4 ms·

Why Diablo's Auction House Went Straight to Hell (2013)

4 points by ducaale 7y ago

boazISgay 7y ago
Degrade attributes of the object when the object is sold. If you want an unmolested version with 10-15% more power, earn it yourself instead of buying it.
peter_d_sherman 7y ago
Excerpt: "But Diablo doesn't have more dungeons, more bosses, etc. Players just play the same procession of levels on harder and harder difficulty levels, picking up better and better loot. In other words, the loot isn't just a helping hand towards their ultimate goal – better loot is the ultimate goal. And with the auction house, players found that the best way to obtain it was to just buy it. And the next thing you know, they're not playing the game anymore. Why would they, when the reward structure that would otherwise motivate them to play was no longer there? Without the promise of better stuff, Diablo was all stick and no carrot." This problem is already solved in World Of Warcraft - basically players can't buy specific items -- until they're of a certain level... But the items attained at a new level are only good/worthwhile to have - for a few levels after that one. That is, after a few levels of advancement, the advantage gained by possessing an item attained at a lower level diminishes (relative to other new/more powerful items attainable at those newer, higher levels), such that after a few levels, the item diminishes in its utility, and eventually it must, of necessity, be discarded as a piece of junk! (Side note: Compare this to how upwardly economically mobile people will discard items that they once purchased that once served them well, because as they attain higher incomes, newer/better/more expensive replacement items can now be purchased by them! When that happens, the old, yet once-useful items, are "crap", by comparison, so they get discarded as trash...) The problem is already solved -- in World Of Warcraft.
- Konnstann 7y ago
  Diablo 3 took a few hours to get to max level on the first character, an hour max on the second, even less if you had friends. Items are already level-gated in the game anyway, so you'd need to come up with a convoluted gear-score system to judge power-level of gear. D3's auction house made the game suck because the combination of game difficulty at Inferno and the way the loot dropped meant that the fastest way to gear up was to do chest runs where you ignored all the enemies. The extreme imbalance on the AH also meant that top end gear was stupid expensive and everything else was dirt cheap, limiting mobility for those who chose to "play the AH".

4 points by ducaale 7y ago

Degrade attributes of the object when the object is sold. If you want an unmolested version with 10-15% more power, earn it yourself instead of buying it.

peter_d_sherman 7y ago

Excerpt: "But Diablo doesn't have more dungeons, more bosses, etc. Players just play the same procession of levels on harder and harder difficulty levels, picking up better and better loot. In other words, the loot isn't just a helping hand towards their ultimate goal – better loot is the ultimate goal. And with the auction house, players found that the best way to obtain it was to just buy it. And the next thing you know, they're not playing the game anymore. Why would they, when the reward structure that would otherwise motivate them to play was no longer there? Without the promise of better stuff, Diablo was all stick and no carrot." This problem is already solved in World Of Warcraft - basically players can't buy specific items -- until they're of a certain level... But the items attained at a new level are only good/worthwhile to have - for a few levels after that one. That is, after a few levels of advancement, the advantage gained by possessing an item attained at a lower level diminishes (relative to other new/more powerful items attainable at those newer, higher levels), such that after a few levels, the item diminishes in its utility, and eventually it must, of necessity, be discarded as a piece of junk! (Side note: Compare this to how upwardly economically mobile people will discard items that they once purchased that once served them well, because as they attain higher incomes, newer/better/more expensive replacement items can now be purchased by them! When that happens, the old, yet once-useful items, are "crap", by comparison, so they get discarded as trash...) The problem is already solved -- in World Of Warcraft.

Konnstann 7y ago
Diablo 3 took a few hours to get to max level on the first character, an hour max on the second, even less if you had friends. Items are already level-gated in the game anyway, so you'd need to come up with a convoluted gear-score system to judge power-level of gear. D3's auction house made the game suck because the combination of game difficulty at Inferno and the way the loot dropped meant that the fastest way to gear up was to do chest runs where you ignored all the enemies. The extreme imbalance on the AH also meant that top end gear was stupid expensive and everything else was dirt cheap, limiting mobility for those who chose to "play the AH".