It will since people who cheat the item progression with trading will have WAY better gear than you in PvP.
That’s not cheating - that’s simply progressing.
When you swap item of value X for item of value Y where X = Y all is fine.
When you swap item of value X for item of value Y where X != Y you:
Cheat (go ahead in) item progression when Y > X (scammers game where players give low quality stuff to noobs in exchange for their higher quality stuff)
Fall behind on wealth progression when X > Y (casuals and noobs often do this and enjoy it without realizing they actually lost wealth)
Fair trading (rune X for rune Y where X and Y are from same category) or crafting (place X to get Y or vice versa) are ways of intended gear progression.
Scamming on the other hand serves for cheating that intended gear progression and it destroys the meaningful competition.
Now, you can go and say that you don’t care with what gear you’ll do PvP since what you care is only doing PvP (not winning in it), but for the most players that’s not the case. People play PvP to win in it and when there is open trading in the game they have to play the trading game (although they may not like it) to get the gear allowing them to win in the PvP matches.
Bartering has been around since humanity started migrating after food sources. Last time I checked secure trading required both players accept the trade, although I have come across a scammer that has attempted to be clever by swapping a similarly looking item, which would invalidate my acceptance of the terms to that trade. It is rather unfortunate that people are this way but all it does is serves as a means to adaptation for the person lacking the naivety or child-like innocence which adults should be well aware of is a survival tool anyway.
I prefer to find my own things, and can do so faster than others often. If I take a break from the game, or get a late start, like a really late start, there shouldn’t be much in the way of me catching up without going through the mundane, vigorously time consuming process of going through the hoops of where I would have gotten had I kept running the race.
It is generally more rewarding to overcome disadvantageous odds than it is to claim victory over an inadequate opponent. Normally in order to do so the game requires some degree of skill that can facilitate such things to happen. If the game is only about item progression - which decide the outcome of every encounter, it is unlikely that it will hold any compelling activities for the caliber of a power gamer. Power gamers like to win, true. But winning is a psychology. Power gaming is the most effective way to manifest that psychology within the constraints of the platform of the game. Anyway, a person shouldn’t be trading if they don’t know the value of what they’re trading versus what they’re trading for. That shouldn’t prohibit legitimate trading from taking place though.
I’m fine with the restrictive trading. 1 time trades are good enough for me. That way, nobody can flip off my potential compromise for something I really wanted, even if I have to pay an arm and a leg for it in terms of equity loss. On the same token, the opportunity for me to acquire something more valuable than what I have to offer also exists and it really should balance itself out at the individuals discretion.
I wrote a lot of stuff on the aRPG topic and I always declared ONE big unsolvable problem design wise - the drop chances.
The people who enjoy trading (not for RM profiting) are those that enjoy faster gear progression since trading allows them to artificially raise their drop chances. The SSF players on the other side prefer slower as possible item progression since this prolongs the in-game play time.
Now here comes the unsolvable problem - EVERY SINGLE player has his own ideal vision for the perfect tuning of drop chances aka how fast the item progression should be.
I’ll quote a guy from reddit touching on this topic regarding to D3: In this game, there's a metric I like to refer to as Mean Time Between Upgrades, or MTBU. When you first hit 70, your MTBU is pretty low, every single legendary is an upgrade, but legendaries don't drop all that often. It stays pretty steady at that low rate for quite awhile: fewer legendaries you get are upgrades, but your difficulty is higher so you're getting more legendaries. Eventually, your MTBU starts to increase: you're getting even more legendaries, but you have all the peices for your build, so you're waiting on ancients or better rolls. The important part is next: each person has a different MTBU threshold where they're no longer engaged enough to continue playing in the same loop. When players meet their MTBU threshold, they will either change builds, change roles, change classes, or change games entirely.
The trick is to make the game engaging enough and tweak that stat so that players, on average, stay long enough before reaching their MTBU threshold to feel satisfied, so they leave the game with a 'ok that was fun' instead of a 'well that was a waste of time'. Because of course it was a waste of time, the whole thing is just a big slot machine feeding endorphines into your brain. And it's awesome.
The MTBU is mainly the result from how the drop chances in the game are set to be (let’s call this S). And if we have X players in the game we’ll have X preferences about S and MTBU, but in a game where all these X players play together we can’t have X number of S/MTBU, we can ONLY HAVE ONE for each mode.
That’s the unsolvable problem in aRPGs - even if we offer different modes with different MTBU values we can’t make it optimal for all players.
Trading as a system allows those players that enjoy faster item progression to achieve it in a mode with intentionally designed slower item progression. On the other side, dedicated grinders want even slower item progression than the one intended.
It’s an unsolvable problem - ultimately players go to the aRPG that offers them their preferred item progression speed.
And although trading may first look as kind of a solution to the above problem for the players wanting faster item progression, it ultimately eventually forces everyone in that type of item progression as long as there is competition involved.
It’s a huge topic and very few people can grasp it fully. My opinion on it is that trading has to go and there should exist different modes with different drop chances and mechanics.
For example, modes like:
Standard - default drop chances: The place for normal game play and racing competitions.
Ironman - very low drop chances (kind of a poverty mode): The place for those people enjoying the very long grind. Most SSF players would stay here.
Competitive - no farming, items granted: The place where those that don’t enjoy the farming game, but enjoy the actual competition (be it PvP or PvE in the form of Challenge Rifts) can practice it all the time.
Trading as a system however has no place in aRPGs - it serves absolutely no purpose except for making those cheating the intended item progression happier and thus increasing their desire to purchase more MTX.
In Diablo 3 there is no trading. We are geared in no time and I mean no time. Drop rates must be crazy in order to keep the dopamine going but the result is a dullness from being inundated with reward. The items the player finds must be usable by the player because they’re stuck to the player and because of this, the affixes must be catered to the character type or everything becomes useless. Terrible design.
