Diablo III Auction House Closing Down

[DrunkOnEstus]

That's the thing with these always-on games, it was totally worth waiting almost 2 years to now buy the game in its "real, true state". I had a bad feeling about buying it at launch, and now it's starting to look more and more like something I could enjoy.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I'd like to say it makes the game not suck but...it doesn't. It has a long way to go.

 

[AuronFtw]

while playing as a Demon Hunter (which is near universally considered the worse class) to boot

Wait... you're serious?

You realize that demon hunters had skills like Vault, which was, in literally every aspect, vastly superior to the defensive skills available to *any other class*, including the Wizard's teleport, which featured a shared energy pool with attack skills, a longer cooldown, and less utility. And the ultimate irony? Vault wasn't even popular because DH had even better abilities, like a 2 second literal invincibility that let you stand still and eat the most powerful attacks without even moving or attempting to dodge. And when Blizzard realized this, they halved the duration of Smoke Screen... and it was *still* better than Vault and any other skill on any other class.

Damage? DH was top, hands down. With the exception of the very early Wizard gimmick that used Force Armor to ignore lethal attacks and dumped all of its stats on int, crit and crit damage before being nerfed, DH outperformed any other class with a variety of skills, the most used obviously being Nether Tentacles, which hit every mob multiple times for tremendous damage, could be spammed indefinitely without running out of energy, had a big enough hitbox to clear out corridors by simply firing down the middle of them, and also gave you life back with every damage tick.

And this is the "worse class?" What? For 6+ months, Barbs and Monks couldn't even be used in a3/4 inferno without instantly dying to random autoattacks. Wizards were like DH but with objectively, mathematically worse skills for defense and offense (and the additional problem of all their skills drawing from the same resource pool, a problem DH avoids by having one specifically for defense and one for offense). The odd man out was WD, who had a single gimmick (bear spamming) that sort of worked maybe a little bit if you could gear for it and if you really liked only ever using one build for everything. DH had multiple attack and defensive skills that were so hilariously better than anything available on other classes I didn't know why anyone even played them.

I made the mistake of getting a wizard up to 60 first, and spent the majority of my time and money gearing him out. When I leveled up a DH for the fuck of it, and with a fraction of the gear, he was already out-damaging my wizard and had none of the survivability issues thanks to literal invincibility that didn't require gearing for.

DH and Wizard were the only ones reasonably capable of clearing Inferno on release. DH was objectively better at it simply because Smoke Screen was 10/10 ridiculous, and the higher damage and crit chance obviously helped. The melee classes stood no chance, and WD required a toooon of gear to be able to spam enough bears to do it. But I'm not sure how you figure DH is even remotely "the worst class" when it was the most incredibly, nonsensically broken one on release. Either you're playing it really, really wrong or they've nerfbatted the hell out of Smoke Screen, Vault, Chakram, Elemental Arrow, Spike Trap, Multishot, and the passive Sharpshooter, all of which put DH on a level of its own when compared to the other classes.

 

[BarbaricGoose]

Why is anyone still playing Diablo 3? I know there's a new expansion on the way, but why would anyone still be grinding it out for hours a day?

some people enjoy playing videogames for enjoyment

Man, you gotta get yourself an avatar. Here. Use this one.

Spoiler: Your new amazing avatar. (Please?)

It's the avatar I used to use. Still use it on a lot of sites. Use it--you must! That would make my day. You wanna make my day, right? 'cause if you don't, I'm gonna be sad, and you'll ruin my day.

Anyway... on topic... good on Blizzard. Little late, but better late than never. The AH defeated the entire purpose of the game, in my opinion. The drop rates were so awful, there wasn't really an alternative. You knew your chances of getting an even decent item were in the millions, so why even bother? You buy the gear you need to beat inferno, and you're done, if you fight through the boredom and make it that far.

The fun of these games is the drops. You kill monsters to get drops. You equip the drops and kill stronger monsters to get better drops. Repeat until you have the best gear and have killed the strongest mobs. Only, in this game, it was more like killing the mobs to get gold so you could go to the AH and buy the drops wanted.

Shit, it was like a second job; kill monsters, get gold, spend gold on nice clothes.

The combat was super fun, and honestly, I loved the skill/rune system, but that was D3's only redeeming quality. RoS looks to be shaping up quite well.

 

[VoidWanderer]

While good news, I still enjoy my t-shirt for this game, than the game itself

 

[Aeshi]

Sounds like you never played D2. Well you can go play some CoD and buy all their cool gun camo since you like doing that so much.

I have played D2, it's just that unlike most I don't have the 10-20 years of nostalgic bullshit that seems to come free with that. Unlike most I fail to see the difference between:

- Hordes of Frozen Hammer spammers with "enough points in Strength and Dexterity to meet gear requirements and everything else into Vitality" builds grinding Baal endlessly for gear to sell on eBay/D2JSP and "Demons lords are freed by plot stupidity, you must go get the Crystal Macguffin before they do (spoiler alert: you fail)"

and:

- Hordes of Whirlwind/Rapid Fire spammers with "+3 points into Damage stat, +2 into Vitality and +1 to everything else per level" builds grinding Act 3/4 endlessly for gear to sell on RMAH/eBay/D3JSP "Demons lords are around, you must go get the Crystal Macguffin to stop them (spoiler alert: it doesn't work because of plot stupidity)"

Hey, now it's exactly like Diablo II!

Not playing the game is also always an option. '

Precisely, now it's going to be like Diablo II, a tedious bore that relies mostly on dumb luck actively punishes you if you dare to try and actually accomplish something worthwhile.

