Chris and his D3 Interview

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Phrazz wrote:

First off; If you're spending 30-40 minutes pr day converting currency, you're not playing the same game as I am.

Well, I just did some quick math. There are eight types of small currencies that I generally don't need (at least not in large quantities), so I convert most of it to chaos:

- Wisdom scrolls
- Portal scrolls
- Orbs of transmutation
- Orbs of alteration
- Orbs of augmentation
- Orbs of chance
- Armorer's scraps
- Blacksmith's whetstones

Usually I have to go through 5-10 sellers to find someone who isn't AFK, DND or simply ignoring me. After messaging each seller, I have to give them at least around 30 seconds to respond before moving on to the next one. So it's 3-5 minutes per currency, multiplied by eight currencies, and there you have your 30-40 minutes per day spent playing hideout warrior instead of playing PoE. And no, please don't tell me something like "you could have easily made 200c from farming in those 30-40 minutes". I'm not one of those super-efficient speedrunners who can clear 50 maps per hour while wearing MF gear. I come from the old-school D2 background, I play at a much slower pace and try to enjoy the process (isn't it what we're all supposed to do?), and that means I absolutely need to trade in those small currencies to keep myself solvent.

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Second; I'm not referring to "AFKers, DNDers and/or players who simply ignore you", I'm talking about the minimum amount of effort required to bypass the RNG, like leaving your map to trade, visit another player's hideout, message the player you are trade with etc.

As I said, I don't think you'll find ANYONE that doesn't want a better trade system to get rid of the many weaknesses poe.trade has. But not being able to trade instantly isn't a weakness, it's a strength for the game and the economy - in my eyes.

You can't be half-pregnant. Either you have an automated instant buyout system (aka AH), or you have a system that relies on (non-)willingness of each individual player to trade with other players. I mean, you could introduce something like a penalty for not responding to trade whispers within a set period of time, but it would probably do more harm than good, and would frustrate players even more than the current system does. I personally see no way of improving the existing trade system and addressing the issue of non-responding players without turning it into an automated AH, but if you have any viable suggestions, I'm all ears :)

Here's a transcription of the part of the interview about difficulties.

6:00 Difficulties

(The interviewer is conflating the difficulty slider currently in D3 with the play-through difficulties in previous versions of both D3 and PoE.)

I: "How do you gauge the amount of difficulty to allow your players to choose from?"

CW: "So we were using a system a bit like Diablo 1 and 2 where you play through the game iteratively, all of one difficulty level, then on the next, then on the next. You couldn't jump between them like you couldn't say 'You know what? I'm ready to ratchet it up to Hard' and have it be more difficult."

I: "Right."

CW: "Which is kind of a fundamental difference from the way they are doing it in D3 at the moment. And so our system here, which is why I assume they scrapped it in Diablo 3, had the problem that you have players repeating content and it gets boring after a while. The system they have at the moment in Diablo 3, I believe where you can change the difficulty on the fly, the issue we have here, the reason we never investigated anything like that in Path of Exile, is that we believe that gamers all believe that they are going to be the best player. And so they are all told by the internet that you've got to be playing this on the hardest difficulty."

I: "Right."

CW: "And so, if they can't, they are going to criticize the game, potentially. Now I haven't actually played Diablo 3 since the point that they made that difficulty change, I've only played it pre Reaper of Souls. I haven't experienced it. I don't know exactly how it's done in D3. But our understanding of the system and the reason why we're not doing something similar in Path of Exile is that we'd rather have a more consistent experience - some people are just a lot better at it than others and more quickly settle down to the difficult content that's appropriate for them at the end of the game."

I: "I like that. I mean it's an interesting approach and it's a nice contrast to those who might feel a little overwhelmed by that bevy of options. And I think you are absolutely right, that ultimately you are always just going to chase what is the most rewarding or what is the best. The goal is to get to the end game and to do so, anything in between is kind of... it's just fluff. I can definitely appreciate that, by comparison."

("Overwhelmed by that bevy of options"?!? It's a difficulty slider! That's like saying "I can set the oven to 250 degF or 275 or 300 or... It's just too overwhelming!")

