TLDR: In my opinion, BOA legendaries and sets is a good idea, but personal trading taking a hit is unfortunate. Trading in Clans via a dedicated stash, though, could be a perfect compromise.
Posted this in the official forums as well, check it out.
Since Blizzcon, and numerous statements both in interviews and forum posts from the devs, legendaries and sets being Bind on Account in the updates coming soon seems to be a fairly real inevitability. They've added on a small caveat, though, in that when people play in groups, they can trade high end BOA items to whomever was in the game when it dropped for approximately 2 hours.
Many, arguably, believe this will kill trading. I've said in other posts that I don't believe it will kill trading, so much as it will severely damage the possibility of there being an "economy," as well as putting an even bigger dent in 3rd Party Sales sites and cheating.
Unfortunately, what also takes gauge in the side from this shotgun blast is the ability for people to trade personally with one another outside of 2 hour windows. Even if they tweaked the rule so that friends didn't even have to be in the same game when an item dropped to trade it to someone, that 2 hour window still means certain people won't be able to trade with certain other people.
Mass trading and economies aren't what a game like this is about, and they're most certainly not necessary to continue on. Therefore, like some others here, I think a perfectly acceptable compromise is simply to implement a Clan Stash.
Here's how I see it working...
1) Many patches ago, people were upset that every rare and legendary item required a casting time to Identify. Personally, I was just happy to see ID scrolls go away, but Blizzard tried to compromise by both reducing the cast time, as well as patching in the Book of Cain, that serves as a de facto "ID All" feature.
However, in Reaper of Souls (as well as on console), rares don't require Identifying. And since I assume people won't be running around with inventories literally full of unidentified legendaries and sets...despite serving as a nice memorial to a beloved character...the Book of Cain's function, at least, will be rendered decidedly irrelevant.
2) With the Book of Cain gone, the Clan Stash can fit perfectly in the town in its place. Basically, anything you put into the Clan Stash can be taken and used by anyone else in your Clan. Real simple.
3) As I said above, legendaries and sets are made BOA 2 hours after dropping, and can only be traded to people who were in-game when they dropped. This could likely be easily tweaked to extend to accounts in the same Clan when an item dropped. In order, obviously, to prevent people from joining up with particular Clans simply because they have access to an insane amount of items. Maybe it would require each account in the Clan to have their own tab in the Clan Stash.
For instance...Clan "Hexadecimal" has 8 members, each member with their own tab in the Clan Stash. Player "Mathlete#5556" joins up, and looks at the other 8 members' tabs...but all the legendary and set items acquired FOR the Clan BEFORE Mathlete joined up are either grayed out, have X's over them, or simply don't let Mathlete access them. Once more legendaries and sets are placed into the other members' tabs AFTER Mathlete has joined up, Mathlete will have access to those items from then on.
Seems convoluted, but really, it's just an extension of what currently exists in Reaper of Souls...just extended to specific other accounts.
4) Obviously, this would require some distinct consideration on the Clan members' parts, regarding who gets into the Clan and who doesn't. It would likely mean that Clans tend to be restricted to close personal friends, or simply trustworthy online parties. But all in all, either of those two factors wouldn't generate an economic structure that can be exploited.
It just means one thing...personal groups can go beyond four people, and are encouraged to work together outside of a single game.
As far as I'm aware, part of the devs' motivation for reducing the amount of players per game to four, instead of eight, was to encourage people to work closer together and make the people who don't contribute to battle much more noticeable. Yes..."leeching" still does occur, but I'd like to think it's hated more in D3, where only three other people can be in a game to help you, as opposed to in D2, where seven other people could be in a game with you, and if two or three people are lagging behind, it's easy to not even notice...but those people get free XP without having to do anything.
In addition, one of the proposed added features to the Ultimate Evil edition of D3 for the PS4 is something called Avenger Kills. I'm not sure all of the ins and outs, but basically...if one player is online and dies, the monster that killed that player jumps into the game of a player on that person's friends list (and I believe the monster in question gets stronger). If that monster kills the next player, the cycle continues until someone kills the monster and gets a whole mountain of loot.
What this says to me is that the concept of players interacting with each other OUTSIDE of one single game, or a particular timeframe, is on their radar. A Clan Stash working this way would encourage that, without making "trading" feel too necessary, or like the overly social Wall Street minigame it used to be.
5) As an additional sidebar...the reason I think a Clan Stash would work better than "Friends List Free-Trade" is that, quite frankly, not everyone on my Friends List are people I trust. Not everyone I accept a Friend Request from is necessarily people I think should have access to the items I've stored in my stash nor do I think they should be able to borrow my items temporarily, as I don't know all of them well enough to lend them something.
If I were in a Clan, though, chances are pretty good that I'd trust everyone else...or at least if I trusted the leader enough to make good judgments on who gets to join, I won't have to worry about people making off with the Clan's hoard and quit.
----
Personally, I've never really been too concerned with Clans. I've always been a rather solo player, but if Diablo 3 has taught me anything, it's that taking the easy out through TOO MUCH trading (i.e., the Auction House) is just not going to be a preferred way to play. However, playing "self-found" while definitely satisfying for me, tends to leave me feeling rather lonely, and in a game designed to bring people together...I really don't like being an island. But restricting trade to a two-hour window, to people only in the game with you, seems a hair too strict.
