Blizzard's Community Relations

[Phred]

This is the same AH that allowed you to roll your PC clock time backwards to cancel an auction...

Didn't that turn out to be bullshit? Much like this one probably is. Oh and the session hijacking too.

[Tarami]

Edit:  Given the "clock setting back" stupidity, I'm guessing that maybe all that is happening is that switching the button order means it grays out the wrong button (probably the point where they aren't checking button ID, but rather button ordering), which lets you press what is actually the "buyout" button, allowing you to send a buyout request on an item that you shouldn't be able to.  And then their server has a horrible bug that obeys a buyout request for an item with no buyout, using (allegedly) the current bid price as the buyout price somehow.  I could believe that combination of bugs actually happening.  Not in a "forgivable" sense, but in a "I can imagine someone fucking up that bad" sense.

I think what happens is that the AH protocol doesn't differentiate between buy outs and bids - a buy out is simply a bid the level of the buy out, then you indirectly win the auction because you reached the buy out. The client, when pressing buy out, checks the buy out, then places a bid for that amount - 0 gold. The AH server frontend compares that bid for 0 gold with the buy out - 0 gold, a match! It sends the transaction for sign-off to the master server by flagging the auction as expired. When the master server gets to that item in the queue, it checks the bid for the amount of money to transfer, since the bid is the going price - as mentioned, a buy out is just a bid for a specific amount. So the bid amount is transferred between the accounts and the item is sent to the buyer.

Simply, the reason it works is because you can place a bid for 0, which happens to be the buy out. If that weren't possible, you wouldn't be able to trick the system, since a buy out otherwise can't be set lower than the starting bid.

[waffel]

This is the same AH that allowed you to roll your PC clock time backwards to cancel an auction...

Didn't that turn out to be bullshit? Much like this one probably is. Oh and the session hijacking too.

It was very, very real. I didn't think it was until I tried it. it was patched a few days later.


Also, gold selling is up and active on the RMAH for .25 cents per 100k

[waffel]

More hacky goodness, this time being able to see how many properties an UNID'd item has:

Start a chat line, in party, whatever. Link your item. Follow that immediately with two special characters, for example ëë. Then link the same item again (some of this might be extraneous but I know this works). Put the cursor in between the two ë's. Press delete three times. Instead of deleting the entire [Archon Armor] it will just delete the [ and it will expose the item code.
The item code is a bunch of numbers and gibberish, it probably means something, some of it is probably encrypted, but at the very minimum you can find a specific part just before the name that looks like this:
528:528:0:0:7:0
the 528 will be some random 3 digit number, but that 7 is what you're looking for. subtract 2 from that number, and this is how many properties your item has. In this case 5. EDITED BECAUSE TYPING IS HARD
You can expect that until this is patched, at least a decent percentage of items that are being sold UnID'd will be known to be not 6 property items and well, thats awful, so don't buy them. You can't do this from a link just in the trade chat from someone else.
As long as items don't change hands, this exploit does nothing, so lets try to keep it that way.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/wmvr8/do_not_buy_unid_items_right_now_there_is/

[waffel]

And another:

Basically a scammer is able to trade 1 item but make it look like a stack of 100 in the trade window. So you go in thinking you're getting 100x of something (Firey Brimstone) but are left with 1.

This has also been around since release. Go go Blizzard!

[LK]

QA is not very good at looking for hacks in a game, and I shudder at the thought of expecting them to.

[waffel]

An APPARENT item dupe has popped up, with the exact same bow being sold on the AH 10x. Same name, same stats, same everything:

The item in question was a ilevel 63 Revenant Bow Named Sovereign End, with +9 Maximum Damage, +255-507 Fire Damage, 11% ias, and 60% Crit damage. It's DPS was 1017.9.

They all sold within 10~ minutes, with a player claiming he was able to buy two and both were sent to his stash. 

[Paelos]

So Mike releases the letter to the public, telling the gamers they are working on stuff.

