The Auction House III: Evil is Back

[MongoJerry]

Diablo III is a fun game. The variety of skills, the fast-paced frenetic gameplay, the multiplayer, the joy of advancing your character through Normal, Nightmare, and Hell difficulties. And then you hit level 60, and can delve into the incredibly challenging Inferno difficulty you've heard so much about. The gear you've acquired in the previous difficulties is really just a "starter set;" the game resets with Inferno difficulty, and you have to farm this mode a ton just to make slight advancements. You need to take the mindset going in that you're starting over from scratch; the REAL game begins with Inferno difficulty and the gear you gain there. Ask anyone who has been there a while.

That was pretty clearly stated by the developers. The design is that you need to farm Act IV hell a while to do well in Act I inferno, Act I inferno for a while to do well in Act II inferno, etc. Inferno is the end-game. The game has been released for two weeks, and it sounds like people aren't having much trouble with Act I inferno. It sounds like they're right on target with the projections.

If people could farm up all their gear without using the auction house and beat Act IV inferno easily, we'd all be talking about how stupidly easy the game is and how there isn't any end game content.

Diablo III has now become the Auction House. Don't think this won't happen to addicted players. It won't be about playing the game anymore, it'll be about playing the Auction House. It's the inevitable end-game result of Blizzard's game design.

That's how a lot of players played D2. They sat in trade channel, looked for deals, and rarely played the game. Other people camped the third party real money auction houses and did the same thing. The only differences with D3 are that the auction house is more visible, gold actually has some value as a currency (for now -- maybe not in the future, though, if they don't create more money sinks), and the interface is simpler.

Diablo III is built on gear (after level 60), but it is not an achievement-based gear system. In World of Warcraft, you get gear as a reward for achievement. In Diablo III, you get gear via gold (or real-life money once that's available). You make gold initially by playing the game to farm up items - most items you find will be for selling on the AH, not for using on your character - and eventually you just stop playing the game altogether because you're far more likely to get upgrades from the Auction House. As your gear in Diablo III improves, the odds of actually getting a drop that's an upgrade from playing the game itself go down and down and down. It'll be far more effective to login each game session and camp the Auction House, playing the buy/sell game to ensure you have the liquidity to purchase things you want.

I definitely think this is a valid issue -- that there aren't any item rewards tied directly to achievements. Mind you, they never were for D2, either, so the game is using that tradition. However, D3 should be an improvement over D2, so I agree.

I can think of a couple of ways to mitigate this issue. I think there is a lot of room to add achievement based rewards when it comes to class specific items, for example. I suggested in another thread that perhaps only the best legendary class specific items could be crafted and that those crafts would be account bound, for example.

Another possibility would be to add in the concept of jewels -- and have the best jewels or recipes for jewels be rewards for difficult achievements. And again, have them be account bound.

So, there are some ways that this could be fixed. My belief is that by having some slots be rewarded by the auction house and other slots rewarded by achievements would be the best kind of balance.

You may be sitting here thinking "nah, I won't do that, I'll play the game and earn my rewards without using the Auction House." If you are, I'd venture you haven't been playing Inferno difficulty for long.

I don't have qualms about using the auction house to either sell or buy items any more than I had qualms about trading items in D2 (except for the issue of dupes -- and luckily the items I traded for usually weren't ones that people cared to dupe). However, I don't feel the need to buy the very best top stat item to get that extra 1% damage. I just use the auction house to fill out a slot or two that has fallen substantially behind.

As others have posted, I think that you are keeping your WoW hardcore raiding mentality, where you must scratch and claw to scrape out that extra 1% dps or hps so that you can kill the boss and get to the next challenge. And, if you don't, you are holding back not only yourself but 9-24 other people.

The Diablo series isn't that way, though. It's a semi-solo game where you can party up if you want to. There's noone else to disappoint if you are using second tier items. You are free to create your own goals and achievements as you wish them.

Personally, my end-game will be beating Inferno (including Whimsyshire) on hardcore. I think this goal will take months to achieve, and when I finish, it's going to feel awesome. When I finish it, I'll probably farm a bit more (and yes, probably sell and buy some items off the hardcore gold AH), power up my Wizard a bit more, and retry the encounters a few more times to make sure that I can do them consistently. Then I'll start to think about odd-ball builds that probably will never work in hardcore Inferno but will still be very fun to play as far as I can get them to.

1) "Well, this is just because Inferno difficulty is too hard. Blizzard will nerf it." I don't see this changing anything. The end game, the true way to advance your character past any artificial point, is to play the Auction House. You may feel that there's no reason to do so once you've defeated the hardest difficulty in the game, but many people won't. People want to progress their characters; it's part of why we play RPGs. You're not playing Diablo III for the PLOT, are you? You saw it all in Normal difficulty! Diablo II never had a Inferno difficulty, and was thus much easier than Diablo III in end-game, but people still played for ages to try to get better items. If Diablo II had an Auction House, its end-game would have wound up the same as Diablo III's.

Trading *was* the end-game in Diablo II. You just chose not to play it. And Inferno will be "nerfed" -- not by Blizzard changing the mobs, but by Blizzard gradually releasing better and better gear over time so that people will perpetually have something new that they feel that they have to get. Blizzard has already announced that they will be buffing legendary drops in a future patch.

People play Diablo III for character advancement, and in the end, no matter where that end is, the only realistic way to advance your character will be the Auction House. You may have the patience required to farm for an incredibly long time in Inferno difficulty, but in the end - even if you beat all of Inferno this way - you're still going to need to go to the Auction House if you want to progress further.

The same was true in Diablo II. How many of the very top runes did you see drop for you in your Diablo II career? If your only goal is to get the no-holds barred very top items, then you're just going to have to trade, just like you did in Diablo II. That's your hardcore server first WoW raiding mentality seeping into this game. If you want to play it that way, then go for it. But Blizzard is not forcing you to play it that way. You are choosing to play it that way.

If, on the other hand, you're a strange character like me who once he has beaten a game tries to beat it again using less and less powerful items and skills, you won't have to spend all day on the AH -- just maybe a few minutes a day to get a key item or two that you need.

Now, keep in mind that despite the tone of this post, I'm still playing Diablo III. I'd like to "beat" the game in the sense of clearing Inferno difficulty, and try out the other classes. But I don't want to get sucked into the Auction House end-game, so there's only so-much shelf-life this game has for me. Back to World of Warcrack when MoP's released!

You don't have to get sucked into it, Bolty. Just release your WoW raiding developed need to have the very best rolls of the very best items in every single slot. When you do, I think you'll enjoy the game more and will get a kick out of those who claim that you "need" to play the auction house game.