Diablo 3′s RMAH = The Lesser Evil?
Posted 6 November 2012 by FluxThere’s an odd editorial on PC Gamer that takes a critical view of Diablo 3′s end game, mostly as an excuse to offer some generic opinions on the Auction House and other such features publishers are including in games to (attempt to) create a long term revenue stream. Quote:
In the run up to Diablo 3′s launch, Blizzard painstakingly detailed their thinking behind the late alterations they were making to Diablo 3, providing a fascinating insight into the design process. They tore up many of the accepted action RPG elements that Diablo invented. Teleportation scrolls were deemed extraneous, so they went. Unnecessary stats were thrown out, skills were altered or dropped entirely to ensure that every ability had a purpose. NPCs were culled until only the Blacksmith and the Jeweller remained. The end result was finely pruned, impactful and addictive, supported by a levelling system that favoured experimentation over the incremental stat progression and sparse ability options offered by traditional skill tree set-ups.
And yet, this carefully honed and, in many ways, brilliant action RPG finds itself swamped by a bloated final quarter. The climactic rewards of an action RPG – the best loot and the toughest bosses – are hidden behind layers and layers of plodding gold-gathering, Paragon levelling and bargain hunting. The systems designed to fuel ongoing auction house trade and develop a cross-game economy have stretched Diablo 3′s longevity beyond its natural breaking point. Blizzard continue to release major updates that may yet turn things around, but for now it looks as though quest to keep players playing forever has backfired.
We haven’t seen the last of the auction house. I think we’ll see similar ideas popping up in future releases. A full price game supported by ongoing microtransactions will seem increasingly ordinary as time passes and major studios start looking harder at the techniques free to play games have used to make a fortune over the last few years. Guild Wars 2, Mass Effect 3, Assassin’s Creed 3 and Diablo 3 are a few of this year’s big examples. What will be next?
I say it’s odd since the whole piece reads like it was written in June, slightly updated in August to mention some of the 
Patch v1.04 changes, and yet it’s got November 5th for a date. Perhaps it was written a couple of months ago for the print magazine, and just posted online now? That’s kind of a fatal flaw, since the major features in last month’s v1.05 patch, like Monster Power and the Infernal Machine, were introduced to fix (or at least alleviate) exactly the problems mentioned in this editorial.
RMAH or Else?
That issue aside… yes, publishers have a desire to continue to earn money from their games after release. Duh. And since WoW seems to be the last profitable monthly-fee MMORPG (at least in the West), they’ve got to find other ways.
Prior to Diablo 3′s release, I was like a lot of fans, and opposed in principle, to the Real Money Auction House. However, that principle was based in reality, and as Blizzard talked more about the system, it started to grow on me. Not to use myself (I’ve never bought or sold anything in the D3 RMAH) but since it was a fairly painless way to provide ongoing revenue so we’d keep getting patches, Battle.net support, etc. Basically, all the stuff we wanted from D2 and didn’t get.*
So, how do you guys feel about the RMAH now? I still see some players blaming it for all the evils of Diablo 3, though that’s a lot harder argument to make now that v1.05 has largely recreated the economy and difficulty balance we saw in D2 (albeit with still much less common unique drops).
You’re free to scream and shout about the RMAH, but what would you replace it with? What other system could D3 have implemented to provide ongoing revenue to support patches and support? A monthly subscription fee? Cash item shop? Micro-transactions to buy more stash space and resurrect Hardcore characters? Personally, I’d much rather see an RMAH that doesn’t affect my gameplay in any way, and is a useful tool for players who want to use it, than other revenue-generators I can think of, most of which would be far more intrusive into the overall play experience.
D2 Support Footnote
* D2X launched in June 2001 at v1.07, and was quickly patched to v1.08 to fix some big bugs, and went to v1.09 a couple of months later. And that was it for D2X support until late 2003 when v1.10 was released. That patch, which was developed almost single-handedly by Peter Hu before he left Blizzard North for Flagship Studios, brought huge changes as well as making D2X much easier to mod, which enabled his successors to create more big changes in v1.11.
