I would like to consolidate the boa argument into 1 thread. please vote, state your opinion, and say why you think so :). I am making the thread because i am curious on people's thoughts on this topic.
Added two other questions.
Note: if you are one who does not want boa, dont vote on the last two questions.
IF everything will be as developers promissed, target loot etc, it means that you don´t need to trade items and it´s OK
IF something will be different, I don´t like BOA on items, because few of items was found by my friends a I have also found few items which my friends currently using....
At this stage, it´s to early to say it´s good/bad thing for D3 if we don´t know....
edit. I will prefer BOA items with option to trade within your clan, that will be best for me....
Just to echo Annubizz; I think it's too early to really tell. I voted it should be added because if Blizzard got everything correct and playing self found will be fun any rewarding, then we don't need trading for legendaries. They are still allowing gold / crafting mats / rare trading, and maybe that will be enough. Who knows, if they add runes / charms and make those trade-able as well, then the trading portion might still be alive.
Unfortunately, it's a wait and see with this one in my opinion. And if forced to vote, I say add it.
I can't conceive of a game where drop rates are high enough and targeted enough to have self found be the only way to gear out your character in any way you would want (able to find that build enabling legendary for your desired build in a reasonable amount of time) without the end game quickly fading back into bore-town. If the speed with which you can gear up totally on your own is long enough to extend the end game (via appropriately paced rng and not overdoing the percentage of smart drops) you run the risk of a situation where you can't find the piece of gear you're interested, that you want to use to open up that awesome build you've been itching to try out. Allowing trading of legendary items simply gives you an option to get ahold of that piece you want without being at the mercy of RNG. To balance the game between these two would take some foresight on Blizzard's part that we haven't seen in this iteration of the series and that I'm not hopeful of seeing.
My preference is that Blizzard err on the side of keeping the loot-hunt viable long-term and allowing us to augment difficulties that we have in finding particular pieces of gear or particularly powerful pieces of gear via trading. From what I see, the argument against open trading is that it allows too many people to gear up too quickly. I think this doesn't hold water. For the majority, they will need to first find something worth trading (or many somethings) in order to obtain what they want. Certainly, there will be some who are fed items (early D3 vanilla streamers) but my enjoyment of this game is not predicated on what others choose to do. That is of course, unless Blizzard decides to enforce this policy, in which case my enjoyment of this game quickly becomes dictated by a group who has decided if they can't play the game the way they want then no one should be able to play the way they enjoy.
I agree that BoA on Legs/Sets have no place in D3. If someone wants to play self-found mode thats ok with me, but dont ruin the game just because you envy the other person gold stacks in account. Trading was in previous games very important aspect of people socializing and I hope the trading mechanics will be improved in D3. Blizzard please dont jump from one extreeme to another, it just shows you are under presure of everyone that hates botters and 3rd party shit sites and you couldnt fix all the problems related to that so you create the philisophy of " BoA everything and remove AH so boters will die".
Now how do we make this front page or whatever so Biizard will read this ?
The removal of the AH and BoA Legendaries are probably the two things I'm most excited for in RoS. Despite what others are saying I think that trading has always been a disaster in all three Diablo games, and I'm thrilled that Blizzard is committing their full attention to making the self-found game as good as it can be. Finding loot is simply more fun than trading for it, and the only way to make certain that trading doesn't take control of the game again(as in vanilla D3) is to kill it entirely.
Trading only 'took control' of the game in vanilla because they made it that way.
Just saying.
The whole point of trading is that it's better for getting what you want than just playing the game yourself. Otherwise no one would bother. So when people ask for trading to remain in the game, they're asking to be given an advantage over self-found players, which is exactly what Blizzard wants to prevent. They've very explicitly stated that their design goal is to make self-found loot the best way to gear up. That leaves no room for trading no matter how you look at it.
The whole point of trading is that it's better for getting what you want than just playing the game yourself. Otherwise no one would bother. So when people ask for trading to remain in the game, they're asking to be given an advantage over self-found players, which is exactly what Blizzard wants to prevent.
