Diablo 3's auction house is a factor in item drop rates.

[TheDutch3Z]

I knew something like this would happen. Always-on + Auction house = Disaster. It is unacceptable. I can't believe more than 6 million PC gamers were dumb enough to buy this game.

I know! It's as if people are actually ENJOYING PLAYING THE GAME. It's insane!

Enjoying or not, it's nearly criminal the way the consumers are being treated in this. The only reason why you don't have a problem with it is because you're also having fun.

Yes, the criminal part is when the game FORCES you to use the Auction House. Oh, wait.

As for Always Online, I do think that not having an option to create a character solely for offline single player, that cannot ever be brought into Online, seems like a bad choice to make.

Auction House IS optinal , but because of it Blizzard lowered the item drop rate much much lower to try and make some people to use the AH.

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

Can't we just ignore this flaming ball of shit Diablo 3 to death and go back to talking about games that aren't gigantic failures?

 

[Jimbo1212]

The issue is that there is no way for items to disappear eg bind-on-equip thus the market will always become saturated very quickly and deflation will occur.

 

[Kahunaburger]

So don't use the AH. Or is that too simple a concept?

The reason why this thread exists is that regardless of whether you P2W or not, Blizzard designed the game around the P2W system such that it makes your experience slightly shittier in a variety of ways.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Yeah, this is what I've been saying right off the bat. The loot game is designed for the auction house and not the other way around. In short, it sucks for the player.

As a little side note, another way the loot game sucks in is the fact that there are no interesting bonuses to be gained from items. Ever. 3% crit chance is as exciting as it's ever going to get, and that fucking sucks balls for a loot oriented game.

I would like to point out that item on the right is for level 54 only so you can't equip it if you're under level.

No I'm not defending the game as I recently have been reading up on it. Overall it seen to play Inferno mode properly you MUST use the auction house (you got to have your classes stats high to their prefer stats in order to survive) which while yes I did bought the game but I refuse to use the AH at all. Needless to say I won't be playing Inferno mode once I had unlocked it.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Let's say an item has a 0.00001% drop chance, and we end up with 1000 of them on the AH. So, the system halves the drop rate, so we end up with only 500 later on. You, as a player, will never notice that the drop rate has changed from 0.00001% to 0.000005%. It will have no impact on you whatsoever. The only impact it will have is if one looks at the whole group of six million players.

The take-away from this is that designing around the P2W system was a terrible idea from the start,* not that it would be less terrible if the P2W-oriented gameplay was designed slightly differently.

*Unless the goal was to create a demon-themed Farmville clone.

 

[Soods]

Well, the auction house prices were utterly ridicilous. Combining 3 gems into a larger one cost 10 times as much as simply buying the bigger one from auction house. Same goes for blacksmithing, you have to pay twice as much to get armor with random stats instead of just buying the perfect item from AH.
I can see the necessity, but still it hurts.

 

[Signa]

I knew something like this would happen. Always-on + Auction house = Disaster. It is unacceptable. I can't believe more than 6 million PC gamers were dumb enough to buy this game.

I know! It's as if people are actually ENJOYING PLAYING THE GAME. It's insane!

Enjoying or not, it's nearly criminal the way the consumers are being treated in this. The only reason why you don't have a problem with it is because you're also having fun.

Yes, the criminal part is when the game FORCES you to use the Auction House. Oh, wait.

As for Always Online, I do think that not having an option to create a character solely for offline single player, that cannot ever be brought into Online, seems like a bad choice to make.

It's nice how you glossed over that word "nearly" just as easily as you gloss over everyone's concerns in the thread.

 

[black_knight1337]

Taking a wild stab I'd say most of the people complaining in this thread a. haven't played the game or b. have played the game very little. It's incredibly obvious. I don't why people are going ape shit over this. The auction house is beneficial for the players, it creates a massive marketplace where people can trade items easily. The drop rates have to be effected by it otherwise the economy will go to shit. The prices atm in the auction house are a bit over the place but that is normal for anything first hitting the market. Give it some time and the prices will end up stabilising.

