Bind on equip items ?

[Tigel]

If you look at the gameplay video when Barbarian if equipping magical axes (02:13) they seem not to be bind on equip, with WoW terms. Which is nice IMO.

Also it seems that Blizzard will be implementing WoW style inventory bags as the Barbarian seems to have four empty bag slots in his inventory and there is small bag dropping later in video (08:49).

[moranor]

the less wow stuff the better
they had a cooldown effect on the ground stomp attack = no thanks and they also had a "block" text that popped up everytime someone blocked = even more no thanks

[Furyan]

I hate the idea of having soulbound item in D2. This would discourage trading, which is imo one of the main things the popularity of D2 is based upon. So I really hope they don't make bind on pickup items, those things should stay WoW-only.

[konfeta]

they had a cooldown effect on the ground stomp attack = no thanks

WoW-Phobia for the sake of hating on WoW is, quite frankly, stupid. It's an AoE stun move. Unless you give it a sensical limitation such as diminishing returns for every use on monster x over time y or a cooldown, it will either be stupidly overpowered or nerfed into gimmicky uselessness.

That said, soulbound items in D2 are a no-no, I agree. Not the game for it.

[Omikron8]

for those hesitant about skill cooldowns apparently they have never played a caster class in D2

hello casting delay timers

[Arioch]

Given how much Blizzard hates people trading items for real money, and assuming that drops are now player-specific, I'm betting that most good items are going to be bind on equip, if not bind on pickup.

[stillman]

I agree with moranor: the text showing up telling us something was blocked was really distracting. The animation alone should tell the story. I don't even like the little red life bar showing up over each enemy. And, basically any Ryu-Ken Street Fighter 2 colored puffs and splashes with each hit that cover up some of the action is bad imo. Hopefully there will be an options setting to take that wacky stuff off. This is kind of a minor complaint for me though; I'm pretty happy with what I saw.

As for the bind idea, I don't think it would be used in such an item-dominated game like Diablo. Or, it would at least be mentioned in Q&A.

[worlann]

I agree, soulbound items do not fit in the Diablo franchise.

[TheSakari]

Trading was core to diabloii for me. It made the game. Soulbound items simply don't fit in diablo... its all about the loot.

[mitchflow]

The key point here that everyone's missing is that items become worthless over time if they don't have a soulbind mechanic. Consider how many Occys drop any given day on Bnet. Multiply that by six months and they're really not so hard to comeby any more. When you factor in soulbinding, it makes the items disappear from the economy everytime someone uses one so it keeps the price and quantity stable.

I'm personally a big fan of bind on equip. It just makes for a healthier economy.

[Vertigo X]

The key point here that everyone's missing is that items become worthless over time if they don't have a soulbind mechanic. Consider how many Occys drop any given day on Bnet. Multiply that by six months and they're really not so hard to comeby any more. When you factor in soulbinding, it makes the items disappear from the economy everytime someone uses one so it keeps the price and quantity stable.

I'm personally a big fan of bind on equip. It just makes for a healthier economy.
Apparently the fact that Diablo 2's system was great in terms of economy escapes some people.


WoW-Phobia for the sake of hating on WoW is, quite frankly, stupid. It's an AoE stun move. Unless you give it a sensical limitation such as diminishing returns for every use on monster x over time y or a cooldown, it will either be stupidly overpowered or nerfed into gimmicky uselessness.

That said, soulbound items in D2 are a no-no, I agree. Not the game for it.
I believe it's just fine as long as they don't make the word cooldown visible. The cooldowns in D2 were barely noticeable due to there being no visible mention of it besides the skill turning red temporarily.

[mitchflow]

[QUOTE=Vertigo X;6574544]Apparently the fact that Diablo 2's system was great in terms of economy escapes some people.QUOTE]

For it's day it passed muster but we have moved on to bigger and better ways of doing it. How many hours did you waste on the chat screen spamming WTT blah blah blah? I wasted more than I can count.

These days I, we collectively, want to buy/sell/trade in an efficent system. We want to know what our items are worth, and we don't have time to wait around trying to trade for some set piece. I want to spend more time playing the game than cranking through unnecessary logisitics.

[psykeman420]

binding is ftl

however people are quick to attribute WoW to this when really it and most other aspects of WoW are in fact predated by EQ at the very least, with MMOs there are really two types of basic MMO, EQ and UO style.

Diablo isn't an MMO at all its an action rpg with online multiplayer and I think soulbound is crap, I mean in D2 you could even trade off your personalized items, and another person could personalize them and so on, now that was cool, I liked getting items that had been personalized by many people.

[theseus]

Apparently the fact that Diablo 2's system was great in terms of economy escapes some people.

I believe it's just fine as long as they don't make the word cooldown visible. The cooldowns in D2 were barely noticeable due to there being no visible mention of it besides the skill turning red temporarily.

