This feeling persists for a lot longer throughout SSF for PoE.
It boils down to individual play styles really. I play with a lot of people that really enjoy trading. It is literally what we enjoy doing. Farming crafting materials crafting GG items that have insane value and selling them. It is also what I do for a living. I do hand made crafts, often selling them for 5-20x the cost of the raw materials because i make something that has value for someone else. In d3 might as well just delete my character at the end of the season. That is what I enjoy about PoE, the time I spend is always going to have some value even in the late end game where as in Diablo III I can quite literally get the BIS for any of the metas within 12 hours from a new seasons launch. Then its like okay what now? The only thing to do is farm better versions of those items and push GR which is pointless with how dominate the botters are.
And then if I want to flex and show off or just play casually I create a SSF character for that other experience.
I think D4 has a good opportunity with having instanced loot drops. I could see them creating a SF mode that allows group play while keeping most of the benefits of not being able to trade.
You do realize the only reason for you to enjoy trading is the RM aspect, right? Everything else trading offers could be replaced by an advanced crafting system so you would basically stack the gear you need right now from drops you would otherwise traded.
Trading exists in PoE and Diablo 4 so that the whales have increased drop chances from it. No one cares about the RM traders like you, but they care for the whales that spend tons on MTX. And because the whale don’t have time to put the hours in the game himself, they give him trading. And RM traders appear.
True, but then you solve the imbalance by hurting the gameplay imo. Going to a vendor to essentially buy my gear, with materials I got from other items, sounds as bad as trading.
Also, hopefully the itemization is too complex for that to work. There shouldnt be specific items that you can target like that. Because each item should be somewhat unique based on the stats it spawned with, that happens to be great for your build. It would essentially have to be “design your own item” then.
There will of course be legendary affixes that are desirable, which you will want to target. But maybe you want Crit chance on that specific legendary, but someone else want +fire dmg, and another want Crushing blow etc.
Yes. I have mentioned that before too. In my opinion PoE trading completely falls apart really fast in the PoE leagues, where you can go in, and trade reasonably good items for next to nothing. Not through RMT, but through actual in-game trading.
The biggest issue with trading tends not to be the “bis” trading, but the item tiers just below.
The markets that games, typically, are able to create are not healthy markets. They are artificial, they lack the basic principles that governs real-world markets (such as scarcity). And unsurprisingly, they break apart because of it.
If you want trading, then make a game that actually is focused on it, and tries to create something resembling a working market, with item decay, so stuff gets taken out of circulation over time, with monetary policy, where currencies are not just unlimited and ever increasing etc.
Something like Star Wars Galaxies did a lot of really interesting things with its economy, that afaik havent really been replicated since. That was a road to go down. I dont think it fits an A-RPG though.
This is why group play is so much more efficient than solo in D3. Direct negative consequence of allowing trade for groups only.
Trading is gone. The economy is gone. That’s what matters to people. Trading with people in your group for 2 hours is not satisfying and will lead to D4 failing to win over fans. The consequences of such a failing cannot be exactly predicted but it will certainly not be good for Blizzard.
They can make D4 as dark as they want. If it uses the systems of D3, they’ll never win over D2 fans, many of whom consider D3 a terrible game and certainly not the true sucessor to Diablo 2. They’re trying to win back the fans who left because of D3. If you watch the end of the Blizzcon D4 lore panel you will see what they said about their goals and D2.
Diablo 3 has morphed into a loot hunting game where you can’t trade the loot you find. The player count must be low, which would be no surprise. It’s no wonder Blizzard decided years ago that it was no longer worth putting resources into development of Diablo 3 and began work on a new game which does feature trading, Diablo 4.
Blizzard has some serious ARPG competition looming on the Horizon. PoE2, and the big unknown in particular which is the League of Legends developer upcoming ARPG game. Riot games, League of Legends, hugely successful. At least it should push Blizzard to try harder.
If you disable crafting this would be a whole new type of game, in which the player can not influence the items he receives in any way meaning the variance involved from the drops will be huge.
We already had the above case in D3 with specific items during early Seasons and it isn’t good for the gameplay.
The best scenario is to have an incredibly good AI crafting system allowing the complete replacement of trading. But then the whales won’t be happy, because they won’t be able to manipulate their drop chances by simply buying the stuff from 3rd parties.
So, it’s a never ending cycle:
Competitive players are not happy of trading → Replace trading with crafting → Now whales/pro-traders are not happy → Introduce P2W → Now other players are not happy → Remove P2W and introduce trading → Start from beginning
I dont think that is a problem honestly.
I am not against being able to alter items you already found; like rerolling a stat on an item (however it is a somewhat dangerous path to go down if taken too far).
I am also fine with crafting, but I dont think you should be able to craft the same items you can get from killing monsters. Crafting should be for other stuff.
In another current thread, someone mentioned being able to craft different healing potions (with bonuses on them, like D3 and PoE). That makes much more sense in a crafting system than outright being able to make Mythic item X.
Being able to craft basic items like rares are also fine of course - so you can craft some decent items, in that outlier situation where absolutely nothing drops.
I think being able to “target” items is useful. If I am looking for better Gloves for my character, it could be interesting if I can influence that somehow. But not by crafting 500 gloves hoping I get the ones I wanted - not by gambling 500 gloves.
I’d rather see something like;
You can craft a potion that greatly increases the drop chance of Gloves for an hour, and proportionally reduces all other item types drop chance - so you are not getting more items than before.
This way, the way you get gear is still to go out and slaughter monsters. Which is the basic gameplay loop that should be sacred in an A-RPG.
Yes, but without killing monsters you can not craft too. So, the optimal case is a balanced crafting system allowing the player to reduce the item variance to an extend depending on his previous number of monster kills.
The more you play → the better items you should be able to craft
Of course. But the experience of getting “Awesome firebolt Legendary of eternal epicness” from a UI vendor screen in a town, vs. seeing it fall on the ground when killing an enemy, is two somewhat different gameplay experiences imo.
uh huh? That is not true at all lol. I enjoy trading because:
Social aspect
Because it means my items/time has real value. I can log in and if i decide I want to make a high budge FCBear Druid over the weekend I can go sell/trade the items from my MF Sorc and boom.
I hate games without trade because like D3 everything is too accessible. I literally can get BIS gear within 12 hours of a new league. That is utterly pathetic
Social aspect and value from items are not strictly bound to trading. It happens so that current aRPGs lack good social activities and crafting systems replacing trading. Trading per self is not a requirement for these two you mentioned to exist.
Trading is fine. Unlimited free trading with no restrictions or binding is terrible. You’ll have an over saturated economy in months, with people buying all of the best gear in the game for 30 bucks from a third party website, just like Diablo 2.
I don’t think people remember just how bad the economy really was in D2.
D2 economy was due to duping. Also d2 is an example of what happens when a company doesn’t combat rmt. You can combat rmt without restricting trade and pointing to D2 and saying “this is what happens when you have trade” is a logical fallacy.
True. Duping, map hack and other cheats all worked against D2.
D3 didn’t have these things but what it did have was the real money auction house. Blizzard invited people to come and RMT, and so masses of people did.
We can expect that D4 will not have duping, or a real money auction house. The only thing you can’t rule out is botting. A good anti botting system with constant banning of cheaters is essential.
Under these conditions, trading will work a lot better.