There are major drawbacks to the idea of having an auction house. Many of these are not immediately apparent. Some can be compensated to a degree. But some were already a bloody wound in the game before Season 4 and will become even more gross the moment Diablo 4 gives access to such a trading platform. I will go through some of the more problematic ones and you will probably notice a common thread among them (TLDR at the bottom):
-
Who profits the most? Where gold is the currency of choice, gold sellers will naturally flock to a game. Obviously, an auction house would be a massive boost to the gold seller economy. And the platform will be their favourite place to sell items. Why? Because its right in your face. This is not directly a problem for the players, but for Blizzard it is.
-
Whose playing ground is this new feature? If you think that auction house supplies will come equally from casual to hardcore players, think again. The vast majority of offers will come from grinders and our beloved gold sellers. On the other hand, anyone interested in selling their lucky find from yesterday will have to compete with bot items and bot prices. Have fun and good luck with that.
-
Path of least resistance: If gold is the auction house currency, it will become even more desired than it is now. This means that players are more tempted to go to certain websites and buy gold in order to place their bids. In general, if there is an ingame platform that offers a convenient way to skip the farming process, such as those interesting boss loot pinatas, players will definitely focus on it. More people than ever will look for easy sources of gold and get into trouble, resulting in bans and lost players. The developers absolutely want to avoid this.
-
Ideally, the player base should remain large and active over a long period of time. Now there is the risk that players will buy a complete set for any meta build from the auction house, try it out for a week or two, and then leave the game early because they are done with the experience. Again, a scenario is that money only went to gold/item sellers and not, say, in the D4 shop. A poor man has to prioritise.
Who cares, right? Well, you know who. -
An auction house provides a nice way to get exploited or duplicated items across the player base in no time. And it gives the D4 team nightmares thinking about undoing all the damage. This and the last point are big reasons why trade restrictions, such as for modified items, are still in place.
-
Believe it or not, ARPGs are games built on progression. Progression is meant to take time and a balance between finding and rewarding players is necessary. This already suggests that any pay-to-win system is a bad idea for this type of game.
If the farm and gear process is not fun, then either it is not the right genre for a player, or the D4 team should be tackling more important issues than providing easier ways to skip integral parts of the game and therefore giving further reasons to cry for content.
One issue they probably cannot address without questioning the game itself, is that players see stuff online and want to try it out immediately for themselves. I hope the developers keep this in mind for the future but avoid thinking about it too much. Dont expect this to become a thing and dont wish for it if you play this genre.
TLDR: Takeaway from this post should be, that it is very important for the developers to give gold sellers and exploiters the middle finger. In the games current state, adding a simple auction house goes against this. It would not be a fun addition to have without a lot of tweaks to different areas of the game, which has the potential to open up a another can of worms.
Personally I am not a fan of the idea at all, seeing what the trade changes in Season 4 have brought to the surface. Not worth the effort. However, if you can think of solutions that would keep the above issues in check, feel free to comment.
If you are interested in an example, I have made a suggestion for trading in guilds that is able to solve many of these problems and it keeps Season 4 trading rules intact at its core: Suggestion! --- limit trade to guild members only