Diablo III Wild Speculation and Rumor Mongering Abounds

[ezrast]

Requiring a connection strikes me as kind of a dick move, but I really don't think it's implausible the decision was made mostly independently of the auction house thing. The sort of hardcore players who would spend money on items would all be playing realm anyway.

Announcing both at the same time was a poor move, however.

I agree with the principle but damn it I *liked* playing my Nova sorc.

Yeah, there's more to it than their example showed - figuring out how to use your chosen spell in less-than-ideal situations can be challenging and fun, and it's nice to be able to specialize your character to be really good at one particular thing.

[Tebonas]

I understand the desire to be able to play a product anywhere, but I think they fail to consider the repercussions of allowing that.

See, the repercussions aren't for the player. While the repercussions of not being able to play anywhere are.

[LK]

I understand the desire to be able to play a product anywhere, but I think they fail to consider the repercussions of allowing that.

See, the repercussions aren't for the player. While the repercussions of not being able to play anywhere are.

Point well taken. But then it boils down to: do what's best for the customer, or the company?

I know what the answer is... based on your perspective. One party needs to compromise / accept the validity of the other's position for the conflict not to exist.

[Tebonas]

Thats the Democratic definition of compromise I presume?  

Of course enough people will still buy the game regardless and there will be very little negative side effects for Blizzard. The customers will give in, and those few who won't buy it because of that will be statistically irrelevant. Other companies will see it CAN work and begin to enforce those ridiculous schemes as well. And not because they see the validity of Blizzards position, but because its Diablo.

Upside for the customers? Zero

[Furiously]

I'm trying to imagine how much cheaper games will be if no one pirates them.... I'm guessing not at all.

[Talpidae]

You're guessing right.

[rk47]

I despise the online always thing, because I can sympathize with some gamers on laptop.
Perhaps a refreshing login will allow a 30 days counter before offline single player is locked out?
There's really no excuse for a single player game to require more than one time internet authentication.

[Fabricated]

I'm trying to imagine how much cheaper games will be if no one pirates them.... I'm guessing not at all.

I'm pretty sure that every publisher is eying the $65 price point right now since they got away with $60. Just waiting for the first shitty publisher brave enough to try and get away with it.

[Amaron]

I thought the point of D2 was to let you click the same lolwhirlwind button over and over then maybe switch once in a while to heroic leap.  I don't see why focusing on one skill is a problem here.

[Malakili]

I thought the point of D2 was to let you click the same lolwhirlwind button over and over then maybe switch once in a while to heroic leap.  I don't see why focusing on one skill is a problem here.

My guess is that they think their wider target audience expects more interesting combat than that at this point, and that those of us who put enough time into Diablo 2 to remember what whirlwind and heroic leap are in the first place will probably be buying the game no matter what.

[Paelos]

I'm trying to imagine how much cheaper games will be if no one pirates them.... I'm guessing not at all.

I'm pretty sure that every publisher is eying the $65 price point right now since they got away with $60. Just waiting for the first shitty publisher brave enough to try and get away with it.

I'd like to find out exactly what rate people are buying at $60. I'm certainly waiting the month for rebates and whatnot that take every game back below the 50 mark.

[Malakili]

I'm trying to imagine how much cheaper games will be if no one pirates them.... I'm guessing not at all.

I'm pretty sure that every publisher is eying the $65 price point right now since they got away with $60. Just waiting for the first shitty publisher brave enough to try and get away with it.

I'd like to find out exactly what rate people are buying at $60. I'm certainly waiting the month for rebates and whatnot that take every game back below the 50 mark.

Personally it hasn't effected my habits too much, but I don't by loads of games brand new to begin with.   I think I can count on one hand the number of games I've bought at that price point so far, but I can also count on two hands the amount of new games I've bought in the last year and a half for full price. 

It really just comes down to day1 or not for me.  Civ 5 I bought day 1, Starcraft 2 I bought day 1, both of those were worth it.  Two games which I bought at full price that I should've waited on were Brink and CoD: Black Ops (I've been looking for SOME shooter to stick for a long time now and its caused me to waste some money grasping at straws).

In any event, Diablo 3 is a day 1 for me, and a high % chance of being a collectors edition box.  What can I say, I'm Blizzard's bitch.

[apocrypha]

I pre-ordered D3 in February from Amazon for £25.50 ($42) so whatever pricing changes between now & release I care not about.

The cash Auction House bothered me at first, not enough to consider not buying it, but after thinking about it I'm less concerned now. As long as the gold AH functions OK and isn't as bereft of items as the goblin AH in WoW then it'll do.

Always-on internet requirement for single player is, however, a total dick move. If it works like SC2, i.e. you can still play single-player offline but without achievements etc, then I'm fine with that, otherwise I will be annoyed by it. But still not enough to not play it.