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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CelticHound wrote:

Removing the auction house and essentially turning D3 into SSF, they had to re-balance the drops, and the difficulty. Besides Loot 2.0, they got rid of the four difficulty levels and made the difficulty scaling user-selectable. Game balance, in general, is basically what Blizzard has been working on in D3 ever since. (Plus The Necro pack, and the rift skinned like the original Diablo last January, but that was for fun.) At this point, I'm fairly confident that if there is a specific build I want to play in a D3 season, I can farm the gear for it. And even if I'm a sucky player who can't hack Torment XIII, I can still see all the content in the game, scaled to an appropriate level (with less reward than players who can play at higher difficulties).

well if thats the kind of game you want to play, a game with a casual, shallow loot and build system that struggles to hold an experienced heavy hour player for longer than a week then go play it mate. If you cant get your head around the idea that youre not entitled to everything in the game just for showing up then this isnt the game for you, theres 1000s of games out there designed to accommodate that mindset. Youve picked one of the only games that doesnt, and thats the reason its been here for 4 years and still going strong while D3 is a rotting corpse and countless other games have come and gone. Theres no need to ruin this game and make it just like all the other shallow easy come easy go games that cant hold up for more than 6 months without dissolving in their own lack of substance.

Right. What you are failing to comprehend is that Blizzard has managed to separate difficulty from content such that difficulty is an independent axis.

In D2 (and similarly in D1, Titan Quest, etc., etc.), it doesn't as much matter if I can't manage Act 5 in Hell difficulty, because I've already gone through that content in the previous difficulties. In Path of Exile, there is game content and a story-line quest that people who are not "experienced heavy hour players" will not get to see.

Perhaps an overdone and unrealistic example will help. Imagine that GGG implemented a cluster of three or four side areas in an act, with their own tile sets and monsters, that could only be accessed each time by defeating a sub-boss that 99% of builds couldn't dent. So 99% of the player base would never see these assets. That would obviously be a waste of time to create assets in the game that no one would ever see.

On another tack, as an "experienced heavy hour player", you've killed the Shaper and done all the content. Why do you keep playing a character? Everything in the game can only get easier from then on. Wouldn't you want to be able ratchet up the difficulty and take on Shaper v.2 and so on? Or maybe that would be too overwhelming.

Oh, and I will be playing the D3 Season that starts next month. Oddly, though, I'll be quitting after a week or so because I'm not an "experienced heavy hour player". I'll do the Season Journey for the pet or whatever, but the grindy stuff or timed challenges to get to Conqueror? Nope, boring.

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raics wrote:

I assume he didn't mention the possibility of a limited auction house, it's either no AH or the unrestricted one D3 had. There are ways to do that tastefully too, but I guess he prefers that raw feeling of an unfinished mod.

In your opinion, what would a limited auction house look like?

p.s. I don't have time to transcribe the part of the interview where trade comes up - maybe start listening at 26:00? - is anyone else willing to do it?

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DGTLDaemon wrote:

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Phrazz wrote:

First off; If you're spending 30-40 minutes pr day converting currency, you're not playing the same game as I am.

Well, I just did some quick math. There are eight types of small currencies that I generally don't need (at least not in large quantities), so I convert most of it to chaos:

- Wisdom scrolls
- Portal scrolls
- Orbs of transmutation
- Orbs of alteration
- Orbs of augmentation
- Orbs of chance
- Armorer's scraps
- Blacksmith's whetstones

Usually I have to go through 5-10 sellers to find someone who isn't AFK, DND or simply ignoring me. After messaging each seller, I have to give them at least around 30 seconds to respond before moving on to the next one. So it's 3-5 minutes per currency, multiplied by eight currencies, and there you have your 30-40 minutes per day spent playing hideout warrior instead of playing PoE. And no, please don't tell me something like "you could have easily made 200c from farming in those 30-40 minutes". I'm not one of those super-efficient speedrunners who can clear 50 maps per hour while wearing MF gear. I come from the old-school D2 background, I play at a much slower pace and try to enjoy the process (isn't it what we're all supposed to do?), and that means I absolutely need to trade in those small currencies to keep myself solvent.

"

Second; I'm not referring to "AFKers, DNDers and/or players who simply ignore you", I'm talking about the minimum amount of effort required to bypass the RNG, like leaving your map to trade, visit another player's hideout, message the player you are trade with etc.

As I said, I don't think you'll find ANYONE that doesn't want a better trade system to get rid of the many weaknesses poe.trade has. But not being able to trade instantly isn't a weakness, it's a strength for the game and the economy - in my eyes.

