Auction House Acceptance: Flux Goes Shopping
Posted 26 July 2012 by FluxI did not use the Diablo III Auction House at all for about six weeks after launch. I didn’t want to, I didn’t need to, and I saw the way so many heavy AH users had burned out on Diablo III, largely since they could never find any gear that was better than the stuff they’d bought. I was self found and proud of it, since my l33t skillz were enough to (eventually, arduously) defeat the content that lesser mortals were blowing through in seconds, thanks to their ill-gotten goods.
Did I stick to my guns (or at least my pistol xbows), and remain self found? Did I score enough loot playing solo and making wise use of the Artisans to pull myself up by the bootstraps and succeed without delving into the corrupting trading market?
Read on and find out.
What's the origin of the gear on your Inferno characters?
- 2) Mostly from the Auction House or friends. (43%, 2,118 Votes)
- 1) All from the Auction House or friends. (30%, 1,463 Votes)
- 3) Mostly self found. (13%, 645 Votes)
- 5) I don't have a character in Inferno. (9%, 457 Votes)
- 4) Everything self found. (5%, 240 Votes)
Total Voters: 4,921
Loading ...The Diablo III Auction House
Early Auction House display.
I’d almost never traded in Diablo 2, and not just because the trading system sucked. I played a lot back in the day and was very proficient at Magic Find, so I was able to supply virtually all my own needs. In fact, I can only remember one actual trade, when I swapped a Stormshield for an Eaglehorn, mostly since I had found 4 Stormshields and was sick of using a Buriza back in the v1.09 days, and wanted a different bow for cow running. (Naturally, I found a Windforce about a month later, and this was all in the Hardcore economy, where items held a lot more value.)
So no, I didn’t want a Diablo 3 Auction House from some sort of “God I wish D2 had one” desire. But the D2 system was inarguably awful, since even if you avoided the wug-infested hellholes that were Battle.net trading channels and games, the lack of a standard currency complicated things, and that’s not even mentioning the massive corruption from illicit RMT, which was largely fueled by duping, hacked items, Pindlebots, etc. After that, the idea of a clean, clear, official, legit Auction House in Diablo III was a pleasing one, and I looked forward to it.
Once the game was out though, I had no interest in using it.
Self Found, For Reals
It wasn’t a difficulty temptation to resist in those early days, since I didn’t hurry through the game and hit the Inferno gear-check-wall that frustrated most early rushers. I played more slowly, mostly solo, and alternated my time between several characters (my Wizard, Barbarian, and Demon Hunter were all around level 50 back in late-May), regularly passing items between them in a sort of we-are-a-solo-party arrangement. I never bought or sold anything on the AH though, neither gold nor real.
I wasn’t making some big moral stand, since as I said, I didn’t object to the AH, in principle. I just didn’t need items other than those I was finding, plus I wanted to experience and evaluate the game as it was designed and balanced, and not use the GAH to paper over any flaws in the balance, rate of progression, difficulty, economy, prices, crafting, and all the rest.
That theory soon looked very wise, in the sense of preserving my enjoyment of Diablo III, as numerous people I knew rushed one character into Inferno, found it way too hard without better gear, and found the GAH the only source of that gear. Others didn’t even wait for Inferno to start GAHing, and turned their full play through into something of a glorified god mode tutorial by using bought gear to wildly overgear their characters.
This was probably fun at the time (I recently finished Act 4/Hell with my neglected Wizard while using a 1289 two-handed sword — obliterating everything in sight with .2 second bursts of Disintegrate was ridiculous and yet fun.) but was ultimately a recipe for dissatisfaction, since buying such gear meant that they never found any upgrades in Inferno, and that really amplified the issue of Diablo 3′s underpowered sets and uniques.
I eventually worked my Demon Hunter through Hell and into Inferno, and found it less than a stone wall of gear check, but far from a happy fun experience. And this was after the v1.0.3 nerf that made Act One Inferno much more item rewarding and much less one-shot misery. My Demon Hunter wasn’t getting one-shotted, but my killing speed was far from acceptable, since my weapon was far from excellent. Everyone “knows” that Diablo III’s uniques and sets are underpowered, and the in-game item drops and Blacksmith recipes are underpowered as well… but only in terms of weapon damage. Armor, on the other hand, isn’t that poorly balanced, and you can craft some pretty good rares once you’re into the high 50s, even before you’ve got Inferno materials or have found any of the supremely-uncommon crafting plans.
