Well in this case Blizzard won't need to force the auction house on players like F2P games do, so game balance or advancement won't be incumbent on it. It's in Blizzard's best interest to make a good game so you'll pay the 60 bucks up front that they demand. Secondly Blizzard isn't selling advantages to the player. Other players are. Blizzard is just skimming their cut off the top. I've been a Blizzard fan for a long time. The diablo, warcraft, and starcraft franchises have been some of my favorites over the years. (Still don't care one bit for WoW though) Third party gold sellers have always been a problem with D2 and mmo's though, so hopefully the auction house will be a more controlled and balanced way to give people who want to spend money on advantages a way to do it. Lastly D3 won't be an MMO so any rot that might spread from rampant auction house spending will (hopefully) be contained. That being said, the introduction of a real cash auction house still worries me. I've already preordered D3 after playing the beta and have no intention of using the auction house.
If "Blizzard is forcing me to buy advantages to advance" but the items being sold on the auction house are player-found, how did the first player find gear to sell?
I'm sure that it will never be mandatory, at least for 3/4 of the game, to be well-geared in order to proceed. The issue generally comes in high-level play, at least with MMOs (which D3 arguably is, kind of). I'm guessing (and I could be wrong) that like in MMOs, you may be forced to either gear-grind, or use the auction house to equip yourself, unless you are lucky or really good. Unfortunately, that's standard MMO practice (which is why I too often lose interest in MMOs once I hit the end-game). One thing that MMOs do in order to prevent buying victory, so to speak, is to make the very best gear 'bind on pickup'.
That's something else I'm completely missing here. The "MMO" label. I'm not seeing the "Massive" part here, because D3 games are actually limited to half the maximum players in a game as D2. There's no persistent world, or large-scale endgame content. You do have to login to their servers to play, which I admit is an issue for people with poor/unreliable connections. However, there's not much (if any) fundamental difference between D3's setup and D2's setup. If logging in to their servers is what makes it an MMO, then... Starcraft 2 and Steam are both MMO's, too? I'm not trying to be smarmy I just don't understand the reasoning here, and since this thread is obviously more "politically-motivated" instead of discussing the game itself, I hope I'm not out of line.
Which is why I earlier said that it's a non-MMO game that seems to be trying to be one. Pretty much a wannabe-MMO.
The only MMO aspect I've found in D3 was in the character progression. You dont have any choice anymore... Characteristic points are automatically distributed and you cant choose which skill / rune you want to get. Your character just follows a directed path and the players only role is to click on monsters and loot. That's all. Its D2 for retards. The game is still well done and I somehow decided to pre order it, not sure why. I miss Diablo 1, the freedom it has, the complete absence of grinding (monsters did NOT repop !) and its amazing ambiance... (still happy they kept sound FX from D1 for D3, like the scroll sound or when firing bows... hehe.)
Many games are simplified like that. The same thing irked me about Dungeon Siege 3. Overall, I agree with your post fully.
It's neither isolated to, nor representative of all MMOs (though, I agree that a lot of them do this). An example of one that does not, is DDO. (BTW, I hate that about DDO, and D&D in general -- sometimes more choices does not necessarily imply a better game experience). The part that I think you guys are missing about the MMO aspect is the auction house itself. Auction houses are present in nearly every MMO, but they generally do not involve real money in any way whatsoever (at least typically so). You'd expect in a non-MMO to isolate trades to be between two people who are logged in together. There would be no real auction then, because there would only be a few people logged in together. All you'd have would be private trades. My take is its the auction house that makes it an MMO, because that's where you have persistency.
Shards of Dalya had an "/auction" channel for in game chat. So every last person in the game could see and make bids on items as they saw fit. They never involved real money though. You had to earn the monies used as payment via tradeskills or monster grinding. And they required certain levels for every item. No level one newblet could buy the Uber Greatsword of Slaying or whatnot. That is a free to all game that uses the original Everquest engine with a few modifications. The idea that some stupid map named "Auction House" makes it an MMO is incredibly shortsighted. I hope Roguish Renovation or Interior Dredmorating make an "Auction House" room just to mock this concept. TomeNET is another free game I have played that used a globally available auction system. And they do not even have tiles! They have ASCII graphics!! But there are rarely more than a handful of people logged in to TomeNET. Again, real life money means exactly nothing in real games. Yet you are implying that because there are few people, this example is not an auction? I have been to real life auctions with only a few interested buyers. Would you dismiss them as trades only too?
