A disservice?

[MongoJerry]

I've been wondering if it is a disservice to play with people who are experiencing Normal for the first time. Since I'm in Nightmare all my younger toons tend to have gear handed down and sometimes even big gems and they just feel really overpowered. I'm feeling like I should avoid playing with people who are doing their first trip through so that they get a more honest experience. I'm curious what others think about such.

Let the other person make their own decisions about their feelings. If that person wants to try the game out at their own pace, they have the option to play on their own or with people they know who are also starting out. We certainly did a lot of both when we started so that we could explore the world. However, if the person starts a public game or asks you to join them, they are saying that they want people with them to help them, and you shouldn't feel guilty about doing so.

I don't have time to fully expound now, but I agree, and feel the auction house does the same thing.

(Note: The following comments apply only to the in-game gold auction house and not the real money auction house. As you know, I'm a hardcore player, so I don't have to deal with the real money auction house issue).

This has been a motif that has been expressed by several Lurkers, and I have to say that I disagree. I think that this revulsion for the Auction House comes from the bad experiences with Diablo I and II with dupers, where you couldn't determine if an item you're trading for was a fake or legitimate item. But that's not the case in Diablo 3 for the moment. All items up for bid on the auction house are legitimate items found by players during their adventures.

The game is designed around trading. When you craft, for example, you know that chances are that even when you create a useful item, it will likely not be useful to your specific character. Among our friends, if my character creates something that I know Frag, Swirly, or Kevin can use, then of course, I'd give the item to them. However, when my character crafts, say, 20 boots and 15 of them are only useful for demon hunters and monks, they go up on the auction house so that some hardcore DH's and monks can get some good use out of them rather than have them take room in my stash. My character could salvage those boots, of course, but I feel that that would be a waste, depriving those DH's and monks of gear they could use. The same thing goes for emeralds, which my character will never use, some of my excess Pages of Jewelcrafting, etc.

Now, let's turn it around using a real example from yesterday. My character has sold a bunch of items on the auction house that other players are getting good use out of. Then, I see a wand up for sale for a decent price (50k). I'm feeling quite a bit underpowered at my level, since my character hasn't found a decent weapon in 15 levels, despite plenty of farming. That wand would increase my character's dps by about 30% and allow her to progress to the next tier of content. Now, Swirly made a comment over Mumble about how he would never buy something off the auction house, because he would feel that his character hadn't earned it. (Feel free to correct me, Swirly, if I didn't express that well).

However, in my view, my character farmed that gold, found those emeralds, and crafted those DH and monk boots. These are things that she did. In the meantime, another player says, "Hi! I found this wand that I can't use. I hope someone can get some good use out of it. If you have 50k to spare, I could make good use of that gold for my character." So, I take the wand that the other player doesn't need, and he gets 50k (minus the 15% transaction fee) from my character that he'll make good use out of, too.

Now, I don't know the player who found the wand. All I know is that he or she is a hardcore player like me trying to progress as well as he or she can. If this transaction had happened in a game session, I don't think that Frag or anyone else here would complain at all about it. But that's my point. The Auction House is a mechanism that facilitates these kinds of transactions -- matching those who have a need with those who have a useful item that they can't use themselves. This is a good thing.

Trading has been an integral part of Diablo for a long time. I know from my own experiences that trading in trade chat was a painful but crucial aspect of Diablo II to help people get the right items for their builds that they were making. (I didn't do much trading in DII, but I found it useful a couple of times). Unfortunately, in the past, dupers created too many fake items, scammers scammed people too often, and since gold was mostly useless in DII, the economy used a painful bartering system rather than a smooth currency system. Now, however, the items are legitimate, the transactions are safe, and gold (at least for now) has value as a currency. There is no reason not to use the gold auction house in game.