Goals for a Fixed Trade System:
- Preserve fair progression.
- Encourage meaningful trades.
- Deter item dumping/gifting.
- Keep trading exciting and rewarding.
Suggested System: Item Tiered Barter Trading (ITBT)
1. Item Tier / Level-Based Valuation
Each item is assigned a Trade Score based on its:
- Item level
- Power tier (e.g., Sacred, Ancestral, Uber-Unique)
- Affix roll quality
- Rarity class (e.g., standard, crafted, unique, Uber-unique)
Think of it like a “gear score” but used only for trading fairness.
2. Trade Balance Meter
In trades, a meter shows the “fairness” of a proposed trade. You can only complete a trade if:
- The value difference is under a set threshold (e.g., ±5%),
- Or you offset the imbalance with tradable currencies (e.g., gold, obols, crafting materials).
Example:
- Trading an ilvl 925 Ancestral Sword (Tier 7 value = 700)
- You want an Uber Unique Helm (Tier 9 value = 1000)
- You can offset the 300-point difference with rare materials, obols, or multiple Tier 7-8 items.
3. Trade Tokens or Limits for Imbalanced Trades
To allow for some flexibility:
- Players earn Trade Tokens through gameplay (e.g., Ladder rewards, Drop luck in endgame content,…).
- Tokens allow limited number of high-imbalance trades per season.
- Prevents trade abuse but keeps strategic gifting possible.
4. Bind-on-TRADE for High-Tier Trades
Any item involved in a Tier 9 trade becomes bound after first trade. This prevents reselling/flipping.
Bonus Incentives to Trade:
- Seasonal Trade Challenges: Milestones like “Trade an item with X stat” or “Trade with 5 different players” offer cosmetics, mats, or XP.
- Player Marketboards (Guild-only): Allow limited-item posts in guild halls (avoids global market flooding).
- Trade XP or Rep System: Trading high-value items earns small perks (emotes, cosmetics, extra stash tabs, trade reputation).
Anti-Exploit Measures
- High-value trades are logged and delay-confirmed to prevent rapid item dumping.
- Trade bots get flagged if they trade more than N Tier 9 items per hour/day.
- No trading across more than 20 ilvl difference, period (prevents boosting lowbies).
5. Cross-Class Item Discovery
To incentivize a robust and diverse trading economy:
- All classes can now find unique and Uber-unique items for all other classes.
- These items remain unusable by other classes but are now tradable via ITBT.
- Class-specific items gain slightly increased drop rates, but are evenly distributed across all players.
Why this matters: This dramatically increases the availability of rare, build-defining gear and motivates players to engage with others—especially in the late game, where most are hunting for very specific pieces.
Example:
- A Sorcerer player finds a Doombringer (traditionally a melee Rogue/Barb weapon).
- They can’t use it—but they can trade it for a Raiment of the Infinite they actually need.
- This promotes a circular economy of high-value item exchanges.
In addition to all this I recommend adding cross chat of all servers on the trade channel up from 12 to 120 players.
I think a Auction House with the above designed rules could function properly in addition to avoid players running to D2Jsp asap.
This is the only reason why Diablo 2 LoD feels less dead 6 weeks into each new ladder, while this game feels like I am playing completly alone in a huge world that was designed to be an MMO. Yeah, it was designed to be engaging.
But right now this game could have launched as a single player game and it would have been the better choice.