As a player you don't feel like your being pushed towards the auction house. Your loot keeps getting better and better allowing you to keep up with the difficulty curve while still allowing the game to have a degree of difficulty. Sure you can go to the auction house and buy some stuff which will make you clear the area easily but really what is the point of that. It's effectively the same thing as activating god mode in skyrim. Technically your not cheating but it makes the game incredibly easy and sucks all the fun out of it.

Tldr, These modifications are necessary, the auction house is overall beneficial and don't trash something you've never/barely played.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

You guys know there is a none pay auction house right, the pay auction house isn't even up yet :/

They have also made these changes to try and counteract gold selling which has led to a sweatshop culture in china.

I don't think it's that bad an idea really.

 

[WoW Killer]

I don't think I understand. If the loot drop rates are too high then everybody gets the best gear too quickly and there's nothing left to do in the game. It makes sense for the drop rates to be low. Further, I don't see how this is promoting the auction house (whether real money or gold). The lower you set the drop rates, the fewer items will be put up for auction. For an item to be on the auction house, it means that item has dropped for somebody somewhere who didn't want it. What exactly is this about?

 

[Soopy]

I don't think I understand. If the loot drop rates are too high then everybody gets the best gear too quickly and there's nothing left to do in the game. It makes sense for the drop rates to be low. Further, I don't see how this is promoting the auction house (whether real money or gold). The lower you set the drop rates, the fewer items will be put up for auction. For an item to be on the auction house, it means that item has dropped for somebody somewhere who didn't want it. What exactly is this about?

lets do some simple math shall we?

Lets say Player A wants item X, he is grinding and grinding, trying to get that item to drop. but it only has a 0.001 drop rate.

Meanwhile, there are 6,000,000 other dupes playing the game as well, in those 6 million players about 6,000 of them will get the drop, well, a number probably wont want it, so we will say 4,000 of them put the item up on the auction house.

This shit gets expensive because Player A doesnt want to fuck around with the auction house bullshit like the other dupes who play the game, he wants to earn his gear the old fashioned way.

But those ever so awesome fools at Activision/Blizzard look at the auction house and go "OMG there are 4,000 of dis item on da markut! We ot to lower da spawnz rat!" (Most likely while drooling on themselves) and lower the spawn rate of that item by half.

So now, because they are looking at the market, they can create an artificial shortage of said item by making it spawn even less, forcing Player A, who wants nothing to do with their crappy auction house, to work harder to try to get his item that others were able to aquire twice as easily, just because those dupes managed to get there first and not want it.

So, if you still cant see why its a BAD idea and how all it is good for is fucking with the player base, then I am so sorry.

Yeah, the is absolutely no game play orientated motivation for the RMAH.

 

[WoW Killer]

But those ever so awesome fools at Activision/Blizzard look at the auction house and go "OMG there are 4,000 of dis item on da markut! We ot to lower da spawnz rat!" (Most likely while drooling on themselves) and lower the spawn rate of that item by half.

So now, because they are looking at the market, they can create an artificial shortage of said item by making it spawn even less, forcing Player A, who wants nothing to do with their crappy auction house, to work harder to try to get his item that others were able to aquire twice as easily, just because those dupes managed to get there first and not want it.

Wait, so they're going to be altering drop rates on the fly based on auction house supply/demand? Ok, I can see how that is a problem.

But are you sure that is what Bashiok was saying? It's not clear that that is what he meant. He could simply mean the drop rates must be set lower due to the presence of the auction house (in other words, set lower initially, not adjusting them over time based on the market). This makes sense in that if you have 5 classes all looking for separate gear, then in the presence of trade you can set the rates 5 times lower and you would have the same amount of useful items per player. I presumed that is what he meant. Maybe I'm wrong.

Do you know what post that quote initially came from? It's not linked in that topic in the OP. I'd like to get some better context around it.

So, if you still cant see why its a BAD idea and how all it is good for is fucking with the player base, then I am so sorry.

Chill, I just asked a question.