Additional Gifting/Trading system

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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Please don’t! I think EHG should give us some facts and statistics how things are now, where they want to go and what things should look like from their point of view. On top of it I still can’t find an answer why they did a 360 on a game feature they had in mind and announced and swaped it into the crap it is now.

Wow. I was actually going to suggest something similar in the game’s reddit. I think this is a great idea!

The only thing I would add to it would be for the chance for the token to drop start off infinitesimally small, but slowly increase with the more time you play with that other character (up to a cap, of course).

No numbers, no statistics no facts. Noone can tell where we are now and where EHG aims to be in the end. There are no answers in this thread but only vain chatter about trading.

I certainly hope they can clarify it for you. Was pretty clear to me and does not involve numbers or statistics. Where we are now is the gifting system that they have described in their post that will be live in 0.9. Where we are going is very likely improvements to the gifting system but not in any way towards open trade. One undeniable fact is that it is their intellectual property and from their statements now and in the past I believe they want to limit any outside exploitation of it as much as possible.

If this was just a misunderstanding I would’ve expected a dev post making EHGs stance clear.

Communication is pure luck, currently.

I’m confused.

I… I just don’t understand.
This is once again the same issue that’s ALREADY been discussed. You’d buy the game go to a discord/forum/website request and item get into a party or send a friend request go to whatever thr closest large mob pack is and fair out currency vs actually playing the game and farming the item. This means either all drop rates must drop to compensate or, the tokens have to have greater rarity then total 24 hour solar eclipse in the middle of December. Both solutions btw suck.

The reason request trade with restrictions does not, has not and, NEVER will be a viable solution is either the system has a single fault and completely warps the game and requires constant attention and balance adjustments that are largely ineffective or, it’s so insanely tight the system that needs maintenence, upkeep and, balance is used once ever 6 months if that.

And what so you say to the people who don’t want to fall in line for the loopholes in the proposed system. The ones that allow you to break the game?
What if I don’t want to sit on a discord server/Forum/website refreshing like you do for POE looking for better prices in exchange to facilite the trade.

Now this isn’t to say I LIKE gifting I don’t and with all the restrictions it has guess what? People are rarely if ever going to use organically if at all.

If anything the only real solution if people are that desperate to not play the game is an expansion of the crafting system.

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Most online games have RMT. I would pretty much flat out state if your game doesnt have RMT capability it wont be that popular

No, we shouldnt have to do your jobs to try and make a fun experience, thats for you to give us and frankly where is it? never seen a game discussed so much without anyone actually playing it. Not only that I personally and others HAVE given you ideas not just on this, on MANY things you ignored even to leave feedback on as you guys are too busy to leave a post even stating ‘thats a shit idea’ at least that puts the idea to rest

  • dungeon ideas
  • corruption mono improvements
  • trade ideas

The only and 100% ONLY reason a developer would want to disallow free trade (but allow simps who group up to do it) is because their game isnt robust enough to support it

I havent logged into the game in a long long time and I question why I even bother to come here to read updates, LE is either just frustrating or boring, the devs strangle you in every way - almost nil Mana/Regen, no Auras, 70% of affixes to defence, no movement speed, boss damage reduction (this is the worst in a power fantasy RPG) and rudimentary crafting, no XP loss on death so nothing matters and now no ability to ever trade with anyone except weird asians as no one plays in Oceania and I dont want to play with others

Having a blast with the new PoE league and absolutely would not touch it without trading as its a miserable experience

Ill probably come check LE out in about 2 years when the ‘new’ classes release which honestly forget their names its been so long now

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Yeah, so why do you bother, and bother other who care about the game

I am a big proponent of number 4. I will definitely fall on the side of no trade over free trade.

I think 4 is better at limiting the possibilities for RMT and the overall power trade provides by significantly limiting your potential options. The economy of PoE SC trade vs PoE as a private league is a massive difference in the availability of items.

For me I think there are a few things trade system needs to keep intact. Keep in mind that the Key tenet is: Playing the game is the best way to get items

  1. It cannot be something that you list on a third party website and then are able to trade with someone you have never met before
  2. Be able to trade with someone that you play with regularly
  3. It should Limit exposure to RMT
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Nice write-up! I like your approach.