You can't be half-pregnant. Either you have an automated instant buyout system (aka AH), or you have a system that relies on (non-)willingness of each individual player to trade with other players. I mean, you could introduce something like a penalty for not responding to trade whispers within a set period of time, but it would probably do more harm than good, and would frustrate players even more than the current system does. I personally see no way of improving the existing trade system and addressing the issue of non-responding players without turning it into an automated AH, but if you have any viable suggestions, I'm all ears :)

The ridiculous stuff people come up with lmao. So you trade in your wisdom scrolls for other currency daily? Haha, wtf man. The bloating in your post is just awesome. It shows you are running out of any option to even debate this any longer, and have to resort to this kind of silly talk.

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Miská wrote:

The ridiculous stuff people come up with lmao. So you trade in your wisdom scrolls for other currency daily? Haha, wtf man. The bloating in your post is just awesome. It shows you are running out of any option to even debate this any longer, and have to resort to this kind of silly talk.

I understand that there are players who don't even bother picking up small currencies, let alone trade them, but I'm not one of them. I am a casual player, I play at a slower pace, and small currencies make up most of my income early in the leagues. So I'm sorry if sounded like I was trolling or pulling arguments out of thin air, but I assure you I was not. I meant every word I said. And that's the reason why I would be very happy if GGG at least introduced a currency AH. I can live with having to buy/sell gear manually, but converting currencies in the current system is just a huge pain in the ass.

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DGTLDaemon wrote:

I understand that there are players who don't even bother picking up small currencies, let alone trade them, but I'm not one of them. I am a casual player, I play at a slower pace, and small currencies make up most of my income early in the leagues. So I'm sorry if sounded like I was trolling or pulling arguments out of thin air, but I assure you I was not. I meant every word I said. And that's the reason why I would be very happy if GGG at least introduced a currency AH. I can live with having to buy/sell gear manually, but converting currencies in the current system is just a huge pain in the ass.

You are just old-school from the "pick up every cracked sash to sell in town" days.

I get that. I'm a "stop to smell the corpses" kinda player myself.

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CelticHound wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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CelticHound wrote:

Removing the auction house and essentially turning D3 into SSF, they had to re-balance the drops, and the difficulty. Besides Loot 2.0, they got rid of the four difficulty levels and made the difficulty scaling user-selectable. Game balance, in general, is basically what Blizzard has been working on in D3 ever since. (Plus The Necro pack, and the rift skinned like the original Diablo last January, but that was for fun.) At this point, I'm fairly confident that if there is a specific build I want to play in a D3 season, I can farm the gear for it. And even if I'm a sucky player who can't hack Torment XIII, I can still see all the content in the game, scaled to an appropriate level (with less reward than players who can play at higher difficulties).

well if thats the kind of game you want to play, a game with a casual, shallow loot and build system that struggles to hold an experienced heavy hour player for longer than a week then go play it mate. If you cant get your head around the idea that youre not entitled to everything in the game just for showing up then this isnt the game for you, theres 1000s of games out there designed to accommodate that mindset. Youve picked one of the only games that doesnt, and thats the reason its been here for 4 years and still going strong while D3 is a rotting corpse and countless other games have come and gone. Theres no need to ruin this game and make it just like all the other shallow easy come easy go games that cant hold up for more than 6 months without dissolving in their own lack of substance.

Right. What you are failing to comprehend is that Blizzard has managed to separate difficulty from content such that difficulty is an independent axis.

In D2 (and similarly in D1, Titan Quest, etc., etc.), it doesn't as much matter if I can't manage Act 5 in Hell difficulty, because I've already gone through that content in the previous difficulties. In Path of Exile, there is game content and a story-line quest that people who are not "experienced heavy hour players" will not get to see.

Perhaps an overdone and unrealistic example will help. Imagine that GGG implemented a cluster of three or four side areas in an act, with their own tile sets and monsters, that could only be accessed each time by defeating a sub-boss that 99% of builds couldn't dent. So 99% of the player base would never see these assets. That would obviously be a waste of time to create assets in the game that no one would ever see.

On another tack, as an "experienced heavy hour player", you've killed the Shaper and done all the content. Why do you keep playing a character? Everything in the game can only get easier from then on. Wouldn't you want to be able ratchet up the difficulty and take on Shaper v.2 and so on? Or maybe that would be too overwhelming.

Oh, and I will be playing the D3 Season that starts next month. Oddly, though, I'll be quitting after a week or so because I'm not an "experienced heavy hour player". I'll do the Season Journey for the pet or whatever, but the grindy stuff or timed challenges to get to Conqueror? Nope, boring.

