Who all is in for Diablo III at launch?

[ImaNihilist]

So is it worth spending the money levelling up the blacksmith then?

John

Honestly, there isn't much else to spend money on unless you buying stuff in the AH.

[Johnmcl7]

I was worried about spending money on him then finding out later I really needed it for something else.

John

[ImaNihilist]

I was worried about spending money on him then finding out later I really needed it for something else.

John

You don't have to spend money on them. I suppose you could just save all your cash and then buy items from the AH.

Point is, there really isn't anything to spend money on. You don't have to stack pots and runes like in D2.

[vertices]

I do think the AH ruins finding loot. I mean there is no bind. Which means even if you only get double vendor price it's still worth it to put it on the AH. So you can always find tons of gear for next to nothing.

WoW always had sinks to take stuff out. In this game with no bind, basically all gear stays in forever unless someone wants to vendor it.

This would appear to me to destroy any value in finding loot pre 60.

Unless like monroeski said and you just avoid the AH but that is hard to do when it's there.

I'm only at 30 but without hesitation I vendor all blues without even looking at them. I stacked quite a bit of crafting mats so I don't even bother to convert them anymore.

[kpxgq]

AH is destroying the game but also in a sense, AH has become a part of the game itself?

[Astros Fan]

I think this review is the best I've seen on youtube, and he explains the AH pretty good about how it has really screwed up item drops compared to DII.

http://youtu.be/y37xLXwGo50?hd=1&t=8s

[Timman_24]

Honestly, I don't think a bind on equip would matter either. The loot drops so fast and furious in this game that the AH would be overwhelmed with bind enabled anyway. I'd say the best policy would be to have Bind on Pick Up super items that can only be had through quests or major boss battles and then have extremely rare items for the high end AH crowd. IMO the best items should only be available as BOP.

[Snakespy]

I have found the best drops to be from Elites, not Bosses. Actually I'd say bosses have some of the worst drops. That's just from my experience.

[Kamakazie]

I have found the best drops to be from Elites, not Bosses. Actually I'd say bosses have some of the worst drops. That's just from my experience.

This is by-design. Blizzard didn't want people doing boss runs in this one, so they introduced the Nephalem Valor buff and put the best drop rates on Champs/Elites.

[vertices]

Honestly, I don't think a bind on equip would matter either. The loot drops so fast and furious in this game that the AH would be overwhelmed with bind enabled anyway. I'd say the best policy would be to have Bind on Pick Up super items that can only be had through quests or major boss battles and then have extremely rare items for the high end AH crowd. IMO the best items should only be available as BOP.

This.

There should be a combo of BoP items, and then super rare BoE drops.

[monroeski]

Unless like monroeski said and you just avoid the AH but that is hard to do when it's there.

No, not really.

[Rush]

I think this review is the best I've seen on youtube, and he explains the AH pretty good about how it has really screwed up item drops compared to DII.

http://youtu.be/y37xLXwGo50?hd=1&t=8s

He is correct that unqiues/sets/etc don't drop nearly frequently enough, but he's missing the real sore point of the AH. It makes too much rare loot available to everyone immediately. If rares are commonly better than equal-level legendary and set items, why would you make loads of them available to everyone? It drives prices down, and the next thing you know, every character in every difficulty is rolling with (primary stat)/vit/resist armor and a massive damage weapon. There is zero reason to go magic finding, which was my favorite part (aside from pvp) of D2. Oh - and since everyone gets their own loot - in a four-player game, you have 4 times the amount of loot dropping. Too. Many. Rare. Items.

It's also ruined crafting. I can buy much, much better stuff from the AH for well under 100k than I could ever craft. Maybe chalk this up to bad luck, but I've spent a lot of time crafting, and guess how many of those pieces my characters actually wear? Zero.

I mean, I know D3 is much harder than D2, but I think about how ridiculously long it took to get my D2 characters geared up as well as my wizard was within one week of D3's release... and it's just disheartening.

Solution? Kill the for-gold auction house. Make it go away. Create easily-accessible trade channels and make people trade the old-fashioned way - via chat channel or forum post. This won't fix the issue of how many awesome rares are available, but at least it will slow their spread, and it will make people work a little more to get these items. It's better than doing nothing but clicking a couple of buttons to get ridiculously good gear for your character.

And what's up with the level cap being so easy to hit? Sure there were detractors that hated the grind-fest D2 became at high levels in order to hit 99, but it made hitting the cap actually mean something. Where's the incentive to keep playing a character that I easily capped within 2 weeks?

I know, I know, it's not Diablo 2.... but overall I'm pretty disappointed. I do love the game for what it is, but my interest is already thinning. I played D2 on and off for a decade - I don't see my D3 addiction lasting through the summer.

[Rush]

No, not really.

It may be a solution for you, but I like to play in groups - both RL friends and random public games online. Neglecting the AH will gimp your character compared to those people you meet. This isn't horrible now - but it will be when pvp arenas come out... which I plan on frequenting.

Avoiding the AH is only a good option if you play solo or only with a group of friends that all agree to avoid it.

[ImaNihilist]

The bigger problem with the AH, me thinks, is the lack of information you have before you even go there. Because everything is random, it's hard to know what really "good" is. You might see something that looks good in the AH, but you don't really know what the odds are that you will get either that very item, or a better item, the next time you play.

The concept of rare is so broad that it basically encompasses all items worth trading. It's like playing the lottery, only you don't know what your odds are of winning, the jackpot is constantly changing, and you don't know what the odds or jackpot are of other lotteries.

I'm not too worried about it though. Blizzard can easily make very small tweaks that change the entire economy. For example, they can release a set of items which can't be repaired, BoE items, or somehow quantify the probability.

Imagine if every item had a probability number attached to it. The AH would be FUNDAMENTALLY different. What if the probability of finding this item that you think is really rare is actually quite high? Maybe the odds are actually 98% if you play through your current difficulty. Still worth it? Probably not.

I like the AH, I just don't like that I don't know what I'm looking at.

[Timman_24]

I'm not too worried about it though. Blizzard can easily make very small tweaks that change the entire economy. For example, they can release a set of items which can't be repaired, BoE items, or somehow quantify the probability.

The problem is those tweaks fix the macro-economy of the AH, but destroy the gamer that wants to play by finding their own gear. Then you are bound to the AH, because your rare items are unrepairable or you absolutely never see a drop that you can use. BOE could be the way to go, but like I said I think too many items drop for it to really matter---but if you tweak the drop rate you could destroy normal play. They need super items that are BOP perhaps linked to achievements, very hard quests, or extremely rare/practically impossible bosses.