Diablo III

[Decker]

As long as there are no "Cash ONLY" items, I'm fine with a cash auction house along with a in-game gold auction house.

[faranim]

The interview posted on the previous page seems to indicate that Blizzard wants the auction house and economy to be almost entirely player driven. If the players favor the Real-Money AH, then that will be the place to go.

I believe the system will have some sort of e-Currency, so you could still use the Real-Money AH after you manage to sell some items on it and generate a balance, it will just take longer than the player who dumps $50 into his initial balance.

[rigwarl]

I don't see how the cash auction house is worse than people selling D2 items on Ebay.

[Amnesiasoft]

I don't see how the cash auction house is worse than people selling D2 items on Ebay.

Well, Blizzard charges you a flat fee to list the item.
Then they take a cut out of the price you sell it for
Then they take a cut for cashing out
Then their third party payment system takes a cut for cashing out.

I get that they want to make money off it, but that's just a tad... excessive. I get the feeling the only one that will be making money in the auction house is Blizzard.

[mosc]

Man, there are going to be people with serious incomes from D3 if they do that, which could be a huge financial boon for blizzard. I commend them for trying to deal with item-buying issues in a new way. I mean, poker sites make huge money and their product is essentially keeping transactions secure and making sure rules are followed. People will happily give blizzard their cut for that.

My concerns with the system would be it's effects on the ingame currency. With real dollars coming into the system, players would likely value items based on how easy they are to "sell for real" rather than how useful they are in game. It also may make it difficult for players who do not want to spend "real money" on acquiring items to get what they want, no matter what happens ingame.

I think the ingame vs real money economies can be balanced by having a strong ingame gold currency. D2, for example, had a very weak gold currency. In other words I'm saying if they can keep a stable exchange rate between ingame gold and dollars than it could work very well for everyone. I think it would be easier to catch gold farmers as well. Players wouldn't want to buy from third party websites with easy access to supported stuff ingame and venders who were bringing in serious dollars would be easy to distinguish from your average player.

[psion]

Erm... both or just one? Stat points != Skill points. I knew stat points were going to be done automatically, which is probably better. I always found them annoying to deal with anyway, and required planning ahead or making stupid mistakes... won't be missed. Skill points on the other hand? If those are gone... (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

I thought both, but maybe they'll still have stat points.
Here's the section on skill points:

Spoiler:

In addition to the three new items and stash information, we were told that the Skill system has gotten a complete revamp. Instead of 7 active skills, we now only have 6. In addition, the traits system was removed and turned into a "passive skills" section on the skill window, cleaning up the UI quite a lot, and allowing us to choose Skills and "traits" (passive skills) all in one window. That in mind, we can also only have up to 3 passive skills at one time. However, we begin the game with only 2 active skills and no passives. The last four active skill slots can be unlocked at levels 6, 12, 18, and 24, and the three passive skill slots are unlocked at levels 10, 20, and 30. So by the time we complete Normal, you should have unlocked all of the possible skill slots. Now, skill and trait points were also removed. Once you reach a certain level, you unlock X skill and/or X passive that you can swap in and out as you see fit. Again though, you can only have 6 actives and 3 passives at any given time. The reasoning behind this is to remove the Diablo 2 style of thinking, where we save all of our points and dump them into better skills, once we hit the end game. Jay said that they found employees (in the alpha) dumping all their points into say, Magic Missiles, until they unlocked Arcane Orb. They would then respec, and dump all their points into Arcane Orb, until they unlocked the next tier skill. This system didn't really make much sense and allowing us to hot-swap skills/passives whenever we want gives us the ability to "test" the skills without worrying about wasting any points. With skill points gone, skills/traits will scale with your level/gear. For example, a skill like Bash will scale with your weapon damage, whereas something like Disintegrate will scale with level. Yes, big changes! I'm actually a really big fan of the revamping of the skill/trait system. As I said earlier, it really cleans up the UI by consolidating the system into just one window, and the ability to hotswap skills is awesome. It means that I will never have to respec, which in turn means I will never have to have more than one character for the class (unless I want a male/female).

