Blizzard shutting down Real money Auction house

Mephisto_Helix said:
How is the AH tied to loot drop rates, serious question. Like for example in DDO, the rare loot is still as rare as a Heidi Klum drol, regardless of the AH or ASAH. Does the removal now in Diablo mean that drop rates get upped or something?
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The loot drops in Diablo 3 are tied to a global economy. The AH and the RMAH are tied to that global economy. So, when deciding what to drop (in terms of stat quality), Blizzard's servers will check to see what is floating around in the economy (and the AH and RMAH) and decides what stats to assign to your item drop based on what is already available. It does this so that the market does not become flooded with overly-powerful artifacts thereby devaluing the items in the AH and RMAH i.e. it keeps the economy balanced. This is not a problem if only a few players use the system, but everyone is flooding the market with highly-powered items so that they can make money to buy highly-powered items. This reduces the rate at which those highly powered items are dropped, making it more difficult to get good gear.

By removing the AH and RMAH, they are removing this balancing mechanism and the artificial adjustments to your loot drops. It means the loot drops are only dependent on your actions in the game and the level of monsters that you kill. This means that the statistical chance of getting good items is no longer based on what is on the AH or RMAH, but on basic statistics confined to the game that you are currently playing.

*Disclaimer: This is a simplistic interpretation of how I understand how the economy works. In reality, it is probably much more complicated than this, but I didn't study economics at university, sorry. I fully reserve the right to be wrong.
 
There is no way that the auction house economy at a given point in time affects what your drops are - obviously I don't have concrete proof of this, but I think it's crazy to think so. The loot design when the game first released seemed to be built around the fact that there'd be an auction house. You'd pick up loads and loads of garbage items and the only way to progress would be to sell these items in order to afford stuff that could actually allow you to progress.
 
Whether loot drops are directly tied to the current economy is debatable, but it's undeniable that the AH's existence had an effect on how the loot tables were set up.
 
Clive Woofer said:
Whether loot drops are directly tied to the current economy is debatable, but it's undeniable that the AH's existence had an effect on how the loot tables were set up.
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Indeed. If I compare the heaps and heaps of crap loot that I received in D3 to the heaps and heaps of loot that I receive in TL2 the difference is astronomical. I can play TL2 for an hour or two and get an upgrade or two. In D3 I played for days without getting any better items back when I still played it. It also sucked that in D3 I had to leave the loot there because my inventory was too full, at least in TL2 I have a pet that can constantly run to town and sell the extra loot for $$$.
 
Wyzak said:
Indeed. If I compare the heaps and heaps of crap loot that I received in D3 to the heaps and heaps of loot that I receive in TL2 the difference is astronomical. I can play TL2 for an hour or two and get an upgrade or two. In D3 I played for days without getting any better items back when I still played it. It also sucked that in D3 I had to leave the loot there because my inventory was too full, at least in TL2 I have a pet that can constantly run to town and sell the extra loot for $$$.
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Glad to see I am not the only one that found TL2 to be more fun than D3 esp when it comes to loot drops. Then again Blizz would never run a D3 workshop for mods so its more than just loot.
 
Namdrater said:
There is no way that the auction house economy at a given point in time affects what your drops are - obviously I don't have concrete proof of this, but I think it's crazy to think so. The loot design when the game first released seemed to be built around the fact that there'd be an auction house. You'd pick up loads and loads of garbage items and the only way to progress would be to sell these items in order to afford stuff that could actually allow you to progress.
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I still beleive that Blizzard puts some good items on there for us seeing as they never showed the seller on AH like with WoW so they must be hiding something.

99% of the loot is garbage when I farm so always wondered how perfect items get found unless my luck sucks.
 
Holy shit.

I read the first 3 pages and realized so many opinionated people that have barely played the game(or have no clue what is going on) and have no idea what's comming. (If the shoe fits and what not.)

Removing the AH is good and bad.
I am not a fan of the barter system for many reasons. One is that it takes time and is subject to shady people.
For hardcore players that AH was great because the economy did not inflate out of control due to the deaths.
Now the ladder system will most likely be the focus of the broader economy when it finally arrives.

Keep in mind that another reason the barter system worked in D2 is because unqiues had set stats. "Shaco for 2SoJ" was a set deal.
You knew what you give and get. But now loot attributes are random ranges. Gold will fall away as a currency and we will likely see high tier gems or the like take it's place. Meaning now you're trade spam will look like "160dx, 14%L 1Soc Crit mempo for [god knows what]"

For softcore it was over effecient and destroyed the option of rewards from farming.
Overall this will likely be a good change. We can also most likely chalk that date up as the date for Loot 2.0.
If anyone here has put many hours into both console and PC versions then you'll know what your in for.
It's a bit too "looty". Even by D2 standards. Hopefully the feedback from console will filter before the PC patch and we get a more balanced implementation.
 
GlacieredPyro said:
Holy shit.

I read the first 3 pages and realized so many opinionated people that have barely played the game(or have no clue what is going on) and have no idea what's comming. (If the shoe fits and what not.)

Removing the AH is good and bad.
I am not a fan of the barter system for many reasons. One is that it takes time and is subject to shady people.
For hardcore players that AH was great because the economy did not inflate out of control due to the deaths.
Now the ladder system will most likely be the focus of the broader economy when it finally arrives.

