Diablo 4 must not have trading

General Discussion
41

They said it wouldn’t work like that.

Think of it this way. You have 150 dungeons. 7 pieces of gear. And potentially all the different weapons or perhaps they’ll be categories of weapons.

As a rough guess lets say 15 different possible things a dungeon can roll on this week.

150 ÷ 15 = 10

So they’ll be 10 dungeons this week that are better for farming Helmets.

That doesn’t mean you have to keep farming helmets, in fact if you choose to try your luck on some of the other gear you want because you’re bored of those 10 dungeons, well now you have 10 different ones to farm boots from.

It actually works great once you understand it.

42

Fair enough, but if those 10 dungeons get an equal helmet droprate boost, you are thrown back to the original problem; people will farm the one of those 10 dungeons that is easiest for their build. Nearly same result as if you picked the most efficient of all 150 dungeons. Rewarding people for doing the repetitive grind of the same dungeon over and over.

Sure, you can always choose to do something else than what is most efficient - that is also the case without any special reward system at all. But if you are looking for a helmet, deciding to go to the boots dungeons would be inefficient.

Why not just change it after each dungeon/activity instead of each week? Solves all repetition issues.

43

You can only do so much there will always be one dungeon that’s faster than the others. You can also drop multiple keys for the same dungeon with different affixes rolled on it, so you might find a dungeon you didn’t feel was efficient, now is with your new key.

Is English your first language Shad? Cause you missed another really basic piece of English here.

I don’t feel I need to clarify when I already wrote in the same text you quoted:

It’s not inefficient if you are also farming boots. Not sure how you misinterpreted my meaning here.

It’s only really at end game when you’re after 1 or 2 items that you would have less dungeons to choose from.

Maybe a 3 day rotation would be better? I’d like enough time to hit all the dungeons on rotation otherwise it might defeat the point of it and it rerolls stuff I’ve already done.

44

You can do so much though. Just reward people for doing some other dungeon instead.

No.

I dont think I misinterpreted anything. I get that you might want both a helmet and boots. But even if you need both equally, due to the efficiency of repeat farming the same content, you will be better off just farming the easiest dungeon that has either a helmet og boots buff? You can switch, just because you prefer do do something different, but the game is incentivizing you not to switch.

Farming the same dungeon for 3 days still sounds bad to me. Even a single day would be bad imo.
Why would you want to hit all dungeons on rotation (the 10 with the helmet boost for example) ? Seems like the system is actively encouraging you not to do that? There would be no benefit to doing the different dungeons?

45

You have any other suggestions?

Personally I think they’ve done well with the system.

Without this system there will for sure be a meta with dungeons and maybe 5-10 will be recommended on youtube by influencers.

If you have any other ideas I’m sure devs would want to hear them.

I do like that this way it gives the dungeons a sense of place for 3 days or a week. Whatever the rotation cycle is. But I haven’t tried it. Maybe I would get bored after 3 days and want to bounce round the whole map instead. But I think this way it feels like I’m visiting different areas of the map for a reason. Looking for something in particular inside a particular set of dungeons. It just kind of feels immersive to me this way.

46

Here the real problem is that there is a design in D3 that some very small group of items are very much needed for the strongest meta builds and that those builds way too strongly outperform their closest competitor. We see that in the weapons as well. Said in another way, D3 has way too many unusable weapons/items in reality and way too few that are truly usable due to its design and even less viable options within a build. (One might also suspect that due to the influence of time in seasons you are acquiring a set and locked into that level of the game way too fast, instead of growing into it over time and have time to progress in D3, you are to quickly and easily at your final build components even if can get better versions of the same items).

The best solution to that is not trying to create and maintain a meta in first place like original D2 and D1 were, yeah I know it sounds old fashioned. There was a reason though why those games were designed without a real endgame. :stuck_out_tongue: (any meta will be soon know through guides nowadays anyway), but unfortunately we all know or suspect D4 will be also about a designed and maintained meta endgame. Well then the other solution is another hard one, but mainly for the devs and in some talks it does seem they may be trying to go there and in others I doubt it.

