Author Topic: Diablo 3  (Read 1975 times)

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Offline Espadon

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Diablo 3
« on: August 04, 2011, 08:37:36 am »
Perhaps you've heard about Blizzard's update on Diablo 3:

1) In addition to virtual auction house, there will be a RWT AH:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/08/01/diablo-3-will-let-players-buy-and-sell-items-for-real-money/

2) Diablo 3 will be an online-only game without support for modding:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/08/01/diablo-3-cannot-be-played-offline/

Character editing was one of the most enjoyable things for me in D2, and modding one of the main advantages of the PC platform, so #2 is a major strike against buying the game for me. On the other hand, the game is virtually guaranteed to be a blast to play. But is a fun game worth both shelling out so much money and being bound to a draconian DRM?

Do the new announcements change your purchasing plans?
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Offline {LAW} Gamer_2k4

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Re: Diablo 3
« Reply #1 on: August 04, 2011, 10:04:00 am »
I don't like the "paying for items with real money" bit.  To me, it sends the message, "We're opposed to cheating unless we can make money off of it."

I probably wouldn't have bought it anyway (don't have the time to play games), but I really hate the "no playing unless you're online" model.  The excuse of "players will need an online character separate from their offline one" is complete BS.
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Offline Biscuiteer

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Re: Diablo 3
« Reply #2 on: August 04, 2011, 10:55:41 am »
The RMAH certainly is the hot topic for Diablo 3 at the moment... but i see why they would go ahead with it. Any diablo 2 veteran worth his salt should know what i'm about to reference: D2jsp. Haven't heard of it? Well, it's a website that pretty much performs very much so like the proposed auction house setup: You can pay real money and purchase any item you so choose. If you managed to find something of value, you could sell it for 'forum gold' which can be used to buy other things. However, D2JSP is a third-party website with no real guarantees on the purchases you may make. You could run into scams or viruses trying to check out from such sites, for example. Blizzard realizes that it's impossible to fully stomp out such shady businesses, so they instead opt for creating their own version of the real-money deal themselves. This way, they can deliver a proper trading format to the masses in a way that won't expose their customers to danger. By adding a few nominal fees, they can also profit from each and every sale - and hopefully use that constant flow of money to keep Diablo 3 afloat for many years to come (wishful thinking!).

Yes, there will be people who resort to third-party websites anyway. But by creating this inherently powerful alternative (built into the game itself), Blizzard can both deliver the same system while dealing a blow to the websites they loathe. If you still aren't a fan of the auction house, i don't blame you. It is a surprising feature for a game to have... But keep in mind of the following: Remember that the RMAH is separate from the standard gold-only house, and you don't have to use it if you don't want to. If Blizzard does a well enough job with their goals, gold should be worth a Hell of a lot more than it was in D2, and from the looks of all of the new uses for gold - such as crafting, item upgrading, leveling artisans, item socketing, and more - it seems that it will. So the gold-only house might turn out to be quite profitable in of itself! Secondly, remember that the RMAH works both ways. You don't have to spend money on the game if you don't want to, but if you ever stumble on a nice unique, you can always go ahead and sell it for a few bucks. Blizzard has stated that they plan on allowing players to waive the listing fee for the first few items every month, which is a nice way to get to know the system at no real cost to you. Lastly, the game's Hardcore mode will feature a separate Auction House that will be gold-only, so atleast you don't have to worry about players buying their way in the game's supreme difficulty.

In contrast, I can't say I agree with everything that has been revealed lately. For one, Blizzard is planning to have the option to sell characters in the auction house. That, to me, is just too much. I don't want to be able to buy my way into essentially a completely beaten game. Secondly, the whole online-only deal is understandable, but disheartening. Blizzard wants to curb the hackers and bots by enforcing this online only deal. Internet availability is improving across the globe but it's still not up to par quite yet. Most people who will be playing the game probably won't have an issue with the 'DRM', but the ones who will face it probably will face it more than once. The online-only system bit also cuts off our favorite pastime, LAN parties. Now any such parties are ruined if any one of your friends don't have their own net connection or if Blizzard's servers are taking a dump. And with no modding support, it really cuts back on potentially great and creative fan-made apps that could have improved the experience - though it does make it harder for hacks to be developed. But we all know such hacks will be developed anyway. It's hard to come up with the right answer, sometimes.

