This is a possible solution to the issues of “Garbage Uniques” and the ever popular trading debate.
First Garbage Uniques. I play a lot of ARPGs with my friends and one of the biggest complaints across many of them is at some point in your progression uniques go from being super exciting to screen clutter. Seeing that gold beam from the sky and saying meh, just feels bad. Selling “Gromthor Molten Axe of the Destroyer’’ for a handful of gold because you literally have no use for it feels bad.
From a game design standpoint it’s a tricky issue because you need uniques to be a common enough drop that people get to use them at the appropriate time in their progression and you don’t want uniques to be so overpowered that no one cares about random items anymore.
The LP system in Last Epoch is a nearly perfect solution and man I love it so much, but I still wind up leaving 99% of my 0 LP or common 1 LP items laying on the ground.
The other issue is trading. I want to start by saying that I am against a global trade economy and I agree with all the objectives the devs are trying to accomplish with the trading system. But I’m not sure the current solution is the best possible answer.
What I love about Last Epoch is that the game is filled with out-of-the-box creative solutions that so perfectly solve the genre’s problems. The crafting, the LP system, the way multiplayer parties interact with endgame systems, just so much good stuff. Next to the rest of the game the “gifting” system just feels like a placeholder, and I can’t help but feel that it is just there while the devs test wacky, trade-solving ideas. Hopefully all these “suggestions” posts will help the creative process.
So on to my suggestion. Guilds. When you create a guild (even a solo one) you get access to two devices: the guild forge, and the guild vault. The guild forge is used to grind uniques down into a currency with a cool name like Epoch Dust, or Chrono Shards, or something, I’ll call it Dust for now. We’ll come back to the forge in a sec.
At the Vault you can place items for other guild members to purchase with their own dust. Now a couple of points about this. First I suggest putting something like a two week cool down on swapping guilds or on using the guild vault upon joining or both. The amount of time itself doesn’t really matter to non-market traders since most of us will have the same friends in two weeks or four but a 2 + week waiting period on each delivered order would seriously hamstring a mass trading market. Next, Guilds should have a maximum number of members, you don’t want everyone joining a single massive trade guild. Finally, because the person picking up the item is the person paying the Dust cost and because the prices are set by the devs based on rarity / level / power etc it becomes difficult to “rob a player of the experience”. (ie before a new player can pick up a rare item from the vault they will have farmed dozens of uniques to get the Dust to pay for it.)
Now besides trading what else could you do with Dust? First of all, guild upgrades: increasing the maximum members, buying tabs in the guild vault, buying / upgrading guild halls (that can be decorated with mtx cosmetics), etc. This creates space for the devs to add a ton of extra content down the road. The guild can unlock these things with Dust either donated to the vault or collected through trade taxes.
And now back to the guild forge and your Dust sink. Place a unique in the forge and pay a Dust cost (determined by its rarity / level / power etc) to reroll its chance to have LP. You could use a table similar to Rune of Ascendance or a custom table. The actual odds of rerolling the item are less important than the fact that you now have something to do with all your 0 LP uniques.
If you made it this far, thanks for taking the time to read, and looking forward to seeing everyone in March.
I think anything they come up with for guild sharing, modifications to gifting, and any “trade” ideas they come up with should be handled separately. A token material to make un used uniques useful is a good idea, however it may not fit acrossed the board everywhere they may need such a material. I also think things that make any crafting too determistic would go against the same core tenants of the developer same as open trade does.