Trading/Marketplace?

[NOVAxyz]

I know you're all planning on implementing multiplayer and which is why I bring this up for in time you guys may be able to collaborate and use the ability to trade with other players through a sort of 'marketplace' to trade things such as all your unused or unneeded gems, epics, or even to help other players complete a leg set. To be fair though I truthfully have only been playing for about a week and am only a lvl 30 wizzy. But any feedback on my idea whether it has already been discussed or just if you would like to support my idea would be GREAT!

Below is just the sort of setup I've seen to work pretty decently.
Taxing: All items become taxed when put up on the marketplace whether that be a % tax (usually around 5-10) in gold,
or bypass the gold taxation and allow a 5-10 gem tax on placing the item up for trade.

Amount Tradable: You could initially start it out as only 1 item able to be put up for trade,
and have each additional slot be around 50-100 gems. Probably only about 1-10 trading slots.

Time posted: This one is just simply about 24-72 hours up on the market, if it hasn't been bought within that time clearly it was an either,
an unfair price or an unnecessary/common item

Pricing: This is probably one of the most important parts of the idea as it will be how other players purchase your items. Most marketplaces only have 1 or 2 options (gold/gems) but it could as well be used as an opportunity to mail someone a 'trade for trade' (I want what you have, do you want what I have?) and trade either 1 item for 1 or multiples, your selling 1 item but I'll give you these several items in hopes you may accept mine instead of anothers.


Once again this is just an idea, I hope you read through it and tell me your ideas/concerns/problems with it!
My first post!

[SoulGaming2]

Yes, yes and yes. Great ideas. The shop system is (propably) gonna be changed this year, including more items to buy for gems and gold. I hope that your ideas will be put in the game. For now, as Serban confirmed, he is the major of the offline game activity (Act 4, companions, other staff including shop system) ... Note he don't do art, art goes to Marius.

Serban said that they are working ... Or going to work... On heroes home village. This means that some pages you now have in your inventory tab should be moved to this village, making them changing the shop system from apart (hopefully).

[Adrian (Developer)]

Introducing a Trading/Marketplace system poses several problems that are hard to solve considering the current game state:
- inflation: given enough time the market will fill with cheap and good gear, thus reducing your incentive and fun to actually fight monsters to get it.
- exploits: any exploit will impact the market by further lowering prices or introducing insanely powerful items on it. It's one thing to have some isolated cheaters, another thing to allow those cheaters to interact with legitimate players.

Let's not forget the negative impact the marketplace had on Diablo 3.

[Quarks]

Introducing a Trading/Marketplace system poses several problems that are hard to solve considering the current game state:
- inflation: given enough time the market will fill with cheap and good gear, thus reducing your incentive and fun to actually fight monsters to get it.
- exploits: any exploit will impact the market by further lowering prices or introducing insanely powerful items on it. It's one thing to have some isolated cheaters, another thing to allow those cheaters to interact with legitimate players.

Let's not forget the negative impact the marketplace had on Diablo 3.

trading completely ruined Diablo2

[SoulGaming2]

Yes it does. But it makes you motivated to find, for example Tyrael's might, the best armor in the whole game and trade.

[Jose Sarmento]

Maybe just allow trading 1 for 1 on Unique/named items?

So I could swap some of the 3 Rylocke's Deflectors gathering dust in my stash against some Deirdre's Resolves or whatever, and make someone else happy in the process.

And if the game enforces a 1:1 exchange, both inflation and exploits will be kept in check I think...

[Ivx]

The more I think about it, the more I feel like it should never be implemented (at least not in any grand scale or meaningful way).

1) Makes you feel like you never get good enough gear; a.k.a. keeping up with the Joneses

You know that feeling when you get a good legendary drop? How difficult it is to replace and how it feels nice every time you see it on your character portrait, then you check it and think "I was really lucky when that dropped"?

That's going to disappear when 50 other pieces with better stats are just a few taps away in the trading area. You can't compare your drop rates to drop rates of thousands of other players; there will almost always be someone who will have gear better than you. And that's going to make you feel like your drop rate sucks, the game is unfair and you'd rather not even bother looking anymore.

Right now, you may get a good set item that won't be perfect, but it will be usable in some build or another. It may not have the perfect offense stats, but then you take a closer look and realize that hey, maybe you can keep this for your tank set. Or the other way around. If you get that same item while a marketplace is already offering you similar ones, you won't feel it's nearly as special or useful and you'll just feel like 'meh, another mediocre legendary'.

2) Loot progression

"Yay, I leveled up/found excellent gear, now I can play high Trials for even better gear!"

That's gonna disappear for "let me grind more gold or buy more gems so I can get better items at the market". Which will lead to...

3) Ermahgerd bring out the torches and pitchforks, it's turning pay to win!

The game is currently not in any way pay to win. But that's going to change if you're allowed to bypass both luck (drop RNG) and effort (grinding) by buying enough gold/gems to get an item that you just saw in the marketplace, so that you can compete with the Gear-gods of the Leaderboard. Which will make you feel like...

4) Playing the game is pointless

Specifically, playing the actual levels is pointless because after all, the end-all perfect piece of gear is sitting right there outside the dungeon, on a market stall. Just waiting to be bought. How can your luck compare to the pooled luck of thousands of other players? It can't. And that means that you have to buy whatever is out there if you want to compete.

Etc. etc. etc. Basically, I could go on forever. Overall, I think it's a really bad idea to put this into a game which seems to have got its rarity balance just about right. Rare items should remain rare. I do agree that they should sometimes be more readily available - for example, in the shop screen for gems - but an unchecked free market would make them too readily available.

What's the point of playing the game when you can't get anything better than what your neighbour on the market stall is already offering you? For that matter, what's the point of playing at all if you have flawless gear?

In the current game, even if you have near-perfect gear, there's still at least some space for improvement. If that changes to being able to just buy flawless pieces, well, I don't know what's the point of playing it then...



P.S. Not all doom and gloom - maybe trading gem varieties of the same rarity 1 for 1 would be an idea. Since people usually miss one or two particular types when crafting, perhaps that wouldn't hurt.. And you could help other people if you play the game together with someone else.

[SoulGaming2]

Yes, as long it has ruined most of old schools RPGs, devs must be careful and don't do the mistake in this.

[RageGoat]

When I've played other games of this genre, the parts I enjoyed the most usually involved sharing gear with friends. When a buddy finds something for your class and gives it to ya, or vice versa.

However, I have to agree with Ivx here. Centralized trade usually ends up hurting the feel of these games.

My vote would be a loot-allocation system with live multiplayer ideally, or if not, some kind of sharing system between friends. Even if a bit exploitable, it doesn't matter much without a market to worry about.

[Radament]

Thought it was a good idea, until Adrian pointed some things out.