Blizzard Admits Diablo III Auction House Was a Mistake

[Tumedus]

I personally don't think the AH was the problem so much as other design decisions relating to gear that pushed the AH to become more integral than it needed to be.

The way they made the gear and the stats, there was very little variety in what people needed. And because of the way they designed the skill system, all gear gave you was more damage or more survivability. There was nothing about the gear that could define a new build.

Thus people primarily wanted the gear to clear the content, but they designed inferno to be a huge cockblock. Partly because of the above and partly because of how they designed the gear level vs. monster level drop formula, you could either farm Act 3/4 Hell endlessly in hopes of getting perfect rolls and none of the really good stuff (sets, recipes or legendaries) or farm inferno with substandard gear and likely die incessantly because you ran into a BS set of monster affixes that just owned you.

OR you could buy the gear off the AH that gave you a reasonable chance of beating inferno.

The gear just wasn't compelling so the only reason people wanted it was to clear the content, but clearing the content was hard until you got the gear which meant it was simply easier to buy the gear off the AH (for most people). I mean, it should have been a major red flag when all of the popular farming points in game for the first couple of months (until they nerfed them) were locations where people could spawn a chest with as little fighting as possible.

 

[bz316]

Gee, if only there had been somebody to warn them...

 

[Incomer]

You know what was messed up about D3? The AH made those of us who prefer regular gaming suffer. I may be forgetting the specifics here, so forgive me.

I went through the entire game on what was the normal difficulty. As I usually do with games, I went through every dungeon, I swept every map. I am quite thorough when I play games like this. I left piles of dead creatures strewn in my wake. And during that entire time, I saw not one item classified above "Rare".

Okay, I thought, this game won't drop anything better than rares at this difficulty. So I started again at the next difficulty up. I got through a little over half the game and I hadn't found anything any better than the equipment I already had. Nothing.

It was at that point I came to the realization that this wasn't the game I was looking for. This game was meant to be played by farming encounters for super rare drops and then posting those drops on the AH. Regular players such as myself were never going to find anything of interest on our own, we were expected to buy it off the AH.

As I am utterly uninterested in such "gameplay", that's the point at which the game was shelved. I am of the opinion that if I can't earn something in a game myself, I don't want to have it. I play MMOGs the same way. I do not want other people to earn stuff for me. For me, that is akin to cheating, and it sullies any future victories I might have (did I really kill the Foo, or was it just because I bought that awesome bit of armor off the AH?).

As that was clearly NOT the attitude of the D3 developers, I said "See ya!" and moved on.

I think every RPG fan goes and does the scouting for hidden stuff(which is useless here on the first 2 runs!). Problem for me was the way the game was structured, you have those first 2 difficulties that you can beat with one hand in your nose and the other in your ass, you get to the third one and in first 2 acts you realize that 1)hey this is actually rather fun, finally some challenge, 2)too bad I've already seen everything that's ahead of me and 3) that I'm fed up with my character. To top it off comes act 3 the third difficulty and gear score check from WoW. You don't have the gear you die (heck even pros spend so much time grinding locations to get to some decent gear lvl).

 

[-Dragmire-]

Wouldn't increasing loot drop percentages alone make the auction house less useful without getting rid of it?

 

[Scarim Coral]

He only notice the mistake now? (Well ok he notice it earlier but still.)

I guess he underestimate how much money a person have and willing to pay in return to not spending hours to farm rare loot especially when the loot in Diablo itself is broken.

 

[DTWolfwood]

First steps to fixing a problem is admitting you have a problem

 

[Callate]

I'm torn between admiration that they actually admitted this and "Holy screaming duh, why didn't you listen to anyone who was trying to tell you this in the first place?!"

 

[Aggieknight]

What hurt the game wasn't the AH, but the fact that 95% of gear that dropped was useless for any class. It practically forced players to use the AH to gear up. The crafting was just as dumb, spend a bunch of parts from gear that you melted instead of sold to maybe get something useful.

It was idiotic.

 

[cdemares]

The game's stat design, drop rates, and lack of item-based builds are the problem. The AH could have worked and can still work, just don't design the rest of the game to make it practically required. I don't care if other people want to farm, but don't make me do it.