I dont fail to comprehend it, I am aware how diablo 3 have difficulty worked out, Im 36, I had diablo 1 when it came out, diablo 2, titan quest, I have these games, Ive been playing them for 20 odd years. Im well aware how they work.

Anyone who wants to get to maps can get to maps if they put in the effort. If they dont then the game provides them enough content for the effort they want to put in, for people who want to put in more effort the game has more content for them. Theres no problem that the low effort people do not get all the content, they dont have an appetite for that much content anyway. I understand how the game difficulties work, I dont understand the point you are trying to make with this latest post.

blizzard seperated difficulty and content, yep. Are you trying to suggest thats a good thing? Because its not, its terrible and its part of the reason their game is bad and has no life span. Another reason their game is bad is because they let you find all the gear within a few days, just like the difficulty sldier the gear that takes longer to find is the same gear, just with the slider turned up a little which lets you turn the difficulty slider up a little and now the game feels exactly the same as it did before you found the game and turned up the difficulty. Its a terrible loot system and a terrible difficulty system.

Its a game that started out terribly flawed and the more they added needed systems like endgame functionality the more they destroyed the core systems of an arpg like loot. Theyve just taken this idea of balancing the game towards the most low effort, high entitlement player further and further to the point where the game has no life span. These games are loot games, and theyve taken away the rarity of the loot, the individuality of the loot, the loot has no trade value cause u cant trade, the loot has no impact because they just have a slider that counteracts your power, when you add this to character levels being rendered virtually meaningless, challenge becoming meaningless because its the same thing youre fighting 15 hours in as 50 hours in as 500 hours in just with a slider turned up, they have literally destroyed the core of what drives an arpg. It is such a fundamentally shit game in terms of an arpg that its hard to put into words, completely pointless, its pathetic tbh. Diablo 3 as it stands is an afterbirth, the baby was the RMAH, the blizzard big baby cash cow sold to people using the vacant diablo brand they had sitting around, and the game that is left in the wake of the RMAH is the soggy afterbirth that came with it, dressed up by a bunch of caretakers to save face for blizzard in the wake of their cynical cashing in on the fans of blizzard north whos ip they inherited. At no point was diablo "lets make an awesome arpg", it was "we can make a lot of money from the diablo brand with an RMAH" followed by "we best just fiddle with this corpse a little and please the most whiny entitled part of the player base somewhat so that they keep buying our other products".

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CelticHound wrote:

In your opinion, what would a limited auction house look like?

There are a lot of ways to do it, time restriction, amount restriction, token restriction, account parking and whatnot. I'm a fan of token system myself, with monsters dropping an account bound item that allows you to place an item on sale at your friendly neighborhood trading npc.

The biggest risk with efficient trading isn't your average Joe that will take half an hour less to outfit his char, it's those that trade exclusively and the token system should enforce at least some balance between playing and trading. One more advantage is that people will be less likely to spend tokens and put out cheap crap on sale, which should lower availability of common items and raise their price a bit, which is a good thing, the market caves in way too fast currently.

However, the best thing about an in-house trading system is probably GGG being able to do a proper trading tutorial, I've seen newcomers complaining about trade chat often enough, asking "are we really supposed to be trading this way?" Well of course not, but the game doesn't say that anywhere.

"Away" trading will NEVER happen in POE.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

blizzard seperated difficulty and content, yep. Are you trying to suggest thats a good thing? Because its not, its terrible and its part of the reason their game is bad and has no life span. Another reason their game is bad is because they let you find all the gear within a few days, just like the difficulty sldier the gear that takes longer to find is the same gear, just with the slider turned up a little which lets you turn the difficulty slider up a little and now the game feels exactly the same as it did before you found the game and turned up the difficulty. Its a terrible loot system and a terrible difficulty system.

I would say the main reason D3 has no life span is because it no longer has an economy. Even as shitty as that game was, if it kept at least trading it would still be incredibly popular today. Loot for the sake of loot is pointless. Thats why PoE is still alive and flourishing while Torchlight 1,2, and D3 aren't. Hell, I'd personally like to know if D2 has as many players as D3; it might. Its why Warframe is huge and Borderlands isn't. Loot has to have value or it starts to not mean anything. You can only gear a character or 2 and kill the same boss so many times before the trinkets don't mean anything unless they have value to someone else.

The most important factor in all of these looters, for longevity, is its economy. I would almost argue its more important than the game itself on for long-term sustainability. Even a shitty game like D3 would more than likely still be popular if it had one. I mean before they even closed it down, my buddy was still making a killing in that game.