Just to be perfectly clear, the proposed trading system they announced, is just in its design phase and has not been tested or implemented in any way.
Regarding your points:
That would kinda defeat the whole purpose of the system. THAT is the one decision you have to make, do you want to trade or not? With this CoF woudl essentially be trade enabled (with probably a few more costs attached to it)
I think if both factions are fairly well balanced you don’t need that. Player distribuion might flucuate a bit depending on the cycle or meta, but LE has a lot of tuning knobs and levers for balancing
Why is a big drop on CoF side “boring and unfair”? They activel decided to go this route for more loot, but to lose all the trading perks. And so did the Merchant Guild players decide to skip the juicy random drops for more juiced loot. So that is the whole idea fo the system. Having a trade-off.
Also I don’t know, this sound like something that needs to be optionally and only if all players in a party mutually agree with that.
I, for reasons I cannot fathom, have been thinking about this a lot (trade faction versus non-trade faction). In addition to, “wow, gold is going to be a horrible unit of measure in this game”, I’m scratching my head about; How do you balance these two factions?
It seems to me the value of Merch Guild scales with the number of active players in the Merch Guild. Compared to the value of CoF, which is presumably a flat drop percentage increase (1). So the only real way to balance the two would be to have the CoF drop percentage be based upon an average number of active Merch Guild players for the last… I don’t know, week? And is it just a linear scaling? Or is it something like an exponential?
(1) Or is it? I’ve also been thinking that what EHG actually does is decrease the drop percentage globally, then give CoF a drop increase to make it equal to what it is today.
Another thing I’m scratching my head about is; how are there ever any more factions? Maybe factions always arrive in a set of competing interests (like trading/not-trading). But what other interests are there? I’m stumped, but I think the answer is; none. This makes me a little sad, also for reasons I cannot fathom.
I really hope this is not accurate but it is what I fear. I don’t really like trade so would favour Fortune.
They absolutely have to nerf drop rates for traders. I get that, but it does not really matter how much they reasonably nerf it it will be better than the way it is right now for getting items. So trade would always be better. I think with levels fortune would need to be better than it is now.
I either don’t know what I’m doing (I don’t think so) or it takes a little too long currently to get my characters where I want them. I’m not streamer level hours but I do play quite a bit. It is true that we are effectively in a super long ‘season’ so it kind of makes sense that drop rates are designed around that.
This is a point I don’t see how in hell you can balance trading with not trading.
Trading, if you fully engage with it, despite worse drops will always have the advantage. But you can’t do drops from CoF like 10x to 20x better to compensate: well, you can, but good luck with complaints later…
CoF will have to accept trade players will get better items in the long run. This is evident when you have all your pieces more or less in order, and any upgrade is a specific base with a specific exalted, or 2LP uniques with 70+ level for LP. This wall is very tall very soon with current drop rates. I cannot see a system that will not have that turning point where trading players will have a clear advantage.
This is something that I can accept without any regrets. I’m not trying to compete with others and their drops/gear, I just want to be able to play without having to deal with trade but still have a chance to get decent drops.
Yes I know I can play without having to deal with trade even if trade exists for everyone, but having another option is an excellent choice in my opinion.
I think the balance is supposed to come from how long it takes to grind to get a specific item. Consider the trade faction and what the items end up costing. If items are any good at all, they are probably going to cost millions of gold. How long will that gold take to grind?
I assume the balance will come with CoF being able to find the item in about that same amount of time. Hopefully CoF will have other advantages. Things like finding specific items/stats/LP easier.
There may also be some faction preference depending on if the player plays a lot or just a few hours a week.
I play just a few hours a week, if that, and I definitely don’t want to spend some of that time messing with a trade thing. I also don’t much care for theoretical BiS items as much as I do just having fun killing things.
Not to be that guy*, but I don’t feel like an ARPG needs a “dynamic economy” to be interesting. This isn’t a proper MMO. And most of what you’re doing isn’t trying to impress friends or get rich. (I mean maybe that’s some of it, but it’s definitely not the main thing.)
The main thing you’re trying to do is get stronger and kill different interesting bosses with various mechanics and find new loot to make you want to try a different build or class. That’s what an ARPG really is. It’s the motion, the combat, the strategy and planning, and the bosses. Everything else is kind of extraneous and only enters the gameplay loop infrequently.
The only thing I really need or want trade for is to give rare items to friends and vice versa. I’m not sure why everyone wants everything to be PoE where only the rarest possible items matter and everyone is only grinding to trade up to them, but that’s not what I’m personally here for. I hope this game stays something I can enjoy without having to do that.
The thought wasn’t at all based upon EHG being deceptive, it was based upon my reading of these forums and the OG posters (seemingly) implying that too much loot was dropping already.
Didn’t know that, wasn’t part of my thought process. To repeat, my thinking was a mental exercise to amuse myself about how I, and as an extension, EHG could get the value of CoF balanced with the value of the Merchant Guild and not break the game.
I wasn’t being “defensive” it was just based on the direction many are going with literal accusations against EHG and the way you had worded what you said about “what EHG actually does” so it lead to that conclusion.
Definitely appreciate anyone with ideas on how to make it better and their willingness to bring it to the community and the devs.
It will be interesting to see how trading and CoF will be balanced with each other since trading’s “efficiency” scales with the number of traders whole CoF (on paper) wouldn’t. Though we also don’t know how the prophecies are going to work.
It depends on the rarity of the items people are wanting to buy. So if the trade guild is fully stocked with most players on there, the good items that people want are going to be prohibitively expensive. The fewer players you have contributing to the trade guild, the less available the items will be. The number of players on the trade guild scales availability of items, but not really cost of the items. If an item is vendor trash, people aren’t going to buy it for any decent amount anyway.
I think people are getting caught up on item availability on the trade post and not considering the cost of the items if they are there. The best items in the game, if players want to sell them, are only going to be affordable by the top few players anyway.
virtually unobtainable items are still going to be virtually unobtainable even with trade.
Not being able to repost an “underpriced” item for “market value” and make a profit is also going to change how it functions compared to how people may be expecting it to function. It’ll be interesting to see & how many posts raging about not being able to put an item up for sale that they bought.
