Uh, no. Non-trading with higher droprate wont outperform trading with lower droprate. Trading is nearly endlessly more efficient/easy than finding gear yourself.
You could likely give a 10000% droprate bonus, and trading would still be better.
No, not saying there should be a 10000% droprate bonus. This is why you likely can’t balance it only through droprates. Looking at crafting/gambling costs could make sense too.
There is no reason it should end like that.
You can also look at it from the opposite direction (though same result). Dont boost droprates in non-trade-mode, just reduce them in trade-mode. Whether droprates are high or low in absolute terms is not important for this discussion. The relative droprate between the two modes are; to ensure the best gear progression rate for everyone.
Huh? Separate game modes obviously means you cant give one of your non-trade characters items from one of your trade-characters.
Really? When I have traded in PoE, it takes like 5 minutes max, from searching for the item to buy, till the transaction is completed.
Exactly.
You cant create a single satisfying droprate for both trading and non-trading.
That is a concern, but probably not a big risk. PvE/PvP, respec/no respec dont seen in need of separate modes.
Having 4 different modes (SC/HC * trade/nontrade) doesnt seem like it would be a major issue.
They pretty much have the solution with the addition of the “legendary affix consumable”. That means legendaries can have somewhat fixed stats, while rares + consumable offers the option of customization (with the increased rarity that comes with such an option).
Yeah, but we cant exactly have 1000000 modes.
Note that two modes does not necessarily have to be Unlimted trading and No trading.
It can be variations; like “Slightly restricted trading-mode” (like Bind on Trade etc.) and “only trading between people present when the item dropped-mode” etc.
You’re missing a key sentence in the next paragraph. What would stop say, 3 people with no trade enabled and therefore automatically increased drop rates from initially gearing up faster given the increased drop rate? Then they bring along their trade-enabled buddy to do content that he wouldn’t be ready for gear wise yet? That trade enabled buddy then has an advantage over all other trade enabled players because he was able to participate in content that others who didn’t jimmy rig the system this way didn’t exploit the artificial advantage of.
A lot of people take open trading in d2 as an example of how trading wrecks things. A lot of people are forgetting about the fact that duplicated items were a rampant thing in the game, and so naturally there was an unlimited supply of basically every item that has ever dropped. This skews drop rates. Furthermore, if any sort of duplicating items goes unchecked in d4, it’s all moot again anyway.
To me this honestly is just the clear solution. Both sides are pretty polarized and passionate about trading/non-trading. I see no real issue with having trade vs non trade “leagues” “modes” whatever you want to call it. " Splitting the player base" is the only real argument against it but honestly I would hope/assume if Diablo 4 is a pretty good game there should be enough players that it isn’t a big issue the only development challenge is segregating it.
Kind of a bit of topic, but what do we think of gear made or enhanced with legendary affix consumables should they become Account bound or say Bind on Trade?
This is at least a good all round option, the 2 hour time limit seams to work well.
The average person would, but with most things if someone/gold sites looking for a way to take advantage of a system they will make or find a workaround. in short it’s just code and history tells us codes get broken.
I follow this forum a lot especially trading threads. I do agree there might be ways to go about it that somewhat appease both crowds.
I still think if you take a look at all the trade threads the die hards on both sides seem quite prominent. People will still complain pretty hardcore about either concept. So the argument might be “flawed” that I can agree with. I don’t think it completely fails at all haha
This is why I suggest a mode for people who want no trading at all. And a mode for those who do.
The only other way is to do what Blizzard is trying to do now, to have everyone in the same mode. I don’t know which way would work out better.
This is right. Even if we end up with two modes, trading and non trading, I doubt trading will be 100% open.
Even D2 had some uber items you had to farm yourself. The bind on trade for top items idea is one idea that could be used here for powerful items. The main thing is that trading is useful at end game.
And thats a BAD IDEA. The game doesnt need more modes. It just needs restrictive trade which Blizzard is already looking at. Anyone that wants OPEN TRADE clearly doesnt care about GG 3RD PARTY item selling or whats to benefit from it
You don’t play when there is open trading - that’s the issue - you only trade.
So, their way of solving the above (aka D3 RMAH days) is bringing restricted trading, but this is still bad since it still allows cheating of intended item progression.
The solution is bringing non-trade and (S)SF modes, so that players who dislike trading could fully enjoy the game. But this may endanger the whales who would play the trade modes.
It’s all like one big sea with small fishes (casuals), big fishes (regulars, small time scammers), very big fishes (dedicated players, 3rd parties), sharks (competitive players) and whales (biggest RM spenders). The more you boost one fish pool, the more you may endanger the others. And since the balance of the sea population is influenced by one single factor - money earned by the owner of the sea, the owner chooses the most profitable distribution of the sea population.
Trading in D4 atm heavily favors casuals and whales, and it’s highly probable this isn’t changing in the future.
In this ocean called life you’re either a shark or a crab. You either move forward only or you only strafe and side step. When you tell me how I play the game because there is open trading - all I can say is speak for yourself?
If you aren’t actively competing against other people, you’re only cheating yourself by “cheating” air quotes there because I don’t equate trading as a means of cheating item progression. This would not be the case if every item in the game was available by way of trade, which was the case in d2 simply because a duplication exploit existed and it wasn’t corrected and the items weren’t eradicated in a timely manner. That is as far as the correlation to cheating goes with trading and item progression for me. If trading exists and you feel like it’s not fair that you can trade for items as opposed to finding them yourself, do yourself a favor and find them yourself for the love of all that is holy. When you start tampering with drop rates because of an exploit that completely removed the RNG from the drop tables you’re attacking a symptom of a cause rather than directing your focus to the root of the problem which would be the cause of that effect. Restricted trading would work, because at the very least, a worst case scenario where duplicating items finds its way back into the game gets thwarted considerably. You don’t have an unlimited quantity of stones of Jordan that you can construct an entire hierarchy of economy based off of how many stones of Jordan an item is worth.
