Opinions on real-money auction house?

Hey guys, I'm totally new to this beta, installing it as we speak.
I am extremely excited about getting to try this game out.
But even tho I'm new i would like to give my opinion on this matter.
The very instant they announced the "Real money auction house" in diablo 3 i actually demanded/got my money back from my pre-order.
I will not be buying the game nor will i bother to try it out.
The fact that people were forced to use dodgy sites in D2 was the only reason you did not see each and every one running around with the best equpment money could buy.
And beeing the greedy bastards that Blizzard are i believe that they will start taking a rather big percentage of your money as a "fee" for beeing the middle hand in the whole deal.

The thing is...

Who guarantees they are not editing items to put on AH to sell for money without anyone ever suspecting since people will think it comes from players.

Thats is geniusly evil.

MAKE NO MISTAKE. They WILL control the market. If someone benefits, it will be THEM.


Another huge problem, will be the feeling that.

"Hey, why am I grinding a full day to get value worth 5 bucks? If I like this game, I should dish a hundred bucks right away to economize months of frustration and go straight to the fun".

If you ever worked in your life, this thinking is unavoidable.

Since now there are 2 ways. The game segregates people in 2 tiers.

People who have the real life money, rich players, have the best stuff, no need to bow/low themselfs to the same degree as the other tier of player:

People who just bought the game and are trying to live by like everyone else, or like they used to, in traditional, old school games. Competing with their time and effort.

But its unavoidable.

With an Auction House, all the value you get from your runs, gems, gear, recipes, whatever, will end up turning into a flat fee value. X gold per time. There is no escaping that. Some people will just stash their valuables without fully turning them into liquid value or even seeing it as such.

But in the end, the amount of value they make per time is determinable.

And at the same time, by a simple glance on the auction house, the value per "dollars" can also be determinable.

So, without further ado, one can see how much each dollar is worth in time. Or how much an hour is worth in dollars.

Once people figure the average of that for that particular week, more or less, its just a simple choice:

"You have 20 bucks, do you want to skip 100 hours of grind?"

Because lets say 20 bucks buys 100 man hours of grind in Diablo 3, due to hundreds of thousands of low life players, either adults trying to go by old school style, or kids, of latin american/south east asia people or whatever target audience play on your servers.

That will determine how valuable each man hour is. People from Australia will be able to get things very cheaply, because they will play with the lowest low life of online gaming, the SEA people. NA, will be lucky to have latin american people. Its likelly that Europe will end up having the most expensive man hour.

That kind of sub-game is a direct derivation of Real Money Auction House.

Because you allow people to put money on it. You segregate the community. You force everyone to evaluate things equaly. You enlighten/aware people of the value of their time.

Ive played many games like that. As an example, Im a lawyer in real life, my lowest valuable hour is worth 2 hundred hours of menial/grind tasks from some random dude/mass on the Auction house?

To me its as easy as "hire" some random unknown player to do the shit for me. Its just an example. A teenager that chooses to spend his pizza/theaters/shopping/allowance fee on Diablo will likely be able to buy their hundreds hours of man grind as well.

In the end, it will be so easy and cheap, that even a teenager with a few bucks they got from its parent will allow him to be a RICH player in the game.

Make no mistake, things will be CHEAP in this game. The best end game items will be worth 20 bucks and people selling will think they did a good deal! Wow, with this item I bought a steam gift!



What this means in the end?
WE ALL LOSE.
The whole sense of FAIR COMPETITION is lost. Despite what I do in real life and how much real money I make SHOULD NOT MATTER.

The reason I, and many people play games, can no longer be fullfilled. Its not the same game anymore. Its not the same rules. Its not the same feeling of satisfaction and reward. It does not have the same challenge.

No need to surpass anyone using your individual traits to get your goals. Just open your wallet. No social engineering. No clever trading/bartering.

Everything you do, is so innefective compared to spending 20 more bucks, that you start thinking. Why should I bother to buy this to resell for x% more, if I have to do it a thousand times, wasting many hours of micro management, when I can simply BUY EVERYTHING.

Thats the main problem. That is against ethics and moral of competitive online gaming traditions.

