Diablo Auction House bad for core game - SotA should consider this

Hi.

I received a mail today that Blizzard has decided to shut down the Auction Houses.
The reason they explained is the following:

We are writing tell you about an important change to Diablo III: we're going to be removing the gold and real-money auction house system from the game.
When we initially designed and implemented the auction house system, the driving goal was to provide a convenient and secure system for trades. But after much review and player feedback, it became increasingly clear that despite the benefits of the AH system and the fact that many players around the world use it, it ultimately undermines Diablo's core game play: kill monsters to get cool loot.

What has that to do with Shroud of the Avatar you might ask?


They current SotA plan as i understand is it to make it possible to craft more powerful weapons and items then weapons you can find.

Would that not ultimately also lead to destroying one of the core reasons to go into dungeons and explore and hunt? Finding good weapons and items?


So i thought i grab this news and throw it into the community.
And see what we all have to say about that.

 

Interesting.

My motivation for going into dungeons, exploring, and hunting is to progress the story line.
After I finish the story, my motivation would be mostly to explore. Not necessarily to find better equipment, but to find interesting stuff.

I like the idea of players being able to make the best gear.
If the best gear is dropped by mobs, somebody will build a database of what drops where, and people will go camping.

I think interesting looking equipment should drop from humanoid mobs, perhaps with stats that come very close or maybe equal to what a player can make, but not better.

I've enjoyed games that let me take a piece of equipment I like the stats of, and mash it together with a similar item I like the looks of.
One game has a cash shop that sells interesting skins for armor and weapons that you can buy for a couple of dollars and apply to your less visually interesting equipment.

 

I would like to see a player driven ecosystem with the player vendor system, which i think will be set up in a reasonable way. I am a do it all kind of person. I love exploring dungeons with a warrior character, or doing some crazy pvp with a mage character, or even finding pleasure in the often monotonous grind of farming resources to craft your next piece of armor, or bump your crafting up a few points. If the game is fun i can find joy in all aspects of it. I have great faith that this team will give us a balance between the crafting items and dungeon items. I would even think there will probably be a "questing/hunting" element to some of the top tier crafting. "You must defeat the liche and capture his essence in this crystal in order to imbue your staff with his power" kind of thing...

 

For gear, there needs to be some type of balance between crafted vs drops.

If crafting can make the best gear how are the plans for said gear found or gained?

• Is it through drops off of creatures
• Is it from experimentation, which could lead to player to player teaching of plans
• Is it from a tradeskill vendor where you just purchase the base plans (this sounds boring to me)

(A combination of the first two points could be worth considering.)

Perhaps item drops from mobs could be reversed engineered, thereby giving the crafter the opportunity to learn then create the item. Perhaps the reverse engineering has a % chance for learning it, based on your skill in your trade. Perhaps when learnt the item you make is not identical, meaning it does not have the same stats. Perhaps it is just a copy of the look of the item which then can later been enchanced through other trades or enchanting. Perhaps when the item is reversed engineered you can choose to learn the stat enhancements or learn the visual design and once you've learnt one of them you cannot learn the other aspect?

In regards to an Auction House (AH), my opinion is yes, there should be one of some description. I will certain want to be able to trade with other people. I would very much like to have an AH for offline trading. I think online trading is great and I will do that, but I will not be online every waking hour due to real life commitments. In my opinion not having some type of offline trading platform would be detrimental to SotA.

 

I think the devs have said somewhere, sometime that they do not like the idea of auction houses. I don't think they will be in SoTA. I leave it to someone with a better memory to find an explicit reference!

 

I have always found house vendors like back in UO were the best selling feature. I have played MANY mmo's since, and to this day still feel the old house vendor method worked the best and made the game more real. Perhaps adding the ability to rent store space in town could be an option as well.

 

I think the difference between Diablo and SOTA is that Diablo is a game-type I like to refer to as Loot Porn. Borderlands is sort of similar. The purpose of playing the game is to gather loot and find things. With Diablo allowing players to sell their loot for real money undermines the main sense of discovery in the game. SOTA I don't think will be taking this route; especially if it models itself against UO's (early days) loot model.

In SOTA is sounds like raw materials rather than the items themselves will be important, which would then be used by crafters to create the items. This is a core difference between Diablo and SOTA that makes the issue with Diablo's auction house removal sort of non-relivant to us.

