Diablo 4 Can Bring Back The Auction House

The auction house in Diablo 3 had good intentions, but ultimately paved the way the the game’s ruin. How can Diablo 4 do better?

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Diablo 4 is rumoured to be making its first formal appearance at BlizzCon 2019 in less than two weeks. While we can expect plenty of demon slaying and looting of legendary gear, now is the perfect time to discuss how Blizzard could bring back the Auction House. In Diablo 3, the failings of the Auction House were apparent from its launch and may have doomed the game from reaching its true potential – attempting to implement it a second time would require a vastly different design philosophy.

In sum, the intent in Diablo 3 was to provide players with a safe, legitimate way to exchange in-game currency or real money for items, rather than continue to see players use unsecured, third-party websites. In that sense, the project was a success, but the Auction House also had the unintended effect of becoming the most efficient way to increase a character’s overall power level, rather than actually playing the game.

So how can Diablo 4 do better?

First Things First: Get Rid Of Real Money Purchases

Implementing an Auction House in Diablo 4 would necessitate a complete overhaul, and unlike its predecessor, needs to have the loot progression system of the game series in mind. At its heart, players love acquiring weapons and armor, and nothing is more rewarding than playing and finding something that boosts our characters to new heights.

Removing the option for real money purchases should be obvious, as that is far too close to pay-to-win and would feel too similar to the misstep of Ghost Recon: Breakpoint. Integrating an Auction House into the next Diablo game should instead use only in-game currency -and what’s more, it’s time to move beyond gold as the only currency.

Gold Is Unlimited And Bots Run Wild

Since the removal of the Auction House in Diablo 3, gold became a useless currency that would accumulate endlessly. It was not until the Empowerment of Greater Rifts that there was finally some form of gold sink added into the game. The problem of course is that Diablo 3 has a bot problem, and thus players have access to massive amounts of gold. To avoid this in the next game, Blizzard would need to implement a new manner of currency that could be used in the Auction House, along with a method to moderate and control the bots.

One option would be to adopt a system of progressively rarer currencies in the same way that Path of Exile does. That game has a completely different method of in-game trading, but there is no denying that it is deep, complex, and satisfying. At the highest levels of play, players would have the chance to slowly earn the rarest of currency needed to spend at an Auction House, rather than simply grind for gold.

Remove The Ability To “Play” The Auction House

A major issue mentioned above was that players found it more efficient buy and sell over and over to both generate more gold and find better items. This removes the entire need to play the game. This could be countered by making items account bound after a single trade, allowing the original finder of loot to sell it for in-game currency. Limiting loot trade to only one buyer per piece would eliminate the secondary market for goods that circulate forever from buyer to seller.

This would also keep the supply of items far lower than in Diablo 3, where there was no cap on how many times an item could be traded and led to an ever-increasing pool of items to exchange.

Another option would be to artificially lower the usefulness of the market by limiting the number of items that a player could wear that were purchased on the Auction House. In Diablo 3, players could trade for everything they needed, acquiring all their armor, weapons, rings and necklaces as well as gear for their followers without ever fighting a single demon. A limitation of two to three items worn at a time by players would force players to actually play the game, but also help provide an option to locate an elusive missing set piece or two.

Blizzard could also make items purchased from an Auction House have zero stats, but still provide its secondary or set-bonus. This would offer players a short-term solution to missing items, and still provide a power increase until they can find their own.

Then again, the answer to creating an Auction House might lie in something radically different, such as a total revamp to what the endgame of Diablo 4 might look like.

Looting Gear? Try Creating Your Own

Crafting in Diablo 3 is marginally useful while leveling, but at the endgame, serves virtually no purpose outside of a few recently buffed sets and the need to create items for use within Kanai’s Cube. One way to bring back the Auction House would be to completely reimagine the concept from the ground up, such as not selling any weapons or gear at all, and instead, crafting components for the long-term construction of your own gear.

This may sound radically different from what Diablo has had in the past, but there is reason to consider the possibility. Diablo 3 has suffered for years with the problem of creating engaging endgame content to keep players around for the long term. The ability to find Legendary gear is now trivial, and players are bombarded with drops, especially as higher levels of Torment are added with their increased drop rate multipliers.

The answer may lie in taking a page from Destiny 2, in the way that Bungie has recently embraced having players work towards to construction of gear that they want with the Chalice of Opulence. This empowers players and gives them a long-term goal. In Diablo 4, a new currency and quests could be used to either craft set pieces, or if we move away from the notion of making our own gear, to provide buff that increase the odds of finding a specific type of gear.

These are but a few ideas to consider, and while they may sound radical, Diablo 4 cannot possibly be made with the same model of Diablo 3, or it too will offer little to players in the endgame and likely suffer the same abandonment as the current game.

A Second Try At A Novel Idea

The intention of the Auction House in Diablo 3 was positive in its inception, but its implementation was flawed and problematic. With careful planning, a second iteration could be a hit in the game – but only time will tell if Blizzard ventures into a second attempt, or if the failure of the first Auction House was simply too harsh to ever consider trying again.

Link Source : https://www.thegamer.com/diablo-4-can-bring-back-the-auction-house/