it wouldn't work anymore.
You don't have to make the items that merchants have more powerful then those from drops just different ones but in similar power. You would want some drop exclusive items, and some merchant exclusive items for your build.
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On June 01 2011 14:32 sob3k wrote:
2. The auction house is a somewhat better idea, but it also has pitfalls. The most basic one is that it's primary effect is to remove player-player interaction, which is typically exactly the opposite of what you want in a multiplayer RPG. Whereas in D2 players would get together and haggle and trade together directly, now you are putting a big fat automated and impersonal system between them. All a player has to do is farm a bit, throw those items intone auction and hope someone goes for it. You could literally play successfully without speaking to a single other person.
Not necessarily - take for example WoW's auction house, which I'm sure most are familiar with it. The auction house takes a cut of your auction based on the item's value and the time of the auction, if a D3 region-wide auction house existed (aka something MASSIVE) then it could very well have an even higher tax, encouraging players to trade between each other instead of just putting things up on the AH. Ofcourse people would still use the AH (unless the tax was ridiculous), but I'm sure some people would try to advertise their trades on sites, etc.
either way, prices wouldn't oscillate as much, yes, but that doesn't mean you can't "play" the auction house, or that desperate people won't try to buy your stuff. Rare stuff wouldn't always be up in the auction house, and if someone with enough gold is desperate for X item, and you happen to be the only one available, I'm sure he'd pay an extremely high price for it.
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On June 01 2011 20:27 Polis wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2011 20:23 kuresuti wrote:On June 01 2011 20:13 Polis wrote:On June 01 2011 14:32 sob3k wrote:
1. It's pretty clear to me that NPCs selling top tier items is a bad idea. Firstly it isn't fun or interesting to just buy gear. In a diablo style rpg player are devoting 90% of their time or more to getting items and improving their characters. When doing this the game designer wants then to be out in the world killing monsters and doing quests and actually playing the game, not sitting in a shop window and reloading until they can click on some picture. It's about 19876x more fun to do runs of bosses and other areas (especially if they make them tricky), than to just pick items up. in D3 should be more than just time in= money out. Why not have new kind of merchant that have some powerful items that don't randomly change but that just have high price? The merchant that you level up could be like that, you would see that he have sword of uber awesomeness that cost 10x more then you have, that would give you a reason to gather more gold, and make it more interesting (add extra reason to grind it will be items + gold not just items like now). The problem a solution like this would create would be that everyone would be farming gold for these items, which means no one will be buying the stuff you are selling. It could work for awhile when people sell their lower level items to lower level players, but when everyone starts hitting the higher levels it wouldn't work anymore. You don't have to make the items that merchants have more powerful then those from drops just different ones but in similar power. You would want some drop exclusive items, and some merchant exclusive items for your build.
This could work if for instance all charms in the game or all jewelry could only be bought from merchants with gold. You have to keep merchant and monster dropped items completely separate though, because if you start mixing them in power or effect what happens is that people find it's either easier to just goldfarm, or it's a waste and the normal drops are better.
You still run into issues with randomization though. You really don't want people sitting at shops for hours buying and gambling charms, but if the shop items aren't random then it removes nearly all the fun from getting them. I guess they could just be ludicrously expensive to minimize the time spent buying and selling.
The thing is I don't see this method making gold the primary currency, it would just make it another specific commodity like rune packs used to reroll GCs in d2 or pgems.
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On June 01 2011 20:33 Kelberot wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2011 14:32 sob3k wrote:
2. The auction house is a somewhat better idea, but it also has pitfalls. The most basic one is that it's primary effect is to remove player-player interaction, which is typically exactly the opposite of what you want in a multiplayer RPG. Whereas in D2 players would get together and haggle and trade together directly, now you are putting a big fat automated and impersonal system between them. All a player has to do is farm a bit, throw those items intone auction and hope someone goes for it. You could literally play successfully without speaking to a single other person. Not necessarily - take for example WoW's auction house, which I'm sure most are familiar with it. The auction house takes a cut of your auction based on the item's value and the time of the auction, if a D3 region-wide auction house existed (aka something MASSIVE) then it could very well have an even higher tax, encouraging players to trade between each other instead of just putting things up on the AH. Ofcourse people would still use the AH (unless the tax was ridiculous), but I'm sure some people would try to advertise their trades on sites, etc. either way, prices wouldn't oscillate as much, yes, but that doesn't mean you can't "play" the auction house, or that desperate people won't try to buy your stuff. Rare stuff wouldn't always be up in the auction house, and if someone with enough gold is desperate for X item, and you happen to be the only one available, I'm sure he'd pay an extremely high price for it.
I haven't played WoW and don't really know the specifics, but I assume the gold economy works because there are gold sinks (buying skills, mounts etc.). It works like this in all MMORPGs that I can think of, except one.
