With a 7 day delay and the necessity to join friends list (or clan, as an alternative idea) it would not be done for every average item, and for the top items some people will always find a way (even if it's selling entire accounts).
The way'd be "friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend"
If mass trading becomes as convoluted as that then the system would be working just fine, it would allow fairly free restricted trading but prevent the 'I must have 'X' item so will just go to 'Y' website and get it immediately' and be a hassle to trade with someone not already in your network.
I will say that I generally agree with Shaggy's take on the situation I want to feel like I have a realistic chance that I will find 'X' or complete set 'Y' (items don't have to be perfect, just usable) without legendaries raining from the sky, and if I find 2 'Zs' why should I not trade one with someone in my network that has 2 'Xs'?
Restrict trading to item 4 item, leave out the gold, that means that you have to actually find something worth trading unless someone is giving out freebies (is that really a problem? I never found it to be in D2 I enjoyed levelling up my barb so I could slowly equip that full IK set after someone had dropped the maul and chest for me while I was lvl10 after finding the boots/gloves/belt/helm myself on a different char (don't think I ever had maul or armour drop)). Would it be possible to bybass the restrictions? Sure. Would it be easy? Relatively. Convenient? probably not, and that seems fine to me.
Plus is you feel you have a genuine chance of finding or trading for an item that surely reduces the motivation to spend $25 to bypass the killing monster bit? That's like 5 beers (please note I have no idea how much a beer in the US costs) you've spent on a virtual item you could (and feel like you genuinely could) find in the next hour!
@Shaggy even in the old system you'd have to "find" your own items to be able to transmogrify them (no trading). I'm pretty sure we knew that before knowing anything about this soulbound feature. Just a friendly fyi
Also man, slow down... you're gonna explode brah (I can't help but picture you typing these last posts with an angry face at your keyboard and monitor lol..)
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.
Restrict trading to item 4 item, leave out the gold, that means that you have to actually find something worth trading unless someone is giving out freebies (is that really a problem? I never found it to be in D2 I enjoyed levelling up my barb so I could slowly equip that full IK set after someone had dropped the maul and chest for me while I was lvl10 after finding the boots/gloves/belt/helm myself on a different char (don't think I ever had maul or armour drop)). Would it be possible to bybass the restrictions? Sure. Would it be easy? Relatively. Convenient? probably not, and that seems fine to me.
At the risk of sounding like a history teacher, I don't like your example. If you had used a D3 set like Natalya's or Inna's, where all parts are equal, ok, but I'm not sure if you mean what you said.
The IK armor was so extremely rare that it'd be comparable to a crit Mempo, maybe even a 6% crit Mempo, I'm not sure. Finding all the rest of the set was trivial in comparison, with the weapon being a low tier "elite" item and the remaining items being only of the "exceptional" level.
So I might agree with what you had in mind but not with a situation like the one you described. If 10 items (not runes or such) from D2 would have been considered too top tier to be allowed for trade, that chest would have been among them. And I do like that restriction for some top end items.
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.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Not even Death will save you from Diablo Bunny's Cuteness!
They are introducing guilds and clans at the same time they're taking away the last of the large scale interactions left while still having no plan about PvP. Raiding is obviously not for this game. Mind you, guilds and clans could've been absolutely great now that the AHs no longer existed and really foster a sense of community and all that fun but... now you don't have a real reason to be in one, and nothing to do if you end up in one.
I disagree here completely. Having a guild/Clan allows you to interact a lot more with people. I am going to use maplestory as an example cause I've played it for a long time. In the beginning it was just me and my friend, as we got older we realized it was boring with just us two, so we'd make some friends here and there but nothing that lasted. Then we decided we'd make a guild and from there on we always had someone to talk to. Someone to help us out, and at times we'd help them out. It became a community inside of a community, which is exactly what clans and guilds are supposed to do. They allow you to interact with people, whether it be simply talking or training, or trading. So To say clans completely lose their purpose is going a bit far. They definitely will still serve their purpose. Hoping Dfans gets a clan so I can join up and play with all you fine fellows on the forums.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Not even Death will save you from Diablo Bunny's Cuteness!
