Diablo III now significantly worse!

[kitten]

Aug 1, 2011 13:58:23 GMT -5 Warchief Onyx said:

I've seen a number of f2p MMO's that use microtransactions be not only successful but have legitimately good economies.

How many of them do you know where a player can purchase an item from another player using actual money? I've (shamefully!) played Maple Story on and off for years, and although the economy was definitely rocky before, after implementing the shop where you can buy items from other players for cash, the economy was completely and irreversibly sent to fucking hell. Finding and item you wanted to buy with in-game currency made you wander from hundreds of vendor's stalls, but you could just enter a convenient search for an item you could buy from someone with real money (who wants to bet it'll be similar in Diablo 3, where buying an item from someone for in-game currency is near-impossible while buying for real money is incredibly simple and quick?). While gold farmers had upset the economy before, the addition of this new feature completely destroyed value of certain items and made it damn near impossible to enjoy the game without depositing significant amounts of real money into things.

I understand that Diablo 2's economy was apparently fucked up, but the way to fix it is absolutely, positively not to add a real money trading system. Doing this suggests they're going to build the game in such a way that makes the most profit out of this system, which is going to gimp the game for people who don't use it. They're intentionally sabotaging what could otherwise have been a game tuned to be balanced so that they can make more money off of it, and this is a ridiculously insidious way of turning a profit for the game that could set a very dangerous precedent. This kinda shit ruins games, and there's a lot of proof of it doing so. PC gaming is already pretty fucked up by draconian DRM and microtransactions, watching it get even worse is just upsetting, especially for when it starts spreading beyond PC.

Feynman is really on the right side in this argument, and I'm surprised that several of you on here are complacent with what they're doing with this game.

[chucat]

Your entire argument is built on the assumption that Blizzard will be able to create a decent, functioning economy using gold in a game like Diablo 2.

If they can, then there's no reason for the money shop to exist, because there's already a form of currency in the game already. Blizzard makes no further money than sales of their game, players get their insulated player driven economy (ps you can still buy gold because you can always buy gold)

If they can't, then you'll be back to JSP, then the entire thing boils down to where do you want the Stone of Jordan currency conversion to take place: Legitimate first party website where you know any payment errors will be dealt with by a company that has one of the best customer service track records, or a third party website that's like "Guys please post when you make a deal so we can bring someone to watch you really carefully and be the middleman."?

In the first case you don't need a money shop in the second case you do because I am not going back to Bartertown.

[Ike]

Trading 30 SOJ for Zod Rune please pm.

[chucat]

Way to solve national debt crisis:

Obama finds a Zod Rune and sells it for real money.

[Ike]

Obama appoints a group of highly trained fatasses to grind 'round the clock.

[Super Orbus]

That sounds really wrong.

[Shinigami]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBrESZJlNvQ&feature=feedu

Total Biscuit gives his thoughts.

[Feynman]

I rather like this Total Biscuit fellow.

[Weasel]

I'm not sure if I hate the online-only singleplayer or the real-money auction houses more, but either way, I'm basically guaranteed to never, ever buy a copy of this game. I'd rather play through Titan Quest or Borderlands again.

[Feynman]

Don't forget that Torchlight 2 is on it's way, and Grim Dawn is in the pipeline as well!

There are plenty of quality alternatives if you want to play a hack 'n' slash lootfest that don't involve supporting one of the most transparently sinister schemes the gaming world has ever seen.

[kyouki]

Didn't care much for the art design in the first place- looks more like World of Warcraft than Diablo. Internet connection required for offline play is a deal-breaker for me.

[Super Orbus]

I'm keeping my eye on Torchlight 2 as well.

[Deleted]

All of these things have very little bearing on how I'll be approaching Diablo III, so I'm not as bothered as most. Granted, my ISP will probably choose launch week as the time to have a random outage or kill my modem, but it's not like I don't have other stuff to play.

[akumajobelmont]

I've gotta agree with feynman and the rest... this stinks. I don't think I'd EVER get to the point where an item in-game is worth me paying real bucks for. Especially if I have to be always connected to use the bloody thing. I've never understood RMT in games. DLC, yeah I get to a certain extent, but dropping actual dosh on a virtual piece of armour... pffft.

I play games to escape from things like the real-world 'economy' and all that other bullshit...

Can't wait for Torchlight 2.

(edited for typo)

[Super Orbus]

Well, Activision is all about monetizing their properties as much as possible. If we assume that they're going to try to add some kind of secondary revenue stream to the game, whatever we may think about it, which kind would you rather have? Some sort of micropayment system, or a subscription fee? At least with the micropayment system you do have the option not to pay and still play the game.

I don't like it either, and I think Feynman's concerns about implementing legitimized RMT destroying the economy are quite valid. I'd rather they just had a real money shop where people could buy funny hats or whatever.

But they could be charging a subscription fee, and I'm pretty sure people would pay it.