According to Mike the issues they want to fix are: Build diversity, Balance, Better Legendaries, Interface/Social Improvements, AH Improvements, and PvP

According to the players, the issues they want to fix are: Loot quality, Inferno Difficulty, Lack of Endgame, Bugs/Dupes, Inflation, AH requirements, and Bots.

Until that disconnect gets shored up, D3 isn't going to see any improvements.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I think build diversity is actually huge. I know people online complain about inferno difficulty but I can assure you that there is a huge number of people who found a build they enjoyed playing and then were forced into something they did not want(tank barbarian) and it killed their desire to play.

[waffel]

Add a better method to make games (descriptions, game names etc)
Vastly improve the chat functions of the game
Fix loot (crafting, legendaries, everyfuckingthing)
Create an alternate method of leveling/character progression to do at 60
Add a server without any AHs. On this same server create a ladder system similar to D2.

There, was that hard?

[Hoax]

There's really only two things they need to work on, the whines about Inferno are stupid.

#1) AH use is mandatory. AKA: You don't farm for drops you farm for gold and things to sell on AH to buy your "drops".

#2) Ongoing balance preferably way less fucking nerfs to the things people are making work (except say venom hydra) and lots of buffs to the stuff that just doesn't serve any purpose starting with abilities and eventually getting to runes that aren't that good.

Most of this other shit is so unimportant compared to those two things that its hardly even worth mentioning. Although I think fixing #1 may require they look at the entire item/crafting/drops/legendaries/sets systems and get real smart about fixing shit.

[Paelos]

There's really only two things they need to work on, the whines about Inferno are stupid.

The whines about inferno are pretty valid actually. It's not fun and tuned to stupid things. Part of that is balance, part of that is loot, and part of it is that they put all the level 60 stuff in there.

[Malakili]

There's really only two things they need to work on, the whines about Inferno are stupid.

#1) AH use is mandatory. AKA: You don't farm for drops you farm for gold and things to sell on AH to buy your "drops".

#2) Ongoing balance preferably way less fucking nerfs to the things people are making work (except say venom hydra) and lots of buffs to the stuff that just doesn't serve any purpose starting with abilities and eventually getting to runes that aren't that good.

Most of this other shit is so unimportant compared to those two things that its hardly even worth mentioning. Although I think fixing #1 may require they look at the entire item/crafting/drops/legendaries/sets systems and get real smart about fixing shit.

What are "things to sell" if not drops.  Again, I'd say this end game is pretty much just like Diablo 2 in that you hoped for ANYTHING good, and then you traded it in for Stones of Jordan  and then bought the items you needed.   I don't disagree that the focus is TOO MUCH on gold farming, I agree with this criticism, but if you get something good enough to sell on the AH for a good chunk of change that IS your "drop."  Granted, I understand a lot of people here really enjoy using only items they or friends fine - fair enough - but that is practically an entirely different discussion.

Agree with number 2 whole heartedly.

[Rokal]

What are "things to sell" if not drops.  Again, I'd say this end game is pretty much just like Diablo 2 in that you hoped for ANYTHING good, and then you traded it in for Stones of Jordan  and then bought the items you needed.

I don't think as many people participated in the Diablo 2 barter economy as you believe did. Both you and Blizzard seem too focused on this fringe aspect of Diablo 2 to the detriment of everyone that never bothered with trading but decided to pick up Diablo 3. Using only drops you found or traded among friends seems to be the more common way people played Diablo 2, which makes sense when you consider that the trading community formed around websites and forums outside the game. Why would you bother seeking out an outside website to trade when you could easily progress through the game with only loot you found?

I don't want to buy upgrades, I want to find them by playing. I don't want it to take 200 or even 20 hours to find a mediocre upgrade either. At some point you will reach a gear level where farming for upgrades becomes inefficient and it's unlikely you'll find upgrades over what you are using through normal gameplay. This is where trading becomes the most practical way to play if you want to obtain further upgrades. In Diablo 3 this happens around level 10 because of under-leveled loot and the ease of the AH.

