To Trendy

[ShinUkyo]

Oh Please don't add an auction house. I want to still have to look for upgrades. Even going through player shops makes the experience of finding the right piece special. Once you put in a big list, and it's super easy to find good stuff, we will become lazy and stop wanting to look. I know bout the DD store site, but it's not a true AH. SO please don't add one.

If you truly enjoy farming your own gear, and the requirements to find good gear are sensible, then you'd have no need for an auction house. You could just choose not to use it. If you caved in and used it, then even despite what you consciously think, you really didn't enjoy the farming as much as you thought. If anything, there could be marks put on items that have been sold, similar to the "forged by" mark in the current game. So if you indeed farmed your own gear, you could prove that, and maintain whatever bragging rights come with it.

To me, as much as the "loot" aspect is great (and as much as I usually like loot games,) it wasn't what drew me to the vanilla version of this game. The vanilla game had an intuitive, natural, enjoyable progression. Your gear didn't mean much of anything, and your stats came purely from leveling up and choosing where to distribute them. The base game was strictly about build strategy and thinking on your toes. The later content, while it still involved those two things, also had a strict "gear check" as people call it. The game wasn't designed with NM and later stage content in mind, so they did what they could to compensate. I still enjoyed the hell out of this game, both vanilla and the DLC era, and I know they'll go into the next DD with all of the lessons they've learned on progression.

[Chuckdatas]

If you truly enjoy farming your own gear, and the requirements to find good gear are sensible, then you'd have no need for an auction house. You could just choose not to use it. If you caved in and used it, then even despite what you consciously think, you really didn't enjoy the farming as much as you thought. If anything, there could be marks put on items that have been sold, similar to the "forged by" mark in the current game. So if you indeed farmed your own gear, you could prove that, and maintain whatever bragging rights come with it.

To me, as much as the "loot" aspect is great (and as much as I usually like loot games,) it wasn't what drew me to the vanilla version of this game. The vanilla game had an intuitive, natural, enjoyable progression. Your gear didn't mean much of anything, and your stats came purely from leveling up and choosing where to distribute them. The base game was strictly about build strategy and thinking on your toes. The later content, while it still involved those two things, also had a strict "gear check" as people call it. The game wasn't designed with NM and later stage content in mind, so they did what they could to compensate. I still enjoyed the hell out of this game, both vanilla and the DLC era, and I know they'll go into the next DD with all of the lessons they've learned on progression.

This is fine and all. And to be honest this isn't so much as a "me no want this". It's because I have witnessed what Diablo 3 turned into and where it is heading. People are leaving that game in herds. The root evil of that game is how people aren't excited about drops but instead just make money to buy their weapons. I am not concerned about my experience, but about how instant gratification quickly ruins a game where it's longevity is based on item hunting. Diablo 2 had a much more involved time of finding what you want, even if you are trading for it you still had to search. I will post a good article to read on how the AH affected Diablo 3 and why it broke it.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/arti...-III-Is-Broken

And for the record I have been playing this game (in all 3 versions) since October of last year so I started because of the great mix of strategy and fighting elements. But stayed for making my character better, getting better items, and moving on to harder challenges.

[ShinUkyo]

And for the record I have been playing this game (in all 3 versions) since October of last year so I started because of the great mix of strategy and fighting elements. But stayed for making my character better, getting better items, and moving on to harder challenges.

I wasn't implying otherwise; sorry if it sounded like I was. Most folks like you and me, that came along before NM, started the game for those same reasons - and it was glorious. And even with all the struggles of balancing the DLC content, we've stuck around. That's because the game has remained fun, despite its progression issues past the vanilla game, and Trendy has done a great job of taking community input and translating it to game changes for the better.

My only point of sadness was in that the post-vanilla game turned into a loot and stat game, versus more of an intuitive and purely strategic one. But as stated before, they didn't plan for this stuff when they crafted the base game. The item generation, GUI, and loads of other things were only designed with the base game's stat limitations in mind (and possibly slightly past those.) So they did the only thing they could to ensure longevity: utilized tried and true stats progression standards (like in MMOs, but not as extreme.)

Edit: I'm definitely not rallying for an auction house in the next game, either, don't worry. I was moreso pointing out how it could help in the current title. I'd much rather have the next game eliminate a need for such a thing altogether, by making the usable loot (from start to endgame) be reasonable enough to farm yourself. As people said, good loot shouldn't be a cakewalk to procure. At the same time, the frequency of huge negative stats and utterly useless equipment is far too great right now (and a lot of this has to do with the coding not being designed with such numbers in mind.)

