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On October 05 2022 06:07 Miragee wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2022 02:27 andrewlt wrote:
RMAH is an inevitability on any game where trading can net you the best items. The only question is if the RMAH would be official or unofficial. All the official RMAH did was make it easier for everyone to participate instead of limiting it to the people who are willing to jump through hoops to register on fansites or ebay. It exposed that being able to trade for the best and rarest items is inherently bad for the game. This has always been a weird argument to me. It's like saying you should legalise any crime because you can never fully prevent it from happening. Same logic. I think real money trading is inherently bad and should be deincentivised. If they actually issue bans, a lot less people will risk it and it will stay out of the mainstream, which is healthier for the game. Do you speak about D3 when you say being able to trade the best and rarest items is bad for the game or for games in general?
The problem with RMAH (as I see it) is that it completely shifts the focus of the game. All of the sudden for many people it becomes a source of income instead of entertainment. This in turn leads to people finding and using all the exploits possible to maximize profit. Your game is now full of bots, dupes, scams, every possible chat channel being spammed with trade offers etc.
I don't really see how that could be good for any game. Especially in context of Diablo franchise, which always relied on this dark and subdued atmosphere. It becomes kinda hard to immerse yourself in this dark world when all you see all the time are WTS, WTB spams in the chat. Not that big of a problem for previous entries maybe but D4 is supposed to have open or semi-open world so I assume a global chat will be present.
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On October 05 2022 07:14 Manit0u wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2022 06:07 Miragee wrote:On October 05 2022 02:27 andrewlt wrote:
RMAH is an inevitability on any game where trading can net you the best items. The only question is if the RMAH would be official or unofficial. All the official RMAH did was make it easier for everyone to participate instead of limiting it to the people who are willing to jump through hoops to register on fansites or ebay. It exposed that being able to trade for the best and rarest items is inherently bad for the game. This has always been a weird argument to me. It's like saying you should legalise any crime because you can never fully prevent it from happening. Same logic. I think real money trading is inherently bad and should be deincentivised. If they actually issue bans, a lot less people will risk it and it will stay out of the mainstream, which is healthier for the game. Do you speak about D3 when you say being able to trade the best and rarest items is bad for the game or for games in general? The problem with RMAH (as I see it) is that it completely shifts the focus of the game. All of the sudden for many people it becomes a source of income instead of entertainment. This in turn leads to people finding and using all the exploits possible to maximize profit. Your game is now full of bots, dupes, scams, every possible chat channel being spammed with trade offers etc. I don't really see how that could be good for any game. Especially in context of Diablo franchise, which always relied on this dark and subdued atmosphere. It becomes kinda hard to immerse yourself in this dark world when all you see all the time are WTS, WTB spams in the chat. Not that big of a problem for previous entries maybe but D4 is supposed to have open or semi-open world so I assume a global chat will be present.
I don't think chat spam is really a problem. Usually you can disable chats. Also, since it's an AH, no chat is needed, really. The other points you made are very valid. Simberto also has a really good point. It actively devalues any achievements you can make ingame. It feels hollow. It's very similar to microtransaction skins in this regard. For me personally, a very important point is the intrusion of the real world into the game. It breaks the fourth wall and any immersion. I like game being seperate from the real world. Once I start them, I'm in a new world. Same as opening a book.
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On October 05 2022 06:07 Miragee wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2022 02:27 andrewlt wrote:
RMAH is an inevitability on any game where trading can net you the best items. The only question is if the RMAH would be official or unofficial. All the official RMAH did was make it easier for everyone to participate instead of limiting it to the people who are willing to jump through hoops to register on fansites or ebay. It exposed that being able to trade for the best and rarest items is inherently bad for the game. This has always been a weird argument to me. It's like saying you should legalise any crime because you can never fully prevent it from happening. Same logic. I think real money trading is inherently bad and should be deincentivised. If they actually issue bans, a lot less people will risk it and it will stay out of the mainstream, which is healthier for the game. Do you speak about D3 when you say being able to trade the best and rarest items is bad for the game or for games in general?