This way, people are encouraged to develop relationships, strengthen their bonds in groups, and help each other through the game, but not necessarily speed-run strangers through content and give away overpowered legendaries to noobs who just beg hard enough.
I think if encouraging Group Play is a concern of Blizzard's, but they don't want to bend on the "4 players per game" idea, this is the perfect compromise in a lot of ways.
Why would a "Friends List Free-Trade" system mean that people would have access to your stash?
He is suggesting more of a clan bank tab. More so than a friend's list bank. Where this bank is where you deposit legendaries and other BoA goodies. He means that if he were to put something in the bank for a particular person in his clan, he wouldn't have to worry about someone outside the clan ninja'ing that item. It all seems like extra unnecessary work though, and I wish they would just open up free-trading to clan members and possibly implement a mail system. I have high doubts the latter would be implemented though.
5) As an additional sidebar...the reason I think a Clan Stash would work better than "Friends List Free-Trade" is that, quite frankly, not everyone on my Friends List are people I trust. Not everyone I accept a Friend Request from is necessarily people I think should have access to the items I've stored in my stash nor do I think they should be able to borrow my items temporarily, as I don't know all of them well enough to lend them something.
This is extremely confusing to me. Why would a "Friends List Free-Trade" system mean that people would have access to your stash? Why not just hand them the items?
Last minute add-in paragraph...I knew someone like you would leap on it, ;-)
People on a person's friends list wouldn't have access to a person's stash. I'm merely making the differentiation between a Clan Stash idea and Blizzard compromising to include everyone on a person's friends list. Not to mention, compromising that way is kinda silly, as people can just fill their Friends list to the brims, and an economy would still exist, just limited to whatever a Friends list can hold...what is it, like, 200 or something? In that case, why not just make everything tradeable and let people running the economies reign all over again?
That's why I think economies going away is a healthy thing. Any newbie who either begs hard enough for a handout, or finds one single item they know is desired by the community, they can spin it into lots of other items, and it ends up like the AH never went anywhere.
Clans are meant to offer people some amount of exclusivity. If you're part of a Clan, whether your Clan is a small-time, casual, "only play once a week" Clan, or an "elitist" 24/7 Clan, you gain certain privileges over a solo player. However, the nice thing about the updates (like Loot/Paragon 2.0) is that even a self-found player, if they get lucky enough, can still acquire items to hang with the top end players, all on their own, without the help of any trading.
A Clan Stash idea like this one would still mean economies take a major blow, trading is restricted, and most high end items still have to be worked for to some extent...but friends who appreciate trading amongst themselves, and interacting outside of a game, can do so.
You're fine with "clan economies" but not with "f-list economies" (which is limited to 100, btw)? I don't understand that.
Apparently you'e also fine with people in a clan "gain[ing] certain privileges over a solo player"......for some reason.
And yes, a stash that could be accessed by all your friends would be a very bad thing.
You don't understand that...okay, let's see if we can really break this down then...
Right off the bat...a Friends List can hold 100 people. Thank you for that value. Thus...what are the real honest-to-goodness odds that a single Clan will be allowed to have over 100 members? Unless they seriously boost the Friends List to allow more people, that's going to be stupidly opposite.
Second...how big do Clans really have to be? I'm sure there are Clans in some games with over 500 members. Hell, some in WoW with over 10000 members. My estimation, like I said, is that Blizzard wants to eliminate the idea that games like this require an economy. Even if each Clan allows 50 members max, it still restricts trading to small ecosystems, as opposed to a system like the Auction House, which imbalanced not only the entire game worth of drops and item quality, but your average neighbor in a public game.
And like I said before, the nice thing about Loot 2.0 and Paragon 2.0, among other things, is that self-found players who insist on being solo islands can still find top end elite and godly gear all on their own. Trading, whether P2P or in an Auction House, is no longer necessary to get godly gear...Clan Trades via a stash would just help.
So ultimately, the "advantages" being gained by being in a Clan that can help you get gear aren't enormous or gamebreaking.
Why would a "Friends List Free-Trade" system mean that people would have access to your stash?
He is suggesting more of a clan bank tab. More so than a friend's list bank. Where this bank is where you deposit legendaries and other BoA goodies. He means that if he were to put something in the bank for a particular person in his clan, he wouldn't have to worry about someone outside the clan ninja'ing that item. It all seems like extra unnecessary work though, and I wish they would just open up free-trading to clan members and possibly implement a mail system. I have high doubts the latter would be implemented though.
edit :: additional clarity
Free-trade to clan members would still work okay, I suppose. I decided on this way because it sticks a little closer to what the intended thrust of making all legednaries BOA seemed to be, which was to restrict trading so that a massive community-wide economy isn't nurtured.
It also prevents someone from joining a clan just because that Clan boasts having one of every legendary in their clan stash, or something along those lines. It would encourage people to join up with at least one Clan asap so they can get in on the ground floor. Or, they can join later, after the Clan's saved up some good items in their hoard, they just don't get access to what's been saved up before that, which is really no big deal.