You will, at best, feel indifferent when you get your second copy of the most rare item in the game, in an RNG based itemhunting game - most people will just rage.
IF you ever find the rarest item in the game twice, consider not raging at all
Adding clans is not cognitive dissonance because they want people to play together. That doesn't demand the sharing of items on a larger scale to avoid a conflict in design philosophy. Sharing on a small scale however...
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.
It doesn't matter. A shortcut is a shortcut. Being less of a shortcut doesn't absolve it from being a shortcut. Removing the AH and only allowing trading on a mass scale just makes the undesirable destination further away, but it doesn't change that destination. There is no item I can acquire from the AH that I can't also acquire with trading. It's slower trading because it is less streamlined, but in essence it's the same conceptually. In the end, you're still not hunting the item yourself which is supposed to be the focal design crux in a monster slaying loot hunting game. We want a game that will be satisfying for years to come, but we're not willing to analyze how trading shortens that experience?
It is evident to me now that Blizzard's main priority is how satisfying the loot hunt is from slaying monsters, how finding those items feels when you acquire them yourself, and how this plays a role in the scope of the community at large. By placing that priority as their primary goal anything that diminishes this seems secondary to them now.
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.
It doesn't matter. A shortcut is a shortcut. Being less of a shortcut doesn't absolve it from being a shortcut. Removing the AH and only allowing trading on a mass scale just makes the undesirable destination further away, but it doesn't change that destination. There is no item I can acquire from the AH that I can't also acquire with trading. It's slower trading because it is less streamlined, but in essence it's the same conceptually. In the end, you're still not hunting the item yourself which is supposed to be the focal design crux in a monster slaying loot hunting game. We want a game that will be satisfying for years to come, but we're not willing to analyze how trading shortens that experience?
It is evident to me now that Blizzard's main priority is how satisfying the loot hunt is from slaying monsters, how finding those items feels when you acquire them yourself, and how this plays a role in the scope of the community at large. By placing that priority as their primary goal anything that diminishes this seems secondary to them now.
Yes it does provide a shortcut, but remember as long as drops are hard to come by and not showering down on us then we'd still have to work. Trading is literally just a RNG check in that it allows you to find the leg you want instead of the one the RNG is constantly giving you. I already know I want to be a frost mage. There's 0 argument in my mind that's what I plan on building. Now I have to find legs that give me a greater output of damage and defense. One such item is frostburns, if for some reason I'm stuck with only finding any other glove other then frostburns there has to be a system to check the RNG and make sure it's available to me someway. That's where trading would come in. It's not ideal but if you do get the short end of the stick it's there to help out. Enchanting does this to a lesser degree, I can't magically get that special affix of 40% extra cold damage, but at least I can change stats that are less than stellar thanks to RNG.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Not even Death will save you from Diablo Bunny's Cuteness!
Adding clans is not cognitive dissonance because they want people to play together. That doesn't demand the sharing of items on a larger scale to avoid a conflict in design philosophy. Sharing on a small scale however...
Small scale? (This is not directed at you, but rather the other people before you that pointed out that clans might be useless.)
Keep in mind the "typical act 3 run loot" presented at Gamescom:
Then: 73 white items, 266 blue items, 83 yellow items and 7 legendary items!
That's 7 out of 429 items you can't trade. Not included tomes, gems, potions, and new stuff like other materials, charms, keys or whatever. And all gold. And all the crafting materials that come out of salvaging loot or crafting stuff based on your drops (exception: legendary crafts, enchanted stuff, marquise gems).
Some people act like "Oh my god, I can't give my next crit Mempo drop away to a random guy on my friends list, so let's just empty my friends list right away". Yeah... right.
Maybe everyone posting in this thread is a Samaritan, but I know quite a few people who did not give their drops to their friends but rather put them up on the AH as soon as they were worth something, like more than 5m gold. We can argue about the BoA rule, and pretty much everyone agreed that making all legendaries BoA was an overreaction. But let's not draw the wrong conclusion that this change makes clans useless - that's just plain ridiculous.
