[Gaming] Diablo 3 : Ser Farm-A-Lot
- Thread starter Jay
- Start date
I've pre-ordered Torchlight 2.
Offline play. Supported.
LAN play. Supported.
Online play. Supported.
Necronic
Staff member
How is it Blizzard's fault that these people are so idiotic?
Dave
Staff member
I think the worst part of this is the fact that it encourages gold/item farming where in the past people's accounts were banned for this very thing. What, really, is the difference between a website selling D3 gold for profit on their site, or the same person selling the gold on Blizzard's RMAH? $1 transaction fee and 15% fee for moving the money out of the Blizzard wallet. So why does this piss me off? Why does this even matter to me?
So let the gold buyers have their day in the sun. Let the Chinese farmers dominate and destabilize the in-game economy. Make a few bucks off people. I'm out. My son and nephew may still play it and I'll even pick it up a time or two when I'm bored, but I no longer care. I'm not their target audience so they won't miss me.
- Really good items will be posted to the RMAH instead of the in-game AH. Why would you post things in teh normal AH when you can make real money off of it?
- When PvP is introduced, people with more money will always win. This is an extremely unbalancing thing.
So let the gold buyers have their day in the sun. Let the Chinese farmers dominate and destabilize the in-game economy. Make a few bucks off people. I'm out. My son and nephew may still play it and I'll even pick it up a time or two when I'm bored, but I no longer care. I'm not their target audience so they won't miss me.
S
SeraRelm
You said you don't like it because of the suggestion or belief that Blizzard is supporting, directly or indirectly, illegal account hacks because they make money off the sales of stolen items/gold. Unless there's some sort of evidence of that, I'm completely comfortable calling it baseless speculation, and thinking it's ridiculous that you're boycotting the game over it.
S
SeraRelm
You didn't say baseless, you said "wild." It's not that wild, ergo "spin". Your opinion on why it's the last straw for him is fine though, we all have opinions and I can respect that.
Dave
Staff member
You realize that I was quoting a Forbes article, right? That I am not the one that said that? I AM the one saying that Blizzard is now allowing and encouraging gold sellers/spammers where before they banned and blocked these same individuals. I'm never reporting another gold spammer in WoW or D3.
As for the boycott, I said that I'd pick it up now & again. There's just nothing really there for me. I've beaten Diablo on normal & nightmare and am now on hell...and I'm tired of it. I'm tired of doing the same quests a hundred times. I'm used to that because it was the same in D2. But what is NOT the same is the incessant and constant chatter from the followers. Or the constant dropping of connection - and yes, it happened to me three times a couple nights ago so it's still happening.
Once you've been through normal level everything is a grind. And now PvP won't even be a viable option because ($$ > Time) & (Gear > Skill).
Added at: 10:53
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertc...uction-house-should-not-be-your-summer-job-2/
You quoted a Forbes article, which seems to be based on speculation and conspiracy theories rather than any sort of evidence. You're saying that Blizzard is encouraging gold selling (true!) and spamming (false!), and seeming to suggest that the pay AH is primarily benefiting people who stole items and/or gold from other players, without any basis for that. Further, you're either failing or refusing to separate legal, sanctioned sales that are monitored by Blizzard to protect both seller and buyer, and those which are done illegally through other means. Then you're taking it further and refusing to report anyone who is illegally selling their in-game items on the basis of there being a legal way to do it, which makes no sense to me. All in all it looks like a lot of panic, particularly given that the pay AH has been live for less than 24 hours.
All that aside, moving on from the game because you're bored of it is completely fair. The game is a grind, and that's not for everyone. I personally found that Normal dragged like a bitch and Hell was where the game started to get interesting, but if you're not having fun and you don't care about beating the hardest difficulty, by all means move on to something else.
And yeah, the past couple nights the server stability's been complete shit. I've had 10+ second lag spikes and disconnects at least once or twice per night. It sucks.
All that aside, moving on from the game because you're bored of it is completely fair. The game is a grind, and that's not for everyone. I personally found that Normal dragged like a bitch and Hell was where the game started to get interesting, but if you're not having fun and you don't care about beating the hardest difficulty, by all means move on to something else.
And yeah, the past couple nights the server stability's been complete shit. I've had 10+ second lag spikes and disconnects at least once or twice per night. It sucks.
The reasoning for gold selling to be illegal in games has always been "it destroys balance, makes money the only way to win, not the way the game's meant to be played". Other than that, it's only illegal because the TOS says so. There's nothing inherently evil about asking money for work you put into it. If I work on my pc for 3 hours to make a nice poster to sell, or play a game and sell the gains, isn't a very deep moral chasm.
Now that Bliz gets a cut, the objections based on fairness are thrown out the window.