Or they can decide against Clans altogether and stay solo. Also a fine decision to make. Self-found players can play self-found, and not be "gimping" themselves, while people who appreciate social interactions and trading can be in tighter groups and Clans.
The problem with clans is that you can only be in one. And so, because you never know all of your friends' friends, you will be cut off from a lot of people, because you might want to be in clan A with person X, Y and Z, but person X wants to be in clan B because some of his friends are there. I'm sure I'll have friends spread across at least 3 or 4 clans.
And so...should I assume by this that you classify all of your friends under one singular solitary heading of "friends"? There are no "close friends," "personal friends," "online acquaintances," "forum acquaintances," "random peeps I met in X chat channel," "random nutjobs I met in Y channel," "guys I went on two runs with back in college"? Everyone's just a "friend" to you? And you need the ability to trade with literally every single friend at every single moment at every point in time?
Besides...do you often find yourself formally trading with "friends' friends"? Someone on your friends list often tell you, "hey maka, this dude I know has a perfect item for you, here's his battletag, meet him in-game and he'll give it to you?" Honestly, there are personal friends of mine that have friends on their list that I don't know I'd want to meet, ;-)
Like I said in the original post, I'm not a big purveyor of Clan culture, but truthfully, this would get me into one. Even if there's only five or six of us in the Clan, it'd mean we'd have our own little party going on, and we could still trade items and communicate, regardless of who's playing, who's on, and who's not.
So...maybe this way would cause you to think closely about which Clan you chose to be in then. It might cause you to prioritize trade with certain friends over others. I mean, look at it from the other direction...there will likely be friends of yours choosing on their own to be in a Clan you're not in, meaning they're prioritizing trade with other people than you. Doesn't mean they don't like you, doesn't mean they hate you, doesn't even mean you can't play with those friends in the same game, it just means when it comes to trading, you're trading with other people instead.
Trading, whether P2P or in an Auction House, is no longer necessary to get godly gear.
It never has to be that way, if you balance the game around self-found. This is a point that I've never understood, and will never understand. That if a tool is out there, people feel obligated to use it, even if they know it will ruin the game for them. They trade themselves to the top, then complain that trading ruined the game.
And while it wasn't balanced around self-found before, it will be balanced around self-found in the updates.
Clan trading would offer the slight advantage of opening the way to different and more diverse gear, but this way of trading wouldn't be as nearly game-breaking or game-ruining as the AH was, due in part to the fact that item affixes and stats will be rolling differently than they do now.
In a Clan trading scenario, I'd like to see how people "trade themselves to the top." Especially when a self-found player can grind, farm and gamble to pretty much the same place. Will it take more time? Perhaps. But playing with lots of people to help you will always take LESS time to get strong than playing on one's own. Always.
In a Clan trading scenario, I'd like to see how people "trade themselves to the top." Especially when a self-found player can grind, farm and gamble to pretty much the same place. Will it take more time? Perhaps. But playing with lots of people to help you will always take LESS time to get strong than playing on one's own. Always.
Well, now you've just given the lunatics an anti-clan argument! ACCESS TO MORE PEOPLE IS AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE! /laugh
I'm for some form of clan/friends trading. The one thing I'd caution is that if you make it clan-only then you're basically mandating that someone joins a clan. Whereas if it's friends & clan, joining a clan becomes a bit more optional.
I'm gonna get out of this topic because I'm just reading the same points over and over again. Everything you say I'll be able to do, I can already do now, so I won't be gaining anything, only losing.
Balance around self-found, leave trading alone, and let people figure out for themselves what's fun and what's not. That's it. K.I.S.S.
Sorry to hear that. No one's forcing you out. You're the one saying in the other thread that I'm "bending over" for being optimistic about the BOA situation. Now I try to perpetuate a reasonable compromise, even posting the same thing in the official forums (which, incidentally, 3 hours later, not only doesn't have any replies but isn't on the front page of General Discussion anymore), and you lose interest. Not even once saying, "gee, good point", just shooting holes through it. No respect for anyone else's viewpoint but your own...
Then, when I counter everything you're saying, without you acknowledging ONE benefit I'm pointing out, you default to "less options = bad"? Real clever. And the whole "Blizzard telling us what's fun"?
In a Clan trading scenario, I'd like to see how people "trade themselves to the top." Especially when a self-found player can grind, farm and gamble to pretty much the same place. Will it take more time? Perhaps. But playing with lots of people to help you will always take LESS time to get strong than playing on one's own. Always.
Well, now you've just given the lunatics an anti-clan argument! ACCESS TO MORE PEOPLE IS AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE! /laugh
I'm for some form of clan/friends trading. The one thing I'd caution is that if you make it clan-only then you're basically mandating that someone joins a clan. Whereas if it's friends & clan, joining a clan becomes a bit more optional.
Yeah, but that's what I'm trying to tell maka. They're updating the game to be more balanced between trade and self-found. Meaning, if you want self-found, play self-found. If you want trading, join a clan.
