Whether you agree with letting people buy items or not, it will lead to players quickly dropping the game.
If all builds are the same, except for items, gives a huge incentive to buy the gear. Once a person buys the top sword, he has no reason to go thru inferno to try and find it-or farm to trade for it. That eliminates all replay value. This is the major flaw of Diabo 3.
This will lead to many players paying $60 to run through the game, on rails, and then paying money to tweak out their favorite character and not playing anymore.
Blizzards way of maintaining the user base of Diablo 3 will be to include a console version. A user group used to playing games for a short time, and expansions. We will get a steady stream of new content to keep up with the high amount of game drop outs and lure the player back with new items and features.
People who I see will buy from the AH (whether gold or real money) are: People who are stuck somewhere in the game (ie, in inferno) and cant get the gear they need to progress; people who are into serious pvping or; people who want to play the market (buy when it's cheap to resell at a higher price).
All of those reasons imo are valid reasons that promote replayability. There is a forth person who will buy from the AH, and they are the people you describe: people who want to get to the end asap for bragging rights and then they move on. Only those will vanish from the game, and imo, that isn't a bad thing.|||Yea, I don't really get what about the RMAH makes top gear more readily available. Get rid of it and the same amount of items will be available for sale for gold. Get rid of that and the same amount of items will be traded for other items.
The RMAH doesn't more effectively flood the market, and with duplication gone there's going to be a much slower gear saturation than in Diablo2.|||I just don't see how the RMAH = everyone has every good item and there is nothing to play for. I'm willing to accept that there's the possibility for a flood of good items to hit the market due to" farmer sweat shops". I agree with the supply, but I don't agree with the demand. Have you noticed that most of the people truly excited about the RMAH say things like "Ima gonna be rich!"? How many people are saying "oooohhh RMAH, can't wait to spend all my money!"? I don't know anyone that will really drop $70 on a single item when they could buy a brand-new game for less.
Yes there will be people who spend the money in small amounts. But those people willing to spend great amounts of money to trick out their characters are the same types of impatient, instant gratification players who wont stick with any single game for very long anyway. I believe that the players who will stick with D3 for the long haul will be sellers not buyers, and that will in itself regulate the RMAH.|||Quote:
I don't think so. There was a time when a Grandfather went for $500 on Ebay because it was so rare. But once dupes, item farmers and people just playing their high level characters, it became common.
Even without dupes, the massive amount of people playing and the item farmers will flood the market. Or Blizzard will have to lower drop rates. But if they did, nobody would ever find the best gear and the next tier down will be what's bought.
All the players I knew that bought items were gone in two months. And they didn't even buy the best gear, just the stuff that made the game boring.
Just don't buy the damn gear guy, it's as simple as that. NO really, it is.|||Quote:
Whether you agree with letting people buy items or not, it will lead to players quickly dropping the game.
If all builds are the same, except for items, gives a huge incentive to buy the gear. Once a person buys the top sword, he has no reason to go thru inferno to try and find it-or farm to trade for it. That eliminates all replay value. This is the major flaw of Diabo 3.
This will lead to many players paying $60 to run through the game, on rails, and then paying money to tweak out their favorite character and not playing anymore.
Blizzards way of maintaining the user base of Diablo 3 will be to include a console version. A user group used to playing games for a short time, and expansions. We will get a steady stream of new content to keep up with the high amount of game drop outs and lure the player back with new items and features.
That didn't sound too bad
|||Quote:That didn't sound too bad
Oh no! Not a steady stream of new content! Anything but that!
Blizzard is truly evil!|||This scenario will only be true if Blizzard is running a cash shop and selling every item in the game for real money.
Since all items are found by players, Blizzard will have control over the rarity of items to make sure the truly great stuff won't be popping out left and right.|||Quote:
If all builds are the same, except for items, gives a huge incentive to buy the gear. Once a person buys the top sword, he has no reason to go thru inferno to try and find it-or farm to trade for it. That eliminates all replay value. This is the major flaw of Diabo 3.
Uh, you realize that all builds are NOT the same right?
2.7 billion builds for the wizard alone.
