Seriously, can someone enlighten me to the (clearly) world-shattering consequences of Diablo items selling on 3rd party websites? I mean, it must create such a terrible situation that it justifies killing off one of the staple features of ARPG games. Of course, PoE has never experienced those consequences, so it must be completely specific to Diablo…
27 Likes
Open-trading is the number one cause of cancer. I read it in a gaming magazine so I am very well informed.
18 Likes
I’ve played PoE with a lot of people and nobody has ever felt like RMTers had any impact whatsoever to the experience. I’ve never felt the need to accuse anybody of RMT in-game, nor did it ever matter. It’s a popular issue on the forums, but in-game, nobody cares.
To address PvP and competitive concerns… there will be a million legit players on top of the leaderboards with equal or better gear acquired via luck, skill, or knowledge. If end-game scaling is done via diminishing returns, RMTers can’t buy gear that is substantially better than anybody else (and they can’t buy skill, either)
And one more thing to add - everybody knows it’s more fun to play the game and earn gear via drops. RMTers just want a little edge because they lack in skill or time.
32 Likes
It doesn’t justify it at all. Blizzard needs to focus on eliminating the bots and allowing trading to happen. Most of those old D2 websites only had items in stock due to the fact that they ran a large amount of bots. If they would actually focus on eliminating bots, then there wouldn’t be enough items for third party sites to really be worth running.
I really couldn’t care less if someone bought an item through a 3rd party site though. It doesn’t effect my gameplay at all.
20 Likes
It isn’t.
Trading is bad on its own. It is boring gameplay, it hurts the progression curve when you can just skip it all, it hurts the basic gameplay loop of killing stuff for their loot.
RMT is obviously bad too, but kinda unimportant. Trading should not happen in D4 because of trading itself, not because of RMT.
25 Likes
Mindlessly grinding for all of eternity isn’t something most players can cope with. You’re in the minority. Hence the devs announcing to the world that trading is coming back in D4.
My only argument at this point is in favor of completely free trading, rather than limiting the highest tier of item trading, like the devs have suggested.
8 Likes
That is just a matter of setting the right droprate.
You aren’t exactly grinding forever to get gear in D3. Quite the contrary.
11 Likes
On the flipside, POE suffers ridiculous inflation from bots/for profit traders that push casual players out of the market altogether.
And casual players are the ones that need access the most to a healthy trade market.
So I wouldn’t say POE doesn’t suffer a problem and trading real money isnt exclusive to the Diablo franchise.
I also wouldn’t want a 3rd party software trading platform in D4 like it is in POE that is rampant with scammers and price fixing.
7 Likes
I never said “mindlessly grinding for more gear”. I’m talking about the only thing there is to do in the entire game of D3 – mindlessly grind. You just kill demons, that’s it. The player is stuck in an endless, mindless loop where you just right click like a zombie, and watch demons die.
You can’t fight other players, you can’t trade – there is factually nothing to do in D3 other than grind.
5 Likes
It increases botting, floods chat with spammers, and results in waves of account stealing. GGG is a relatively small company and Blizzard is a huge fat target. That’s why.
9 Likes
Everything you named is easily taken care of in other games with open trading, and Blizzard has deeper pockets.
3 Likes
Majority of trading is for low to mid-tier items, not the super expensive high tier items. Casual players can easily afford low to mid tier trades. The super expensive high tier items are mostly priced by their rarity and power. If bots were wiped from PoE the powerful and rare items would still be too expensive for most casuals (and even some of the hardcore players) to afford.
edit: PoE trade isn’t perfect, but it’s more damaged by a poor trade system than anything else. Having to whisper a dozen people before getting a response, nobody wanting to take the time to sell their cheap items but too lazy to take them out of the trade tab, stuff like that
4 Likes
Like I say in all these trading threads…
For me it’s not the RMT. All I’m afraid of with full open trading, is drop rates being made really low to facilitate it like we had in D3V. There are always going to be people who find a way to monetise it, or cheat the system.
D3 is not even immune with its minimal trading allowance. JSP is still going, and I even know someone that sells carries instead of gear through there.
Give us some sort of solo mode, and I’m happy for you guys to trade anything and everything.