Not the only case; there are also people who just like to trade and be "trading tycoons", just like the "AH flippers". And some people just want to trade because they only like one class but get "unlucky" to find good items for classes they really don't like. Or they want to cash out (legal or illegal way, whatever).
They've very explicitly stated that their design goal is to make self-found loot the best way to gear up.
Is that really what they "explicitly stated"? I think it's a bit of a stretch.
Trading just went too far, people forgot to play the game, and Blizzard wants people to really focus on acquiring loots from monsters rather than other players. If the community wouldn't have been poisoned by the AH, I doubt we would've ever seen BoA to the extent we might see it now. Blizzard is overreacting to steer players into the other direction. I'd be careful though by deriving from that they want to eliminate trading altogether; if they thought trading should not be part of Diablo, there would've never been an AH in the first place.
I'm in the 'who cares' category, but I think limiting trading of legendary/sets to only your party is ok. Maybe you'll never get that one legendary for that one build you might want, I guess those are the breaks. It won't keep you from getting anywhere in the game.
Trading only 'took control' of the game in vanilla because they made it that way.
Just saying.
The whole point of trading is that it's better for getting what you want than just playing the game yourself. Otherwise no one would bother. So when people ask for trading to remain in the game, they're asking to be given an advantage over self-found players, which is exactly what Blizzard wants to prevent. They've very explicitly stated that their design goal is to make self-found loot the best way to gear up. That leaves no room for trading no matter how you look at it.
In a game thats supposed to be about enjoying killing monsters and finding loot, I want to know how you quantify an advantage. How do you even begin to compare what I enjoy doing to what you enjoy doing? Where do you mark off the degrees of enjoyment? Where is the baseline of enjoyable? Sure, trading offers an advantage in killing monsters, but with the number of times Blizzard has stated this game is not becoming e-sport, how can you say Blizzard is trying to keep someone from "gaining an advantage". I want trading to stay in the game because its a part of the game that I enjoy. You want trading kept out because it gives other people an advantage and yet doesn't actually impact how you play your character one way or another.
And what's the next step? Soon the argument is going to be "That person can play longer than I can and therefore gets an advantage." So Blizzard introduces time restrictions on how many hours you can play the game. And then "That person is still doing better than me becuase they are smarter and better understand the synergies between skills." So Blizzard decides that every class has one build only. And then you complain "That person is still killing monsters faster than I am even though Blizzard has restricted everything else in the game." And at that point you finally realize that it wasn't any of the game systems you didn't like, it was always something deep within you that you weren't satisfied with and that you couldn't stand to look at so you turned it all outwards and tried to keep others from enjoying things the way they wanted to in the name of "fairness".
Someone will always be better than you, someone will always be better than me. They will have a better route, they will have better gear due to sheer stupid luck, they will have more friends to play with, or more hours in the day, or fate will simply smile upon them more brightly. The best way to address this is not to restrict them. The best way to address this is to examine and change your outlook and find satisfaction in actually playing the game for yourself, not in trying to compare yourslef to others.
I think the Loot 2.0 changes, along with making legendary and set items BoA is a great idea.
This way you can trade blue/yellow gear and get yourself a nice farming set for endgame, but if you want REALLY good gear you HAVE to farm for it. Afterall this is an ARPG, farming for gear is kinda the point
Trading only 'took control' of the game in vanilla because they made it that way.
Just saying.
The whole point of trading is that it's better for getting what you want than just playing the game yourself. Otherwise no one would bother. So when people ask for trading to remain in the game, they're asking to be given an advantage over self-found players, which is exactly what Blizzard wants to prevent. They've very explicitly stated that their design goal is to make self-found loot the best way to gear up. That leaves no room for trading no matter how you look at it.
In a game thats supposed to be about enjoying killing monsters and finding loot, I want to know how you quantify an advantage. How do you even begin to compare what I enjoy doing to what you enjoy doing? Where do you mark off the degrees of enjoyment? Where is the baseline of enjoyable? Sure, trading offers an advantage in killing monsters, but with the number of times Blizzard has stated this game is not becoming e-sport, how can you say Blizzard is trying to keep someone from "gaining an advantage". I want trading to stay in the game because its a part of the game that I enjoy. You want trading kept out because it gives other people an advantage and yet doesn't actually impact how you play your character one way or another. If that's the end result, and this is a game people play for fun, who is Blizzard's choice actually giving an advantage to?
