Wallshadows wrote on May 25, 2012, 00:02:

Cutter wrote on May 24, 2012, 23:33:
And to think how much nonsense could be avoided if they had kept the SP portion of the game offline, or at least had an offline mode that wasn't tied to the AH.

The problem with that is once you hit Inferno, you rely on the AH in order to get higher tier items to make the grind beyond Act 1 much less painful. Without this option, you're pretty much at the mercy of the game given certain mob combinations which are sometimes tied in to quests and need to be killed in order to progress. Is this difficulty a flaw with the game? I don't think so, Blizzard pretty much came out and said you'll die a lot in Inferno but it would do them good to work on some scaling issues for certain classes.

The gear tier system, on the other hand, was known quite some time before the release of the game along with progressively difficult content from one act to the other. Harder mobs, better gear so it shouldn't shock anyone to put two and two together and that Act 4 gear would trump all gear before it.

It just so happens that those who have made it to Act 4 sell their finds for obscene prices but if people are willing to pay for it then I guess the system works.