Should D4 have localized face-to-face trading?

General Discussion
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I really want trading to be part of the game, not because I’m a hard core mf-ing trader but because I recognize the gravitas trading face-to-face with another player brings to social interaction and in extension to the air of the game world as a whole.
This also means that I don’t care for a server wide auction house or even localised auction houses, nor the problems that nessessarily arise from such mechanics. They are all very complex and I have studied them far to little to sport an informed opinion.
Face-to-face trading however, seems a more manageable topic to discuss and a more manageable game mechanic to balance.

Thus I hereby invite all you min-maxers, trade junkies, PvM puritans and everyone in between to suit up with your most convincing steel man arguments and weigh in on this specific topic!

Here’s to kick us off.
You already know I want it in the game, but here are my thoughts on how to implement it:
In Diablo 4 we are going to hack and slash our way across a vast open world. What better way to implement face-to-face trading than to make use of the sheer size of the game world as a way of regulating it? You do this by leveraging the distance and area specific farming with making it so that items can be traded only once, (or so that items diminish in value some other way when being traded, though I fear softballing this issue might cause inflation).

I will illustrate this with a story:
Imagine that while kicking butt in your favorite area, The Dry Steppes, far away from Lut Gholein, you loot mostly scimitars, pikes and other area typical things.
After some trips to the nearest outpost, (which houses no waypoint), you have a few things in your stash that you want to trade.
Some of the stuff you found is pretty cool looking, other stuff is more in the good category, but the item you really treasure, is a helm with high poison res that you found in the poison filled Halls of the Dead.
It’s time to trade, so you mount your horse and ride for the big city.

In the city you trade off a couple good items and give a cool looking one to a low level new arrival, then proceed to the waypoint, for the big price is waiting in the jungles of Kurrast.

While you could trade your poison res helm in the big Temple city of Kurrast, to where you traveled by waypoint, you would much rather find that juicy price that can be pried from the hands of desperate adventurers deep in the harsh jungles close to the spider caves. Ah…
The thirst for gold and adventure is never quenched, time to mount up again!

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Zaven: “Our underlying philosophy here is we think it is the best when you can kill a monster, and get loot that way.”

I agree with this 100%. I would rather get my loot by actually playing the game instead of sitting in town looking for someone to trade with. Right now in D3 many players just drop legendary items on the ground for others to pick up. So some “players” can get fully decked out without really every doing anything.

  • If we just trade for everything the loot hunt is no longer a hunt.
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Yes, that’s why I was proposing my way. To me it would seem more like an actual gameplay mechanic and not a runaway inflation maker, being that you actually have to put effort in to be able to trade in the first place and that items could only be traded once.
You did read the post, no?

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Only if it’s a 1:1 trade of equal value. By value I mean Blizzard determined value and not player determined value. So Every item would have an ilvl/sell value/trade value or some other numerical way to determine it’s trade value. So you couldn’t sell your items for mats or gold you would have to trade an item for an item and only one. So you couldn’t trade 50 low level grey items for a legendary, or 3 blues and 4 yellows for a unique. Unique for unique, legendary for legendary, yellow for yellow, blue for blue of equal level.

A system like that i wouldn’t mind since it requires players to hunt for loot they want to trade. No hand outs, no freebies, no playing the market or finding a gold cheese farming spot to buy your gear. Might even put a hold on real money trades, since the buyer would still have to spend time in game to get an item of equal value rather than opening his pocketbook to just buy gear.

If not, the proposed limited trade system proposed so far seems like a good middle ground. I’m sure we’ll find out more in a few weeks.

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Wyatt Cheng agreed with that philosophy.

Timestamp - 2:15

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the gravitas trading face-to-face with another player brings to social interaction

Incorrect statement. 99% of such interactions are: Hi, thx, thx, gl.

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I just want trading solely for making it easier for PvP portion. I don’t care if all tradeable items were to be PvP based gear; I’ll take that model. Doesn’t bother elitist PvE player base to fiddle with leaderboards and doesn’t turn PvP into a drag. That way bots will have no motive to bother you non-stop at all either because their target buyer group is greatly reduced.
However knowing Blizzard, they will not gate anything behind any purpose to emphasize the chaos of right after initial release. Then I hope they have plans for embed and easy to use chat filters if that’s the case.

As for socializing, you can greatly skip that with third party sites in Diablo 2, sure. What shocking was; I found out that not a single one of you played Diablo 2 around friends to trade or exchange items with them. Am I the only one? Really?
Third party sites sure strong back then because D2 has an open market with no limitations. Do you hope third party sites would be just as strong like in D2 at restricted trade system of D4 or just presume it? I’m intrigued.

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Don’t forget “WUG” :rofl:

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You would need to get the items you are trading away, so you can’t trade for “everything”. As you mentioned right now with D3 having very limited trading there are still carries and freebies, so limiting trading won’t stop that. But so what? Sometimes it’s fun to be able to help your friends catch up to you so you can play together at the same difficulty and it’s fun for both of you.

