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Quote from Enril766

Quote from skritsarn

Its a good idea imo, it would really make it feel special to find that awesome legendary
But they'll definitely need to improve on it. Maybe limit each item to be traded just once to whoever you want,
or just make the very best gear soulbound. It does feel a little extreme to make all legendaries 100% soulbound since they don't seem to have any plans replace the AH with some other kind of trading function anyway which would make it alot harder to find the right trade.

i remember during blizzcon that they said , only the best legendaries would be soulbound

Quote from Ethezial

I don't understand how replacing the look of an item on my character can have such a drastic effect on YOUR gameplay.


So I want these boots, right? They let me move through enemies, awesome. But here's the thing. They look stupid with the other Legendaries I'm wearing that suit my build. So in your world I have to just let it go because it ruins the item's "uniqueness". So in your world, I have two options: deal with the fact that these boots look dumb with my other gear, or sacrifice the stat I want for something that looks better, but stat wise doesn't complement the build I'm aiming for. Nothing about that sounds logically sound to me.

I've read your posts, and I get that you're passionate about this topic. (On a side note, a lot of your posts come across extremely condescending which is what led me to post in here in the first place). But your logic, while it may make perfect sense to you, makes no sense to me or a lot of people in here.

Quote from Slayerviper

Well I'll just leave it as this. Based on itirnitii's well-articulated post I agree with him… The issue is modifying any of these into non slot passives, short durations, or entirely changing the abilities requires a lot of time and balancing. Considering this game has a lot of issues on hand I don't think taking additional time delaying RoS is ideal for Blizzard or any Diablo fan. Redesigning 14ish abilities is a significant amount, I say this would be better for a future patch.

If you were really serious about you need to build an argument and explain every little detail to get popularity. This eventually leads to Blizzard paying attention as it has happened to a couple of members from this site. What I see is you basically said “I want to push more buttons” here is my 30-60 minute worth of effort to address the issue. I think itirnitii explain the problem better in about ¼ the amount of words, now you need to figure out how to redesign 14 abilities and make them appealing enough to use but not overshadow other classes or other abilities.

Anyways I’ma stop being a troll now and piss on someone else’s thread

I guess the crux of why I don't really like your position is that all choosing a passive skill on your active bar does is influence that choice alone. Once you've made that choice to put Energy Armor on your bar, the fun that choice you made brings to your playing experience practically dies in the water right there for the most part. Sure, you might take a little bit less damage from something or dish out a little more damage and that has consequences as you're playing, but the problem is it becomes a very bland influence and it is not actively engaging at all. Instead of casting a cluch Slow Time so a monster's projectile couldn't reach you or casting Frost Nova at just the right time to freeze seven monsters instead of just three, it becomes the monster hit me for less damage or I hit the monster for more damage; which to me for an active skill is unacceptably boring. Yes, I could just avoid these bland uninspired skills if I want to have more fun in combat, but that's just a testament to how poor these skills are designed as active skills in the first place!

Why should the fun of choosing Magic Weapon die the minute I make that choice? I get a flat DPS boost and kill faster, but where's the actual fun in that? Active skills shouldn't be designed in a way that pits fun against stat boosts. If a skill choice has no fun or tactical implication after you actually pick using it, then something is terribly wrong to me. Why can't Magic Weapon instead add only 5% DPS (down from 10%) and also do something fun and strategic every time I cast it? What if Storm Armor worked somewhat like Static from Diablo 2 when you cast it and halved all white monster's HP within a certain radius and was given a reasonable cooldown?

Believe me, I fucking love the idea and implications of Slow Time, Frost Nova, Mirror Images, and Diamond Skin. They are skills that offer a change in the way your character actually fights monsters in different scenarios of tactical combat. The problem is, I don't think when people are making their active skill choices that these awesome tactical defensive skills should be pitted against bland DPS/EHP buffs. Bland DPS/EHP buffs are for paragon leveling, they are for gear choices, they are for passive skills. Let's not add them also in the realm of active skills. It's just too much. To me, active skills should always be active engaging mechanics that change how you play your character and for it to be anything less to me is just maddening and sloppy.

Quote from Enty

Quote from itirnitii

That's another thing to consider too. If Blizzard was focused on catering to the individuals that said "what other people do outside my game doesn't affect me" then they wouldn't need to remove the Auction House. Yes, the AH does influences drop rates in the current game and that does affect those players who mostly keep to themselves, but why not just instead excise that influence and leave the AH standing? They could just stop making the drop rates take the Auction House into account and keep the AH. The fact that they found it necessary to remove the AH completely shows that they do care about the way people are exchanging items as a community and how that affects the way finding legendaries from monsters feels for the average person who takes advantage of all the systems and mechanics in the game that Blizzard endorses.

