Have you guys actually thought this through? Here's an example.
3rd party site buys 101 accounts. 99 of them are sub botters and are friends with each other putting their list to 98. They all then friend one special bot, and all 100 accounts are linked at 99 /100 friends. That special bot now friends the alpha account, who is now at 1/100 friends. If the website wants to link every batch of farming accounts, then every alpha account will be at 3/100 friends, and there can be as many alpha accounts as the site can buy. You're friends with one of the thousands, you have access to the entire bot economy.
So, what you're saying is that MILLIONS of people should not be able to trade because a couple thousand botters might make a "botters trade network?"
Flawless victory. It's that kind of knee-jerk reaction that leads to very nearsighted "solutions" to "problems."
Botters are bad. They are against the EULA and ToS. They should be dealt with. Period. But the game shouldn't be designed to punish the rest of us because of botters. That's complete madness. That's allowing the inmates to run the asylum and it's simply not how things should be done.
Imagine if Blizzard came out tomorrow and said "we've become aware that Bounties are easily-exploitable by botters, therefore we're removing them." You wouldn't settle for that explanation. You wouldn't settle for something you enjoy being removed simply because botters were exploiting it. You'd (rightly) tell Blizzard to crack down on botters and not to ruin your fun.
The issue with Free economy is you get the same issue you have right now, to many players = insanely low drop chances = get nothing from actually playing.
If nothing was bound, and the drop chances were high enough thatd ud get something from just a few hours of playing you could pretty much get every item u wanted in 1 day by trading of anything you got that you didn't want... So it's either have free economy but have to spend 2 weeks+ farming to get 1 decent item or have no trading but actually get drops at a decent rate.
I agree with everything else.
This is exactly why trading should be limited to our clan, or your friends list when the item is dropped, or one trade per item. I think something needs to be done because trading is a part of the endgame, it is what will help D3ROS' longevity.
Edit: Maybe using horadric caches for trading could be cool. For example: Here I'll exchange this Azurewrath for 8 h caches. Could pay off, might not.
I can't imagine how you could be so dismissive and blaise about any subject. It's really put-offish.
There's no reason Blizzard should be designing the game around what botters do. They don't do it in WoW, they shouldn't do it in D3. People bot for herbs/ore in WoW all the time. Blizzard doesn't remove all herbs and ore and related professions from the game. They deal with the botters as best they can. Period. It's a very simple concept, and you're obviously smart enough to understand it.
There's nothing utopian about it, not when you have a game where millions of people play and have varying things they enjoy. You don't simply attack every "problem" with a machete. Arm hurts? AMPUTATE IMMEDIATELY! Minor abrasion on your foot? AMPUTATE! Someone keyed your car? SEND IT TO THE SCRAP HEAP! No one actually thinks like that. You don't throw the baby out with the bath water. It's just a bad thing to do.
Imagine if my response to your idea about Nephalem Rifts was "you're living in Utopia" and basically told you to stop making suggestions on how to improve the game because it's imperfect and always will be. I mean, the game never will be perfect, so let's just not try to improve it. That kind of defeatest attitude is stupid... and you're only acting like that because you fail to understand that this issue does matter to lots of players (a poll on incgamers suggests that 60% of people want a less-restrictive solution than what is currently implemented and also suggests that hard-line BoA advocates are barely even the plurality of those polled). That is far too large of a number to simply ignore and play off as if it's some minority who is just trying to ruin the game for you. The "BoA or die" crowd is, actually, the minority. Why? Because the sane majority is fucking fed up with these extreme black-and-white solutions to problems.
I still have to see a compelling argument that trading has anything to do with boosting the longevity of the game. On the contrary, even.
D2 would like to speak with you. The game that set the bar for longevity... had trading. The idea that trading causes massive harm to longevity is not only overblown, but completely contrary to history. Sure, maybe more people would have played D2 for longer if there was no trading... but maybe more people would have gotten frustrated about RNG and quit sooner too.
It's a double-edged sword. Trading expedites certain things for a certain group of players. But for another group it acts as a safety net against RNG. You are only looking at it from one perspective, though. You are not acknowledging that the lack of that safety net might actually cause people to quit the game too. Both things are not good for longevity - but both things are fairly minor in the grand scheme of things.
