Precisely, I think. You can keep your naivety.
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Sounds like a good plan to me.
Yes, but it will, by definition, take a lot less time than finding the items you wanted to gain through trading.
Exactly.
Agreed.
Problem is, no matter what number you pick here, lets say 200 hours, just to have a number, then if you balance it for trading, people who trade will on average spend 200 hours, and people who do not trade might spent 2000 hours.
If you balance the 200 for people who do not trade, then people who trade will get all that gear in 20 hours (numbers are an example obviously).
You cant get that “optimal” droprate for both traders and non-traders within the same game mode, it is simply not possible. Because trading is orders of magnitudes more efficient than not trading.
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They also said D3 would have trading. Then they luckily got rid of it.
Nothing is ever set in stone.
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Fair points.
I think you can do things to help narrow the difference though. For example if 10 items have a 1 % drop chance you are correct in that if you play solo it could take up to 10x or more time to find the correct one. But what if after you find two of these items (both being the wrong one) you can break them down into a crafting material that allows you to make the one you are trying to target? Now at worse it takes 2x as long which I guess is still reason to gripe over people being able to trade but it doesn’t take that much longer were the game is not enjoyable solo. At what point is it fair to take away the enjoyment people get from the social aspect of trading? Hell maybe even make it so one item will break down into the material you need to craft another one. Trading will still have its benefits, and it should have benefits.
I am a fan of two game modes as well honestly.
People heavily paying for items in games are usually really wack at it. If D4 is dependant on skill not only on items, it’s not going to be an huge issue in pvp if someone wants to be highly competetive. Casuals seems to have the biggest problem with trading and staying behind (who are you racing with ?) while in reality they are not even participating in these high end activities. Majority of competetive endgame oriented people want trade because it makes gear chase more exciting instead of turning everything into game for 1 week max. It’s game about loot after all and that part should be thrilling.
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People will always try to twist these systems for personal gain, corrupting their very essence and diluting whatever they intended to bring to the game.
The moment ingame items gain real monetary value, things go south really fast. It has the potential to trivialize actual ingame efforts by legit players, which completely sucks. We already had a taste of that with the Auction Houses, and it was awful.
Any form of trading in-game leads to third-party grey market websites offering to trade items to you in exchange for cold hard cash, i.e. trading system in-game results in P2W scenarios.
Trading isn’t gone, you can trade with anyone in your game where the item dropped for 2 hours.
As disappointing as it may be for some people, actually playing the game to get the loot is far better than when we used to spend more time on the ah/trading than killing monsters or spamming channels endlessly while everyone tries to scam everyone else.
How about perfect rolled primals for $15 each ? how would that make you feel when everyone in your clan has perfect gears.
Also if trading is allowed and people could sell primals do you really think people will trade you primals when they can sell for real money to some one else?
Let’s not forget about botting…
Also as i said previously trading leads to abysmal drop rates and that makes the game focusing more in trading than in-game play…and some people feeling the need to buy them with real money which leads to black market…
See what’s happening with Diablo 2 botting/hacking/spamming a great game with a ruined multiplayer…most people play solo there…
There simply are too many downsides and very little benefit…
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I disagree the downsides outweigh the benefit and I think Diablo II and Path of Exile is proof of that. It makes things messier and harder to manage I agree with that but that is a price worth paying IMO.
I think the solution is to do what PoE did and just have two separate game modes. We clearly have a divided player base wanting two different things I think trying to compromise or make a system that trys to appeal to them both might very well be impossible. I would rather they don’t pick and just do both. But that is just me.
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Some people are just a-holes man that’s why they implemented instanced loot (thank god) because everyone back in the day had Pickit or just loot everything fast (gl ranged dudes) and after that they disabled open trading/AH because some people were scamming/botting and they were manipulating the economy…
I like instanced loot to be honest. I think it was one of the few changes from D2 to D3 that was a good evolution.
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Trading in PoE defeats the purpose of actually playing the game in many cases, especially mid-late league. The best part of PoE is the early league when everyone needs everything and a new player can’t get end game gear for a handful of chaos orbs (not BiS, but good enough). This time frame is arguably the most fun because you can find good gear and actually feel like you found something good- it’s not something that sells for 1 chaos later in the league. * There is always those GG items for people to trade but the game content doesn’t require it.
In Diablo 2, there was no policing at all. Just buy all the gear you want with real money. If Diablo 4 has a trade economy like that, you might as well just hand the economy over to China and bots.
I think Blizzard will end up with the Classic WoW system with restricted drops/economy. Bots and spammers may still be a thing but at least you can’t just buy mythic items for gold or real money.
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Truueeeeee one of the greatest things that happened in Diablo !
- more stash space
- no stamina bar (some people like it , i don’t)
PlugY really helps Diablo 2 tbh…
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.
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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.
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Indeed.
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.
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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.
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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