Developers Blizzard have been slowly revealing tidbits about Diablo III, with the most recent being a lorebook to be released together with the title. The company now has introduced a new feature that focuses on the action RPG's trading system: the auction house system.
Basically, players can either use in-game gold or real money to purchase, trade, and bid for items for the respective currency; the former method is done in the gold-based auction house while the latter is in the currency-based auction house. Players can open up the interface within the game, in which they can sell items from a shared stash (essentially a storage shared among all a player's character classes on their Battle.net account) or from a single character's inventory. A seller will be charged a fixed transaction fee for each item listed in the auction house. Blizzard will collect the fee for each item listed in the auction house.
The auction house will also feature a "smart search" functionality to automatically sort out items based on upgrades to tailor a player's in-game character. Blizzard states that they will not plan to post items for sale in the auction house, as the system is meant to be player-driven and involved. While a concrete decision has yet to be made, the auction house will only be available to players once they reached "level 10" according to producer Jay Wilson. Players using Hardcore mode will not be able to access the currency-based auction house; instead they will use the "Hardcore-only" gold-based auction house.
The currency-based auction house will be split into different regions each representing the region's currency. For example, if a player wishes to trade on a Singapore server, they will trade in Singapore dollars in that specific auction house. At this point in time, the regions this feature will be available are North America, Europe, Asia, and South-East Asia.
In other related news, the game also requires a constant internet connection regardless of which mode a player chooses to do. Wilson said it was a decision they made in the duration of the project to offer persistent characters, players that wish to play multiplayer with in-game characters they can store online forever, and enhanced security.
He also stated that "99.9 percent of people out there have internet connection", when asked about the justification of the decision. Wilson added further that if a player's connection drops, a player could die but the in-game penalty wouldn't be harsh (specifically a 10 percent decrease in durability for equipped weapons and items) unless the player is on Hardcore mode, in which case he or she loses the character permanently. He also said that piracy was a factor in this decision, but it wasn't "a deciding factor".
Blizzard also announced a banner system for the game. Players will get to show off their achievements for Diablo III through an actual banner with symbols representing which parts of the game a player has completed.
Much like StarCraft II's server choices, players in Australia, New Zealand, and South-East Asia will have access to both local and US servers. Further region-specific details about the auction house and Battle.net will be announced later. For more information on a recent build of the game, check out GameSpot's in-depth hands-on preview.
No comments:
Post a Comment