That's why my perspective, from the get-go, is that instead of socially-engineering the game, Blizzard should be giving us the "sandbox" that was D2. They took a major step towards this with Adventure Mode, but took an even bigger step backwards with BoA. D2 was amazing because it didn't tell us how to play even though it obviously needed a bit more balance. In fact, the only major example as to how D2 failed to provide freedom was the OP ladder runewords (which is also why I'm against ladder-specific rewards that aren't cosmetic).
D2 was so successful because it didn't say "you can't trade" or "you must trade."
D3 started out with "you must trade (or close to it)" because of the AH and has now migrated to "you can't trade." This harsh juxtaposition with how D2 handled the subject (by specifically NOT handling it at all) is troubling to anyone with a memory of the past. The AH was an experiment, and hopefully Blizzard learned from it. I just don't see going to the other extreme as a reasonable solution. It reminds me of American politics. People who seek middle-ground solutions are spurned. Everyone has to pander to their constituency and the more extreme you are about your beliefs the better it works out... even if that is decidedly against the interests of the average people.
I still have to see a compelling argument that trading has anything to do with boosting the longevity of the game. On the contrary, even.
1) It makes farming items even after you have all the ones you want interesting because you can trade them to other players for currency, crafting mats, or even better versions of your current gear.
2) It creates a social environment between players (if there is interaction between them through the trading) because you have to communicate, negotiate, and meet new players or players you've already met before.
Could you please elaborate on your opinion as to why trading is bad?
Not quite because I believe the original proposition was to use the friend's list as the only means of trading. If item binds on 1st trade you run into the same problem as the items that drop as BOA. Put another way, if Player A trades Player B item0, item0 is now bound to player B right. Well now if player B wants to trade for item1 that Player C has, he wont be able to use item0 in that trade. And its quite likely item0 is worth trading since player B traded for it in the first place... so now you got people complaining they cant trade an item more than once with their friends (no trading back and forth as well).
The only true way to facilitate user-friendly, safe, and fair trading is the Auction House... thats it. All of these friend-trade or clan-trade ideas have major flaws in them and trying to fix these flaws would only make the game mechanics so convoluted the entire game would become repulsive to play. You either want to be able to trade... in which case we need the AH back, or you don't want trade in which case say hello BOAs for the future of D3.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Blizzard used to care about releasing Diablo III, then they all took an arrow in the knee...
1) It makes farming items even after you have all the ones you want interesting because you can trade them to other players for currency, crafting mats, or even better versions of your current gear.
2) It creates a social environment between players (if there is interaction between them through the trading) because you have to communicate, negotiate, and meet new players or players you've already met before.
Could you please elaborate on your opinion as to why trading is bad?
1) It makes farming items uninteresting as it gives players the option to skip farming and buy items off a website
2) Serves as an excuse to not come up with actual systems that make people join games together and socialize (like Baal runs which are most effective when people party up or monster immunities which make people party up)
3) Creates a botting-friendly environment
Have you guys actually thought this through? Here's an example.
3rd party site buys 101 accounts. 99 of them are sub botters and are friends with each other putting their list to 98. They all then friend one special bot, and all 100 accounts are linked at 99 /100 friends. That special bot now friends the alpha account, who is now at 1/100 friends. If the website wants to link every batch of farming accounts, then every alpha account will be at 3/100 friends, and there can be as many alpha accounts as the site can buy. You're friends with one of the thousands, you have access to the entire bot economy.
Edit; reworded for clarity.
Item binds on 1st trade.
Aaaaand down goes your pretty model.
I was actually about to post with this in mind, but Dousie beat me to it =)
I'd be in favor of items having a 1 trade limit, I think that's a good middle ground, but it'd have to come with qualifiers, such as only to people in your clan / in your game / on your Flist (for some set amount, like two weeks +). Then that'd almost completely kill the vast network of botters.
But if it's left to JUST a 1 trade limit, then you have the same problem that we have right now; Getting all the gear you could ever want is just minutes away.
@ Shaggy.
Sorry bud I was on my phone at work and didn't have to time to write out anything very long, I wasn't trying to be just an ideological douche.