And yes, D2X v1.10 was awesome, but it was like 2.5 years between v1.09 and v1.10. There’s no comparison from the D2 days to the amount of support and big patch changes we’ve seen post D3, with big patches almost monthly, and they haven’t even added the PvP system yet, which will be arguably the biggest change of all.
RMAH/AH is fine.
The only thing which was problematic with it is that many players were not comfortable with an instant reflection of what others had (i.e. seeing all the powerful stuff found by others in the AH), as opposed to what they had. In previous games, we all knew that there must have been others who were way ahead of us, but did not really care. But when someone finds a seemingly good loot that is actually worthless thanks to being 1000+ other, more powerful items already in the AH, that can be food for thought.
But with 1.0.4, and especially with 1.0.5, the AH actually became a good trading tool. Any new character can very easily find powerful items to gear up, and they can, and this is a safe assumption, get a full MP0-1 compatible gear under a million gold (or around that), then join the club soon with the increase of paragon levels.
Is this a joke ? Do you really think the \quality\ of recent patches support is due to RMAH revenue ? After a +10 million copies sold within a week ?
I don’t mind this feature anyway but it has nothing to do with the efforts Blizzard puts on \fixing\ its game.
The D3 patches only added features which should have already shipped with the finished game. Now that there is an actual endgame (MP and Paragon), we’re only missing PVP and the D3 beta is over woohoo
Spot on.
I’m surprised people still play this and call mediocre patches a FIX. If anything they encourage more AH/RMAH use.
Where is PVP?
Where is end game?
Where is fixed loot?
Where are the loot synergies?
Stack more hp and resistance and **** all. Dumbed down pile of dog ****.
And Yes I come here for the giggles.
I think both Auction Houses have re-oriented the game in a negative direction. Finding loot upgrades from fighting is exciting and rewarding. Buying loot upgrades feels completely unrewarding like I’m play SimDiablo. I wonder if I can buy a guild house and set the wall paper to One Direction Posters. Blech.
While I don’t use the AH, if it continues to bring in revenue and help support the game, I’m more than happy to have it included in the franchise. Prior to patch 1.0.4 and 1.0.5 I felt the balance was off and that it was basically needed to use some form of the AH to advance, but with the recent patches I’ve been able to happily progress without using the AH.
But there are many sides to this arguement. Without the AH there wouldn’t be a need for online only, but then we wouldn’t have the security or online features. Personally I feel they should have an offline and online version. As a huge fan of the Diablo 2 Mod, Median Xl, the saddest tale of D3 is that there won’t be any mods for it.
Never had an issue with the RMAH/AH
used both, that is my business.
diablo 3 was not the first game to implement pay options.
most online games have been doing that forever. look at kabam games, or evony, farmwhatever etc etc the option has always been there.
those that do pay for these services DIRECTLY ASSIST in supporting the game for everyone, EVERYONE. look at the steps diablo 3 has come out with, argument-ally if they shoulda had it or not, it is irrelevant. The fact they are pushing these updates is all i care. the time and effort they put it. by more than 1 person too!
if there were not the rmah and the ah within diablo there would just be 100 times more black market operations doing the same thing. happens with anygame. I rather be able to buy 2 mil gold directly from blizzard anyways then going to some shady place on the side and giving them my personal information.
Diablo 3 tried to do something new, they might not have please everyone, but they tried something new.
RMAH/AH ruined this game. Simple as that.
No, it didn’t. Simple as that!
Don’t use it?
The issue is that I do not believe Blizzard’s claim that drop rates and item design are unaffected by the existence of the auction houses.
I think the auction houses heavily impact drop rates and item design. There is a big difference between designing those systems to work well for players finding all their own equipment vs. working well with massive auction houses with supply/demand/uniqueness requirements.
As a result, I believe it is very difficult to acquire Inferno level gear without the auction houses, *forcing* many people to use them.
I guess you are right to some degree. Having an AH provides another means to source items. It would be fair if the only way to purchase said items was with in-game gold, requiring players to actually play D3…
But, one can use real money to bypass the playing and skip straight to the farming (or beating your ass in pvp when it arrives). How is this not pay to “win”? The only answer I can think of is that there is nothing to gain from playing D3 in the first place, which is no consolation.