And then, when you reach this point where you have spent 250 bucks to be top ten in a server, and have the best gear, you look around and there is nothing left. You feel no joy, no achievement. You feel empty. Its meaningless. You feel ashamed of yourself. You dont even belong to the game community anymore. Other people cant even compare and relate to you anymore.


Ive seen and done it all. In multiple f2p games before. Nothing ever gave me the satisfaction of old games before vip/premium accounts and later on cash shops with monthly buffs and then slightly later, direct tradeable items that could be bridge this "real money per game time" perception.

Now games are being designed from ground up with it in mind. The baby is born with cancer.

There have to be a way to trade without spamming the channels (main reason i stopped playing D2 on Battlenet).
The economy of an MMO ist utterly important and should be taken on carefully from the DEVS. The best i saw in this regard is the player driven economy in Eve Online.
With the absent of Gold currency its a bit difficult to accomplish. A Real Money AH ist a easy solution but i doubt it will make it into the game (to many no-go sayers). Maybe we should wait and see how RMAH will work out in D3. Im fine with an orb based AH too but it would be a bit difficult to implement it for simple but efficient usage.

"

Dreggon wrote:

I'm interested in how people feel about this. Blizzard is doing it with Diablo 3, and while I don't agree with the premise, I agree that their reason for doing it is unassailable - because people will sell the items anyway, it's better to make it official rather than going through dodgy websites.

How does everyone else feel about this? Could this work with PoE? Please don't use "pay to win" as an argument; it's not valid for the aforementioned reason.

RMAH and player-based trading with virtual content for real money is the evil in today's world of video games.

I'll explain my point of view: A video game is there to have fun alone or with friends, to chill out, to compete with others. As long as the success/progress depends on the skills of each player alone and on nothing else - as long the real fun and the main goal of a video game are existent. Bringing real money in the game destroys everything coz that are two different worlds - "game to chill" and "money to live".

If there is a possibility to sell items for real money, there will be a large pool of players playing the game not just for fun. And this mindset and intention to earn money destroys the magic world of the game. If people do so, quite suddenly they forget what the game was created for and what a game generally is.

A good example is Blizzard. This company was telling for over 10 years, they would do everything possible to prevent cheating, hacking AND commercial intercourse in theier games. Blizzard has NEVER tolerated the player based commerce in theier games like Diablo 2 and WoW. Blizzard was all the time saying "Trading with content in our games is illegal".
And what happens now? As they have noticed, there is a big part of a cookie they could snap off, they have grabbed it fast and silent. For me it looks like the state police would claim "We can not prevent banks from being robbed, so we've decided to rob banks by ourself to solve this problem".

I repeat my thought again: RMAH in PoE is the worsest thing I could imagine, even worser as bugs, imbalance and exploiting.



@Devs: Guys, do you want to shot voluntary in your own head? If yes, implement a RMAH in PoE.

i think its going to make the 3rd party sites just sell stuff cheaper, can see it now, @@@@@@@XXXXXX.com 20% cheaper that the rmah!!!@@@@@@@@, they arnt doing anything by making a RMAH, aprat from joining the 3rd party sites =(

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Interesting wrote:

Who guarantees they are not editing items to put on AH to sell for money without anyone ever suspecting since people will think it comes from players.

Thats ridiculous conspiracy theory style nonsense. Why would they do that subterfugely? If they wanted to sell items for real money they would just come out and do it, they are blizzard, they can pretty much do what they want without fear of failure, even if D3 flopped (which it never would) WOW alone pretty much keeps them afloat as a company, thats not including the vast success of starcraft in Asia. So if they wanted to make items and sell them they would...

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Interesting wrote:

Thats is geniusly evil.

Dont be so melodramatic, also particularly ironic considering the profession you admit to later in this post... Its not evil, its economics, they came up with a solution to 3rd party sites selling their products and why wouldnt they earn a cut of the profits if they could, they havent become one of the largest game developers on the planet by chance or by being charitable.

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Interesting wrote:

"Hey, why am I grinding a full day to get value worth 5 bucks? If I like this game, I should dish a hundred bucks right away to economize months of frustration and go straight to the fun".