The Dev's have said there will be no auction house. You may be able to review items for sale in a region, but you will have to truck it there to get it.

What Diablo did was good for Diablo as that auction house was pretty dumb to begin with, and there is a lession to be learned there. However, I doubt this is something to relate to SOTA at this point.

 

I've only seen such a system on a UO freeserver, and it was an excellent way to make things convenient without making the market feel too small (geographically). I'd like to see this.

 

The AH in Diablo was a bad idea for a few reasons:

- While leveling, cheap gear on the AH, together with the fact players often outleveled somewhat the content they are playing through, meant that the best way to play was to purchase gear from the AH and mostly ignore loot; purchasing the best gear the character could use typically meant nothing nearly as good would drop in the next whole act. For players that went with the most efficient way to play, the hunt for the gear aspect was completely removed from the leveling game.

- It made crafting irrelevant. Crafting allowed players to get the type of gear they wanted, for an expensive price and with random properties; purchasing from the AH was usually cheaper and allowed players to get the exact item they wanted.

- As crafting was also the main gold sink intended for the game, it meant far less gold was leaving the game than it should. Cue hyperinflation.

- At max level, it was far easier to just purchase the item you wanted rather than go hunt for it. This changed the game from a loot slot machine into what was mainly a gold grind.

- Looting was tuned taking into account how easy it would be to swap gear in the AH, which meant that good loot was unsatisfactorily scarce for anyone not making use of the AH. In other words, in order to keep the game under balance and not allow players to be "done" too fast, Blizzard in the end pushed players into the AH.

I don't think SotA will have those issues, though. Completely different gear philosophy. Not to mention that a central AH is not planned, and less convenient trade would reduce those downsides already.

Having said that, it's still interesting for Portalarium to take a look at the Diablo 3 AH debacle. It might help tune a few systems to avoid having crafting and trading at odds.

 

You are forgetting that crafting the best stuff in the game does involve killing mobs, I'm sure it has been discussed that crating is going to take "ingredients" and these will drop off mobs

 

Agreed RecoElgred. The crafting of the really awesome stuff would be offset by two metrics - the rarity of the ingredient and your crafting skill as opposed to the single drop change a la Diablo. More elbow room for tweaking. More fun too I think!

As for Blizzard dropping the AH I got the same notice too...and SoTA was the first thing I thought of. More fuel for the "we don't want it" bonfire.

 

*chuckles* SotA was the first thing i thought of also. I published a news article on it last night as being something the devs may want to get more info on as im sure that the public press reason isnt the only one behind the decision and they may be able to dig deeper for all the reasons..

Then use that info to determine if its a good or bad idea for SotA, based on others already testing the waters.

 

Yeah, there must have been something we're not seeing to force this decision. They were making real $ off of that thing. I'm sure it was more than enough to offset the cost of operation at least. There had to be a very compelling reason for the shutdown.

 

Yet another reason why having "better and better" gear is a bad idea.

 

I do like the idea of some ingredients and resources coming from drops, then when you gather a bunch you need to find a crafter worth their salt to turn it into something. Good way to get 'fighters' and 'crafters' working together.

 

As I have not been in the forums much I was not aware the Devs have advised there wont be an Auction House. While I personally think it is not the correct decision if that is what they've decided then that is that.

I suppose having a one stop trade shop is considered easy mode for trading. Can anyone point me to any information from the Devs regarding how trading is going to work other than the obvious gen/trade chat spam? Another mechanic other than using chat channels?

Thanks

 

I will look for a link, but each town will have a bazaar, and players can have an NPC vendor on their property.
The desired mechanic is going to be running around talking to vendors to see what they've got. There might be a bulletin board in town you can post advertisements for your shop, or there might be town criers that you can hire to promote your shop.

As far as I know, there will not be a chat channel to spam.

 

It might be some sort of a legal matter. Someone(s) paid for an expensive item, loses the item in game, turns around and sues Blizzard.

 

Blizzard most likely found something that causes them to loose five bucks to a smart person so they will swing a million dollar Hammer at the problem . Why? Because they can. I just wish more of the Blizzard Generation could see the Carrot On a stick shenanigans they are force fed .. But im very optomistic that SoTA will Shake that tree.

 

Most people that play (and make) games don't care or don't understand what a story line is. We're part of the minority on this one.