[WarDaft]

I am actually quite looking very forward to the cash AH. The arbitrage opportunities given the average battle.net player will be absurd.

[EmptySet]

Erm... both or just one? Stat points != Skill points. I knew stat points were going to be done automatically, which is probably better. I always found them annoying to deal with anyway, and required planning ahead or making stupid mistakes... won't be missed. Skill points on the other hand? If those are gone... (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

I thought both, but maybe they'll still have stat points.

I'm pretty sure it was announced very early that stat points are gone. Their reasoning was that in DII everyone ended up with the same stat allocation anyway (enough strength and dex for equipment requirements and max block, everything else in vitality) so they might as well just do it automatically.

[Beardhammer]

I don't see how the cash auction house is worse than people selling D2 items on Ebay.

Well, Blizzard charges you a flat fee to list the item.
Then they take a cut out of the price you sell it for
Then they take a cut for cashing out
Then their third party payment system takes a cut for cashing out.

I get that they want to make money off it, but that's just a tad... excessive. I get the feeling the only one that will be making money in the auction house is Blizzard.

And players that decide to put their proceeds into their Bnet account instead of real-world cash. Notice that two of the four cuts apply only if you try to cash out - they don't apply if you have it set to go directly to your Bnet account.

Honestly, I like this kind of system. There's been mention of a leaked "Map Market" thing for SC2, and by just putting your proceeds directly into your account, you could sell excess crap in D3 to buy maps in SC2... or, if you play WoW, you could pretty easily pay your WoW subscription (and, who knows? Maybe even extra services) by selling D3 items. I like that idea, actually.

EDIT: Some extrapolation:

Let's say that, on a cash transaction, Blizzard takes a pure 60% cut, divided between the AH fees and cash transaction fees and whatever - 60% of the sale goes right to Blizzard. The other 40% goes into your Battle.net account, which can then be spent on other Battle.net-related things - subscriptions, maps, name changes, whatever.

Now, let's say the third-party provider (almost certainly gonna be PayPal, but we'll see I guess) takes an additional 20% if you choose to cash out. So that means Blizzard gets 60%, PayPal gets 20%, and you get 20%.

Now, figure an average item selling for $3.00 and Blizzard picks up $1.80 no matter what. If you go for the Battle.net account option, Blizzard technically gets all $3.00 of it - sure, it's "your" money, but it can ONLY be spent on Blizzard products and services, so realistically speaking, it's Blizzard's money and they're just letting you use it. Blizzard, in the end, gets 100% of the transaction if it's done via Battle.net account deposit. Hell, you'll probably be allowed to use the cash to buy other cash items from the AH, so Blizzard will still get well over their 60% cut since I'd imagine a lot of players will likely just do the Battle.net account option - I know I probably will.

If you choose the cash out route, Blizzard still gets their $1.60, PayPal gets $0.60, and the player only gets $0.60. I mean, hey, it's still sixty cents... but that's barely enough for a 32oz drink at a QT during the summer sale. Sell about 8 of those items and you could treat yourself to Taco Bell. So you can see that, even if they give players 20% of the cut (which, honestly, seems a bit generous to me), actually making money off of this system would pretty much be a no-go. I can make more money in a week donating plasma than I could make in a month selling items, unless items are going to sell for more than I expect them to, and if the player's cut is larger than I expect.

I imagine D3 cash items will end up functioning very similarly to, say, the prices on Magic cards. You might have a couple of game-breaking items that also qualify as bank-breaking items (before it was banned, I believe Jace, The Mind-Sculptor was worth something ridiculous like $80 apiece), but most items will probably end up being fairly cheap - after all, you're trying to convince people to shell out real money instead of in-game gold, and for most folks that crosses a pretty significant line. Drop 20,000 gold on Stone of Jordan 3.0, what the fuck ever. Drop $20 on that same item? Well, now you're speaking a different language; you can't pay rent with Diablo 3 gold. I'd be very surprised if the average item went for more than, say, $5 on the top end. Again, there will be exceptions, but I don't see costs even reaching double digits on average.