Dont understand this view, to me games like POE and Diablo ARE fun when im looting, its not like an MMO where they are deliberately made to be boring as **** until you reach the endgame. These are essentially single player or at most small group games. If you dont find the game 'fun' in the first place why the hell are you playing it. Its not like POE or D3 are deep RPGs that suddenly become different, they are just endless combat fests with loot to collect. If you dont enjoy the 'grind' as you put it (wrong term for a loot game imo) then why are you playing?

"

Interesting wrote:

People who have the real life money, rich players, have the best stuff, no need to bow/low themselfs to the same degree as the other tier of player:

People who just bought the game and are trying to live by like everyone else, or like they used to, in traditional, old school games. Competing with their time and effort.

Games already segregate people based on lifestyle. Currently (for example) in a game like say WOW (which Ive never personally played btw) you are only successful if you plough many hours into the game. Same is true of most, if not all MMOs. So if you have kids, a wife, a job, a life etc... you will never ever progress as quickly as someone who has none of those things and is online 24/7 grinding the same repetetive areas. And its not like that requires skill, it doesnt, Diablo doesnt require skill either. Most RPGs require next to no skill beyond the ability to do simple math and figure out DPS and armour values. Most people just copy cookie cutter build X and then just plough hundreds of hours despite not having half the skill of people with less than half the in game experience.

See it all the time, the super high leveled toons in most MMOs are usually owned by people with way to much time but very little skill or ability to interact with others. So why should people who have basically just a lot of time, be better off than someone with more money? Who decided that was some rule or law of the internet?

Now if it were a genuine game of skill like say the best online FPS games which run tournaments, then maybe you'd have a point cause you shouldnt be able to buy success in a game based purely on player skill. But rpgs arent based on skill they are based on time invested, thats it.

"

Interesting wrote:

With an Auction House, all the value you get from your runs, gems, gear, recipes, whatever, will end up turning into a flat fee value. X gold per time. There is no escaping that. Some people will just stash their valuables without fully turning them into liquid value or even seeing it as such.Because lets say 20 bucks buys 100 man hours of grind in Diablo 3, due to hundreds of thousands of low life players, either adults trying to go by old school style, or kids, of latin american/south east asia people or whatever target audience play on your servers.

That will determine how valuable each man hour is. People from Australia will be able to get things very cheaply, because they will play with the lowest low life of online gaming, the SEA people. NA, will be lucky to have latin american people. Its likelly that Europe will end up having the most expensive man hour.

This is just borderline racist drivel... sorry but it is. Let me put it simply for you. If you enjoy a game for the games sake, why does it matter to you what other players do, or what some auction hall deems is the value of one game hour?? IF I enjoy D3 when it releases, I wont care if 1 pound/euro is the equivalent of 200 hours, I will still play the game regardless, cause (unlike you it seems and others) I play games for enjoyment sake of the game NOT to feel superior to others or somehow measure my worth by reaching the top of a ladder system.

Its a ludicrous argument, its like saying that if say D2 had enable a feature that allowed you to pay 20 dollars to finish the game instantly that people would do it. Sure you'd get people who might cause they have more money than sense, but most would simply rather play the game... Just cause you may monetize every conceivable action in life (unsurprising considering your job) doesnt mean others do. I play games cause I enjoy them, not to impress people or feel Ive achieved something.

And, as an aside, what any of that has to do with peoples ethnicity is beyond me...

"

Interesting wrote:

Ive played many games like that. As an example, Im a lawyer in real life, my lowest valuable hour is worth 2 hundred hours of menial/grind tasks from some random dude/mass on the Auction house?

To me its as easy as "hire" some random unknown player to do the shit for me. Its just an example. A teenager that chooses to spend his pizza/theaters/shopping/allowance fee on Diablo will likely be able to buy their hundreds hours of man grind as well.

In the end, it will be so easy and cheap, that even a teenager with a few bucks they got from its parent will allow him to be a RICH player in the game.

What this means in the end?
WE ALL LOSE.

The fact your a lawyer doesn't surprise me cause you put monetary values on everything, you have forgotten games are there for enjoyment not as a task you must complete. If you feel a need to buy items simply cause you can I suggest thats your issue not an issue with the system in place to allow that to happen.

