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There are numerous things about Diablo III's design that are dumb: four players maximum in a game, no chat channels, etc. However I think the single dumbest decision that Blizzard made when creating this game is their auction house.
Why is it dumb?
The auction house itself is a good idea. Creating custom games with the item you wanted to trade as the title worked (somewhat) in Diablo II, but it required you actively spend your time trying to sell items you've found instead of finding more items and killing monsters - which is the point of the game. An auction house also meant that Diablo would finally have a currency that is valuable, as Diablo II's gold currency was absolutely worthless, no amount of gold would ever equal an item of significant value.
But why, despite all of that, is it actually a piece of trash? Here's a list of reasons:- Ten items on sale at one time maximum - This is the single most irritating thing about Diablo III in my opinion. The entire purpose of the game is to kill monsters and get loot. Trading is the best way to upgrade your character; you've found something good but you don't need, you can trade your item for something you can actually use - mutual gain.
But wait! Are there more than time items you would like to trade? Too bad, you have to wait. I don't care about the logistical reasoning for why they decided on this, it's irritating and hampers trading - it's bad design.
- Auction house 'lockout' - This isn't a real lock-out, but it might as well be. Let's say you have ten items on the auction house, but they aren't selling, well I guess you might want to consider taking them off and putting new items on, or taking them off and re-pricing them - OH WAIT YOU CAN'T. Blizzard decided that it was a good idea for you to have to mull over your poor decisions over a period of two days instead.
Right now I have ten items on the auction house for sale. Some are overpriced, some simply have a very small or niche market, and some are simply being undercut - until they sell or two days pass, I cannot trade items. I cannot personally take down my own items, I have to either have a friend of mine purchase my items for me, eat the 15% gold deduction, and re-sell, or I wait.
And what if you don't have a buddy who can do this? Or what if no one is online? Sucks to be you friend, you have to wait. Diablo III punishes people who want to sell multiple items and it punishes people who are selling items that sell slowly. I have no idea how this is justified.
Anyone else hate the auction house?
 
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Well I'd have over 300 items in AH right now if there wasn't the limit, maybe it'd have too much items in the AH if it had no limit? It could be difficult to handle so many from such a huge playerbase? I'm not sure, maybe stuff would be too cheap and people would have gear even faster, I'd like 1 hour to cancel an auction, and obviously - less glitches.
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Well in other games you could pay for more slots in the auction, maybe that is the direction they are going for, But i haven't played a game with auction house "lockout" before, This part is a really bad choice by blizzard
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i don't know why they didn't follow the same format they had in warcraft, where you could post as much as you want, search for partial names of items, set the length of your auction, etc. seems like a big mistep on this
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On May 25 2012 01:27 Bitters wrote:
i don't know why they didn't follow the same format they had in warcraft, where you could post as much as you want, search for partial names of items, set the length of your auction, etc. seems like a big mistep on this
Agreed. I'm sure Blizz has a reason, like it's easier for their servers, or they want to protect their in-game economy, but at the very least, I don't understand the 'lock-out' that can occur because you can't sell items. What a bonehead move.
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WoW doesn't have a limit on the number of auctions you can have at one time. During my gold making days I could have thousands of auctions everyday on the auction house. However WoW's auction houses are server wide and not region wide so maybe something's going on with that?
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It's like Blizzard watched the Bioware guys try to do an auction house in SWTOR and thought it was a competition for worst auction house possible. I don't get how they can go from WoW's auction house which was a perfection of the idea and concept(originally from FF11 if memory serves..) to D3's.. clunky, limited, and all together annoying interface that makes it appear they had no idea what they where doing. Did no one from the D3 team talk to the Wow team about this? I just don't understand how d3's ah got so.. subpar.
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Definitely top three annoying things but immune minions, freeze plague molten champs take the cake.
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I agree. I think the problem is that. Blizzard no longer gives a damn about what the players think. Activision seems to influence more than we thought on Blizzard.
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I know what you mean.
I have 5 bank alts and practically a full stash along with some rares on each class because I don't want to vendor/salvage the rares. It seems insane to me to vendor/salvage rares and get a small amount of reagents or 200-400g when you can get thousands on the AH, even for crummy level 5 rares.
But I might have to vendor just to make space so I can actually play the game instead of waiting for my minimum auctions to go through.
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I thought that bitching about the AH interface would be more valid, but oh well. I've never played WoW but I'm guessing that the item diversity is less than D3. If there was unlimited options with auctioning items, the AH would be completely flooded. Imagine wading through 2000 pages of items instead of 20, with each one just slightly different from the next. AFAIK, the restrictions are in place to prevent that from happening. If you want to get items sold, make good decisions instead of throwing everything there. Some people have claimed that they have made millions in the GAH, even though they were confined to the artificial limits that were imposed.