I want to write out a possible implementation of an Auction Hall.
As Free and unlimited trade is a nightmare to balance, lets put some limits on it:

Limited_Trading: (One can Trade one item per dungeon run)

  1. Gated behind a dungeon: You need a dungeon Key → Limiting access
  2. The level of the item you can trade depends on the Dungeon Tier: T1 → 0-25, T2 ->0-50, T3 → 0-75, T4 → 0-100. , If I want to see all Items in the Auction Hall i better beat that T4 Boss Mob.
    → Limiting Access
  3. a) Rotating ThemeDays: On Monday I can only see Helmets, On Tuesday Armors, etc. → I cannot trade a full build in a day.
    b) The Boss drops Item-Buy-Tokens randomly. To buy some nice gloves you need to get lucky and drop a Glove_Buy_Token first. (Tokens can be kept in the Chest)
  4. Refresh the “Cursed” -AuctionHall with Souls, collected from the mobs in the Dungeon. See the Fire Dungeon. I want to see more Items in the AuctionHall? I need to clear more of it.

Just some Ideas.

Edit1:
A little bit more of an unorthodox idea:
Items bought from the “Cursed” Auction Hall expire / vanish after a certain time_period.
That could enable Free_Trade, as this allows you to try out builds but they will not be permanent.

Same with the tradeToken for friends. It would allow them to join you for some sessions, but not forever. But they can then use the time, while they can keep up with you to find their own gear.

I think a randomly appearing market NPC after you beat an echo boss or dungeon boss would help further limit abuse.

Thank you for this write up Kovitikus. I came here to say something in a similar vein. My friend group exists in several different time zones, so we can only play together for an hour or two at most. The rest of the time we are solo only. It would feel bad to not be able to give your friend the thing they’ve been looking for if you happen to find it when they’re sleeping/working/etc.

The current proposed system of being together when it drops is too restrictive. Maybe extend it to, “played together in the past three days”?

I just wanted to voice my problems with the current system and I hope these complaints are heard and addressed.

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Thank you for your reply ExsiliumUltra. I agree with you that it would be best for an uncontrolled external economy to not exist in Last Epoch. I doubt I’m clever enough to think of the exact methodology that would allow micro economies within friend groups of 2~5, without exposing a convoluted opening for bots and RMT. I’m sure with the right restrictions as you mentioned it could be done.

Playing and trading with my friends is the #1 thing I’ve been looking forward to since I began playing Last Epoch. I and my friends likely won’t come back to Last Epoch again without this problem solved.

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After reading all these responses, there are two ideas I have had as well. One goes along the lines of the one proposed by TolleWurst.

Although he said Guild Trading, I was thinking of Friend’s List trading. This way all your friends you truly game with can get that item they’ve been chasing if it drops for you. Then you can still run/manage a guild of any size and keep the current plan of the item gifting within the party you form of guild members. Limit the friends list to about 30-50 people max. If you have more than that, you’re probably a streamer with a fan base or something.

The second is with the current planned iteration of the in game item gifting, make it for anyone in your current party, and not zone restricted. As with other IRL incidents that can happen, I think it would be awful if my friend I’m playing with had to go to the bathroom or for a smoke, and we run a monolith. We get his item and he can’t have it because he was AFK for 5 minutes. That seems like a really large oversight that should also be addressed.

My two cents. :slight_smile:

This is also an extremely data-intensive process for server-side authentication-based systems. There has to be a three-tiered database for items to check against any duplicates or fraudulent items based on checking item unique IDs that can also be manipulated by clients when in the hands of nefarious users.

The client would have a copy of it but if it differs to what the server has then computer says no.

And that’s bad? Why should the devs be the arbiters of legitimate sociability? Not everybody is as socially awkward with a small social circle as me (or my firstborn who actually is autistic).

This isn’t a bad thing at all. I’m more writing it as a reason to restrict the size of a friends list and not have a community of like 300 people able to freely trade within each other. Or have RMT botters with a regular client list. Keeping the friends list small means you’ll only give items to your actual friends. I still think guilds should be big and encourage grouping together for drops, but not a friends list.

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