Trading isnt a huge deal for me. Auction house where people can buy power is going to completely invalidate any sort of leaderboards they might implement some day.
1 Like
Nah, AH wouldn’t affect “future leaderboards”… to use the AH you would need to farm the currency and it would be non tradeable, so there would be no difference from how it is now, botters would rule.
1 Like
I was under the impression he was talking about a real money AH the way they implemented it in D3. If it’s like the original WOW AH then sure no issue for me. Would have to make sure it was balanced around gold farming though.
There is no balance. This is just runaway inflation because botters gonna bot, and RMT’ers gonna RMT.
1 Like
Except the Gold farming will take place in China who will dup and sell the gold for real money. Gold drops in the game will shrink to a fraction of what it is today as a consequence. Because gear drops also will shrink as a consequence to duping you will “have” to buy gear in the AH for an obscene amount of gold.
This is what happened in D3 and will happen in D4 because nothing has changed that will stop it.
1 Like
What i noticed here in the forums is that giving reasons for anything doesn’t matter. So i decided that from now on in such posts I will just answer to the point. in this case:
I am FOR haveing a AH in the game with game currency.
I’ve just given you the reasons why the AH failed in D3 but apparently that doesn’t matter. Unless those reasons are addressed an AH in D4 will also fail. An AH in D4 that does not address those reasons will make the game unplayable for the majority. of players.
1 Like
Ideally, players wouldn’t care at all how other players get their gear – auction house, trading, real money, whatever. But the * reality * of any system that adds a source of gear to the game is that Blizzard will re-tune the rest of the game to account for that extra / earlier / more powerful gear. And since there’s only 1 D4, that re-tuning affects everyone.
Blizzard has specific ideals for player systems-interaction, XP progression, legendary drops, etc. (e.g., per hour of playtime) that they feel will make players happiest, return most often, spend the most money, etc. And whenever one part of the game changes, they’ll endeavour to maintain those ideals by rebalancing other parts of the game. In the case players spending gold at an AH, the gameplay counterbalance will be more gold drops, less gear drops, + harder mobs. (Extra gold so AH players can still participate in other systems like masterworking; less gear so inventories don’t fill up; harder mobs because better gear is easier to obtain earlier in the game.) Then, people who don’t want to use the AH will end up flush with gold and nothing to spend it on; crappy gear; and a more difficult time / less fun progressing. That’s the negative.
A Diablo 3 game designer named Andrew Chambers recently posted a video about the lessons they learned in D3, including how negatively the auction house impacted the game:
- youtu.be/Qyk_V5xN9ZQ?si=dBg0x6b3HSpbJy5U
- Trading & action house: 4:46 - 12:55
Quick relevant excerpt from that video:
“We tuned the game to account for the auction house. We had to assume that players would use it, and then that informs a certain power expectation that players would have at certain levels. If, we say, a player hits level 60 they’re going to use the auction house to buy act 2 gear; then, we need to make everything hard. Or, if they buy act 4 gear, then everything needs to be way harder. And then you end up with wasps that kill you like this [snaps fingers], and elites that are just constantly hammering at you. And players are hammering themselves at the content again and again and again. And this is actually the worst for players who don’t want to engage in the auction house — they’re just like, ‘Man, I’m running out of money. I can’t repair my gear. I’m constantly dying because I can’t get better items. What do I do!?’ And it sucked that the solution to that was you should go to the auction house. It’s not great!”
2 Likes
I for one am a very big advocate FOR increased trading, and Blizzard is making a good step in that direction with the coming changes. However, as a big advocate FOR trading… I am extremely AGAINST the implementation of an auction house.
Why? The implementation of an auction house completely goes against the purpose of trading… yeah players can obtain their items, but it reduces the player interaction and social aspect to literally zero. The whole premise of trading and bartering, is to not only give players another way to play the game by obtaining mass “wealth”. But, trading creates another avenue for social interaction and community development. An auction house completely negates that aspect entirely.
Not only does an auction house essentially kill social interaction compared to player to player trading… it also negates item for item trading… in lieu of Gold for item or a some set currency…If the developers where to add future tradeable items, such as “charms” and a charm inventory… there will very likely be no item for item trading via auction house, you will have to trade for a currency then turn around and trade of an item. Makes a 1 way trade a 2 part trade without involving interaction or bartering as a part of the process.
Except there will less gold. My brother and I played D3 everyday from launch. After a year I had a little less than 1 million gold. Because you could buy gold with real money on black market sites there was gold inflation and less gold drops to compensate. Both the Real Money and Gold Auction Houses nearly killed D3.
Don’t get me wrong; I liked the real money auction house. I have a very well paying IT job and lots of disposable income. I was spending $3,000 - $4,000 a year playing Diablo 3 and I always had the best gear. If you bring back the AH people like me will be dominating the game and everyone else will be angry.
People have to consider all the facts. Those in favor of the Auction House are only considering why it would be fun to trade. They are ignoring the ugly reality of how it will be ruined by scammers, hackers, cheats and people with lots of money…
Many of the complaints were about the existence of the AH at all. It made lot drops crappy. Since people could buy the items they wanted, it meant spending more time sifting through items with terrible stats on them.
Loot 2.0 was about making drops far more meaningful to your character. Which is much more fun than buying all your loot on the auction house.
3 Likes
Auction Houses can’t be controlled by the community or the devs, they will always be governed by gold-sellers, and those gold sellers will always jack up the prices to where only whales can afford anything. Hence why it failed in D3, along with duping running rampant.
2 Likes
This already exist as Blizzard already “Outsourced” this to 3rd party website instead of get their hand dirty. Every time I went to discord try to sell some service I always directed by the Blizzard endorsed Moderator team to a website for trade. The website is authenticated with Battlenet ID only and this show Blizzard is behind this.
I think the topic in this thread should be whether AH should be officialized or leave as it. I will prefer maintain the status quo as I have no issue using this “Third Party” site after traded billions gold worth of material and services.
I didn’t know any1 requested and AH.
You failed to mention how you will deal with bots and dups? How will you stop people from buying gold with real money? Will Blizzaard have to spend considerable time and resources policing the auction house which would be better served improving the game?
Unless these issues are addressed an AH is doomed to fail all the while ruining the game for the majority of players who would be force to pay to play.
1 Like
All items bound when purchased. This will fight a major amount of bad stuff with the AH.
Dupes should be prevented. That is how you fight dupes.
Fighting gold sellers is the hardest part to deal with. Patrolling trade channel more could help. Also an easy to report feature. Getting rid of it 100% is a solution that has never been found in any game.
Binding items on purchase would solve most the issues.
No… because the problems that will arise will happen before any purchases. The problem will be flooding the AH with duplicate items and gold. How will your system address this? Remember, we do not want Blizzard diverting resources that would otherwise be used improving the game to policing the AH…
The only way I could see to expand trading would be to make all items account bound including gold and materials. You can sell items to the in game vendors and all items sold would then be available in an in-game warehouse controlled by Blizzard.
This would vastly eliminate any profit from the transaction minimizing the incentive for hackers and cheats to bot and dup. The warehouse would contain a lot of useless items but there would be enough good gear sold by people already well equipped or sold by people who did not know what they had.
This solution would not be liked by people who consider trading a game in itself but would offer more choices for regular players looking for gear. Blizzard would control the price sold and bought as well as controlling what is available to be bought in the warehouse eliminating inflationary factors. Gear would than remain reasonably priced.
1 Like
Dupes cant happen. They have to be prevented. Once u have dupes every system breaks. There is no after the fact way to fight dupes in AH.