[Chuckdatas]

And sorry for making you think, I thought so. I just wanted to let you know how big of a fan I am of this game. In my opinion what got me hooked was how you had so many ways to get stuff. Through challenges, Beating bosses, Random drops, and occasional trading. I just don't want to see this franchise head to to the singular place to get most gear(the ah). I am excited to see what comes next for TE, because they have always impressed me with how they react to community suggestions.

If you would like another person to play DD with, feel free to add me. I usually play with at least 1 other person, and from this forum I play with GOKUPP a lot.

SteamID: Chuckdatass

[DarkSoul]

Never ever make a map like Etherian Festival of Love again

Jokes aside

Please don't make requires multiplayer maps in a single player game.
Make sure your rng system is streamlined so that it rewards players at all levels of play.

Are the lessons to be learned for any new games

[ShinUkyo]

And sorry for making you think, I thought so. I just wanted to let you know how big of a fan I am of this game. In my opinion what got me hooked was how you had so many ways to get stuff. Through challenges, Beating bosses, Random drops, and occasional trading. I just don't want to see this franchise head to to the singular place to get most gear(the ah). I am excited to see what comes next for TE, because they have always impressed me with how they react to community suggestions.

If you would like another person to play DD with, feel free to add me. I usually play with at least 1 other person, and from this forum I play with GOKUPP a lot. SteamID: Chuckdatass

Despite usually only playing co-op games with local/IRL friends, I've actually been making strides to play with some other forum members lately. I've met some cool folks in doing so. I'd love to play with you guys sometime. ^_^

[Cure]

Dam you beat me to the punch. My list is longer though, but most things I agree on.

One thing I love about Trendy is their fantastic customer service base. It truly is unique.

I completely agree this is one of my favorite things about trendy. Even if dungeon defenders was not the fantastic game it is today. I would still be around because of the fantastic customer service.

[cronik]

I would agree with most of the OP. the only thing i'd clarify on is my interpretation of what went wrong with d3 (i think the escapist still came shy of the real reason)

simply put, the game (all of it) is balanced around the AH, simply by the nature of its existence. drops have to be absurdly low, simply because the market would be flooded otherwise by the 24/7 players, which in turn means the casuals will never find decent gear to wear and use in their struggle with a game balanced around that 24/7 AH-equipped playerbase.

don't make blizz's mistake. don't attempt to balance a game with random drops around an AH. it's completely impossible to create any serious incentive for people to progress naturally in the game (without very specific limiters on each level stepping stone) if they can shop on the AH and find far far far better gear there than they could playing the game normally.

other than that, i'd just re-emphasize the need for a future title to have a better idea of where it wants to end up in the future, with room in the code for breathing room. however, i feel the most important question devs should ask themselves while designing a potential DD2 is "can players follow the progression path and manage the difficulty curve on their own, or do 95% of players have to visit the forums to figure out how to beat a specific encounter or where to go next?"

up to NM in DD, i think most players can push through the challenges and feel a sense of accomplishment without resorting to forums, but after that it'd be virtually impossible. all the tacked-on content created frustrating walls, mostly in the form of character power, difficulty spikes, and knowledge curves. i don't think people here talk enough about the "knowledge" component, and i think if you focus on making that an intuitive process, the rest will fall into place.

[CrzyRndm]

Laura, Ice and I work long hours to ensure that our community is happy

And that is very much appreciated from my end

It's because I have witnessed what Diablo 3 turned into and where it is heading.

To me, D3 is broken on so many levels that basing anything off it isn't going to work.

If progression is well implemented (like the base game of DD), the shops are only there to supplement your normal gear drops. According to your article, progression in D3 worked for about the first half of the game, and then just keeled over and died. That is the real problem.

A well implemented shopping system can relieve frustration at the RNG and benefit all. D3 is an example of a bad implementation, DD's current system is very mediocre at best.

[AeroCloud]

If you have an auction house, you need to make sure that you have unique/untradable items that you can only earn yourself and those are better than anything you can buy. This helps some people progress with some gear from shops/auction house and then be able to actually start farming their own good stuff.

I do love how often Trendy makes patches, I dislike how poor things are tested before patches are released.

You cant compare D3 to this, D3 is a joke. Its turned into a pay to progress game, which really ruins any game. Along with such a short, very boring when you repeat it game.

One suggestion if you are making a DD2, REMOVE THE ABILITY TO HACK ITEMS/MANA ETC. This is the #1 cause that most people don't even start/play the game.

If each game you played was different from the last, it would add more strategy to it. So maybe give more difficulty options with more random things that can happen, and of course base loot off the difficulty of each change.

I'm sure I'll have more suggestions, but I must say... This game is really good, just a few bad flaws that hurt it.