Additional Gifting/Trading system

Feedback and Suggestions
2

Nice idea, this would prevent one of the many problems this system will bring. :+1:

I feel like EHG could have included the community more into their decision about trade.
And before all the hardcore fanboys cry out “ItS ThEiR GaMe ThEy CaN Do WhAt ThEy WaNt!!!” and stuff like that, please… don’t…
While they did of course ask us for our opinion, at least I think I remember something like that, they did not present us more concrete examples and share their ideas during the process to let the community weigh in. At least that’s how I feel, but I’m also not someone who visits the Forum every day since EA started so I might have missed something.

I think ideas like OPs one could have helped to create a dynamic trade experience. For example this idea could have maybe made it into the announcement, if they had told us “Hey, this is our idea for trade, what do you guys think?”. Then OP says “Hey, I got this idea with tokens.” - the idea gets presented to the community and 70% of the community say “Great idea!” and look at that, you got a solution that most of your core audience will be happy with. Maybe some more ideas could have made it into the announcement… something like unrestricted trade of non-unique and set items with a lvl requirement of <60 or something like that, so more experienced players can help out newer or more casual players during the leveling process. Or free trade of 0-LP uniques or something similar. Or an auction house where every account is allowed to trade up to X items per month globally. Or have tokens like the suggestion of OP which are even more rare and allow you to place one item per token into the auction house. Of course there are many more ideas that the community has and some of them would have gotten their approval and some don’t, but yeah… it just feels like there was a big opportunity missed here.

I’m not saying the presented solution is all bad, but it could have been more fleshed out I think. It’s like “Here’s what were gonna do, we know it’s like the 3rd or 4th different approach than what we initially said, but have fun and now it’s final!”.
The good thing is that I have faith in EHG that they change/adapt the system if they feel like the community wants those changes, so maybe their decision is not as final as it sounds (at least to me it sounded pretty final).

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3

I like the Idea.
Its simple and powerful, though the drop-rate of such a token should be carefully considered.
One could add another condition for the usage of the token, such as playing a certain amount of time with the friend to use it.

Like I drop one, and then I also need to play one hour to fill some bar before I can use it.
(Just an Idea)

4

Very good suggestions.

I feel like more people should actually use the upvote functionality of the forum if they support this idea :stuck_out_tongue:

Its right up there, below the thread title :stuck_out_tongue:

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5

I had a similar idea of trade groups that do the same as tokens just without inventing tokens :D. The idea is okay but you introduce free trade for hardcore playerrs while casuals will be shafted.

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6

I appreciate your well thought out suggestion here and the assessment of the realistic scenarios that need to be accounted for @Lord_Yanaek. If an expansion of trade were to be introduced to Last Epoch I do believe that it would require a clever solution like proposed here. I’ll link this internally and ask our game design team to read through.

Also, I invite others to brainstorm in this manner. As mentioned in Trasochi’s dev blog we are not firmly against trade, but rather the negative consequences that it brings when entirely open or exploitable.

Thanks, Yanaek.

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7

I think it’s safe to say that the community is also very largely with you that an entirely open trade is not ideal and brings a lot of problems that EHG has the opportunity to avoid. Many of us just don’t want to see an entirely closed option without even a limited economy either and so far this is what we’re seeing. Something in the middle where SSF is still balanced for but players who want to trade can find something to enjoy is preferable and will bring in a lot more players, even if that system isn’t entirely perfect and open to some exploitation (Which every system is. This gifting system is also exploitable and I’ve seen multiple suggestions of how it can already from clever players).

I’d also like to point out that the dev blog didn’t give me the impression that EHG isn’t against trade. The statement:

makes it seem like the door is basically closed on any meaningful trade that might include some form of an economy. I really do hope that based on your statement here Judd that this is just a misunderstanding between the community and EHG.

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8

Gifting is completely exploitable. Didn’t need 2 seconds to think of ways to exploit it or use it for RMT. IF this is true and your only reason to hesitate to bring a trade system is the quotet part then remove gifting for now and go back to the drawing board.

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9

I have no interest in trade, but the system we have is exclusive, that on its own is not great. Gating trade, a feature many people want probably because they come from PoE, is a bad idea. Why do I have to play with some dude with 50 minions in order for A CHANCE to maybe get an item he/she doesnt need but I do? If I cared about trade, that would be a hard pass.

13

And to complicated! Open this window, put item there, hope my friend finds the gift inventory and so on and so forth. On top of that we can never tell if somone realy needs the item we have because we can’t simply drop it and our friend can say yes or no because he sees the item through his lootfilter.