Being able to trade for the best and rarest items was bad in D1. It was bad in D2. But some people make it sound like it was only bad in D3. D2 fan communities are all hypocrites. There was a benefit in being able to trade using fan communities but as long as trading exists, you can never fully stamp out the people who are willing to trade real money for it. Playing whack-a-mole with your legal team is an expensive exercise in futility. All D3 did was expose the problem more fully by allowing more people to do it.
Fans who expect a company to hire an army of lawyers to curtail real money trading are being stupid and unrealistic. Lawyers are expensive. There's no certainty that you're winning a case. Police will and should laugh at a company expecting them to help because they have better things to do. Some banned fans might even sue you. And some of your worst botters and dupers will be in Russia where Putin will never hand them over to you. As long as trading exists, you can't stop people from adding real money to the transaction under the table. The best and only workable solution is to just design any and all trading out of your game completely.
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It's bad in D3 when the itemization is designed to maximize transactions while offering very little to the player in terms of stat customization. You can disagree with that all you want, that doesn't make players with a different opinion hypocrites. Love trading in many games that I play I think it is a really interesting aspect. As I said before I don't really care about real money trading, but I care about cheating free environment etc.
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Kind of hard to have a reasoned discussion when people are looking at D2 with such rose-tinted nostalgia that it can do no wrong while endlessly criticizing D3 for issues that were present in the earlier games. Your first sentence is such a hot take considering that when Blizzard removed the RMAH from Diablo 3, they had to remove the gold AH as well. Both were detrimental to the game.
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You can argue that D3 itemisation wasn't specifically designed to maximise transactions, but you can't really argue that itemisation in D3 wasn't completely fucked at launch.
* Mouseover an item shows a big number which is mostly all you need to care about, making it brainless
* Uniques as collectable paperweights and not much else
* No real item/build interplay that I am aware of at least, but less sure on that last one
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I don't use rose tinted anything when looking at D2, I see many qualities to it and I also can formulate many criticism about it and often talked about it with other players.
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On October 06 2022 08:04 andrewlt wrote:
Kind of hard to have a reasoned discussion when people are looking at D2 with such rose-tinted nostalgia that it can do no wrong while endlessly criticizing D3 for issues that were present in the earlier games. Your first sentence is such a hot take considering that when Blizzard removed the RMAH from Diablo 3, they had to remove the gold AH as well. Both were detrimental to the game.
They also overhauled the whole item drop system because it was designed with the RMAH in mind and was absolute dog shit. Without the RMAH (not cut for Blizzard), there was no need to keep a detrimental system like that in the game. Now, I don't like the new system, either, but that's an entirely different story.
I for one hate the notion that any pro full-trading argument is somehow due to rose-tinted D2 nostalgia. I have played quite a few games with full- or almost full-trading over the years and I always liked it much more than restricted trading or solo selffound. There are some reasons for this:
1. The item drops need to be balanced around the trading system. If you have non, you need a system that enables you to get fitting gear in a reasonable time. There are a few solutions:
- Add (important) items drops to set enemies or locations to make sure people get them. This is a good solution for single player games.
- Smart loot in some capacity: This is incredibly boring in my opinion. It makes it so you can't really find gear for alts you plan. It also takes away the opportunity to find a cool item for a different character that makes you start a new character.
- Make the itemisation very simple (a few numbers) and just increase those numbers on items dropped in line with the areas you are in. This is, again, very boring.
- Include a crafting system: This can be an interesting solution but it also massively takes away from drops being interesting. Crafting in all Diablo entries has been crap so far, so this doesn't help.
I don't like any of the above solutions for a multiplayer game. I like an open drop pool with very rare stuff in it. However, to make that work (being fun) you need full trading. Of course there will be the solo selffound crowd that grind for 10k hours just to find the one item. And that's ok but it is not for me.
2. I personally like the idea of working towards a goal. With random drops, this is always uncertain. With trading, you can make steady progress, but the chance of dropping something yourself still remains. You also have the chance of getting something rare that someone else needs. That's exciting.
Currently, I'm still playing Path of Exile and Guild Wars and in both games, most things are tradeable, especially very rare things. There is illegal RM trading in both games. However, as I mentioned earlier, it's just less prevalent compared to having a RMAH. With an official tool, everything you earn is weighed against real world money. You want to grind something? Either grind 10 hours or pay 50 cents. That's a terrible feel when you are working full-time, earning like 50 times the amount per hour, and get home to escape a bit from this world only to find yoursefl thrown back.