I really have to admire the business people at Blizzard for thinking this sort of thing up. It's a transparent way to make a lot of money without really doing anything but providing the framework, and it only gets better the more those players play your games. Say Blizzard starts making quality custom maps, along the lines of StarJeweled and the like, and sells them in a map market. You still have WoW - its subscription fees, special services, hell maybe even the special pets and mounts in the store - and before long you'll also see Titan and its related stuff popping up. That's a lot of things for players to spend money on, and Blizzard could end up making a pretty decent buck if they play it right, and without having to take the risk of a "free to play" approach.

[rigwarl]

If I play D3 anywhere nearly as much as I played D2, I'll almost certainly make back at least what I paid to buy D3. That's pretty good!

Regarding the percent cut, my guess is that it will be somewhere around 10% if you don't cashout, and an additional 10% of your cashout.

[ProZac]

I get the feeling the only one that will be making money in the auction house is Blizzard.

See, this is in no way Blizzard saying "look, a business opportunity!" They're in the business of producing games, not jobs.

[Chen]

I imagine the AH cut will be similar to WoWs which I believe is 20ish percent. This is pretty similar to real life auction house cuts as well. I wonder what the balance of items on each of the AH's will be. Will the cash AH have more items than the gold AH? Or vice versa. Either AH will be available to any players but transferring from one to another will result in an extra AH cut (i.e., wanting a sword thats on the RL one but only having gold, will require selling said gold and then buying the sword, thus entailing an extra AH cut for you when you sell the gold). Its very interesting though. As someone else said, if I play D3 anywhere near as much as D2 I will definitely make the money back I spent on the game, which is kind of nice. And maybe be able to make enough money to pick up the expansion when it inevitably comes out (or maybe the third SC expansion).

[mosc]

well, if there's no "cut" on the gold auction house and you can sell gold with some reasonable cut, then both auction houses are essentially the same as long as the exchange rate of gold to real dollars is essentially stable. It effectively wouldn't matter which auction house the item was listed in. Got no gold? You can buy gold so in reality you can spend real money in either place. Selling an item for ingame gold? You can simply sell the gold later for cash.

[Chen]

well, if there's no "cut" on the gold auction house and you can sell gold with some reasonable cut, then both auction houses are essentially the same as long as the exchange rate of gold to real dollars is essentially stable. It effectively wouldn't matter which auction house the item was listed in. Got no gold? You can buy gold so in reality you can spend real money in either place. Selling an item for ingame gold? You can simply sell the gold later for cash.

Yeah, though considering WoW has a cut on its AH I'd imagine there'd probably be one on the gold only AH as well. Its a gold sink in the same manner as selling items back to a vendor only nets a fraction of the item's actual cost. Even then though, as long as the cut is a simple percentage it'll be easy enough to determine where the "better" place to buy an item is. I'd imagine there'll very quickly be some sort of 3rd party app or website where you can quickly enter the average price of a gold piece and then determine what the actual exchange ratios are if you want to buy something on the real AH and you only have gold to use.

[Amnesiasoft]

If you choose the cash out route, Blizzard still gets their $1.60, PayPal gets $0.60, and the player only gets $0.60. I mean, hey, it's still sixty cents... but that's barely enough for a 32oz drink at a QT during the summer sale. Sell about 8 of those items and you could treat yourself to Taco Bell. So you can see that, even if they give players 20% of the cut (which, honestly, seems a bit generous to me), actually making money off of this system would pretty much be a no-go. I can make more money in a week donating plasma than I could make in a month selling items, unless items are going to sell for more than I expect them to, and if the player's cut is larger than I expect.