That’s a relative statement, of course, as the armor you can craft or find is plenty good enough for Hell, and maybe Act One Inferno. You’ll need to farm farm farm if you want to advance through Act Two, though. Farm or Auction House.
Just surviving isn’t enough, of course. You need to kill things to get loot, and you need killing power to kill things. My Demon Hunter had a good build and decent armor when she got to hell, but even after several Hell/Act 3 and Act 4 runs at level 60, with full stacks, and numerous scratching and clawing and desperate efforts to get through the first half of Act One, with NV stacks active, I’d never found better than a 550 DPS crossbow, and it was one of those lumbering, 1.10 Attacks per Second xbows. Ugh.
So, earlier this month, I finally decided I was wasting time sticking to my “all self found” mantra, and visited the Auction House late one evening. (In disguise, so none of the neighbors would recognize me.)
Succumbing to Temptation
Dream of more than 3 affix filters.
Moving quickly, I settled on a 1086 DPS bow. No frills, no bonuses other than the lightning damage, for 50k on the buyout. I must admit to some excitement as I transferred the purchase to my stash, and waited to equip it to see what my character window DPS would do.
Believe it or not, that number went up. I don’t remember the exact stats, but it was something like from 8800 up to 17k (without 
Sharpshooter selected, since that bloats the Demon Hunter’s displayed damage to meaninglessness), plus the faster firing rate meant much faster Hatred generation and better projectile avoidance.
I wasn’t just shopping for better numbers though, so I quickly went and played… and laughed my way through most of Act One, as all of the encounters that had formerly been all but impossible became routine. I’d been struggling against almost every boss pack since I took so long to kill things that I had to kite like a windy day at the beach. This made my margin for error very thin against almost any boss pack, and when I got Boss Modifiers like Waller, or Fast (much less both), I had no chance. I was forever running out of Discipline, or I’d miss one Smoke Screen and take two hits and drop dead, or run a burst of damage to try to finish a Champion off and wind up just short and out of gas. Worst of all were the fights when I’d run away, scramble, struggle, and finally kill one or two monsters, or die when I nearly had the pack dead, and by the time I got back to the scene of the battle all the surviving monsters had completely regenerated their hit points.
More damage fixed most of those problems, and in less than an hour I blew through the second half of Act One, killed the Butcher on my first try, and even earned the achievement for doing him in under two minutes on Inferno.
Naturally, more damage wasn’t enough for everything, since when I moved on into Act Two I and found the gear check a reality. Suddenly the one shot days were back, as those yodeling Lacuni bomb throwers were happy to show me in the canyon. I pushed on, eventually earning five stacks in Act Two and making it almost to Alcarnus, but there were many deaths on the way, and I had to ditch some mobs, including a group of 4 Champion Sand Wasps with Mortar, Arcane Enchanted, Vortex, and Illusionist.
How I wanted to beat them, as my Demon Hunter always takes Mortar as a personal insult and challenge. Alas, I could not. The confusion of so many Illusionist wasps (their baby wasp BBs do no damage, but are indistinguishable from the real ones) was a huge pain, and they kept Vortexing me into the midst, forcing me to hit an instant Smoke Screen and run. But where to run, with Arcanes turning, slot motion BBs everywhere, real and fake Wasps floating in every direction, and a dozen Mortar shots coming at me from every direction the second my SS wore off. (Just writing about it now I wish I could go back and try again. If only Diablo III had some kind of “save game” state in a single player mode that could be revisited at your leisure.)
So no, I couldn’t beat Act Two Inferno with a decent damage bow and crappy gear. What I could do, after a bit more practice and some better gear (all self found) was run Act One quite efficiently, clearing out 90% of the bosses in about an hour and earning a good 20 or 25 high level rares per try.