No, but I would not consider them massive either. Real world is about as persistent as you can get though lol. I know because I've tried to undo things I've done in rl, and it never really works out. I'm not saying that it is an MMO, just that the auction house part is definitely both massive and persistent, which is a quality that it shares with MMOs.. There are a number of MMOs out there that are either heavily instanced or have private servers with very few users -- that doesn't mean that they aren't MMOs. You don't want to label it an MMO, not because it doesn't share aspects of MMOs, but because it doesn't share ALL aspects of MMOs. And I can certainly buy that. Just as there are other games that do consider themselves to be MMOs that DON'T share all those same aspects.
Actually the reason I resist calling it a MMO is that it is using the MMO stuff as a flimsy excuse to cover for implementing draconian DRM measures that should not even exist. The definition of a Massive Multiplayer Online Game does not in any way include DRM. That is a choice made by the developers. If it is even possible to play a local game without Internet access then the game will be available cracked before it is available for retail sale. That has been the case for a long time. DRM punished people who pay for the game more than it dissuades piracy. And DRM complicated patches and removes certain features that could otherwise be easy to implement. Just to throw out an example, Skyrim was cracked and downloaded many times before it was even available to buy at any store. In the end, Bethesda made a fortune on the game. I would go so far as to argue that piracy *HELPS* sales by allowing those skeptical to see how the game actually works and see that they will enjoy it. That is in no way meant to support theft of software. Please do not take it as such.
I haven't bothered to comment the MMO-calling comments until now, but here goes. For me, the definition of a MMO is a persistent online world to play in. D3 has none of the sort. Each game of Diablo III is a small server, no more MMO than playing Duke Nukem 3D over a LAN is. So we should perhaps stop calling it a MMO or a wanna be, it has nothing to do with MMO, unless it is the social and trading features that spur the MMO branding. Is TF2 a MMO too then ?
This thread is kinda crazy. The whole point of diablo has always been the 'gear grind'. If someone wants to pay money to skip the POINT of the game, then really, why should that bother you? They have just paid real money to 'cheat' at what is essentially a single player or cooperative game! And, it's not like the game is designed for you to have to purchase items with your monies to succeed either, so claiming such is foolishness plain and simple. MMOs are not about mass trading, they are about mass playing together. Massively MULTIPLAYER Online Game. Diablo is, at best, a 4 player game. I'm not entirely sure what that has to do with anything though. After having actually tried the game I completely disagree with this to be honest. Putting in stat points in D2 was not hard (was it hard for you?) I mean sure, you could make some wacky ineffectual build, but in reality it was just clicking a button repeatedly. If stats had somehow been complicated affairs and designed well enough that you could build your characters in a variety of effective ways that changed your gameplay, then that would be something else entirely. But it wasn't. I think I will not be thrilled about ever leveling a second character of the same class up again due to the linear rune and skill unlock system, but the first time will be way more fun because of it. You gain so many abilities every level and you are essentially pushed into trying new things constantly. Look at it this way: I already know what I 'think' my ideal build will be for my Witchdoctor at 60, but if I could simply unlock skills and runes in any order, then I would just play that build up until 60. Done. The way it is now, every level I will adapt my build as I gain access to new tools trying skills and runes as I get them which will allow me not only to have a more varied leveling experience, but it will let me find out if what I THINK my optimal build will be actually WILL be my optimal build.
Diablo 2 had 2 "correct" stat point assignments. Strength for whatever gear you wanted to wear. Dexterity nothing/enough for max block chance. Vitality is for everything else. If you put 1 point into energy at any time, delete the character. The only "variant" was shield block or not. Stat choice was an illusion. Titan quest did it better; but that's for another place. D2's skill assignment was the same; you followed the path of synergies for the 1-3 skills you wanted to use, putting 1 point into each one, trying to scrape by until level 24 or 30, when your "build" was done. The rest was putting points into skills you already had. Let's look at numbers, keeping in mind that every Diablo 3 skill has an un-runed and 5 runed forms (rune effects can be drastic, like changing a projectile spell into an AoE, or simple, as in added damage). For simplicity's sake, I'll assume un-runed skills are undesirable. D2 barb: 30 skills total. D3 barb: 21 skills at 5 runes each, for 105 different skill effects, + any 3 of the 16 passive traits. How is D3 more restrictive/narrower/dumbed down/whatever?
