DiabloFans

Quote from shaggy

Quote from Zeyk23

You're saying that by making it easier to trade, it will actually take longer for people to reach the power cap? Sorry, that doesn't make any sense at all.

That's not what I'm saying at all. Re-read and try again. I'm not advocating for ANY form of mass trading. I'm advocating for what I refer to as "bind to friends/clan" instead of "bind to game."

I'm advocating for a framework whereby we can define our own game-within-a-game without defining what others are doing. Nothing more, nothing less.

Quote from shaggy

Quote from Zeyk23

Yes, Blizzard is a business, and they make money by creating good games. Congratulations, you cracked the code. A less cynical person might call BoA Legendaries a "make the game as good as possible" decision.

His point, since you were too busy being a smartass to actually let it sink into your skull, was that making everything BoA may very well come at a price. That price is drop rates so greatly increased (since you can't trade anymore) that the game doesn't have any longevity to it. This is a REAL concern whether or not you tap dance around it.

Let's just say, for example, that around 90 out of 100 (with 100 being absolutely BiS gear in every slot) the rate at which you acquire items gets slow. Let's also say that Blizzard tunes drop rates with the intention that you hit 90 after 8-12 months. Now you have the majority of players at 90/100 within a year who are basically in the SAME situation they are now - most items are not useful and the ones that are useful are few and far between.

Without further details, that is a recipe for attrition due to severe boredom. Us Diablo FANS don't want a game that has a predetermined shelf-life. One thing we learned from D2 is that the players make the game what it is and that having the freedom to do so is what gives the game such a long lifespan. D2 had loads of problems, but it lasted because, in a way, it was almost a sandbox. There weren't lots of rules. The game wasn't catering to self-found or traders, nor was it trying to exclude one or the other. The social engineering that you're advocating was NON-EXISTENT in D2 and that's what made it work.

Quote from maka

Quote from Zeyk23

Quote from maka

Quote from Zeyk23

i.e. "if we improve loot too much, traders will reach the endgame too quickly and get bored"

That's a financial decision if I ever saw one.

That's nonsense, they're not collecting any money from people who already bought the game. In fact they're removing their only source of post-launch revenue for the sake of resolving this issue.

Bored people don't buy expansions, and might even resent Blizzard, therefore having repercussions in future games/other franchises.
If not, why do they care if traders get bored?

Quote from maka

Quote from Zeyk23

In my opinion they should just remove + Pickup Radius and give it a better default value. Nobody likes using an affix slot for a small convenience like that. Then add new skill-specific affixes to increase the radius of certain skills rather than tacking that on to pickup radius.

Alternately they could not nerf it, and make it only for gold pickup and those other skills.

Witch Doctors might disagree.

Quote from maka

Quote from Zeyk23

i.e. "if we improve loot too much, traders will reach the endgame too quickly and get bored"

That's a financial decision if I ever saw one.

Quote from maka

Quote from Zeyk23

If they just buffed loot across the board and left trading intact, this situation would not change. They would probably have to add more MPs to compensate, so now you're playing at MP6 and the other guys are playing at MP11. Same deal. This psychological effect is the real problem with the AH, and trading in general.

Damn, wrong again. You just can't catch a break today, Zeyk.

Viable =/= fun. Compounding that, the fact that this game is about loot makes higher MP's a goal for everyone, because they drop so much more loot (and this game is about that loot). If they made MP purely about the challenge (no extra loot), then I could care less about higher MP's. But then all the people that pretend to care about the challenge would have to take that mask off, and reveal what everyone already knows: they just want that extra loot.

If they buffed the loot across the board, maybe I'd have a chance of actually SEEING many of the legendaries that exist in the game. Have never seen a Mempo, have never seen a Witching Hour, have never seen Lacuni's, have never seen Ice climbers, Have never seen Windforce, have never seen Calamity, have never seen Stormshield......and this is just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are loads and loads more I have never seen.
Plus, I don't use the AH, so your argument is DoA.
You keep insisting why I don't feel satisfied with the game. Does it not sound strange to you that you insist that you know that better than I do?

Quote from maka

Quote from Zeyk23

Quote from TheDFO

Yeah, I think BoA is an item sink. Personally, I think it's something they needed from the get go, even if BoA isn't the best.

Now that they're dropping the AH (which is a pity, IMO, as other trading method is...terrible), I don't think they really need a BoA or something to denote self found. Even if you do trade for it, that probably means you found something of near equal value.

You just said it yourself, other means of trading are terrible. And I think it's already been established that the AH was also terrible in its own way. That's why they added BoA - to kill trading entirely and focus the game around the most fun way to find loot, which is self-found. If they didn't, some third party site would build something comparable to the AH and we would eventually be right back in the same position, with self-found players being second class citizens compared to those who traded for exactly what they wanted. We had that in D2 and it was awful.

Wow, you REALLY don't understand the complaints SF people have about the current game, do you?

To everyone that shares this man's opinion, get it right once and for all: we're not upset because traders are 'ahead' of us in terms of gear. We are upset because gearing up SF takes so long and the loot is so bad. In a game balanced around playing SF, traders would still be ahead of me, but I wouldn't care any more, because playing SF would be fun.

Quote from maka

Quote from Zeyk23

People who trade want an advantage, it's meaningless for them otherwise.

Wrong.

Quote from Zeyk23

Diablo is a game that's all about farming as efficiently as possible.

Wrong gain.

Damn, not your day, buddy.

Quote from overneathe

Quote from Zeyk23

Let's say that they left the auction house as it is, and added a completely separate Self-Found Mode. Self-found mode has a huge boost to loot drops, so those players can farm substantially faster than players who continue to play in regular mode and trade for loot. Would you be okay with this?

The problem with adding a self-found mode is that it's one more mode. With having normal and Hardcore and at some point Ladder and non-Ladder we'll have 4 different types of modes, in which players can separate themselves from their friends. With an inclusion of self-found it would mean 8 modes. If you get a new real life friend, for example, and he says he's a huge D3 fan, you might not be able to play together more then ever. He might be Ladder, Hardcore, Self-Found. You'll have to squeeze in exactly in that category to even play with him.

Quote from shaggy

Quote from itirnitii

Keep in mind my position is willing to compromise with ideas involving smaller scale trading. I'm really only arguing against a global economy.

I'm not going to respond to the other stuff because, at this point, this is all that matters.

Like I said, if "economies" revolved around clans and friends... it would solve the problem from BOTH ENDS without ostracizing anyone.

You don't want to trade? Join a clan (and have friends) that aren't into that. If a d-bag like me is on your friends list, chat with him, don't group with him. Right? It's a VERY SIMPLE solution that not only achieves your goal of eliminating "mass trading" (a goal I don't disagree with) but promotes social aspects and does so without infringing on ANYONE. If you want to refrain from trading you can, if I don't... I can!

The best part is that it's a PLAYER-DRIVEN solution. It's not done by Big Daddy Blizzard. It's not done by the government overlords. It's done by US. The game gives us a framework... and we take that and run. In my mind that's the absolute best way to handle something like this.

Quote from Ryude

Quote from Mehsiah

I was hoping to hear about ladder news from Blizzcon on whether I want to keep going for Paragon 1000 or not. With news that nothing is going on with it at the moment I'll prob stick with going for 1000 since Im around the 600 mark now.

Yeah man, I realized last month that they weren't going to implement ladder. It's just one of those things they do to draw in people. Remember team deathmatch?

Quote from Ruluku

Quote from Zeyk23

Quote from maka

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.