Idea of an AH System for Diablo 4 ... finally Hyperinflation hits us also ingame

PC General Discussion
1

Hello Community!

My mother language is not english, so please be kind if you find some grammatic erros. I post this here because i hope the community here is more active and MAYBE a blue find this here. (are here some of them??? :upside_down_face:)

Before I start with the Topic, let me clear this.
I totally hated the D3 with the realmoney auctionhouse. After 2 or 3 months i quit and i restarted until they closed it, i think it was with the release of the first addon who brings me back.

So please try to be open for the following.

We need an auction house for D4 !
Why?

  1. The actual possibilty of trading is so sad. The trading chat is a catastrophe. On of the last updates limited the chat to the difficulty of the levels . There is no other way as to spam or to watch the chat 24/7 to sell or buy good items.

  2. 3rd party Trading Pages…. I’m absolutly not a fan of log in with my Blizzard Account Data on such third party sites. I don’t use it and i guess many casual players either. I can’t accept the fact that a company like blizzard outsource the trade problem to an foreign company/page who did not work with blizzard together or isn’t part of the Blizzard corp.

  3. Normaly the gold prices dropes how longer a season is online. That’s normal cause at some point the market is full of items and no one need them anymore and so the prices dropes.
    This actual season (Season 5) we have the new mechanic of the Infernal Hordes. With an allin in the gold chest you get easily 500-1000 mill each run.
    This is nice and good, beaucse the lack of gold before was big. BUT there is one big problem. Goldsellers and goldbots.

They push so much gold in the economy by buying items in the begin of a season too such horrendible high prices that the economy gets floated with gold who should not be there.

Last season with the start of the new item system (the rework was pretty good and neccesary, finally we get out of D4 beta :rage:), i was happy when i get sold a 3 GA Weapon for about 1000 mill.
Today, after 6 weeks in the season 5, people offers them for 4-5 billions and they get em sold. Some prices are at 20-50 billions.

That shows me, there is way to much gold in the whole economy.

With an auction house we should try to elimenate this out of the economy, because i think when you don’t do this, gold goes more and more and you have a hyperinflation.
This means, when you play without any trading of some good items, you will NEVER have such an amount of gold to compare in the trading chat with other buyers. And so you will never have any chance (except it drops) to buy a good item. (especially u can trash a good item after unlucky in Tempering)

So here comes my idea of the AH.

But before we need to make another change of the items system. That means a massive trading restriction in the item system. Only items that dropped in a group are tradeable between the members (like Diablo 3). Also with a timelimit of 1 or 2 hours, if you want/needed.
All other items, who found solo or after the timelimit expire, are ONLY tradeable over the auction house.
Gold is also not tradeable between players.

To be clear. I play D4 for the most time (about 90 %) solo. So in my opinion the restrictions above are not against soloplayers.

My auction house has the following mechanics:

  1. In any bigger Capital City (or just in 1 city, idc) they implement the AH trader or building. whatever…

  2. The AH has typically filters for items, their slots, level, etc. (i think you know all these) to search for specific items

  3. Flasks/Mats/Bossmats can be sold as a stack (not depending how much inside of a stack; 27 f.e. maximum of bossmats is still the stack cap of 50 → at the moment)

  4. 2 selling options: Auction over time and Buy-now Auction (like WoW AH)

Auction over time: 24 or 48 hours, it cost a Fee f.e. 500k gold for start the auction.
But at the end you don‘t have a penalty when it ends (or just maybe only few 1-5% of the price achieved).

Buy-now auction: only 24 hours max, it cost a bigger fee to start the auction then over time. And also a much higher penalty at the end (would say start at 25-30 %)

So, as a seller, you have to think about it:

  • List item Can i sell the item with MY price (and iam sure about i get it sold with this price) but with a higher penalty and faster then the auction over time because atm i need the gold for MW or something else OR

  • List item List the item with a lower startprice but maybe with a higher output and less penalty over time because i don’t need the gold atm the most

  1. The gold penalty/fees vanish out of the economy.

  2. Items who are in auction are not in your inventory or bank. (like WoW)

  3. You should only have max 10 auctions at the same time. Lets be honest. By the dropchance of really good items, 10 slots could be a enough for the most players.