14

I like the idea of a gift token. It does help solve the gear difference for casual friends. Maybe make it where they only drop after so many hours of playing together or time played otherwise they could be abused for trade with people you just met. There should be a limit on gearing a friend’s new alt with a token though. Or you could just cash in your tokens with that player to instantly gear their fresh alt.

A quick thought I had for the situation when I first saw the dev post was to have a dedicated 10 core friends list where you can trade anything you want even if they weren’t in the group at the time it dropped. Only allow adding the initial 10, and then after that, you’d have to play with them for 5+ hours to be able to replace a core friend with someone else. And only allow one gift to each friend per week. That would slow down people from just gearing someone’s brand new alt and skipping the content/whole reason to play the game. I feel it stays in line with people able to help friends while still completing content and playing together rather than skipping right to the end game.

These are just incomplete thoughts. Maybe it could help to a system that stays in line with the Dev’s vision of the game, but allows friends to keep up with each other.

15

Out of curiosity, if I wanted to RMT a Ravenous Void or other rare unique, how you as the “filthy RMTer” exploit/do that? I could envisage a way to do it (kinda) for boss drops but not for random world drops.

It’s really not much different to PoE in that regard. Both require to click a few things (less in LE’s case tbh), place an item in a UI, etc.

16

Boss RMT is straight up just run the boss and trade the item away best part is the person buying can just afk in the reward room

Random unique rmt is extremely simple and here me out.
Runes of Ascendance turns items into uniques that can be traded.

Both works but are subject to change.

There are also other ways where gifting can be exploited to do RMT that have been confirmed to work.

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17

Yeah, that’s what I assumed.

I had forgotten about that, though there’s still an element of RNG to it.

18

Not currently, unless this has changed since Friday when Mike posted this:

19

From the same day a bit later on stream Twitch

The plan is to get rid of it but he most certainly confirms it to work

20

I’m pretty sure he’s talking about the testing environment in some respect there. So you can’t really extrapolate that to the actual release.

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21

Someone I had the displeassure to know spent 5k+ on obtaining random loot in another game. If some is stupid and rich enough They throw money out of the window.

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22

Yes, all the info we get is based on the current version they have right now.
Everything is subject to change until 0.9 goes live.

Just because their tentative plan is to change how it works does not mean that it’s going to make it.

The same way being AFK in the reward room allows you to leech tradeable items is subject to change

Even if both were changed for 0.9 launch there will still be ways to do anything i mentioned above because those two are not the only ways of doing it, but they are simple ways of doing it.

At the end of the day, we produced quite a few ways to “exploit” the system and we haven’t even played around with the system yet!
all the ways of doing it have been confirmed to work one way or another as of right now. (Subject to change)

So realistically no matter how many exploits they take out before 0.9, the system is going to be exploited whether its small or big one’s heck the system could be bugged one way or another for all we know.

24

I’m not sure I like that idea given you’ve already “paid” for the item (by using the rare drop token) but you’d have to fight a thing that could potentially kill the item for you? If it were optional, so you could either playitsafe and take the item as is or risk it for a buff (max the rolls, increase some affix tiers, etc), then I’d be fine with potentially loosing the item.

25

Okay, so because the devs said they will look at this thread and basically want input from the community, here are some of my thoughts about the whole situation and some alternatives to the proposed trade system. I have talked about this with some friends and as a collective we played most of the popular ARPG and MMORPG games so most of the stuff I’m about to say is already implemented in some games in one way or another. Of course this is fine, there is no need to invent the wheel again. Also, there is no perfect solution, it’s about making compromises!

First, let me start with a few of the worries of both sides. By both sides I mean the side that wants more freedom in trading and the side that wants more restricted trade. Of course it’s a spectrum, some people don’t want trade at all, but for simplicity I’m going to say there are only two sides in this discussion.

People who want relatively free and unrestricted trade:
These people usually say that free trade means players can freely choose whether or not they want to engage in trading or not, so more power to the players. Another argument is that drops are now more valuable, meaning that if an item drops that is sought after for a specific class or build, that item can be traded instead of rotting away in your stash or worse. It feels bad if something like an Orian’s Eye drops and you never plan on using it. It also feels bad if the item you want just isn’t dropping at all while with free trade you could trade that Orian’s Eye for the item you want. A lot of drops are already meaningless (of course this could change in the next versions, but I’m talking about current possibilites in the game right now), so even if a top tier item drops, if you’re never going to use it then what’s the point? Where is the excitement? There is no difference between an Orian’s Eye and a white hatchet for those players. They also say that to be able to trade you have to provide something with similar value, meaning you have to play the game anyway to be able to trade (excluding RMT in this scenario).