What I would also like to know: Would you want bots and hacks to be available for anyone? Maybe some boxes to tick in the starting screen, such as "map hack", "auto target", "instant log out on low health" etc. And how about letting your char farm as a bot once you log out?
And last but not least, I don't expect them to send lawyers etc. Issueing bans is enough together with the fact that people have to go to shady site, where they could get scammed, hacked or whatever. This already leads to a situation where RM trading, while still a problem, doesn't interfere with the experience of the player base because it will affect the economy less than bots, farming groups etc. at that point and it's also not in the face of everyone playing all the time.
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"The item drops need to be balanced around the trading system" is a very good argument to me for a trading ban. A few months after D3-RoS was released, Blizzard changed the drop rates of set items. It is quite reasonable for a player at max level to complete one of their class sets in something like 10-30 hours of farming. That's more palatable to me than having to trade for them. The vast majority of legendaries and set items can be reasonably self found by an average player without sinking hundreds or thousands of hours into the game. You're obviously not going to find all of them but you'll find enough to be able to outfit your character. No trading means higher drop rates, which is way better for the players who don't want to trade. In early D2, Mephisto dropped legendaries like candy and you can get most of the lower level legendaries this way, some of which are best in slot. It was patched out but that sort of system can work in a no trading game.
I do agree that smart loot, as implemented in D3, was boring. I forgot the exact breakdown but too much of the loot was targeted towards the character you are currently playing. Some smart loot, say 50% targeted towards your class, is fine. Whatever number they used for D3, it was too high.
I don't like the concept of very rare stuff. Most of the ones found in D2 were created by cheating. Those items were out of reach of the vast, vast majority of the player base. It is just a waste of resources for the developers to design, implement and police.
When Blizzard removed the AH from D3, they didn't just remove the RMAH, they also had to remove the gold AH as well. While the RMAH had real life concerns baked in it, from a pure gameplay perspective, real money wasn't the biggest problem with the AH. The biggest problem was the efficiency, ease of trading and availability that came with it. The gold AH suffered from the same problems and would've been a problem if it had remained. Don't be fixated too much on RM trading because gold trading suffered from a lot of the same issues.
In any game, there will always be people who progress faster, farm more efficiently and play more. There will be cheaters as well. In early D3, whenever the top players upgrade their gear, it is advantageous and easy for them to dump all their outdated gear on the AH. It is also the place for both top players and cheaters to dump all the surplus drops they don't need. The result is a massive deflation of gold prices for decent rare gear. For the players who are behind the cutting edge of progression, they can outfit their character with their found gold far more easily than waiting for random drops. For newer players, playing the AH became a better source of progression than actually killing monsters. And that held for the gold AH as well.
Removing the official AH while allowing trading removes the efficiency and ease of use out of the system. The company is handing an advantage to the players who are willing to partake in fansites, reddit, discord, what have you to facilitate their trading. Without the availability of an official AH, most players will not jump through hoops to trade. I did a bit of trading in D2 early on and it was so cumbersome and unfun for me that I gave up on it after a while. There were a lot of people who tried to do switcheroos and other nonsense too.
Let's go back to my first paragraph. A system of pure self found gear allows for higher drop rates than a system that allows trading since like you said, the item drops need to be balanced around the trading system. A trading system, and the resulting lower drop rates, is a slap in the face to the segment of the player base that doesn't want to use third party sites to facilitate their gaming. It is bad policy for any game maker to give an institutional advantage to players who are active in online communities. Might as well advise players that Facebook is recommended to make the most out of the game.
Trying to deter real money trading only through bans is a tricky proposition. A seller making enough money can easily purchase a fresh copy of the game and go around any IP bans a company can do. Banning buyers can get problematic. Make the algorithm lenient and too many will not get caught. Make it tight and a lot of clean players will end up getting banned. And compared to Path of Exile and Guild Wars, Blizzard has a bigger target on their back for class action lawsuits. Trading just opens up too many problems, requires too many resources that are better spent elsewhere, benefits a very small minority and disadvantages the vast majority of the player base who will get most of their items from self found drops.