In Diablo 2 there is trading. It takes a long time to get the best gear! It’s not necessary to reward the player every 5 seconds because every single item that drops has more inherent value simply by virtue of player pool being greater than one. There are more dimensions to a drop. You are getting fewer items but the possibilities of each item creates a dopamine hit that’s FAR more satisfying.
Yeah. I don’t know, Diablo 3 feels like a very limited, hand-holding experience to me. I just want to be able to find an amazing item and decide if I want to use it or see what I can trade it for because that’s how our minds are evolved. I love that trading boosts player interaction in a way nothing else can. Having an item glued to me makes no sense.
We could do this dance all day but in the end we’re getting trading and thank you Diablo devs. Bring back the raw, gritty, dark world of Sanctuary
No it doesn’t have to. There is no reason why gear acquisition speed without trading should be faster than with trading. They should be more or less the same. Which of course means droprate should be higher without trading.
Hopefully not. At least if they do have any trading, it should be extremely limited. No trading of mythics, legendaries or legendary consumables. Rares could be bind on trade I guess (allowing trading to be relevant for end-game).
Well I’m not buying it if it doesn’t have 100% open trading, but I’m sure that for every one like me, there’s five of the other side, so I guess I’m not buying it.
Besides, Blizzard has a way of targeting every fun thing about a game and removing it because people whine a lot. They’d rather have boring games than potentially frustrating ones.
of course there are reasons. if the game has only one source from which to acquire loot, that source is burdened with providing all of the dopamine hits related to the player’s loot acquisition. players are missing a dopamine hit from both thinking about the trade possibilities of the item, AND the trade transaction itself. to make up for this, they need the dopamine hits through item drops alone which means more loot.Loot 2.0 leaves the chat. diablo 3’s loot system exists in its current form because it has no choice but to exist like this. they would change it if they could, but they can’t. players want instant gratification and demand constant reward for simply stepping into the game nowadays. they don’t understand the reasons inundating each player with their OWN personalized loot is bad for the game and long-term fun factor.
trading made the loot game way more interesting for me and many others. few people could find end runes but we could still acquire these extremely rare items through “saving up” and trading for them. this made almost every item of little value eventually become of great value. it’s just how you’d expect items and characters to behave in a world where you can buy and sell from npcs, see players next to you knowing they’re getting items, and being able to talk about the items you’ve found. I would only expect to be able to exchange finds. “you can look at it but i can’t give or trade it to you because it’s a game and it’s reminding me it’s a game”. it’s simply unnatural to just keep it all to myself because this isn’t how anything works in reality or even from player to npc interaction. it’s inconsistent. trading creates this amazing item importance, diversity and possibilities that we don’t see in D3.
i think used items should represent what we expect a used item to be. lesser in quality. the amount of times an item is traded should relate to the item’s effectiveness. this will fix a ton of issues with market flooding
If the quality degrades even the first time it is traded, that could go a long way to make trading less overpowered.
A mode without trading is still better though.
That’s fascinating. Does it take into account what would change if people had the ability to lose their equipment?
How about hardcore mode?
The best way I’ve seen itemization done might not be very practical for a game of such a large scale. It involved decay timers, global limits on certain high end items and static locations fixated on specific mobs. Item could also get destroyed if it wasn’t maintained and took to much of a durability hit before being repaired. Also, certain high end equipment required a special blacksmith to repair which was somewhere that to reach was a bit of a quest in and of itself.
This type of rules force you to grind for the items again. I don’t like it long term. Short term forced re-grind like Seasons is okay (when you have a choice which mode to play - Season or NS), but for NS there shouldn’t be any of that stuff, just like there shouldn’t be item tiers like ancient, primals etc - these are the same like the decay stuff.
Therein lies the problem. People want to improve continually without suffering the consequences of atrophy. But they’re having so much fun grinding for the items in the item hunt game that’s suppose to be all about hunting items I thought?
I mean seriously. You’ve got Diablo 3, which has what you want. Most people have abandoned it. Even Blizzard has given up on it. And yet you want the same again?
Drop rates are crazy because power comes from items and items only. You cannot restrict access to the items because otherwise players don’t get anywhere… and when you keep power creeping everything you have to make items drop more and more so players can surpass the point they were at.
Terrible design, yes.
Trading does not boost player interaction in a way that means anything. By far the majority of trades are just 2 people joining a pre-made game, trading, and then leaving. That’s player interaction, but it doesn’t DO anything. Typing in general chat is more meaningful - more people see it and they can see it longer.
No, desire is very much an integral part of humanity. There’s a reason coveting thy neighbor is a sin. Any game trade system is very much based around people’s desires and superiority complexes - amassing virtual wealth to lord it over others and acquire what you want quickly.
The thing is, in a game world trading isn’t necessary to fulfill those desires - as long as the game has reasonable crafting, questing, and other systems.
Sure, but nothing in that description says anyone has fun hunting for the same items over and over.
That’s what multiple classes and builds are for, by the way.
I respectfully disagree with this. As a huge fan of this genre playing any of the popular games for a long time and mostly every game until ROS made the change had open trading, I have made lots of friends and socialized a lot boosted by trading.
People don’t play the game in a bubble as often when people are sharing around items with each other that help out other classes/players. Especially when its earlier in the lifespan of a season/ladder/game and all sorts of items that don’t have any top end trade value are still really useful for helping other people level and get through the game.
Diablo 2 became what you are describing with premade games but it used to have all sorts of hilarious open trading games everyone would come in and chat and screw around in.
To be honest I still occasionally make friends just screwing around and chatting with people iv met in premade games or via trade chat to meet up and swap items.
