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Shadowlyger
Nov 5, 2009

ElvUI super fan at your service!

Ask me any and all questions about UI customization via PM

Clarste posted:

I don't think you can blame the problems of Diablo 3 1.0 entirely on the AH. If anything the problem was balancing the entire game around the supposedly untested AH, which is something they absolutely had the choice not to. If you know something is untested it's generally not a great idea to bet everything on it turning out perfect the first time?

In fact, they very specifically did not balance the game around the AH, which was kind of the problem. The AH was added primarily to give people a way to trade items without needing to go through some shady third party website, so it came from a well-intentioned place, but they failed to consider the overall effect it would have on the game. Drop rates were already too low, and the AH exacerbated that by letting you skip the gear grind with money, meaning you had even fewer occasions where you would actually get an upgrade to drop, making playing the actual game feel like crap.

Ultimately, axing the AH and increasing drop rates was fixing two separate problems that fed into each other.

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Kanos
Sep 6, 2006

was there a time when speedwagon didn't get trolled

Shadowlyger posted:

In fact, they very specifically did not balance the game around the AH, which was kind of the problem. The AH was added primarily to give people a way to trade items without needing to go through some shady third party website, so it came from a well-intentioned place, but they failed to consider the overall effect it would have on the game. Drop rates were already too low, and the AH exacerbated that by letting you skip the gear grind with money, meaning you had even fewer occasions where you would actually get an upgrade to drop, making playing the actual game feel like crap.

Ultimately, axing the AH and increasing drop rates was fixing two separate problems that fed into each other.

There is a pretty commonly held theory that the specific reason the drop rates were so catastrophically low was to encourage people to use the RMAH - from which Blizzard received a cut from transactions - which would definitely qualify as balancing the game around the AH.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Fruits of the sea posted:

I'm looking forward to people rediscovering this with all the "metaverse" games. No you can't earn money by playing, because the economy is dominated by some combination of bots, price-fixing cartels and a bunch of low salaried office workers in the Philippines/India/North Korea/etc.

Oh god, everything "Metaverse" is just so...ugh. I keep seeing stuff that's all "You can do X in VR!" And I'm all "Yes, Second Life has existed for 18 years. Why is this considered new and shiny?" If I wanted to do any of the things advertised in a VR chatroom we've had a program that does all of that and then some that's old enough its eligible for the draft.

And the thing is? I don't want to do any of that BS in a VR chat room. Let alone one full of soulless corporate drones drawn in the "Congealed Disappointment" art style they seem to have chosen for the "Metaverse" crap.

Arzachel
May 12, 2012

Kanos posted:

There is a pretty commonly held theory that the specific reason the drop rates were so catastrophically low was to encourage people to use the RMAH - from which Blizzard received a cut from transactions - which would definitely qualify as balancing the game around the AH.

There was very little endgame content on launch so they cranked up the difficulty hoping that will slow down the grind enough to keep people occupied for a while, a plan as old as Everquest.

Kanos
Sep 6, 2006

was there a time when speedwagon didn't get trolled

Arzachel posted:

There was very little endgame content on launch so they cranked up the difficulty hoping that will slow down the grind enough to keep people occupied for a while, a plan as old as Everquest.

This argument doesn't really match up with reality for me. It's not like Diablo players weren't already preconditioned to run the same repetitive content over and over and over and over.

Kanos fucked around with this message at 16:17 on May 18, 2022

Shadowlyger
Nov 5, 2009

ElvUI super fan at your service!

Ask me any and all questions about UI customization via PM

Kanos posted:

There is a pretty commonly held theory that the specific reason the drop rates were so catastrophically low was to encourage people to use the RMAH - from which Blizzard received a cut from transactions - which would definitely qualify as balancing the game around the AH.

Well that theory is wrong, drop rates being too low was entirely independent from the AH.

Kanos
Sep 6, 2006

was there a time when speedwagon didn't get trolled

Shadowlyger posted:

Well that theory is wrong, drop rates being too low was entirely independent from the AH.

