Like I said in that other thread, they were very transparent about wanting to make a console version years ago. I thought it was a very well known fact, so the idea that there are people surprised about this is kind of interesting.
Dunno why some fans are arguing the PS3/4 announcement is evidence the game was built for consoles, I don't buy that. I'm sure this major deal was reached long ago, perhaps even during game development time. I'm more apt to believe a lot of the game's gear/skill stuff was built with the AH in mind
Actually, I think many of the initial problems came from the fact that they really didn't. They said they balanced the game around not having it in the first place, and it kind of shows. Early and mid game you loved your trusty weapon that had carried you for 5 levels with only its 50 DPS, until you got into the AH and found 1000 more powerful items for your level at ridiculously low prices that made progressing a non-issue and kinda made you feel bad about what you found. This feeling never stopped during the game, mainly because you are always getting drops around 5 levels below your current one. Unless you got stupidly lucky, the AH whiffed whatever challenge they initially planned.
Similarly, they said they internally hadn't beaten inferno, and that was because the way they set it up (remember that iLVL 63 items only dropped in A3/A4 back then) with its ridiculous difficulty increases biased against melee players meant that people were not progressing naturally, but instead cheesing the game to get them (usually DHs stacking a shitload of MS and IAS) and getting to those acts and farming specific spots and goblins to sell items on the AH. Then, by having those items you absolutely needed but couldn't get by playing normally, the solution was to go to the AH, which wasn't an option they didn't have internally and didn't balance the difficulty against.
I remember one of the Blizzard employees said something like he beat inferno Butcher after many tries with a 350ish DPS weapon. That they thought they had created an appropriate challenge and they didn't realize at the time how the players would respond to that kind of wall with an AH available. IMO, had they actually balanced the game around the AH, they might've made the earlier difficulties even more difficult and maybe considered people wearing always level appropriate gear.
They certainly lacked a lot of foresight of how many items were going to be available to every player in the AH vs the game. I think that, even with the AH in place, they could've done a much better job at minimizing its impact (if that is really what they wanted).
the console version has an
offline mode...
superior version confirmed
OK, that is absolutely fucked up =/
I don't know if I care enough at this point to be pissed tbh, but it kind of stings.