It's complicated on this subject though. When I said you're living in should-land, I was referring to you and everyone else who just says "well, we shouldn't have to have our game built around botters", and "Blizzard should be able to just crack down harder on bots". Yes, in a perfect world that would be the case, but as years of evidence will back me up, Blizzard, or anyone for that matter, CAN'T crack down on bots 100%, and having even 1% around really does screw with the game.
When I first joined this site and the hot debate was whether or not Blizzard should implement the RMAH, I was all for it. Hell, I defended it like it was my own idea. I used the line of thinking 'Hey, if you don't like it, don't use it! How does it screw with YOUR gameplay?'. Looking back, I'm very comfortable admitting I was completely and utterly incorrect. It DID screw with my gameplay. Call me weak willed if you want, but why on Earth would I spend days upon days, hundreds of hours or more farming for one particular item when I could just get instant gratification and buy it? For me at least, hunting for items was the #1 reason I played D2, and the #1 reason I wanted to play D3. I'm not saying that's how YOU need to play, or anyone else, I'm instead giving you a reason why I'm defending the BoA idea.
After all of that is said, it boils down to this for me; I would much rather have to farm every legendary that I want to use, because that is more satisfying to me. I'd rather work hard, in-game for the items then just buy them. I thought I would like buying them with the RMAH, and it turns out I was wrong, and that aspect alone almost ruined the game for me.
With the current model, there still is trading in RoS. Crafting mats (specifically from legendaries), gems and to a slightly lesser degree gold are all still valuable, and are all very needed for RoS. I realize that isn't what everyone would want, and I'm not saying those people are wrong for wanting something different. Instead I'm saying this current version, in my opinion, is the most healthy for the longevity of D3.
I still have to see a compelling argument that trading has anything to do with boosting the longevity of the game. On the contrary, even.
D2 would like to speak with you. The game that set the bar for longevity... had trading. The idea that trading causes massive harm to longevity is not only overblown, but completely contrary to history. Sure, maybe more people would have played D2 for longer if there was no trading... but maybe more people would have gotten frustrated about RNG and quit sooner too.
Yeah, that still says nothing about why and how trading affects longevity in a positive way. Just because it was a big part of D2 and D2 lasted for a long time? Well, duping was also a huge part of D2 so maybe that's the key to success.
A lot of long-term players stayed for PvP. For PvP you need equip sets for many situations. How do you get so much different and very specific gear? Trading. Without trading, those players might have lost motivation a lot earlier.
So it boosts longevity because its a means to get gear faster? So when you can buy your stuff instantly it motivates you to play more and otherwise there is a risk that you lose interest?
If some people can't realise that the fun in this game is the hunt for items, and not necessarily having the items in your possession, then that's their loss.
With this statement you are just putting a foot in your mouth in so many ways. What is the goal of hunting for items if not to possess them? What is the goal of trading if not to posses even more items faster? Durr. If all the fun is supposedly in the item hunt then why do you want to trade instead of hunting for items? Durr again.
It's complicated on this subject though. When I said you're living in should-land, I was referring to you and everyone else who just says "well, we shouldn't have to have our game built around botters", and "Blizzard should be able to just crack down harder on bots". Yes, in a perfect world that would be the case, but as years of evidence will back me up, Blizzard, or anyone for that matter, CAN'T crack down on bots 100%, and having even 1% around really does screw with the game.
And you know I fully agree with you on this point too. /bromance
My philosophical, and rhetorical, question boils down to... why ruin aspects of the game for MILLIONS of players over what that segment of botters that Blizzard can't crack down on?
When you fall and get a scrape on your knee you don't go and cut your leg off because it's "ruined." When your car gets a flat tire you don't go all Thelma and Louise and drive it off a cliff. When your child sneezes you don't euthanize them.
Trading HAS DRAWBACKS. Not trading HAS DRAWBACKS.
The rational solution is to design a game that's fun whether or not you trade. Design a game where you're not miles behind if you choose not to trade, but one where you're not penalized if you do trade. It goes back to the "sandbox" mentality versus the "social engineering" mentality. D2 was successful because it didn't try to define how we played the game outside of the very broad. To a certain extent they did this to a fault - Enigma, for example, allowed TOO MUCH freedom. But one of the things that made D2 so successful is that they weren't busy taking stances on whether or not trading was good - they were just making a game that people liked under a variety of circumstances.