[Malakili]

I pre-ordered D3 in February from Amazon for £25.50 ($42) so whatever pricing changes between now & release I care not about.

The cash Auction House bothered me at first, not enough to consider not buying it, but after thinking about it I'm less concerned now. As long as the gold AH functions OK and isn't as bereft of items as the goblin AH in WoW then it'll do.

Always-on internet requirement for single player is, however, a total dick move. If it works like SC2, i.e. you can still play single-player offline but without achievements etc, then I'm fine with that, otherwise I will be annoyed by it. But still not enough to not play it.

I worry about how separate the auction houses will REALLY be.  Because of the RM AH, everything will have a defacto RM value, and since gold can be sold on the RM AH, even that will have an effective exchange rate to USD.  But like you say, none of this bothers me enough that I won't buy the game, and thats what Blizzard is counting on.

[Mrbloodworth]

I pre-ordered D3 in February from Amazon for £25.50 ($42) so whatever pricing changes between now & release I care not about.

The cash Auction House bothered me at first, not enough to consider not buying it, but after thinking about it I'm less concerned now. As long as the gold AH functions OK and isn't as bereft of items as the goblin AH in WoW then it'll do.

Always-on internet requirement for single player is, however, a total dick move. If it works like SC2, i.e. you can still play single-player offline but without achievements etc, then I'm fine with that, otherwise I will be annoyed by it. But still not enough to not play it.

I thought SC2 was just a check, not a constant connection.

[Malakili]

I pre-ordered D3 in February from Amazon for £25.50 ($42) so whatever pricing changes between now & release I care not about.

The cash Auction House bothered me at first, not enough to consider not buying it, but after thinking about it I'm less concerned now. As long as the gold AH functions OK and isn't as bereft of items as the goblin AH in WoW then it'll do.

Always-on internet requirement for single player is, however, a total dick move. If it works like SC2, i.e. you can still play single-player offline but without achievements etc, then I'm fine with that, otherwise I will be annoyed by it. But still not enough to not play it.

I thought SC2 was just a check, not a constant connection.

If you lose connection it just tells you you can't get achievements and such

[Mrbloodworth]

I pre-ordered D3 in February from Amazon for £25.50 ($42) so whatever pricing changes between now & release I care not about.

The cash Auction House bothered me at first, not enough to consider not buying it, but after thinking about it I'm less concerned now. As long as the gold AH functions OK and isn't as bereft of items as the goblin AH in WoW then it'll do.

Always-on internet requirement for single player is, however, a total dick move. If it works like SC2, i.e. you can still play single-player offline but without achievements etc, then I'm fine with that, otherwise I will be annoyed by it. But still not enough to not play it.

I thought SC2 was just a check, not a constant connection.

If you lose connection it just tells you you can't get achievements and such

That's very different than how D3 is going to do it from what I have read. You loose connection in D3, you go to log in screen.

[Teleku]

I despise the online always thing, because I can sympathize with some gamers on laptop.
Perhaps a refreshing login will allow a 30 days counter before offline single player is locked out?
There's really no excuse for a single player game to require more than one time internet authentication.

From what I can tell, your character is stored on the servers, not your hard drive.  So you would need to be physically connected to the server at all times to play.

[MuffinMan]

I've always wanted lagdeath in my single player games.

[Amaron]

I worry about how separate the auction houses will REALLY be.  Because of the RM AH, everything will have a defacto RM value, and since gold can be sold on the RM AH, even that will have an effective exchange rate to USD.  But like you say, none of this bothers me enough that I won't buy the game, and thats what Blizzard is counting on.

I don't even understand why there is a gold AH.    The amount of gold required to buy anything worthwhile will surely cause the value in memory to roll over.   The gold AH is going to be full of a bunch of newb items selling for EXACTLY the same price (ie however much gold you can carry).   Those same items will sell on the real money AH for a quarter.

[Paelos]

If you set posting fees for items, that limits the amount of useless shit people will be willing to post for real money. If they can post items to a gold AH for nothing, then people can trade there for currency value and trade the currency.

[Malakili]

If you set posting fees for items, that limits the amount of useless shit people will be willing to post for real money. If they can post items to a gold AH for nothing, then people can trade there for currency value and trade the currency.

I think they already said there will be real money listing fees on the RM AH. 

[Hutch]

If you set posting fees for items, that limits the amount of useless shit people will be willing to post for real money. If they can post items to a gold AH for nothing, then people can trade there for currency value and trade the currency.

I think they already said there will be real money listing fees on the RM AH. 

The real money fees are the only reason that the RM AH is being built. Activision Blizzard wouldn't have bothered, if they weren't collecting a vig.

[Amaron]

They said you'll get a limited amount of free listings.

[Paelos]

If you set posting fees for items, that limits the amount of useless shit people will be willing to post for real money. If they can post items to a gold AH for nothing, then people can trade there for currency value and trade the currency.