In Ragnarok Online players use Zeny to buy stuff, just like players use gold in WoW. I'm not sure if I'm forgetting something, but I really can't figure out why. There's barely anything to put your money on. You can buy lower level items and use some services which are really cheap, the good stuff are still rare items found by other players. This is similar to Diablo 2, where there are a few uses for gold like gambling and buying items when you're not good enough to find better yet.
Two similar situations where one turns into a money economy and the other into more of an item economy. Am I missing something here, or did it just happen by accident? Perhaps this could happen in Diablo 3 as well?
+ Show Spoiler +I don't know the proper terms for these type of things, but I hope you get what I'm saying at least.
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imo the auction house is a great thing. You dont have to waste time joining and creating games where you need to trade.
Also trading for gold where gold is used for some many things makes it great and a currency. You don't have to keep all good items around because you want to save them for some other character but you can just rebuy it whenever you need it. I cannot see why people still think trading by making a game or through other sites is good.
I actually never liked trading items for items because you always knew that there might be something off. Like the item is not actually worth that much because the stats on it are really bad.
I know it might feel good when you got one great deal but someone always gets ripped off. Don't get me wrong i made some good deals too, but it didn't feel right afterwards.
I feel the same way about trading sites. Anyone who uses these or buys from sites gets ripped off, imo. Its just my way of playing and buying doesn't make it fun for me.
I just think the auction house is the best way to go to replace all of this. I don't have any experience with it in wow but every i know says it is great.
I just cannot see how all your other options can replace it in the same way i feel it should be.
I just get the feeling that everyone who is saying they don't like the auction house is because they want to exploit others through any way possible. Am i right that there should be some kind of system to prevent this and the auction house might be a good solution? It is also a fast and easy way to trade,
And the most important thing at the moment. It saves up time. They want you to play the game and not waste time trading. Every second you are trading, you could be playing the game and find that item yourself. Which is even better.
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On June 01 2011 20:45 sob3k wrote: but if the shop items aren't random then it removes nearly all the fun from getting them.
Why? Would getting gold in the purpose of buying an item that you had seen, and that you want be fun? Gold could also vary in drops. It doesn't have to be 1gp 2gp 1gp 1gp...2gp, it can be 1gp 2gp 1gp 1gp...500gp 1gp etc. Just like most item drops are useless to make the good one special big amount of gold drop can also be much bigger, and not common. I don't mean to say that you should be able to buy that uber item for 500gp just that gold drops should vary allot to perceive big ones as special.
On June 01 2011 20:45 sob3k wrote:The thing is I don't see this method making gold the primary currency, it would just make it another specific commodity like rune packs used to reroll GCs in d2 or pgems.
Hmm that would depend on balance maybe? That still would be better then having useless gold like in D2 I don't know what they do in WoW to make gold important because I don't play mmorpg.
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Just use gold for things that isn't equipment. Stuff like potions, scrolls, repairs and services. I see no problem with that and having huge cash surplus happens at some point or another in every game
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On June 01 2011 23:11 Warpath wrote:
Just use gold for things that isn't equipment. Stuff like potions, scrolls, repairs and services. I see no problem with that and having huge cash surplus happens at some point or another in every game
That's the thing, though. They stated that they'd have a higher value for gold this time around. Nobody trades in gold in D2. There's a couple reasons for this. Not only is it entirely too easy to earn, but it's nigh useless outside of gambling (which you don't need supplementary funds to do, since you make so much in the first place). Blizzard doesn't want people trading primarily in items this time around. There is one way to make this happen without breaking the game: make gold sinks, or make gold less common. I imagine it'll be a mixture of the two.
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There are various other reasons, such as an arbitrary gold cap, losing gold on death etc. I would not like an item based value system like SOJ's to be in diablo 3.
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On June 01 2011 23:16 goiflin wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2011 23:11 Warpath wrote:
Just use gold for things that isn't equipment. Stuff like potions, scrolls, repairs and services. I see no problem with that and having huge cash surplus happens at some point or another in every game That's the thing, though. They stated that they'd have a higher value for gold this time around. Nobody trades in gold in D2. There's a couple reasons for this. Not only is it entirely too easy to earn, but it's nigh useless outside of gambling (which you don't need supplementary funds to do, since you make so much in the first place). Blizzard doesn't want people trading primarily in items this time around. There is one way to make this happen without breaking the game: make gold sinks, or make gold less common. I imagine it'll be a mixture of the two.
I actually really like this idea. D2 always annoyed me with gold. I was always obsessed with picking up all those small gold amounts, and in the end, all I did was gamble it away anyways. It was kind of a useless commodity, strangely enough, especially considering things like repair and potions were so ridiculously cheap.
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EPT
