3 points of importance Bots, Items and PvP

Items is always a complicated matter in ARPGs. With uniques the problem comes when an item is BIS for a broad archetype (IE: All fire-based builds), BIS for an item type (IE: Previous Bastion for shields), or that can replace a generic T20 item entirely.

Uniques really shine when expands your build options, or empower very niche play styles or skill selections, or have very strong effects but with downsides you have to work around.

There’s not a definitive anwser of what makes an unique excellent, we have plenty of good and bad uniques in the game currently, I only hope the uniques are under constant supervision to give players more options to build with, instead of less (usually due to being BiS or required to make X work).

No worries about Bots in Last Epoch, as there won’t be open trading.

There also won’t be any PvP (to my knowledge). So, that’s not an issue either.

The entire game is an item-chase game, so, again, IMHO, no issue there either.

We assume, we don’t know what they’re going to do with trading since they said they’re scrapping the Bazaar.

Another design decision that just boggles the mind. All these resources going to implementing MP, just so people can group in a game that hardly requires it. Trading is the one aspect of MP that people who don’t group can still take advantage of, and now it looks like that is gone right out the window as well.

The bazaar was the one part of MP that looked interesting…

No, they’ve just decided that their intended implementation of trading wasn’t going to go down well & that they would need to change it based on feedback from the community. At no point have they said that they are dumping trading (which is what I assume you mean when you say “gone right out the window”).

If you’re the kind of person that enjoys spending all day wandering round a car boot sale looking for the one decent thing in a mountain of tat, yes. I don’t so their original version “boggles the mind” but apparently quite a lot of people (in the UK at least) do, so…

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I’ve heard so many different things on this now. I guess I’ll just have to wait until (whenever) to see what is actually coming. Still not holding out too much hope. And yes, the randomness of the original bazaar concept seemed interesting. Instead of falling back on the POE-style web search for whatever is up for sale.

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Its understandable that not everyone wants to keep track of all the different sources if news, since it can be very tiring staying up to date.

But there are very easy and digestible informations out there in foms of news and dev blogs.

Here is the passage from the dev blog they announce the latest update to the roadmap (including the removal or Gates of Memorium and Epoch’s Call along side the reiteration of the trading conecpt).

The bolded part is the important one.

Hard disagree. The impact that bots have on most players of most games is no more than being an excuse to self-generate indignation. With a few exceptions, actual degradation of the player experience is rare and often unnoticeable. It would be better that EHG spend their resources on game content and features than the wild goose chase of botters that don’t matter except to people who’ve forgotten that games aren’t real.

Hard disagree. Creating new items that nobody cares about because they’re either side-grades or not powerful is how you create a stagnant game. In a game that is designed to be played for a long time, over years and through many content/update cycles, older things are inevitably going to become outdated and fall behind. Players need to have the maturity to deal with not being able to hit the top once and then never having to do it again. That you see “new and more powerful items” as a “punishment to players with existing items” is a problem with your emotional state, not with game design.

Hard disagree. PvP is not a strong enough selling point for enough of the player population that it should be considered at all important in a primarily PvE game. This is known. It’s time PvP enthusiasts accepted that they are not and will never be a primary audience for any game that isn’t built from the ground up around PvP.

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Community feedback is almost pointless because some people have exact opposite opinions. Lots of talk about marketplace and meh. I spent 8 hours a day in D2 chat room looking to trade items, seeing the same messages spammed at once in awhile an interesting deal. It worked, but took a lot of time. It was better than joining a ‘trade game’ at least. Then D2JSP came, and the forum made it a lot better…

Sometimes the fun part of trading is negotiating item for item(s). For me, an in a game board where people list their items would be enough. Then you could message the person and try and make a trade. The board would just be finding items for sale. It would just have a filter for everything. Of course some draw back would be subjective time-wasters…like someone with a single really good item that really wont ever trade it. There could be more to it, I won’t write anymore details.

For me, item collecting is really important. You know, like an item that is 1% better than the next best costs like 5x more, lol.