If people are joining Clans JUST so they can "trade their way to the top," what I'm saying is...they can "get to the top" without joining a Clan or trading. They're able to do it on their own. As opposed to now, where you can't be in that top percentile of badass godly characters without working the AH hard, or trading with other players.
As for if it's Friends & Clan, it becomes optional...I don't think so. No more optional than joining a Clan would be in this scenario. And in that regard, having friends and joining a Clan is basically identical. There's no feeling of exclusivity or extra rights or privileges or benefits. Basically, just as it was in D2. Clans in D2 weren't special, they just had little text tags before their names. Big whoop.
Attaching a Clan Stash to clans makes it much more of a benefit than just "looky at us! we're in the same team!"
What I'm saying by this is simple...if Clans and Friends are the same exact thing, why should Blizzard bother making a whole UI around Clan communication? I can manage people I know already with my Friends list. Limiting trading to Clan Members, and/or via a Stash, is a really easy thing to implement, and adds a different element to interaction beyond just playing with Friends.
Well maka, I'm sorry this issue is so stressful for you. I'm sorry this is such a dealbreaker. I'm sorry that Blizzard is telling you what's fun, and bossing you around, and changing your routines and preventing you from interacting with your friends in the way you want.
News flash...I can't fix this. At least not on my own. All I can do is pretty much you said in that other thread...make noise and suggestions. And as far as I can see, that's what I'm doing here.
Where is any real suggestion or noise from you besides contradicting OTHER people day in and day out? Trust me, I'm not telling you to not post in this thread anymore, post here as much as you want. But at least I'm making a well-thought out suggestion. I'm doing my share of critical thinking, coming up with suggestions, ideas, philosophies that seem to make everyone happy on all fronts.
At least making suggestions this way, and on the official forums at the same time, I'm putting other reasonable alternatives right under Blizzard's nose. I can buy the expansion with a clear conscience, knowing I did about as much as can be expected of me as a player, short of holding protests outside their Headquarters, to make this game the best it can be, and not just what I want it to be.
So please do this forum, and Blizzard, a favor. Post a nice long thread about what you think should change about what they're doing in the expansion and pre-patch. I'd love to read all the ways you feel they're tying your hands and ruining your enjoyment, despite practically overhauling the entire game.
I'm sure it won't come off as exaggerated or making mountains out of molehills at all.
I'd be okay with this system, but with two restrictions;
If you're only allowed access to items that have dropped for other people in the clan you joined AFTER you joined, and you're only allowed to be in 1 clan per game type ( SC / HC ). I realize this isn't ideal for some, as they probably want to have 1 character in a clan of their buddies, another in a serious one, ect. But, the reason why I'm for BoA in general and why I'd only like this system with these specific restrictions is, I (and yes it's a personal opinion) want the *best* way to acquire items to be actually farming them yourself. If this system is put into place without the 1 clan per game mode rule, then the best way to acquire items instantly becomes having 1 character sit in a 3rd party bot clan, so you can just buy any item that drops off the 99 other bots in the clan from the website ( or whatever the max people in a clan is ).
Well maka, I'm sorry this issue is so stressful for you. I'm sorry this is such a dealbreaker. I'm sorry that Blizzard is telling you what's fun, and bossing you around, and changing your routines and preventing you from interacting with your friends in the way you want.
News flash...I can't fix this. At least not on my own. All I can do is pretty much you said in that other thread...make noise and suggestions. And as far as I can see, that's what I'm doing here.
Where is any real suggestion or noise from you besides contradicting OTHER people day in and day out? Trust me, I'm not telling you to not post in this thread anymore, post here as much as you want. But at least I'm making a well-thought out suggestion. I'm doing my share of critical thinking, coming up with suggestions, ideas, philosophies that seem to make everyone happy on all fronts.
At least making suggestions this way, and on the official forums at the same time, I'm putting other reasonable alternatives right under Blizzard's nose. I can buy the expansion with a clear conscience, knowing I did about as much as can be expected of me as a player, short of holding protests outside their Headquarters, to make this game the best it can be, and not just what I want it to be.
So please do this forum, and Blizzard, a favor. Post a nice long thread about what you think should change about what they're doing in the expansion and pre-patch. I'd love to read all the ways you feel they're tying your hands and ruining your enjoyment, despite practically overhauling the entire game.
I'm sure it won't come off as exaggerated or making mountains out of molehills at all.
Exactly this. I've never once said people who don't like BoA are wrong. I'm not an elitist jaggoff who says people have to play the way I want to play. But unfortunately the amount of counter ideas I've heard on this subject is almost zero. In fact, other than 'just don't do it', I haven't heard a single reasonable approach, or logical thought out idea on how we can have both a stable, non-flooded economy, as well as free trading, balanced self found AND having playing the game the best way to acquire sought after items.
If the answer is 'well, I don't care about an inflated economy, I just want to have free trading and great self found', then awesome, that's where you stand. But realize there's a very large chunk of players (judging solely on the sentiment I see on both here and the Bnet forums) that DO care about how out of control the economy could get, and about how 3rd party bot sites will instantly become THE place to get your gear, again. I think the majority of us can agree that the AH really was detrimental to D3V. Well, taking out the AH but leaving up free for all trading just replaced the AH with 3rd party sites, and we're back to square one.
