Playing Diablo 2 by yourself was boring. Playing Diablo 3 by yourself is boring. Not exactly news to me. I'll always get more mileage out of these games when I'm playing with friends.
For what it's worth, I'm level 38 in nightmare act 2 and the game is still really fun to me.
Playing Diablo 2 by yourself was boring. Playing Diablo 3 by yourself is boring. Not exactly news to me. I'll always get more mileage out of these games when I'm playing with friends.
For what it's worth, I'm level 38 in nightmare act 2 and the game is still really fun to me.
I thought Diablo 2 single player was fantastic and the most addicting game of all time. I just resent that the Auction House has made loot drops (one or the allures of the franchise) largely pointless.
I thought Diablo 2 single player was fantastic and the most addicting game of all time. I just resent that the Auction House has made loot drops (one or the allures of the franchise) largely pointless.
i got an answer for that, don't use the auction house
i got an answer for that, don't use the auction house
The drops are tuned so that use of the AH provides the same access to drops that would have occurred by a typical D2 player. By not using the AH, you are seriously hampering your ability to play the game in the way it was tuned.
Not saying it is impossible, but it adds a ton more farming, which is not the fun part of the game as far as I am concerned.
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The drops are tuned so that use of the AH provides the same access to drops that would have occurred by a typical D2 player. By not using the AH, you are seriously hampering your ability to play the game in the way it was tuned.
Not saying it is impossible, but it adds a ton more farming, which is not the fun part of the game as far as I am concerned.
This was from the Reddit Q&A a week ago:
Quote:
Q:You’ve been quoted as saying that Diablo III loot is balanced around the existence of the Auction House. Could you clarify what you mean by that? Many people seem to assume that means there is “less” or “poorer” loot being dropped on an individual basis because we’re expected to get our actual upgrades from the Auction House. I read it more as the existence of the Auction House allows a much wider variety of loot affixes. If a person had to rely on only their own drops or ad hoc trading, the game would have to roll most items with +Primary Stat and +Vitality/Resist. With the Auction House in play, the game can roll literally millions of crazy stat combinations, because even if you only get “crazy” drops, you can still use the Auction House for the hard-to-upgrade slots. Thoughts?
A: I’m sorry, I don’t remember saying that and if I did then I was drunk and/or wrong. We tuned and balanced the game without the auction house, as there weren’t enough people internally using it to test it against gameplay, so we didn’t design anything for it.
Expanded Answer: The auction house has absolutely no effect on drop rates. There are conspiracy theories and misunderstandings but I do want to re-iterate, the is NO interaction whatsoever. Bashiok mentioned earlier that we took the AH into account, so let me expand a little bit on that. The drop rates were tuned for a player who would never use the Auction House. For the majority of internal development we didn’t have an Auction House, we all played using our own drops only. I’ve personally leveled multiple characters from 1 to 60 internally before the game came out using only drops that I found – we all did.
When we say we “took the AH into account” that means it’s one of many factors. ie. some players will choose to play without trading, some players would play in a group of 4 where they share drops among each other, and some (as it turns out, many) players would use the AH.
Three weeks after launch player’s gear is much higher than what we were expecting. When I killed the Butcher on Inferno for the first time I was using a weapon with 492 DPS. There are also certain passives which are much more powerful than they were during internal development. One With Everything, for example, was basically never used internally because we didn’t have an auction House. With the auction house, it feels like a mandatory passive. In retrospect we should have seen it coming. In the game’s current state though, it’s a powerful Monk ability that gives Monks a big survivability boost and has some interesting (some would argue fun, others would argue negative) effects on gearing.
I consider playing without the Auction House to be a very fun way to play the game. I’m personally planning on rolling some new characters that I’ll set aside to be “no-AH/no-twink” characters. Much like in D2 when I would make a new character with a friend and we’d agree with each other not to twink our characters out.
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The drops are tuned so that use of the AH provides the same access to drops that would have occurred by a typical D2 player. By not using the AH, you are seriously hampering your ability to play the game in the way it was tuned.
Not saying it is impossible, but it adds a ton more farming, which is not the fun part of the game as far as I am concerned.
So you are saying you are pretty much being compelled to use the AH, whether you want to or not.
Edit: I see this is incorrect - Blizz did not account for the AH
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Last edited by Bobblehead; 06-13-2012 at 02:47 PM.
So you are saying you are pretty much being compelled to use the AH, whether you want to or not.
