There is an excellent and constructive critique of the D3 loot system (including the auction house) here.
“Since I’ve received no positive feedback from the game that my effort is being rewarded, I will feel as though my efforts are pointless.”
I’m not sure it would help if the game said “Dude! You ALMOST got an awesome drop that time!”
OK, here’s another gripe, unless I’m wrong. I just finished Normal difficulty, starting on Nightmare. It appears I’m going to have to wait until Act 2 to get my jeweler back? How fookin’ annoying is that?
I’m assuming I can bounce back to a previous quest in Act 1 and visit the jeweler there, but what a hassle! I want to just portal back to town, do all my selling/jeweling/blacksmithing, and keep playing!
Never mind! I found him, he’s just hiding in Act 1!
So what you’re really griping about is the terrible design of New Tristram, right? Because I can totally get behind that one.
That is a great thread.
“Apparently designed by Zorro” is one comment I’ve seen.
TLDR ----> The auction house is making item drops way less fun.
This isn’t technically a gripe, but since it is slightly negative in tone, I’ll put it here.
Is anyone else finding that the AH sorta takes a huge chunk of fun out of seeing loot drops? Yesterday I realized my weapon was 3-4 levels under my level cap, so I popped onto the AH and boom, instantly upgraded my DPS from 380 to 450ish. I was able to do the same with most of my gear as well. Now A4 Normal is a joke. I’m breezing through borderline one-shotting shit like a baller. This definitely has its share of fun, don’t get me wrong.
But it comes with a big downside. When I scroll through my countless blues or identify the 3-4 rares I might get in a short session, there seems to be about a 98% chance they will be worse than what I have now. I don’t think I’ve upgraded off a ground drop since level 20. I can pretty much be assured that most of what I find in any one session is junk. To make matters worse, the prices on the AH have deflated enough that most of the time it’s not even worth selling…
Rose-colored glasses, etc etc, but I remember in D2 it was great fun to scrabble along through the acts, constantly making minor upgrades in gear from drops and cumbersome player trades until one finally assembled a set of gear worthy of merit. Now I pop onto the AH, spend a few thousand gold, socket a few gems, and boom I’m a wrecking ball.
I can’t say it’s ruined my fun, but I definitely agree with the consensus that itemization and loot progression needs to be seriously tweeked.
That’s a lot of what the link up in post 321 is talking about. You can still play the game by picking up your own upgrades, you’ll just reach a point where it is REALLY FREAKING HARD. Like, things will one-shot kill you because you only have 1/3 the health of somebody who’s upgraded everything on the AH, and they have to scale the game for that guy.
Yeah. It was actually reading that link that crystallized my feelings on the matter and prompted me to post.
I agree that AH takes the fun out of looting…but what’s the point when I never find any good loot? Like I said before, nothing I have found in the last…40 levels, easy (I’m level 59 now) was ever worth equipping. All junk that I would get from the get-go. We’re talking quivers worth just 50 gold. And what’s up with getting stupid high level items? Ohmigod, a level 58…socketed ring! That’s just as good as a…level 2 socketed ring! Ugh.
I really wish I had waited on buying the game now.
And look at this new patch:
“Nigel Cutthroat has recently fallen on some hard times and will now drop lower quality items when slain.”
“Gold and quest experience rewards for replaying “Heart of Sin: Get the Soul of Azmodan” have been reduced.”
“Gold and quest experience rewards for replaying “Heart of Sin: Go to the Keep” have been reduced.”
Yeah, I was a dumbass for buying this game so early and being so optimistic. That’ll learn me.
Not paranoid at all. Blizzard has explicitly stated that they expect players to use the auction house and adjusted drop levels accordingly.
A game mode that locks out the auction house and increases loot quality would be wonderful. It’s not going to happen of course but a man can dream…
Though I might want a larger stash.
Well, to be clear though, what that’s about is not so much lowering drop rates in general but smoothing them out so that there are not particular bosses or areas people always play for farming, but rather, so that people will farm everywhere.
Regarding the AH, I agree that it is a problem, but it doesn’t seem as severe to me as it does to a lot of others. It only seems to be necessary to go to the AH when you want gear for Inferno past act II. Prior to that, people report being able to use gear acquired only through solo play with no AH.
I myself have never used it–granted I’m only up to Act I Hell…
A maximizer will always go to the AH, of course. But for us satisficers things are fine. 
(Also–one could think of loot drops not just as ‘things I might use’ but also as ‘things I might sell’. This will make the rate of ‘good’ drops higher for you…)
A single mule character can give you a LOT of extra storage space, and only takes about five minutes to get up to the town.
Right now I’m up to Act 3 Nightmare without having used the AH once; I’ve accepted a couple donations from other players, but most of my stuff is from drops and even the blacksmith.
Another thing I haven’t seen mentioned–having shared gold makes it where even characters who are just starting out are rich. This is probably why I see level 5 items, 18 dps, going for 100,000 gold on the AH…
Same here. My current plan is to not use the auction house until absolutely necessary.