Do you have a source or is this just faith in the idea that Blizzard did not have dollar signs in their eyes about the RMAH? Because "oops we made drop rates complete dog poo poo and the game is borderline unplayable" and "now you can bypass the grind and buy items directly for real money(of which blizzard receives a cut)" being completely independent of each other is very suspiciously coincidental, especially considering it would have been very easy for them to buff the hell out of drop rates to partially address the issue, but they did not until they removed the RMAH - a move that was spurred primarily by the fact that the thing was putting Blizzard in a weird place wrt legal liability.

Kanos fucked around with this message at 16:23 on May 18, 2022

Bust Rodd
Oct 21, 2008

by VideoGames
The auction house being removed came like, maybe a year or more before they fixed the legendary drop rate. They were definitely separate issues,

RealityWarCriminal
Aug 10, 2016

:o:
People forget how bad D2 droprates were

RMAH had the same problem OWL had (and Valve's Artifact had). They had dollar signs in their eyes and forgot to make and establish a popular game first.

imweasel09
May 26, 2014


Kanos posted:

Do you have a source or is this just faith in the idea that Blizzard did not have dollar signs in their eyes about the RMAH? Because "oops we made drop rates complete dog poo poo and the game is borderline unplayable" and "now you can bypass the grind and buy items directly for real money(of which blizzard receives a cut)" being completely independent of each other is very suspiciously coincidental, especially considering it would have been very easy for them to buff the hell out of drop rates to partially address the issue, but they did not until they removed the RMAH - a move that was spurred primarily by the fact that the thing was putting Blizzard in a weird place wrt legal liability.

The guy they brought in who fixed a bunch of the problems with D3 loot tweeted about it. Apparently they genuinely didn't balance around the ah, they just flat out balanced really badly and then when the AH got wallpapered over the top of the bad drops it made it seem like the only sane option because they hosed it up so bad.

A Buttery Pastry
Sep 4, 2011

Delicious and Informative!
:3:

Kanos posted:

This probably pushes revisionism a bit far. Blizzard North was responsible for Diablo and Diablo II, which were obviously both masterpiece games, but they had nothing to do with the -craft games which were also genre-defining classics.
I just said their best games were made by someone else, which makes their golden age far less impressive.

Eej
Jun 17, 2007

HEAVYARMS

busalover posted:

Outlast and won how? He's walking away with a fat bonus, that Twitter user probably not.

Bobby Kotick: hundreds of millions of dollars
Twitter user: now works at Riot

So much winning

MechaCrash
Jan 1, 2013

imweasel09 posted:

The guy they brought in who fixed a bunch of the problems with D3 loot tweeted about it. Apparently they genuinely didn't balance around the ah, they just flat out balanced really badly and then when the AH got wallpapered over the top of the bad drops it made it seem like the only sane option because they hosed it up so bad.

The video game industry no longer deserves Hanlon's Razor.

Lord Packinham
Dec 30, 2006
:<

MechaCrash posted:

The video game industry no longer deserves Hanlon's Razor.

Yea, I don’t believe them either. Too many coincidences and blizzard doesn’t get the benefit of a doubt.

Kanos
Sep 6, 2006

was there a time when speedwagon didn't get trolled

A Buttery Pastry posted:

I just said their best games were made by someone else, which makes their golden age far less impressive.

I understood that. My point is that the Warcraft games and Starcraft(which were made by Blizzard inhouse) were equally as good and important as Diablo(which was the franchise made by North). Even if the Diablo franchise did not exist, Blizzard still had an incredibly strong record of quality video games that any game studio would have been justifiably proud of.

imweasel09 posted:

The guy they brought in who fixed a bunch of the problems with D3 loot tweeted about it. Apparently they genuinely didn't balance around the ah, they just flat out balanced really badly and then when the AH got wallpapered over the top of the bad drops it made it seem like the only sane option because they hosed it up so bad.

Okay but that then begs the question that if these were two completely separate issues, why did they not adjust drop rates in any real way until after the AH was shut down? It was hardly an unknown or mysterious issue, people were screaming at them about it from all angles from virtually the moment people hit endgame.