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I'd say there are really pros and cons to having a trading system and/or restrictions. I can think of many pros to trading without restriction and I definitely prefer that usually (depends on specifics per game and the goals i guess), but I could list some cons as well such as rarest items becoming too common and cheap or not having to deal with the harder gameplay to still get the best stuff. I think many of the cons can be dealt with by having random and low drop chances for rare stuff, and ensuring you get some valuable rewards at all stages of gameplay.. which come with their own consequences and really makes a different style for a game. For example, I definitely really like being able to go in a ton of different places to get valuable, unpredictable drops in D2, while I don't really like having to do specific raids many times to get a chance at a specific item drop in wow. To be fair I realize most raids or instances in wow also have a bunch of random stuff that drops so that both drop styles kinda exist in that context, however if you aren't interested in raids in that game you end up (after some amount of patch progression, before expansion) getting a underpowered character unless you instead farm honor in specific pvp context in order to get specific pvp sets of comparable power as a reward. In any case trading is a huge part of wow and I appreciate a lot how in vanilla, almost everything you get anywhere including at low levels has some value which you can exchange for other valuable stuff of a higher level that you'd hardly have access to at that level without trading, which come with their own benefits and may have a low level requirement to use. Trading for something rare and powerful is costly, but then that piece can last you a long time and there is a lot of choice there but you can probably never afford everything etc.
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On October 07 2022 01:43 andrewlt wrote:
"The item drops need to be balanced around the trading system" is a very good argument to me for a trading ban. A few months after D3-RoS was released, Blizzard changed the drop rates of set items. It is quite reasonable for a player at max level to complete one of their class sets in something like 10-30 hours of farming. That's more palatable to me than having to trade for them. The vast majority of legendaries and set items can be reasonably self found by an average player without sinking hundreds or thousands of hours into the game. You're obviously not going to find all of them but you'll find enough to be able to outfit your character. No trading means higher drop rates, which is way better for the players who don't want to trade. In early D2, Mephisto dropped legendaries like candy and you can get most of the lower level legendaries this way, some of which are best in slot. It was patched out but that sort of system can work in a no trading game.
I do agree that smart loot, as implemented in D3, was boring. I forgot the exact breakdown but too much of the loot was targeted towards the character you are currently playing. Some smart loot, say 50% targeted towards your class, is fine. Whatever number they used for D3, it was too high.
I don't like the concept of very rare stuff. Most of the ones found in D2 were created by cheating. Those items were out of reach of the vast, vast majority of the player base. It is just a waste of resources for the developers to design, implement and police.
When Blizzard removed the AH from D3, they didn't just remove the RMAH, they also had to remove the gold AH as well. While the RMAH had real life concerns baked in it, from a pure gameplay perspective, real money wasn't the biggest problem with the AH. The biggest problem was the efficiency, ease of trading and availability that came with it. The gold AH suffered from the same problems and would've been a problem if it had remained. Don't be fixated too much on RM trading because gold trading suffered from a lot of the same issues.
In any game, there will always be people who progress faster, farm more efficiently and play more. There will be cheaters as well. In early D3, whenever the top players upgrade their gear, it is advantageous and easy for them to dump all their outdated gear on the AH. It is also the place for both top players and cheaters to dump all the surplus drops they don't need. The result is a massive deflation of gold prices for decent rare gear. For the players who are behind the cutting edge of progression, they can outfit their character with their found gold far more easily than waiting for random drops. For newer players, playing the AH became a better source of progression than actually killing monsters. And that held for the gold AH as well.
Removing the official AH while allowing trading removes the efficiency and ease of use out of the system. The company is handing an advantage to the players who are willing to partake in fansites, reddit, discord, what have you to facilitate their trading. Without the availability of an official AH, most players will not jump through hoops to trade. I did a bit of trading in D2 early on and it was so cumbersome and unfun for me that I gave up on it after a while. There were a lot of people who tried to do switcheroos and other nonsense too.
Let's go back to my first paragraph. A system of pure self found gear allows for higher drop rates than a system that allows trading since like you said, the item drops need to be balanced around the trading system. A trading system, and the resulting lower drop rates, is a slap in the face to the segment of the player base that doesn't want to use third party sites to facilitate their gaming. It is bad policy for any game maker to give an institutional advantage to players who are active in online communities. Might as well advise players that Facebook is recommended to make the most out of the game.