That is to have enough builds for every class that also play really different and still do perform within a few percentage points of each others and do not have too many overlapping items and where missing one or two top items still make the build function at at least 90% efficiency of peak performance (This will never really work with big numbers though) and where you can meaningful progress until you get to that point and maybe even more importantly some rock, paper, scissors where a barb most of time will beat a monk in efficiency, while loses to a wiz and wiz loses to a monk.

D3 weirdly enough did try some of this, but weapons and items as stat sticks did make it fail. All those level 70 items and even sets you can craft at Haedrig could have been potentially your first power level in game while progressing to stronger builds if too many of them were not utterly BS, while others OP …

If we look back at old RPG’s though (that is one of the fathers of ARPG) before online even existed they have been solving the problem already for years. Have NPC’s selling the items you need for strong builds, but not the strongest. Those are from special monsters and often guaranteed drops, now that last works a bit less in the slot machine that an ARPG is supposed to be. Still it can be used.

Have a design where tier 2 builds that can be made from buying/crafting, tier 1 from targetable drops and S-tier from RNG, just make sure that the S-tiers do not depend fully on having the exact correct 13 items to talk in D3 speak but at least 4-5 are interchangeable with others within 5% efficiency and that also gives different play styles so not everyone is locked into button mashing CD style. (Something the Blizz devs after North devs left went wrong when added OP runewords in D2 that were craftable and utterly predictable) It will give players a sense that they can keep progressing and growing even before they have the best items from RNG and those items you need to clear the game are available to get even if the best take a load of mat or gold or beating hard bosses first time even if that will take time. The super duper special items just make it easier or unlock more fun options or the top efficiency without per se needing 13 in the right combination as well.

Unfortunately that is way easier to do in an offline RPG that has a fixed gameplay since you do not have to redefine everything every time you want to change the meta (which with those kind of games only happens with an expansion), or if do not redefine go into a powercreep that makes balancing over whole game almost impossible and as we all know players hate nerves so powercreep will be a thing with regular meta changes unless devs put a lot of time in each change, maybe even more as just creating new story content would need which is expensive like hell.

Yeah I know many people say RPG’s give us many builds and freedom, but that is because they have way more tightly designed all those builds, item classes and your strength of build over the whole game. Another one of those paradoxes where tighter design gives greater freedom of choice in the end or at least the illusion also due to making sure a player never needs BiS to be great and loads and relative quick meta changes tend to eff up those designs.

47

Can take it a step further, if people will otherwise just end up doing Dungeon A → Event X → Dungeon B → Event Y → Dungeon A repeats.
By making it "the last 10 specific dungeons you have run wont give a MF bonus, for example. Spreading out any risks of rotations a lot more.

Then of course, there still is the dungeon keys themselves, which hopefully help too, but that goes for all the different reward systems - imo, you should not be able to have more than ~10 dungeon keys at any time, and they should bound to the character (not account). That could go a long way of encouraging diverse dungeon runs, where you basically do the dungeons that you have keys for, also ensuring diversity in which dungeons players do. That is a more heavy-handed approach than the reward system though. Stick instead of carrot.

That is how I see it for sure.

It feels like the D:I Codex system, where the game tells you specifically what to do all the time.
Instead of merely telling you to go try some different stuff.

Indeed. Balance is key, and preserving a low power scaling is as well, so the different builds just aren’t endlessly far from each other.
If the top (“meta”) builds are only <20% better than other good builds, there hardly would be a problem. Instead the absurd like 1000%+ better top builds we see in D3.

Same goes for individual items, as you say. Missing a BiS item should not result in missing out on a freaking 600% dmg bonus, but maybe a 10% dmg bonus. Way more build diversity, more item diversity, and not least, you wont feel screwed by RNG or luck, since even if you didn’t find that BiS item, you can still do fine, and your build can still work, with some adjustments.

48

Which you can do, you just don’t get the bo us rewards. The codex dies let you know a % completed of each area, so you could easily work on what you want to complete it.

49

Which was the topic. Obviously there is no gun to your head, but incentives matter. They should incentivize doing diverse content instead of, well, the opposite.

50

By odds and chances you can not really have everything you need by playing D3. You may want a perfect Primal but game never would give you just that.