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intrigue
Washington, D.C9933 Posts
i agree it could be better, i've been a bit spoiled by the valve trade system. we should also be able to make custom game names for trading. but watching so many people complain dreadfully all the time is really disheartening. like some things people say are just ridiculous. i can't see anyone saying this with a straight face:
On May 25 2012 01:11 Salv wrote:
Blizzard decided that it was a good idea for you to have to mull over your poor decisions over a period of two days instead.
consequences for bad decisions can seem harsh, sure. but they're not unreasonable. there are obvious practical reasons for making you think about what you want to sell. and more importantly, it's 2 days. 2 days. have you played for more than 6 hours? congrats, better cost efficiency than a movie. there are annoyances in an otherwise good game but seeing people talk about how things are "trash" and how much they "hate" them gets really uninteresting really fast. it's much easier to be taken seriously if you use a constructive tone rather than an outraged one.
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We need a D3 QQ thread. All the complaints can go there. Should I create one?
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you guys are doing it wrong.
obviously you need to set up a website that lists all of your items currently available, then advertise the site -> find a buyer via email or ingame chat -> put item up on AH and have them immediately buy it
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The limited amount of items in the auction house is genius. It keeps items retain their value and doesn't dunk the prices of lower lvl items so lower lvl characters can actually profit somewhat from the auction house as well.
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On May 25 2012 02:49 ZaplinG wrote:
you guys are doing it wrong.
obviously you need to set up a website that lists all of your items currently available, then advertise the site -> find a buyer via email or ingame chat -> put item up on AH and have them immediately buy it
I would love it if Blizzard made the AH accessible ingame, from the internet or even an app! Makes it easier to track your auctions and to look at items when bored (at work). The only problem with the second and third ideas is that even more stupid people will get their accounts compromised.
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8748 Posts
Using the auction house already makes you so much stronger even with the ten item limit.
I feel like these statements have some inconsistency:
Creating custom games with the item you wanted to trade as the title worked (somewhat) in Diablo II, but it required you actively spend your time trying to sell items you've found instead of finding more items and killing monsters - which is the point of the game.
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The entire purpose of the game is to kill monsters and get loot. Trading is the best way to upgrade your character; you've found something good but you don't need, you can trade your item for something you can actually use - mutual gain.
When you are adventuring, you are killing monsters and getting loot. When you're trading, you're only getting loot. So you're fulfilling the point of the game only when you're adventuring. Trading is supplemental to the game that, when used at the proper times, can get you loot more efficiently.
D2's trade system was very time consuming. D3's trade system is far less time consuming. And even less time consuming would be your hypothetical free and unlimited auction house. But you've got to draw the line somewhere. If there was some super smart system that automatically traded for you while you were adventuring so that you suddenly lost items you didn't need and got gold or suddenly got items and lost gold, that would be ridiculous. When the whole community can perfectly optimize their loot and gold distributions, the game becomes too easy. The more easily you can trade, the more easily you can get your desired combination of stats. But it's pretty obvious to any D3 player that randomness is an enemy that you're constantly struggling against.
Asking for a better AH is asking for an easier game. It's much different than WoW because of the randomness of stats. The line must be drawn somewhere for design reasons and perhaps somewhere else for logistical and technical reasons, and then the line ends up somewhere and that's that.
I think if you accept the way it is and respect the fact that the AH is a limited resource that you must manage then you'll get along much nicer. If you use your 10 slots better than the next guy then you have an advantage, just the same way you use limited resources better than the next guy to gain an advantage in so many other ways.
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On May 25 2012 01:54 Linwelin wrote:
WoW doesn't have a limit on the number of auctions you can have at one time. During my gold making days I could have thousands of auctions everyday on the auction house. However WoW's auction houses are server wide and not region wide so maybe something's going on with that?
And you are paying €14 per month, so they can afford the extra servers.
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I think the AH is a nice added perk for selling your loot at the end of an adventure into the deepest dungeons. I invested a lot of money into my stash space so I could have one or more tabs dedicated to what I want to sell in the AH, if an item doesn't sell I will probably turn it into gold or crafting materials, unless I feel the item could have sold if it was lowered a bit, then I will re-list it.
Dwelling on the fact you can't sell loot is not the way to go about it. Just vendor/break it down or store it in the stash and move on if you cannot sell it the first time.
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EPT