In fact, and that hopefully brings the discussion back to the original topic of the thread, clans might be a great supplement for the new legendary BoA rule. As some people pointed out, you really want to play in groups now - and if you're organized in clan, it might be much easier to find groups with similar interests.
@Shaggy even in the old system you'd have to "find" your own items to be able to transmogrify them (no trading). I'm pretty sure we knew that before knowing anything about this soulbound feature. Just a friendly fyi
Oh, I know that.
I'm just saying that if you REAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALY want the look of <item X> you could trade something for an unidentified <item X> and get it.
This system? You don't find it, you're fucked. And that seems massively severe for cosmetic changes. Afterall the transmog system works on the Pokemon "gotta collect them all" philosophy. That is mostly divergent with the BoA "probably won't collect them all" philosophy.
They are going from AH economy to no economy in one fell swoop. Sounds like a plan.
This is the general sentiment at incgamers. It's nice to know there ARE people out there who dislike this one-extreme-to-another approach. The AH was bad.... so we have to do 100% the opposite and not understand WHY the AH was bad.
Lack of understanding the "why" of a problem tends to lead to bad solutions. And here we stand!
We can argue about the BoA rule, and pretty much everyone agreed that making all legendaries BoA was an overreaction. But let's not draw the wrong conclusion that this change makes clans useless - that's just plain ridiculous.
Agreed! It doesn't make clans useless. They're still a way for players to find that "4-player co-op group" in which to share their "bind to game" items! They're still a private chat channel. They still have a use, for sure, but it's definitely diminished. Most of us assumed that clans would be the way to facilitate trading without doing anything fancy. Only the most fervent traders would find a need to go outside of friends and clans to trade. The rest of us would have almost certainly been satiated just to exchange items, arbitrarily, within our "circle" so to speak.
I think that's why you get this whole WTF?????????? reaction. Clans seemed like a natural solution (a friends list with global chat!) to allow people to trade with the others they gamed frequently with.... without facilitating any kind of large-scale trading. Maybe some of us were reading the tea leaves a bit too much.... but it sure seemed like they'd go hand-in-hand for a really cool experience.
You will, at best, feel indifferent when you get your second copy of the most rare item in the game, in an RNG based itemhunting game - most people will just rage.
IF you ever find the rarest item in the game twice, consider not raging at all
You could make a real life experiment out of this. Have someone win a lottery - any lottery, any amount, doesn't matter as long as it's vastly better than the consolation prize he's about to receive (the shard, in D3X!), then he keeps playing and when he wins again, he gets told 'you should've won the other one, not this! gtfo! here's a paperclip' and record the reactions
I thought about the same example actually and my idea was, someone who has won 50 million $ already would gain absolutely nothing from another 50m. Well, 50m, sure, but there's only so much you can spend.
However, that is irrelevant simply because of the odds. You can't argue against something with one tiny example that could happen in theory.
I could get behind the idea that an item can be traded to a clan member but only if the guy was already a member of the clan when the item dropped. That way 3rd party websites wouldn't be able to invite their customers to the clan and sell items.
I could get behind the idea that an item can be traded to a clan member but only if the guy was already a member of the clan when the item dropped. That way 3rd party websites wouldn't be able to invite their customers to the clan and sell items.
Look there is always going to be a way to gain an advantage. If you don't multibox, you're not maximizing your chances of loot in RoS. If you only sleep for 4 hours a day and play for 20 AND multibox.. etc etc.
If they allow you to only trade with your guild - there will be a d2jsp guild. Probably a d2legit guild too.
Not everyone has the same moral or ethics as you or the next guy. What you should focus on is only what affects you, don't go out of your way to concern yourself with others or their methods. Unless you're trying to learn something, you shouldn't care what person 139723938 is doing and let it affect you. I mean that's just general advice for life, not just gaming.