Don't get me wrong, Cardinal, I totally support this from a "it's still a hell of a lot better than the current proposition" perspective. Honestly, I think this is what they should have *started* at instead of going Full Monty on us. I really think we'd *all* be less testy and having much more productive discussion on the subject if a significant segment of the playerbase didn't feel like their backs were against a wall on this subject.
That being said, anything they can do to make clans more than a private chat channel (used mostly for LFG) I would strongly support. I don't want clans to turn into "trade cartels" either. But, I personally hate the "only can have it if you're a friend/clanmate after it dropped" restriction - although you didn't propose this it seems to be a prevalent idea. I just have to say that you and I could be friends. I think it would be really shitty if we decide to be BFFs three months into RoS and suddenly you're not able to have any loot from before that. It's almost like we have to plan out our friends/clanmates.... and to me that's such a bizarre and artificial restriction. It's not very organic, it's not very intuitive.
So, I hope they really stray from that particular notion. It makes sense if you're looking at a "use this to stop traders" perspective, but if you look at it as a holistic solution to a problem, it's very janky and confusing.
Ultimately, I just don't feel that lobbing off 99% of trading produces a very good place to have reasonable, cool-headed, discussion on the subject. That is Blizzard's fault for not playing it cool, for not really even discussing this with us. The fact that there really hasn't been much back-and-forth despite a pretty significant portion of the population wanting LESS RESTRICTIONS on trading is kinda hurtful. We don't even have the decency to understand what they're trying to accomplish and why they think this is the best way to do it.
And, I fully expect something more "meaty" than "we think it's most fun to find your gear from monsters." All of us get that, and all of us agree with that. That doesn't mean we want that to be the ONLY way. Even if I only execute one trade per year, I don't want to hear "you MUST find items from monsters, Nick" ... it's just too totalitarian and absolutist. Let me be the big boy I am and let me figure out if I want to make a trade for a particular item or if I want to keep grinding it. Perhaps this week I'll want to grind it out, but after four months I'll be ready to admit that RNG kicked my ass and move on. I am old enough and smart enough to evaluate that on my own, though. And if I am the cause of my own dissatisfaction with the game... well chalk that up to living and learning.
Quote from Bleu42»
I'm not an elitist jaggoff who says people have to play the way I want to play.
..snip..
AND having playing the game the best way to acquire sought after items.
No offense, but it does seem to me that you are of the opinion that anyone who "acquires sought-after items" in any means other than killing monsters is "playing the game wrong."
Can't you be a TAD bit more open to the idea that a large portion of us don't want to be trading 24/7. Hell, some of us might not even execute one trade per month. But we still want that option, and that we are not "playing the game wrong?" It's really, really, getting old to hear this (strawman) argument that everyone who trades isn't "playing the game." If I acquire 95% of my items from monsters, hell 90%, isn't that still PLAYING THE GAME 90%+ of the time? Isn't that a pretty damned reasonable threshold? Why does it have to be 99.9999999% or more?
The whole problem with the "anti-trading bloc" argument is the "if you're not getting as close to 100% of your items from monsters as humanly possible then you're not playing the game properly" train of thought leaves NO ROOM FOR ANY NEGOTIATION OR COMPROMISE. It's "play my way or get the fuck out!"
If we're talking about a compromise... that's a horrible starting point. It really comes off as one side refuses to even listen. Their only perspective is "my way or the highway." And, frankly, it may seem good in the short term when you're getting your way, but that's an atrocious way to design a game with millions of players. It can *never* be anyone's way or the highway, even Blizzard's. There are too many parties that have a vested interest in the game for any discussion to be that black-and-white.
Posted this in the official forums as well, check it out.
Since Blizzcon, and numerous statements both in interviews and forum posts from the devs, legendaries and sets being Bind on Account in the updates coming soon seems to be a fairly real inevitability. They've added on a small caveat, though, in that when people play in groups, they can trade high end BOA items to whomever was in the game when it dropped for approximately 2 hours.
Many, arguably, believe this will kill trading. I've said in other posts that I don't believe it will kill trading, so much as it will severely damage the possibility of there being an "economy," as well as putting an even bigger dent in 3rd Party Sales sites and cheating.
Unfortunately, what also takes gauge in the side from this shotgun blast is the ability for people to trade personally with one another outside of 2 hour windows. Even if they tweaked the rule so that friends didn't even have to be in the same game when an item dropped to trade it to someone, that 2 hour window still means certain people won't be able to trade with certain other people.
Mass trading and economies aren't what a game like this is about, and they're most certainly not necessary to continue on. Therefore, like some others here, I think a perfectly acceptable compromise is simply to implement a Clan Stash.
Here's how I see it working...
1) Many patches ago, people were upset that every rare and legendary item required a casting time to Identify. Personally, I was just happy to see ID scrolls go away, but Blizzard tried to compromise by both reducing the cast time, as well as patching in the Book of Cain, that serves as a de facto "ID All" feature.