  4. When you abort an auction, the costs of the start are gone.

  5. Items with an offer can not aborted.

  6. You get an ingame message when an item is sold in your chat (maybe in the trade chat). But you don’t get any message for an offer (for what, only spam).

  7. You never see the name or account of the buyer and the seller. This should disable price agreements (of course there is a possibility to do this, but know with a risc). This should also help players who has not a big Friendslist or play more solo.

  8. The AH should also only be realm/region wide.

  9. You can pick up your gold after you sold an item directly at the auction house or it get send with the actually post system. Items need always to get pick up directly from the AH (so no item disappear when your 10 slot post system is full)

Because of the penaltys who goes in the „system“, i hope that the gold not become so much - or at least FAST worthless.
On the otherside we finally have a system were u can sell the items and dont need to be 24/7 online and spectate the trading chat. This could also help to keep the gold prices in a stable region, because with the AH the quantity of offer should thereby be increased. And you as a buyer can compare different offers.

I am so disapointed of Blizzard that they always say,after the D3 AH armagedon , they don’t wanna make an AH anymore.
The mechanics i used for my idea are out of 2 games of the company. So they have the knowledge and know the mechanics of different trading systems and they could not figure out a system for D4 by themself. This is really, really sad.

I hope we can discuss this to stop the inflation and implementing finally a trading system in a game without 3rd party sites.

At least i don’t say we need an AH immdiately with the next season. But sooner or later, especially you have mechanics in your game to farm effective gold like Horde ( this is good and neccessary for the casual players), we need a better way to reduce the described mechanics of overfloating the system with gold.

And also we, the casual players (and i guess also the pushers) we want finally a trading system who is simple and inside of D4 and not somewhere in the internet.

Thanks for your time.

1 Like
2

I think that’s a nice list of feedback. I want an AH too without the real money transactions

3

If your think that have an ah is going to solve botting or rmt an anyway you are incorrect everything else you said is fine

4

ah is nice but its not critical rly without ah is more like sf and less bots

5

With all the ideas that the diablo 4 team took from the past era, I don’t know how they didn’t take the idea of how they have the auction house.

You drop a piece of gear and put it up for sale, but you need x amount of reputation cok that faction if you need to buy a particular high grade item.

Items bought at auction are account bound.

But I say it again even if they keep on with the same thing.

( we have no intentions to implement an auction house for now )

How would the community react if it comes to light that the system is in development.

The auction will arrive in the same way that the cooperative dungeons arrived whether we like it or not.

6

Once you start adding restriction to an ah like that people will just go to a 3rd party website cause it’s easier then dealing with restrictions

7

What restrictions do you mean exactly of my suggestion?

With this changes you cannot use a 3rd party website anymore because nothing (except group found) is not tradeable anymore directly from person to person - only over an AH.

You can make one exception of this rule for flasks or smokys.

No the AH don’t solve the botting or rmt. It helps with trading (and maybe not such gold explode for items with a better market overview and the fees/penaltys)

That’s right. As i said it’s not so important for the next season, BUT it has to come in the near future. Trading now is just so complicate and time intensive. I wanna play and kill and not spec 24/7 the trade chat.
Just start an auction and when something is getting sold iam happy and when not, i try it again and maybe a 3rd time. And when its still not sold, then i destroy it because then after 3 times i can think myself that the item is useless in this season.

8

Items that are in the mid to good range will loose value over the course of a season.
Very good to super good items will increase in price over a season.
This will happen regardless if theres an AH or 3rd party or whatever.

Reasons for this is that people will outgrow the mid to good items and the competition for the next step up in item will increase and thus drive the price up because the demand will be higher than supply. While on the mid to good items its the opposite.

9

LOL you read all that?