I mean, if botters were THAT detrimental to the game, well D2 never should have lasted. If D2 is any indication, maybe they should worry less about the "economic effect" of bots and less about the "economic effect" of trading because it sure didn't seem to matter THAT much in D2.
Yeah, that still says nothing about why and how trading affects longevity in a positive way. Just because it was a big part of D2 and D2 lasted for a long time? Well, duping was also a huge part of D2 so maybe that's the key to success.
Except duping is explicitly against the rules, even in D2?
Your point is that trading kills longevity. I counter that by saying that one of the longest-lasting games in PC history, and certainly the game that really put ARPGs on the map, had absolutely no restrictions on trading and was considered a major success. This doesn't prove that free trading contributes to logevity, but it sure would suggest that it isn't nearly as detrimental to the longevity of the game as you'd like to portray it.
I mean, if you're right that trading kills longevity then any reasonable person would have to believe that D2 would never have made it for 5-10 years because, surely, at some point that massive negative effect that trading had would have kicked in and killed it off.
More likely is that most people just don't give a shit if the game lasts them 2 months or 20 years, so long as they have fun playing it. Shocking, I know.
For me, TL2 had next-to-no replayability, but I still enjoyed playing through it. I still got dozens of hours of entertainment for my $19.99. I don't see what the fuss is about. Not every game needs to have 10 straight years of playing. That's a completely unreal expectation to have of ANY game... including D2. No one picked up their copy of D2 and thought "If I don't play this game for 1000 hours per year for 10 years then it's terrible." After playing D2C no one picked up their copy of LoD and thought "If I don't play this game five days per week, every week, for six, or more, years then it's terrible."
The whole "longevity" discussion boils down to mostly-misplaced expectations. Sure D2 lasted a long time, but you just can't expect a game to last a decade. D2, in that respect, was one of those games that somehow achieved something that most games have absolutely no chance of doing. In fact, in this day and age, I'd be surprised if ANY game that only had one expansion could even last for five years.
Hell, WoW requires an expansion every 18-24 months to stay relevant. Let that sink in.
With this statement you are just putting a foot in your mouth in so many ways. What is the goal of hunting for items if not to possess them? What is the goal of trading if not to posses even more items faster? Durr. If all the fun is supposedly in the item hunt then why do you want to trade instead of hunting for items? Durr again.
For most players (ie: not hardcore traders) the goal of trading is to have a fall-back, a safety net, against RNG. If you and I are buddies and you are trying to make that thorns build work... and you've managed to find five of the six items that make it work, and then you go for 3, 4, 5, 6, 7... 8 months without finding that last item... maybe I, as a good friend, hook you up if I find it.
There is nothing detrimental about that behavior. It doesn't "devalue" legendaries. It doesn't destroy the integrity of items. What it does do, though, is alleviate some of the negative consequences of a game driven by RNG - strangely enough they have realized this is important because that's basically what the enchantress (and most likely crafting) do to an extent.
If they implement a good self-found experience most people will have very little incentive to engage in "mass trading" and the lower the demand for these things the less impact botters and 3rd party sites will have. But if they accomplish this it begs the question why they'd even need to remove trading since trading becomes an obvious second-best to killing. It becomes the fall-back. It becomes what you do when you're frustrated with RNG, and not what you do to actually gear up.
To me... that sounds precisely like a game I'd really like to play. One where I'm not told if I'm allowed to trade, but one where trading ceases to be the focus of the game because the game is THAT FUN... and because finding your own items actually feels productive. A game like that, in and of itself, would probably have a very small trading/3rd party seller community because everyone would be engrossed in self-improvement.... without the nanny state approach.
When you need that one specific item for PvP, then you don't farm for YEARS to get this single piece.
Requiring one specific item also applies to making a build in D3, has nothing to do with PvP per se. If your sole concern is the speed of item acquisition, I guess RMT websites are actually a god given gift to the playerbase.
Allow trading.
Make gold BoA.
trading now works item for item like in D2.
you can trade your friends and bots wont exist if gold, gems and crafting mats are BoA.
everyones happy.
You are getting things wrong. Diablo end-game is NOT farming items. That's what the Diablo 3 devs told their players what end-game was. But in Diablo 2, farming items is not the end-game.