Kanos fucked around with this message at 19:34 on May 18, 2022

A Buttery Pastry
Sep 4, 2011

Delicious and Informative!
:3:

Kanos posted:

I understood that. My point is that the Warcraft games and Starcraft(which were made by Blizzard inhouse) were equally as good and important as Diablo(which was the franchise made by North). Even if the Diablo franchise did not exist, Blizzard still had an incredibly strong record of quality video games that any game studio would have been justifiably proud of.
But not as strong.

Eej
Jun 17, 2007

HEAVYARMS
I see we've moved onto the stage of "making poo poo up"

Bust Rodd
Oct 21, 2008

by VideoGames

Kanos posted:

Okay but that then begs the question that if these were two completely separate issues, why did they not adjust drop rates in any real way until after the AH was shut down? It was hardly an unknown or mysterious issue, people were screaming at them about it from all angles from virtually the moment people hit endgame.

Because the game was in a really bad place and the person in charge actively didn’t understand what the game was supposed to be or what the fans wanted and it wasn’t until he was literally replaced with the dude who managed the incredible console port that the game began to improve. because he and his team were like “ok what if the loot in the console port was good and made sense” and then there was this hilarious time period where Diablo 3 (PC) was unplayable dogshit and Diablo 3 (Console) was the best in class ARPG. It really can be blamed largely on the original D3 Director just being loving terrible at his job.

Analytic Engine
May 18, 2009

not the analytical engine

A Buttery Pastry posted:

But not as strong.

lol gently caress off, people like different genres

Vegetable
Oct 22, 2010

A Buttery Pastry posted:

But not as strong.
What are you getting out of this pedantry

Magmarashi
May 20, 2009





Vegetable posted:

What are you getting out of this pedantry

I wonder this so often across many different websites, honestly

A Buttery Pastry
Sep 4, 2011

Delicious and Informative!
:3:

Analytic Engine posted:

lol gently caress off, people like different genres
?? Even if you prefer the -craft games, the two Diablos clearly added to the reputation of Blizzard?

funkymonks
Aug 31, 2004

Pillbug

Kanos posted:

Do you have a source or is this just faith in the idea that Blizzard did not have dollar signs in their eyes about the RMAH? Because "oops we made drop rates complete dog poo poo and the game is borderline unplayable" and "now you can bypass the grind and buy items directly for real money(of which blizzard receives a cut)" being completely independent of each other is very suspiciously coincidental, especially considering it would have been very easy for them to buff the hell out of drop rates to partially address the issue, but they did not until they removed the RMAH - a move that was spurred primarily by the fact that the thing was putting Blizzard in a weird place wrt legal liability.

Drop rates didn’t feel any different from Diablo 2 which also had punitively terrible drop rates. Of course you could get around that by duping and cheating.

Bust Rodd
Oct 21, 2008

by VideoGames
For all intents & purposes, Blizzard is responsible for Diablo, StarCraft, and Warcraft, and splitting hairs over that doesn’t change how literally everyone on Earth perceives them

tracecomplete
Feb 26, 2017

funkymonks posted:

Drop rates didn’t feel any different from Diablo 2 which also had punitively terrible drop rates. Of course you could get around that by duping and cheating.

Godly Plate of the Whale (and a character editor) are why Diablo 1 remains the superior game

Strategic Tea
Sep 1, 2012

busalover posted:

Outlast and won how? He's walking away with a fat bonus, that Twitter user probably not.

Don't you know the best revenge is living well, leaving one's tormentor to cheerfully abuse 5-10 thousand more people before they expire from old age?

Dick Burglar
Mar 6, 2006
girl power, bitch

#resist

Clarste
Apr 15, 2013

Just how many mistakes have you suffered on the way here?

An uncountable number, to be sure.

Bust Rodd posted:

Because the game was in a really bad place and the person in charge actively didn’t understand what the game was supposed to be or what the fans wanted and it wasn’t until he was literally replaced with the dude who managed the incredible console port that the game began to improve. because he and his team were like “ok what if the loot in the console port was good and made sense” and then there was this hilarious time period where Diablo 3 (PC) was unplayable dogshit and Diablo 3 (Console) was the best in class ARPG. It really can be blamed largely on the original D3 Director just being loving terrible at his job.

