While I can understand some of your points when it comes to trading i have to say i completely disagree with the idea of not having trading in any ARPG much less one with so much potential. Trading is the backbone of social interaction in almost every ARPG. What you are really promoting is a solo self found style game with no real social interaction and zero reason to. That sounds completely unfun to me.

Thanks for the feedback, but I'm sure that the Wolcen community could think of much better ways to promote social interaction that don't depend on trading.

"Trading is the backbone of social interaction in almost every ARPG."
That is a very strong claim. Can you please explain? Over 90% of the players that I've traded with in other games leave the group before I can even type a "thank you". It seems that the vast majority of players want to spend their time killing mobs rather than trading. The few players who do make comments are typically more toxic than social.

I also don't understand why you think it is "unfun" to find your own loot. Do you enjoy spamming trade chat, being forced to use 3rd party web sites, stop what you're doing whenever somebody wants to buy one of your items, etc.? This is a sincere question ... I don't understand how anybody would think that is fun. Is it just what other ARPGs have done in the past so you associate those activities with ARPGs in general?

If you dont want trading and want boring loot to rain from the sky by the dozen that is only beneficial to your build go play diablo3. Most people coming to this game are hardcore arpg diablo2 and poe fans. Trading was a part of every successful arpg it makes for more to do at endgame and makes loot feel good when you find a good or rare drop. No trading or with heavy restriction is boring to 90% of arpg fans. The end.

With all due respect for your thoughts and efforts Muktuk - I strongly disagree. I despise cookie-cutter drop systems where the game is artificially helping you by dropping "relevant" items. It feels a lot more one-dimensional loot wise.

On top of that, disabling trading is feeling ridiculously restricting.

The good, by far, outweighs the bad here, in my opinion.

Gotta say Muktuk, While you have a few good points (5 and 8 are of concern to me) most of them I disagree with entirely When a great piece of loot drops even if it is not for my build I instantly think Oh wow haven't seen that yet wonder if I can trade it for something I need and I get excited and go look for advise of other players and this encourages social interaction sure some times I will get sold sort but thats okay its part of the learning experience and I can't tell you how many times in D2 a conversation started with "which build you using this with? oh have you tried this or that" and a discussion about tactics and strategy ensue. Of course a game where there is interaction between people there are always gonna be toxic people no matter what you do but I rather be able to be social and ignore toxicity then just hammer it alone like your suggesting.

As for the 3rd Party Issue that is up to Wolcen to combat as this is a problem in MANY good multiplayer games.

Exactly ^, if you find something not for your build you either keep it and save it for a different character you wanna make or you trade it for something you do need. Maybe you make a new character because you found a godly piece you wanna build around. Games with Diablo3 style loot are boring af and most people don't enjoy it. The loot is a major aspect of any great arpg and If you copy d3 itemization/loot then guaranteed this game won't last long. Most people are here and excited because of crap games like that, and do not wan't a depthless boring repetitive experience.

solo self found isnt for me, its boring as stated above. No trading would be insane, and I wouldnt play this if that was the case.

No trading doesn't imply that it is easier to get awesome loot. In fact, trading almost guarantees that it is way too easy for players to get optimal loot which is another reason for why I'm against that system. I want a system that requires thoughtful builds and reasonable skill to get the best loot, rather than being able to simply buy it from somebody else. I agree that "cookie-cutter drop systems" are poor which is why I never suggested that approach.

I still feel that the negatives of trading greatly outweigh the positives, but how about something like this:
Allow players to enable "self found" mode (not "solo self found" mode) in which case they would get a boost to their magic find, but players would be unable to trade any items that dropped while self found mode was enabled. The intent would be to set the magic find boost such that self found mode was somewhat comparable to trading in regards to efficiency, although I would expect trading to still make it much easier to get near-perfect items. That way players who love to trade can still do so, but players who dislike trading wouldn't feel forced to deal with the issues that I listed in my OP. Self found and non-self found players could group together and self found mode could be toggled on or off at any time.

In other words, let the players decide. It wouldn't be perfect or address all of the issues with trading, but perhaps it would be much better than a one-size-fits-all approach.

That would be fine by me, but without toggling on or off because ppl would just abuse the bonus magicfind and then shut it off to trade, if you choose self found then that is what you are until you make a non self found character.

Thanks Twoshotz. Actually, the system could not be abused as you describe because any items that drop while self found mode was active could never be traded, even if you subsequently turn self found mode off. Similarly, any items that drop while self found mode was off could always be traded, even if you subsequently turn self found mode on.

An advantage of being able to toggle self found mode on or off after character creation is that then you could turn self found off while grouping with friends, but then turn it on while soloing. Not something I would do, but I expect that some players might like that flexibility.

Yeah I think that is a great idea, and then everyone can be happy, I like trading in games and some people don't so why not. PoE does this with a SSF only option. I think its fair to all.

A good compromise could be for there to be a system similar to PoE, where SSF is an option that players can choose to opt-in to. I wouldn't force it on the entire playerbase though, for the reasons described above.

Thanks all for the feedback. Much appreciated!

I also think it is important to ensure that there is some use for legendaries and uniques that aren't an upgrade for a player, such as being able to "feed" those items to other legendaries as I described earlier.

Hopefully the Wolcen team will consider what we've discussed in this thread.

I agree with both sides. In PoE, I will make characters in SSF and gen. pop. as well. I actually hope that Wolcen devs will appease both sides and make a SSF mode for people that like to discover on their own, and have an open trade option as well.
I don't like playing the trade houses, but I do like having the option to buy a piece or two here and there when I've been sitting on irrelevent gear for awhile.
I like the alternatives Muktuk suggested if a SSF mode were available, or maybe even to the game itself. Feeding high level gear to a shop or to relevent gear is certainly something the devs could/should implement or at least experiment with.

I noticed that "Auction House (Gold, no real money)" is quite popular on the Wolcen Community Suggestions site (https://trello.com/b/ruXxtdhT/wolcen-community-suggestions).

An in-game auction house with a robust set of search filters would eliminate issues 2, 4, 6 and 7 in my original post (and help with issue #5) so that would be a good option as well. GGG's trade website for PoE is the best example I know of for how to make a good set of search filters for an ARPG, although the search filters should be integrated with an in-game auction house in order to avoid several of the issues that are associated with a game that only allows player-to-player trading.

Trading will kill this game faster than it took Jesus to respawn.

I like the idea of being able to trade/buy using in game gold with a group you are playing with or friends (when the loot drops it has a timer for allowable time to trade). Otherwise trading just becomes the "end-game."