If the price of gold is set based on the exchange rate of 100,000 gold per $1 (arbitrary value) and you find an item that sells consistently for 1,000,000 gold in said auction house, does that not mean that that item is worth $10? Yes, of course it does. Thus, RMAH places actual real worth in gold and items. Whether or not YOU IN PARTICULAR are affected by that is not even the argument. If Gucci wants to place a value of $5000 on a handbag, that's the value, and people will buy it.
And what makes that item consistently sell at all, much less for a million gold?
Not Blizzard.
Now... how it affect design decisions? The decision to make something hard to get creates artificial low supply of items in that tier. So the harder the last level is, the harder it is to get items, driving the RMAH price up increasing Blizzard profits. If they want some item to sell more, they need to lower the prices so it becomes more attainable. But not too much, otherwise it will be too easy to get. If the last level was easy, everyone would have a good chance of getting items in that tier and they wouldn't be as active in the AH.
Once again, this explains why it could theoretically be beneficial to do things that way, not why it's true in this case.
I have no idea what you're trying to say regarding lowering the price. Something about Blizzard manipulating item values or something?
Finally, the last level being hard. Really? The last level is difficult, therefore RMAH? Could it not also be that the last level is difficult because
it's the last thing there is, and if the last level was easy everyone would beat it and have nothing left to do?
Also, pushing people to the AH is the "drop rate" on particular stats. If the game benefits from life stealing items and they notice the price on those items is drastically low they just decrease the drop rates and the price starts to go up.
More baseless, theoretical speculation. Are we talking about actual, existent Blizzard or the plot to your thrilling new novel?
Now, I've heard/read people talking and most people I know of find it much easier (and we all know people will take the path of least resistance...) to farm gold by selling off junk (Real Money Junk Vendor) and just buy the item they want from the AH. It's far easier to let someone else farm and list the item and just give them gold.... I mean money (because gold == money now.)
What are you even trying to say here?. People farm gold to buy things, but gold is potentially the same as money therefore they're spending actual money? Or just that people use the AH and thus... well, what? How does this relate to anything?
But who cares if the harder level is too hard... don't play it, right? You ever wonder why the lower levels are so easy? There's no challenge there and people will not feel their money's worth. Let's create a HUGE cliff of difficulty so people will be desperate to break that barrier... some of them will pay money because it's not worth their time to grind out gold.
Lower levels are easy so anyone can play them. Difficulty spikes because there's only so much time to ramp it up, and only so much purpose to graaaaaaadually ramping up difficulty, especially for things like not standing in fire where increasingly but gradually gentle reminders don't really do much.
Does it spike too fast in some areas? Could be, I wouldn't know. But even if it did, that'd have nothing whatsoever to do with Blizzard being an evil corporation unless, again, you can somehow explain why. Not why
it could be, mind you, but why it is and isn't anything else.
Or are you talking non-item design choices? Well, that's easy too. Some skill you have lets you play the game without needing some bad ass loot only found on the hardest levels of Nightmare... nerf it. People will be enticed to the AH to buy better gear. That's a hell of a design decision change... they'd never nerf something so much... Force Armor + Diamond Skin? Hello?
Force Armor + Diamond Skin was
broken as shit. They nerfed it so you could play the goddamned game without
needing to use that one set of skills because nothing else was even close to it in power (except, of course, the other cheese they also nerfed).
I'm also curious now, though. Supposing they had left several broken combos in the game. How would that have affected your opinion of them and their dastardly schemes?
Oh, you say they can just go to a lower level area and farm some gold to get items to fill these needs? Did you even read any of the links I posted? They nerfed gold drop rates.
I have not been reading things you haven't been linking yet, no. Incidentally, if the stuff you did link had any merit, you probably wouldn't need all this new material.
Anyway, this first one is interesting, but you'll notice he's claiming a universal nerf, using only data from a very specific run. Running a certain route and getting less gold does not mean everywhere ever drops less gold, especially when said route was far more profitable than other regions to begin with. Given that Blizzard has explicitly stated they want the game to be about random champion/boss packs, not farming the same boss over and over again, this is hardly surprising or difficult to justify.