In any case, to finally answer the question at hand... Yes I do plan on buying the game. The game mechanics look great, it looks really fun to play. The battle.net systems seem pretty fleshed out as well. I'm not really asking for more than that, I just want to have fun! And it does look quite fun. If i play long enough, i might even be able to pay off for my purchase through the RMAH, and then i'd basically be playing Diablo 3 for free - and i won't have any problem with that.
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Offline echo_trail

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Re: Diablo 3
« Reply #3 on: August 04, 2011, 11:42:52 am »
I did a pretty long response to a similar thread on a diablo 3 related forum I attend to. I don't really feel like typing it all up again, so I'm just gonna quote myself:

Quote
Nice article; well written, thought through, articulate.
 
 I just don't agree at all. The RMAH idea holds a number of serious  issues for me. Issues that could potentially make me not wanna play the  game. I'd be luying if I said I won't be trying it out, because I  definitely will regardless, but I might not hang around.
 
 The fact that ingame trading in diablo 3 is not gonna be item2item. One  of THE best things about Diablo 2 was the trading aspect of it. As soon  as you'd completed the game a couple of times, and gotten yourself some  fair items, you turned to trading. It became a new game in itself, and  it was always a laugh to trade your newly found items into something  else, and then see if you could get something that was worth more in the  first place. With the currency being gold(or especially with it being  real money) this idea gets utterly destroyed. Yes, you can argue that  you can still do this with gold/real money, but it's never gonna be the  same. Especially since it's a matter of time before a site comes up that  diagrams the selling price of every item in the game on an average  curve, and so the trading system will be mechanized and lifeless.
 
 You also spoke of goldfarming, which, in my opinion, is one of the  biggest 'Blizz, you haven't thought this through'ish aspects of the AH  idea. Blizzard said that the marked and currency value will be set by  the community, i.e us. While that is undeniable, there is no way in hell  we'll be able to compete with the goldfarmers. The value on everything  from items to gold is gonna plummet, because the chinese can afford to  underbit everyone almost regardless of the price. If you look at item  sites today, highrunes go for less than €1, and it's still profitable  for them. We are gonna reach a point where selling your items isn't  worth the trouble, rendering the RMAH pointless in the first place.
 
 Also, reading through the transcript, I noticed people kept asking the  very obvious question of why you wouldn't always just put your items on  the RMAH as opposed to the gold oriented one.. after all, most of us  would rather make real cash than ingame gold, right? Blizzard's response  to this was that you are going to need ingame gold to advance in the  game, and so you'll need to put stuff up on the gold related AH as well.  But here's the thing, not really. I reckon that if I make €10 off of  selling an item, I can get more gold for that if I go to a chinese  goldfarming site, than if I buy it off of the gold AH. Look at WoW  today, how effin cheap is gold on farmsites? So for all their hard work  here, blizzard is NOT shutting down the profitable farm sites, and the  RMAH will not be a properly community controlled economic flow of  currency.
 
 Another thing here, and I know people might think it's a little vaginal  of me, is ethics. The current system not only encourages botting,  goldfarming, duping, hacking and scamming, but it practically applauds  it. We get spammed with fake phishing e-mails all the time, and the  ingame chat is just a mess as well; "Cheapest gold on the net, save 50%  now!" or "Wow, I tried this site and it's AWESOME!". Most people see  this and they think, "Nope, no way I'm doing that". However, now people  are gonna be accustomed to pay for things like this, and with Blizzard's  concent, it'll be worse of a problem than it has ever been before.
 
 Scamming is another thing.. How many of us have seen "This is an  official GM, I need your pass to bla bla.." in WoW? Well if you've  glanced at the chat for even a second, you must've seen it. If you look  at most of the other great titles Blizzard's put out there in the past,  it's obvious that people will do anything for a set of pixels with some  beneficial sideeffects. How many of us have been scammed in WoW/Diablo?  Most of us have probably scammed others as well.. it's a huuge thing.  People are always coming up with new ways to get ahold of other people's  items, and now that we're adding actual money to the equation, it won't  exactly be a decreasing factor, will it? I remember playing D2 a lot,  and I would make some pretty awesome friends.. some of them I knew for  years, and one of them I still talk to occationally, 7 or 8 years later.  There was something cool about getting to know people to the point  where you trusted them enough to hold your windforce while you muled, or  you allowed them to enter your account to borrow an item when you were  offline.. People became more than just casual acqaintences, they became  actual friends. Now though, that trust is already broken in advance.  There is no way I'm letting anyone borrow anything from me, 'cause there  are already plenty of examples of people scamming friends for much less  than actual money.
 