Anyway, the problem I already see is that the really good items will ONLY be sold on RMAH. Gold inflation is already way higher than "predicted" by Blizz - for som reason game companies really can't fathom the gamer mentality. The combination of gold inflation with RMAH and the ever-increasing power creep in ANY game (see WOW, see D2,...) will mean that in 6 months time, you'll get more and more end-game content only accessible to a small elite who pays to win...And since that's boring, they'll leave too. D3 will be a ghost town when D2 still has thousands of players every day. D3 will, too, but it won't be enough.
Now that Bliz gets a cut, the objections based on fairness are thrown out the window.
Anyway, the problem I already see is that the really good items will ONLY be sold on RMAH. Gold inflation is already way higher than "predicted" by Blizz - for som reason game companies really can't fathom the gamer mentality. The combination of gold inflation with RMAH and the ever-increasing power creep in ANY game (see WOW, see D2,...) will mean that in 6 months time, you'll get more and more end-game content only accessible to a small elite who pays to win...And since that's boring, they'll leave too. D3 will be a ghost town when D2 still has thousands of players every day. D3 will, too, but it won't be enough.
It'll mostly depend on how many people are stupid enough to pay the exorbitant prices the RMAH stuff is set at right now. If not many buy, prices will drop. The problem is those with disposable income or mom and dad's account number.
Diablo 3 is MAN'S GAME Dave. MAN'S GAMES require thoughtless grinding. Maybe you need to play some more baby games that put fun ahead of spreadsheets.
Added at: 12:22
Blizzard is the pusher so yes, they are somewhat to blame.
Necronic
Staff member
I'm fairly confident that prices for anything short of the absolute best items will tank to below a dollar within a month or so. The rate at which gear enters the game, and the fact that it never leaves the game, and the blacksmithing of high end gear, makes me think that gear and gold will both be pretty plentiful in the near future. Think of WoW in its origins. In the early days people were paying close to 20$/100 gold. What's that ratio look like now? The key is mudflation, and D3 has a good system to allow mudflation to tank values down to an appropriately low level.
And as for "pay for play", eh, I dunno, two reasons against that (beyond how low $$wise prices will end up being):
1) The advantages you may get from the best of the best gear that will be worth a lot of cash will be insignificant compared to the advantages you will get from a proper balance of stats that suits your build. This kind of thing takes smarts, not money
and
2) When it comes to pvp (which I doubt will ever work well due to the "Alpha Strike" problem with this game and glass cannon builds), the deciding factor will be the twitch of the player. PvE in this game requires far more skill than it ever did in D2, arguably more skill than even PvP required back then. [/quote]
Also:
Maybe a little. But not nearly as much as the participants who knew exactly what was coming, and should know exactly what to expect. If you want to compare them to "a pusher" it would be like a heroin dealer taking a customer down to look at junkies at the methadone clinic and say "this could be you", and then seeing if they still want it.
I mean, it's like suing a tobacco company these days.
Goddamn am I having fun playing Monk. Every time I use "7 sided strike" on an elite mob after killing all his minions i make "attatatata" sound ala Fist of the Northstar.Im weird like that.
If DnD and SWTOR taught me anything, it's that I get way too giddy when I take down the ultimate badass bosses by punching them.
I have a baby monk. It's fun. I really like the craziness of WDs though.
I like Monk so much that I played Act 1-3 in one sitting, alt+tab'd once in awhile to post here.
They are kinda tanky get lots of buffs that +dodge and armor and got skills/passives that help you regen hp.
They are kinda tanky get lots of buffs that +dodge and armor and got skills/passives that help you regen hp.
Necronic
Staff member
Be warned, lifesteal becomes almost completely useless when you get into inferno (and hell to a degree). Each difficulty level reduces it's effectiveness by 20%, so in Inferno it is reduced by 80%, meaning that your 2% lifesteal is actual 0.4%. Their goal was to reduce the problems caused by lifesteal stacking in D2 (which, you know, was soooo much better balanced). They've gone too far in the other direction with this setup, but hopefully they will balance it back the other way.
is grouping pretty much required in Inferno?
All very well, but my problem is this: 95% of items will be sold well under $5. Another 3 or 4% will still be relatively cheap, and the top 1% will sell for $lots. Since items never leave the game, the supply will only ever increase; demand will fall very quickly for the lower-level items; people will sell them on the GAH. "Everyone" who bothers to play to Inferno will use the AH. the endgame WILL be rebalanced (and/or new content added), assuming that you possess at least "average" level 60 gear - you know, the type that's still hard to get right now. New level 55+ characters, who come in in 6 months or a year, will be faced with an even worse brick wall than now: the balance will shift because Inferno is "too easy" once you're properly geared, meaning you have little choice - buy stuff or grind in Hell forever.