If legendaries are tradeable they flood the market and over time become too abundant and too accessible to everyone on a scale that dwarfs their designed integrity. This is especially true when you consider botting, third party sales, and pay to win which is all hindered greatly and effectively by BoA. When this happens the overall strength of the community as a whole rises by a large margin. This means everyone you play with, despite your efforts to play self-found, has a higher level of power. When you play with them, they kill monsters faster thereby impacting your rewards; both experience gain and item drops. So, even if you try to keep to your own drops, you are still affected unless you play completely solo or isolate yourself from a large percentage of the player base (people who trade); neither of which make sense from a design standpoint in what is supported by Blizzard as a game with an emphasis on the multiplayer experience. The idea that you could join a game with anyone at random and know that they received their items from actually playing the game is an invaluable and mutual experience and also a legitimate concern shared by many. Again, this is even more reasonable when you consider that Blizzard greatly supports Diablo 3 as a multiplayer game. This indeed affects almost everyone in some fashion or another whether they care to admit it or not.
If legendaries are tradeable they flood the market and over time become too abundant and too accessible to everyone on a scale that dwarfs their designed integrity. This is especially true when you consider botting, third party sales, and pay to win which is all hindered greatly and effectively by BoA. When this happens the overall strength of the community as a whole rises by a large margin. This means everyone you play with, despite your efforts to play self-found, has a higher level of power. When you play with them, they kill monsters faster thereby impacting your rewards; both experience gain and item drops. So, even if you try to keep to yourself, you are still affected unless you play completely solo or isolate yourself from a large percentage of the player base (people who trade); neither of which make sense from a design standpoint in what is supported by Blizzard as a game with an emphasis on the multiplayer experience.
This still doesn't address why your play style should be more valid than mine. You can play solo, or you can play with only people on your friends list, or in a clan with people who have take a solemn oath not to trade, and you can avoid the effects you mentioned. But again, it fails to address the larger idea. What happens when you're in a game with people who got lucky/are just better/have outleveled you because they've played longer, and the same thing starts to happen. Now they're killing monsters faster and impact your rewards but it has nothing to do with their ability to trade. What then. Why take out a valid option that others enjoy when those same effects that are supposedly being addressed will come up elsewhere?
The whole point of trading is that it's better for getting what you want than just playing the game yourself. Otherwise no one would bother. So when people ask for trading to remain in the game, they're asking to be given an advantage over self-found players, which is exactly what Blizzard wants to prevent.
Not the only case; there are also people who just like to trade and be "trading tycoons", just like the "AH flippers". And some people just want to trade because they only like one class but get "unlucky" to find good items for classes they really don't like. Or they want to cash out (legal or illegal way, whatever).
"Trading tycoons" who don't even play the game itself should hardly be a priority for the game design. People never finding items for themselves is exactly the problem RoS is supposed to solve. And cashing out now is only possible through third party sites which of course Blizzard doesn't want to encourage.
They've very explicitly stated that their design goal is to make self-found loot the best way to gear up.
Is that really what they "explicitly stated"? I think it's a bit of a stretch.
Trading just went too far, people forgot to play the game, and Blizzard wants people to really focus on acquiring loots from monsters rather than other players. If the community wouldn't have been poisoned by the AH, I doubt we would've ever seen BoA to the extent we might see it now. Blizzard is overreacting to steer players into the other direction. I'd be careful though by deriving from that they want to eliminate trading altogether; if they thought trading should not be part of Diablo, there would've never been an AH in the first place.
I don't recall the exact quote but they've said it numerous times, that the most fun way to play should also be the most effective. The "most fun way to play" they're referring to being self-found, and most effective meaning the best way to upgrade your character.
They did think that trading was an important part of Diablo when they built the AH, but they've since decided that was a mistake. I don't know what you call what they're doing if not eliminating trading - legendaries are what the game is all about now.
Trading only 'took control' of the game in vanilla because they made it that way.
Just saying.
