That’s just how it is with any system that provides more than 1 end-game route. Each end game usually provides it’s own specific rewards. Not necessarily the world boss drops, but other end-game features. They only said they were working on others and only had keyed dungeons so I can’t use an example. But other ARPGs that have multiple things to do in the end-game provide different rewards for those things.
I would argue that trading makes the game more fun. Every item becomes interesting; not just items you find that are direct upgrades. I really hope and don’t expect loot 2.0 to be a thing in D4 which would mean people are setting themselves up for disappointment if they don’t want trade.
This “adjusting to your situation” thing is not a good thing when it comes to creating your character. It gives no choice to the player. You are playing a cold wizard and all of a sudden you get a legendary with a fireball legendary affix and now you are forced to play fireball or suffer being weak instead. I can’t speak for everyone, but for the people I have spoken with, we enjoy going into the game, looking at the skills, and choosing a route for us to take. We like choosing our abilities and type of gameplay. It’s simply leaving the RP elements intact. With trade I can simply trade that legendary for one that suits me better.
There seems to be the misconception that trade makes “getting gear” easy. In trade you are able to gain wealth and buy specific items that would normally take you longer to get. But lets look at the reasons why it would take longer. The item could be a very common legendary, however it is competing with 100 other legendary item drops and it just isn’t realistic to expect it in a reasonable time. There are 2 fixes to this. You do what Diablo 3 did and make the drop rates crazy high where you find ‘x’ number of legendaries before finding the one you need. Or you allow trade. So that even if you just find 1 of the legendaries you are bound to be able to trade for the single one you want. One isn’t easier than the other. As for which is more satisfying. I personally feel like the trade one was. After all, how many legendaries did you go through in the non-trade scenario to get the one you needed. Sure you were excited about finally getting what you needed, but you became numb to legendaries in general in the process. While, with trade you can instantly get excited for any legendary as it carries a good opportunity for progression. If you feel like the one where you found a lot of legendaries but only 1 was useful was more rewarding then that is just differing opinions of rewarding gameplay and we can’t change those.
I really don’t understand why people believe the game turns into nothing but trading once its implemented. I assume this comes from the D3 AH experience which that was most definitely the case. However, I haven’t seen anyone wanting free trade to actually suggest having an AH.
I believe I was slightly misunderstood. I am saying whether the game is restricted trade or free trade, the progression of the game would ideally be the same. Blizzard should have an idea how long it should take a player to progress in the game. And how they make sure the majority of people follow that progression rate will change based on whether the game is free trade or restricted trade. I’m not talking about 2 different modes. Especially since I believe if the game does have a SSF mode, it should not cater to people who want better drops. It should just be something people do for the challenge. Blizzard needs to make a decision on trade and not simply split their player base because they are indecisive.
So if the game is designed for a specific progression rate, open trade and restricted trade won’t matter for that. Restricted trade would most definitely make it easier for blizzard to keep people to that designed progression rate. But I believe that would be a decision made at the detriment of good gameplay.