Blizzard Admits Diablo III Auction House Was a Mistake

[Seracen]

Yay! Maybe, just maybe, they'll release an offline version. Then I'll buy it.

Now just remove the AH and always online requirement and I may actually check out your game, Blizz.

This...a thousand times this...

 

[danon]

Well it's good that they admit that AH was a mistake and RMAH just added to that terribleness. Now if they would recreate diablo 3 to make it have offline mode and remove the AH and RMAH for those who wants to play multiplayer. Then i would actually buy it.

 

[DirgeNovak]

The solution is easy. Open servers without AH, and allow offline play.
Those who still want the AH get to keep it, those who hate it don't have to put up with it and those who want to play alone will be able to.

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

"Yes, the auction house was a terrible mistake. That's why we continued to sell the game anyway."

Reminds me of when that SEGA guy said Aliens: Colonial Marines was a developmental failure. And he was saying, "oh, Gearbox screwed us over and the game is pathetic and disappointing and we're sorry." But they weren't, I suppose, sorry enough to stop selling the game.

This industry is ready to apologize for broken products, but more than willing to sell them. Even when they know their product is broken, they will lie to sell it, get their profit, and then apologize. That... does that seem wrong to anyone else? Like, the most disingenuous bullshit ever?

 

[danon]

Well it was not like they were obscuring the fact that it was going to be a AH you can just not buy it. The launch problems though although very predictable was a good basis for refunds.

 

[Little Gray]

This means playing turned into:
- Grind to get gold in your gold suit AND/OR
- Grind to get items in your item suit - items which you could never actually use, just sell on AH.
- Use AH to buy slightly better gear.
- See how far you can get before it's no longer fun to play.
- Repeat.

WHEEEEEEEEEEE

Note - this was pre-Paragon.

Replace AH with trading other players and you just summed up Diablo 2 as well as basically every game like this.

 

[thiosk]

What I didn't understand about this was... didn't people at blizzard play, you know, world of warcraft?

When I quit Wow back in, geez, 2007, the AH was crazy time consuming already, and I can only imagine it has gotten crazier.

I understand that there was a problem with the in game economy of Diablo 2,but jeeze it took them a long time to figure this out.

 

[Yan007]

Well it was not like they were obscuring the fact that it was going to be a AH you can just not buy it. The launch problems though although very predictable was a good basis for refunds.

The main issue with the AH is that game balance was affected by its very existence. By that, I don't mean that more people have/want better items and that it screwed the game, I mean that they tweaked the numbers down to reduce the number of good drops individual players would get in order to compensate for the availability of great items on the AH. That this was done for money or not doesn't factor into my hatred of this system.

Yes, I also know we had 3rd party websites selling items for D2, but it wasn't so much "in your face" has it is now.

My quickfix solutions for D3 (not definitive, but maybe quicker to implement asap):

-Inform players that the AH will be shut down in 2 months and to take out their money asap.

-Rework drop tables to take into account the now defunct AH and give bosses better loots.

-Bring back the chatrooms.

-Bring back game creation/selection with names and passwords.

-Allow a "no story" mode where you can run around everywhere with no locks blocking your way and allow people to go to any acts they want. Also allow toggle hostile in town in this mode.

-Remove inferno difficulty and replace it by a difficulty modifier. For example, you could create a game and enter 10% in the modifier field and now monsters are 10% stronger than they were in Hell difficulty and may yield items more often and so on, but not absolutely better than what we already had in inferno difficulty.You would play this mode for challenge and more frequent yellow and better drops. You could then brag about beating the game at a higher modifier than your friends and so on.

-Make grouping more FUN and something players will want by making the game harder when people join, but much more rewarding. If you have a full game you could get a health/drop%/so on bonus. You could even make some group bonuses dependent on the type of characters in the party/game. You could give special "group attacks" as well a bit like in the LOTR MMO and so on. Use your damn imagination and money for once!

-Create a secondary game mode/system, first on PTR, then implemented, that would allow for a skill tree-based system and free points allocation like in D2. Implement items more like they were in D2. You could implement this with the Xpac, who knows.

-Offline and LAN modes. Open B.net.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

and substantially increasing loot drops as well as making the blacksmith much more viable

Pretty much hit the nail on the head right there. Why not do that?