True... i would be the one who'd feel no sense of accomplishment. However... blizzard agrees with me and that's why i intend to buy RoS. Trading for legendaries/ set items would diminish the importance of the loot hunt and people would soon just trade their way up instead of actually focusing on gameplay.
Others may enjoy trading for their items but this game is not a trading game. That's the exact reason why the ah will be removed. First and foremost we have to make the loot hunt interesting. BoA on legendaries and set items accomplishes just that. If trading rares and blues is not enough for you, then you're just being selfish. You'll still have your trading, we just want our endgame.
Making the loot hunt interesting is one of the major goals for Loot 2.0.
I could get behind the idea that an item can be traded to a clan member but only if the guy was already a member of the clan when the item dropped. That way 3rd party websites wouldn't be able to invite their customers to the clan and sell items.
If the BoA decision for legendaries/sets stays for the final build, then they should look into options such as this.
The Blizzard fanbase might not believe in the idea that they can mold the game with their feedback, because the actual changes almost never match their own ideas 1:1, and take months to be implemented and tested, but I'm sure they're listening to all reasonable arguments and discussing what's the best way to balance all those.
True... i would be the one who'd feel no sense of accomplishment. However... blizzard agrees with me and that's why i intend to buy RoS. Trading for legendaries/ set items would diminish the importance of the loot hunt and people would soon just trade their way up instead of actually focusing on gameplay.
Others may enjoy trading for their items but this game is not a trading game. That's the exact reason why the ah will be removed. First and foremost we have to make the loot hunt interesting. BoA on legendaries and set items accomplishes just that. If trading rares and blues is not enough for you, then you're just being selfish. You'll still have your trading, we just want our endgame.
Making the loot hunt interesting is one of the major goals for Loot 2.0.
I could get behind the idea that an item can be traded to a clan member but only if the guy was already a member of the clan when the item dropped. That way 3rd party websites wouldn't be able to invite their customers to the clan and sell items.
If the BoA decision for legendaries/sets stays for the final build, then they should look into options such as this.
Without them being BoA, legendaries would just become the new norm. We can't have that...
I think i would be ok with "I could get behind the idea that an item can be traded to a clan member but only if the guy was already a member of the clan when the item dropped."
They talked about this specifically - a friend showing up in your game and handing you a set of top-tier equipment seems cool at first, but the fact is that he just deprived you of weeks/months worth of progression. It's the same thing that people complain about with the AH - you hit 60 and buy a full set of "starter" gear to play MP4 or something, and it feels awesome to have gotten so big an upgrade over what you found naturally before, until you realize that it's impossible to find natural upgrades now because you skipped straight to the end of the progression curve. Receiving free loot from your clan is the same thing.
Sharing items in co-op is fun, it creates an immediate sense of comradery with the people you're playing with and encourages co-op which we all know is badly needed. Sharing items within a group of a hundred people is a completely different beast and quickly approaches the level of "pick and choose" that the AH gives you today.
Does that place still exist ? I was mod in the WoW forum there for 4-5 years before Elly banned me for critisicing the way she runs the place. I was hoping she went bankrupt by now ^^
If mass trading becomes as convoluted as that then the system would be working just fine, it would allow fairly free restricted trading but prevent the 'I must have 'X' item so will just go to 'Y' website and get it immediately' and be a hassle to trade with someone not already in your network.
I will say that I generally agree with Shaggy's take on the situation I want to feel like I have a realistic chance that I will find 'X' or complete set 'Y' (items don't have to be perfect, just usable) without legendaries raining from the sky, and if I find 2 'Zs' why should I not trade one with someone in my network that has 2 'Xs'?
Restrict trading to item 4 item, leave out the gold, that means that you have to actually find something worth trading unless someone is giving out freebies (is that really a problem? I never found it to be in D2 I enjoyed levelling up my barb so I could slowly equip that full IK set after someone had dropped the maul and chest for me while I was lvl10 after finding the boots/gloves/belt/helm myself on a different char (don't think I ever had maul or armour drop)). Would it be possible to bybass the restrictions? Sure. Would it be easy? Relatively. Convenient? probably not, and that seems fine to me.