 Which sorta brings me to my next point.. sorta..
 
 Blizzard's done a lot to promote socializing and teamplay within Diablo  3, which I think is awesome. They've promoted easy access drop-in play  mechanics, the individual looting system that makes you not wanna rip  somebodys head off when they steal an item just in front of you, you can  talk to your friends in other blizzard games from within the main  screen, stuff like that. All ideas that are truly great. Until they  added actual money. Imagine downing an unbelievably hard boss, and all  you get for it is some mediocre items, while someone in the party finds a  super unique item, that sells for, say €100.. You should just be happy  for him/her, but that's not how the world really works, is it? I'm the  kind of asshole that would get extremely envious, and it could  potentially ruin my experience of the game. But even if you aren't as  petty as me, there's always gonna be that notion of envy, and no matter  how you put it, that's gonna be a negative aspect as well.
 
 All in all I'm really not a fan of the recent AH idea, and I do believe  it's extremely counter productive. As I said earlier, I'm still gonna at  least try the game out, 'cause there's no way I'm turning my back on  this after what feels like an eternety of hyping and waiting. I have no  doubt it's still gonna be a good game, but I feel like "good" is a  compromize when it could've been "awesome".
 
 Again, really nice article, Phrozen. Well done mate.
 
 My 2 cents..                                      
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Offline 12th_account

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Re: Diablo 3
« Reply #4 on: August 04, 2011, 08:38:46 pm »
I care neither for online play nor cheating. I'm just going to play the game solo and hope it keeps it concise without having me sit through dialogue that adds nothing to the overall story, repetitive enemies and fights, leveling up skills that will quickly be useless and punish me by denying me great items for not exploring every nook and cranny in every level.

Diablo 2 was only decent to me. It could have been great had they cut out half the content and not have you think too much about how to spend skill points and equipment, if only for the sake of brevity.

Offline Eagles_Arrows

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Re: Diablo 3
« Reply #5 on: August 05, 2011, 12:09:20 am »
So I can sell items in Diablo 3 for real money, get my money back from the game, and then some?  Hmm

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Offline ds dude

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Re: Diablo 3
« Reply #6 on: August 05, 2011, 08:25:46 pm »
diablo 3 > torchlight II
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Offline Blacksheepboy

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Re: Diablo 3
« Reply #7 on: August 05, 2011, 09:51:17 pm »
Any diablo 2 veteran worth his salt should know what i'm about to reference: D2jsp. Haven't heard of it?

If Blizzard didn't do this, everyone else would, again. Everyone else will probably anyway. Undersell Blizzard, lol

but the fact that it's official pisses me off a little (scammers get away with it, but not f**kin blizzard). the 3rd party crap wasn't official; made it more bearable

and you don't have to use it if you don't want to.

but what about the people that do use it

us = "grrrrrrrrrr." anyway, it's a good idea. meph running 10,000 times for a SoJ is a little overrated

anyway, getting into d2 a bit before d3, and got bug-rushed to hell mode with a lvl 1 character, so I can't talk bad, heh. Leveling takes needless amounts of time. So by this method, you're level 80 within a couple days.
« Last Edit: August 05, 2011, 10:00:31 pm by Blacksheepboy »

Offline Ymies

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Re: Diablo 3
« Reply #8 on: August 06, 2011, 02:49:57 am »
the new auction house is a brilliant move, both for the player and the company. we won't have to fear the chance of getting scammed on d2jsp and the company gets its extra pay while (supposedly) eating on the 3rd party cash harvesting systems. d2jsp is what makes all the difference here, they're like one of the largest and most active gaming forums around and the rate at which people 'contribute' to the cause has made diablo 2 in its entirety more or less paytowin