You forgot the flat fee to even list the item.

[rigwarl]

Knowing these types of games, I consider the flat fee pretty mandatory to prevent people from spamming a gazillion items with insanely high prices hoping someone will misclick it, which was common in WoW even though it DID charge a flat fee. Obviously cashouts are costly to Blizzard as well so that fee is also quite understandable. As for a successful auction holding a higher fee than a listing, this is pretty standard as well.

I mean, no one is forcing you to buy or sell stuff. If you're worried that other people who ARE willing to do so will have an advantage, well, this is no different than Diablo2, or WoW (brag: I sold my druid for $1000), or really any other game where doing so is remotely feasible. Again, compared to Diablo2, even if it only helps me make back 20 cents for each hour of playing, it's better than the 0 cents that Diablo2 offered, and that will probably end up translating to $20 total. Which is great!

Even considering all this, I've also heard that the best items will be soulbound, so people will just sell the best gear (along with the character) through Ebay or other means anyway.

[WarDaft]

I would be surprised if the real money cuts were any higher than the 3% Credit Cards charge retailers. Blizzard is best off in the long run if the economy becomes robust so that there are many transactions that they get a bit of money from, rather than relatively few transactions on which they gouge the player.

As far as how willing people will be to pay money for in-game stuff... surely everyone remembers the celestial steed?

[Decker]

$25, right?
There were vanity pets you could buy as well. $10 each I think.

[mosc]

It seems like if the currency is stable, you'd be better off trading ingame money to minimize financial transactions and then just selling gold for cash. Gold would be the easiest thing to sell for cash. Though I'm sure we'll have plenty of listings by newbie idiots asking for $10 minimum on an item worth 2 ingame gold translated to .02 cents real money or somesuch.

[Beardhammer]

If you choose the cash out route, Blizzard still gets their $1.60, PayPal gets $0.60, and the player only gets $0.60. I mean, hey, it's still sixty cents... but that's barely enough for a 32oz drink at a QT during the summer sale. Sell about 8 of those items and you could treat yourself to Taco Bell. So you can see that, even if they give players 20% of the cut (which, honestly, seems a bit generous to me), actually making money off of this system would pretty much be a no-go. I can make more money in a week donating plasma than I could make in a month selling items, unless items are going to sell for more than I expect them to, and if the player's cut is larger than I expect.

You forgot the flat fee to even list the item.

You're right. It can be lumped into the "Blizzard's cut" thing, but I did forget to mention it.

I get the feeling the only one that will be making money in the auction house is Blizzard.

See, this is in no way Blizzard saying "look, a business opportunity!" They're in the business of producing games, not jobs.

If you're producing games, there are job positions to be had. Each project requires programmers, artists, QA people, and plenty of grunts to do the scutwork. Blizzard runs more than one project at a time, and each project also needs support personnel - community managers, the people who answer the phone when you want to scream about something, the people who answer emails... lots of people, which means lots of jobs. AAA games have budgets that run well into the millions of dollars, and while I'm fairly certain Blizzard is definitely making profits from their games, it's still a substantial investment.

Then you also consider the cost of keeping WoW running... they want to add a map marketplace for SC2 and more Bnet 2.0 changes... Titan's probably only a year or two away by now... and you can see how having some extra income would come in handy. The more income they get, the more likely they are to be able to finance new projects, which means new job openings - or they can add on to existing projects, which could also mean new job openings.

[Decker]

I get the feeling the only one that will be making money in the auction house is Blizzard.

See, this is in no way Blizzard saying "look, a business opportunity!" They're in the business of producing games, not jobs.

If you're producing games, there are job positions to be had. Each project requires programmers, artists, QA people, and plenty of grunts to do the scutwork. Blizzard runs more than one project at a time, and each project also needs support personnel - community managers, the people who answer the phone when you want to scream about something, the people who answer emails... lots of people, which means lots of jobs. AAA games have budgets that run well into the millions of dollars, and while I'm fairly certain Blizzard is definitely making profits from their games, it's still a substantial investment.