Mark my words the vast majority of 'normal' players may use the auction hall to buy the occasional super rare item they need for a recipe or a specific build, but most normal players will simply trade for in game gold or items with other players. Its not like Blizzard forces you to use ONLY the RMAH, that would suck. I will use the traditional auction house, most people will. Its gonna have millions playing worldwide, most likely anything you can find on the RMAH will be available on the normal AH, anyone with a brain and a life will just save there in game gold a little longer to trade for virtual items not real money. Only people who dont have time or aren't interested in the loot (PVP fanatics) will bother with the RMAH.

And please explain to me (nobody has yet) why some dude buying his gear and wasting his real money on it means I lose anything? I dont lose a thing, thats his lookout, I dont understand why you care what other players do. I will still be playing my game exactly the same, my enjoyment is in no way affected by what other players do.

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Interesting wrote:

Everything you do, is so innefective compared to spending 20 more bucks, that you start thinking. Why should I bother to buy this to resell for x% more, if I have to do it a thousand times, wasting many hours of micro management, when I can simply BUY EVERYTHING.

Thats such weird logic, its like suggesting just cause I could pay my nephew 10 pounds to complete a game for me that I would just to save my time (which would be worth more) if you break any activity down like that it becomes meaningless. People play games (I hope) cause they enjoy them, usually on multiple levels. Gaining loot is just one of the things they enjoy, its not the ONLY thing they enjoy. And besides so what, if you decide (more fool you) that enjoying a slow growing progress through a well made game is not worth it and buy all you gear, if thats how you get your kicks who am I or anyone else to say thats wrong. It doesnt bother me.

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Interesting wrote:

Thats the main problem. That is against ethics and moral of competitive online gaming traditions.

And then, when you reach this point where you have spent 250 bucks to be top ten in a server, and have the best gear, you look around and there is nothing left. You feel no joy, no achievement. You feel empty. Its meaningless. You feel ashamed of yourself. You dont even belong to the game community anymore. Other people cant even compare and relate to you anymore.

Please enlighten me what are the "ethics and moral of competitive online gaming traditions" ?? Cause I must have missed that memo that the gaming gods sent out to you! I mean really melodramatic much?

And it sounds to me like you have done this yourself and felt 'ashamed' (laughable but ok Ill go with it) what community is it you 'dont relate to any more' cause according to you everyone will use the RMAH so nobody will care you did that... Right??? Or maybe your just blowing the whole thing way out of all sensible proportion, just maybe...

If you are stupid enough to waste money doing something that leaves you feeling worthless then more fool you, and presumably in the this frankly bizzarre doomsday scenario in your head where D3 players will all collectively feel cheapened and used at some stage those guys will stop playing, leaving just the people who didnt use the RMAH and we can carry on enjoying the game exactly as we have all along... so again why should I care if people do that?

*applauds* Thanks for addressing that one, RodHull.

Barelly read the first line of each quote repply. Not worth repplying. Better luck next time.

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RodHull wrote:

If you enjoy a game for the games sake, why does it matter to you what other players do, or what some auction hall deems is the value of one game hour?? ... I play games for enjoyment sake of the game NOT to feel superior to others or somehow measure my worth by reaching the top of a ladder system.

Thats my point of view too, as long as you are not forced to compete in some kind of ladder system (like D2) or as long as you have no chance to compete in the ladder(s) anyway as a time-limited casual gamer - _AND_ as long as no kind of only-buyable item is needed to finish the game at all.

"

RodHull wrote:

Mark my words the vast majority of 'normal' players may use the auction hall to buy the occasional super rare item they need for a recipe or a specific build, but most normal players will simply trade for in game gold or items with other players. Its not like Blizzard forces you to use ONLY the RMAH, that would suck. I will use the traditional auction house, most people will.

Only fact I suspect with it: the 'option' to sell rare equipment for real cash, could lead to more and more users who prefer this against ingame trades, meaning less offers at conventional trades, leading to rising tradevalues on much demanded stuff...
But I think we have to wait and see how its get balanced - and I will wait until its clear to what its going.

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Interesting wrote:

Barelly read the first line of each quote repply. Not worth repplying. Better luck next time.

rotfl