12 Likes
Just because they have deep pockets doesn’t mean they want to waste money fighting criminals. If by easily taken care of you mean they ignore the problem and let the game be over run with criminals, sure they could do that but why would they? You need to look at some of the things Blizzard has had to deal with. At one time WoW gold was being used as a currency to facilitate South American drug deals because it was valuable and easily traded internationally over the internet.
2 Likes
Your last paragraph is describing low ball seller to create a sunk market to mass purchase and resell at fixed prices.
The trade system is broken in POE. And since mats are currency, yes inflation even effect low/mid teir and the devs purposefully make fotm builds each release (yes to sell more mtx) that directly effect trade pricing by artificially increasing demand, allowing price fixing and further inflation from Botting for mat farming.
The whole 1ex starts at 45ish chaos each league but ends at 200-250c due to said market flooding. And again 3rd party trading makes scamming rampant.
I’m no convinced in the least.
3 Likes
Ive said this so many times!!! Its not the fun aspect of trading that ruins things its the hacking and botting that needs to be prevented
7 Likes
And you still have the mindless grinding to collect the gear to trade with, which you probably want to get real money for, and because of the mindless grind you won’t want to do it yourself and like everyone else you will bot to make money and if you get banned just buy another copy and bot again
3 Likes
Because where there’s black-market RMT - there’s room for all kinds of fraud and security concerns. While they aren’t directly Blizzard’s problems if the user breaks TOS that way - indirectly it affects Blizzard a lot. Such things lead to bad user experience, put dirt on the companiy’s name in the eyes of the consumer, even if Blizzard was completely and totally in the right.
On the other hand, officially supported RMT in a premium product, like the infamous Auction House in Diablo - creates another kind of bad rep, because users start complaining that the game is P2W and what did they pay $60 for?!
Furthermore, allowing item trade inevitably dilutes the experience of some users and makes them quit your game faster, and with much inferior experience.
For example, currently, your friend can level you up and boost you to torment 13 in a matter of 2-3 hours. This is a shortcut, but when I used it a few times - I found that I wasn’t enjoying the gameplay on that character. You either always follow that killing machine that your friend is - then what’s the point? Or you leave their game and find yourself being instantly downgraded a lot, with bad-matching gear and unbalanced character strength.
In the end, there’s downsides no matter how you look at trade. Allow it or deny it - people will complain.
The company can only chose a lesser evil, which they did. Lack of trade does limit freedom, but at least it doesn’t break gameplay and doesn’t leave many openings for fraud.
1 Like
What is really boring and un-rewarding game play is finding an item with great rolls, but you have one that is slightly better. That potentially OP item is now just trash. As for not killing stuff for their loot, how do you get stuff to trade unless you actually play the game and kill monsters for their loot to trade in the first place? (Talking actual trading and not RMT).
With trading, there is a much wider range of items that have value. I can find something cool I don’t need and trade for something I do rather than just salvage the item for parts. If the RNG gods don’t bless me, I can build up value on smaller items then trade for the big item I want.
With BOA, it is either an upgrade or trash. You quickly run into a case of diminishing returns as upgrades are fewer and farther in between, hoping that the rng gods will bless you because that is the only way to get an upgrade. My season ends about 1-2 weeks in because of this, and for a lot of people, it is the same.
As for RMT, Blizz needs to find a way to seriously mitigate it. While I have no problem with people buying and selling items for cash, the spam bots, account thieves, and scam artists are very, very annoying. They could mitigate some of the RMT damage by having tiered items where items from 1 tier can be traded for items from the same tier. This would cut back on the PTW and RMT because the person they are trading with would have to put in the time to find something of actual value to complete the transaction. Another option would be for them to actually police their own game.
Trading should be a viable option for gearing in D4, so should SSF for gearing. There are ways to make it viable and fun for both groups, the Dev’s just need to put in a little work to make it happen.
4 Likes
3rd party websites selling things for real money has only a very small presence in D3, thankfully. Just look at Borderlands 3 where the problem is much more severe. It’s also worth pointing out that those websites are always against the T&Cs of a game and using or participating in them is a bannable offense.
And no, the fact that they exist does not justify having open trading. That is the same logic as thinking that a ‘death day’ like in the film The Purge is justified because crime happens sometimes. Open trading is justified when there is a sufficient demand for it from legitimate players, but not when it’s there because some people break the rules for a profit.