I mean, what am I supposed to do when I want a new weapon? Go "WTB a [Calamity] with +1.33 Hatred Regen, +10 Discipline and a DPS of 1200 or greater?" I don't see many people bothering to respond to that, and out of the people who do I doubt any of them will want to wait for me to compare every offer I get to every other offer I get (plus my current weapon) first.

And yeah, somebody's probably gonna read this and go "oh but with Loot 2.0 you won't need to do that to get good gear", but there's a key word in that sentence:

"Good (enough) gear"

Prehaps "good (enough) gear" is enough for those of us who are content with being mediocre, but for those of us who want "Great" gear this is just making the process of doing so about 8 times more tedious for no purpose other than to humor the screaming children who can't tolerate the idea that somebody out there has better gear than them, and I think that might be the real point of this update.

I don't think this change has anything to do with the RMAH supposedly "getting in the way of Diablo's core gameplay" especially since I'm willing to be D2's RMAH(s) probably got more traffic in a month than D3's has in a year. I think this change is about spite.

It's the idiots who are content with "good enough" looking at the players who've spent enough time playing to get "Great" gear and going "I don't have that, so I don't want anyone else to be able to have it either" and then going "Plz delete all the gear of everyone that's used the AH, ever because even after it's gone there might still be people who are better than me" for good measure.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Haha, lol and lmao. I think that's about all there is to say about it. GFD Blizz are a bunch of idiots, no duh the AH system wasn't going to work as they intended. We told them this before the game's launch. We have been telling them this since the game's launch.

 

[Hawkeye21]

"When we initially designed and implemented the auction houses, the driving goal was to provide a convenient and secure system for trades."

BULLSHIT. Anyone who played the game when it launched could see that game itself was built around AH, or more specifically RMAH. If you wanted to progress beyond certain point you were forced to buy stuff at AH as drop rates were ridiculous.

That said, I think D3 is moving in the right direction, fixing a lot of things that were wrong with the game. A week after it came out I became increasingly disgusted with it and gave it up, now I am thinking I might pick it up again.

 

[Steven Bogos]

Why is anyone still playing Diablo 3? I know there's a new expansion on the way, but why would anyone still be grinding it out for hours a day?

some people enjoy playing videogames for enjoyment

Man, you gotta get yourself an avatar. Here. Use this one.

Thanks, but the system hates me. I've tried to set an avatar a couple times and it never works. I poke the IT guys about it but they just tell me to deal so I gave up

 

[antidonkey]

Eh.....the real money one...not sad to see that go away. The gold one.....I used it quite a bit. I can't tell you how shitty my drops were so the AH certainly came in handy for getting gear but mostly I used it for crafting supplies. I guess ultimately, I probably won't miss it but I also don't see myself playing D3 again until the xpack.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

It was all a clever ruse. They only but the Auction House in there and kneecapped the gameplay so they could take it out later and look cool. Should've worn my tinfoil hat today...

 

[Pepsik]

And let me guess, the always online stays, because? Becuase REASONS! I would say an always online requirement ultimately undermines singleplayer game's core gameplay :-D

 

[LordLundar]

Maybe they'll actually reverse the global loot nerf they implemented shortly after launch. You know, the nerf that happened because of the Auction houses.

If you've followed any news besides this on what they're doing with loot (or even the changes they've already made), you probably wouldn't have to write that comment

I have actually. Loot 2.0 is adjustments to the format generator to make what does drop actually useful to the class and a further nerf to the drop rate. The issue is that the announcement was made when the AH system was not slated for removal. Now that it is, the original GLN that was implemented because of it needs to be considered. To ignore it and run with Loot 2.0 as originally planned is going to make the grind even more tedious with no alternative. Now unless you want to grind for days for a single piece, that's not going to make you want to stay. And if it is a style you like, you might want to save some money and play cookie clicker.

 

[Little Gray]

Well that is one way to kill off the game. The gold auction house is pretty integral to the game if you have any intention at all of running on monster power 10. Diablo 2 was able to go without one because all of the items had a much smaller variation of stats on them. It was easy enough to find a good one but with diablo 3 there is so much variety on items its going to be insanely hard unless they replace the AH with something very close. It will also make rather worthless but still useful for when you just hit the cap items almost impossible to find.

Also trading is going to be really weird because gold will be completely worthless and the top end gems are far to rare to be used as a currency.

I have actually. Loot 2.0 is adjustments to the format generator to make what does drop actually useful to the class and a further nerf to the drop rate. The issue is that the announcement was made when the AH system was not slated for removal. Now that it is, the original GLN that was implemented because of it needs to be considered. To ignore it and run with Loot 2.0 as originally planned is going to make the grind even more tedious with no alternative. Now unless you want to grind for days for a single piece, that's not going to make you want to stay. And if it is a style you like, you might want to save some money and play cookie clicker.

While loot 2.0 does reduce the number of uncommon items you get it actually increases the number of rare and legendary items as well as make them more useful for your class.

 

[katsabas]

Thank.The.Lord.

Seriously, good riddance. I was tired of seeing outrageous prices at the AH because of the RM one. 1 billion gold for a unity ? Are you joking ? Where the fuck am I gonna get that kind of money ? I like that they finally realised that the game should be about playing to find loot and gold, not getting gold to buy the items you need. I mean, really, from all the items I have, the only ones I have either found or forged are the amulet, a ring and the shoulders.

However, there is one thing I will miss.

The only thing I liked about the auction house is that it gave me materials. Gems, Brimstone, recipes, etc. I will be sad to see it go away cause this always helped me stay ahead of the game.

As a side note, if the materials won't be sold through the game anymore (not even through say, a merchant), their prices will skyrocket before the AH goes offline.