The issue I see with the concept in its current form is that it is only really viable for those who already make money from these sorts of games (aka gold farming businesses). The drop rates along with the 30% cut, $250 cap and limit to 10 auctions at one time mean only those with multiple account and multiple users will be able to generate any decent level of income from the game. It all results in a system that isn't really designed to give the long term player a way to make a decent amount of money from their playtime, but instead a system for the developers to get a cut from the already established gold farmers.
Wouldn't it be even more convenient for the farmers if there wasn't any cap?
I think the cash cap is more about mitigating money laundring. (a big problem for anyone who want to design any handling of real money)
And my guess for the item count cap is that otherwise, people would use the auction as a bottomless stash...
[quote name='Telastyn' timestamp='1337260379' post='4940923']the move from a roguelike to a tiny isometric action-MMO is disappointing.
I'm confused as to which diablo games you've been playing? Hasn't Diablo always been an isometric beat-em-up with RPG-like character progression, woven together with a weak storyline?
[/quote]
I dunno, I've always seen the playstyle as a roguelike. You have a town and a random dungeon you progress downward (an occasionally return to town) until you hit the 'bottom' with no real quests to speak of.
Especially for the first... I dunno, 2.5 acts of D3 there's no reason to return to town and little reason to explore. Just a bunch of sequential quests that lead smoothly into the next.
Where the comparison breaks down is that roguelikes (at least the ones I've played) require thought and careful evaluation of situations to complete. Diablo (any of the 3) merely requires careful smashing of mouse buttons as rapidly as possible. There's also the whole, you know, turn-based thing. Which results in radically different gameplay. Diablo123 are action games that may have been initially inspired by roguelikes, but simply having randomized dungeons does not a roguelike make. Of the three, the first was perhaps nearest to an actual roguelike in structure, with its 16-level deep dungeon, and greater use of randomization.
I can see it discouraging people from treating Diablo 3 as a way to generate money simply because there's no chance they could make it big by finding a single rare item. Less people seriously farming will mean less competition for the actual farmers.
They may indeed prefer a much higher cap/none at all, but it isn't necessarily bad for them.
There is also a charge for posting items up on the RM AH (about a dollar iirc) to stop people posting items if they don't plan on selling it.
Servers have been mostly perfect for me after Tuesday and Wednesday SNAFUs.
Impressions:
- I like the skill selection and runes a lot. You have LOTS of choices to make. Some combinations are noticably more effective than others (same as D2). There is *definitely* room for people who want to make non-cookie-cutter or "challenge" builds (same as D2). Sure, early in the game you are pretty much locked to certain skills since you don't have a variety unlocked yet (same as D2). Once you get at least one rune unlocked for all of your spells, it gets Real. The only important high-level difference between D2 and D3 as far as character skills go is that you don't have to recreate your character to try something different in D3.
- I really like the equipment-based damage instead of invest-points-in-skills system.
- I dislike having the skills on multiple "pages". When you level up, it will most likely be during heavy combat. You can't really pay attention to the "you just unlocked X skill" popups during a fight. This means you'll have to spend a few minutes sifting through your skill menu to FIND what you got and read the descriptions. Meanwhile, your friends continue without you or stand around bored if they're nice enough to wait. Having all skills on a single "page" would make this process much quicker.
- I am not sure whether I like or dislike the difficulty-gated features: Certain things only start becoming available in nightmare mode (items to upgrade your crafters past a certain level, more varity in item stats such as bonuses to resistances, and more abilities on blue/yellow miniboss monsters).
- Acts 3 and 4 had utterly subpar plot and side-dungeons (loot dungeons) compared to the first two. Act 4 is also very short.
- I am a little bummed about the simplified socketed items (max of 2 sockets, four types of gems instead of seven). I don't know if later difficulties add new gems or D2-style runes or not.
- I haven't seen a single unique or set item or equivalent. I've got two characters to Nightmare mode so far - I would have found several by this point playing D2. If these items even exist, I suspect the scarcity is intentional due to the auction house.
- I am disappointed that two-handed items always appear to be vastly inferior to two separate one-handed items.
- Followers are significantly better. Their random conversations are a nice touch.
- Occasional dramatic loss of framerate even on very-high-end PCs is disappointing (and may be a bug).
Overall, I really like it. A few nagging issues, but I would still recommend it to everyone who played the hell out of D2, Titan Quest, or Sacred 2.
- Occasional dramatic loss of framerate even on very-high-end PCs is disappointing (and may be a bug).
You'll find thats a lag spike from the highly unoptimized server architecture they are using.
I've had a few drops that is obviously a client problem, usually with lots of water effects.
Where I normally always get a solid 60 fps, at these certain spots it drops down to 30.
I've only found a few of these spots and they where all very local, so not much of a problem and overall I must say it works very well for me.
I could even play without problems while my friends banged their head against the endless stream of error codes on launch day.
I'm starting to really see the shortfalls of the skill system. Halfway through Act 2 Nightmare, and my character hasn't "changed" since Act 3 Normal. Let me explain.
In D2 (I know, everyone is starting to get tired of how D2 was the boss; and yes, D2 was far from perfect. And yet, I still play it to this day.) there were always incremental changes to your character. You get a level, you get a point to make a skill just that little bit beefier. You find a new item, maybe an amulet with +2 all skills. Whatever. There were constant changes occurring to your character.
Well, in the absence of any usable loot drops at all since A3Normal, and the absence of any rune unlocks that interest me, there has been approximately 0 character progression. Sure, there have been the small stat increases with levels, but those haven't been at my choosing. I have not been able to do a single thing to change my character by my own decision in the last probably 10 hours of gameplay. Maybe more.