Offline echo_trail

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Re: Diablo 3
« Reply #9 on: August 06, 2011, 01:37:22 pm »
the new auction house is a brilliant move, both for the player and the company. we won't have to fear the chance of getting scammed on d2jsp and the company gets its extra pay while (supposedly) eating on the 3rd party cash harvesting systems. d2jsp is what makes all the difference here, they're like one of the largest and most active gaming forums around and the rate at which people 'contribute' to the cause has made diablo 2 in its entirety more or less paytowin

And the RMAH defeats this how?
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Offline Espadon

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Re: Diablo 3
« Reply #10 on: August 06, 2011, 02:23:58 pm »
It's not too different from legalizing marijuana I guess...
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Offline Ymies

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Re: Diablo 3
« Reply #11 on: August 06, 2011, 07:33:53 pm »
the new auction house is a brilliant move, both for the player and the company. we won't have to fear the chance of getting scammed on d2jsp and the company gets its extra pay while (supposedly) eating on the 3rd party cash harvesting systems. d2jsp is what makes all the difference here, they're like one of the largest and most active gaming forums around and the rate at which people 'contribute' to the cause has made diablo 2 in its entirety more or less paytowin

And the RMAH defeats this how?

like i said, blizzard's gonna take over an at least seemingly great deal of the 3rd party sites' business while the players won't be needed to depend on an outside forum to do his daily trading. i assume you do know how much of diablo 2'd enjoyability the d2jsp is eating away as we speak

someone mentioned somewhere that it seems that blizzard finally realized that it's practically impossible to dispose of all the 3rd party gold farming etc communities entirely, thus a move like this seems like the perfect one to me. i would like to stress the fact that the rmah system won't make diablo 3 any more paytowin than diablo 2 has been for so many years

i'm not exactly saying that the rmah would defeat the current arrangement by a long shot, but merely that it's a step into much more secure trading and thus player friendliness. trading is what the game is all about, i hope you do realize that

Offline ds dude

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Re: Diablo 3
« Reply #12 on: August 06, 2011, 09:50:43 pm »
The auction is a great implementation.

This way, gamers can have a steady source of income without having to go outside and socialize.

I approve of this.
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Offline echo_trail

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Re: Diablo 3
« Reply #13 on: August 07, 2011, 03:18:03 am »
I honestly don't get why people think the RMAH will combat third party sites. If anything, it encourages them. think about, the AH is gonna be anonymous, so you can't enter games and start spamming people up in advertisement for you AH profile, right? That's seemingly clever, however I believe it's backfire bigtime. If I'm a Chinese item/goldfarmer, I wanna make sure I'm always cheaper than everyone else, and that people know where to look for me for the max potential of costumers. Blizzard's AH won't let me do this, so I set up my own independent site, much like I have in year with diablo 2.
When people learn that my site is always cheaper than the AH on average, and it has a good reputation of being fast and reliable, where do you think people are gonna buy their stuff? I know where I would.

And another thing, why do people think they'll be able to earn anything worth mentioning from this thing? Well if you want to, you better be fast. you better make your fortune within the first year or so, 'cause as soon as the top tier items start coming on the AH, no one is gonna wanna buy the mediocre items you put up.
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Offline Ymies

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Re: Diablo 3
« Reply #14 on: August 07, 2011, 05:33:48 am »
by third party sites i mostly mean d2jsp, it's far worse for diablo 2 than all the chinese farmer sites combined. if you have ever used d2jsp you should know unsecure the trading environment is. the chance of getting scammed is there constantly and the german kiddos are looking for new ways to cheat people off their stuff nonstop

Offline echo_trail

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Re: Diablo 3
« Reply #15 on: August 07, 2011, 06:30:25 am »
I have, and it isn't nearly as 'dangerous' as you claim. In fact I've only ever gotten scammed twice, and one of those times it was my own fault for trading with someone who just joined up. The other time I got back my stuff by properly reporting the incident. Easy.
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Offline Ymies

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Re: Diablo 3
« Reply #16 on: August 07, 2011, 10:29:08 am »
yeah easy and safe when you're smart and know what you're doing. unfortunately a great majority of the people in there aren't nearly as mature. you can always ask for a mod to mediate the trades, but that's where automaticity in the form of the auction house comes way more handy