In game currencies don’t usually work so well for item trading (especially if the bots exist), because in my experience, people value their items infinitely more than the in game currency, usually. I think it would be awesome if there was in game currency that really worked well. Honestly real money marketplace works the best, but that comes with problems too, like real life legal problems and every kind of scammer that real money makes situations worse in the big picture.

Community Feedback can never been pointless - opposite opinions is exactly what the devs need to be able to make an informed choice about a particular feature…

They have already said that they are going back to the drawing board on the trading aspects of the game because of feedback from the community on their original proposals… and this was before they even implemented anything.

Yes, they have to make a decision on how they are going to do it, and its unlikely that whatever trading option they chose will be to everyones taste, but at least they can make a decision based on feedback rather than just implementing something without any kind of input from their existing player base.

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Yeah, I’m also sad to see the idea of the Bazaar disappear before we even got to see it. As I stated elsewhere in the forums, I played in a game with a Bazaar before and it worked very well. It actually also encouraged people talking to each other while loitering around. That’s something I have yet to see repeated in any online game with trading that I have played since, not once.

I find it a little sad that the idea got shot down in flames by a consensus of opinions in here based on nothing more than a name. I wish they’d shown the same determination they show now in keeping this new awful crafting system with the Bazaar idea and at least taken it to a testing stage.

It didn’t, the devs gave a description of how it would work (like a car boot sale with randomly selected player “stalls” which we wouldn’t be able to influence/change) and that’s what the community reacted to. I assume you weren’t here for the several months of discussion? There were plenty of people on both sides of the argument.

That already happens a lot at the moment, no trade needed…

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I can’t believe it’s that hard to figure out, tbh. There’s only so many ways to implement trade. If they can get a community-sourced unique “to-market”, from scratch, using only the forum-based vote feature, why not do the same with trade? Let’s see what the community wants and go from there. No need to waste all this time in the vacuum of space, coming up with idea(s) the community will just be divided on anyhow. Throw the different methods up for vote, and let majority decide…

As you know, I was here for the months of discussion and as you are also aware the “description of how it would work” was vague at best. That vagueness was what I was insinuating by “nothing more than a name”. So, with a slight change of wording, I still stick by what I said.

For your benefit: “I find it a little sad that the idea got shot down in flames by a consensus of opinions in here based on a vague description of how it might work from the devs and no actual specifics or working beta example to test”. Better?

With respect your comment about people talking to each other is irrelevant to the current state of LE. We have no multiplayer, so we cannot see how people will interact in the game in the context of trading. I can only assume you are either referring to the forums here, which again has no context in terms of “in the game”; or you are referring to “chat”, which again is not trading.

I appreciate your efforts to pedantically pick apart my post, but perhaps you should have also paid an equal amount of attention to your rebuttle? Don’t tell someone their bucket leaks when you’re covered in water from a leaky umbrella. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Yes, but IMO, I think that trade as a concept is too impactful on how the player interacts with the rest of the game for the devs to just chuck up a vote & be willing to implement whatever the community chooses. If the community overwhelmingly voted for an AH-type fully automated system that used gold as the currency (or even not-gold) & the devs thought that would be phenomenally bad for how the player was then effectively “forced” (because it’d be so much more efficient to just grind gold then play the AH) into using it to get their end-game BIS items I don’t think the deve would ever implement that.

I honestly can’t remember since it was a while ago & you did say you were away for a while. Wasn’t sure if there was any overlap there.

Not really (IMO), from Zaodon’s post as they’ve changed their view on it:

  • visit other player’s shops
  • purchase items for in-game gold
  • The player shops that appear are random
  • Players in a party will also be able to gift items to each other, as long as the item dropped after both players joined the party.

I guess it depends on how much detail you’d want, I can respect you wanting more/all of the detail for me (& apparently many others), the above was sufficient to know that I really wouldn’t have enjoyed it or used it much, if at all. They’ve also said before about other things, that once you’ve implemented something then decide that it’s not a good thing, it can be very difficult to remove it without players’ collectively loosing their shit.

