Another thing the AI has to take into account too is how much your character progress is.
For example, if you just started Shako should cost way more for you then if your character is already well developed and the extra power you get from Shako is lower.
If we look at a character build and we apply a development scale from 1 (minimum) to 100 (optimal) then the item prices for this specific build have to change accordingly (from very to less expensive) so that the player can always look forward to a future upgrade without this taking ages for him.
The above also guarantees players are to use the AI trade vendor less in early/mid game relying mainly on what they find from battles.
Rogue Like is the direction I want them to take. Rivers has been suggested, to bring more variety to zones. I would even add Lakes. Bridges. ADOM game was good fun, even better than Nethack.
Adding more variety to zones is nice but I hope they don’t take the roguelike elements into the gameplay itself.
I want to be able to plan builds, not put up with whatever the game gives me for the next 1000+ hours and be forced to reroll if I don’t like what I randomed.
It’s why if there is no trading I think there needs to be a way to target highly specific items.
In the context of this thread a computer run economy might work but I’d have my concerns about it being gamed and exploited worse than a player run one would ever be. I also think “AI” is being thrown around a bit too freely here, but that’s semantics.
That’s something the AI vendor will help you with since he could sell you any item in the game at any time (on a potential P2W server item X would cost far more real money at day 1 compared to later in the Season, so that a whale wanting to get the GG build immediately would have to pay say $2k at day 1, or play the game himself for some time and get that build for say $200 later in the Season).
It’s a huge topic - how far player’s build planning and specific item targeting should go in different stages of the game and should it be rewarded more than those players that mainly adapt to what they find instead of following a plan.
We with Shadout agreed that during early/mid game the power gain from crafting/AI vendor should be minimal aka you have to mainly rely on the drops you get from combat. This of course should be the case when our game is designed well enough to present us with many build alternatives among the different power tiers, so that a lucky player won’t get twice our power while our crafting prices are super high. Said otherwise, variance and balancing play huge role how the build planning and crafting in the game should be structured.
And then comes the next factor - player’s skill. A player targeting each Season the same items and doing the same build he’s used to should be considered less skilled than a player always adapting his build to the drops he get.
So, in the perfect world the most efficient non-P2W play during early/mid game should come from:
1] Adapting to drops and crafting what’s optimal based on your current setup
2] Adapting to drops, following a plan and crafting what’s better (current setup or plan)
3] Adapting to drops, following a plan and crafting in a way to achieve your plan ASAP
4] Adapting to drops only without using any crafting
5] Following a strict plan and crafting based on it
Note that 2] should at some point during mid game become the most efficient way to play, just as 3] should in the late game, and 5] in the very late game. 4] would be optimal in the very early game when crafting is super expensive.
Why not Rogue Like stuff? Its good stuff, people loved it back in the days. What happened was game industry went mainstream, and everything started to cost money.
ADOM had literacy, find traps, cursed items, all kind of fun stuff. Even Bridge Building if I remember right. Law System.
I was talking about the introduction of roguelike elements into gameplay itself, which would get you away from being able to plan builds since roguelikes are all about simply making do with whatever you find.
With a computer run economy, my biggest concern would probably be players finding a way to game the system and be able to get items far cheaper than they’re supposed to be able to.
It also takes the skill out of bartering, which was an aspect I enjoyed in Diablo 2.
I like Roguelike stuff, just not in a game where I would hopefully be playing a character for hundreds if not thousands of hours.
In a Diablo game I want to be able to plan and build a variety of characters, not simply put up with whatever the system gives me and need to start over if I don’t like it.
It works in roguelikes because a playthrough tends to only be a few hours tops.
Theoretically you could still have bartering with the AI vendor in a way that it would offer you a higher price for something or that it would not trade with you the respective item for some time if you demand lower price on an item the AI already offered you the best price. However, I don’t like this direction aRPGs should go - there are other better knowledge checks the game could make.
About gaming the AI I doubt that would happen when it’s finally finished and out of beta (after first few Seasons). And during beta gaming the AI would never reach even 1% of the RMT proportions.
Bartering with an AI just isn’t the same. AI isn’t there yet.
Also virtually every piece of software most complex than hello world has bugs in it that can be exploited, and unless Blizzard is very quick about finding and fixing any issues the damage can be quite significant since the only limit is how often the player wants to do the exploit.
Consider that it took Blizzard years to figure out where white rings were coming from on Diablo 2.
There is no such thing as “it probably wont happen” in software development when it comes to somebody finding a way to exploit your system.
For something as far reaching as the economy of the game (items) you would think that some sort of tagging system existed by now, that would allow the tracking of virtual property and therefore measures could be then taken from that data to encrypt a more secure trade user interface. BoA & trading aren’t really fluent together.
You could restrict the amount of times an item is traded before it became BoA and non-tradeable.
I still think it is important to brand identifiers on items so as to know where they came from. A generic but easily accessible system would enable plenty of informatics regarding trade hubs and player driving factor to economy. That is assuming economy matters to the gameplay experience deliberately designed for.
Actual money will always have purchasing power for virtual wealth.
I’m skeptical that the AI would be as good as you think it will, or that it will be worth the time and effort needed to develop it.
Like i’ve been saying: It’s like you found a solution you think is really cool(and sure, the prospect of what will be capable with AI is cool) and now you really want a problem to solve with it.
and you’re more concerned about if you can rather than if you should.
You can always do the things the old way on Earth and never reach Mars. Balancing and trading AI provide you with more options how to do stuff. It’s a step that’s inevitable, it’s only a matter of time to happen. And just as you don’t know whether it will be of success, you also don’t know it’s implications if it’s a success (we don’t know all of the potential indirect benefits of landing with people on Mars simply because such thing never happened).
Many people enjoy trading and replacing that experience with an AI alternative while closing the door for RMT will surely grant your game a lot of players. A simple mouth to mouth marketing from players might turn out to be huge: “Dude, they have some crazy AI, you can trade with a vendor everything you find/need.”
Not to mention the balancing part some of us here find very intriguing too.
Sure, we can go all day back and forth circling the topic, or start working on that shuttle engine so we actually reach the point to finally have that new vision from Mars.
I really doubt many people enjoy trading.
But those who do, are not exactly getting the same experience from an AI. It might be the people who keep talking about the “social experience” of trading.
Their current trading solution includes BOTH free trade and BoA. You can trade some common low-tier items freely and other highly-sought high-tier items are bind-on-account/pickup. Some items could be traded once and then become BoA - they were very vague on this. 10m50s in to the video:
If you listen to what he says, it’s pretty clear they were all over the place on trading when the interview took place.
Summary - they had 3 categories they were thinking about:
Low-tier items are free trade.
Some items are tradeable once and then become BoA.
Hey man, thank you for taking the time to link this. After what they did to d3, I honestly had no interest with d4 so haven’t kept up with whats going on over there. Super interesting video.
As you said, sounds like they are waiting to see how things go with diablo immortal or d2r to decide on loot.
Edit" after watching, im so glad i had NO HOPE for d4 lol , the skill “TWIG” not tree…and no runewords or trading of actual good loot. LOL doa.