Trying to deter real money trading only through bans is a tricky proposition. A seller making enough money can easily purchase a fresh copy of the game and go around any IP bans a company can do. Banning buyers can get problematic. Make the algorithm lenient and too many will not get caught. Make it tight and a lot of clean players will end up getting banned. And compared to Path of Exile and Guild Wars, Blizzard has a bigger target on their back for class action lawsuits. Trading just opens up too many problems, requires too many resources that are better spent elsewhere, benefits a very small minority and disadvantages the vast majority of the player base who will get most of their items from self found drops.
Hey, thank you for your post! You are making good points. As stated by ProMeTheus112, there are definitely cons of having unrestricted trading. In the end, I think a lot of it comes down to what type of game you have and what niché it wants to fit into.
1. In a purely online game, I think you can expect from players to want to take part of the online community. If you are playing Guild Wars for example, you are signing up for a multiplayer experience first in foremost. If you then decide to play alone, don't interact with the community etc. that's you putting restrictions onto yourself. For single player game, it's the exact opposite. There is no player interaction and hence the drop system needs to be balanced around having no trade. And then there are games, where both sides can make valid points. These are games like Diablo, which have a single player experience and multiplayer added on top. I think you can make arguments for both sides of the isle and it comes down to personal preference. You said this:
"A trading system, and the resulting lower drop rates, is a slap in the face to the segment of the player base that doesn't want to use third party sites to facilitate their gaming. It is bad policy for any game maker to give an institutional advantage to players who are active in online communities"
And while I agree with that notion, that could be flipped on it's head as well. Some players want to engage with these type of systems. They are fun to them. I for example love trading but I love trading with some friction involved, like in Diablo 2, Path of Exile and Guild Wars. For me there is fun in looking for a personal to trade with. Sometimes it can be frustrating, yes, but it adds more for me than it takes away. I also like the social interaction, the possibility to barter etc. All this is being removed by AHs, which I dislike. When I played Guild Wars 2 for example, trading existed in form of an AH but it felt the same as trading with an NPC. The only difference was that I needed to go through an extra menu with a lot of lag...I just don't like AHs in general. At that point, player trading is pointless imho. So I always argue against AHs but for trading with some friction. I know I'm in the minority here, but that's what I like. Which leads me to my next point.
2. What niché wants the game to serve? Not every game needs to be for everyone, despite the common notion that games always need to grow, attract more players, the largest amount of players possible. I think the best games are made when they are made for a specific audience. It will not be for everybody and that's ok. Those that like the systems will stay and be way more happy than they would be with 10 times as many people in a watered down game (the other won't be as happy, either). And I think, this applies to trading as well. It's ok to have games with full trading for someone like me and games with limited or no trading for people such as yourself. Some games, even the majority, with trading should have AHs because that's what the majority enjoys. However, I would hate the fact if every game had an AH. I'm very glad GGG is so diligent about not adding an AH to PoE despite the fact people pester them like crazy. Please leave me this game that actually panders to me.^^
Anyways, for D4 it looks like it's going for a system I don't like. This is why I said the game is dead to me. Sounds a bit drastic but I know myself well enough to know I won't enjoy and online RPG without trading for long. This only one of many reasons of course. I also fear they will use a very similar smart loot system to what they implemented in D3 for example. From the footage, dev posts etc. some strong similarities between D4 and D3 can be spotted, some of which are the major gripes I had with D3's itemsation and customisation.
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When it comes to itemization, looking back at it D2 had some truly brilliant ideas. The more bonuses the equipment has, the smaller the bonuses are. This made sure that plain old magic items with just a single prefix and affix were never obsolete as you could go for less bonuses but stronger ones.
On the other hand one thing I liked in D3 (after expansion and patches of course) was their handling of unique items in that they gave you some truly unique abilities that you couldn't find on any other gear. What I didn't really like in the end was the system where you could just get those unique abilities without having to actually equip those uniques and that all the power and gameplay was focused around set items (which also gave you unique abilities thus making unique items kinda obsolete).
Edit: I also kinda miss cursed items from D1, where you could find stuff with negative attributes. Made the thrill of eq hunting that much more exciting.