Resigned to My Fate
And that’s what I’m still doing, when I get time to play, a week and a half later. I’ve not found any bow upgrades, though it’s possible. I have found damage two-handed weapons for a variety of other weapon types that I will never, ever equip, other than as a joke.
I have found a ton of upgrades for pretty much every other item slot though, and have found numerous upgrades for my level 60 Barbarian and Wizard, including weapons that should be more than enough for them to work through Act One. The Wizard just finished Act 4 of Hell, and had a laugh doing it with 35k life, over 450 to all resistances, and a two handed sword that was just short of 1300 DPS. I haven’t done more than 10 minutes of Inferno with her yet, but she moved through everything up to rescuing Cain without so much as having to activate her Diamond Skin, and I’m sure I she could advance to Act Two without any real difficulty.
From a purist PoV though, those items I used to overgear my Wizard, along with everything else I’ve found since I bought that bow, are tainted. Impure. Unclean. Since they were enabled by me using a non-self found bow that more than doubled my damage. Even though it wasn’t a very good bow and had damage equivalent to that of a sword, two staves, and a polearm I’d found, while still scratching along with that 550 xbow.
Luckily, there are no purists in Diablo III, so no one knows or cares about this but me.
Vote Time
As far as I know, I’m fairly unusual in not using the Auction House constantly, and doing it since shortly after Diablo III’s release. I’m also fairly unusual in that still enjoying the game, even the Inferno end game. (There’s almost certainly a strong correlation between fact one and result two.) And why wouldn’t I? It’s challenging enough to keep me on my toes, and since all but one of my items are self found, I’m not bored and depressed by the item hunt, since I’m forever finding upgrades. Every yellow question mark is a delight and a thrill!
(Okay, not really. 1) the game desperately needs an “ID all” button, since JFC, no one wants to stand there right clicking for 45 seconds every time they return from an item run with 5 stacks. The 3 second wait just adds annoyance most of the time, “Oh look, another ilvl 62 weapon without a single +damage mod on it!” 2) Imagine how much fun it would be will be when you can find unique/sets more than once a week, and if they’re better than average quality rares are now?)
So, how unusual am I in my Auction House usage? Survey time.
(By request, I moved the vote up to the top of the article so it would be visible on the main page without requiring a click through.
I feel kind of dumb over the AH. I lobbied hard for it during development, suggestions about it, etc, but I didn’t really have the vision or foresight to see what it would do to the game.
Now I remember all those barter system suggestions that I sneered at and feel kind of sad.
Granted that part of this issue comes from a poorly-designed item system. There’s no point in having six-affix rolls if only three possible affixes are desirable anyway. Almost all the mods are junk mods barring a precious few.
I went even farther than Flux and bought some items with real money. I’m pretty desperate to get this damn legendary wiki project done and I shuffled around ten bucks, getting almost every legendary in the game, which is sad. Moving it from RMAH to GAH and back through liquid funds.
Which is way worse than the GAH in how it impacts the game. I feel filthy.
In your defense, there was really no way to know the item system would be so broken that the AH / RMAH would break the game. But it wasn’t just that, it was a confluence of 3 factors:
Bad Item Design (randomness / rares)
Difficulty Curve
The existence of the AH
The idea of the AH in the game is a great one, but it comes with an implicit assumption: that you have actual options when gearing your character. The idea is that you would find things which are good that you DON’T want, which you could sell for items you DO want. And this would be beyond just a DH selling a Barb item, etc. It also came with another implicit assumption: That inferno would be challenging but doable with a variety of tactics and gear styles.
Unfortunately both of those assumptions turned out false. Everyone wants the same 3 or 4 item mods, meaning there is little “variety” in how you build your character. Just as an example, as for why we assumed there would be, we all are D2 vets, and in D2 resistance was a static number, meaning you had choices: Do I want to get a lions share of it from armor, or shield, or amulet, or a combination of all 3, or is there a specialty weapon, etc. Diablo 3 doesn’t really have that type of decision to make because there’s no real alternative to all resist, so it’s best to have it everywhere possible.
As for the difficulty, this further confounded the problem by making very few stats suitable to clear inferno. Not only is it preferrable to have resist all in every slot, it’s almost required to progress past act 2.