10

Of course. Items with only 1 or 2 GA will lose value, that’s normal. The best items in the game should cost much (was in d2 also), but when someone pays 50 bill or more then there is way to much gold in the economy. D4 is a hack’n slay and not a economy trading game, where the one who is sitting 24/7 in the trade chat wins. Trading should support your item progress especially as a casual gamer who has not so much drops in a season like a blaster

Last season 1-2 bil was “normal” for a 3 GA item, now you get nothing :smiley:

And for all the players who don’t like trading, Blizzard should implemente SSF. But when we take D3 as a mark, it comes before D5 is released :rofl:

11

I was referring to the post directly above mine that was not yours

12

I play ssf myself but these seem like reasonable points.

Therefore I approve because I am the law

13

I mean gold is such a useless currency. Its way too inflated as well. 1 mill gold should be squished down to 1 gold. Makes dropping 1 gold from a mob a nice find, which you go to and pick it up. Nowadays theres gold piles everywhere and nobody is backtracking or going out of their way to pick up any gold from mob drops.

If you need somethig smaller than gold, add in silver where 100 silver is 1 gold.

14

Before any AH is implemented, D4 needs a SSF mode or player tag to distinguish between traders and people that prefer to find their own gear.

Also they need to have separate leaderboards for traders and SSF players or else there is no real way for players to see how well they are doing on equal footing with other players. If someone finds their own gear but all the top 100 players trade for their gear, that’s going to make that player feel like they need to trade in order to compete whether they want to or not.

I’d rather not have an AH, but if we do eventually get one there needs to be readily identifiable ways players can compare how well they are doing in their chosen play style.

15

I played a world boss this morning. There were three chinese players who did not move and died instantly. I revived one but they were dead within 10 seconds. Obviously: bots.

Any organized AH by Blizzard would soon be filled with gear farmed by bots and duplicated. This would result in a reduction in drops for ordinary players as Blizzard would be forced to compensate in order to prevent flooding the game with BIS items. With an AH evolving into a monopoly for good gear prices would climb higher and higher reaching insane levels.

This is not ideal speculation. This happened to both the real money AH and the gold AH. The people who just want to play the game without buying gold and trading will be driven away just like the first two years of D3.

2 Likes
16

But remember, the drop rates are affected by something like an AH. Blizzard have an idea on length of time they want people to take to progress. With AH it becomes faster because you can more easily find the gear you want. This means actual drop rates will become worse and the only place to get a good item for most casual players will be the AH.

This in turn defeats the whol D4 playstyle IMO, which is when something sweet drops and your like oooo whats this. Now your off to the AH with the cash you farmed to get something decent, because drops so rare.

This is how D3 was at the beginning, drop rates were terrible, casuals got little to nothing exciting during the AH days.

3 Likes
17

Exactly… This is why there are “no plans for an AH”.

1 Like
18

I spent an enormous amount of time in D3 vanilla. It was impossible to get past A3 inferno without playing trade simulator.

So if they bring anything like an AH i hope they do what LE did.

2 Likes
19

To get better gear is now also possible, by 3rd party websites. There are search filters to find easily what you want - in your words. The only difference is, 3rd party and blizzard.

And to be clear. An AH can’t safe us from the botter invasion. You need restrictive bans, who also ban the account complete and mark the Hardware of the PC

It could help for a better market overview so prices with 50 bil + will not get normal.
I know it by myself in WoW AH. If many players have easy access to a trading platform, in this case the auction house, then there is competition. So if an item is offered for 10 million, I will offer my identical item for 9.5 million.

There is a time (season start +2 or 3 weeks) where the offers will raise higher and higher, because many players wanna get stronger in a short time (i can unterstand this, cause real life) and they will get those items, but also with more offers/sellers the prices will fall because of the competition. Now they just raise and raise and raise (and this 6 weeks after Seasonstart/ 3 weeks before end) because NOW you can not compare easily, just over 3rd party (and the sellers there has to be online).

20

Make all items account bound. No trading at all. This allows for the best drops during the game and eliminates bots and duplicators.

1 Like