I think it would be nice to have a kind of mix of all the systems. Where you have usable magic items, truly unique uniques, set items that maybe give you just extra bonuses but no unique abilities (as to not make uniques useless) and a crafting system on top of that, which would let you upgrade your gear. This way if you find a low tier unique/set/magic item with bonuses you want you could keep it and upgrade it so that it wouldn't be made obsolete by finding a higher tier item (coolness is a factor too after all).
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I agree the chance to get a negative attribute on items in D1 was really cool. I can't remember exactly how it worked but if it's so that it increases the chance of another attribute being a bit higher or getting an extra attribute that makes it a really cool mechanic.
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On October 07 2022 07:07 ProMeTheus112 wrote:
I agree the chance to get a negative attribute on items in D1 was really cool. I can't remember exactly how it worked but if it's so that it increases the chance of another attribute being a bit higher or getting an extra attribute that makes it a really cool mechanic.
To be honest, it wasn't like that. Prefix, affix or both could be cursed and they were straight negatives. The chance of finding cursed items was very low though so it wasn't very discouraging. I like the idea of it balancing out by making non-cursed part stronger though. It would make for interesting min-maxing on characters. Trying to find non-factor curse and great bonus for your class (slower cast speed but big boost to damage for a melee fighter char for example) would be an interesting challenge and add depth to eq hunting and itemization.
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On October 07 2022 07:12 Manit0u wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2022 07:07 ProMeTheus112 wrote:
I agree the chance to get a negative attribute on items in D1 was really cool. I can't remember exactly how it worked but if it's so that it increases the chance of another attribute being a bit higher or getting an extra attribute that makes it a really cool mechanic. To be honest, it wasn't like that. Prefix, affix or both could be cursed and they were straight negatives. The chance of finding cursed items was very low though so it wasn't very discouraging. I like the idea of it balancing out by making non-cursed part stronger though. It would make for interesting min-maxing on characters. Trying to find non-factor curse and great bonus for your class (slower cast speed but big boost to damage for a melee fighter char for example) would be an interesting challenge and add depth to eq hunting and itemization.
Yeah. Or also I think it could add a chance to get some unique bonuses that only appear when a malus is present : D
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On October 07 2022 07:01 Manit0u wrote:
When it comes to itemization, looking back at it D2 had some truly brilliant ideas. The more bonuses the equipment has, the smaller the bonuses are. This made sure that plain old magic items with just a single prefix and affix were never obsolete as you could go for less bonuses but stronger ones.
On the other hand one thing I liked in D3 (after expansion and patches of course) was their handling of unique items in that they gave you some truly unique abilities that you couldn't find on any other gear. What I didn't really like in the end was the system where you could just get those unique abilities without having to actually equip those uniques and that all the power and gameplay was focused around set items (which also gave you unique abilities thus making unique items kinda obsolete).
Edit: I also kinda miss cursed items from D1, where you could find stuff with negative attributes. Made the thrill of eq hunting that much more exciting.
I think it would be nice to have a kind of mix of all the systems. Where you have usable magic items, truly unique uniques, set items that maybe give you just extra bonuses but no unique abilities (as to not make uniques useless) and a crafting system on top of that, which would let you upgrade your gear. This way if you find a low tier unique/set/magic item with bonuses you want you could keep it and upgrade it so that it wouldn't be made obsolete by finding a higher tier item (coolness is a factor too after all).
If I remember right, Blizzard added new blue item only affixes in LoD that were more powerful than the ones available to yellow items. It wasn't so much that the bonuses for yellow were smaller, it's that blues can roll stronger affixes that yellow items can't.
In theory, the D3 team's initial philosophy that 6 affix rares that rolled the ideal combination should be the best items in the game had some merit to it. A rare item that rolled the ideal 6 affixes for your char, after all, could be rarer than uniques. I don't know if this was just never destined to work out in practice or the execution was just subpar or both. It just failed terribly at launch.
I'm glad they did a course correction but they did overshoot it quite a bit. Uniques and set items went from garbage to mobile gacha games levels of powercreep. By the time I stopped playing, I think some set bonuses were increasing skill damage by over 1000%+.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that Blizzard kept low level unique/set items relevant in D3 by giving them variable levels. At level 15, you can find a level 15 unique with a unique bonus you want. But sometime later, when you are level 60, you can find a level 60 version of the same item with better stats (including the unique bonus). Of course, you do have to find the item again. But at least it let people find some unique/set items early without wasting all the effort on Blizzard's part to create them since they could still be relevant at higher levels.