Then you also consider the cost of keeping WoW running... they want to add a map marketplace for SC2 and more Bnet 2.0 changes... Titan's probably only a year or two away by now... and you can see how having some extra income would come in handy. The more income they get, the more likely they are to be able to finance new projects, which means new job openings - or they can add on to existing projects, which could also mean new job openings.

I'm pretty sure that they know make jobs when they develop games. It's just being said that they don't expect people to make a living off of this auction house thing.

Edited because it came off nastier than I intended.

[Beardhammer]

I get the feeling the only one that will be making money in the auction house is Blizzard.

See, this is in no way Blizzard saying "look, a business opportunity!" They're in the business of producing games, not jobs.

If you're producing games, there are job positions to be had. Each project requires programmers, artists, QA people, and plenty of grunts to do the scutwork. Blizzard runs more than one project at a time, and each project also needs support personnel - community managers, the people who answer the phone when you want to scream about something, the people who answer emails... lots of people, which means lots of jobs. AAA games have budgets that run well into the millions of dollars, and while I'm fairly certain Blizzard is definitely making profits from their games, it's still a substantial investment.

Then you also consider the cost of keeping WoW running... they want to add a map marketplace for SC2 and more Bnet 2.0 changes... Titan's probably only a year or two away by now... and you can see how having some extra income would come in handy. The more income they get, the more likely they are to be able to finance new projects, which means new job openings - or they can add on to existing projects, which could also mean new job openings.

I'm pretty sure that they know make jobs when they develop games. It's just being said that they don't expect people to make a living off of this auction house thing.

Edited because it came off nastier than I intended.

Yeah, you're right. It can be read that way, and I'm assuming that's how he meant it to be interpreted.

[SecondTalon]

Then why did... you....

ARGH

[Decker]

He was possibly admitting that he was wrong?

[Beardhammer]

Then why did... you....

ARGH

Because I didn't read it that way initially?

[Jesse]

Then why did... you....

ARGH

Because Beardhammer.

[Menacing Spike]

I will definitely make the money back I spent on the game, which is kind of nice.

I already won 60 bucks thanks to these news! That's also kind of nice.

[Faithful]

The worst part about this is that Blizzard is located in California and thus, Hellooooo internet taxes. Diablo 3 will actually show the second largest profit for the state of California, behind weed.

[Beardhammer]

The worst part about this is that Blizzard is located in California and thus, Hellooooo internet taxes. Diablo 3 will actually show the second largest profit for the state of California, behind weed.

Hah, watch Diablo III account for something like 30% of the state of California's gross income.

[Obby]

I keep flipping back and forth on whether or not I am going to buy this. I loved D2, it was my favorite game for a very long time, but now that Blizzardvision is actually saying "Hey, this is how long your leash is and if you want it longer, too bad because fuck you," it's really putting me off from this. I'm torn between my love of the series and the company I used to hold dear, and Activion's corrupting influence and greed. No single player without being connected to the internet (which is the only time I'd want to play SP anyway, when my internet was down), no mods, no skills, no stats... I can overlook the cash AH, because people will do that regardless of whether or not it's sponsored by Blizzard.

It just feels like it's going to be awesome, and a huge letdown, both at the same time.

[Intrigued]

I find most of the changes to be wholly awesome. Skill points just made you save up weirdly (ok, no spending skill points til level 30, then I will be totally awesome and can finally have spells... wtf?) and made you inflexible and super focused. With the new system you will still be focused, but you have the flexibility to switch to something else when you want/need to. Stat points were weird in the same way (ok, don't spend any points on energy because that'll be taken care of by items when you're level 99 anyway... ok, so for the first 50 levels I have huge mana problems? or I gimp myself and put points in then have no interest in bringing him to late game).

