Why are items selling for real money, bad enough to justify a lack of open trading?

General Discussion
81

The only thing that they have left to sell are accounts. Along with possibly letting them play on your account to get what you want. Both of those things are real risky and not as good as far as generating profit like selling items and gold for real money.

Even though it would be nice to play a bot free game. The best we can hope for is one that has such a low bot population that we perceive the game to be bot free. Where it has the illusion of being free of botting.

Trouble of it is though botting is just one of many problems in a totally free and unrestricted trade system.

I will give you a better clue as to what I am talking about. City of Heroes added in an AH. At the start there was a Dragon Wings recipe as part of inventions issue that added the AH and crafting to City of Heroes. The recipe started at 10,000,000 influence (gold). That was fine by me because I knew a variety of places that I could farm for rare hard to find mats that sold for millions of influence. So I just went out and farmed till it got over that amount. Then went and bought those wings from the AH.

About three years later those same recipes along with the hard to find mats were better sold to vendors instead of the AH. The only things that remained high were the invention origin recipes that were extremely rare.

What I am wanting to avoid is feeling like I have to trade in order to progress. I want to be able to get to the hardest dungeons in D4 if I spend enough time playing D4. I don’t want it where they are put out of reach just because I don’t play the same amount of time per day as others do.

Also I want a chance at getting some of the best items in the game.

Just think if Alpha Howl a barb helm in D2 wouldn’t drop unless you played 10+ hours a day or botted. How would you feel knowing that you will never find that item. That the only way of getting it is to either play 10+ hours a day, bot or trade with someone that does bot or has no life outside of playing D2?

It is saying that the best items in the game are only for those that play like the above. If I were to put in the same amount of time over a longer stretch of days I should still be able to find the same things that they did spending less real time to get them.

Take a mythic item that might have an average drop rate of 300 hours to find. If a person is able to play 10 hours a day that means that within about a month of so he should find it. Now if I play for around 3-4 hours a day then within about 3 months I should still have an equal chance at finding that item. This is what I am talking about.

But there are elite players that don’t think so. They think those items are for them and only them to find. As well as reaching the highest ranked dungeons in D4 when it releases. They want it that way so it can boost their ego.

The only reason that Blizz made such a high drop rate is because items carry the majority of the power. Items are what make the build. You don’t need such a high drop rate if items only carry a limited portion of your overall power. Add in good strong alternative pieces of gear that can still carry you to the highest ranked dungeons in D4 then we will be good to go.

Actually Blizz has the task to design D4 in a way that doesn’t encourage more botting than would be normal. That would help some, but we both know that botting is a never ending war of cat and mouse. The only way it ends is if all players decide to play fair and honest.

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82

Blizz had to almost give us the gear because of making sets make the build instead of the player choosing the build through point spending and limit the gear to only have a portion of the overall power.

No doubt this will be the case with a lot of items that are marked as bind on trade in D4.

84

It’s worth noting if they’re taking pointers from PoE, then people have managed to beat all of the game’s content in solo self found mode(which doesn’t alter drop rates even).

So while feeling like you have to trade is subjective, in the strictest sense of the word it’s 100% not actually required.

One of the biggest problems for this is less about trading and more about the fact that the elite 10+ hours per day players have often vastly more optimized drop rates.

As a casual solo player in Diablo 3, I could never hope to get to items in the same amount of play time as the people running high level GRs in groups. It’s not even remotely close because the drop rates are so badly designed in D3.

Which D4 having trading or not, the difference between a solo casual player and an elite group farmer shouldn’t be that big in terms in hours needed to get good items.

A casual player is supposed to take longer to get to the ultimate finish line because they play less hours per day, not because the game punishes them for being casual.

2 Likes
85

Of course items will lose value over time and especially if the market gets saturated over the course of 3 years. This isn’t an issue in Diablo 4 or any multiplayer ARPG because of seasons/ladders/leagues

86

Even when there are cops, people still steal stuff. Therefore we should just get rid of police…

There will be people who who get by anything, climb over highest wall, unlock the most secure safe, bypass the toughest firewall.

This is a logical fallacy. Great system can significantly reduce cheating or pay2win.

87

And just like that you’ve presented a logical fallacy of your own… the police’s job is to protect people’s freedoms like going to the store and BUYING whatever they want

88

That’s not true. Because I never made this argument. I only present a line of argument that is a fallacy.

Saying cops also do other stuff actually help my case even moreMy whole argument is even if they are not full proof against all crimes, we still need them!

