Wow, this is a surprising reversal of trends as far as user generated content and micro-transaction based economies go, but the auction house really did change the core mechanics of Diablo 3.
As a player I really did kind of like the auction system during the initial grind from level 1 to 60, but when there was no more level progression and the only progression was item progression, it just stopped being fun because the only purpose of playing was to kill things for the best drops that you could sell on the auction house. There was no longer a use for almost everything that dropped.
The auction house mechanic might work on a MMO style game, but Diablo 3 isn't a MMO and the auction house broke the one mechanic that made the game a lot of fun - random loot drops.
It's treasure hunting basically. Auction house turns treasure hunting into a job, and thus it's less fun after a while.
This is a good lesson for game designers. The treasure hunting random loot mechanic works only if it can't be short circuited. The moment you can "buy" treasure, it's no longer treasure, it's a commodity and collecting commodities is a job, not a game.
Well, it's also worth noting that the presence of the auction house necessitated that drop rates for good stuff be depressed, as well, since the increased ease of trade means that the effective supply is higher. The effect of this, of course, is that the average player never sees the really good gear in the course of play - if you want good gear, you have to go buy it. Not only is the treasure hunting mechanic short-circuited, it's actually retarded by the presence of the AH -- most folks I know (myself included) quit playing D3 when they figured this out.
The other factor exacerbating this was the gear design in D3 - they drastically boiled down the potential combinations of gear by reducing the number of potential stats on items and baking everything relevant to the character's viability into the gear (rather than using a character progression path independent of gearing), so that while in other loot grinders a piece of loot may be useful but not perfect, in D3, there's basically "has everything I need" and "not useful at all". When you combine this binary gear usefulness with deflated drop rates, you end up with a situation in which most players feel that actually trying to play the game as a treasure hunt is an exercise in futility.
> The auction house mechanic might work on a MMO style game, but Diablo 3 isn't a MMO
What's the meaningful difference? I mean, what specifically makes auction house work in an MMO, but not a game like Diablo?
I thought auction house as a feature either works, if done right, or it doesn't. I thought auction house as an idea is great, and now this... I haven't played Diablo 3 yet; I played a little World of Warcraft back in the day and I liked the way I can sell unneeded gear and buy exactly what's right for me instead (buth some pretty cool items are Soulbound and cannot be sold!). I thought an auction house in a game like original online Magic the Gathering is pretty fabulous: auctions there are full of player-run trade bots which are tolerated by administration, and all this in a game that didn't start out with game currency to begin with (they appropriated tournament tickets as a de facto game currency). I can't play the game itself, unfortunately: interface is just too clunky for me.
D3 is all about the (tradeable) loot. The AH works in WoW because everything sellable was also consumable, and the most desirable items couldn't be sold. To get the best stuff in WoW, you play the game. To get the best stuff in D3, you pull out your wallet.
Imagine how WoW would have been if good items only dropped from dungeon bosses once per 1200 runs, but were sellable on the AH. Once you've been through the dungeon once to experience it, why would you ever go back, rather than just purchasing some gold?
You truncated what he said. He qualified it with "that you could sell on the auction house", which is exceptionally important.
Grinding bosses for drops to build the character that you want offers great direct feedback - you kill the boss 84 times, and he finally drops the thing you've been looking for. The reward is tangible and exciting. Compare to the AH structure, where it's basically "well, I'll grind for things that might sell, and then hope they sell well enough that I can save up for that thing I need which I know will never actually drop for me". The direct feedback and chance for excitement is practically gone, because the things that you are actually excited for come from the auction house rather than the gameplay.
Except that at least Diablo 1+2 were for everyone. I remember playing those for the story and the gameplay. The loot and levelling were a means to an end for me - finishing the game.
The whole repeating the game again on harder difficulties, requiring better loot and grinding was very much an added bonus.
Diablo 3 decided to throw those who were there for the gameplay and story out the window, and was purely targeted at the grind. I finished the game in 2 days and still had half my characters skills left to unlock. What kind of RPG is that?
The Action RPG genre used to be about more than JUST loot grinding. It used to be about so much more, that welcomed players who were looking for all sorts from the game. Some people liked fast twitchy action mechanics, some liked the RPG story elements, some liked endlessly tweaking character builds and some liked loot grinding. But Diablo 3 is almost entirely focused on the last, with little room for the rest.
But the thing is there is still a trading economy in the game. It will still exist, it's now just unofficial. In diablo 2 you traded items by joining chat rooms and spamming your wares or joining message boards. You then traded by arranging a game together and trading in person.
Actually no; when they made the auction house they reduced the quality of items that dropped. This is evident in the console versions, which have vastly different "loot tables" and no auction house. So they didn't just make it convenient for players, they tailored the items that drop around the fact that anyone could sell and buy items.
For the small group of players that always did trading that's probably a good thing, but for the vast majority that want the game to be Diablo and not the auction house it was a pretty bad change to the core game.
As a new player, I really liked the AH: Every single thing that dropped for me was either completely useless, or orders of magnitude worse than what people were throwing away on the AH for a pittance. (Sub-optimal stats went for cheap.) So, I could basically always find something that would be a significant upgrade every few levels.
If I had actually been seeing drops that were any good (due to a non-depressed drop rate), I'd have not felt the need for it ... but using the AH basically quadrupled my character's effectiveness. Using it was definitely part of "playing the game".
It made leveling great: You can freely vendor/DE almost everything you pick up if you want, and use the cash to buy things on the AH. Profit! At the end game, though, I can absolutely understand why that would kill the fun.
As a player I really did kind of like the auction system during the initial grind from level 1 to 60, but when there was no more level progression and the only progression was item progression, it just stopped being fun because the only purpose of playing was to kill things for the best drops that you could sell on the auction house. There was no longer a use for almost everything that dropped.
The auction house mechanic might work on a MMO style game, but Diablo 3 isn't a MMO and the auction house broke the one mechanic that made the game a lot of fun - random loot drops.
It's treasure hunting basically. Auction house turns treasure hunting into a job, and thus it's less fun after a while.
This is a good lesson for game designers. The treasure hunting random loot mechanic works only if it can't be short circuited. The moment you can "buy" treasure, it's no longer treasure, it's a commodity and collecting commodities is a job, not a game.
Treasure hunting is a game.