Blizzard Admits Diablo III Auction House Was a Mistake

[Darks63]

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

So basically you are waiting for the Console version then.

Well I suppose it's good that capitalism exists for Diablo fans, because Torchlight 2 was a better Diablo experience then Diablo 3 was.

Not only Torchlight 2, both Path of Exile and Grim Dawn wouldn't be this far along in development if it weren't for the disappointment of D3

Thanks for the mentioning these two titles as I hadnt heard of them before. The info about those two games look like they have potential especially the one being worked on by the Titan quest devs.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Blizzard damn well knew what they were trying to do in introducing the Auction House, and quite frankly they deserve no pity. They call the AH a mistake, but it was a calculated risk; players' enjoyment of the game vs forced grind.

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.

The drop rates are fucked because of the AH.
(Also, the stat-skill system is designed specifically to reduce player skill as a factor for character performance, which in turn skews the value items even higher.)

By simple economics, there is finite Demand but infinite Supply. Given enough time, the game will eventually generate more desirable or even ideal items than the player population can demand.
Complicating matters is that all of Demand is also a form of Supply.

So why slash the drop rates?
To slow the depreciation of initial item values, and (vainly) try to slow the rate of inflation (gold).

If drop rates are sufficiently high to satisfy demand innately, there is literally no point to the AH (or any of those 3rd Party Sites/Black Markets the AH is supposed to "protect" the players from).

It all leads back to grind, and the sacrifices to gameplay designed to emphasize the grind.
Blizzard wants you to grind to keep you playing, and playing to keep feeding them revenue they didn't actually work for or earn.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

The thing that irked me about the Auction House is that you might as well use it. Past Normal, it's the only way to get gear that is actually your level. By Inferno, you pretty much have to use it. Perhaps if they hadn't set it up so that you had shitty drops the whole game, players wouldn't have 'abused' the AH... well, no. That's not true. I mean, why hunt it down when you can just buy it? Money is otherwise useless in Diablo.

 

[afroebob]

Well look at that. Another case in point that fans know what the fuck they're talking about.

No offense but the only time fans ever know what the fuck they are talking about is with intrusive DRM and (usually) EA being dicks. Granted, if you were talking about the DRM sucking in Diablo 3 because of the AH than sure, I can get onboard with the fans, but you aren't so my previous statement that most fans, and people in general for that matter, are idiots and wrong about almost everything they say, think and believe still stands. It was a failed experiment, but it doesn't mean it was a bad one to do.

 

[Skeleon]

Maybe they aren't beyond redemption then. Up until this point, it seemed to me that Blizzard's tactic was to simply repeatedly say "What are you talking about, it works great, if anything doesn't work properly it's the users' fault".

 

[irishda]

Frankly, I've got no sympathy for anyone in this case. Blizzard's made too much money for anyone to have to defend them, and the fans? This is the same group of fans that ran one boss for ten fucking years. He wasn't a particularly inventive or creative boss. In fact, he was pretty on par to the D3 bosses. But that didn't stop people from continually attacking just him for a decade. So no, I don't give a shit that the AH took away "the need to grind for equipment".

 

[Lovely Mixture]

This is the same group of fans that ran one boss for ten fucking years. He wasn't a particularly inventive or creative boss. In fact, he was pretty on par to the D3 bosses. But that didn't stop people from continually attacking just him for a decade.

I'm sorry, can you clarify what you're referencing here? I'm quite curious.

Maybe they aren't beyond redemption then. Up until this point, it seemed to me that Blizzard's tactic was to simply repeatedly say "What are you talking about, it works great, if anything doesn't work properly it's the users' fault".

Call me cynical, but I don't think this is indication that they're going to change that behavior in the future.

Man, remember Blizzard liked their community?

 

[Atmos Duality]

So no, I don't give a shit that the AH took away "the need to grind for equipment".

The Auction House didn't remove the need to grind for equipment, but amplified it.
Either you pay money to get your items, or you grind yourself stupid. There is no alternative.

In Diablo 2, this didn't stop players from rushing Hell Forge and doing stacked Baal runs for the better part of a decade but at least those madmen did so entirely by choice (I guarantee that every one of them doing the rushing had already beaten Hell Mode, and were either doing Ladder Rushes, or were grinding for runes).

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

This begs the question of whether the PS4 version will have an AH. If it does, Jay will have egg on his face.

The AH is the main reason why I still haven't bought D3. Until they get rid of it my money stays in my wallet.