This really can’t be that difficult of a concept to grasp. If you feel like it is cheating, don’t do it. Or do do it and feel cheated.
The drop rates would almost certainly need to be adjusted if there were 2 modes, just to ensure that the non-trade mode doesn’t make players fall behind in terms of gear acquisition. Targeting loot to the classes may not be enough, depending on what the actual drop rate would end up being.
Hardcore mode doesn’t turn off trading.
The whole point with a drop rate adjustment would be to ensure players in 1 mode don’t have a much slower gearing pace as opposed to the other.
This always makes me scratch my head. You know there are very few ARPGs that can boast enough players to make a trading economy a thing, right? Do all of you just not play ARPGs, no matter how good their other systems might be, simply because they don’t have endgame trading?
Further, do you think everyone who has ever played D1/D2 offline was doing it wrong? They couldn’t trade even if they wanted to.
I used the hardcore reference to say that it should be the same game, with the only difference of non trades (and in hardcore case of perma death).
BOA mode and trade modes should play with the exact same drop %, the only difference should be the lack of trades in BOA.
There are people who doesn’t want to trade. That’s NOT the same as saying they don’t want trading in D4.
A Solo self find season should be sufficient.
However, people who wanted trade are NOT all for open trading for everything include your neighbors cat and mother-in-law.
When OP can’t even rationalize that not all are for open trading for all, but proceeded to dump everyone into 2 extreme end, it fails.
Trading talk should started NOT about trading but the design philosophy of the game and gear acquisition. Should trade be a alternative to finding your own loot? Should some gears be personal that you can acquired only via quests. If you can trade them, wouldn’t it undermine the gear and the effort to get them? Should game be economic base? If so then more items should be tradable.
Once we can reach an middle ground in agreement ( with compromise) or what the game should be, then we can talk what gears ( or all gears) should be tradable , then we can decide how ( if at all) to divide players.
Many good points.
Should trade be a alternative to finding your own loot?
yes
Should some gears be personal that you can acquired only via quests.
yes and with quest items I would go as far to say character locked
Should game be economic base? If so then more items should be trade-able.
yes all but the items made from legendary consumables.
You obviously haven’t played D3 within the RMAH days and you don’t have any clue of the damage open trading causes to the game (especially one with an AH in it).
It’s not what I feel - trading effectively changes the drop chances - even a superb defender of it like OP realizes that and offers higher drop chances for SSF.
When you play a game that has intended item progression speed and you change that speed that is effectively cheating. Opening an editor in D2 to get the items you need or going in a public game and getting these from a 3rd party guy serves for the same thing - you cheat the intended item progression. And this creates problems when you play online and there is a form of competition in the game.
You can of course cut the competition entirely, but then you will be creating a game for kids and that has to be stated in the announcement of the game. The players have to know whether the game they are playing has a meaningful global (not reduced to clans) competition or not.
If they tell me D4 does not have such competition I’ll buy the game, run through the campaign and move on to other games.
If they tell me D4 has a meaningful competition I might enjoy it if I find it meaningful myself and play the game for as long as it’s supported by the publisher.
I hope this clears things for you.
Yes, but in today’s world it all starts with a marketing philosophy aka how to monetize the game most and make the biggest profits from it.
So, marketing philosophy overwrites the proper game design philosophy in aspects that are gray area like trading aka such with many possibilities how to be approached.
In the case we want to design a proper aRPG game trading is ABSOLUTELY unnecessary since it could be entirely replaced by an advanced AI crafting serving for in-game economy without the ability players to scam others or buy from 3rd parties.
However, in the case where we comply with our marketing team’s desires we have to extract the most profits from a mechanic like trading and this is achieved optimally when there is restricted trading allowing certain players (those known as whales) to buy stuff from 3rd parties, feel happy about the cheating of the item progression and spend more in the MTX shop.
I did. I actually thought it was a good idea before the game came out only realizing afterwards that the game itself was lacking something that not having was a deal breaker for me. No PvP = Not the game for me. Needless to say it took them two years to release an added insult to injury and I didn’t even give RoS a chance. Although I did have fun with the combat in vanilla playing hardcore mode. The RMAH didn’t effect me at all. 1) I would never spend real money on virtual items. 2) I would never expect to make more than cents on the hour for selling virtual items for real money through such a system, thus, I wouldn’t ever waste my time trying to do so with their RMAH. Sounded good in theory, clearly not the case in practice.
How about the real cheating that takes place in blizzard games and though-out battle net. The starcraft map hackers. THAT’S cheating. What form of competition did D3 vanilla have without the promised PVP? You don’t have to answer that. The experience was very short lived for me. They couldn’t have added meaningful pvp interactivity even if they wanted to, and maybe they did, I don’t know. But what was assuredly coming soon never came and there were plenty of alternatives including blizzards other games that did involve actual competition where players competed against other players.
If I have an item that I can’t use, that someone else can use, whom also has an item that I can use, and we both “cheat the intended item progression” by both getting ahead from swapping said items with each other upsets the game experience for you somehow, no, it doesn’t clear up a thing. If the game had an “intended item progression” then trading would be forbidden. It wasn’t. It was embraced with high hopes. It turned out to not be as big a deal as it was attempted to be made, thus the removal of the RMAH. Case in point, it’s not that serious, and verily not a big deal. If they determine it to be a problem going forward, they’ll restrict it as much as they feel necessary, or remove it all together. Did you guess that it wouldn’t effect me one way or the other?