That's an interesting statement. So what was the endgame in D2 that they could try to reimplement into D3 (with their own twist obviously)?
Shaggy, I never specifically argued in this thread that trading kills longevity so that you would have to counter-argue. I just wanted to hear a good argument that it boosts longevity which I still haven't and, of course, will not. The thread title irritates me to no end.
To me... that sounds precisely like a game I'd really like to play. One where I'm not told if I'm allowed to trade, but one where trading ceases to be the focus of the game because the game is THAT FUN... and because finding your own items actually feels productive. A game like that, in and of itself, would probably have a very small trading/3rd party seller community because everyone would be engrossed in self-improvement.... without the nanny state approach.
Let's just agree on what you said in that paragraph and call it a day.
Allow trading.
Make gold BoA.
trading now works item for item like in D2.
you can trade your friends and bots wont exist if gold, gems and crafting mats are BoA.
everyones happy.
That's a pretty quick solution, while perhaps flawed, I think it solves many issues.
The only thing I could see as flawed in this is the botters having to farm items, which I'm guessing is A LOT harder than botting for gold. Maybe this is a good solution
Lol sorry buddy but you're living in should-land.
Edit: Maybe using horadric caches for trading could be cool. For example: Here I'll exchange this Azurewrath for 8 h caches. Could pay off, might not.
I can't imagine how you could be so dismissive and blaise about any subject. It's really put-offish.
There's no reason Blizzard should be designing the game around what botters do. They don't do it in WoW, they shouldn't do it in D3. People bot for herbs/ore in WoW all the time. Blizzard doesn't remove all herbs and ore and related professions from the game. They deal with the botters as best they can. Period. It's a very simple concept, and you're obviously smart enough to understand it.
There's nothing utopian about it, not when you have a game where millions of people play and have varying things they enjoy. You don't simply attack every "problem" with a machete. Arm hurts? AMPUTATE IMMEDIATELY! Minor abrasion on your foot? AMPUTATE! Someone keyed your car? SEND IT TO THE SCRAP HEAP! No one actually thinks like that. You don't throw the baby out with the bath water. It's just a bad thing to do.
Imagine if my response to your idea about Nephalem Rifts was "you're living in Utopia" and basically told you to stop making suggestions on how to improve the game because it's imperfect and always will be. I mean, the game never will be perfect, so let's just not try to improve it. That kind of defeatest attitude is stupid... and you're only acting like that because you fail to understand that this issue does matter to lots of players (a poll on incgamers suggests that 60% of people want a less-restrictive solution than what is currently implemented and also suggests that hard-line BoA advocates are barely even the plurality of those polled). That is far too large of a number to simply ignore and play off as if it's some minority who is just trying to ruin the game for you. The "BoA or die" crowd is, actually, the minority. Why? Because the sane majority is fucking fed up with these extreme black-and-white solutions to problems.
D2 would like to speak with you. The game that set the bar for longevity... had trading. The idea that trading causes massive harm to longevity is not only overblown, but completely contrary to history. Sure, maybe more people would have played D2 for longer if there was no trading... but maybe more people would have gotten frustrated about RNG and quit sooner too.
It's a double-edged sword. Trading expedites certain things for a certain group of players. But for another group it acts as a safety net against RNG. You are only looking at it from one perspective, though. You are not acknowledging that the lack of that safety net might actually cause people to quit the game too. Both things are not good for longevity - but both things are fairly minor in the grand scheme of things.
That's why my perspective, from the get-go, is that instead of socially-engineering the game, Blizzard should be giving us the "sandbox" that was D2. They took a major step towards this with Adventure Mode, but took an even bigger step backwards with BoA. D2 was amazing because it didn't tell us how to play even though it obviously needed a bit more balance. In fact, the only major example as to how D2 failed to provide freedom was the OP ladder runewords (which is also why I'm against ladder-specific rewards that aren't cosmetic).
D2 was so successful because it didn't say "you can't trade" or "you must trade."