Diablo had a terrible economy there is no doubt about that.

[Cyborgasm]

I never played WC so can someone tell me what soulbinding is?

[NarcoticHobo]

Okay damage done per hit popping up over enemies would absolutely destroy the game. Diablo is supposed to be about fear and the unknown, cartoony crap like number of damage or block popping up over enemies is for games like wow.

Any sort of binding is just not what Diablo is about. The most fun part of the game was the insane trading and economy that fluxuated like a mad cow on its period. There were always considerably rare items even after years of MFing, simply because some items were just of such a low drop rate. If rares just managed to retake the top dog crown from uniques I think the problem could be solved in this way as well, since the odds of getting a perfect rare are far lower than some always the same item dropping in.

Still I remain optimistic as from the demo it looks like they still have at least a year if not 2 left to work on this game, and by then it will be molded into a much more diabloesque feel rather than the current diablo world as interpreted by the wow artists look.

[jrichard]

I never played WC so can someone tell me what soulbinding is?

I'll describe WoW's version of it since that's another blizzard game. An item that is bound to a character can't be traded or sold to another character. Once an item is bound it can only be sold to a vendor for gold or disenchanted (broken down into magical components used in the enchanting profession).

Items in WoW bind in two ways, bind on equip and bind on pickup. Bind on equip items don't bind to the character until they are equipped and can be sold to other players and traded up until someone equips it, then it is soulbound and follows the rules above.

Bind on pickup items bind to a character as soon as they loot it. They can never be sold to other players or traded on the auction house.

Most of the highest level gear in wow is bind on pickup. That means in order for you go obtain it with a given character, you have to be in the party or raid for the kill. Not just in the party, but also within range of the fight. So, you can't just sit a character at the beginning of a dungeon and roll on items.

Also, drops from dungeon bosses have several different ways of being divided. The most common is to have everything of uncommon quality (roughly the equivalent of magic items) and above rolled on. When items of that quality or better drop, the members of the party get a rolling dialog box on their screen where the item will go to the person who rolls the highest number between 1 and 100. There's more to it than that, but that's the basics of rolling.

There is no MFing in Wow as it's done in D2. A dungeon run might take anywhere from an hour or less for the lower level easier stuff to 6 hours a night for 2 nights for the higher level larger raids. There are no bosses that can be run in less than a minute who can drop most of the games items and the raid dungeons have reset timers making the 25 man ones only runnable once a week for a group. Dungeons are run for gear, but require a full party to do so. Most comparisons between the two games will fail due to this. The dungeons range from 5 person dungeons you can do throughout your leveling to the 25 man raid dungeons that you can get into after maxing your character level and collecting gear good enough to be able to survive and do your job in those dungeons.

Dungeon bosses have a very limited list of items they can drop and anything a dugeon or raid boss drops will bind on pickup.

Duping and botting aren't anywhere near the problem in wow as they are in d2. The economy is based around mats for the professions and items used for leveling or beginning the raiding at 70 (the current max level). Bots run, but they are looking for the profession mats or gold mainly. The RMT in wow is for leveling of characters, buying gold and buying accounts.

Consider also in this that in d2 you can in the space of a week (real time week, not a week played) get a character to high level and gear him in the game's best gear. In wow, you'll spend 10 to 15 days just leveling to 70. And by that i don't mean 10 to 15 days of real time, that's 10 to 15 days of time spent playing that character, 240 to 360 hours spent playing. At that point, you'll just be ready to start the work of getting gear that will get you into the lowest tier of raid dungeons so that you can get geared up enough to move to the next one. There's an expansion due out later this year for Wow and at this point, even if it were to come out Dec 31, there's not enough time for a person to start playing WoW and see the game's current best gear on their character. Also, note that with regular content updates adding newer and better gear, the system never hits a point where what you are wearing will be the best the game has to offer for very long and xpacs tend to reset the bar on items pretty much completely.

Completely off topic maybe and more than you wanted to know for sure. :)

But there was method to my madness. Would an item system like wow has work for d2? No, not in a non-mmo setting. Would d3 benefit from some limited binding rules on items, most notably the ones at the higher end of the spectrum? Oh yeah. Binding items is about pulling them out of the economy and keeping it from stagnating. The d2 economy, especially since .09 has been ruled by dupes and botters. It wasn't long into that patch when we saw the first of some massive duping. It was also in that patch that we really saw an upturn of the number of bots running. I knew a guy in real life who had more than 20 computers in his apartment running bots 24/7. Add to that the really long time since an update to d2 bringing in better stuff and you have one very stagnant economy.