The whole point of trading is that it's better for getting what you want than just playing the game yourself. Otherwise no one would bother. So when people ask for trading to remain in the game, they're asking to be given an advantage over self-found players, which is exactly what Blizzard wants to prevent. They've very explicitly stated that their design goal is to make self-found loot the best way to gear up. That leaves no room for trading no matter how you look at it.
In a game thats supposed to be about enjoying killing monsters and finding loot, I want to know how you quantify an advantage. How do you even begin to compare what I enjoy doing to what you enjoy doing? Where do you mark off the degrees of enjoyment? Where is the baseline of enjoyable? Sure, trading offers an advantage in killing monsters, but with the number of times Blizzard has stated this game is not becoming e-sport, how can you say Blizzard is trying to keep someone from "gaining an advantage". I want trading to stay in the game because its a part of the game that I enjoy. You want trading kept out because it gives other people an advantage and yet doesn't actually impact how you play your character one way or another.
And what's the next step? Soon the argument is going to be "That person can play longer than I can and therefore gets an advantage." So Blizzard introduces time restrictions on how many hours you can play the game. And then "That person is still doing better than me becuase they are smarter and better understand the synergies between skills." So Blizzard decides that every class has one build only. And then you complain "That person is still killing monsters faster than I am even though Blizzard has restricted everything else in the game." And at that point you finally realize that it wasn't any of the game systems you didn't like, it was always something deep within you that you weren't satisfied with and that you couldn't stand to look at so you turned it all outwards and tried to keep others from enjoying things the way they wanted to in the name of "fairness".
Someone will always be better than you, someone will always be better than me. They will have a better route, they will have better gear due to sheer stupid luck, they will have more friends to play with, or more hours in the day, or fate will simply smile upon them more brightly. The best way to address this is not to restrict them. The best way to address this is to examine and change your outlook and find satisfaction in actually playing the game for yourself, not in trying to compare yourslef to others.
Your argument applies exactly the same to the auction house itself, and that decision has already been made. Telling people that they should simply be satisfied that everybody who's willing to trade has double their DPS as a result is not reasonable and Blizzard knows it.
If legendaries are tradeable they flood the market and over time become too abundant and too accessible to everyone on a scale that dwarfs their designed integrity. This is especially true when you consider botting, third party sales, and pay to win which is all hindered greatly and effectively by BoA. When this happens the overall strength of the community as a whole rises by a large margin. This means everyone you play with, despite your efforts to play self-found, has a higher level of power. When you play with them, they kill monsters faster thereby impacting your rewards; both experience gain and item drops. So, even if you try to keep to yourself, you are still affected unless you play completely solo or isolate yourself from a large percentage of the player base (people who trade); neither of which make sense from a design standpoint in what is supported by Blizzard as a game with an emphasis on the multiplayer experience.
This still doesn't address why your play style should be more valid than mine. You can play solo, or you can play with only people on your friends list, or in a clan with people who have take a solemn oath not to trade, and you can avoid the effects you mentioned. But again, it fails to address the larger idea. What happens when you're in a game with people who got lucky/are just better/have outleveled you because they've played longer, and the same thing starts to happen. Now they're killing monsters faster and impact your rewards but it has nothing to do with their ability to trade. What then. Why take out a valid option that others enjoy when those same effects that are supposedly being addressed will come up elsewhere?
If they played longer, that is fine and fair. It's a false analogy. As long as the game's constructs are similar for both players it is fair game. How long one chooses to play is not a game construct.
And yes, you can choose to play solo or with a self-found clan, but again that supports ostracism in a game that is supposed to be about the multiplayer experience. The fact that you are sharing a mutual experience that is relatable to any other person you could join a game with, friend or stranger, within the limitations of the game's constructs and boundaries that are evenly applied to everyone.
I really thought my opinion about this was the unpopular one... I'm kind of surprised by the poll results to be honest. But it is a small sample size, so pretty much negligible.
Even with my viewpoint though "necessary for D3's survival" is definitely an overstatement.
I'm only saying it supports ostracism if you are trying to play in a way that leaves you unaffected by what other people are doing outside of your games. If you say that "other people trading has no influence on me" then that is only the case if you ostracize yourself from any other player that does trade, either by playing alone or by playing only with a select group of like-minded players. In the end you are selectively avoiding a certain player set which would make up a significant portion of the player base.