However, in Reaper of Souls (as well as on console), rares don't require Identifying. And since I assume people won't be running around with inventories literally full of unidentified legendaries and sets...despite serving as a nice memorial to a beloved character...the Book of Cain's function, at least, will be rendered decidedly irrelevant.
2) With the Book of Cain gone, the Clan Stash can fit perfectly in the town in its place. Basically, anything you put into the Clan Stash can be taken and used by anyone else in your Clan. Real simple.
3) As I said above, legendaries and sets are made BOA 2 hours after dropping, and can only be traded to people who were in-game when they dropped. This could likely be easily tweaked to extend to accounts in the same Clan when an item dropped. In order, obviously, to prevent people from joining up with particular Clans simply because they have access to an insane amount of items. Maybe it would require each account in the Clan to have their own tab in the Clan Stash.
For instance...Clan "Hexadecimal" has 8 members, each member with their own tab in the Clan Stash. Player "Mathlete#5556" joins up, and looks at the other 8 members' tabs...but all the legendary and set items acquired FOR the Clan BEFORE Mathlete joined up are either grayed out, have X's over them, or simply don't let Mathlete access them. Once more legendaries and sets are placed into the other members' tabs AFTER Mathlete has joined up, Mathlete will have access to those items from then on.
Seems convoluted, but really, it's just an extension of what currently exists in Reaper of Souls...just extended to specific other accounts.
4) Obviously, this would require some distinct consideration on the Clan members' parts, regarding who gets into the Clan and who doesn't. It would likely mean that Clans tend to be restricted to close personal friends, or simply trustworthy online parties. But all in all, either of those two factors wouldn't generate an economic structure that can be exploited.
It just means one thing...personal groups can go beyond four people, and are encouraged to work together outside of a single game.
As far as I'm aware, part of the devs' motivation for reducing the amount of players per game to four, instead of eight, was to encourage people to work closer together and make the people who don't contribute to battle much more noticeable. Yes..."leeching" still does occur, but I'd like to think it's hated more in D3, where only three other people can be in a game to help you, as opposed to in D2, where seven other people could be in a game with you, and if two or three people are lagging behind, it's easy to not even notice...but those people get free XP without having to do anything.
In addition, one of the proposed added features to the Ultimate Evil edition of D3 for the PS4 is something called Avenger Kills. I'm not sure all of the ins and outs, but basically...if one player is online and dies, the monster that killed that player jumps into the game of a player on that person's friends list (and I believe the monster in question gets stronger). If that monster kills the next player, the cycle continues until someone kills the monster and gets a whole mountain of loot.
What this says to me is that the concept of players interacting with each other OUTSIDE of one single game, or a particular timeframe, is on their radar. A Clan Stash working this way would encourage that, without making "trading" feel too necessary, or like the overly social Wall Street minigame it used to be.
5) As an additional sidebar...the reason I think a Clan Stash would work better than "Friends List Free-Trade" is that, quite frankly, not everyone on my Friends List are people I trust. Not everyone I accept a Friend Request from is necessarily people I think should have access to the items I've stored in my stash nor do I think they should be able to borrow my items temporarily, as I don't know all of them well enough to lend them something.
If I were in a Clan, though, chances are pretty good that I'd trust everyone else...or at least if I trusted the leader enough to make good judgments on who gets to join, I won't have to worry about people making off with the Clan's hoard and quit.
----
Personally, I've never really been too concerned with Clans. I've always been a rather solo player, but if Diablo 3 has taught me anything, it's that taking the easy out through TOO MUCH trading (i.e., the Auction House) is just not going to be a preferred way to play. However, playing "self-found" while definitely satisfying for me, tends to leave me feeling rather lonely, and in a game designed to bring people together...I really don't like being an island. But restricting trade to a two-hour window, to people only in the game with you, seems a hair too strict.
This way, people are encouraged to develop relationships, strengthen their bonds in groups, and help each other through the game, but not necessarily speed-run strangers through content and give away overpowered legendaries to noobs who just beg hard enough.
I think if encouraging Group Play is a concern of Blizzard's, but they don't want to bend on the "4 players per game" idea, this is the perfect compromise in a lot of ways.
I would not be against this.
edit :: additional clarity
People on a person's friends list wouldn't have access to a person's stash. I'm merely making the differentiation between a Clan Stash idea and Blizzard compromising to include everyone on a person's friends list. Not to mention, compromising that way is kinda silly, as people can just fill their Friends list to the brims, and an economy would still exist, just limited to whatever a Friends list can hold...what is it, like, 200 or something? In that case, why not just make everything tradeable and let people running the economies reign all over again?
That's why I think economies going away is a healthy thing. Any newbie who either begs hard enough for a handout, or finds one single item they know is desired by the community, they can spin it into lots of other items, and it ends up like the AH never went anywhere.
Clans are meant to offer people some amount of exclusivity. If you're part of a Clan, whether your Clan is a small-time, casual, "only play once a week" Clan, or an "elitist" 24/7 Clan, you gain certain privileges over a solo player. However, the nice thing about the updates (like Loot/Paragon 2.0) is that even a self-found player, if they get lucky enough, can still acquire items to hang with the top end players, all on their own, without the help of any trading.