I like having some trading just for the fact that if you have a loot system that you get drops for other classes just as often as your own (ie not D3 loot 2.0) then if you main a barb bit get an item for a sorc, you can potentially trade that item for an item that is good for your barb. Without the ability to trade your options are to create a sorc just to use it (which you may or may not have interest in, and means you can’t use it right away anyway since you have to build a new character) , or vendor it, which seems like a waste if its a good item.

So to me, trading makes those good but not for my class drops more exciting since you can still trade for something for your class, if you choose, in addition to starting a new char for it or salvaging.

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What part of this do some people not understand? “Earn yourself” is not a difficult concept to comprehend.

— and then, we are also thinking that– probably — the highest quality, most powerful things in the game, especially in that area, there should be items that you can’t trade at all. That you have to earn yourself. You have to go do those end-game dungeons, and kill monsters, etc. to get that loot. - Zaven

  • Earn yourself is not the same as trading for it.
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No, but you could trade a tone of little things for 1 big thing. That’s not really equitable. Nor is giving your buddy a bunch of good stuff to “help out”. That’s why I say 1:1 equal value items only. So if you want that awesome Druid unique chest plate I have you have to trade me an equally awesome Barb unique that I want not 5 legendaries, or 15 yellows, or 50 blues, or any combination , or mats, or gold.

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Some of us like trading and want to make it work. Perhaps it can work alongside the ethos of “earning yourself”.

It will be interesting for sure…

Fair enough, but that’s mainly due to the industrialised aspect of trading that I’m trying to address.
I learned how to speak english by playing D2, and the trading and the boosting were important aspects of that journey, trading is not just one thing done in one way.

I did. Trading is fun and a great motivator to grind a little more. It’s like playing pokémon!

My thinking is that if you make trading matter for what I consider the most important aspect of it, ie. the social aspect, and nothing else. You won’t need the third party sites. I like @Beefhammer suggestion of only being able to trade for items in the same item tier and think it is along the same lines as my OP.

Amen brother!

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If I do a bunch of monster killing to earn my barb a nice item, but a high end sorc item drops instead and I trade that for a nice barb item how have I done less to earn it than if rng gave me the nice barb item directly? If anything it’s more work to then trade for what I want, but at least the option exists.

You earned an item of equivalent value that you traded, so yes, you did earn it by earning the item that let you trade for it. Like how in real life you earn money that lets you buy things.

I am not saying I want unrestricted freebies for all, but if you earn a nice item by killing monsters, but it doesn’t fit your class, it would be nice to be able to convert it to a nice item that fits your class, so all your work isn’t wasted. Maybe having a must robust crafting system will work as nicely, but right now on D3 when you get primal wizard set gloves and you main barb, getting 15 souls isn’t much of a conciliation.

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Killing monsters will be the only way to get the best gear. The best gear in the game will be BoA. Gear that you can trade will no doubt be face to face. I highly doubt that the devs of D4 want to go down the rabbit hole of creating an AH again. AHs just don’t fit the Diablo franchise.

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I don’t understand what’s rong with the D3 trading system. trade items with everyone in the group for 3 hours. It’s perfect.

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i hope they keep trading within party or AH. cant let it have 100% open trading so people can buy with real money over 3rd party sites. (game goes full P2W then lol)

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I’d be okay with a trade system like Escape From Tarkov has.

Or a trade system that only allows items of equal value to be traded. Blizzard sets that value by way of each items RNG % which can be represented in a tiered system of say 10 different values - basic to elite. Of course this means that all characters have their own drops and items cannot be thrown on the ground to be picked up by someone else, or they do that but also keep a 3 hour free trade window open for people partied together.

Basically if a caster class character finds an elite melee weapon they can’t or won’t use, then they could trade that for an elite caster weapon that a melee class character has but can’t use. Those that don’t want to trade don’t have to and those that do, can. This trading however I don’t think should be in a person to person trade window, but via an anonymous store window accessed from a hideout or an NPC, which is what Escape From Tarkov does. The item you have deposits into a pool of the same items, and you withdraw the item you want from a pool of those items. This, I think, is a better way to trade than collecting and using gold as a trade currency.

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Posted a similar system, however, with that value, the items need to be of the same rarity. No way a blue elite is equal in value to a legendary or unique elite item.

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I agree. I posted this idea in part in this forum a few days after the D4 announcement.

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Yup, see, I’m not this all encompassing no trade monger. As long as drop rates are not indicative of requiring trade I’m all good. That’s really my big issue with trade. Now I don’t need D3 drop rates, but anyone who wishes to avoid trading should be able to gear in a reasonable amount of time.

That’s why I like the 1:1 equal value trade system. You cannot get freebies, trade with gold, or unload a bunch of junk for something good. Everyone has to play roughly an equal amount to get gear wrthbtrading and o one can benefit from handouts.