I'm not saying a middle ground can't be taken that allows trading. I'm just saying this shows to some extent where their priorities lie and how that influences the decisions they make. To me, it shows they care about what the community is doing as a collective. Not to mention the fact that having to balance drops around the AH in the first place shows they care about what the community is doing at large concerning items; but that was a decision made very long ago as well.

I also think they want to avoid a feeling of cognitive dissonance amongst the stances they take. If they allow a system to be in a game, they want to make sure the game is balanced around that system just by the very nature that it exists. To have it exist and then say, "well, it is there, but you can just avoid it for a better experience" has a very duplicitous nature that has to at least be considered. I'm not using this as an argument for or against trading, because obviously whether trading is allowed or not being a better experience is subjective, but just some food for thought. It's all about what priority Blizzard wants to put on a pedestal, and I think either way people are going to get burned.

So really it boils down to what Blizzard's order of priorities are as far as what they choose to implement and what boundaries they choose to set. I think their course of action with the AH removal shows that they want finding loot from monsters to be the best way to get loot for the community at large, and anything that attempts to compromise that on a global scale is a secondary priority. They might know that some players keep to themselves mostly and can have a more individual experience, but that's clearly not the player they want to balance the game around. Otherwise removing the auction house entirely wouldn't be necessary at all, they'd just have to make sure it doesn't influence those who choose not to use it.

They could just have all options available and that would be suitable for the entire playerbase: self-founder, mostly self-founder but some trading with friends only, traders, and auction house users. Drop tables are balanced around self-found play and anyone who chooses to use any other options to obtain loot can do so at their own impulse and discretion based on their own idea of fun. If Diablo was a sandbox game this is probably what it would look like. But I don't think Blizzard wants this type of operation. They clearly care about what influence each and every one of the systems within the game creates. From Blizzards perspective, the fact that it exists means that they endorse anyone who uses it which means they have to acknowledge how players who use the system are influenced by it, not the players who choose to avoid it. I feel like that's the just the way Blizzard analyzes these things. It's their way of drawing a line in the sand. We have seen this time and time again with pretty much every patch that restricts and expands what players can and can't do. So, really it is no surprise for me to see them do the same with trading.

Calling back to an example I made earlier, if there was an NPC that gave infinite gold they would acknowledge how that NPC affected players that used it, not players that chose self-control and avoided it, when selecting a point of balance. Is that methodology right or wrong? Debatable I suppose. My only argument here is that I believe this is just Blizzard's modus operandi for making these types of decisions.

Whether that is good or bad for the game overall, we all have our own opinions. But let's keep in mind we don't have all the pieces to the puzzle either.

I do want to make a note that I really enjoy reading everyone's opinions on this subject as well.

The problem with the AH is it was TOO READILY available. With trading you are severly limited in that I can only join a game with 3 other people. I'm not looking at ~40 pages of the same item over and over. Think about it. First you have to find a leg of worth to trade. So I want Frostburns but can only find Taskers... I now have to have found a Taskers, then somehow managed to get into a game with someone who has been lucky enough to find a Frostburn AND want to trade for a taskers. Chat helps speed this up, but most people don't use general chats. The other alternative would be going to sites like d2jsp, but the problem with that is not everyone is willing to put their cash into a 3rd party site to get a cool BiS item for them, and not many are even willing to take the extra time to go out of their way and even peruse a site such as d2jsp. I'm one of em. Literally never even been to d2JSP. Like NEVER. I Have used the Ah however and that's cause it was like the only way to gear well. If some of the proposed changes happen it'll be a bit easier to gear by yourself, but I think they're going a bit overboard in the other direction.

Quote from shaggy

Quote from Dimebog

Once again, the premise is that /really/ powerful legendaries are going to be extremely rare, says Blizzard. It would be like getting 6 items equivalent to Gladiator's Gauntlets just so that you get to see that orange drop once in a while. You don't get Mempos every game, do you? The difference is that they want to make even low-end legendaries kind of interesting because they can support some kind of obscure builds even if their stats are not so good.

I don't get how you don't understand that EXTREMELY RARE and NO TRADING don't mix. All that does is create a massive "luck gap" and frustration for people on the wrong side of that chasm.

So instead of AH barons... we have people who got insanely lucky with an "extremely rare" legendary that actually matched their class/spec? How in the world does that sound better? At least the AH stuff was in our control - if you wanted to make a lot of money you could. Relegating power purely to RNG is basically the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

Now, Blizzard may have systems that help players "beat" RNG, but they never should have dropped this bomb without giving us information on the other things that keep it in context.