D3 started out with "you must trade (or close to it)" because of the AH and has now migrated to "you can't trade." This harsh juxtaposition with how D2 handled the subject (by specifically NOT handling it at all) is troubling to anyone with a memory of the past. The AH was an experiment, and hopefully Blizzard learned from it. I just don't see going to the other extreme as a reasonable solution. It reminds me of American politics. People who seek middle-ground solutions are spurned. Everyone has to pander to their constituency and the more extreme you are about your beliefs the better it works out... even if that is decidedly against the interests of the average people.
Idealogues rarely solve problems.
2) It creates a social environment between players (if there is interaction between them through the trading) because you have to communicate, negotiate, and meet new players or players you've already met before.
Could you please elaborate on your opinion as to why trading is bad?
Not quite because I believe the original proposition was to use the friend's list as the only means of trading. If item binds on 1st trade you run into the same problem as the items that drop as BOA. Put another way, if Player A trades Player B item0, item0 is now bound to player B right. Well now if player B wants to trade for item1 that Player C has, he wont be able to use item0 in that trade. And its quite likely item0 is worth trading since player B traded for it in the first place... so now you got people complaining they cant trade an item more than once with their friends (no trading back and forth as well).
The only true way to facilitate user-friendly, safe, and fair trading is the Auction House... thats it. All of these friend-trade or clan-trade ideas have major flaws in them and trying to fix these flaws would only make the game mechanics so convoluted the entire game would become repulsive to play. You either want to be able to trade... in which case we need the AH back, or you don't want trade in which case say hello BOAs for the future of D3.
2) Serves as an excuse to not come up with actual systems that make people join games together and socialize (like Baal runs which are most effective when people party up or monster immunities which make people party up)
3) Creates a botting-friendly environment
I was actually about to post with this in mind, but Dousie beat me to it =)
I'd be in favor of items having a 1 trade limit, I think that's a good middle ground, but it'd have to come with qualifiers, such as only to people in your clan / in your game / on your Flist (for some set amount, like two weeks +). Then that'd almost completely kill the vast network of botters.
But if it's left to JUST a 1 trade limit, then you have the same problem that we have right now; Getting all the gear you could ever want is just minutes away.
@ Shaggy.
Sorry bud I was on my phone at work and didn't have to time to write out anything very long, I wasn't trying to be just an ideological douche.
It's complicated on this subject though. When I said you're living in should-land, I was referring to you and everyone else who just says "well, we shouldn't have to have our game built around botters", and "Blizzard should be able to just crack down harder on bots". Yes, in a perfect world that would be the case, but as years of evidence will back me up, Blizzard, or anyone for that matter, CAN'T crack down on bots 100%, and having even 1% around really does screw with the game.
When I first joined this site and the hot debate was whether or not Blizzard should implement the RMAH, I was all for it. Hell, I defended it like it was my own idea. I used the line of thinking 'Hey, if you don't like it, don't use it! How does it screw with YOUR gameplay?'. Looking back, I'm very comfortable admitting I was completely and utterly incorrect. It DID screw with my gameplay. Call me weak willed if you want, but why on Earth would I spend days upon days, hundreds of hours or more farming for one particular item when I could just get instant gratification and buy it? For me at least, hunting for items was the #1 reason I played D2, and the #1 reason I wanted to play D3. I'm not saying that's how YOU need to play, or anyone else, I'm instead giving you a reason why I'm defending the BoA idea.
After all of that is said, it boils down to this for me; I would much rather have to farm every legendary that I want to use, because that is more satisfying to me. I'd rather work hard, in-game for the items then just buy them. I thought I would like buying them with the RMAH, and it turns out I was wrong, and that aspect alone almost ruined the game for me.
With the current model, there still is trading in RoS. Crafting mats (specifically from legendaries), gems and to a slightly lesser degree gold are all still valuable, and are all very needed for RoS. I realize that isn't what everyone would want, and I'm not saying those people are wrong for wanting something different. Instead I'm saying this current version, in my opinion, is the most healthy for the longevity of D3.
I gues I'd be willing to live with that risk.
And you know I fully agree with you on this point too. /bromance
My philosophical, and rhetorical, question boils down to... why ruin aspects of the game for MILLIONS of players over what that segment of botters that Blizzard can't crack down on?
When you fall and get a scrape on your knee you don't go and cut your leg off because it's "ruined." When your car gets a flat tire you don't go all Thelma and Louise and drive it off a cliff. When your child sneezes you don't euthanize them.