On October 07 2022 05:22 Miragee wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On October 07 2022 01:43 andrewlt wrote:
"The item drops need to be balanced around the trading system" is a very good argument to me for a trading ban. A few months after D3-RoS was released, Blizzard changed the drop rates of set items. It is quite reasonable for a player at max level to complete one of their class sets in something like 10-30 hours of farming. That's more palatable to me than having to trade for them. The vast majority of legendaries and set items can be reasonably self found by an average player without sinking hundreds or thousands of hours into the game. You're obviously not going to find all of them but you'll find enough to be able to outfit your character. No trading means higher drop rates, which is way better for the players who don't want to trade. In early D2, Mephisto dropped legendaries like candy and you can get most of the lower level legendaries this way, some of which are best in slot. It was patched out but that sort of system can work in a no trading game.
I do agree that smart loot, as implemented in D3, was boring. I forgot the exact breakdown but too much of the loot was targeted towards the character you are currently playing. Some smart loot, say 50% targeted towards your class, is fine. Whatever number they used for D3, it was too high.
I don't like the concept of very rare stuff. Most of the ones found in D2 were created by cheating. Those items were out of reach of the vast, vast majority of the player base. It is just a waste of resources for the developers to design, implement and police.
When Blizzard removed the AH from D3, they didn't just remove the RMAH, they also had to remove the gold AH as well. While the RMAH had real life concerns baked in it, from a pure gameplay perspective, real money wasn't the biggest problem with the AH. The biggest problem was the efficiency, ease of trading and availability that came with it. The gold AH suffered from the same problems and would've been a problem if it had remained. Don't be fixated too much on RM trading because gold trading suffered from a lot of the same issues.
In any game, there will always be people who progress faster, farm more efficiently and play more. There will be cheaters as well. In early D3, whenever the top players upgrade their gear, it is advantageous and easy for them to dump all their outdated gear on the AH. It is also the place for both top players and cheaters to dump all the surplus drops they don't need. The result is a massive deflation of gold prices for decent rare gear. For the players who are behind the cutting edge of progression, they can outfit their character with their found gold far more easily than waiting for random drops. For newer players, playing the AH became a better source of progression than actually killing monsters. And that held for the gold AH as well.
Removing the official AH while allowing trading removes the efficiency and ease of use out of the system. The company is handing an advantage to the players who are willing to partake in fansites, reddit, discord, what have you to facilitate their trading. Without the availability of an official AH, most players will not jump through hoops to trade. I did a bit of trading in D2 early on and it was so cumbersome and unfun for me that I gave up on it after a while. There were a lot of people who tried to do switcheroos and other nonsense too.
Let's go back to my first paragraph. A system of pure self found gear allows for higher drop rates than a system that allows trading since like you said, the item drops need to be balanced around the trading system. A trading system, and the resulting lower drop rates, is a slap in the face to the segment of the player base that doesn't want to use third party sites to facilitate their gaming. It is bad policy for any game maker to give an institutional advantage to players who are active in online communities. Might as well advise players that Facebook is recommended to make the most out of the game.