A Clan Stash idea like this one would still mean economies take a major blow, trading is restricted, and most high end items still have to be worked for to some extent...but friends who appreciate trading amongst themselves, and interacting outside of a game, can do so.
Sorry if that was unclear.
Right off the bat...a Friends List can hold 100 people. Thank you for that value. Thus...what are the real honest-to-goodness odds that a single Clan will be allowed to have over 100 members? Unless they seriously boost the Friends List to allow more people, that's going to be stupidly opposite.
Second...how big do Clans really have to be? I'm sure there are Clans in some games with over 500 members. Hell, some in WoW with over 10000 members. My estimation, like I said, is that Blizzard wants to eliminate the idea that games like this require an economy. Even if each Clan allows 50 members max, it still restricts trading to small ecosystems, as opposed to a system like the Auction House, which imbalanced not only the entire game worth of drops and item quality, but your average neighbor in a public game.
And like I said before, the nice thing about Loot 2.0 and Paragon 2.0, among other things, is that self-found players who insist on being solo islands can still find top end elite and godly gear all on their own. Trading, whether P2P or in an Auction House, is no longer necessary to get godly gear...Clan Trades via a stash would just help.
So ultimately, the "advantages" being gained by being in a Clan that can help you get gear aren't enormous or gamebreaking.
It also prevents someone from joining a clan just because that Clan boasts having one of every legendary in their clan stash, or something along those lines. It would encourage people to join up with at least one Clan asap so they can get in on the ground floor. Or, they can join later, after the Clan's saved up some good items in their hoard, they just don't get access to what's been saved up before that, which is really no big deal.
Or they can decide against Clans altogether and stay solo. Also a fine decision to make. Self-found players can play self-found, and not be "gimping" themselves, while people who appreciate social interactions and trading can be in tighter groups and Clans.
Besides...do you often find yourself formally trading with "friends' friends"? Someone on your friends list often tell you, "hey maka, this dude I know has a perfect item for you, here's his battletag, meet him in-game and he'll give it to you?" Honestly, there are personal friends of mine that have friends on their list that I don't know I'd want to meet, ;-)
Like I said in the original post, I'm not a big purveyor of Clan culture, but truthfully, this would get me into one. Even if there's only five or six of us in the Clan, it'd mean we'd have our own little party going on, and we could still trade items and communicate, regardless of who's playing, who's on, and who's not.
So...maybe this way would cause you to think closely about which Clan you chose to be in then. It might cause you to prioritize trade with certain friends over others. I mean, look at it from the other direction...there will likely be friends of yours choosing on their own to be in a Clan you're not in, meaning they're prioritizing trade with other people than you. Doesn't mean they don't like you, doesn't mean they hate you, doesn't even mean you can't play with those friends in the same game, it just means when it comes to trading, you're trading with other people instead.
Clan trading would offer the slight advantage of opening the way to different and more diverse gear, but this way of trading wouldn't be as nearly game-breaking or game-ruining as the AH was, due in part to the fact that item affixes and stats will be rolling differently than they do now.
In a Clan trading scenario, I'd like to see how people "trade themselves to the top." Especially when a self-found player can grind, farm and gamble to pretty much the same place. Will it take more time? Perhaps. But playing with lots of people to help you will always take LESS time to get strong than playing on one's own. Always.
I'm for some form of clan/friends trading. The one thing I'd caution is that if you make it clan-only then you're basically mandating that someone joins a clan. Whereas if it's friends & clan, joining a clan becomes a bit more optional.
Then, when I counter everything you're saying, without you acknowledging ONE benefit I'm pointing out, you default to "less options = bad"? Real clever. And the whole "Blizzard telling us what's fun"?
Come on now. Really.
If people are joining Clans JUST so they can "trade their way to the top," what I'm saying is...they can "get to the top" without joining a Clan or trading. They're able to do it on their own. As opposed to now, where you can't be in that top percentile of badass godly characters without working the AH hard, or trading with other players.
As for if it's Friends & Clan, it becomes optional...I don't think so. No more optional than joining a Clan would be in this scenario. And in that regard, having friends and joining a Clan is basically identical. There's no feeling of exclusivity or extra rights or privileges or benefits. Basically, just as it was in D2. Clans in D2 weren't special, they just had little text tags before their names. Big whoop.
Attaching a Clan Stash to clans makes it much more of a benefit than just "looky at us! we're in the same team!"
What I'm saying by this is simple...if Clans and Friends are the same exact thing, why should Blizzard bother making a whole UI around Clan communication? I can manage people I know already with my Friends list. Limiting trading to Clan Members, and/or via a Stash, is a really easy thing to implement, and adds a different element to interaction beyond just playing with Friends.
News flash...I can't fix this. At least not on my own. All I can do is pretty much you said in that other thread...make noise and suggestions. And as far as I can see, that's what I'm doing here.