People who want more restricted trade:
These people usually say that free trade ruins the fun and creates an unfair economy. It also creates room for RMT and all of that stuff that we don’t want. They also say that drops get more valuable as you’re not able to just go and trade (or buy) any item you want but you actually have to play the game and find the item yourself which makes the drops more exciting. They also say that free trade means the game will be balanced around trading, both in difficulty as well as in droprates. Depending on the trade system, they also say that more restrictive trade encourages players to actually play in a party with other players, but I feel that part is debatable and depends a lot on the trade system and the boni you get from party play. They also say that the less restrictive a trading system is, the more likely people are going to use bots (and the higher the risk of RMT).

So, that’s roughly what both sides say. I’m pretty sure there are many more points on both sides, but I wanted to keep it simple. Okay, so the currently propsed trade system is pretty restrictive. That’s not a bad thing in general, but I feel like in the propsed form there are too many weaknesses! Let me list a couple of possible trade systems with their pros and cons.

1) Free trade:
As already mentioned, free trade means freedom for the players. They can decide themselves if they want to trade and how often they want to trade, etc. Unfortunately, this system would mean difficulty and drop rates need to be balanced around trade. It also is highly exploitable and botting and RMT are pretty much preprogrammed in such a system.

2) Proposed System:
The proposed system is very similar to the trading system in D3. In my opinion this systems biggest weakness is the fact that you can’t trade with someone you would usually trade with (member of your group) if they weren’t there when the item dropped (I think they need to be in the same zone?). This basically dictates when you should play and kind of forces you to create another character that you have to play if your group isn’t (fully) online. I am aware of the counter arguments, but I personally think this system is way to restrictive! Of course it’s pretty good in preventing botting and RMT, at least compared to free trade, but people will most likely still try to use bots to farm high corruption and claim all drops for themselves, basically quadrupeling their drops. Also, high corruption runs can be sold for real money, just without any guarantee that you will receive a specific item. In every system people will try to abuse it, so even in a system like the proposed one you will face botting and RMT problems.
Suggestions to extend this system have already been made, for example the trade tokens. These could be freely usable, or they could have restrictions aswell. Restrictions could be tiers (tokens for rare, exalted, unique, etc.) or they could be usable for specific persons (like if players A, B, C, D are playing and a token drops, it can only be used to trade with these players). They could also be gated behind some content like a dungeon. There are many possibilities to get rid of the “you have to be there when it drops” problem. Not everyone has the exact same amount of time to play but of course you like the game, you want to play the game, you want to play the game with your friends and if one of them is missing you’re getting penalized pretty hard imo.

3) Auction House:
A system using an auction house can give a lot of freedom to players while still keeping abuse pretty low. Of course there are a few prerequisites to make that work smoothly. One of them is the need of some sort of currency (or currencies). This can be gold but it can also be something else. Also, trades need to be anonymous. This means that the person “selling” the item in the AH mustn’t have any way to controll who buys the item. They can offer the item with a starting price and, if they want to, a buyout price. But they musn’t be allowed to choose who gets the item. Of course the system can still be abused, but as I already said, no system is perfect. Finally, if an AH in this form exists, P2P trading mustn’t be allowed! Of course you could limit the number of items one is allowed to offer, either by saying you can have X items simultaniously in the AH and/or saying you can trade up to Y items per week. EHG could also offer MTX which allow you to increase that number. Of course this would make some people scream P2W!!! but I wanted to mention this possibility anway. Another way would be to also have some kind of token which is needed to offer an item to the AH. Again, many possibilities here!

4) Guild Trading:
This system is similar to the proposed system, but trade would be free between guild members. Restrictions could be as follows: You have to be part of the guild for X days to be able to trade rares, Y days for exalts and Z days for uniques/sets. Something like that. Again, tokens could also be used in this system to support party play and engagement in the game.

These are some of the ideas we were talking about. I might add some more or give more details about the ones I already mentioned, but it’s kind of late and I’m getting sleepy lol.
Please feel free to add your feelings, hopes and worries. The devs said they monitor this thread, so if you want to have your voice heard as a member of this community, now is the time to do so!

Important Note: (This post will most likely be edited and extended a couple of times, not only to add more suggestions but also to keep things nice and clean and not clutter this thread with a million posts :wink: )

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