Keep in mind that another reason the barter system worked in D2 is because unqiues had set stats. "Shaco for 2SoJ" was a set deal.
You knew what you give and get. But now loot attributes are random ranges. Gold will fall away as a currency and we will likely see high tier gems or the like take it's place. Meaning now you're trade spam will look like "160dx, 14%L 1Soc Crit mempo for [god knows what]"

For softcore it was over effecient and destroyed the option of rewards from farming.
Overall this will likely be a good change. We can also most likely chalk that date up as the date for Loot 2.0.
If anyone here has put many hours into both console and PC versions then you'll know what your in for.
It's a bit too "looty". Even by D2 standards. Hopefully the feedback from console will filter before the PC patch and we get a more balanced implementation.
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Also will make trade scams more common since we can't use the AH to safely trade without problems :p
 
Clive Woofer said:
Whether loot drops are directly tied to the current economy is debatable, but it's undeniable that the AH's existence had an effect on how the loot tables were set up.
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Yes, I totally agree. If anyone played pre 1.03 and didn't use the AH. Trying to survive in inferno act2 was impossible. I did loads and loads of act1 butcher runs but the items were not even close to being good enough to survive any mobs in act 2.
 
Namdrater said:
Yes, I totally agree. If anyone played pre 1.03 and didn't use the AH. Trying to survive in inferno act2 was impossible. I did loads and loads of act1 butcher runs but the items were not even close to being good enough to survive any mobs in act 2.
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Played from the start here but was only casually playing so only got to hard before stopping until I could upgrade from the AH, since I could never find gear for my barbarian was always for hunter or monk :p.

Same thing happened when I started my monk I never saw any monk stuff was so rare and ended up buying from AH to progess and finish inferno.
 
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It should also be mentioned that the AH failed because:
1) Items have an infinite lifetime - no BoE or BoP restrictions like in WoW which removes item from the pool.
2) One auction house for everybody, instead of limiting the auction house to 10 or 15k players.
 
Wyzak said:
It should also be mentioned that the AH failed because:
1) Items have an infinite lifetime - no BoE or BoP restrictions like in WoW which removes item from the pool.
2) One auction house for everybody, instead of limiting the auction house to 10 or 15k players.
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Agree on the first point. Which is why HC worked, but do elaborate on the second. How would that work?
 
I wouldn't have minded the AH at all had it not affected loot drops the way it did. The fact that I basically had to use the AH was my main gripe with it. If the AH was an optional extra just for those interested in trading items, then fine, but it wasn't. Even people who had no interest in the AH inevitably would have to use it to get gear.

Contrary to popular belief, not everyone who plays games like D3 enjoys farming one path 50 times in a row for the infinitely small chance that we might get a good drop. That's not my idea of fun.
 
GlacieredPyro said:
Agree on the first point. Which is why HC worked, but do elaborate on the second. How would that work?
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I have no idea how they would make it work, but they would have to do something. To throw 8 million players onto a single auction house was bound to fail especially considering the first point. Every split they make would improve the experience.
 
Wyzak said:
I have no idea how they would make it work, but they would have to do something. To throw 8 million players onto a single auction house was bound to fail especially considering the first point. Every split they make would improve the experience.
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Quite right. It's an extremely tough conundrum.
I'm sure they threw some exceptional minds at the problem and were unable to come up with a solution that lived up to their standards which is why they decided to scrap it. I'm just very afraid that it'll end up like the console version in terms of drop rate.
 
StaggerLee said:
The loot drops in Diablo 3 are tied to a global economy. The AH and the RMAH are tied to that global economy. So, when deciding what to drop (in terms of stat quality), Blizzard's servers will check to see what is floating around in the economy (and the AH and RMAH) and decides what stats to assign to your item drop based on what is already available. It does this so that the market does not become flooded with overly-powerful artifacts thereby devaluing the items in the AH and RMAH i.e. it keeps the economy balanced. This is not a problem if only a few players use the system, but everyone is flooding the market with highly-powered items so that they can make money to buy highly-powered items. This reduces the rate at which those highly powered items are dropped, making it more difficult to get good gear.

By removing the AH and RMAH, they are removing this balancing mechanism and the artificial adjustments to your loot drops. It means the loot drops are only dependent on your actions in the game and the level of monsters that you kill. This means that the statistical chance of getting good items is no longer based on what is on the AH or RMAH, but on basic statistics confined to the game that you are currently playing.

*Disclaimer: This is a simplistic interpretation of how I understand how the economy works. In reality, it is probably much more complicated than this, but I didn't study economics at university, sorry. I fully reserve the right to be wrong.
Click to expand...

After some actual research, I have come across something that Bashiok said a while ago. What I said above is correct except for the extent to which it is done. I mentioned that Blizzard makes the corrections to your drops in order to preserve the balance of the economy, but Bashiok stated that the corrections are made to balance what you as a player can have, based on what you have access to, including the auction house. So, in principle, what I said is correct, but based on a smaller rather than a larger economy, but the AH is factored in, nonetheless. Here are Bashiok's quotes, I will include links once the Battle.net forums are back:

"What I said, and what is true, is that with far more players and an increased proliferation of item trade, we have to factor in how many items are being found by players and how quickly a player can gear up by 'sourcing' items from others through trade and the convenience of the gold auction house. "
 
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