In short, I don’t think it was the AH that is to blame. It’s the way the item system works at its core that makes good items so exceedingly rare that the difference between good and amazing is trivialized, because anything usable seems amazing when 95% of everything that drops is utter trash by the time you find it.
Precisely. I fully believe that the AH isn’t really the problem. I would expect the AH would work fine if it was implemented exactly as it is in D2. The problem has to do with the poor item system and limited value in legendary items. An item in D3 is either valuable or trash, there are no mediocre items.
The rate that stat requirements scale so quickly also forces item upgrades as well which in part forces you to the AH unlike D2 where progression was more in the hands of the player. I actually went into a lot of depth on this issue on the D3 forums recently. Check it out if you want the full details. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6146815280#1
Well I think the lack of a “currency” would keep it from working if it were just dropped into D2. But other than that I agree with the sentiment.
I’m not sure if I agree with the conclusion that this was an effort to shift more commerce to the RMAH, but in reality it does kind of work out that way.
I actually wrote a lot about the economy and itemization, but determined that no one would really care so I never posted them anywhere (still have in google docs). But the fact of the matter is that three things are so interconnected, that a game problem is likely one of the three but often all 3: Difficulty curve, Economy (Gold / Real money), Itemization.
The fact is, each one seems messed up, and each one is in part messed up because the other 2 are messed up. There are other problems though, the lack of control you have over your character’s stats, the lack of leveling up as well. And I think all 5 of those factors coalesced in a way that made the end-game unbearable (for me).
I would love to see them do something radical like take all primary stats off gear, and shift all primary stats to gems (adding more sockets, 3-6 per item slot).
I’ve played\advanced four (4) toons (Barb, Demon Hunter, Monk & Wizard) from level\day one to Inferno Act I pretty much as you did. Tended to share gear found by one toon with another. Was (and pretty much still am) a rabid purist but sadly I’ve had no choice but to hit the GAH for class-specific weapons upon my arrival in Inferno.
In some cases I grudgingly accepted hand-me-downs from my guildies and I still vehemently refuse to patronize\shop the GAH for anything other than weapons. As a matter of fact, I felt almost as if I’d *cheated* when purchasing the weapons; not to mentioned totally fleeced by the *ridiculous* prices.
My guild (Holy Knights of Westmarch) used to maintain several mule accounts as a guild armory of sorts. We’d stash and share goodies found with each other and it was cool. Obviously this sorta thing isn’t possible in the present game.
I’ve been farming Act I Inferno now for the past three weeks. Average stats for my people:
Vitality: 1,100
Resists: 350
DPS: 18k
Any one of my people can clear the entire act in approximately two hours; (Cemetery, Festering Woods, Leoric’s Manor, Warden, Butcher). Last evening I played my Barbarian three hours, made 250k (GF 115%, MF 129% with NV5) and died six times. Found a buttload of magic & rare vendor trash, with only one keeper (a pair of britches if memory serves). Finished the evening off by making eight (8) perfect square gems (2 of each color) for 240k (am gradually building up my gem stock).
Yeah, stuff drops … but the majority of the drops are pretty much worthless except as vendor trash, e.g. a ilvl 63 xbow with +150 str, +75 intel, 6% to Zombie Bears and *110* dps … wow wee
I remember actually *finding* useful gear in Diablo 2 … this hasn’t been the case (so far) with Diablo 3. I still totally dig the game and love the challenge, but gear itemization and drop rates are a joke, legendaries are worthless in their present state, and the prices with the GAH are completely ridiculous.
Pendraig-HKW
Commander, Holy Knights of Westmarch
Maybe AlexanderBarin can lick you clean, he likes filth.
Mostly self found. Could be 100% self found, but I decided to get some minor upgrades from Hardcore GAH.
This gear was enough for me to clear Hardcore solo, but certainly not enough to faceroll through later acts. I think if my goal now became to obtain gear able to faceroll A3/A4, I’d die trying to self-farm it.
I do have a feeling that the drops/quality is going to get improved in 1.04 soon, as they promised to reduce reliance on the AH.
