Trading - Do we need two character types?

General Discussion
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I’ve discussed how trading should work a great deal on this forum, and have seen many arguments from both sides of the debate. There’s one core idea that I’ve seen people from both sides of the debate agree upon. It’s the idea of having two types of character, one with trading enabled, and one without.

It’s possible that if Blizzard tries to keep to the middle ground, attempting to satisfy both sides of the divide, they will end up with dissatisfied players on both sides.

There is a way they could try to give everyone what they want. It would work like this:

When you create your character, you have to tick a box. Do you want to be trading enabled, or non trading (self found). Note that I do not refer to “Solo self found” That is something completely different. Trading option is self explanatory. Trading would be similar to how it is in D2, to satisfy those players.

Text will explain the difference between the types. If you choose non trading, your character can never trade; it is permanent. To balance out that non trading characters can only find their own gear, they will receive a boost that makes it easier to find gear they can use.

This could be through a significant natural magic find boost. But what I think would present a more perfectly balanced approach would be to make it so that that self found characters will only find gear their own class can use, and not other classes. This will satisfy players who like D3 the way it is now.

I’ll add some that people have argued they would like to find drops for other classes still, because they can transfer it to alts.

The idea is that players who don’t want to trade, and would prefer to find their own gear, can do so in an enjoyable way. This deals with the primary concern by players who are against trading, that they won’t be able to find their own gear due to rarity.

The other concern by players against trading is that they don’t like that other players might get ahead of them by trading. This is easily solved with this system. Trading and non trading characters can have their own seperate leaderboards, so they’re not competing directly with each other anyway.

The great thing is they will play in the same world together and could even pvp with and against each other. With non trading characters only having loot drops that their own class can use, it can be aimed that the trading and non trading characters will be balanced well enough that there is no problem with them playing with and against each other.

Preferably they’d play entirely together, even in pvp. But if that did turn out to be too problematic, seperating them for pvp only could be a possibility for consideration.

Just to be clear, I’m not advocating two seperate game modes. This is about having two character options, one with trading enabled, and one without. They all play in the same mode together. There’s just differences in how they acquire loot. It should keep most people happy.

Adding some new information. It might be better just to have a seperate mode for non trading players. I’m saying this best on some of the replies to this thread.

The trading mode would allow for trading, including meaningful end game trading. I realise that 100% open trading isn’tt going to happen. Any trading restrictions must not destroy the ability for meaningful end game trading, and preferably would be on the lighter side.

The sort of restriction I could see working is that that top end game items are only tradable once. There could be certain special uber items, like in D2, that you must find yourself. Mythic items could remain non tradable. Other top tier items, such as legendaries, must be tradable at least once. So basically bind on trade.

Bind on trade stops people from flipping items. It stops 3rd party sites from buying up stuff to re-sell too.

9 Likes
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Yep.

Completely agreed.

Not a fan, finding gear for other classes is nice.
Also, hopefully D4 is not so shallow that most gear can easily be viewed as belonging to one class - hopefully nearly everyone can theoretically use nearly everything, depending on their build.

Well, we can play multiple characters.

Honestly, just boost the droprate in non-trade mode, and maybe make gambling/crafting cheaper or similar.
The goal is not to make the mode “easy” in absolute terms, but just to make the progression similar to what you get in trade-mode, without the trading.

Imo the two game modes should be completely separate.
But I guess keeping them together could be a compromise. However it means that the two gear progressions have to be very well balanced against each other - or you end up in a scenario where the traders can “carry” the non-traders or vice versa.
You avoid that with separate modes.

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I think you need to look up the definitions of need and want.

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Didn’t think about non traders getting gear for alts. I guess you could have non trading characters receive loot for all classes, the same as traders do. Would need to boost drop rates in that case so they are approximately balanced with trading characters.

How much should drop rates be boosted by? I don’t have a clue to be honest. It’s something Blizzard would need to calculate. It would need alpha/beta testing to tune it to the right level.

I think I don’t need to do that. It is clear that by trying to follow a middle ground, they’re going to annoy the D3 players, who prefer that system. And they’re going to annoy the D2 players, who prefer the D2 system.

Trying to balance it to please both groups of player on either side of the divide is a gamble which may or may not pay off.

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OP did you really need to SPAM the forum with ANOTHER TRADE post after yours died. Really

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You’re the spammer. Spamming up feedback threads with your useless, non contribution whining. If you’ve got nothing constructive to add, then don’t post.

This idea is supported by people who prefer no trading. Because it’s the best they’ll get in terms of being able to play it similarly to how they play D3 now.

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None. They’d out-gear trade-enabled players and therefore out perform them every step of the way. You’d literally have to institute segregation across the board if you grant one access to gearing up faster than others.

Things like this don’t work because what would prevent players from exploiting the advantage? If they don’t want trading to exist in the game give them the option to turn it off from the get go, permanently, without any advantage for doing so. Should they change their mind later? Then they really weren’t all that against trading in the first place.

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Bad Ideas / Splits Playerbase. Even if they play together having someone get something they dont need then going oh sorry GG im not trade… NO Thanks

Again Bad IDEA ( Incoming 3rd Party Seller Sites … No Thanks

Why would i choose NON TRADE if it means i am going to get loot based on RNG potentially slower. Especially when when with this “OPEN” Trade idea i can just buy GG gear i need . Again BAD IDEA

Again Splitting the Playerbase… Um NO THANKS

Restrictive Trade is how you do it not some silly NON TRADE / TRADE TickBOX
Im not going to be out in the world have some guy link me a godly drop and thn have him say oh i dont need this but i picked so trade so sorry mate just salvaging it.