So now that gold is hard to get, how will you afford the new higher repair rates and still have fun with the game? One person even suggested selling off items on another character and getting rid of it! Wow. That's what I want to do just to be able to play a stupid game.
I'm curious if
you're reading this. Half the comments are talking about RMAH, the other half are telling him to stop dying repeatedly. He's also, as always, vague as hell about what's actually happening and why.
Furthermore, if this is the case how do you explain the recent halving of repair costs, mentioned in that very thread? Given that this post was made after that went live, and the bizarre comment about the AH, I'm tempted to suspect a troll.
It's beneficial to them to make things rare so they fetch a higher gold value and entice players to pay that price. It's also beneficial for them to control the cost of items so that it doesn't get too obscene so players will still pony up. It's also beneficial for them to create artificial scarcity to create those Bentley/MErcedes items that power players will crave. If they find the item is not selling, they increase the drop rates to lower the price and keep people buying and selling on the market. Do you really not understand how economies work and how Blizzard could absolutely be using this to their advantage to make money on the RMAH?
COULD. BE. IS NOT THE SAME AS "IS." I do not understand why you insist on going into speculation with no basis whatsoever beyond "it's physically possible and would benefit them." What is your point in doing this? That they have a motive and therefore are? That they might in the future and therefore... something?
What are you trying to say? This is a major, recurring thing for you, so it must be important, but I just don't understand what you're getting at.
RE: Peer Pressure. You apparently have never been outside. Peer Pressure can be huge. You see someone driving around in a new car and it looks totally awesome or has some cool features you like. You have some urge to own that item (even if you try to claim you don't.) It's human nature, deal with it.
Yeah. That doesn't mean I go buy new cars very often. It just means I want to somewhat more than I already did.
That's also human nature.
RE: Blizzard made auctions. Prove they don't do it.
This is not how arguing works. RMAH cures cancer. Prove it doesn't.
Or we could, you know, have a conversation.
A statement is one thing, but Reddit founder recently come out and said they made fake accounts to entice people to use it. The Bandwagon Effect... you should probably read about that too.
The difference is that there's no cost to making a Reddit account. If there's also no cost to using the RMAH or whatever, what's the problem? If there is, then that'll be a limiter, similar to how most people aren't alcoholics or wearing the latest fashions.
Also, just because YOU don't fall for some trick doesn't mean that applies to everyone. Blizzard making a gameplay change or secret auctions can most definitely impact how the RMAH is perceived. I just read the other day that people were making a big deal out of actually making money on the AH... that has a psychological impact on people. 1. Money can be made. 2. I can buy things with real money and not be derided like before.
I didn't mean to imply that I was the measuring stick by which others would also act. I meant that most people would act roughly that way coincidentally, and that your claims to the contrary were sensationalist and unreasonable.
I'm not sure what you mean by the latter part. Time was, people couldn't buy things using real money because of the crushing shame, but now there isn't any crushing shame so they can and will? And... this is a bad thing, I guess?
Who's to say Blizzard doesn't buy out items to create the image of demand? A few hundred bucks here and there will not hurt their bank, but it will definitely make people think people are paying real money for digital items. You can call it a conspiracy if you like, but it could very well be happening and you'll never know about it.
Because market forces aren't that easy to fool. They'd be fighting against the actual weight of the market using their own money- this just doesn't work unless you have some way to recoup those losses, and turning a slightly higher profit isn't going to cut it.
Or, let's put it another way. Blizzard takes, what, 30% of an item's value? Meaning to recoup their losses on, say, buying a $100 item for $200, that one act would need to result in around 14 other people selling (successfully selling, mind you, not just listing at OR being willing to buy at that price) that item for $150 instead just to break even (well, turn a paper thin profit). If they manage to convince people to buy for $200, they'd still need 7 of them. That's just not going to happen from one errant sale.
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Topic: Diablo 3 (Read 110982 times)