Quite frankly, I don’t see that happening unless they drastically alter inferno to not be progression-based.
I have a feeling they’ll nerf Inferno again, too. We’ll see.
I don’t know if they’ll nerf it. I imagine they’ll leave it much as it is, because I just don’t see them having the time to do that kind of design while also working on PVP and the item game.
I really wish they’d have just kept inferno the way it originally was.
That’s not a feeling, that’s 1.0.4. underused skill buffs.
Guaranteed that the balance guys are going to create hilariously OP new synergies or overbuff many of the currently weak skills based on an incomplete understanding of what makes the current good skills good.
AH simply appears to be the most efficient way to gear (and profit, for those who manage). I do not have an inordinate amount of time to put in gaming any more, so time is an issue. AH saves time, even with the interface issues.
“I was in agreement with the community consensus that trading sucked in D2″
Since when has this been the consensus of the community? One of the best parts of Diablo II was the player-to-player trading in my humble opinion. I agree that it’s not the easiest thing to get into for new players, but for long-time traders it was awesome.
Trading is also one of the main reasons I’ve been visiting this site on a weekly basis since the release of Diablo II (ETF ftw!)
What happend Flux, you used to be cool:\
Since bartering was phased out, with good reason, in the real world.
The trading did suck. There were no systems in place to support it besides spammy chat rooms and trade games where you’d probably not find what you’re looking for.
The evidence that it sucked is sites like d2jsp. It needed a drastic overhaul, and there were two ways to go about it: a barter system, or an auction system. They simply went with the latter.
WUG wasn’t fun, and it didn’t work well at all. It was time consuming and frustrating.
Welcome to the dark side flux
New sunshiny Flux >>>>>> old cynical Flux
? You’re describing what would be a large shift in perspective for him. I don’t see how his writing reflects either that he was “cynical” before or that he’s “sunshiny” now…
Not cynical before? You must be blind mate.
Not sunshiny now? Look at the title “Auction House Acceptance: Flux Goes Shopping”. This is something straight out from a children’s book.
Well sure, the title is meant to be kind of silly and cutesy, but 1) I suck at titles and names in articles or fiction, and 2) it’s just a title. The content is what it is, and nothing in this article was written with any kind of, “I better make this sound positive about D3 or Bobby’s check won’t clear this week.”
It’s obvious that a lot of people have decided they hate D3 and want to spend their online time informing other people of that fact. I am not one of them and in fact I’m getting more sucked into the game lately than any time since launch, since my DH is now well geared up for Inferno MF and my item finds are increasing in quality.
I played my Barb through almost all of Act One Inferno last night, using 100% self-found gear, and it was a lot of fun and quite challenging. The Barb has pretty good armor and defensive stats, but not a great weapon (740 dps 1H) so there were a lot of long, tank-fest struggles against tenacious bosses.
I have to comment on this, as I followed pretty much exactly what Flux had above. I actually levelled all 5 chars to 60 and to Act 1 inferno, then took the wizard forward to try and progress.
One of the reasons for this is the lack of space in your stash, I knew I was going to level all chars at some point so was saving some useful stuff I found along the way, I bought all the stash quickly and it was full.
I also wanted to learn the mechanics of all the chars, I had played the beta but it wasnt extensive enough for me to choose a character to play long term. (I played D2 for 7-8 years before moving to WOW)
For me the big problem was Act 2, I cleared Act 1 self found and then hit a brick wall in Act 2, I got very frustrated seeing all my money drain away for repairs when my 15k damage on my wizard just wasnt enough to kill stuff or to beat enrage timers. I spent 100k on a weapon to take me to 20k damage and managed to progress (eventually) to Belial.
Hah – this was a joke, I had 300 tries to beat him, always dying before phase 3. This week I gave up and gave in to the AH, I spent 2 million on a new weapon and some more gear that had resist all and more damage to take me to 25k. I killed him on the 10th attempt and realised it wasnt my playstyle it was my DPS problems. Now bearing in mind at the same time I am running Act 1 with 300 MF and regularly vendoring 100 rares at a time as they are so rubbish – I concluded I just couldnt self find through the game.
