🌟 the Facts of Trading + D4

General Discussion
21

Primals are slightly better than ancients, which are slightly better than the base item. People get excited because they are kind of rare but they really don’t matter at all in the grand scheme of things. Ancients are almost the same, just not “perfect”. And the items in D3 generally suck as a whole. Why anyone would want to trade in this game now, in it’s current state is beyond me.

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22

I got your point. In relation to D3 it made no sense since there was no flea market to begin with.

23

So getting better stats, more damage, more defense or whatever is you. Got it.

24

Not really. The only difference between Primal and ancient is that one IS perfect and one can be perfect. Stats may vary. Again it’s the same item. Paragon has a much larger effect on the game then the difference between a Primal and an ancient, and outside of the LOD Bonus, often times more than a normal and an ancient.

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25

no
i just mean that this is what people actually want
and why none liked trading in D3
because it was not like that xD

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26
  1. You geared an alt fast. Working as intended.
  2. You didn’t figure in the time it took you to farm the materials in your 30 minutes.

Other than that - I enjoyed your OP. Good read.

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27

But again, somone could have an upgrade tou want or need, thus providing a want or a need to trade.

28

Are you people trolling or completely unaware that droprates are amplified at D3 to the point of raining legendaries from the sky. In a market presence you won’t have that luxury by design yet droprates still can and ought to be tweaked for your needs. Not all people have to share your tastes of success without obstacles.

Secondly it’s all random, time required to reach a safe plateau (which differs personally) may change by something called “randomization”. You had a useful ancient at the first half hour after hitting lvl70? Good. Perhaps you would also like to hear and listen hundred thousands whining about not getting one.

I’ll go with my first guess, impressive waste of time to write all that though. Trade scene is the only thing that saves a game from being a timesink, allow it to prolong its lifespan of popularit. Please see many other MMORPGs that are decades old and Diablo2; some have free market some have restricted but they have it. A full or even part time job wouldn’t allow you to have fun and still profit upon it, that’s the allure of market in videogames.

That allowed people to bring in new players hence prolonged lifespan. When I sit through D3 as a new player everything is decided randomly. So you get an ancient in first 2-3 hours? Great. What guarantees that I’ll be that lucky when I start a new game from scratch? Complete nonsense and pushing personal bias. Your accumulated paragon level can cover up your character’s weakness; for a new starter that’s a long way ahead.

You skipped the fact that Diablo 3 on PC has a black market just like any other MMO or ARPG title. In before “but it is illegal! You can’t do that”; people don’t care, okay. Trading has nothing to do with it. Non-existent trading does not prevent any potential black market, nor impact its size. Before you ramble about “but it would be limited”, no it’s not.
Do you complain about bots? So does every other MMORPG have it but they still have a trade scene and actively get moderated. Lastly, Blizzard got a few tricks up their sleeves against bots if you followed the hints.

Stop wasting your time. Initial interest to the market is too big to pass up for them. As long as they don’t set a system to get in trouble with law again, market will be here to stay.

D4 will have restricted trading system so even if we have bot population their success still be limited greatly. Have you read the quarterly reports or just here for the sake of venting to annoy a few free trade supporters? I say too much effort just annoy a few people.

29

just copy WoW trading system and clone it in d4 with minor adjustments.

It has been tested and it works, for over a decade. Simply tweak it so class items are all BOP while shared items BOE (assuming theres such a thing as class / shared items anymore in d4)

30

Downside to BOA is the more you play, the less rewarding killing monsters for loot is.

Example: I find an ancient witching hour main stat, vit, 6as, 49cd. On my character, I have an ancient WH with main stat, vit, 7as, 50cd. The first one rolled pretty nicely, but has no more value to me than a ancient Cluckeye.

While I know that open trading creates more problems than it solves, trading does allow more gear to have more value longer. One reason I quit the season 2 weeks in is because the loot reward loop has pretty much dropped to zero and the game becomes a slow paragon grind. Hopefully, they can find a system in D4 that allows us players that enjoy trading to trade without it being wrecked with all the outside stuff.

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31

D4 will have cheaters as long as it has incentives to play the game. Suggesting that trade is lone driver of cheating is wrong. As you pointed out, people cheated in D3 with no trading. They cheated for paragon. Why? Because that was how you gained player power. That’s the driver for cheating, and it will never go away, because it’s the same driver for you to keep playing the game. We have to be clear about the premises, otherwise arguments fall apart.

The key word here is unchecked. We have some D2 fans who seem to keep asking for it, but the D4 devs have already stated in one of their updates that trading will be restricted. You’ll have to get kills for the best items in the game, and that’s a good thing.

A key point to moving the discussion forward is to talk about what a viable trade system would look like. What do we want to see?

  • De-emphasize legendaries and sets from the meta
  • Create a robust crafting system where good, end-game viable items can be created
  • Create a HUGE list of reagents and spread them all over the game world
  • Allow trading of crafting materials

Now, you’d have a strong incentive for players to be out in the world playing which is what we want. And you have enough complexity built into the farm zones and various reagent drop rates that people would want to trade, but could farm their own if they were really dedicated and wanted to essentially be “miners” or “farmers” in the game for in-game profit.

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32

I doubt he has forgotten, it’s just there is no money to be made that way
All the traders want is to make money and any trading that doesn’t involve getting money they are against, which is why they don’t like the 2 hour trading window, it’s not that they can’t trade, it’s the fact they aren’t getting cash for it

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33

That’s the entire problem. The two mechanics directly replace each other as a source of your gearing, and they give you conflicting goals.
They can’t really work together, if you get free trade.

The reason why AH works in something like WoW, is because you can sell only a very limited number of items. You can’t sell best loot! You can mostly sell crafting materials, and crafting in that game supplements the main gearing, but does not replace it completely.