Replayability, as it has always been, will be due to trying new builds and new classes. Of course if you are stupidly wealthy and buy every item in the RMAH you could possibly want, item hunting may not hold much appeal to you, but that's a fault with the player, not the game.|||Quote:
I really don't understand the concern. You can only buy what has dropped, the drop rate will be low and of those, many people will not sell the drop.
The AH will simply not have enough elite items to outfit even a small % of people.
it is in Blizzard's best intere$t to make sure the best items drop because those items are going to make them the most money off the RMAH. You actually think they are going to make it that difficult to get the best items ? Muahahaha, now that is funny!
|||Quote:This. There's no reason to assume that all the best items will be freely available to anyone who wants them. Blizzard is smarter than that, they will tune the rarity to the right level to avoid such problems.
Does anyone ever think about how rare the rarest items in D2 were, or would have been if it weren't for duping?
If it weren't for duping, 99% of you all would have never had Enigma, to name one example.
The OP's argument is actually the ONLY problem I have withe RMAH, and I feel he may be completely valid in his argument. Top quality items will most certainly flood the market. It's simply a matter of economics and demand. Due to the nature of the main conquest of the game, there will always be a large pool of players who desire to have the best of EVERYTHING and are willing to pay whatever is necessary to acquire it. Then you have the people who play solely to work the market.
This type of player is extremely common in games containing an AH of any kind, let alone one that utilizes real money. This concept will undoubtedly flood the game with "players" who's top priority is the sale of "goods". Lets face it, regardless of how many people have pretended to count themselves out of the purchase of this game upon release, you and I both know that there will be millions of players within the first couple months.
Regardless of how rare any drop in the game is, we are going to be seeing lots of them in just a matter of time. It's just the nature of the beast. The percentage of players who care more about receiving real money for their top finds (I'm willing to bet at least 30% if not more) than they care about equipping them, will head straight for the AH. And here's the problem, selling that item isn't even necessarily a sacrifice of character power. This is because the seller now has the option to use his income as a means of purchasing something of equal value.
This means that for every awesome item they can't use, it's simply a matter of monetary trade. Money is a powerful incentive, and it will undoubtedly control a large portion of the flow of this game.
So what we're now faced with, is the issue of items being too readily available, and I am 100% certain they will be. There is no incentive to salvage a great find for mats when that item can be sold for money, I don't care how much Blizzard thinks this will be the case. A nice $20 bill in the pocket of the average player is more important to them than leveling up their artisans quicker. The best items WILL flood the market in a matter of months.
So now we are left with a philosophical problem; the matter of acquiring that which is not earned. Some would say, "if you can afford to pay for it, then you've earned it". That is most certainly true in the greater context of things. Value is decided by the consumer, and if that consumer is presented with the option to attach monetary value to a virtual object, then by earning his money, he has earned the right to purchase that object as a means of fair trade.
The problem however, is the matter we are faced with when considering goods within the world of a living game. In my eyes, it's not a matter of principle, it's a matter of concern for the potential entertainment value. On principle, the creator and producer of an idea manifested into physical (or in this case, at least mostly virtual) form has EVERY right to decide how that idea will work. If the consumer doesn't like it, they have the option of attributing zero value to it, and the only one that suffers is the producer.
As far as entertainment value goes, we must consider the state of mind of someone who invests time into a video game. Time invested into a game is, in many ways, similar to the time invested in life outside the game. The main concept is achievement. The goal of achievement is accompanied by joy, and the achievement of joy is accompanied by more time invested into the game. Gamers stop playing the game when there is nothing left to achieve, and in turn, nothing left to find joy in.
As an example, what happens when you play a game and immediately turn on all the cheat codes? It never lasts right? This is a similar concept. Blizzard is mixing real life achievement (the acquisition of money) with in game achievement (the acquisition of that which requires skill of the mind and body to reach(items/power)). As I said, I don't find this to be wrong on a matter of principle. My problem, is that the properly rewarded achievement reached within a game is what makes the game fun. When that achievement is subverted through means of separate achievement (money), the goal of the game is prematurely reached without reward.
It is essentially a shortcut. And just as shortcuts through life are not rewarded with lasting joy, the same is held for achievements within a game.
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