In 250 hours I have found 3 legendary’s and no sets, only 1 legendary (string of ears) is remotely useful.
Sad but true – for all my chars I just cant see me getting through all of the inferno acts without spending.
Matt…
if only max level wasn’t 60, at least you could be leveling and gaining stat points in Inferno
be interesting if 1.0.4 introduces gems that increase Hatred and Discipline
I actually liked trading in D2.
Something about bartering with real live people was fun to me, I would see stuff i wasnt really looking for sometimes that i would be like “damn that is nice i didnt even know that existed”. Helped educated me on on the uniques, runewords and set items by seing them in the trade windows. I enjoyed communicating with people asking how much an item is worth. I enjoyed being able to farm for items runes or keys instead of gold to use as barter tools.
That whole experience has been taken away in Diablo 3.
I dont know if anyone here has played 2moons (Dekaron) but i loved the system they used and i havent seen it in any other game. You would leave your heros sitting in town and he would open his own shop which you could place items in your inventory and set prices and people could click on your hero see the items in your shop and buy them. It was pretty neat, gave your hero a purpose in the world as a merchant while you were afk instead of just dissapearing. Yes there were alot of people sitting in town with shops open but it gave you something to do running around looking for items for upgrades or to flip.
Actually, Final Fantasy XI Online was probably the first to do that back in 2003. They have an AH where you can list up to 7 items at a time (per character, not account), but you can also open your own “Bazaar” on your character with I believe up to 20 items for sale (I haven’t played in a while, so I’m not entirely sure what the limit was.)
Anyways, my point is that it can definitely be a successful part of the game, and if it were implemented in Diablo 3 it might have encouraged people to join Public Games more often. Or, they could have done a “special” Act in the Public Games list that was essentially a giant lobby or town where people left their characters. I’m assuming something like this would have greatly increased the server demand, though.
Lineage II (came out roughly the same time as FFXI) had those personal shops (both for buying and selling) too, and jesus god did i LOATHE that system.
Maybe it’s because in L2, you had to shop for a crap load of ingredients for crafting and/or just buying the item directly, but good god did it take FOREVER to sift through all of those shops. People would usually AFK in the main towns (Giran/Gludio), and there were easily over a 100 of them, clustered all in the center of town. So not only did it lag like crazy, it usually takes 30-60 minutes to check all of the shops for something you might need/want – not to mention keep track of how you would logistically check all of the shops (there was collision detection too so it makes that much harder to navigate)… Now that I think about it, it was similar to trying to find something you want via a trade forum, except instead of having a nice orderly list, it was a cluster**** of individual playershops with signs above their heads…
Not only that, but the system basically forces you to go \AFK\ if you want to sell something… That or spam in the trade channel like in D2 – except there was only one trade channel so the spam was unbelievable.
My first experience with an AH was when WoW came out, and needless to say, my mind was blown by it’s efficiency. There’s a reason why every recent MMO I can think of adopted the AH instead of the other alternatives… And one of the reasons why I was surprised FFXIV adopted the Bazaar/Playershop system instead of an AH, which i recall them having in FFXI… though I could be wrong – i only played the beta. Well at least at launch, anyway. I haven’t kept up with the game after it’s massive fail.
Poll should be viewable from the front page, ’cause I think the people who would read this whole (great) editorial to get down to the poll may be skewed vs. everybody who visits the site…though I can’t figure out which way…
That, and it would draw more people to read the editorial.
I set it to display in the sidebar, but maybe you’re right and I should put it near the top of this article as well, so it would be visible without the click through from the main page. As I type this, about 5 hours after the article went up, there are 1500 votes and many, many times more views of the full article. So either lots of people haven’t voted, or the same 1500 people have reloaded the article repeatedly to read/post comments.
Thanks! Seems to me that it’s getting a lot more votes now but unlike what I thought, the percentages aren’t moving.
I’m often surprised that the vote percentages don’t fluctuate much over time. I guess it means the readers here are fairly ****genous, in that the first 500 voters are more or less identical to the next 5000, but very often vote percentages after a few hundred votes are little changed 10000 later.