Whether it's by binding items or some other as of yet unknown method, we can be fairly certain that in some way blizzard will have to address this all in d3. The people running bots and doing the duping have shown over time that they will work around whatever bnet does to stop them. Looking at blizz's own big game since then as well as others that have come out more recently shows all of the companies making changes to the item systems or trading in a effort to address it all. Giving the game a base currency, an auction house on the servers, and a mail system as they did in WoW doesn't solve the problems, but does make them a little easier to track. Limiting the cd keys to one account and the number of characters each account can have both total and per realm also helps with that. This isn't to say that all of those things should be in d3. As it happens, i think that an auction house would be a huge pain to try and setup and maintain in a game that's not going to be an mmo. D2 was a big change in most of the facets of the game from d1. Expect d3 to be the same.

[Holy-Avenger]

I HATE THEM WOWIFYING EVERYTHING!!!! They better NOT make things soulbound etc. that's one thing I loved about D2, the trading.

[Chestahguy]

i dont like the soulbound idea from wow but i did hate it in diablo 2 where everything was traded for soj's :/

[Lcypher]

I have never played wow, but the explanation above is really intriguing. At some point it was clear to me that MFing in D2 was just plain silly, doing mef in 1 minute or so, and just at some point everyone has the same best gear, I mean im not a hardcore player, I have a life, but I would definitely enjoy a game where there are guys who live to play and only them enjoy the glory of best loot, and not everyone around, but this demands a limitations on the transferability of itmes, I mean - again - at some point it was clear that there are groups of hundreds of people who go out there and make/get the best items and sell them for real money, flooding the market, de-valuing the items and ridiculousness entered into even higher levels (yout botd is only 350% ED, u suck...etc) that sucked!!! I am a strong supporter of re-visiting the issue of items/MF/ and the like. I mean there should be items that mean "respect, m8". and there should be no way you can buy them online.

[Swiffer]

I HATE THEM WOWIFYING EVERYTHING!!!! They better NOT make things soulbound etc. that's one thing I loved about D2, the trading.

As the poster above you said, Items have been binding to MMO characters since the days of EQ, long before WoW came out. Direct your hate properly.

Additionally, to everyone that sees Binding as some kind of mechanic that will totally destroy trading, i call bull****. Check out any populated WoW server and there is a thriving economy. Hundreads/Thousands of items are listed and sold every single day on every server.

Bind on equip would not ruin the trading economy, it would simply mean you might have to consider whether using the item or selling it would be more beneficial, instead of handing down items constantly from 1 character to another.

[Holy-Avenger]

As the poster above you said, Items have been binding do MMO characters since the days of EQ, long before WoW came out. Direct your hate properly.

Additionally, to everyone that sees Binding as some kind of mechanic that will totally destroy trading, i call bull****. Check out any populated WoW server and there is a thriving economy. Hundreads/Thousands of items are listed and sold every single day on every server.

Bind on equip would not ruin the trading economy, it would simply mean you might have to consider whether using the item or selling it would be more beneficial, instead of handing down items constantly from 1 character to another.

Point taken. But it's a lot easier to blame wow ;)

I still hate the idea. I swear if they take out MFing and the ability to trade items, I'm going to be pissed.

[Swiffer]

Point taken. But it's a lot easier to blame wow ;)

I still hate the idea. I swear if they take out MFing and the ability to trade items, I'm going to be pissed.

Cannot say for MF (since nothing has been said) but item trading will not get pulled. It has been a core part of the community since Diablo 1 first came out. Item Trading will be there, i can guarantee you that.

[Garisdacar]

the more i think about it the more i like bind on equip idea.

[bcos]

Nice post jrichard

[Rickroll]

The D2 economy is flooded with the high end items, decreasing the value of those items. Yet, there is enough of a demand for them that people are still willing to spend real $ to get them. Thats an odd contradiction. I think the ladder season resets are keeping items in demand. I mean, the ladder items start over with a reset too, right? I hope that D3 doesnt journey too far from a proven system. It's a testament to the game's design that such a large fan base still exists. Hopefully, Blizzard will focus on what's good about the Diablo series and not on what's making money over at WoW.

After 2 years of playing WoW and grueling 25 man raids filled with incompetence, hours and hours of farming, and too little reward for the time spent, I'm excited to come back to a game that I should have never left.

Extra_Cheese

[PatMaGroin]

If you want to play a game where you spam everything, trade everything, and can't see anything, there is always Diablo 2.

For those of us who want a game that improves on Diablo 2's limitations, inefficiencies, and annoyances (in game trading), there is Diablo 3.

I hope it lives up to what it could be, and not just a prettier, newer version of D2.

[mephiztophelez]

i would hate to see item binding.