I think it'd be nice if there was offline single player, but honestly I don't think there's a foreseeable future where someone doesn't make an easy crack for that, and if you were modding anyway, not sure what the big deal there is. I also don't see myself actually wanting to play at many times when I wouldn't have internet. On the other hand, I also haven't really had much internet outage issues in the past. I mostly agree with the move towards less cheating and stuff even in non-ladder games. I guess I've gotten more used to the idea since I've been hooked on league of legends for a while, which is all online as well.

[Izawwlgood]

All of that would be solved by allowing respecs anyway, which I thought they said were going to be present.

[Decker]

I'm with the crowd that stats were pretty much pointless anyway, since there really was only one "right" stat setup for each class. I don't mind seeing that going. Skill points I'm not too broken up about either.

I think the only thing that has me annoyed is the "online only" thing. I can kind of see their reasoning, I just don't agree with it.

[Izawwlgood]

Yeah, out of curiosity, did none of you ever suffer the effects of forgetting that the Rogue/Amazon died very seductively, while playing on an airplane or other public space?

[Decker]

Since I usually play games in public places with headphones, no, not really.

[Intrigued]

Yeah, or by doing it the way they are saying now. They're both solutions, and I'm not going to say either one is the "right" one. I'm just counterpointing that there are people (me) who like the proposed changes better. At it's heart, I think diablo is about hack and slash more than RPG, and I personally think the previous stats and skills system made it more confusing and elitist than it was worth for the depth that was added.

I think the rune system they are adding will give more real customization than the stat/skill points gave before, and I think that's the goal - real customizations that make your character truly feel different, rather than just being slightly better or worse because of how optimal the build was. Also giant mega toads that eat enemies. I also really like the idea of only having to level up one class to be able to really see all their abilities. I understand that for some people that means less replayability, but to me I'd rather not have to grind through 30-40 levels at least to see how a sorc spamming blizzard is compared to one spamming meteors, and allowing that flexibility will probably mean more replayability to me.

They floated the idea of cheap and easy respecs, moved to respecs but not quite so cheap/easy, and then to this system. Nothing's rock solid at this point, but this system has been changing all the time, so it could easily change tomorrow.

Anyway, it's blizzard, so I have faith in them, they don't often fail me. The community on the other hand... that's a story for another time.

Also - almost lol'd at work about the amazon/rogue comment. Their deaths were super awkward.

[ProZac]

It doesn't seem like it's so much "skill points are going away" as it is "we're using a new system". You're still selecting abilities and passives to boost your character, it's just not organized in the same way. Unless I'm misunderstanding it.

Online only is a thing I understand why some are upset about but... it's not going to affect me. If I'm lacking internet, starting a new character on Diablo 3 isn't going to be on my list of things to do. Pretty much everything on my PC I have to be online to enjoy anyway, so lucky me I guess. My internet goes down, I'm not going to be "ARG! Why can't I play this offline?!" It's "ARG! I hate my ISP!" Those without internet have another issue.

[Obby]

I dunno. Maybe it's my hatred of Activision coming through in a subconscious manner, telling me I don't like these changes in an attempt to keep me from giving them my money.

Which, if I'm being honest, I'd really like to try to do (avoid giving them my money, I mean) but... Diablo. So, yeah. We'll see how it plays out come release day, I suppose.

[Intrigued]

Just make sure you get a crack set up BEFORE your internet goes out, and everyone should be all set.

As of the latest news, you unlock all abilities at the level they get unlocked, and then you have a subset of ability which are basically "equipped" that you can swap in and out, the details of that (do you have to be out of combat? in town? at a special place?) have not been revealed. As you level, you will open up 6 slots for active abilities and 3 passives.

This is a good read with some extra info on the process and thoughts behind it -
http://pc.ign.com/articles/118/1185753p1.html

[Gelsamel]

If the min/maxing is gone... Well I'll still play but eh, it doesn't sound like an improvement on D2.