Never said it was irrelevant, I just said that it (chatting with other players & forming relationships) happens already. I wasn’t picking apart your post, I was just saying that people already chat with each other -

I can feel the appreciation dripping off your post. :wink:

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but once again, all you have shown as the counter to me saying it was vague is a PLAYER’S post on the subject and your feelings about that. Hell, even his post was vague in the details of how it might work ffs.

You’re not demonstrating anything at all to counter what I said. I was involved through all of the discussions in these forums, and NOT ONCE did the DEV’s actually elaborate in great detail over what their plans for the Bazaar were. There were hints and vague outlines, but no details.

So I don’t know how many different ways of saying it, you’re just not getting the point. You replied and quoted me to say I was wrong in saying it was nothing more than a name and I agreed I had worded that badly and clarified it with " a vague description of how it might work from the devs and no actual specifics or working beta example to test" .

The Bazaar was shot down in these forums as a concept. The Devs hardly released any concrete details on what it was exactly planned to be, how it would exactly work, how the shops would exactly work, timers of sales, bidding systems, etc etc etc.

You can bluster around all you want, but we both know how much detail was released to us all from EHG on the subject, so quit blowing smoke please.

You replied to my post saying it was not vague. You’ve not done anything to prove I was incorrect by quoting any dev post with precise details on how the Bazaar would work. So, apart from it appearing that you are deliberately trying to be a pain in my ass for the sake of it, I really don’t grasp what it is that you are trying to achieve here? If I’m wrong in that guess, then please enlighten me because I’m struggling to understand why you’re constantly replying to me and quoting me here? If it’s just to argue for the sake of it over something that you haven’t established as a proper retort; then frankly I really can’t be bothered any more. I have better things to do.

If on the other hand you have the dev posts with precise details of what the Bazaar was going to be and how it was going to work, then I am more than happy to admit I was wrong and you were right. If, on the other hand you do not, then just try to be a little gracious in defeat for once.

I can’t point out a specific dev post although I’m sure there has been some infos on how the Bazaar would work. The quote of @Zaodon that @Llama8 posted, is based on these descriptions/discussions with the devs.

At a certain point, there was enough info to create very emotional debates regarding the Bazaar. We knew that there would be random player shops and the player would have no control over what shops he sees and he would not be able to reset the market place to have access to different shop instances. This certainly was a mechanic that should prevent RMT because people would not be able to trade with specific other people.

No other details were relevant because people already got mad about this specific mechanic. Many players dismissed the Bazaar as a failure because shops would be random with no way to target shop specific items (like in an AH) or trade with specific people and therefore would involve alot of RNG to find specific items and be a waste of time.

I personally would’ve liked to at least try it out. Imho the Bazaar is a nice concept. I’d be ok with the “downsides” as I’m against a traditional AH where everybody has access to the whole marked just by a single click. But it’s not gamebreaking for me, either. I’m just pro trade.

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Yes, this was entirely my point. Thank you.

All that was “released”/discussed were some vague concepts and it was enough for people in the forums to have a discussion that in turn affected the decision to not implement it.

We didn’t even get the chance to “try it out” or see the precise details on how it would have worked, instead it got “culture cancelled” based on blurry rumours.

Regardless of my own opinion on the concept, I think it would have been nice to have had either all the details in writing, or a Beta test of it before it was totally binned. I mean, let’s face it, other trading systems in other games hardly work brilliantly so why not give something different a try?

Anyway, this whole sideshow went to validate my post in reply to Vapour’s original post which was:

and all I tried to say in reply was that I personally was sad that the Bazaar never got to see the light of day due to the consensus in the forums reached, based without precise details or a Beta tryout. That was me expressing my opinion on one aspect of the game which has been affected by community feedback. That reply then got scrutinised under a microscope, which I still don’t understand.

However, it gave some context to Vapour’s reply with one example of community feedback.

Case closed - hopefully :smile:

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