[Bongstrocity]

I like the idea (being a non WoW player, i'm not totally familiar, but as i understand it) with this concept if it didn't remove trading of items entirely, but i sincerely doubt that blizzard would follow that direction. Most likely (as backed up by the non-mmo nature, and basic same overall appearance and interface) they will follow the formula that they know already works, as it guarantees some level of success and requires a hell of a lot less effort, which saves money. However, with all this negative feedback i'm seeing on the boards since saturday based around a very limited viewing of what is hardly a finished game, it reminds me of when any band puts out a new record. You always get someone who hears a band's new album and complains that it doesn't sound exactly like the old album, and appears oblivious to the idea that if you're currently happy with the way things are you don't have to play the new version, as the old one is probably not going to poof like so many HRs. Diablo II (particularly in its latest post xpac incarnations) is certainly a far cry from the first game, and I'm sure that when it came out people were angry that it didn't reproduce the exact same experience, but that's sort of the whole idea of a new game (particularly one that so many people have so publicly begged for, and now are thumbing their noses at) You want a different experience, something more mature and with new ideas and concepts, some of which might be awesome and some might suck (There were no popping suicide dolls in diablo i, and i hate that they added them for diablo ii, but for every change they made i disliked they made twenty i love..) Let's try to stay positive and not piss on the dog when he's not even on fire yet.
/soapbox dismount

Edit: guess i missed someone had just said what i wanted to, but a little quicker... sorry Pat I hope it lives up to what it could be...

[Rickroll]

For those of us who want a game that improves on Diablo 2's limitations, inefficiencies, and annoyances (in game trading), there is Diablo 3.


I'm sure we all want an improved D3. I'm not convinced that soulbinding is an improvement that the loyal fanbase will receive with open arms. As for limitations, inefficiencies, and annoyances... one man's trash is another man's loots.

[Swiffer]

I'm sure we all want an improved D3. I'm not convinced that soulbinding is an improvement that the loyal fanbase will receive with open arms. As for limitations, inefficiencies, and annoyances... one man's trash is another man's loots.

Well binding wouldnt change that. Someone who finds an item to be rubbish is unlikely to equip it and therefore can freely trade it to someone who thinks its the bees knees.

[BattleWhack]

I'm gonna go ahead and say the pop up damage and block notifications need to get taken right the **** out, or at the very least have an option to turn them off.

THAT is one little feature that this game doesn't need.

[Rcuhljr]

I think whatever they do in this respect is going to be closely tied to how they decide to do respecs(if at all), one of the reasons rerolling in D2 when you screwup a character isn't that bad is because "oh well, I'll just hand off my gear"

[Morphinia]

http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/gg252/Midi12/vlcsnap-686471.jpg

wer do these items? have boe on them????

[Rcuhljr]

wer do these items? have boe on them????

that's.. uh kinda the point of the whole thread there bucko.

[PatMaGroin]

Honestly I liked the non BoE-ness of D2, the only thing I didn't like was the economy, and how you had to have a character stacked with MF to keep from falling behind.

[Dimmu]

People seem to not realize that the poor economy in d2 is mainly the result of duping. Blizzard intended well with the 1.10 patch by making runewords the godliest items in the game, but duping clearly ruined that (not to say that nobody duped pre-1.10).
Think about how much d2 you've played and how many high runes you've ever found. I've literally mfd hundreds(maybe exaggerating) of hours in my lifetime and only found 2 high runes in my entire d2 history. Aside from the hellforge and countess, runes are crazy rare, and blizz wanted to implement that to stabilize the economy i think.
My point being that blizzard's original mechanics didn't stagnate the economy, but the dupers/hackers/botters did.
IMHO they need to pay more attention to potential cheaters than anything else when this game is finally released because D2's economy would definetly flourish without them. That said I would honestly rather this game be pay-to-play and have constant updates.
Oh, and MAYBE bind on equip, but if they can successfully keep cheaters at bay i don't think it would be neccessary.

[SlechtWeerBeer]

They can prevent alot of duping by keeping the characters serverside, mirite?
I could see bind-on-equip working, but it would cut down on fun. I've had fun with a friend of mine by switching weapons and trying to kill something, with the crappy damage we did because of the swapping. Ah well, we'll just have to wait and see what Blizz does, no?

[Thyiad]

They can prevent alot of duping by keeping the characters serverside, mirite?

No, you aren't.

Bnet D2 characters are already server side and hours after the reset there were runes for sale on pay sites. Cheats are cheats and keeping it server side won't stop that; it doesn't at the moment. Increased security by Blizzard will slow it down. WoW players may give a better explanation of how it works in their game.

I sincerely hope that the cheats don't ruin Diablo 3's Single Player element, which is an essential part of the franchise. Hellgate put SP MPing server side and it's a disaster. I still wind up with strangers when I want to MP with select friends. It also ruins my trading ability. It totally turned me off that game.

For those of you who don't ever venture into the SPF, we have a thriving community, where odd-builds abound and dupers/hackers aren't tolerated. I don't expect D3 to be D2, but keeping the way the SP and TCP/IP MPing is done is by far the most preferable option.