Making Legendaries more interesting is a nice change, but it's practically irrelevant if my options for finding said Legendary are a) playing for 200 hours in the hopes that the 1 legendary I get is useful or b) using the AH/trading. Their lengthy post doesn't even making it clear whether they understand why their loot system is so unappealing.

They've said that the item hunt wasn't as sustainable as they thought it would be for an 'end-game', but they haven't shown that they understand why that is. If Diablo 2 thrived for years with only the item hunt, why was the shelf life on Diablo 3's item hunt less than a month? This is apparently a question they did not want to ask themselves as they went on to talk about alternative end-game content instead of fixing the loot system that makes up their current end game.

I guess if I took 6-7 years to make Diablo 3's loot system I wouldn't be especially confident in my ability to fix it either.

[Typhon]

[...]Again, I'd say this end game is pretty much just like Diablo 2 in that you hoped for ANYTHING good, and then you traded it in for Stones of Jordan  and then bought the items you needed.   [...]

Big gap here is that the entire D3 game is like D2 endgame - you hope for ANYTHING good near your level throughout the entire game.  


And once you do get to D3 endgame, 'anything good' is largely defined by 1) a weapon with high DPS, 2) Armor with high Resist All.  Such diversity! So exciting!

Edit:  to Ingmar!

[Ingmar]

Buh? You definitely don't need resist all until the D3 endgame. In fact I would say the resist nonsense kicks in a lot earlier in D2.

[Malakili]

I don't think as many people participated in the Diablo 2 barter economy as you believe did.

This is basically the main thing these forums have taught me in the last few months. 

[Ingmar]

I don't think as many people participated in the Diablo 2 barter economy as you believe did.

This is basically the main thing these forums have taught me in the last few months. 

I think just about everyone who played the game long term participated in it to some extent.

[Hoax]

You shouldn't try to beat HC Act2 Hell (realistically short of way overleveling you shouldn't go for Act2 NM on some classes) before you've invested heavily in the barter economy. That's pretty stupid and very different from D2. We're not talking about rare items to power rare and interesting builds here. We're talking about the gear check to make the most powerful and basic build be able to get through the content first run.

I still say the only legit Inferno whine I've heard is that the cc reduction is such a shit bandaid that renders half the abilities in the game useless. That is pretty stupid I'll agree and a sign of how little time Blizz spent playing this game. But again if they were working on making more skills useful I think they would come to that and fix it even if they weren't "fixing" inferno which basically means making it easy enough for the guy bitching about it to beat it.

The other half of the inferno whining seems to be classic WoW/mmo bullshit, bitching that X class is managing to beat content and demanding they nerf them. I hate what gamers have become.

[Setanta]

I don't think as many people participated in the Diablo 2 barter economy as you believe did.

This is basically the main thing these forums have taught me in the last few months. 

I think just about everyone who played the game long term participated in it to some extent.

I played it for 7 years (becoming more infrequent in the last) and still played it occasionally up until D3 release.

I didn't participate in the barter system, I liked getting the gear myself.

I like getting my drops and using them. I get no sense of achievement from buying/trading for them

I have a feeling I may not be in the minority with this.

Blizzard doesn't get this. Blizzard will never get it.

[waffel]

I played online for years, bartered, and had fun. I played single player, without cheats and /players 8'd, and only traded with friends and also had a lot of fun.

Options = good. Blizzard doesn't seem to understand this. "Play our way because the other ways just aren't fun"

[Margalis]

Again, I'd say this end game is pretty much just like Diablo 2 in that you hoped for ANYTHING good, and then you traded it in for Stones of Jordan  and then bought the items you needed. 

Out of all the people who bought Diablo 2 I imagine the number of people who got into bartering was in the 5-10% range at most.

[Tebonas]

I think just about everyone who played the game long term participated in it to some extent.

You and Blizzard. That doesn't make you right, though!

5+ years without a single Trade, either.

[Lantyssa]

I think just about everyone who played the game long term participated in it to some extent.

