So, I have a bit of a personal episode here I'd like to share.<p>I played a lot of Diablo 2, more than I care to admit, and so the launch of Diablo 3 was a really big deal to me. I pre-ordered it on day 1, I pre-installed the game weeks before launch and I read every piece of information about the game. When the game came out, I initially loved it; just an absolute pleasure to play. It was great, until I found the auction house.<p>Within a few days, I had enough gear to handle most everything in the game and after a week or two I had a max-leveled character of each class. What was left to do? I hit the level cap, and even though they eventually came out with a second cap, the idea of grinding made no sense when the auction house existed. The most practical thing to do was trade and that got so boring so quick :/.<p>The design choices that Blizzard made as a direct result of the auction house are both terrifying and a fantastic lesson for anyone in the startup world.<p>As a direct result of making money off of the activities of people in the game, Blizzard made the following game inhibiting decisions:<p>* Penalizing players for dying for longer and longer periods of time<p>* Limiting in-game communication systems severely<p>* Penalizing players for playing in groups<p>I could go on, but the bottom line was this: Activision put profit over gameplay and burned one of the best franchises in the history of gaming for little profit. The game was absolutely atrocious as a direct result of the goddamn auction house. It took my favorite game and turned it into a stock simulator.<p>What made Diablo great was the camaraderie, the lack of a driving arching focus on optimization/monetization, and an amazing community of folks. Diablo 3 tried to turn all of that into money and it sucked.<p>Thank god and good riddance to that rubbish auction house.
The prevailing opinion is that the AH killed the fun of hunting for rare drops, and it should be abandoned.<p>Over time, I've found games that involve grinding for rare drops resembling more and more the psychology of slot machines.[1]<p>It's hard for me to be sympathetic to people who claim the fun thing is now too easy, because it doesn't involve as much mind-numbing work. If your game only works with a slot machine mechanic, maybe it has other design issues?<p>Also relevant: [2].<p>[1] <a href="http://99percentinvisible.prx.org/2013/04/29/78-no-armed-bandit/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=78-no-armed-bandit" rel="nofollow">http://99percentinvisible.prx.org/2013/04/29/78-no-armed-ban...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/12/31" rel="nofollow">http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/12/31</a> (There may be one that's more on point...)
Wow, this is a surprising reversal of trends as far as user generated content and micro-transaction based economies go, but the auction house really did change the core mechanics of Diablo 3.<p>As a player I really did kind of like the auction system during the initial grind from level 1 to 60, but when there was no more level progression and the only progression was item progression, it just stopped being fun because the only purpose of playing was to kill things for the best drops that you could sell on the auction house. There was no longer a use for almost everything that dropped.<p>The auction house mechanic might work on a MMO style game, but Diablo 3 isn't a MMO and the auction house broke the one mechanic that made the game a lot of fun - random loot drops.<p>It's treasure hunting basically. Auction house turns treasure hunting into a job, and thus it's less fun after a while.<p>This is a good lesson for game designers. The treasure hunting random loot mechanic works only if it can't be short circuited. The moment you can "buy" treasure, it's no longer treasure, it's a commodity and collecting commodities is a job, not a game.<p>Treasure hunting is a game.
While I broadly speaking applaud this move, I do feel a little bit like the guys from blizzard need to eat just a little bit of humble pie.<p>'this is really exciting for us'?<p>really?<p>how about, 'we're really sorry we took a franchise you loved and set fire to it, and are now really concerned about the viability of the expansion we're making'<p>Too late; I'll play torchlight thanks.<p>You have a nice diablo romp over there. You've lost my support; I no longer have confidence the team on diablo 3 can deliver a game I actually want to play.
The AH wasn't really the problem for D3. The problem was the basic stat balance issues created huge lottery items.<p>At launch for a Monk basically there were a handful of god stats (attack speed, life on hit, dex, all resist, your specific resist, magic find), a handful of ok stats and a large number of garbage stats. Now even a good stat can be worthless because of the large value ranges.<p>Back of the envelop numbers: say god stats are a 10, ok stats are 4 and dump stats are 2's. Now the MEDIAN item is (roughly) 1% of one with an avg amount of ideal stats (ideal stats with all high end values might be 30 times better).