Even then you can't be 100% sure that the people you are playing with aren't trading with others when you aren't around. The game doesn't enforce it, so you have no foolproof way of knowing for sure.
If you don't care that you are playing with traders, then it's a different story. But don't say it has no bearing on your gameplay experience, because it without a doubt does.
Even then you can't be 100% sure that the people you are playing with aren't trading with others when you aren't around. The game doesn't enforce it, so you have no foolproof way of knowing for sure.
So?
Honestly it sounds like YOU are the one who wants to be ostracized from the general population. It sounds like YOU are saying "I don't want to group with X, Y, or Z." That's not the problem of the traders. That's you trying to impose some restriction on your gaming so that you can feel more manly about the drops you find (which is ultimately what this is about).
Let me give you an example. My buddy recently found a Zuni's chest that was 3000 HPs, 500 DPS, and .2% mitigation better than the one I have. He swapped me so that he could pass my chest on to his WD/Wiz and I could use the one he found, since he wasn't currently using a WD/Wiz he felt that it was logical to give it to someone who was so they'd actually use it.
If I join your game with my 3000 more HPs, 500 DPS, and .2% mitigation.... how exactly is that altering anything you do? It's obviously not big enough of a stat swing to allow us to do anything we couldn't have done before. So *CLEARLY* this whole "trading will ruin my experience" perspective isn't black-and-white insofar as the simple act of executing a trade would alter your multi-player experience.
What you're talking about - what I agree with - is that people who "trade their way to the top" (not people sharing gear among their friends) could potentially ruin your experience. I'm not necessarily interested in grouping up with people who have 500k DPS (in current parlance) honestly, but I'm not in favor of Blizzard playing internet police on this subject either. There really should be some kind of middle-ground. And I agree with you that anyone who picked the first option has got to be mentally unstable.
So the real question comes down to how you eliminate mass trading without ruining the enjoyment people get from hooking their friends up. Because, let's be honest, no one is going to get a set of near-perfect gear (in a short amount of time) just from trading with their friends unless they are majorly lucky or unless their friends are just giving them donations. And, frankly, if some guy has 100 people just donating shit to him, you probably won't ever run into him since he'd have next-to-no reason to do public games!
If Blizzard *properly* limited trading to friends and clans, really, most people would end up grouping with LIKE-MINDED players most of the time. There wouldn't be this threat of "oh man, I'm going to get matched with some guy with 525k DPS and I only have 38k DPS" - or at least it wouldn't be nearly as overwhelming as you make it out to be. People's friends/clans would be their Diablo "family" and their social network and there wouldn't really be a huge need to go outside of that.
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Added two other questions.
Note: if you are one who does not want boa, dont vote on the last two questions.
IF something will be different, I don´t like BOA on items, because few of items was found by my friends a I have also found few items which my friends currently using....
At this stage, it´s to early to say it´s good/bad thing for D3 if we don´t know....
edit. I will prefer BOA items with option to trade within your clan, that will be best for me....
Unfortunately, it's a wait and see with this one in my opinion. And if forced to vote, I say add it.
My preference is that Blizzard err on the side of keeping the loot-hunt viable long-term and allowing us to augment difficulties that we have in finding particular pieces of gear or particularly powerful pieces of gear via trading. From what I see, the argument against open trading is that it allows too many people to gear up too quickly. I think this doesn't hold water. For the majority, they will need to first find something worth trading (or many somethings) in order to obtain what they want. Certainly, there will be some who are fed items (early D3 vanilla streamers) but my enjoyment of this game is not predicated on what others choose to do. That is of course, unless Blizzard decides to enforce this policy, in which case my enjoyment of this game quickly becomes dictated by a group who has decided if they can't play the game the way they want then no one should be able to play the way they enjoy.
Now how do we make this front page or whatever so Biizard will read this ?