Rune unlocks: I like the ones I have. Arcane Torrent + Disruption, Chain Lightning, Magic Weapon, Familiar+Sparkflint, Wave of Force (or Fus Ro Dah, as I like to call it), and the ubiquitous Diamond Skin that every Wizard has to take. (Wait, tell me again how we won't be required to take any one spell, but can choose whatever spells we want?) So, effectively, there has been 0 progression with my character for quite a few levels and several Acts. I'm fine with my current choices, and in fact I will be fine with my current choices for quite a few levels to come. In truth, I could see myself using this loadout for the remainder of the game, possibly with the sole change of taking Arcane Orb once I get to the kite-fest that is Inferno. (Which infuriates me because I love Arcane Torrent. I love the way it feels, the way it plays. The fact that I won't be able use it anymore because I have to kite rather than stand and channel just, frankly, pisses me off.)
And the fact that I already have the skill loadout I want to use for the rest of the game is depressing to me, since the only way my character is going to change now is if equipment drops. No more incremental, skill-point based increases. And I have yet to see any good item drops In Act2NM. No, I won't check the auction house. Buying my way to I Win equipment is not why I play Diablo, never will be. But apparently grinding my way to it isn't going to happen either. And I certainly won't be crafting one. I have yet to actually use anything I have crafted, outside of the sole exception of a wand I used around L9.
And let's talk about equipment again, shall we? As far as I can see, the only modifiers that make a bit of difference are: weapon DPS, main stat (in my case, Int), vitality and resistances. Weapon DPS is boss and king, god even. You want to kill things fast enough that they don't pummel you? Drop whatever crummy weapon+offhand you have and find the highest dps axe/sword/bow you can. Anything else on a weapon besides DPS is a second-class citizen at best. Think your Wizard should use spellbooks and wands? You're wrong, he should find the biggest-ass axe he can find. A wand+spellbook is only going to gimp his DPS.
The only "customization" of your character allowed by the current item system is choosing whether to emphasize your main stat or vitality, but by all reports you shouldn't emphasize vitality over your main stat since regardless of whatever vitality you have, you're going to be one- or two-shot in Inferno anyway, so you might as well just beef your damage since having a big health pool doesn't help you kite any better. So the much-vaunted character customization, it turns out, is actually quite a hilarious joke. I honestly think Blizzard has been trolling us all along.
At this point, I'm feeling a sort of sick dismay about this whole game. Yes, the core elements of combat are still fun. But I can see the end of the fun screaming toward me at a frightening rate. Already, logging in feels a bit like a chore. Slog through the story again (and why, oh why, do we have to roll back the story if we want to go back to different spots along the way?) hoping to finally, at long last, score an equipment upgrade. Collect a whole bunch of worthless items, salvage them, have the blacksmith craft something, have it end up with a whole bunch of +Dexterity and increased pickup radius, have the blacksmith shred it, go back to grinding. Ooh, level up! Useless Rune unlocks. Other Useless Rune unlocks. Mildly Interesting Rune unlocks, but I don't really see a way to work it in without changing my entire playstyle away from something I really enjoy. Try it anyway for awhile, end up going back to what I had before. Slog some more.
I remember reading an article somewhere about the psychology of reward systems and schedules in games, and I think a large part of my dissatisfaction has been the complete and utter lack of a worthwhile reward in over 10 hours of playing. The only rewards have been of the visceral variety: the splat sounds of a champion pack successfully taken down, the whirs and clicks and clings of loot hitting the ground (followed up by the depression and frustration of finding it to be simply shredder fodder). There have been absolutely no longer-term rewards. At all. Story progression? This is Nightmare, I've already seen the story. Character progression? Heh. Heh heh. Player skill progression? It's become a routine. I'm already pretty good at pushing the right buttons at the right times to take down whatever packs might come my way.
My honest prediction is that I will probably make it to Hell difficulty. Probably in the next day or two. (And that, too, is a depressing thing. I haven't exactly been playing for hundreds of hours. and you'll recall that my equipment is shitty. I can remember it took me quite a bit longer than this to unlock Hell difficulty in D2. It feels like difficulty-level progression is just being handed to me, without me working for it.) But once I reach Hell difficulty, I just don't see myself playing this game anymore. And I don't really see myself coming back to it some time down the road, either, the way I still occasionally come back to D2. This feels less and less like a Diablo game all the time, and it is becoming painfully obvious to me that the Diablo that I knew and loved is dead, that the original team is scattered to the winds, and that what Blizzard is producing in the absence might be an okay action game, but is most emphatically not Diablo.
And let's talk about equipment again, shall we? As far as I can see, the only modifiers that make a bit of difference are: weapon DPS, main stat (in my case, Int), vitality and resistances. Weapon DPS is boss and king, god even. You want to kill things fast enough that they don't pummel you? Drop whatever crummy weapon+offhand you have and find the highest dps axe/sword/bow you can. Anything else on a weapon besides DPS is a second-class citizen at best. Think your Wizard should use spellbooks and wands? You're wrong, he should find the biggest-ass axe he can find. A wand+spellbook is only going to gimp his DPS.
Eh, my monk cares about more than simple DPS. Since his common attacks do things every 3rd strike, attacks per second is also important. Likewise, I have him configured with the 'hit all nearby' common attack, so that combined with attack speed means that life per hit (and +spirit per hit to a lesser degree) is something the monk cares about more than the simple dexterity/damage/vitality sweet spot.