Trading is just an alternative to clearing content yourself as itemization aims to have a balance between item grades already. Anyone possessing high grade items will lack stats to meet the thresholds for unlocking abilities and crowd control to cover their cooldowns. Having more legendary powers can be great for PvP where you have 1-2 targets, but a weak approach for oncoming hordes of monsters where you need some sustenance.

Some people certainly won’t be lucky to have some authantic unique items but they’ll be fine with lower grade rare and legendaries in PvE.
If they play enough they will have a unique item somewhere because item quality doesn’t depend on layered odds of 10% and 0.25%. If there’s a chance for unique item to drop then it will. Question is; can your build make use of it or not? You won’t get to pick 10 skills at once in D4 and every choice you made will shift your build’s abilities and their efficiency at tasks. When that’s the case I wouldn’t worry about trading especially if it’s restricted.

Now if they pull a 180 double speak on D4 like they did in D:I, I wouldn’t know though.

51

If there is to be trading then we need an auction house style format again, the old school spam item in channel, meet someone in game needs to stay away and die forever. It doesn’t work well with modern ARPG gaming, this isn’t an MMORPG; no one wants to have their time reliant on someone else these days unless it’s something serious like a World Boss. The players that actually like that system of spamming item, meeting person in private game, trading items only like it for the nostalgia and need to be honest about that, seriously.

Also yes, you can’t trade the most valuable things, that’s a given. But to not have trading completely is a mistake, agreed with posters above.

52

I am thinking some clan-only loot would be cool.

Each member can contribute materials to the clan, & the clan master/leader/officers can determine how much each member can take out of the shared material bank.

Gears can be marked “clan only” & put inside clan stash, & it will be locked, & only useable to people in the clan (Only clan members for a duration or made a certain amount of contribution can use these items). It’s like donating books to the library. No one owned it anymore. It can only be borrowed by members.

“clan only” gears are an automatic return to clan stash on logout or timeout to prevent hording.

53

Yes, of course. The D4 devs will pre-determine the meta by buffing the new HOT skills and it will be the same copy/paste fest like in D3 on top of an outdated complex Math.

Now, since we already know this, let’s brag they make the copy/pasting easier so we don’t have to go to external websites for it AT LEAST. Like:

  • Easily viewable top builds of each dungeon
  • AI for item evaluation so we don’t do Math
  • Paragon boards without rotation and gluing

Seriously, it’s called action RPG for a reason. Lost Ark does this perfectly - you don’t have to do ugly Math there or follow Internet guides/planners to copy/paste, instead you do combat and have fun.

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54

I would suggest a gradual bonus meter for each dungeon. If you have never run X dungeon before, it’s at max bonus. After you run that dungeon the bonus drops to zero and will slowly build back up as you run others. Go to do Y dungeon which you have not run for weeks and it’s built up to a high bonus again, so yay! Go back to do X dungeon again now and the bonus will be so very tiny, so no, go to do Z dungeon and that one has a nice bonus as you have not been in it for a week.

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55

They actually do though. You get bonus for doing all the difderent dugeons, PvP, both rifts, the Helliquary, bounties, zone events, Horadrim runs, and the bestiary. The codex has quests that cover side and elite quests, farming gear, killing monsters, doing events, and such.

You pretty much get rewarded at least once for doing everything the game offers and that’s not even getting into the stuff available for the Shadows or Immortals that provide incentives.

56

We are talking about Diablo 4, not Diablo Immoral.

57

I was replying to a comment about how DI is handled, clarifying that the codex actually does incentivizes every activity, at least once per day. Which, was alluded to not being the case.

58

I see, a bit off topic for the thread but ok, even so the bonus discussion was in regard to the 150 dungeons in Diablo 4.

59

Yeah that sounds like a good design!

60

Rare items/or other rare things should be things you might never see in an entire season. Even if you play on average 5-6 hours a day.

Lets say Tier 1 are the rarest category of items/consumables/mats/currency.
There are 100 tier 1 category things in the game.
In a season i would like that for someone playing 4-5 hours a day on average over 3 months. Should see 20-30 of those t1 things. That to me is in the ballpark proper rarity.

Now, nothing of those things should be “required” for a build but something that would be big QoL or enhance your build. Do we need something like Mirror of Kalandra from PoE which most people will never see drop ever even with thousands of hours. Maybe who knows, its always cool to know that something like that is out there and it could happen to you.

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