Verisimilitude in Diablo III

Last night The New England Institute of Art held it's SIGGRAPH event.  After the event the presenters visitors and students (of age) went for a beer nearby.  While there we talked about Diablo III as quite a few people around the table are playing (when not designing their own games).  The topic of Verisimilitude in Diablo 3's Auction house came up, and in retrospect I think the problems with D3 can really be summed up nicely as 'violations of verisimilitude'.  Let me explain why...

Diablo 3 Commodity App

What am I working on?

My last post was about the VERY few apps in iTunes specifically for the Diablo III Auction House.  By the way, if I missed an important one, post a comment and link to it.  I'll take a look at it and add it to the list.  There seems to be a great many apps for the perfect build, dps, lore...  But what about tracking all that Auction House Data?

4 useful Diablo III Apps

Although Blizzard tried for simplicity there is still a lot of complexity in Diablo 3.  Layered simplicity can still be overwhelming.  Add to that 'the invisible hand of the market', and you have a recipe for confusion.  App Developers can offer little ways to cut down on the confusion.  Although few have stepped up to the plate and made an app.

At the moment there are 4 apps (only 4) specifically related to the Diablo III Auction House up on the iTunes App store.  Before you plunk down your $.99 (no doubt earned from the RMAH), you want to know what they do and if they are any good. Here is a review of each.

My week in Diablo 3

After posting regularly for a while, I hit the wall.  Actually not a writing inspired wall, but rather the Inferno ACT 1 wall.  A solid stone curtain wall of frustration and self doubt.  It took me a week or two of grinding to get exactly nowhere with gear.  Culminating in 5 or six wasted attempts at killing The Butcher, with help, for the first time last night.  In reality I could not get past Araneae the Spider Queen alone.  A friend hopped me from there to the end of Act I.  Despairing and assuming the worst (that I'm bad at this game), I decided to do something really weird.  I decided to ditch my Rare level 60 gear and start buying Magic items.

The plan was this: Stop with the hodge podge of weird attributes on the gear.  Most of the gear was in the direction of +damage and + life with some additions to various resistances and resist all...  But it really wasn't cohesive.  Start buying Chromatic [Item] of Valor instead.  Cohesive armor that increases resistance to all, and Vitality. Markco has a more nuanced approach to it, but I'm going dead simple.

Playing as the Barbarian means that three of my abilities have life gain Skill Runes associated with them.  Frenzy, Rend, and Revenge are the three main attacks.  Which basically spams life gain as I attack.  So far I have replaced 5 items and have done a single farming run, with success.  I need to do a few more farming runs tonight.


Another trick I picked up.  Selling unidentified items.  Especially ilevel 63 items.  Sell them in trade chat for 250,000 to 275,000 gold.  I love this because it's way more then I can get for putting them up on the AH.  I HATE trying to price and sell items let alone try and flip them.  Having always been better on the buy side of the equation means I'm way better at generating cash from commodities.  Unidentified items are basically reduced to a commodity.  Like selling a Magic: the Gathering booster pack.  You're selling the hope.  Most people don't get that the odds are stacked against them.  That I can sell!

I have got some new things to try, and a new plan, which means I'm a lot more excited about this weeks round of farming then last weeks.

Blogging a game idea.

In a previous post a closed economy fantasy game design was suggested.  This post is going to follow up on that idea and flesh it out a little more.  First we'll recap the basics, then flesh out the game a little more.  Feel free to add feedback, suggest additions, etc.