Hi everyone, sorry if this has been said before, I tried to search on it and either didn’t use the right keywords or there isn’t’ anything this specific.
I’ve seen a lot of in-fighting regarding trading, and it seems to continue to ramp up why people want it and why others don’t.
The only thing I could think of to make trading work, would be to allow timed based trading. Meaning, some games allow you to trade with the current group you’re with in your current game, within a 2-hour window. Something like that would work for me, because honestly, I’ll be playing with my friends and family, like my wife, and if I pick up something they can use, since they are in my game, I have a 2-hour window to give it to them to use. Once the game session ends or the 2-hour window is gone, it’s no longer tradeable.
It keeps it still from getting on a black market and allows groups of friends or strangers to go farming to increase the odds of finding items they may be looking for and can trade amongst one another.
Again, if this has been said already or proven bad as well, I apologize, but wanted to share.
Oh really, it’s been a long time since I’ve played with someone on D3, usually run solo, but even that’s been since D2R came out. Playing that with my wife and bud, I’ll play on my own, and when they can jump in, I’ll have collected things for them and help them out. I know in D2R it’s a wild west out there, but I feel I saw the timed thing done in one of the Division games? Could be wrong, been a while since I played it too lol. But good to know. I feel it’s a fair compromise.
Yeah, when people (or at least me) say they dont want trading, they usually mean they want this exact kind of trading, where you can share items between the people who were present when the item dropped.
Yeah, while Diablo 3 launched with free and unlimited trading (along with the AH), it was almost 2 years after when they removed the AH and limited trading so that non-crafted sets and legendaries can only be traded with people in the same game as you for only 2 hours (crafted items were automatically BoA). I believe only normal, magic, and rare items that were actually found as loot can be freely traded. It’s been like that since patch 2.0.1.
Legendary and Set items are now Bind on Account:
Players in multiplayer games may trade Legendaries and Set Items they find with others who were present for the drop for up to 2 hours after the item is acquired
Semantics. The ability to throw items at other people has always been mentioned by proponents of trading. Besides, it’s not like you can really have one without the other.
If you’re playing with a friend and they’re a barbarian while you’re a sorceress, and you find a pair of gloves that’ll be helpful to a rogue (which you’re friend has as an alt) you can choose to either give it to them, or trade it to them for a pair a druid’s pants that they had found.
So yeah, it’s not limited in that regard. The limitation is pretty much who you can trade with, which in most cases you can only trade with people who were actively playing with you.
And how realistic is this made-up “trade” scenario?
You basically have to assume that you will keep stuff you don’t need yourself for the 2 hour window to only give it to the friend you are playing with if they find something you can use to give you in return, instead of doing the reasonable thing and simply giving it to them immediately.
I quite honestly wouldn’t play together with a person behaving that selfishly.
Rather realistic during D3 right before RoS, and during early D3 RoS, as I had experienced that plenty of times when I played with my friends and we lacked tools that could get us the items we needed quickly (well there was kadala but she wasn’t as effective in early RoS as she is now), and loot didn’t really rain from the sky like it does now.
As Knighthood said, the 2h free sharing system of RoS, though very necessary, is not trading. Trading as an activity in a multi-player video game implies to sell items to a complete stranger in exchange of something of similar value. It’s a valid and understandable request for some players, though it needs solid limitations.
I would call it Sharing, rather than trading or gifting, when you are able to hand over items between the people who were present at the kill.
It would have been like having FFA loot basically.
And it is not like trading and gifting of course. Nor should it be. Sharing items in a group encourages playing together to progress and find items. Trading and gifting does the opposite.
It’s still trading, it’s just much more limited compared to free trading, for example you’re not going to be trading with strangers unless you’ve actually played in the same game with them and said items dropped there. Just as Knighthood had said that D3’s version of trading is just gifting since folks could just give the item without doing any trading, the same could and would be done with free trading. I’ve had moments in Diablo 2 where I either given an item away for free, or received it for free (this happens a lot in pvp).
With that said, Diablo 3 version of trading doesn’t necessarily allow for the potential bantering and/or haggling that free trading gives, which I understand that is a reason for why some want free trading as it gives interaction.
We’re not talking about the same thing here. You may want to call it trading, but it’s nothing like what I’ve been describing and I don’t know what other term to use.
Trading implies market. Market implies a significant number of traders with enough goods to balance prices and speculate in the long term, not 4 players on a 2 hours game.
D3 had trading with its AH. RoS system has, litteraly, nothing in common. I was also given free items in D2, no haggle over price or exchanging goods, it was charity, not trading at all.
What I mean is that RoS doesn’t support any form of trading with this system, on the contrary it’s designed to prevent it. D4 needs it because it’s a convivial way of playing to give items to other party members but it also requires an entirely different system to help build a healthy market.
You may like this because it rewards the people who “already” playing the game. Capability of trading at the other hand would allow people to bring their friends in the game and return back to it time to time without a fading interest.
Diablo 3 have this lending system, but this came with the cost of having a very intricate power creep that dictates player effort and worth through actions. This caused game to last for a decade, even though most players blame developers of “not playing their own game”; here we are, speaking at their forums.
If you’re not a fan of intricate power creep or any sort of rewarding dynamic combat and dismay trading at the same time; I’m sorry but you just want to see the game die in a few months.
To contrast, we have no idea about the endgame of Diablo 4 or if it’s any similar to the combat of Diablo 3. Perhaps they go for very diverse systems and have to push the action combat at the background a little. This will impact their decisions at the long run about trading as well. If players will not feel that game will be rewarding or skill ceiling being too low, they will lose interest. Only thing that can allure them in this linear world build would be human interaction and you’re asking to take it away.
Without either of humand interaction or rewards, game won’t be interesting enough, nor would have any qualities for replayability. People play Diablo, an isometric Action-RPG, Hack’n Slash by knowing what happens at the end. There’s no ifs and buts, you kill the titular villain, Diablo at the end; and this journey better be rewarding to the player or at least emphasize it.
Replayability comes from its rewards and players love it. Some dismay this or that, but designers have to consider different elements while you become an armchair developer.