Trying to deter real money trading only through bans is a tricky proposition. A seller making enough money can easily purchase a fresh copy of the game and go around any IP bans a company can do. Banning buyers can get problematic. Make the algorithm lenient and too many will not get caught. Make it tight and a lot of clean players will end up getting banned. And compared to Path of Exile and Guild Wars, Blizzard has a bigger target on their back for class action lawsuits. Trading just opens up too many problems, requires too many resources that are better spent elsewhere, benefits a very small minority and disadvantages the vast majority of the player base who will get most of their items from self found drops. Hey, thank you for your post! You are making good points. As stated by ProMeTheus112, there are definitely cons of having unrestricted trading. In the end, I think a lot of it comes down to what type of game you have and what niché it wants to fit into. 1. In a purely online game, I think you can expect from players to want to take part of the online community. If you are playing Guild Wars for example, you are signing up for a multiplayer experience first in foremost. If you then decide to play alone, don't interact with the community etc. that's you putting restrictions onto yourself. For single player game, it's the exact opposite. There is no player interaction and hence the drop system needs to be balanced around having no trade. And then there are games, where both sides can make valid points. These are games like Diablo, which have a single player experience and multiplayer added on top. I think you can make arguments for both sides of the isle and it comes down to personal preference. You said this: "A trading system, and the resulting lower drop rates, is a slap in the face to the segment of the player base that doesn't want to use third party sites to facilitate their gaming. It is bad policy for any game maker to give an institutional advantage to players who are active in online communities" And while I agree with that notion, that could be flipped on it's head as well. Some players want to engage with these type of systems. They are fun to them. I for example love trading but I love trading with some friction involved, like in Diablo 2, Path of Exile and Guild Wars. For me there is fun in looking for a personal to trade with. Sometimes it can be frustrating, yes, but it adds more for me than it takes away. I also like the social interaction, the possibility to barter etc. All this is being removed by AHs, which I dislike. When I played Guild Wars 2 for example, trading existed in form of an AH but it felt the same as trading with an NPC. The only difference was that I needed to go through an extra menu with a lot of lag...I just don't like AHs in general. At that point, player trading is pointless imho. So I always argue against AHs but for trading with some friction. I know I'm in the minority here, but that's what I like. Which leads me to my next point. 2. What niché wants the game to serve? Not every game needs to be for everyone, despite the common notion that games always need to grow, attract more players, the largest amount of players possible. I think the best games are made when they are made for a specific audience. It will not be for everybody and that's ok. Those that like the systems will stay and be way more happy than they would be with 10 times as many people in a watered down game (the other won't be as happy, either). And I think, this applies to trading as well. It's ok to have games with full trading for someone like me and games with limited or no trading for people such as yourself. Some games, even the majority, with trading should have AHs because that's what the majority enjoys. However, I would hate the fact if every game had an AH. I'm very glad GGG is so diligent about not adding an AH to PoE despite the fact people pester them like crazy. Please leave me this game that actually panders to me.^^ Anyways, for D4 it looks like it's going for a system I don't like. This is why I said the game is dead to me. Sounds a bit drastic but I know myself well enough to know I won't enjoy and online RPG without trading for long. This only one of many reasons of course. I also fear they will use a very similar smart loot system to what they implemented in D3 for example. From the footage, dev posts etc. some strong similarities between D4 and D3 can be spotted, some of which are the major gripes I had with D3's itemsation and customisation.
Yah, I figured a few of us were getting a little heated trying to be concise with our posts and I thought I needed a wall of text to better explain where I was coming from. From the time I joined TL quite a while ago, I think I registered for only one other online community. Everything else I'm using predates my TL join date. I don't mind playing with and interacting with other people online inside the game. But I'm just reluctant to register to yet another forum to play another game. And we all know to avoid the official Blizzard ones. That's where I'm coming from with my opposition to trading. Without an AH, I just don't know how it can be done without using outside communication tools. In-game chat channels just don't work, even having trading dedicated ones.
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On October 07 2022 09:09 andrewlt wrote:
In theory, the D3 team's initial philosophy that 6 affix rares that rolled the ideal combination should be the best items in the game had some merit to it. A rare item that rolled the ideal 6 affixes for your char, after all, could be rarer than uniques. I don't know if this was just never destined to work out in practice or the execution was just subpar or both. It just failed terribly at launch.
While this seems like a good idea originally it's made completely void by the fact that no matter how strong the 6 affixes on the rare items you get they'll never trounce all the extra features you receive from set items in D3. And equipping a full set doesn't leave much room for other items...
It wasn't really helped by the fact that you only ever care about just 1 stat for the most part and that different damage types and resistances were pretty much irrelevant. Turned whole itemization into a no-brainer as you no longer had to sacrifice power for resists/protection or having to diversify your damage output to be able to deal with various resistances and immunities.
Kinda boring if you ask me...
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The core problem with 6 affix rares is how you get them. You need excessively strong loot filters to not make looking for them a boring slog.
I don't want to loot and sell 10000 worthless items, having to manually inspect all of them, to find one valuable one.
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In any case, it seems that we together just randomly discussing this on the forums here could most likely devise a better loot system within a week than Blizzard in several years, and that's really sad.
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EPT