The whole point of trading is that it's better for getting what you want than just playing the game yourself. Otherwise no one would bother. So when people ask for trading to remain in the game, they're asking to be given an advantage over self-found players, which is exactly what Blizzard wants to prevent. They've very explicitly stated that their design goal is to make self-found loot the best way to gear up. That leaves no room for trading no matter how you look at it.
Not the only case; there are also people who just like to trade and be "trading tycoons", just like the "AH flippers". And some people just want to trade because they only like one class but get "unlucky" to find good items for classes they really don't like. Or they want to cash out (legal or illegal way, whatever).
Is that really what they "explicitly stated"? I think it's a bit of a stretch.
Trading just went too far, people forgot to play the game, and Blizzard wants people to really focus on acquiring loots from monsters rather than other players. If the community wouldn't have been poisoned by the AH, I doubt we would've ever seen BoA to the extent we might see it now. Blizzard is overreacting to steer players into the other direction. I'd be careful though by deriving from that they want to eliminate trading altogether; if they thought trading should not be part of Diablo, there would've never been an AH in the first place.
In a game thats supposed to be about enjoying killing monsters and finding loot, I want to know how you quantify an advantage. How do you even begin to compare what I enjoy doing to what you enjoy doing? Where do you mark off the degrees of enjoyment? Where is the baseline of enjoyable? Sure, trading offers an advantage in killing monsters, but with the number of times Blizzard has stated this game is not becoming e-sport, how can you say Blizzard is trying to keep someone from "gaining an advantage". I want trading to stay in the game because its a part of the game that I enjoy. You want trading kept out because it gives other people an advantage and yet doesn't actually impact how you play your character one way or another.
And what's the next step? Soon the argument is going to be "That person can play longer than I can and therefore gets an advantage." So Blizzard introduces time restrictions on how many hours you can play the game. And then "That person is still doing better than me becuase they are smarter and better understand the synergies between skills." So Blizzard decides that every class has one build only. And then you complain "That person is still killing monsters faster than I am even though Blizzard has restricted everything else in the game." And at that point you finally realize that it wasn't any of the game systems you didn't like, it was always something deep within you that you weren't satisfied with and that you couldn't stand to look at so you turned it all outwards and tried to keep others from enjoying things the way they wanted to in the name of "fairness".
Someone will always be better than you, someone will always be better than me. They will have a better route, they will have better gear due to sheer stupid luck, they will have more friends to play with, or more hours in the day, or fate will simply smile upon them more brightly. The best way to address this is not to restrict them. The best way to address this is to examine and change your outlook and find satisfaction in actually playing the game for yourself, not in trying to compare yourslef to others.
This way you can trade blue/yellow gear and get yourself a nice farming set for endgame, but if you want REALLY good gear you HAVE to farm for it. Afterall this is an ARPG, farming for gear is kinda the point
If legendaries are tradeable they flood the market and over time become too abundant and too accessible to everyone on a scale that dwarfs their designed integrity. This is especially true when you consider botting, third party sales, and pay to win which is all hindered greatly and effectively by BoA. When this happens the overall strength of the community as a whole rises by a large margin. This means everyone you play with, despite your efforts to play self-found, has a higher level of power. When you play with them, they kill monsters faster thereby impacting your rewards; both experience gain and item drops. So, even if you try to keep to your own drops, you are still affected unless you play completely solo or isolate yourself from a large percentage of the player base (people who trade); neither of which make sense from a design standpoint in what is supported by Blizzard as a game with an emphasis on the multiplayer experience. The idea that you could join a game with anyone at random and know that they received their items from actually playing the game is an invaluable and mutual experience and also a legitimate concern shared by many. Again, this is even more reasonable when you consider that Blizzard greatly supports Diablo 3 as a multiplayer game. This indeed affects almost everyone in some fashion or another whether they care to admit it or not.
Top 10 Solo Wizard Leaderboard - North America
Highest: Rank 6 // Greater Rift 42 12m40s
This still doesn't address why your play style should be more valid than mine. You can play solo, or you can play with only people on your friends list, or in a clan with people who have take a solemn oath not to trade, and you can avoid the effects you mentioned. But again, it fails to address the larger idea. What happens when you're in a game with people who got lucky/are just better/have outleveled you because they've played longer, and the same thing starts to happen. Now they're killing monsters faster and impact your rewards but it has nothing to do with their ability to trade. What then. Why take out a valid option that others enjoy when those same effects that are supposedly being addressed will come up elsewhere?