Nope, never.

I also don't think y'all realize how many people played single-player or LAN-only compared to online.  The lag and 3 month deletion policy wasn't worth it.

[apocrypha]

I think just about everyone who played the game long term participated in it to some extent.

Played for years, never bartered once.

Every time I joined a game with strangers it was full of bots, pk'ers or douchebags. So I played 90% solo, 10% with friends, usually with /players 8 active. Did MF runs on Meph/Baal, kitted out multiple alts with sets & legendaries, never got anything really high-end but that was OK, I didn't need it to have fun. I did get a couple of drops that I then specifically made characters for, e.g. a spear (forgotten the name of it) that had a huge bonus to pierce I think, that I made a Javazon just to use it. There's no, none, zilch, nada gear like that in D3.

Blizzard seem to have forgotten every single lesson from WoW when making D3. I haven't played for a couple of weeks at least now and have no interest in returning, it's too late.

[Malakili]

never got anything really high-end but that was OK, I didn't need it to have fun. I did get a couple of drops that I then specifically made characters for, e.g. a spear (forgotten the name of it) that had a huge bonus to pierce I think, that I made a Javazon just to use it. There's no, none, zilch, nada gear like that in D3.

There are two separate issues here.  One being the need to barter or not, and one being itemization.   The first one is problematic in D3 more in my opinion because you have basically 0 chance to get anything worth while in anything but Inferno.  This is a real problem compared to D2, where you could get legitimate end game items as early as Nightmare Mephisto - maybe not the highest of the high end, but some really good stuff dropped off him, and pretty much anyone could farm him to some degree.

The second issue being that itemization in D3 is really boring compared to D2.  They've already said that they are working on this particularly in regards to Legendary items, so hopefully this improves over time.  This is also tied to respecs I think.  I too got a lot of replayability out of making brand new characters around items which I found but weren't ideal for my current build in that class.  This goes back to the respec discussion though.

In the end, I happy to be one of the lucky ones because I don't mind what Diablo 3 is.  I think it is fun to play, and Inferno doesn't bother me at all.  The economy is something I always did in D2 so in D3 it is just a more convenient version of how I always played.   That doesn't mean they can't improve D3, but I don't see myself quitting any time soon either.  I guess I'm just one of the lucky people who happens to be their target audience with what they did.

[Reg]

Yes Malakill. I'm sure everyone has noticed by now that you REALLY, REALLY LIKE D3. 

[Abelian75]

I don't really think respecs would make people create characters just to use items they dropped as long as the AH exists (unless it was a BoA item or something).  With the AH, any item is just its value in gold, as there is no real effort involved in converting items to/from gold.  You might roll a character built around a certain item, but it wouldn't be getting the item that made you do that, it would be getting the amount of gold that that item costs (which might come from getting the item itself, or not).

I dunno, a near-perfect market like the AH provides really kills any interest I could ever have in items.  While they definitely should make legendaries better, all it really would mean to me is that there are cooler items to buy, and that orange drops get me more gold.  When I look at an item that drops, I don't ever care if it is good for me or not, I just care about what it is worth (ok, sure, there's a tiny amount of convenience when you don't have to pay the AH fees, but it has little effect on the way I approach the game, personally).

By far the most fun item-related thing I've done in this game was assembling the staff of herding.  And it wasn't even that fun, but it was SOMETHING item-related that mattered to me, and it's definitely because it was BoA.  It has no money value attached to it. (unless you feel like going out and finding someone to farm for you, I guess, which is way too much of a pain in the ass for me to ever even consider as an option that truly exists).

Sadly, I'm running out of ways to convince myself that BoP items aren't just plain awesome in multiplayer games (and christ, BoE at the very least).  I totally understand that some people like trading and bartering and playing the market and all that jazz, but man, for me, I just cannot find an item interesting if you can see hundreds of them on an AH.  Even if it costs more gold that I could ever hope to gather, it's just... so flavorless.  Beh.