By the way I don't want to seem like I am belittling anyone for not wanting to play Diablo 3, not enjoying the type of game or even simply wanting to avoid one where real money is used in transactions at all. I have no problem with anyone doing those things. All of my replies are just to try to give a little perspective about things.
The problem is that I am forced a way to play a character and they are too specialized: the bow girl, she will do ONLY bows for the whole game. D1 left the freedom even when you started as an archer to go get your sword and still use all the spells the wizard could get in the game. I LOVED that, you were no stuck in the class you were selecting at the first minute of the game, you were actually quite free to BUILD the character you wanted. When I say D3 is dumbed down, its because you re not given that freedom anymore. The game is done in such a way that yeah, you can decide if your shoots are gonna slow down your ennemies or kill em, great. But I cant have my hunter do anything useful with an axe and it frustrates me. I am the guy in D1 who maxed out the Magic skill with my warrior, he could even summon golems. In dungeon siege I was level 75 in sword, bow, destructive magic and healing magic. It took ages and the character was not very powerful but it was a BLAST to play and be able to change style whenever I wanted too. There's nothing worst in a game than routine / repetivity. In D3 if I go with a barbarian, I'm gonna have to do close fight the whole time. If I get bored of the fight style and want to go long range, well, too bad. That's why I love the elder scrolls so much; or Diablo 1. Same thing even in D2, if I feel my character starts getting killed too fast I might feel like concentrating only in vitality. It might be a minor choice, but all those character evolution stuff from the old school D&D stuff, well I think they re part of the core of RPGs. D3 removes it all and loses yet more of its good old school "Roleplay" feeling. The game starts to feel " consoley". Maybe dumbed down is not an appropriate term because the game might have a complexity with rune combinations (I'm not convinced yet, what I've played seemed brainless) its more that characters are too classified.
The game also has PvP (arena or something) and if you buy some items for your character (the stronger the better), it may be unfair against someone who only relies on items he finds. Also these auctions may be even more beneficient for various botters who can sell items on the AH for real money. As an added bonus, Blizzard earns money off them instead of fighting them. Actually, D2 was about using a cookie cutter build. The most successful were overused (for example Jawazon/Bowazon for the Amazon) and the others were the "I want to have a hard time playing this game" builds (Amazon with spears, for instance). I don't see your replies as belittling anyone or anything like that, you just have a different opinion.
In Diablo 1 you were still stuck with the stat scaling and calculations limited by the class you chose. Taking spells on a warrior didn't undo the fact that your Str was capped at 255 and int was... whatever the warrior int cap was. The "options" felt fake and when I look back, it seems like they were there to cover overly-narrow character design. In D3 wizards get short-range spells that work similarly to melee attacks, as well as armor boosts. Barbarians can use skills to throw axes around and toss their main weapons as a ranged attack. There are choices, but you have to look for them. Rune system: If you played the beta, you saw the first 1/3 of the first act of the first difficulty, with at most a character leveled to 13 out of 60 levels. That seems to me like picking the first 7 skills on the list in DoD, playing through floor 1, and deciding the whole game is shallow. Unrelated: People bought Diablo 2 gear with real money through 3rd party sites, and could still play closed-realm games. I don't recall people being that disturbed about it at the time. Granted, everyone on the realms had the same hacked, duplicated gear so it was still equal if you think about it that way. Bots: There's a good reason to believe bots won't be able to grind out the high-level gear that will sell well in this game, but that's a bit more than I care to go into when it already feels like I'm spitting into the wind here. If someone's interested, I'll gladly go over the idea in detail.
I am betting your explanation for how bots will not work relies upon there being no chance to bot an online only game. That I must insist, is a fallacy. The Battle.net stuff may well make it more difficult, but it will not be just kiddies running bots for fun this time. Now there is real life money involved. Someone will find a way to grind for gear with a PC doing nothing more than that. Sure, eventually they will get caught, and probably lose the license for that one copy of the game, but so long as the gear farming makes money after expenses, it will continue forevermore. I welcome an explanation if I am incorrect.