 

[Fluffythepoo]

The stated reason for forced online was the ah, so I would think this implies that forced online was just as much a mistake as the ah.. so thats nice

Also if your intention was to make the ah optional, something used by a few.. why was the gear system based around the ah (gear drops were derivatively based on ah needs), if farming something becomes literally impossible because the ah doesnt need you to farm that thing, how the fuck are you not supposed to use ah?

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I wouldn't mind if they kept the Gold-based auction house in place, but I'd be really glad if the Real Money one was closed. I looked over a few prices for the lulz a few months back and, well, I was gobsmacked. People are actually willing to pay a hundred bucks for a virtual item? I've seen Max Bids set at very specific amounts in the thousands, too!

What's the point of playing if you're pretty much just going to use the game as a speculator's tool?

As for Gold? Shit, that currency's already devalued as all Hell. Entry-level blues for lowbies go in the tens of thousands.

It's still the core reason why I've never finished Inferno. Drops turn into cash generators and you end up being forced to ogle the auction houses in the hopes that you'll find something to keep you going. I'm surprised Blizzard didn't realize they'd created a speculator bubble for themselves. They're seeing it pop and are panicking, so the only way they can respond is by firing Jay Wilson or relocating him elsewhere in the company.

My guess is Blizz is in Damage Control mode now. We'll see if Paragon is enough to keep people playing or if the entire system is going to collapse in a few more months.

 

[Lightknight]

My question remains how much money have they made from the auction house? They say it's a mistake but then they give a reason why they can't kill it...

 

[Snotnarok]

It's a total lie they didn't base the game around the AH feature, they limited your item chest space requiring huge gold piles to upgrade it and allowed you to put up a number of bids and not have to monitor them. The game was basically designed like. I didn't even want to use the stupid AH but I did to unload some of the more rare items and it worked...just like it was designed to.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

The sad thing is, I bet they they could have received at least a hundred e-mails foretelling this conclusion.....and they still would have done it anyway.

 

[antipunt]

Hmm


>_>

an apology is better than nothing..

d-^_^-b

 

[tzimize]

I really feel bad for everyone here. I feel bad for the developers because it must be hard to admit that your creation just didn't quite live to everyone's expectations. And I also feel bad for the Diablo fans because you could really see how excited they all were for this title.

At the same time, I admire the fact they admitted it wasn't exactly what they had in mind. Most developers would go "Oh, it's the audience's fault" or "Figures they wouldn't like it if its not CoD". So props for that?

No. No props. This has been bleeding obvious since the first week of Diablo 3 live. They've probably known it a lot longer too, they just dont give a fuck anymore.

Honestly, how fucking stupid do you have to be to not realize that a loot based game would be screwed up if your main source of grinding is an AH?

And for clarification: any "you"s in this post is aimed at the developers, not your post.

Captcha: Dollar signs. Wow captcha, nail on the head.

 

[Beautiful End]

I really feel bad for everyone here. I feel bad for the developers because it must be hard to admit that your creation just didn't quite live to everyone's expectations. And I also feel bad for the Diablo fans because you could really see how excited they all were for this title.

At the same time, I admire the fact they admitted it wasn't exactly what they had in mind. Most developers would go "Oh, it's the audience's fault" or "Figures they wouldn't like it if its not CoD". So props for that?

No. No props. This has been bleeding obvious since the first week of Diablo 3 live. They've probably known it a lot longer too, they just dont give a fuck anymore.

Honestly, how fucking stupid do you have to be to not realize that a loot based game would be screwed up if your main source of grinding is an AH?

And for clarification: any "you"s in this post is aimed at the developers, not your post.

Captcha: Dollar signs. Wow captcha, nail on the head.

Well, I suppose that's true but still...at least they admit it eventually. Most developers just never admit it and blame it on everyone but their cat. I'm not saying everything is forgiven, no, no. It's still their damn fault the game sucks and I'm sure there must have been at least a guy that said "Wait, maybe this game sucks" before the game was released.

But still, I can appreciate them admitting the game sucks while everyone else says "I told you so".

 

[Vzzdak]

Whole point of having GAH and RMAH was to protect people from having to use 3rd party sites. This article sounds like some inane comments to make PR noise.

Real problem was that used items could always be reposted to market, thereby making a huge supply of replacement equipment available that was generally better than what you could find in-game. If they had gone with "binding" gear to the toon (ala lotro), then that would removed excess gear sloshing on market and make found gear feel more worthwhile.