"Trading tycoons" who don't even play the game itself should hardly be a priority for the game design. People never finding items for themselves is exactly the problem RoS is supposed to solve. And cashing out now is only possible through third party sites which of course Blizzard doesn't want to encourage.
I don't recall the exact quote but they've said it numerous times, that the most fun way to play should also be the most effective. The "most fun way to play" they're referring to being self-found, and most effective meaning the best way to upgrade your character.
They did think that trading was an important part of Diablo when they built the AH, but they've since decided that was a mistake. I don't know what you call what they're doing if not eliminating trading - legendaries are what the game is all about now.
Your argument applies exactly the same to the auction house itself, and that decision has already been made. Telling people that they should simply be satisfied that everybody who's willing to trade has double their DPS as a result is not reasonable and Blizzard knows it.
If they played longer, that is fine and fair. It's a false analogy. As long as the game's constructs are similar for both players it is fair game. How long one chooses to play is not a game construct.
Top 10 Solo Wizard Leaderboard - North America
Highest: Rank 6 // Greater Rift 42 12m40s
Top 10 Solo Wizard Leaderboard - North America
Highest: Rank 6 // Greater Rift 42 12m40s
Even with my viewpoint though "necessary for D3's survival" is definitely an overstatement.
Top 10 Solo Wizard Leaderboard - North America
Highest: Rank 6 // Greater Rift 42 12m40s
Even then you can't be 100% sure that the people you are playing with aren't trading with others when you aren't around. The game doesn't enforce it, so you have no foolproof way of knowing for sure.
If you don't care that you are playing with traders, then it's a different story. But don't say it has no bearing on your gameplay experience, because it without a doubt does.
Top 10 Solo Wizard Leaderboard - North America
Highest: Rank 6 // Greater Rift 42 12m40s
So?
Honestly it sounds like YOU are the one who wants to be ostracized from the general population. It sounds like YOU are saying "I don't want to group with X, Y, or Z." That's not the problem of the traders. That's you trying to impose some restriction on your gaming so that you can feel more manly about the drops you find (which is ultimately what this is about).
Let me give you an example. My buddy recently found a Zuni's chest that was 3000 HPs, 500 DPS, and .2% mitigation better than the one I have. He swapped me so that he could pass my chest on to his WD/Wiz and I could use the one he found, since he wasn't currently using a WD/Wiz he felt that it was logical to give it to someone who was so they'd actually use it.
If I join your game with my 3000 more HPs, 500 DPS, and .2% mitigation.... how exactly is that altering anything you do? It's obviously not big enough of a stat swing to allow us to do anything we couldn't have done before. So *CLEARLY* this whole "trading will ruin my experience" perspective isn't black-and-white insofar as the simple act of executing a trade would alter your multi-player experience.
What you're talking about - what I agree with - is that people who "trade their way to the top" (not people sharing gear among their friends) could potentially ruin your experience. I'm not necessarily interested in grouping up with people who have 500k DPS (in current parlance) honestly, but I'm not in favor of Blizzard playing internet police on this subject either. There really should be some kind of middle-ground. And I agree with you that anyone who picked the first option has got to be mentally unstable.
So the real question comes down to how you eliminate mass trading without ruining the enjoyment people get from hooking their friends up. Because, let's be honest, no one is going to get a set of near-perfect gear (in a short amount of time) just from trading with their friends unless they are majorly lucky or unless their friends are just giving them donations. And, frankly, if some guy has 100 people just donating shit to him, you probably won't ever run into him since he'd have next-to-no reason to do public games!
If Blizzard *properly* limited trading to friends and clans, really, most people would end up grouping with LIKE-MINDED players most of the time. There wouldn't be this threat of "oh man, I'm going to get matched with some guy with 525k DPS and I only have 38k DPS" - or at least it wouldn't be nearly as overwhelming as you make it out to be. People's friends/clans would be their Diablo "family" and their social network and there wouldn't really be a huge need to go outside of that.