The way the system is set up, the very top tier items for the absolute best will be rare, but lots of people will be decked out in just-slightly-less items - the one with a 72-roll on a max-80 modifier and such. Meaning the difficulty will be upped. Meaning those who want to grind their own gear or come in later are left in the gutter...Which will be offset by introducing the Xpacks, which will make grinding/levelling easier, and so on, and so forth....
Nope, don't see this ending well for the average person - it'll be good for the hardcore player (type, not game mode), but get ever-harder for the casual. Because the casuals aren't the vocal ones.
Added at: 23:38
For the moment, quite the contrary. Drops stay the same (per character), while enemies do get harder.
However, it's supposed to get rebalanced so as to make grouping more interesting/useful in 1.03.
My final thoughts on D3:
I'm just going to get this out there. D3 has been removed from my system. It wasn't fun. I might pick it up again when they release more content, assuming that they do (they usually do), but I probably won't.
- Story. The story in this game has been blasted every which way by critics, gaming mags/sites, and players; yet Jay Wilson claimed in the AMAA that he, Wyatt Cheng, and the beer drinking koala guy did, that the vast majority of responses they've been getting have been positive. No one seems to know where this positive response is coming from. I believe I may have found it. It's the positive response to the first time they released this story, back in D2. Seriously. How many people have recently started a playthrough of D2? I started one just before D3 launched and have continued to play it (and have more fun) since the launch of D3. I'd like to take the opportunity to break down the story/quest lines act by act, between the two games.
- Diablo 2, Act 1, Quest 1: Quest to prove yourself to the leader of the rogue encampment by clearing our a small map.
- Diablo 3, Act 1, Major Plot Point (MPP) 1: Quest to get into town by killing a bunch of undead that are attacking the town.
- Diablo 2, Act 1, Quest 2: Quest to prove yourself to the other leader of the rogue encampment by killing one specific female NPC - Nightraven.
- Diablo 3, Act 1, MPP 2: Quest to prove yourself to Leah/CoG by killing one specific female NPC - Wretched Queen.
- Diablo 2, Act 1, Quest 3: Quest to save Deckard Cain.
- Diablo 3, Act 1, MPP 3: Quest to save Deckard Cain.
- Diablo 2, Act 1, Quest 4: Random quest to clear a tower and kill the evil Countess.
- Diablo 3, Act 1, MPP 4: Quest to clear out the rest of the cathedral and kill the Skeleton King.
- Diablo 2, Act 1, Quest 5: Quest to retrieve magic item - Horadric Malus.
- Diablo 3, Act 1, MPP 5: Quest to retrieve magic items - Pieces of Tyreal's Sword.
- Diablo 2, Act 1, Quest 6: Quest to kill the big-bad of the act: Andariel.
- Diablo 3, Act 1, MPP 6: Quest to kill the big-bad of the act: The Butcher.
- Diablo 2, Act 1, Quest 1: Quest to prove yourself to the leader of the rogue encampment by clearing our a small map.
Thankfully there's some divergence from the D2 plot-arc in the rest of the acts, but mainly they've just moved things around. What happens in D2, Act 2? You go to a desert city (Lut Gholein) where the guards have all vanished and mercs are protecting the citizens, you have to assemble a horadric artifact to open a portal to the boss, and you spend time either out in the desert or in the sewers before discovering that the real path to the boss is through the palace and the guards are all dead. What happens in D3, Act 2? You go to a desert city (Caldeum) where the guards have all been pulled back to the palace (except the ones that have been sent to Alcarnus) and mercs are protecting the citizens (Iron Wolves protecting the refugees), you have to assemble a horadric sorceror to open a portal to the black soulstone, and you spend time either out in the desert or in the sewers before discovering that the real path to the boss is in the palace and the guards are all demons.
What happens in D2, Act 3? You go to a new town, where your first quests involve beefing up security, before heading out to find more pieces of an artifact in order to break a different artifact, in order to kill Mephisto. D3, Act 3? At least this time you don't have to reassemble anything, but you do start in a new town/castle, where your first quests involve beefing up security, before heading out to kill Azmodan.
D2, Act 4? You head through a portal to Hell to find and kill Diablo. D3, Act 4? You head through a portal to Heaven to find and kill Diablo.
My issue with the story of D3 isn't so much the fact that it's rushed, it has logical leaps to fill gaps in discovering things, or that Act 3 and 4 are so... sparse; it's that it really feels like Blizzard just dusted off D2, moved some stuff around, and re-released it. It's like we're playing Diablo 2.5; or a new expac, Diablo 2: Prime Evil.