I think they already said there will be real money listing fees on the RM AH. 

Yes, that's the point. The fees set a standard for posting items for real money.

[Stabs]

I worry about how separate the auction houses will REALLY be.  Because of the RM AH, everything will have a defacto RM value, and since gold can be sold on the RM AH, even that will have an effective exchange rate to USD.  But like you say, none of this bothers me enough that I won't buy the game, and thats what Blizzard is counting on.

I don't even understand why there is a gold AH.    The amount of gold required to buy anything worthwhile will surely cause the value in memory to roll over.   The gold AH is going to be full of a bunch of newb items selling for EXACTLY the same price (ie however much gold you can carry).   Those same items will sell on the real money AH for a quarter.

I don't think this will be how it works out at all.

Assuming the game is a success and the RM AH is a reasonable success there will be a lot of arbitrage between the two AH systems. Suppose an item like a Shako is $5 on the RM AH and there are none on the gold AH. If I find a Shako my best bet is probably to list it for $10 worth of gold. It's very likely to sell and gold is always convertible.

This means if the economy is busy both AHs will tend to stock everything and prices will tend towards parity.

[Paelos]

It means you would likely see prices as slightly lower on the gold AH due to the conversion and fee rates.

[Amaron]

In D2 gold had no real monetary value at all.  So you guys must be assuming they will somehow create gold scarcity in D3.  I'm not sure how they'll do that in an action RPG.  What would that even gain them when they'd prefer for you to use the RH auction house and pay fees?

[Velorath]

In D2 gold had no real monetary value at all.  So you guys must be assuming they will somehow create gold scarcity in D3.  I'm not sure how they'll do that in an action RPG.  What would that even gain them when they'd prefer for you to use the RH auction house and pay fees?

They're not creating scarcity, so much as creating new money sinks.  In particular they've said a lot of your gold will go into paying your Artisans to craft stuff.  They also mentioned that you'll be able to pay gold to increase inventory space, and that apparently ends up getting pretty costly as well.  As to what they have to gain through doing this, keep in mind that people can sell gold on the RM AH as well.

[Talpidae]

I've always wanted lagdeath in my single player games.

 

[Shrike]

I've always wanted lagdeath in my single player games.

It's already been around. Can't say as it bothers my any. It's single player. Who cares, aside from a slight annoyance factor.

Been there done that in D2. Occasionally, you'd get a bad connection to your realm. Might have to go do something else for a couple of hours. On my normal daily frustration meter, this might blip the needle, but that's about the extant of it. Much ado over nothing.

[Soulflame]

Lagdeath matters to people who play hardcore mode for the challenge.  Assuming there is a hardcore mode, which may not be the case.

[Malakili]

To be fair its a real consideration in hardcore.  I remember in hellgate there were a few zones where you could easily die due to lag before even the loading screen went away if the latency was bad.  I never played d2 hc online for that reason.  Ill still play it in d3 regardless.  Then again the game isn't balanced for hc to begin with.

[Talpidae]

Been there done that in D2. Occasionally, you'd get a bad connection to your realm. Might have to go do something else for a couple of hours. On my normal daily frustration meter, this might blip the needle, but that's about the extant of it. Much ado over nothing.

Wut ?

[Stabs]

In D2 gold had no real monetary value at all.  So you guys must be assuming they will somehow create gold scarcity in D3.  I'm not sure how they'll do that in an action RPG.  What would that even gain them when they'd prefer for you to use the RH auction house and pay fees?

They're not creating scarcity, so much as creating new money sinks.  In particular they've said a lot of your gold will go into paying your Artisans to craft stuff.  They also mentioned that you'll be able to pay gold to increase inventory space, and that apparently ends up getting pretty costly as well.  As to what they have to gain through doing this, keep in mind that people can sell gold on the RM AH as well.

These do seem like limitations that the player base will out grow.

Regarding crafting they pretty much have to keep it down to the level where new players can participate. With gold find as an item property coupled with the killing power of a high level cookie cutter character the earning power of a maxxed character is going to be utterly out of line with the earning power of the newbie - it's entirely possible that a high gold find high kill speed farming character could earn better that 20 times what a regular, newish, player could. Making crafting so expensive that the former could only craft once per day would push the latter close to needing a month's farming to do one craft. That's too expensive.

Regarding bank space if they use the .1, 1, 10, 100 system that WoW used eventually you have all slots bought and it's no longer a gold sink (except for your alts).

I suppose they could do a crafting system with buyable gold bonuses. For instance in D2 you need ilvl = 90 for +2 amulets. Now suppose a crafting system that gave you the option to buy ilvls at every increasing amounts. So normally ilvl = 60 but for 100 you get +1 ilvl, 300 gives +2, 600 gives + 3 etc. People would dump huge money for a random item with unusually high item level.