Plus is you feel you have a genuine chance of finding or trading for an item that surely reduces the motivation to spend $25 to bypass the killing monster bit? That's like 5 beers (please note I have no idea how much a beer in the US costs) you've spent on a virtual item you could (and feel like you genuinely could) find in the next hour!
Also man, slow down... you're gonna explode brah (I can't help but picture you typing these last posts with an angry face at your keyboard and monitor lol..)
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.
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At the risk of sounding like a history teacher, I don't like your example. If you had used a D3 set like Natalya's or Inna's, where all parts are equal, ok, but I'm not sure if you mean what you said.
The IK armor was so extremely rare that it'd be comparable to a crit Mempo, maybe even a 6% crit Mempo, I'm not sure. Finding all the rest of the set was trivial in comparison, with the weapon being a low tier "elite" item and the remaining items being only of the "exceptional" level.
So I might agree with what you had in mind but not with a situation like the one you described. If 10 items (not runes or such) from D2 would have been considered too top tier to be allowed for trade, that chest would have been among them. And I do like that restriction for some top end items.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
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.
I disagree here completely. Having a guild/Clan allows you to interact a lot more with people. I am going to use maplestory as an example cause I've played it for a long time. In the beginning it was just me and my friend, as we got older we realized it was boring with just us two, so we'd make some friends here and there but nothing that lasted. Then we decided we'd make a guild and from there on we always had someone to talk to. Someone to help us out, and at times we'd help them out. It became a community inside of a community, which is exactly what clans and guilds are supposed to do. They allow you to interact with people, whether it be simply talking or training, or trading. So To say clans completely lose their purpose is going a bit far. They definitely will still serve their purpose. Hoping Dfans gets a clan so I can join up and play with all you fine fellows on the forums.
IF you ever find the rarest item in the game twice, consider not raging at all
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
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It doesn't matter. A shortcut is a shortcut. Being less of a shortcut doesn't absolve it from being a shortcut. Removing the AH and only allowing trading on a mass scale just makes the undesirable destination further away, but it doesn't change that destination. There is no item I can acquire from the AH that I can't also acquire with trading. It's slower trading because it is less streamlined, but in essence it's the same conceptually. In the end, you're still not hunting the item yourself which is supposed to be the focal design crux in a monster slaying loot hunting game. We want a game that will be satisfying for years to come, but we're not willing to analyze how trading shortens that experience?
It is evident to me now that Blizzard's main priority is how satisfying the loot hunt is from slaying monsters, how finding those items feels when you acquire them yourself, and how this plays a role in the scope of the community at large. By placing that priority as their primary goal anything that diminishes this seems secondary to them now.
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Yes it does provide a shortcut, but remember as long as drops are hard to come by and not showering down on us then we'd still have to work. Trading is literally just a RNG check in that it allows you to find the leg you want instead of the one the RNG is constantly giving you. I already know I want to be a frost mage. There's 0 argument in my mind that's what I plan on building. Now I have to find legs that give me a greater output of damage and defense. One such item is frostburns, if for some reason I'm stuck with only finding any other glove other then frostburns there has to be a system to check the RNG and make sure it's available to me someway. That's where trading would come in. It's not ideal but if you do get the short end of the stick it's there to help out. Enchanting does this to a lesser degree, I can't magically get that special affix of 40% extra cold damage, but at least I can change stats that are less than stellar thanks to RNG.
Small scale? (This is not directed at you, but rather the other people before you that pointed out that clans might be useless.)
Keep in mind the "typical act 3 run loot" presented at Gamescom:
Some people act like "Oh my god, I can't give my next crit Mempo drop away to a random guy on my friends list, so let's just empty my friends list right away". Yeah... right.
Maybe everyone posting in this thread is a Samaritan, but I know quite a few people who did not give their drops to their friends but rather put them up on the AH as soon as they were worth something, like more than 5m gold. We can argue about the BoA rule, and pretty much everyone agreed that making all legendaries BoA was an overreaction. But let's not draw the wrong conclusion that this change makes clans useless - that's just plain ridiculous.
