But even if you did find those items, what's to prevent you from listing them instead of equipping them? Especially considering you are guaranteed to find awesome items that you can't use, that you can now sell for money, then use that money to buy awesome items that you CAN use. The whole system just encourages a less rewarding form of effort in order to achieve the things you want to achieve in the game.
The average player isn't going to say, "I'm gonna keep playing this game till I have the best of everything" and stick to it. They are going to find themselves in a position where they are happy where their character is at achievement-wise, but not happy with how they got there. That is where it's either time to roll a new toon, hope that the gameplay is so amazing that gear becomes a second priority, or just leave the game. I'm thinking the gameplay will be great enough to keep a lot of people hooked for a good amount of time, but it can't last forever. Killing the same stuff over and over again is only fun for so long, then comes the conquest of gear.|||Quote:
Just wondering if you'd elaborate on how these "best items" will make Blizzard the most money, since with a flat fee, Blizzard makes the same off a Windforce as a, a...crude sash!
People will put Windforce on the AH. They will not put a crude sash on the AH. Windforce makes Bliz money. Crude sash does not.|||Quote:
People will put Windforce on the AH. They will not put a crude sash on the AH. Windforce makes Bliz money. Crude sash does not.
I was only referring to the fee scale, not what will go on the AH...and I promise I will post at least one crude sash on the AH!*
*If we get freebies
|||Quote:Since the AH isn't actually generating items, merely redistributing them, the average player will have roughly the same quality of items as someone playing single player. If the two extreme ends of the spectrum want to trade awesome items for large amounts of real money, that doesn't really affect the player base as a whole.
Yes, but by serving as an easily accessible medium of trade, it puts the RIGHT items into the hands of the RIGHT players at an exponential rate. I use the word, "right" in relative terms of course. The average AH user will have FAR superior items to the average single player simply because he took the drops he didn't need, and got the drops he did by selling and trading. Or because he took the real money he didn't need, and bought the loot that he did. Again, not that there is anything morally wrong about this, just that the fast conquest of gear is more than likely to make the game less enjoyable.
Priorities will certainly be a little ambiguous for a lot of people when the game gets rolling. Do I sell or equip? Do I buy or try to get it myself? Should I trade or sell? $20 isn't much to me, I could buy this really nice item, or I could use it to list 10 other items that I could use myself for a nice profit. Then I could buy even more stuff! But wouldn't I have more fun using all this stuff myself instead?
It's a great big mind@%!$ of problems, and honestly, it could be fun to have to face so many challenges, but at the cost of how much lost gametime? lol I really don't know exactly how it's going to play out, but these are my concerns, time will tell.|||I'll say it again. All of this pseudo-intellectual blabber notwithstanding, you cannot presume to know that any top items will be "readily available" on the AH. Period.
That's an unfounded assumption. Once again, I will repeat that Blizzard is fully capable of managing the rarity of top items to prevent this from happening, regardless of how many people are farming for them.
As other posters have said, there are items in D2 that you and I would have never seen in 10 years, if it weren't for duping.
Imagine if D2 had an AH and duping had never existed. Are you saying that Jah, Ber, Zod runes, for example, would be "readily available" to anyone with a little money? Even now? Because I don't think that is true.|||Quote:
That's an unfounded assumption.
Assumption, yes, unfounded, no. Simple math, really. In a game with millions of players, there will be hundreds of millions of drops each day. If an item has a one in a million chance to drop, it means hundreds of that item each day. If even 10% end up on the AH, it means dozens of that item every week. That's using insane "one in a million" odds and 10% list rates.|||Yea because there were "hundreds of millions" of zods drop right?! You seriously think there would tons of zods every week/day without dupes?|||Quote:
I'll say it again. All of this pseudo-intellectual blabber notwithstanding, you cannot presume to know that any top items will be "readily available" on the AH. Period.
That's an unfounded assumption. Once again, I will repeat that Blizzard is fully capable of managing the rarity of top items to prevent this from happening, regardless of how many people are farming for them.
As other posters have said, there are items in D2 that you and I would have never seen in 10 years, if it weren't for duping.
Imagine if D2 had an AH and duping had never existed. Are you saying that Jah, Ber, Zod runes, for example, would be "readily available" to anyone with a little money? Even now? Because I don't think that is true.