If you could sell epics from the raid - WoW would be much less engaging or rewarding to play, with everyone having everything even without setting half a foot into the raid.

“It’s more fun to do both” - is a great sentiment, but it is extremely short-sighted and unrealistic.

It’s what SOME people are asking for. Half of them do it because they don’t look past the surface level.

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34

I didn’t. If I did, I would’ve left out any mention of botting for XP/mats + the impact of Open Bnet letting you use your hacked offline toons in online sessions.

What open trading is, is a FAN. You know the expression “What happens when :poop: hits the fan? You get :poop: spread around in a much wider area”. It makes everything far worse.

Anyone who actually cares about the franchise wouldn’t want open trading anywhere near it. But of course those 2-3 trade-thread spammers just miss their income supplement, so they couldn’t care less about the overwhelmingly negative impact open trading has on ARPG’s as long as they get to fatten their purse once again.

Like I said before, I saw insanely hacked items being sold for console D3. A Darklight flail with like 160k sheet DPS and a whole bunch of crazy stuff. And why? Because console D3 doesn’t have BOA.

If it did, there would still be hacked items, but not as widespread because not everyone knows how to do it. But instead, they can hop anytime onto the online marketplace for hacked items, break out the credit card and get getting.

BOA + 2 hour trade window with everyone in your party at the time the item dropped.

Your list up there isn’t for trading, but itemization. That’s another whole sad story.

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35

or because they are no greedy botters who sell their items on ebay but just want to have some fun xD

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36

You’re preaching to the choir about item trading. I strongly support the Smart Loot system.

However, I hear the calls for trading. If you want to allow trading and have it be a meaningful part of the game, you need to give players something to trade. I can count on the fingers of a single finger how many times I’ve actually used the D3 BoA trade system. Once. Ever. Smart loot rarely drops things that are worth keeping, and even more rarely drops such things that are worth keeping, but for another class.

So, if we’re even going to have the conversation about trading, we need to understand what will be tradeable. You can’t discuss the topic without talking about itemization, hence my comment about creating a system where you have enough variety and power sources within the gear itself, so you might actually want to trade (and more importantly equip) something that’s not a legendary or a set item.

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37

You might as well say that botting subverts the main gameplay loop. Botting is more time-efficient than playing the game proper, after all?

“Most items” tbh. I’m glad that Blizzard seems to attribute D3’s AH fiasco to a flaw in execution, rather than a flaw in concept. So that we get to twink our alts with those awesome rare lvl 2 trinkets, after all?

I would consider something like max-durability decrease with every exchange of hands. But maybe something that makes more sense, thematically.

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38

I can and I did. The main subject is looking at what a disaster open trading is + choosing whether to abolish trading in D4 completely or allow it in a very diminished capacity. The itemization specifics can be sorted out later, or they can just copy/paste D3’s BOA as it is. Credit card warriors hate its guts, so it’s obviously doing something RIGHT :+1: :+1: :+1: :smiley:

Can’t trade:

  • gold
  • gems
  • crafting mats (including unique reagents like Black Mushroom, Liquid Rainbow etc)
  • modified rares/legs
  • stuff bought from vendors
  • quest items (in Story mode)
  • unique rewards or droppable items like pets or wings

Basically anything that the credit card warriors can take advantage of.

And yes, I’m fully aware that there are people offering paid powerlevelling/gearing services, but they are easily disgruntled by any new player hopping onto a clan or community or just asking for a push in general chat.

39

This is exactly why I said you can’t talk about trading without itemization. Those details matter. You’re making a ton of assumptions with your argument and the main one is that D4’s power system is going to be heavily dependent on items, particularly a handful of highly constrained, highly powerful items (sets, legendaries) that will be what everyone chooses to wear. If the power your player gets isn’t so loaded onto items and if the gearing process is far more varied (ie crafting), the situation changes a lot.

You spend a lot of time talking about credit card warriors. D3 filtered most of them out with the always-online strategy and by running aggressive anti-cheat software. Banwaves often removed botters and hackers of various types. As long as Blizzard doesn’t sell power directly, there’s very little incentive for credit card warriors. The D4 devs have already committed never to sell player power for real money in game. Frankly, you’re arguing against a false premise. Credit card warriors aren’t the primary problem that is fixed by highly restrictive trading.

The reason you want highly restricted trade is to force players to get their power (items) from playing the game instead of playing the market. Any system that allows open market trading, even with in-game currency only, will still create a class of what I’ll cynically call “Wall St. day traders” who spend their time trying to control the trading market such that they own the majority of the powerful items, or have enough wealth to buy them whenever they choose and resell them at higher prices. This is what D3’s Smart Loot was designed to stop, and it was designed to enable the casual player to get access to “build-defining” items.

That’s great, but it comes with it’s own problems that we should also acknowledge, in particular the “legendaries rain from the sky” criticism. It makes legendaries into vendor trash and makes them far too common to feel worthy of the name. You fix this problem by creating an itemization system that’s not so heavily dependent on the legendaries and sets. Again, you MUST address itemization to have this conversation properly - or we’re going to be right back to “items rain from the sky” or people can’t make builds and get angry because the drop rates become a barrier to having fun.

Edit: because “create” is not spelling “credit”

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40

What, you don’t like money?

Aww are you worried I’m going to drop $100 on some gear and then dominate you in D4. That I’d kill so fast in my new gear that it would make you look like a newb? Wow, sounds like a nightmare. I see why you’re so worried about it.

I think you should try Awaken Online, a player named Jason sold a sword for $ 6k. He then took over the city with feral zombies and corpse explosions. You may be able to buy your way to the top in that game.

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