Fair enough, my original point was that you can't blame all its problems on the AH which I guess you agree with. I am 100% willing to believe that the director had no idea what he was doing.

That said, I do think the RMAH was part of a general shift in Blizzard's monetization philosophy where they tried to turn all their games into a steady source of revenue instead of just one-time purchases. They were sick and tired of everyone continuing to play Starcraft and Diablo 2 for years without cutting them a check, so they added what they clearly hoped would be a long tail to Diablo 3 (RMAH) and Starcraft 2 (Arcade or whatever) and OWL and all that, all of which blew up in their faces because they are dumb I guess.

30.5 Days
Nov 19, 2006
I'm not even sure arcade was their plan. If it was, they really hosed it up bad. The sc2 map editor didn't have enough information to use properly (I remember that demo where they kitbashed a new creature by strapping a bunch of buildings to the back of a giant ultralisk or something and I couldn't figure out how the gently caress that even worked when WoL came out) and they made, as far as I could tell, zero improvements to either functionality or documentation after release. I know some people made some half decent things in it, it certainly wasn't impossible at all, but they just didn't put the level of work into it that you would expect from something that was supposed to carry their revenue for a decade.

Herstory Begins Now
Aug 5, 2003
SOME REALLY TEDIOUS DUMB SHIT THAT SUCKS ASS TO READ ->>

Bust Rodd posted:

Yeah I’ve been a lifelong Blizzard game-enjoyer and they have basically been beefing every single release besides the first few WoW expansions pretty much the whole time. Like, Brood Wars was the last time I think everyone felt 100% confident in their products.

In their defense I don’t think anyone at the time really understood what having the cash Auction house would do to the game, and I think maybe it wouldn’t have taken them 5-10 years to get the game where it is now if they’d had that foresight, but Diablo 3 as it stands today is the game that every other loot based game in the world is still cribbing notes from, so the Loot 2.0 teams really deserves some credit for revolutionizing the genre

What? no one in the arpg genre is cribbing jack poo poo from diablo 3 my dude. It's fun to play for a weekend every couple of years, but it's drat near universally considered a backwards step in ARPG evolution. D2 is the one that is still turning up in every loot-based game

E: maybe wolcen took some inspiration from d3 actually

FishMcCool posted:

Do you mean RMT? Because otherwise I would argue that the player market is a tremendous success and a key part of Warframe's success for example. There's enough premium currency being bought to flow around that it allows anyone to 1) earn some from trade and gain access to store items and 2) circumvent the most aggravating sequences of bad RNG luck by buying off the item from a player instead.

Yeah it's this, people go completely insane over in-game economies, for better or for worse (and mostly better if they aren't too stupidly put together).

Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 05:28 on May 19, 2022

Bust Rodd
Oct 21, 2008

by VideoGames
All of the ARPG games that I play (Destiny, Outriders, Borderlands, Division) definitely feel closer to Diablo 3 than to Diablo 2 in terms of loot progression and being able to target/craft the thing you actually want for the build you have. Diablo 2 was just a 100% completely random free for all that gave the player extremely limited agency if they played Solo-Self and didn’t have heaps of d3.forums gold. I don’t play Torchlight/PoE/Lost Ark so maybe those games are more like D2.

Herstory Begins Now
Aug 5, 2003
SOME REALLY TEDIOUS DUMB SHIT THAT SUCKS ASS TO READ ->>
You know that borderlands actually predates diablo 3 by several years? Destiny has pretty much self-developed their loot system from the ground up and division was basically just a mishmash of industry standard stuff by the time it was made afaik. never played outriders, can't speak to that. Really those are all self-developed in basically every significant way and there's very little to tie back to a specific game as the origin.

Ironically for how little the game persisted, dungeon siege was a pretty outsized influence on where arpg/looter itemization went in the early 2000s and then borderlands probably did the next turning of the wheel. Torchlight also bridged some stuff, though idk how much anyone would acknowledge torchlight influencing their game design lol

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Herstory Begins Now posted:

You know that borderlands actually predates diablo 3 by several years? Destiny has pretty much self-developed their loot system from the ground up and division was basically just a mishmash of industry standard stuff by the time it was made afaik. never played outriders, can't speak to that. Really those are all self-developed in basically every significant way and there's very little to tie back to a specific game as the origin.