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I don’t like boosting drop rates for any reason, or before you know it we will be back to D3 and PoE raining items from the sky, this is one think that is crazy in PoE if you don’t use a loot filter the screen is filled with so many items it can give you a nose bleed.

This can be odd to work if someone makes a trade or mule for want of a better word, will they just use it to swap gear to and from when they trade.
I only trade in PoE when I get completely stuck at point and I’m not enjoying the game, but then you can spend a lot of time trying to get the items needed and not be playing with a chance to get them anyway.
It’s always going to be a Yes/No/Maybe from me.

If it’s there I’ll use it at times.

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I like the idea of having BOA mode as a separate game mode, but i’m totally against the idea of BOA mode having increased drop chances.

This should work in the same way than hardcore works, if you enable hardcore mode you play with the exact same rules, but if you die you lose.

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Ok, but no jsp forum gold right? Or will you be using all the fg you’ve accumulated over the last 2 decades with you bots selling gear for fg, on the D4 ladders?

See my point? I’m all for trading, I just want 3rd party websites out, because those that use them have an astronomical advantage over those that don’t right from day one.

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The problem here is I’m guessing it comes from the position that drop rates are balanced around trading being present, and as a result, people who willfully choose to not trade will be putting themselves at a disadvantage in progression.

Conversely, if drop rates are designed without the need to trade, but it’s still possible, you can bet the same pro-trade crowd would be up in arms because people don’t have to play their side-game because actual play can yield the loot they’re after. Hopefully you can identify the hypocrisy here.

Shooting down a rate boost for a self-found mode is basically strongarming the opinion that such players are playing the game wrong. I’m not down with that, and I know others feel similarly.

But circling back to the OP, you still can’t let the styles co-mingle. As I, and others, have pointed out repeatedly here and in past threads, people will find a way to exploit it when any form of competition is involved. However, we also have the issue of people wanting so many different modes to the game (soft/hardcore, trade/no, respec/no, season/no, solo/multiplayer, pve/pvp, etc.) that we’re slowly hitting the point where you may as well be playing alone, anyway, because good luck finding others who have the same precise boxes checked. As a result of chasing all these minute details, the core experience suffers.

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So long as build enabling gear is accessible to players as a function of pure drop chances, then non-trade mode doesn’t need boosted drop chances. If, however, drop chances take trading into account and therefore make it unrealistic to get access to build enabling items without trading; then yes you need to boost the drop rates of those items in a mode without trading.

I personally don’t like to engage with trading in PoE because of how much of a hassle it is to actually find the item, engage the seller, and trade the item. However the drop chances of uniques in PoE are so abysmally bad that unless you have superhuman luck or complete system mastery you simply cannot play a gear dependent build without trading. This is why league starter builds exist and in my opinion this is PoE’s biggest failure. The game in theory has hundreds if not thousands of viable builds; but if you don’t use one of a handful of league starter builds to farm currency to trade for items so your next character can play the build you want to play, you can’t play 99% of the available builds.

In my ideal version of D4, trading is entirely optional. If you want to engage in trading, great! If you would prefer to play the lone wolf fantasy, great! But drop chances for build defining items have to support both ways to play in order to accomplish this. Note I am not asking for BIS gear to drop like candy. What I am saying is that if a unique effect (or legendary in D3/4 parlance) exists that alters how a skill functions and that altered function is what allows a build to work; that item or effect cannot have a drop chance that ensures only a small number of players will ever see it. It is fine to have chase items with extremely low drop chances, but those items should not be build defining; instead they should be the BIS type effects that add that tiny bit of extra something to a build.

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Same drop rates for all, let them restrict trading however they feel suitable. I like the direction of quality over quantity from drops as progression continues presently. I never liked having to use MF on items - especially since the description of the feature was so vague. I found myself asking how the system worked and never did bother to figure it out. I always wanted power over mf on my equipment. I’m glad they are working to do away with that as far as I’m led to understand?

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Maybe too early to know for sure. Like, I know I’m not asking for D3 style drop rates, but I’d also say there’s a caveat to that. If you merely cut drops 50% but still maintain the same broad RNG across affixes, it’s gonna suck. Basically, the rarer they intend to make something, the tighter mods need to be to cut back on that feeling of getting a garbage version. However, if builds are also make or break on certain items, you’ve gotta be cautious about going hyper-rare, too.

I know people gripe about normals/ancients, but I pretty much viewed that as the compromise of getting your build functional until you really do get that suitable ancient.

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But I want you to do that

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I know it’s a bit off topic but.
Yes Diablo MF has it’s what the hell is happening times, PoE has MF %Quality and %Quantity, but to be honest I did get one setup going but unless you could run a 100+ maps at lighting speed you never really did much better, then not having MF in the first place.

So true, that’s where builds will adapt to not needing all BiS items. Hopefully D4 gets it right.

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I can get why people are against splitting it into two character types/modes. If Blizzard can make one mode that satisifies most people, that would be the best way - if it’s possible.

Trading needs to be useful at end game. If trading feels meaningless at end game, it will be a disaster for the game, and for Blizzard. I certainly wouldn’t bother playing and there are many who feel as I do.

We need to be able to trade powerful end game items. Even if they’re only tradable once, and then bound, that is a restriction that I feel I could live with.

Why? Because it still allows for trading most items, and removes the ability for people to buy and re-sell items at higher prices. It also removes the ability for people to sell items to 3rd party item websites for resale.

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Your whole argument fails.

Because you think trading is black and white there was are 2 sides.

There is a wide spectrum of people with opinions about trading ( what’s should be tradable, how core is trading to game etc) , that is between zero trading and unlimited trading.

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Id like to have the choice to avoid trade and not being punished for that