Where is any real suggestion or noise from you besides contradicting OTHER people day in and day out? Trust me, I'm not telling you to not post in this thread anymore, post here as much as you want. But at least I'm making a well-thought out suggestion. I'm doing my share of critical thinking, coming up with suggestions, ideas, philosophies that seem to make everyone happy on all fronts.
At least making suggestions this way, and on the official forums at the same time, I'm putting other reasonable alternatives right under Blizzard's nose. I can buy the expansion with a clear conscience, knowing I did about as much as can be expected of me as a player, short of holding protests outside their Headquarters, to make this game the best it can be, and not just what I want it to be.
So please do this forum, and Blizzard, a favor. Post a nice long thread about what you think should change about what they're doing in the expansion and pre-patch. I'd love to read all the ways you feel they're tying your hands and ruining your enjoyment, despite practically overhauling the entire game.
I'm sure it won't come off as exaggerated or making mountains out of molehills at all.
If you're only allowed access to items that have dropped for other people in the clan you joined AFTER you joined, and you're only allowed to be in 1 clan per game type ( SC / HC ). I realize this isn't ideal for some, as they probably want to have 1 character in a clan of their buddies, another in a serious one, ect. But, the reason why I'm for BoA in general and why I'd only like this system with these specific restrictions is, I (and yes it's a personal opinion) want the *best* way to acquire items to be actually farming them yourself. If this system is put into place without the 1 clan per game mode rule, then the best way to acquire items instantly becomes having 1 character sit in a 3rd party bot clan, so you can just buy any item that drops off the 99 other bots in the clan from the website ( or whatever the max people in a clan is ).
If the answer is 'well, I don't care about an inflated economy, I just want to have free trading and great self found', then awesome, that's where you stand. But realize there's a very large chunk of players (judging solely on the sentiment I see on both here and the Bnet forums) that DO care about how out of control the economy could get, and about how 3rd party bot sites will instantly become THE place to get your gear, again. I think the majority of us can agree that the AH really was detrimental to D3V. Well, taking out the AH but leaving up free for all trading just replaced the AH with 3rd party sites, and we're back to square one.
That being said, anything they can do to make clans more than a private chat channel (used mostly for LFG) I would strongly support. I don't want clans to turn into "trade cartels" either. But, I personally hate the "only can have it if you're a friend/clanmate after it dropped" restriction - although you didn't propose this it seems to be a prevalent idea. I just have to say that you and I could be friends. I think it would be really shitty if we decide to be BFFs three months into RoS and suddenly you're not able to have any loot from before that. It's almost like we have to plan out our friends/clanmates.... and to me that's such a bizarre and artificial restriction. It's not very organic, it's not very intuitive.
So, I hope they really stray from that particular notion. It makes sense if you're looking at a "use this to stop traders" perspective, but if you look at it as a holistic solution to a problem, it's very janky and confusing.
Ultimately, I just don't feel that lobbing off 99% of trading produces a very good place to have reasonable, cool-headed, discussion on the subject. That is Blizzard's fault for not playing it cool, for not really even discussing this with us. The fact that there really hasn't been much back-and-forth despite a pretty significant portion of the population wanting LESS RESTRICTIONS on trading is kinda hurtful. We don't even have the decency to understand what they're trying to accomplish and why they think this is the best way to do it.
And, I fully expect something more "meaty" than "we think it's most fun to find your gear from monsters." All of us get that, and all of us agree with that. That doesn't mean we want that to be the ONLY way. Even if I only execute one trade per year, I don't want to hear "you MUST find items from monsters, Nick" ... it's just too totalitarian and absolutist. Let me be the big boy I am and let me figure out if I want to make a trade for a particular item or if I want to keep grinding it. Perhaps this week I'll want to grind it out, but after four months I'll be ready to admit that RNG kicked my ass and move on. I am old enough and smart enough to evaluate that on my own, though. And if I am the cause of my own dissatisfaction with the game... well chalk that up to living and learning.
No offense, but it does seem to me that you are of the opinion that anyone who "acquires sought-after items" in any means other than killing monsters is "playing the game wrong."
Can't you be a TAD bit more open to the idea that a large portion of us don't want to be trading 24/7. Hell, some of us might not even execute one trade per month. But we still want that option, and that we are not "playing the game wrong?" It's really, really, getting old to hear this (strawman) argument that everyone who trades isn't "playing the game." If I acquire 95% of my items from monsters, hell 90%, isn't that still PLAYING THE GAME 90%+ of the time? Isn't that a pretty damned reasonable threshold? Why does it have to be 99.9999999% or more?
The whole problem with the "anti-trading bloc" argument is the "if you're not getting as close to 100% of your items from monsters as humanly possible then you're not playing the game properly" train of thought leaves NO ROOM FOR ANY NEGOTIATION OR COMPROMISE. It's "play my way or get the fuck out!"
If we're talking about a compromise... that's a horrible starting point. It really comes off as one side refuses to even listen. Their only perspective is "my way or the highway." And, frankly, it may seem good in the short term when you're getting your way, but that's an atrocious way to design a game with millions of players. It can *never* be anyone's way or the highway, even Blizzard's. There are too many parties that have a vested interest in the game for any discussion to be that black-and-white.