 

[Aeshi]

Just put an eBay logo on it and say its there to capture the spirit of the older games in the series

 

[Olas]

Yet another game breaking problem that can be linked back to trying to implement microtransactions into gameplay. I guess to be fair the problem with AH is how it was designed not the concept itself, still this type of crap happens when you try to force extra features into a game for reasons not related to making it more fun to play.

 

[veloper]

That's not a mistake, that's a bloody SUCCESS, Blizzard.

The quote:
"Almost every one of the game's players made use of an Auction House, and 50% of all players use one "regularly". Wilson says that the game still has a daily player base of around 1 million concurrent players, with 3 million per month. He says the problem is that the Auction Houses made money a much higher motivator than actually, you know, killing Diablo."

It doesn't matter if it bores, hurts and frustrates your players to tears, if they still keep coming back for more. No point in apologizing to them.

As for the players who really didn't like it, they have migrated to Torchlight 2 already. For them nothing you may say matters anymore.

 

[mrhateful]

My friends had a lan recently and we tried to play some diablo 3 but It was simply not a fun game, the spells are all the same and no ways to make it interresting. In the end we went back to diablo 2 and had a very good time.
But I dont think its the auction house fault I think its more there are no tactics to it like the old ones, in diablo 3 its basically just click on a monster until it dies(use 5 different animations but with the completely same effect).

 

[Rossmallo]

Wow. It takes a big man to admit that you've screwed up. I play Runescape as well, and the developers there downright REFUSE to acknowledge when they've made a misstep. So...Thanks, Blizzard. Thanks for at least saying when you've messed up.

Capcha: "magic decoder ring"

...Well then.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

Hmm, and when one of Diablo II's former developers noted that the Auction House was a massive break from how they would have designed Diablo II, how did Jay Wilson react?

Spoiler

"Fuck that loser."

Hence I'm not surprised that Diablo III turned out to be such a goddamn waste of ninety dollars.

 

[Strazdas]

the way i see it the aucion house is optional right? so dont use it if you dont like it.
and if you want to use it, its useful for you.
but we are gamers, we use a feature daily and in the evening we complain about its existence.

 

[Kahani]

Taking it out now would be a massive problem though because on top of what he said you would have to restructure drop rates

Except that they've already done that. On release, it was a big problem because there was simply no way to get through inferno without using the auction house, and uniques were so rare you'd probably never see one unless you bought it and they were mostly useless anyway. But there has been a huge amount of rebalancing since then, and now it's not a problem at all to play through the whole game without visiting the AH once (which is exactly what I've done). The majority of complaints about the AH now seem to come either from people who played near release and haven't seen any of the changes since then, or who have never played it at all and just assume it's all terrible without actually knowing any of the details.

So sure, getting rid of the AH might need some further messing with drop rates. But that's something they've done before and continue to work on so it's hardly a massive problem.

as well as the game lobby. You would need a new lobby similar to diablo 2's in order to make it work.

Why?

The solution is easy. Open servers without AH

What difference would that make? A server without an AH is exactly the same as a server with an AH that you simply choose not to use.

and allow offline play.

I think very few people would disagree with this though. It's not usually too bad, especially compared with most MMOs, but I still can't see the point of starting a hardcore character when about 50% of my deaths are due to lag.

I only completed Diablo 3 on Normal for 4-5 characters thus I didn't find AH very useful.

Normal mode is basically the tutorial; it's significantly easier than normal mode in Diablo 2. While they advertised inferno as a new, even higher difficulty setting, it was actually the other way around with the new setting added on the bottom. So yeah, even at the start there was never any reason to use the AH until well into nightmare, and no actual need until late into hell.

 

[Zenn3k]

This is what happens when a rookie developer thinks he is smarter than the player base.

The player base is smarter than you Jay, you can't expect people to act the way you THINK or WANT them to act, they will ALWAYS take the path of least resistance, its human nature.

AH is path of least resistance, it has been in every game with an AH. You guys RUN World of Warcraft, you didn't expect this?!

The AH isn't NEARLY the games only problem, but yes, it was a major negative factor.

 

[Zenn3k]

This begs the question of whether the PS4 version will have an AH. If it does, Jay will have egg on his face.

The AH is the main reason why I still haven't bought D3. Until they get rid of it my money stays in my wallet.

Its actually already been confirmed to NOT have an AH in it.

Smart on their part.