"What's that? People are over using the auction houses and not playing the game? Maybe we should incentivise our players to actually play the game the proper way?"

"Nah, the more they use the RMAH, the more money we get for it".

 

[zinho73]

The premise were wrong. They designed a lot of features on D3 based on opinion of superhardcore players.

I know a ton of people that never bought items on the side for D2, and I bet a huge amount only did that once or twice. It was a huge market because the player base on D2 was also huge, but I doubt that buying items were a bread and butter thing that everyone did regularly to the point of needing a regular AH. A very good trade system and good itemization would have been enough to accommodate most players.

Also eliminating customization because "everyone" just used the optimized option. I really doubt that. Sure, hardcore players (specially in PVP)will look in the internet the best build and run after it, but I bet that even those had a few characters on the side to have fun with and see if other things worked. You certainly did not need any perfect build to beat D2 - and D3 didn't even have PVP.

And they couldn't even kill the blackmarket, which operates with gold now.

And they didn't nailed balance either - even with everything unlocked there are players using optimal configurations everywhere. The problem is even worse because it is way more easy to just use the optimal configuration and people do not even try something different.

Oh, well...

 

[Sack of Cheese]

See? Was that so hard?
I only completed Diablo 3 on Normal for 4-5 characters thus I didn't find AH very useful. The only change I want them to make is to remove always-online feature.

 

[GAunderrated]

"Yes, the auction house was a terrible mistake. That's why we continued to sell the game anyway."

Reminds me of when that SEGA guy said Aliens: Colonial Marines was a developmental failure. And he was saying, "oh, Gearbox screwed us over and the game is pathetic and disappointing and we're sorry." But they weren't, I suppose, sorry enough to stop selling the game.

This industry is ready to apologize for broken products, but more than willing to sell them. Even when they know their product is broken, they will lie to sell it, get their profit, and then apologize. That... does that seem wrong to anyone else? Like, the most disingenuous bullshit ever?

Yes that is why I have become so shady to the point where I believe this one guy believes it was a mistake but those that made the decision don't. It is basically a PR move to safe face for when the expansion is announced but DO NOT BE FOOLED, blizzard hasn't learned a damned thing.

 

[synobal]

"Yes, the auction house was a terrible mistake. That's why we continued to sell the game anyway."

Reminds me of when that SEGA guy said Aliens: Colonial Marines was a developmental failure. And he was saying, "oh, Gearbox screwed us over and the game is pathetic and disappointing and we're sorry." But they weren't, I suppose, sorry enough to stop selling the game.

This industry is ready to apologize for broken products, but more than willing to sell them. Even when they know their product is broken, they will lie to sell it, get their profit, and then apologize. That... does that seem wrong to anyone else? Like, the most disingenuous bullshit ever?

Yes that is why I have become so shady to the point where I believe this one guy believes it was a mistake but those that made the decision don't. It is basically a PR move to safe face for when the expansion is announced but DO NOT BE FOOLED, blizzard hasn't learned a damned thing.

I find it amazingly hard to believe they didn't intend for everyone to use the auction house. All the drops are for about 5 levels below you when you play the game until you get to inferno and high monster levels. If they didn't want you to buy and sell your gear on the AH then why make it so that in order to progress to the hardest difficulties in the game you have to use the auction house.

I've a hard time believing that was by accident. Blizzard is a lot of things but they aren't stupid. They understood what they were doing.

 

[Candidus]

Well look at that. Another case in point that fans know what the fuck they're talking about. Auction house was a deal breaker for me. I knew it would ruin the game.

I'm also sitting smug on the money I saved by not purchasing this dog-pile. We were telling Jay Wilson how stupid it was, why it was stupid and to please cease being stupid months before the game released, so the fact that he's now talking about seeing his error in hindsight makes him look even more pathetic, ignorant and useless than he did while keeping his mouth shut.

Not that we didn't all know how pathetic and useless he was from the moment he said "fuck that loser" of Brevik.

It's bewildering that this POS is still employed, in my opinion. Oh well. Perhaps he's contractually obligated to deliver another certain-to-be abject failure or two before he's released. His works are at least fun to piss all over.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Right you didn't know what would happen, purposefully gimping the entire game so people will be forced to AH and give you more money was completely accidental... not the intended design all along.

Buddy some of us weren't born yesterday and we know bullshit when we see it.