I am a 100% self found gear person. What you say is true pre 1.05. I was stuck in act 3 and upgrades just weren’t coming. That has completely changed. I was able to beat the game in MP1 and am now farming MP4 & 5.
The upgrades seem to have come to a halt tho. I do find items that would up my DPS but at a cost of survival. So I pretty much don’t use those. I am finding 1-2 legendaries a day now tho so I’m at least hopeful and encouraged to keep playing in hopes of finding good upgrades. (the legendaries really do need another review tho)
That said, I’m not expecting to be given items easily to get to MP10. That is the end game. Loot has always been the only Diablo end game. (oh and ubers..forget about that as I never played D2 on battle.net) Now however we have 4 goals. Reach MP10, reach paragon 100, Infernal Machine, and the classic: loot, loot, and more loot.
Finally, the AH is here to stay I’m afraid. But I don’t use it so what harm does it do me? I was a bit bitter about it pre1.05 as the more I played the more I felt that I couldn’t finish inferno without it. But that is no longer true. I am happily living with it now. And as Flux states, if it keeps the patches coming and the servers running, great.
Great post! I’m glad to hear it is possible now. I built my first character using the gold AH, and although it was very effective I wasn’t having much fun. I am building my second character with self-found gear and having a lot more fun. I was just worried that I’d hit a wall in Inferno based on lots of other people’s comments. If you didn’t need it, then there is hope for me.
RMAH was never a problem to me tbh.
What is a HUGE problem to me and what basically made me stop playing is the absence of ladder and its reset.
For someone like me, only playing the game and not playing 24/7 on the AH to make profit, there is just absolutely no way to get decent gear or farm the amount of gold to get there.
Any decent item is now worth well above 100M, it’s just stupid.
Ladder resets would allow any player to just buy items from gold he farmed up. It’s just no possible now and it won’t ever be possible again.
But then again, with the limitation to the amount of chars / account, i don’t see how blizz could manage ladder resets.
Try Diablo3ladders.com for a midway point maybe?
I don’t use rmah but do use ah. Getting an upgrade from the ah is quite thrilling. I just want my monk to feel godly and don’t care where the power comes from. Not using either ah is gimping myself and I don’t subscribe to that view. The game isn’t ruined. Last patch has been good and hopefully pvp will be great.
So… the fact that all these Diablo 2 patches came out without a single drop of micro-transactions a decade ago, or the many patches put out by various game companies without micro-transactions, or the map and content patches for various FPS games like BF1942 and Call of Duty… means nothing?
Companies, for YEARS have been able to survive and make changes to games after having gotten a single cash infusion – release day. Why the economics has suddenly changed these last 3 years baffles me. In that it is suddenly just ACCEPTED that it is impossible for a company that releases games multiple times a year HAS to have a revenue stream FROM a particular game in order to make changes TO that particular game.
What he said.
“All those Diablo 2 patches”. Uhh….what? D2 received barely any support at all, and that took years. The amount of change we’ve gotten on D3 in 5 months has been staggering. If we have the RMAH and those fools who are willing to spend real money on items to thank for that, then awesome.
Exactly. 3 patches in 9 years with an occasional ladder reset or rust storm, with zero chat moderation, no community support, etc. Rose tinted glasses for D2′s game features is one thing, but we fans were raging about the non-support and lack of anti-hacks efforts back in 2001. People just came to accept that non-support and stopped complaining after 4 or 5 years of it?
Besides, the reason D2 was supported even as much as it was, for all those years, was thanks to WoW. That cash cow kept Blizzard running and allowed D2 support to last for years while D3 dev was dragging along. If other games hadn’t allowed Blizzard to remain profitable and functional, where does anyone think the 10 years of free D2 server hosting would have come from?
The point isn’t that they NEED the money to put out patch, it’s that the money they make out of people playing Diablo 3 is incentive to them to try they hardest to keep people playing.
The whole point Flux is making is that RMAH is a non intrusive way for Blizzard to make money, in the sense that we don’t have to spend anything if we don’t want to, and at the same time the more Blizz makes money out of it, the better for everyone. If Diablo’s RMAH turns out to be even more profitable than wow’s subscriptions, it’s diablo that would get the huge developpment team, which means lots of new content and improvements.
