This “buy from players” only happens in Diablo 2 and games where they can dupe items. It doesn’t happen in games where there is no duping.
The fact is that trade restrictions should never be used to combat rmt. It is only hurting player gameplay and doesn’t affect rmt. RMT will always find something to sell in a game.
Con/Pro Comparison (From what I seen):
1.
- Restricted Trade:. - You are now forced to play every single game feature in the game. You can’t simply play the game how you like. This may work for D3 because there is only like 2 things to do in the end game, but Diablo 4 is going to be much larger. If there are 5 - 6 end game things to do and you only like one of those things, you are more likely going to quit when the game forces you to grind 3 other things for a long time that you simply don’t enjoy.
- Free/Open Trade: You can play the game however you want. you only want to do keyed dungeons? That’s fine, you can trade for that world boss only drop. The important thing is you get to play the game the way you like and still make character progression. This is probably the most important thing for maintaining an active player base.
- Restricted Trade: Makes third-party rmt sites get creative with how to sell things. Doesn’t eliminate rmt though. Allows blizzard to not have to actually put any resources into combating third-party rmt sites as this community has the belief that restricting trade solves all problems. RMT has no affect on player gameplay on what is largely a solo-player game (even in D4 which is going to be open world; there is nothing that has been released where rmt would ruin your gameplay somehow.)
- Open Trade: Easier for third-party sites but Activision Blizzard has to put real resources in combating RMT. They can’t hide behind restricted trade as an excuse to ignore the problem.
Note that there are real methods in combating RMT. It’s not like having free trade means that blizzard is defenseless. It all comes down to how they combat it. Diablo 2 is an example of them not combating it at all and shouldn’t be used as an example of what happens with RMT when there is free trade.
- Restricted Trade: Only items you can use are valuable to you. Finding some of the best items in the game becomes pointless if you have no plans of using it. There is no excitement when finding items. Getting players excited to find good loot is arguably the most important thing for a Diablo game. Restricted trade kills that
- Open Trade: Every item you find has potential to be a rewarding experience. I feel like I don’t need to extend on this more, this is the main pro of trade. Everything having worth makes finding loot fun.
- Restricted Trade: It’s easier to balance drop rates of items. Simple pro for blizzard. But only for blizzard. Why is it better for the player to make things easy for blizzard? You are giving up trade for blizzards benefit.
- Open Trade: Blizzard will have to put more thought into balance item drops.
All the pros of restricted trade seems to just benefit Blizzard at the detriment of the players. I don’t see why the player base is willing to give up the benefits of trade just so that blizzard can have an easier time of development. Maybe its your experience that restricted trade is the ONLY way to combat rmt?
This is a false assumption. You could use software that is similar to “Insider Threat Detection” software to find suspicious activity. Then have actual people review the cases detected and make a decision. Or set a small fund for buying items from rmt sites and tracking down all involved parties based on who trades with you. These will not remove rmt but they will reduce it by just as much if not more than simply restricting trade would. However, these cost resources that Activision doesn’t want to spend and we players are just letting them do it at the detriment of good gameplay.
Wanting better drop rates is probably the only reason that makes sense to me. All other reasons are more beneficial to blizzard at the expense of the player. However, I would like to note that you never have to learn the “virtual economy”. You simply have to find out the price of the items you want to buy and work towards that. The economy is always there for the people who enjoy that type of thing, but it most definitely is not a requirement. “Not a requirement” is one of the most beneficial things about trade. You are allowed to play the game how you want and not “required” to do any specific type of content.
In rebuttal to increased drop rates though, progression should/would be similar whether trade exists as not. What I mean by this is that you may find more legendaries when everything is binding, but when trade exists you should theoretically be able to buy the same equipment at the same point, or that should be goal of development. It should never be to make it something like Diablo 3. I believe the drop rate in D3 came out of necessity. All good gameplay was locked behind sets which required multiple pieces to be good and therefore needed to be very attainable. The big pro for trade though is that you get to choose how you want to build your character. You found ‘x’ legendary but you really wanted to play with ‘y’ legendary. With trade you can simply trade for the gameplay you actually want to play instead of just trying to mesh all the legendaries you find into some kind of makeshift build.