Official annoucement here : <a href="http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/10974978/" rel="nofollow">http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/10974978/</a> but i felt ars added some useful context and commentary.
Finally. This was the absolute worst aspect of DIII. It completely ruined the gearing up aspect of the game. Loot drops were tuned down because of it, so how did everyone get gear? They bought it. Lame.<p>The new direction of this game looks really good. These kind of changes make me want to play the xpac. I had previously sworn off the game entirely.
Great move. I remember the first time I stopped by the auction house and bought some powerful gems for my level 20 character. I'd been collecting crappy gems planning to upgrade them, but then for a pittance of gold I had suddenly (almost accidentally) twinked my character with gems with huge stat bonuses and no level requirements. I tried to swear off the auction house after that, but the psychological damage was done, and I never played Diablo 3 after the first time I beat normal difficulty. (To be fair, I might just have been in a different stage of my life than when I was a Diablo 2 addict in high school.)<p>I'm sure this will become a seminal case study for online game design in the future.
I was among the many D2 fans that felt let down by Diablo 3. I never went so far as to grab a pitchfork like some other people, but the auction house really sucked the fun out of the game.<p>Honestly, I'm very proud of Blizzard for making this decision. I never expected them to do something this drastic, but ultimately, it is what is best for the game.
This is the right thing to do, from my perspective. The AHs killed the fun of finding items for me, because there was always something way better you could buy for just a tiny amount of money. This could restore the game to the feeling it is meant to have.
Best news ever. I wrote extensively on the spanish forums about how bad the game was with the RMAH and the AH itself. They claimed many things like "good economy" and nice balance between real money and virtual, but it was all a lie. In fact, the same became dull really fast.<p>This is a wonderful news for the Diablo fans, who really love to trade char by char, using items. Diablo is that, an itemfinder game, trade items for items, not for realmoney. But well, you can sell them outside the game anyways, people did it even with the current AH.
I was able to get through the game relatively quickly with items purchased on the auction house. Afterwards my friends and I were glad we were done with the addiction of 'chasing' the next level/item.<p>If they could make a larger more satisfying endgame, possibly large PvP areas where guilds can fight for territory, claim land, place houses/structures, I'd be happy to grind.<p>But endlessly chasing a carot on a stick? I'm glad the auction house 'ruined' the 'game' for me..
Too little too late. The only thing that can redeem D3 in my eyes is the removal of always online requirement. With AH gone there is absolutely no excuse for it to be present.
It doesn't matter at this point. They've milked it. Gold per dollar has dropped so far it's hard to sell anything except the very best. By the time march rolls around they'll have squeezed everything they could from it. At launch people where busying 'average' items for ~$100+. Now, unless it's best in slot it won't sell
Reduce search by stats flexibility of the AH. Allow only one item per account. Make custom games with custom names available and browsable. Make chat channels relevant by placing everyone in one and having it take a lot of the screen estate.<p>You can still have the AH for one-off items, but reduce the volume by a large margin.
All this will do is make users use external auction houses. As long as they keep in-game trading of rare and legendary items, people will just take it to eBay or some other site, and then arrange the swap in-game.<p>It makes it less instant gratification, but won't stop the buying of items.
Wow, hats off to Blizzard for recognizing that the auction house was undermining the overall experience. Obviously this doesn't stop people from trading in-person, but Diablo 2 had it right and I'm pleased to see they went back to that route.
A reasonable direction go to would be:<p>1. reduce the range of gear power, make the average gear drop 80-90% of the maximum roll for the piece.<p>2. make the best pieces account bound and available in the ladder season.<p>This would encourage replayability of the game and remove the need to spam AH.
I see what they say are the reasons for closing it down.. But here is what I am hearing between the lines:<p>"So guys, we are closing down the auction house! We are not really breaking even anymore between the cost of running the auction house (servers, maintenance, etc) and the profits we get from sold items so we are closing it down and hiding it behind a smokescreen of 'we are totally doing it for the player, lol'. Oh yeah, its still always online so lulz I guess. Please buy our expansion!"