As for those who complain that the loot’s been made to work with the AH and makes it too hard to play without it, I’d say that Diablo 3′s loot system is pretty much the same as Diablo 2′s. Very wide ranges of items from utter crap to the holy grail, with the very best items (and I mean the very best, not just good ones) being so rare you have more chance of becoming the richest man in the world one day than finding them. In diablo 2 you didn’t need to trade to get through hell, maybe farming a little if you had bad luck but it was fairly easy to get through. Diablo 3 is the exact same, the only difference being that Diablo 3 has an additional difficulty, inferno, which is meant to be super tough to get through. Now with monster power everyone is happy as long as they set realistic goals for themselves. If you want everything in MP10 to melt as soon as you get close, you will need to trade, probably for a really long time, before you reach that kind of level, but if you simply want to play without trading, you can still have access to anything the game has to offer on a lower difficulty setting.
Really there’s not much point to hating RMAH, Diablo 3 is designed as a Diablo game, the RMAH and even the AH are optionnal, you are free to do whatever you want. If you want a game that gives you the very best items you can potentially get fairly easily, play wow.
My observation about the D3 economy (and why it’s been less fun than D2) is that the devs wanted it to be stable. i.e. no ladder resets. D2 had those and therefore the loot could pinata out like mad. Or to turn that around, since the loot was so plentiful, they *had* to have ladder resets to break up the entropy now and then.
D3 wanted a stable long term economy, hence quality items had to drop much less frequently. That combined with a much harder top end difficulty, the extreme difficulty of finding a top rare, and the unfindable and underpowered legendaries (at launch), to create a system where the end game that was unplayable w/o obtaining gear from the AH. Which was, I think, a poor design.
The real kicker is that they didn’t have to do it that way. D2′s 3rd party item sales sites were their inspiration for the RMAH, but for some reason Bliz thought they had to make a WoW-style incremental improvement item economy, which doesn’t work in a random loot game like D3. As they should have learned from D2, mega-loot dropping fun can work fine with an RMAH… that’s what all those item sales sites should have proved. There was no reason they couldn’t have had loot like D2 in D3, and ladder resets or seasons or other reasons to keep resetting the economy, AND a profitable RMAH. D2 did, after all.
We’ll never know, but I figure they wanted a thriving player community with tons of regular trades going through the GAH, and the RMAH existing to skim a % off of the top on all the high end trades. Basically a luxury tax. But the game at launch had a terrible economy, which caused player retention to hemorrhage, and must have sent trading volumes plunging. Be interesting to see the RMAH and GAH stats and see how much $ and how many trades are going compared to Blizzard’s projections, but alas, they’ll never give us a hint of such data.
Well, don’t forget that the “Ladder Seasons” were a 1.10 band-aid for the completely broken economy, and even that didn’t really help since Blizzard never bothered fixing the duping problem.
And the loot was so plentiful because of dupes, not drop rates. Sure, I found like 5 gazillion mid level uniques and had fun doing that, but speaking as someone who played mostly self found, in nearly 10 years of playing I haven’t found a single high end unique like Windforce or The Grandfather, not to mention any high runes.
Then there’s also the fact that D2 was such an easy game that you didn’t actually need any high end equipment to play it.
Diablo 3 isn’t perfect, but it made tremendous improvements since launch, especially with the legendary drop rate. And I have a feeling that by the time the first expansion comes out (hopefully sooner rather than later) it will be an outstanding game.
Exactly what I meant, I’ve played D2 a lot, in all aspects (solo, mods, self drop in hardcore, pvp, legit trading…), I’ve even been running bots (as this was the only way to be competitive in the high spheres of trading) so I know very well how rare the really valuable items were ^^
Still I’d say I agree with your thoughts Flux, but only the way D3 was when it was released. The last few patches have been great steps toward fixing the problem and I believe that when you see things in the right perspective, they’re mostly solved already. We’re now very close to how D2X 1.10+ was, with good “uniques” dropping and rares being worthless 99% of the time but still there’s the chance of getting that super insane roll that will make the item priceless.
Sure there’s still a lot that can be done to further improve the game, and a lot of content to add to make it way more interesting, but yeah D3 in 1.05 is a legitimate Diablo and is very very promising.