Ironically for how little the game persisted, dungeon siege was a pretty outsized influence on where arpg/looter itemization went in the early 2000s and then borderlands probably did the next turning of the wheel. Torchlight also bridged some stuff, though idk how much anyone would acknowledge torchlight influencing their game design lol

Dungeon Siege is one of the games in this genre I have never played and I don't know what came from it. What was influential about its itemization?

Fruits of the sea
Dec 1, 2010

Nobody has taken Torchlight’s only innovative idea - autoselling/sending your loot back to town.

kirbysuperstar
Nov 11, 2012

Let the fools who stand before us be destroyed by the power you and I possess.

Fruits of the sea posted:

Nobody has taken Torchlight’s only innovative idea - autoselling/sending your loot back to town.

Didn't that come from the first Fate game?

Come to think of it I'm fairly sure both Lost Ark and TOR let you do that too.

Arzachel
May 12, 2012

kirbysuperstar posted:

Didn't that come from the first Fate game?

Come to think of it I'm fairly sure both Lost Ark and TOR let you do that too.

Yeah, Fate's lead Travis Baldree was one of the Torchlight devs.

Ursine Catastrophe
Nov 9, 2009

It's a lovely morning in the void and you are a horrible lady-in-waiting.



don't ask how i know

Dinosaur Gum

Fruits of the sea posted:

Nobody has taken Torchlight’s only innovative idea - autoselling/sending your loot back to town.

That always felt like a weird half-measure "fix", to be honest, like they wanted it gone but couldn't commit to pulling the trigger for real. If stopping what you're doing to deal with limited bag space choked with vendor trash is an issue, there should either be less useless vendor trash or more bag space, not "I interrupted what I was doing to screw with my inventory next to my dog" instead of "I interrupted what I was doing to screw with my inventory after warping to town".

Shooting Blanks
Jun 6, 2007

Real bullets mess up how cool this thing looks.

-Blade



Ursine Catastrophe posted:

That always felt like a weird half-measure "fix", to be honest, like they wanted it gone but couldn't commit to pulling the trigger for real. If stopping what you're doing to deal with limited bag space choked with vendor trash is an issue, there should either be less useless vendor trash or more bag space, not "I interrupted what I was doing to screw with my inventory next to my dog" instead of "I interrupted what I was doing to screw with my inventory after warping to town".

It's been a long time since I've played Torchlight, but wasn't loot shared across characters? Ostensibly you could find excellent loot for a different character that you wanted to save, sending it back freed up inventory space. It also gave your pet something to do.

Bust Rodd
Oct 21, 2008

by VideoGames

Herstory Begins Now posted:

You know that borderlands actually predates diablo 3 by several years? Destiny has pretty much self-developed their loot system from the ground up and division was basically just a mishmash of industry standard stuff by the time it was made afaik. never played outriders, can't speak to that. Really those are all self-developed in basically every significant way and there's very little to tie back to a specific game as the origin.

Outriders is basically just Diablo 3 but a 3rd person shooter, the loot system is identical. Destiny’s loot system has been completely overhauled multiple times in the last 8 years and every step it takes closer to smart loot and loot 2.0 style itemization and stat distribution takes it closer to god’s light. The “mishmash of industry standards” that the Division is composed of begs the question “well what ARE the industry standards of an ARPG looter” and surprise! one of those industry standards is D3.

I dunno, it has always seemed to me that Diablo 3 is the game all of these games have to be compared to, because it’s the most visible, mainstream loot franchise. Diablo 3 is 10 years old and has sold 30 million copies, it’s literally one of the most bought video games of all time, and every game we’ve discussed has an endless parade of “how is X like Diablo?” articles because that has always been the industry’s baseline. Maybe that’s not how isometric ARPGs look at it but Destiny devs and Outriders and Division devs for sure all look at and think about Diablo because they know that’s the benchmark for distributing loot in a loot game.

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Herstory Begins Now
Aug 5, 2003
SOME REALLY TEDIOUS DUMB SHIT THAT SUCKS ASS TO READ ->>
You're conflating best known with bench mark.

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