89

I reflect about trading and have some conclusions. I usually focus on killing and grinding monsters and dont care of trading. But as someone said before, if I have good gear and cant find anythint better, but my loot is not bad, i cant do anything with it. My conclusion is its not good. I could sell this stuff or exchange for something better for me, but I cant. I hope ancients could be traded for 1 time in D4. I also understand the point why Blizz want to keep mythic items not for trading. Finding this stuff should be one of the most rewarding and exciting thing in the game. But I wonder what I will do if I find one mythic item with great 4 legendary powers, I match all gear to this item and fine, fantastic, applause, curtain. And then some time later I will find another mythic and what now? I have nice build and new item dont match with my playstile. So what I will do with this item? Less powerfull items I can trade for 1 time, but 100x better, harder to find, epic item… i have just to dismantle? Or put into my chest? I dont get it and its illogical for me. This way I have no reward by finding this epic item. I think best option is allow these items for 1time trade. For example my friends playstile match with mythic item which I found, i could give him but I cant. He is forced to spend ??? hours to find it himself, and he dont know he will ever succeed. Its really disappointing. So my conclusion is, i dont want trade blockade of any gear item in the game. I’d rather prefer crafting materials trading blockade which force me to grind this materials to craft something on my own, and then trade finished item.

1 Like
90

What’s your unremarkable insult to people who want trading but aren’t using it to make money in real life, though?

Don’t slap just one cheek.

91

I dislike fully open trade, it kinda spoils PoE for me personally and not involving myself in trade in D2 probably held back the games full potential for me (despite the large amount of time I put into it).

I just find it a pain when content gets gated behind trade, not everyone really wants to go spend a bunch of time searching through trade websites to find some random player to swap a bit of currency with just to access an item.
The most meaningful interaction you can hope for is that they try to scam you, everyone else just gets on with the trade as if it might as well be a built-in AH.

Personally I think they should do a lighter version of D3 trade restrictions where an item is bound on drop to that players current guild and friends list(at the moment of drop).
This way guilds would have a really good function and you’d have a nice microeconomy/social aspects but then they could also balance the loot drops so that the average player can get what they want to complete their build by just playing the game if they want.

92

Never in my entire life of playing Diablo 2 have I have ever met someone who does that, nor have I myself done that.

I think you’re confusing the hyper elite crowd who want the perfect roll on gears with the rest of us.

93

I’m not exactly sure there were a lot of trade sites to facilitate this in D2?
From what I remember people spammed chatrooms back then trying to find trades.

I’m projecting this from PoE, ultimately the internet is a different beast now to what it was 20 years ago.
If D4 has open trade then it will definitely have an equivalent service to PoE’s trade websites, either by Blizzard or a 3rd party.

1 Like
94

Doesn’t mean they were used by even a fraction of the community. You may be only talking about 2,000 players which is more than enough to keep those websites up and active.

That isn’t your problem, that’s Blizzard’s problem and if you’re not going to be competing in the high tier of players, it’s also not your problem.

Again, my whole point of my response is, you’re acting as if it was acceptable back then. It might be true now since things have radically changed with the internet.

But back then? I don’t think so. I might be wrong, but it didn’t seem like it to me.

And even if it’s true now, it’s still not your problem if you don’t care about competing among the super elite.

95

I see you haven’t actually looked in to it, but just make guessses at what you think happens.

Tell you What, I’ll give you an advice, go check it out instead of claming things based on your presumptions, you might get surprised at what you find.

96

Hmmm interesting point here.

The problem is giving the casual players the benefits of a person that invests a lot of time in the game. Like D3 drop rates and haedrig’s gifts and kadala a cube. The sum of it makes finding a determinate item trivial.

I hope in D4 they get the facts straight and stop aimin primarily at casual play.

Let’s compare it to going to the gym.

A casual gym goer shouldn’t feel the need of having tremendous muscles or an absolutely defined shape, you name it…

A person that devotes to the gym is expected to achieve what he/she wanted, the muscles, the shape etc.

Diablo 3 makes the casual player get the muscles in 1 session. Makes it hollow and pointless.

And what for the devoted player? Paragon, primals, augments, grift 100+… boring af. Well maybe finding the mysterious chests cosmetics.

97

I mean, it was acceptable wasn’t it?

Again, I’m not fully sure when it comes to D2. I wasn’t the more involved player I am now back in D2.

I don’t actually see a problem with people using a trade site to find trades, it simply makes things quicker. It works well for PoE.