Edit: I see this is incorrect - Blizz did not account for the AH
Yet many that have gone deep into the heavy difficulty levels claim they cannot get the loot through drops that is available in the Auction House. If the drop rates were truly tuned for people that would never use the Auction House wouldn't that essentially minimize the purpose of the Auction House for everyone except people that don't play deep into the game/levels? It's pretty obvious that they aren't coming clean here if you actually take a look at the items available at the auction house compared to what you have come across.
I think it's mostly a case of people expecting to beat things within a couple of hours, and then crying foul when they get stuck. It's entirely possible to farm the gear necessary to beat Act 2 Inferno from Act 1, and Act 3 Inferno from Act 2 and so on. It seems like people expect to kill the butcher 3 or 4 times and be geared enough to go destroy Act 2.
This isn't really different than Diablo 2. I remember when they buffed Hell in 1.09 or 1.10 (can't remember too much detail clearly) you would have to start by farming NM Meph until you had good enough gear to farm Hell Meph. After that you would farm Hell Meph for weeks or more likely months before you were geared enough to farm Baal in a reasonable amount of time and effort.
Yet many that have gone deep into the heavy difficulty levels claim they cannot get the loot through drops that is available in the Auction House. If the drop rates were truly tuned for people that would never use the Auction House wouldn't that essentially minimize the purpose of the Auction House for everyone except people that don't play deep into the game/levels? It's pretty obvious that they aren't coming clean here if you actually take a look at the items available at the auction house compared to what you have come across.
This is ridiculous to claim. It took months of farming in Diablo 2 to get an ideal set of gear. I never got some stuff i spent huge amounts of time farming for.
To expect ideal drops while leveling and then a short time into inferno is ridiculous. Rose colored glasses must help though I guess.
Yet many that have gone deep into the heavy difficulty levels claim they cannot get the loot through drops that is available in the Auction House.
Well the loot that's in the AH came from drops, so that can't be true.
It's just a question of how much effort is required to get the drops.
They did talk about drop rates and what kind of loot drops when, and that they were going to make it easier (i.e. so you have a better chance of getting gear for Act 2 from Act 1).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Erick Estrada
If the drop rates were truly tuned for people that would never use the Auction House wouldn't that essentially minimize the purpose of the Auction House for everyone except people that don't play deep into the game/levels?
The drop rates were tuned before they had the AH internally. The AH lets you shortcut farming basically.. rather than having to go through 100 rare drops to get the one that you need, you can buy it from someone else who happened to get it. It's like having a bunch of other people farming for you as well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Erick Estrada
It's pretty obvious that they aren't coming clean here if you actually take a look at the items available at the auction house compared to what you have come across.
That's not a reasonable way to gauge it since what you come across through playing is a minuscule sample size. Lets say you get 20 rares per hour playing, and each rare has a small chance of being excellent (because each drop has random attributes within the range for that level), at the top of its range. So you as a player might only see one rare that would be truly exceptional and useful to you per 10 or more hours of game play.
Meanwhile there are millions of other players putting in tens of millions of hours of game play at the same time, so there's going to be millions of other exceptional items found during that same period, and since drops aren't tuned for your class or build, that means most of those are going to go up on the AH.
The updates they've given in the blog about future updates talk about how the drops are tuned currently and how they're changing them.
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Yeah, that staff should never go anywhere. Can't sell, can't drop. I used to keep it in stash until I realized that, and now keep it on me so I never have to worry about having it or not.
Not sure what I did to lose it to be honest.
I have a habit of dragging white items out of my inventory to make room for magic items so I assume I dropped it since it is unsellable.
In any case, about 3 hours and 150k are gone because I wasn't paying attention.
Was also thinking... the AH really did kill this game. In 60+ hours of play time, I have had exactly 1 legendary drop for me (useful for a level 40 character). No set pieces have dropped at all. Just randomized blues and yellows... Really deflating to realize that I'll never loot anything I want to actually use - it all just gets sold to get gold to buy useful stuff. Why would I ever want to farm gold...?
D2 you actually had a decent chance at looting stuff you'd use. Halfway through nightmare you would have had a few sets and uniques drop at least.
The difference between D2 and D3 is that in D2 you werent so dependent on your gear. I finished the game on hell with crap gear, when I found an upgrade it was usually marginally better than what I had and you know what, I appreciated those minor upgrades. It was a nice linear progression. Yes it took long to get decent gear (impossible for me to get top gear) but you were able to play with what you found.
With gear you find in D3 you are effed if you play solo. You can't kite mobs while doing virtually no damage to them. Every few quests you need to go to AH and double your damage to progress. Your progress in the game doesn't depend on how well you play, it depends on how you can troll AH, filter stats and instabuy before someone else snaps what you need.