I absolutely can presume that this will be the case because I have sufficient evidence to do so. Yes Blizzard is capable of managing the rarity of items, but they will NOT make certain items so rare that the millions of people playing D3 (a large chunk of which will just be farming all day and night to earn a profit) will never see them. We're talking about a playerbase that is FAR larger and more diverse than the entirety of D2's existence ever saw.
It doesn't matter if you and a large group of players never saw an item in 10 years. I think you are underselling the vast number of people that are going to be farming the crap out of D3.
No, I'm not saying that the VERY BEST of items that exist in the game world are going to be regularly available for a small price. I imagine that those items will be somewhat rare even on the AH, and will cost a pretty penny to acquire. I do, however, imagine that TONS of awesome items that don't fall into the category of, "best of the best" will be readily available. An item doesn't need to be a godly upgrade for it to be considered an achievement.
You're missing the point entirely. I'm saying that the average player's conquest for items will be far more easily reached than perhaps it should be, and for those of us that won't stop till we have the best of the best, even that is now much more easily within our grasp.
If 1 in every billion monsters in inferno drops a best of the best item, you are going to be seeing at least several of them per week, and I can guarantee that most people lucky enough to find one will take the big chunk of cash over a hearty character upgrade.|||It seems that everything boils down to a player's motivation: intrinsic vs. extrinsic. I would posit that, regardless of the presence of an AH, a certain percentage of people will be willing to commit RL resources toward ingame content. If there were no AH, people would still set up trades: ingame, ebay, etc. I don't believe that the sole presence of (or lack, for that matter) an AH will lead to availablitiy of items. A certain percentage of people will always seek the path of elast resistance. At least if Blizzard has some way of monitoring the economy, they can take steps to regulate it (Whether this is good or bad is a whole new thread topic).
Now, I will admit that introducing a system for easy conversion of digital bits into yen/dollars/euros will increase the number of farmers. However, I can say that that will in no way affect me. I plan on using zero realworld currency in game. Each player will have to make this decision for him/herself.
Extrinsically motivated people are going to do what it takes to acheive a certain level of accomplishment that they hold for themselves. An intrinsically motivated player will play the game the way it is meant to be played, for the joy of it. I maintain that an AH mechanic will do nothing to enable one approach over another.|||Quote:
It seems that everything boils down to a player's motivation: intrinsic vs. extrinsic. I would posit that, regardless of the presence of an AH, a certain percentage of people will be willing to commit RL resources toward ingame content. If there were no AH, people would still set up trades: ingame, ebay, etc. I don't believe that the sole presence of (or lack, for that matter) an AH will lead to availablitiy of items. A certain percentage of people will always seek the path of elast resistance. At least if Blizzard has some way of monitoring the economy, they can take steps to regulate it (Whether this is good or bad is a whole new thread topic).
Now, I will admit that introducing a system for easy conversion of digital bits into yen/dollars/euros will increase the number of farmers. However, I can say that that will in no way affect me. I plan on using zero realworld currency in game. Each player will have to make this decision for him/herself.
Extrinsically motivated people are going to do what it takes to acheive a certain level of accomplishment that they hold for themselves. An intrinsically motivated player will play the game the way it is meant to be played, for the joy of it. I maintain that an AH mechanic will do nothing to enable one approach over another.
While I feel that your opinion is well founded, I think that you may be overlooking the very strong persuasion that money can cause. I'm fairly certain that nearly all players who are on the fence about participating in the RMAH will end up engaging in it quite actively, while a large chunk of the players who claim they will avoid it, will ultimately secede from their ideals in order to benefit from the monetary rewards it can offer them.
This is why I feel that the sole presence of a RMAH will create a surplus of rare items. The existence of the RMAH will bring with it a playerbase that can't be found in any other game. Depending on the potential revenue this game could bring to a person, we could see many millions of players working the market. Even if the earnings are slim, all things considered, there is still going to exist a gigantic number of players.
Yes, trades and sales would exist even without this system. The problem, is that an easy to use, fully supported, and greatly incentivized system such as this acts as a machine that produces participants solely by the fact that it exists. There is a reason that only a small portion of D2 players bought and sold items. It was time consuming, somewhat difficult, and potentially hazardous. With all of those problems out of the way, we are looking at quite a different picture.
As it stands, the strong willed will not be effected in the slightest. The choice is ultimately up to the player. My concern, is that the incentive will be so great, and so easy, that most players will succumb to it.
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