2. Drop rates. This has been a massive, massive bone of contention. For all of normal difficulty, when you kill a boss, it drops rares. That stops in Nightmare and Hell, but apparently picks back up again in Inferno. Blizzard's reasoning for this is that they didn't want people gearing up too quickly. My issue, and that of a lot of other people, is that it makes levels 30 - 60 boring. Face it, nobody plays through the game on Nightmare and Hell for the story. We've seen it already in Normal, it doesn't change, we don't care. We're playing through Nightmare and Hell for more of a challenge and because we want cooler gear. Unfortunately, a lot of people have taken complaining about the lack of drops in NM and Hell to be whining that Inferno is too hard and that we're going into things undergeared. Let me spell this out in as clear of language as I can think of. I do not, under any circumstances, want Inferno to be made easier. I do not want NM or Hell to be made easier, I want them to be more fun. I bet Inferno is fun as all get out.You're working super hard to kill massively challenging mobs, and getting cool rewards for doing it. Unfortunately, I (and a lot of others) will never know first hand, because NM and Hell are so boring that we just stopped caring and went off to play something else.
I think Inferno should be difficult as, well, something that's more difficult than hell. I want people who are beating Inferno to be the best of the best, in skill, gear, and dedication. Because if I gut it out, and beat Inferno, I want to know that I did it only because I really, really put in a lot of effort. I don't want it to be based entirely on welfare epics, or a lowered difficulty level so that the majority of people can do it. I want it to mean something. I don't care if you get your gear from drops in game, or from trades, or from the auction house. That is not what this is about. I'm actually pretty disappointed in Blizzard for dropping the difficulty of Inferno Acts 2 - 3 (4?).
All I wanted, was for more rares and legendaries to drop in NM and Hell, because that's cool and fun. If I manage to fight my way through a dungeon with a bunch of elite and champion packs and a big bad demon at the end, I want a nifty new piece of equipment for it. It doesn't even have to be for my character class - I play D2, remember? It could be something completely useless for me, like a new wand or spirit focus when I'm playing Barbarian. I'm used to getting an awesome new piece of equipment, only to see that it's a rare Cestus. I just want to see something cool drop. Hell, now that I'm replaying D2, I spend a fair amount of my time looking through my new drops just hoping that I'll find a new axe that has 3 sockets instead of 2. It could have all of the same stats on it, and just one more socket, and that's enough of an upgrade to make me giddy. I'm not asking for the world here. I don't need a new weapon to do twice as much damage, or a new piece of armor to give me twice the stat bonus. If Blizzard really is just concerned with how quickly characters gear up, and that's the reason for the rare-item drop drought, they could easily just drop the ilvl and attribute bonuses and make things slight upgrades. Just give us something for our trouble before we hit Inferno; then leave Inferno as difficult as you wanted it to be in the first place.
I'll have to check out what's planned for that patch. I still haven't tried co-op yet.
Necronic
Staff member
Bubbles basically answered this. Before the coop patch Inferno wasn't easier w/ 2 people, unless you were really synergistic. If you were just random/thrown together Inferno was harder. However they already changed this (they put it in before 1.03). The change was that damage does not increase in coop.
I'm a bit confused by this. 1.03 will come out soon, which will reduce difficulty and increase drop rates for Inferno, meaning that pretty much anyone (well geared or not) has access to lvl 63 gear. Now, maybe you're talking about later, like when everyone goes farm crazy in Inferno and starts getting really good gear. Are you saying that they will make the game harder? Maybe, definitely in the case of an xpac. But (ignoring the xpac), it's a bit of speculation that current actions imply otherwise.
Also, there is no reason to talk about anything other than lvl 60. Any gear lower than lvl 60 already costs almost nothing, and before inferno you can get by with pretty random gear, or gear you make at the blacksmith (no AH needed). You could probably do Inferno with purely crafted gear as well. It would just take a loooooonnnnnggggg time.
The "slightly less than" gear will always be in high supply, either through crafting overstock or through people upgrading or whatever, and quite a bit will be on the GAH. To put it in terms of Dune: The Gear Must Flow.
I personally don't intend to use the RMAH at all. It makes no sense to me to put my time in terms of $$, because I just made more money going to the bathroom at work than I would in an hour of farming in D3. And remember, there's plenty of other people like you that don't WANT to use the RMAH. There will always be a lot of demand on the GAH for gear. More importantly though is the following:
The beauty of them allowing gold trading is that it allows people who want to RMT to do it through either the RMAH or through the GAH. It's actually better than them segregating the two through gold, as it would end up reducing the value of gold in terms of gear, which would be very problematic. Honestly, when the gold trading goes live on the RMAH I would expect item sales there to dry up as gold selling/buying is much higher velocity.
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Also, Gared, interesting read. I'm sorry you disliked the game so much. One thing I would note though, would be for you to compare the storyline in D1 to the same standard. A4 has always been Heaven/Hell (I mean, the story is about fighting the devil.)