Sunday Night In Sanctuary

Sunday Night in Sanctuary

Waynedale Gamer

Ahh, Sanctuary, home to such lovely places as Tristram and New Tristram.  Sanctuary also happens to be the setting of our topic today, Diablo 3 and its now defunct Auction House.

            Since its release just over two years ago, I have had a love/hate relationship with Diablo 3.  Without going that far into the past two years of Diablo 3 history, most of us can agree on a few general ideas.  This game blew chunks when it was first released.  Horrible server issues, little to no random environments, and that pesky “real money” auction house that seemed to make Diablo 3 a micro-transaction game, all served to remind us that even mighty Blizzard Entertainment can accidently jizz in their own coffee once in a while.

            Well, in that post jizz moment of clarity, Blizzard realized that their coffee tasted funny and no one wanted to drink it.  So slowly and surely they started to fix the game with a series of patches.  Classes got balanced, new high end content was released, paragon levels came into being, Loot 2.0 came, the auction house was shut down, and the Reaper of Soul’s expansion was released, giving the game a much needed shot of randomized environments and objectives into the game.  Diablo 3 was born again hard, and like anything hard, ready to jizz into their coffee once again.

            While no one can deny that Diablo 3 is a much better game (perhaps the best in the series), there is still a distinct taste of baby-batter in the mocha.  Unlike the spunk of before, this mixture of fluids appears to dullards to be more difficult to fix, and may have inadvertently been created during the repairs to the game.  Luckily for the gaming world, I am no dullard.

            Currently, Diablo 3 has a deep paradox nagging at its core game play, kind of a digital asking of the old “chicken or the egg” question that seems to baffle stupid people everywhere.  Simply stated, it is really hard to get to the highest tiers of end game content without getting certain pieces of loot and gear, which tend to only be found on the highest tiers to begin with.

            This problem was made evidently clear to me when I started to read Blizzard’s own “Theorycraft Thursday” and “Goatman’s Guide of the Week” articles.  So many fun and entertaining builds were listed for your hero to smash his or her way through the game on, but they all depended upon very specific high end pieces of loot, which are distributed totally at random on the highest levels of play.  Basically this means lots of grinding and pure random chance will determine if you get to try the coolest stuff in the game out.

You seem like perfectly nice fellows, but the .00032% chance you might drop something I desperately need means I will be forced to shoot you in the face with lightning until you are dead.

            But how, Mr. Waynedale Gamer, could this problem be solved?  Well, if you ask me, which you just did, I would tell you that some sort of building/residence/location that allowed players to acquire or purchase exactly what they wanted needs to be instituted into the game.  You could call it an auction house.

            “That’s crazy talk you fucking retard!  The Auction House was bad!  It perverted Diablo 3’s kill for loot core gameplay.  You are just a big dumb son of a bitch and you need to stop breathing!”  Just wait a moment and let me explain myself here.  Loot 2.0 made great strides in fixing issues, so it is theoretically possible that a revamped auction house system could fit right into the game if given the sweet loving care Loot 2.0 has been given?  The answer to that question is yes!  Not only yes, but the perfect mechanics to institute such a system are already in place.

            Blood Shards, yep, those Blood Shards you trade for random crappy items that you will never use can be the savior of an already born again game.  Just imagine for a moment that you log into the game, start playing, and visit this new “auction house”.  It will contain the template for every single piece of a gear or crafting material in the game.  You simply pick and choose exactly what you want, and it gives you a cost in Blood Shards.  Once you have that, you run bounties, bounties eventually give you Rift Keys, the Rift Keys transport you into the super-fight situations they currently do, you kill the boss, collect a few random items from said boss as well as your Blood Shards.  You could then trade said shards for any item in the game.

            There we have it, you are playing the game content to get your gear, and you are saved from the complete randomness of the loot drop.  This is an elegant solution to a core flaw, and it offers everyone the chance to get the good stuff.  The guy stuck on torment 1 scrapping a few shards together at a time could eventually get a couple of items to get him into higher torment levels which pay more shards of course.  You can even incentivize random “wild caught” loot by making it slightly more powerful then auction house loot to appease the Diablo 3 purest out there.  No more jizz in the coffee anymore, and at least when you grind out game play sessions, you can at least make some progress towards whatever super build you saw and wanted to try.

            Then again, what do I, Waynedale Gamer, who has been playing the Diablo series since the very first one (I bought it launch day all those years ago at a Target that no longer exists) know about this?

Waynedale Gamer is a reclusive internet hermit/gamer who probably knows more about everything than you do.  Much like the mythical female orgasm, many people doubt his very existence.  He is the only member of Team Waynedale who still faces the fate worse than death that living in Waynedale is.

Currently playing: Watch Dogs (PS4) Diablo 3 (PC)

Currently Reading “Rise of the Warrior Cop”

Currently Album Listening to “Hydra – Within Temptation”