Trading HAS DRAWBACKS. Not trading HAS DRAWBACKS.
The rational solution is to design a game that's fun whether or not you trade. Design a game where you're not miles behind if you choose not to trade, but one where you're not penalized if you do trade. It goes back to the "sandbox" mentality versus the "social engineering" mentality. D2 was successful because it didn't try to define how we played the game outside of the very broad. To a certain extent they did this to a fault - Enigma, for example, allowed TOO MUCH freedom. But one of the things that made D2 so successful is that they weren't busy taking stances on whether or not trading was good - they were just making a game that people liked under a variety of circumstances.
I mean, if botters were THAT detrimental to the game, well D2 never should have lasted. If D2 is any indication, maybe they should worry less about the "economic effect" of bots and less about the "economic effect" of trading because it sure didn't seem to matter THAT much in D2.
Except duping is explicitly against the rules, even in D2?
Your point is that trading kills longevity. I counter that by saying that one of the longest-lasting games in PC history, and certainly the game that really put ARPGs on the map, had absolutely no restrictions on trading and was considered a major success. This doesn't prove that free trading contributes to logevity, but it sure would suggest that it isn't nearly as detrimental to the longevity of the game as you'd like to portray it.
I mean, if you're right that trading kills longevity then any reasonable person would have to believe that D2 would never have made it for 5-10 years because, surely, at some point that massive negative effect that trading had would have kicked in and killed it off.
More likely is that most people just don't give a shit if the game lasts them 2 months or 20 years, so long as they have fun playing it. Shocking, I know.
For me, TL2 had next-to-no replayability, but I still enjoyed playing through it. I still got dozens of hours of entertainment for my $19.99. I don't see what the fuss is about. Not every game needs to have 10 straight years of playing. That's a completely unreal expectation to have of ANY game... including D2. No one picked up their copy of D2 and thought "If I don't play this game for 1000 hours per year for 10 years then it's terrible." After playing D2C no one picked up their copy of LoD and thought "If I don't play this game five days per week, every week, for six, or more, years then it's terrible."
The whole "longevity" discussion boils down to mostly-misplaced expectations. Sure D2 lasted a long time, but you just can't expect a game to last a decade. D2, in that respect, was one of those games that somehow achieved something that most games have absolutely no chance of doing. In fact, in this day and age, I'd be surprised if ANY game that only had one expansion could even last for five years.
Hell, WoW requires an expansion every 18-24 months to stay relevant. Let that sink in.
For most players (ie: not hardcore traders) the goal of trading is to have a fall-back, a safety net, against RNG. If you and I are buddies and you are trying to make that thorns build work... and you've managed to find five of the six items that make it work, and then you go for 3, 4, 5, 6, 7... 8 months without finding that last item... maybe I, as a good friend, hook you up if I find it.
There is nothing detrimental about that behavior. It doesn't "devalue" legendaries. It doesn't destroy the integrity of items. What it does do, though, is alleviate some of the negative consequences of a game driven by RNG - strangely enough they have realized this is important because that's basically what the enchantress (and most likely crafting) do to an extent.
If they implement a good self-found experience most people will have very little incentive to engage in "mass trading" and the lower the demand for these things the less impact botters and 3rd party sites will have. But if they accomplish this it begs the question why they'd even need to remove trading since trading becomes an obvious second-best to killing. It becomes the fall-back. It becomes what you do when you're frustrated with RNG, and not what you do to actually gear up.
To me... that sounds precisely like a game I'd really like to play. One where I'm not told if I'm allowed to trade, but one where trading ceases to be the focus of the game because the game is THAT FUN... and because finding your own items actually feels productive. A game like that, in and of itself, would probably have a very small trading/3rd party seller community because everyone would be engrossed in self-improvement.... without the nanny state approach.
Make gold BoA.
trading now works item for item like in D2.
you can trade your friends and bots wont exist if gold, gems and crafting mats are BoA.
everyones happy.
Let's just agree on what you said in that paragraph and call it a day.
The only thing I could see as flawed in this is the botters having to farm items, which I'm guessing is A LOT harder than botting for gold. Maybe this is a good solution
So basically, there was no end-game, other than your own made-up imagination-land endgame. And D3 is different how?