Quote (Diabarblo @ Mar 10 2016 11:21am)
Nubs were overcome with joy when the ah was removed.
This to this day is the biggest joke about removing trade.
When you lay the scenario out infront of you, it becomes pathetic from a gaming community stand-point.
1.) People bitch that trading is pay to win and that Blizzard needs to remove trade from the game:-- There was no leaderboards, PvP or ranking system of any kind to determine what "winning" was. People who chose to invest their IRL dollars into the game gained nothing from it. They simply wanted to put money into a hobby, much like car enthusiasts like to put money into their cars.
--- There was no forcing a player to trade. People were openly discussing making 'ironmen' characters that they would self-restrict from trading in order to make the game feel more rewarding/harder. So the fact that trade was not required and there was always the option for people to play trade-free if they chose makes the begging for the removal of trade even more idiotic.
2.) People would complain that drop rates were too low because the game had trade. (ie: it was too hard for them to gear up without investing time/money into the game).-- The entire purpose of Diablo 3 ( and all Diablo games, and games like it) is to grind until you find your perfect gear set, and then grind some more. The fact that trade was removed and drop rates buffed so substantially that anyone who is willing to play 20-30 hours per 3-4 month season can have themselves a gear set running at 80-90% of 'end game' capabilities makes the game feel like a 20 hour campaign with no reward. The grind after reaching end game is far more rewarding with trade because the possibility of finding that 'big ticket item' that someone is going to spend $5,000 on is far more exciting then maybe one day finding a 20 INT upgrade on your gloves.
--- By drop rates being buffed as much as they were, it effectively removes 99.9% of items from the pool of useful drops. Almost every legendary you find is going to be instantly useless for your character, every yellow/blue you find is strictly used for salvaging materials, and even if you do find an item you want there is only a small chance that you will ever need to find more than 1. A 6 piece set is a 6 piece set is a 6 piece set. For players who aren't going for rank 1, a poorly rolled 6 piece set is the exact same as a perfect 6 piece set.... they both clear T10 the same speed. At least when you found somewhat useless legendaries (or nicely rolled rares) in the past you had the possibility of selling them on the AH for some small amount of gold. That small amount builds over time until you are able to afford an item you really want/need.
---- Removing trade renders finding an item you don't need, but rolled well, useless. Remember being on a DH and finding an IK chest? Or being on a CM wizard and working DH Nat sets into our gear sets because the set bonuses were universally good? Now what? You're on a wiz, the game gives you that 0.00001% chance of accidently dropping an item not for your class and you pick it up saying "Really? Fucking IK Chest? Thanks blizz".
tl;dr:
-People bitched about trade being bad for the game, and that players were paying to win - when there was nothing to win and players who invested money in the game were simply putting money towards a hobby they enjoy killing time with.
-- Removing trade, while you would think it would add longevity to the gameplay experience, has actually shortened the end game because of how simple it is to get full gear sets with the inflated drop rates. At least when the game had an economy, quality items were sometimes hard to come by given the rarity of them and the number of buyers. Now you play for 10-20 hours and the game pelts you with every item you need... the next 1000 hours that season you are looking for 0.5% upgrades to your already completed set.
And you can argue what ever point you want to make but the reality of it is that the people from Vanilla who were putting in thousands of hours of play time are fading away, and they've been replaced by the 32 year old dad who wants to play 3 hours a week and remain competitve on the leaderboards.
This post was edited by TheDutchMan1443 on Mar 14 2016 12:28am