In fact, and that hopefully brings the discussion back to the original topic of the thread, clans might be a great supplement for the new legendary BoA rule. As some people pointed out, you really want to play in groups now - and if you're organized in clan, it might be much easier to find groups with similar interests.
Oh, I know that.
I'm just saying that if you REAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALY want the look of <item X> you could trade something for an unidentified <item X> and get it.
This system? You don't find it, you're fucked. And that seems massively severe for cosmetic changes. Afterall the transmog system works on the Pokemon "gotta collect them all" philosophy. That is mostly divergent with the BoA "probably won't collect them all" philosophy.
This is the general sentiment at incgamers. It's nice to know there ARE people out there who dislike this one-extreme-to-another approach. The AH was bad.... so we have to do 100% the opposite and not understand WHY the AH was bad.
Lack of understanding the "why" of a problem tends to lead to bad solutions. And here we stand!
Agreed! It doesn't make clans useless. They're still a way for players to find that "4-player co-op group" in which to share their "bind to game" items! They're still a private chat channel. They still have a use, for sure, but it's definitely diminished. Most of us assumed that clans would be the way to facilitate trading without doing anything fancy. Only the most fervent traders would find a need to go outside of friends and clans to trade. The rest of us would have almost certainly been satiated just to exchange items, arbitrarily, within our "circle" so to speak.
I think that's why you get this whole WTF?????????? reaction. Clans seemed like a natural solution (a friends list with global chat!) to allow people to trade with the others they gamed frequently with.... without facilitating any kind of large-scale trading. Maybe some of us were reading the tea leaves a bit too much.... but it sure seemed like they'd go hand-in-hand for a really cool experience.
/letdown
I thought about the same example actually and my idea was, someone who has won 50 million $ already would gain absolutely nothing from another 50m. Well, 50m, sure, but there's only so much you can spend.
However, that is irrelevant simply because of the odds. You can't argue against something with one tiny example that could happen in theory.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
Look there is always going to be a way to gain an advantage. If you don't multibox, you're not maximizing your chances of loot in RoS. If you only sleep for 4 hours a day and play for 20 AND multibox.. etc etc.
If they allow you to only trade with your guild - there will be a d2jsp guild. Probably a d2legit guild too.
Not everyone has the same moral or ethics as you or the next guy. What you should focus on is only what affects you, don't go out of your way to concern yourself with others or their methods. Unless you're trying to learn something, you shouldn't care what person 139723938 is doing and let it affect you. I mean that's just general advice for life, not just gaming.
Making the loot hunt interesting is one of the major goals for Loot 2.0.
BoA should have nothing to do with it.
If the BoA decision for legendaries/sets stays for the final build, then they should look into options such as this.
The Blizzard fanbase might not believe in the idea that they can mold the game with their feedback, because the actual changes almost never match their own ideas 1:1, and take months to be implemented and tested, but I'm sure they're listening to all reasonable arguments and discussing what's the best way to balance all those.
They talked about this specifically - a friend showing up in your game and handing you a set of top-tier equipment seems cool at first, but the fact is that he just deprived you of weeks/months worth of progression. It's the same thing that people complain about with the AH - you hit 60 and buy a full set of "starter" gear to play MP4 or something, and it feels awesome to have gotten so big an upgrade over what you found naturally before, until you realize that it's impossible to find natural upgrades now because you skipped straight to the end of the progression curve. Receiving free loot from your clan is the same thing.
Sharing items in co-op is fun, it creates an immediate sense of comradery with the people you're playing with and encourages co-op which we all know is badly needed. Sharing items within a group of a hundred people is a completely different beast and quickly approaches the level of "pick and choose" that the AH gives you today.
Does that place still exist ? I was mod in the WoW forum there for 4-5 years before Elly banned me for critisicing the way she runs the place. I was hoping she went bankrupt by now ^^
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841