I had an urge last night to built a set of indestructable armor, to do death runs to get through parts of Act 2 that I am just getting too frustrated with.
I did get some help from Blunt and Aegypictus that might make it pointless in the end, but I am going to follow through with it anyway just to see how good I can make it. Not going to pay more than 20k for anything, except maybe a weapon. I am hoping to get most pieces for under 10k each.
Here are my initial stats (with Sharpshooter, 29k dps without))
Spoiler!
Here are my purchases, total about 110k gold:
Spoiler!
Top one is weapon, for 11.5k. 653 dps, 134 dex + socket.
Couldn't find a belt, rings or amulet so they are the same for both sets.
Here is after (22k dps without SS):
Spoiler!
Obviously a bit hit in DPS, but was surprised that dex was as good as it was afterward, when I paid virtually no attention to how much dex was on each item, just that it had some dex. The indestructible set only has cheap gems (square and flawless square), where as my normal set has all Perfect or Star, so that brings the real comparison a little closer.
I don't really think that is enough to function at all really in Inferno act 2 though, as the DPS is with sharpshooter, so just initial burst only. Still might be entertaining to use and not worry about costs so much.
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Rathji, you know those scorpions and tiny snakes in Act 2 that you can walk over and they go "squish"?
LOL, that is what those builds look like! Nice DPS, don't get me wrong. Way higher than I have (32K with my Wizards Familiar) but damn, next to no resistances, super low vitality, armour... wouldn't you die if you tripped over a rock?
I made it through the wall of Act 2, more or less... just working on Belial. Almost had him first try but nada. Couldn't even come close again afterwards.
BTW, for those of you that take any items you don't want and salvage them at the blacksmith, if you are not actually crafting (and there really isn't a reason to cost wise) you can't sell them for anywhere close to what you can just sell the item itself for at a vendor. Case in point, the Hell yellow Hoofs are selling for ~50 gold each. I have never seen ANY yellow item that would sell for less than that at the vendors.
I picked up 5000 Hoofs today just because they are so ridiculously low priced.
Rathji, you know those scorpions and tiny snakes in Act 2 that you can walk over and they go "squish"?
LOL, that is what those builds look like! Nice DPS, don't get me wrong. Way higher than I have (32K with my Wizards Familiar) but damn, next to no resistances, super low vitality... wouldn't you die if you tripped over a rock?
I made it through the wall of Act 2, more or less... just working on Belial. Almost had him first try but nada. Couldn't even come close again afterwards.
Pretty much, it is a new plan since even with putting a ton of money into everything, I was not much further ahead as far as survivability. If I could find a good weapon (crossbow) with both a crit damage bonus and an open socket, that damage would go WAY up as it would right now I am just sporting my 70% gem in a plain bow and just using a crossbow would give me an extra 50% crit damage bonus, on top of the gem and other item stats..
Also, that DPS isn't 'real', Sharpshooter (SS) gives you +3% crit hit chance every second you don't hit an enemy, so after about 25 seconds you max out at 100%, giving you crits every shot you take before 1 second following the first hit on an enemy. That might sound confusing and almost pointless, but the real bonus of it is that with a couple DH skills you can set a couple traps/caltrops and easily fire 4-6 slow moving piercing shots that each can hit each target 2-4 times depending on its size. So if you get 5 shots that hit azmoden 4 times each, thats the equiv of 20 hits that automatically crit. Since the build is focused on that, you stack crit damage as much as possible and you rip apart most groups etc and put a big dent into some elites and bosses.
Quote:
BTW, for those of you that take any items you don't want and salvage them at the blacksmith, if you are not actually crafting (and there really isn't a reason to cost wise) you can't sell them for anywhere close to what you can just sell the item itself for at a vendor. Case in point, the Hell yellow Hoofs are selling for ~50 gold each. I have never seen ANY yellow item that would sell for less than that at the vendors.
I picked up 5000 Hoofs today just because they are so ridiculously low priced.
This is true for all items that do not produce Inferno crafting materials (level 60) as they salvage for items worth about 1k for magic, or 3k for rare, or 20k+ for fiery brimstone.
For me, everything that is not 60 goes to vendor (unless it is good enough for AH).
I am not crafting anything currently, but if anyone needs a Exalted Phantom Bow w/ 5 properties crafted, I can do it. Results are not worth it for now, until gold cost goes WAY down. Currently it takes : 41 Essences, 8 tears and 12 tomes, + 135k in gold. Total value at AH is about 200k gold.
Last bow I made was 600dps.
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