Personally though, I’d prefer they made trade sites irrelevant and provide us the tools to get the gear we want without trade, maybe having trade as a side venture rather than a content gate.

Well if they make the drop rates so poor that you can only reliably get the item you want via trade and the item you want is meta which massively inflates the price then yeah it does become the problem of the non-high tier players.

Itemisation in D3 leaves a lot to be desired but one thing it does well is gives a solid route to getting the item you want and you can do it entirely alone - You can always make the build you want and you never have to involve another person to make your build a reality.

I don’t really care about the whole trading to be the most powerful for most of the seasons, I just care that trading might be a blocker for players making the build they want.

If trade is in D4 and there is no self found leaderboard then I’ll likely find myself on the trade websites trying to find a decent trade to push the leaderboard for at least one of the seasons but I would much prefer they make a game where that’s not necessary.

98

Because D3 revolves absolutely and exclusively around legendaries/set and the ancient/primal versions of them.

White, blue and yellow items are trash, mere placeholders until you find a blacksmith plan or a legendary piece of jewelry to replace them. After that point which is reaaally early game they mean just salvage material or upgrade in cube material.

Rare items should be acceptable, fair, fine and sometimes in some cases compete and surpass a legendary given that it rolls nice or godly.

The character you make and lvl up to 70 and grind paragon with is just nothing naked. You just unlock every skill and rune and gain some stats that are meaningless. Is exclusively gear centered. that’s a major flaw.

And then there is this feeling or urge to get those leg items like real quick and jump into the higher torments.

It fails at giving a sense of true progression and challenge.

And a sense of rarity. Legendary? you said a legendary item just dropped? I think given the amount of them that drop it’s a quite common item if not a basic item in order to do something in the game. They shouldn’t be named legendary for they do not stand up to their name. It’s a fallacy.

And about trading… well, it shouldn’t be mandatory indeed, but trading is like a mini-game inside the game. It speeds up the build completion or refinement. So in order to be fair you should give something valuable in exchange.

Why do people trade?

  1. Because they want an item they lack and don’t have the time to find it, or have given up on finding it by themselves because it’s too rare and because they want it asap. In the journey of finding it they have found other items they don’t need and don’t feel bad for giving those items away for the item they crave.

  2. For the sake of trading and hoarding riches.

Why do some people never trade?

Because the game is the journey. If they trade for that mega rare ultra BiS item, they just killed the chance of finding it by themselves and getting that “yeeeaah babyyyyyy” feeling.

1 Like
99

Because they don’t have to do that, and you think the community wouldn’t find out about it and demand change? The community can already tell when people throttle experience rates.

This wasn’t even true for Diablo 2. Despite trading, they buffed the rune drop rates.

100

Yeah, I can agree with this whole heatedly. With the way the Diablo series is I don’t know why they made the decision to restrict the number of toons you can make so much. At least in d3.

101

I think D3’s itemisation problem is more to do with the way stats are quite limited in scope not the legendary system per say.

Like Boots in D3 are either picked for their legendary effect or being in a set. You can’t pick a non-optimal legendary effect for the boot slot because you want it’s interesting stat, there is no interesting stat - it has vit,primary,res,move or armour - none of those stats are worth anything when all boots always come with them.

Not to mention legendary effects are just way way too strong to not be picking the item solely for the legendary effect.

I actually like this system, it works as an effective loot filter without actually having a loot filter.
Every white/blue/yellow is just materials so you don’t have to stop and inspect every little drop.

Legendary status is effectively a loot filter saying “look at this loot its relevant”.

Although in terms of rarity, Legendaries probably should be called rare.

Yeah but to me this indicates that the problem is that there is no clear non-trade path to get it in a reasonable time. That’s my concern in general with open trade is that they make the game around trade and then items become unacquirable without trade. If the items have a solid path to get then it’s not so much of a problem, then people can be trading for the rolls/stats of the item rather than simply the existence of it.

Not to mention that it might actually take longer to get an item in a trade system where the drop is in demand as it might require you to farm so much to get it that it’s not realistic for the vast majority of players.

IMO everyone should be able to get access to the gameplay defining effects of legendary items and the real chase that makes one legendary significantly better (for the elite players) is what additional stats it rolls. This way people can play the gameplay the way they want but the real rarity comes from getting the right stat combinations in addition to the right legendary effect.
This can work if they can make genuinely meaningful stats in D4 and keep the legendary power “in check” as they have promised.

Yeah but didn’t D3 fall into this trap on launch. I’m just concerned they’ll just fall right back into the same issue in D4 if they’re not very careful.