Does LE really need a conventional trading system?

It will need to be much more restrictive than that in order to not turn into a defacto uncontrolled external economy.

I agree 100%, but they NEED to think of something to enable a group of actual friends to freely trade.

I get the impression that this would also conflict strongly with EHG’s stated goals and vision for the game.

One thing I just noticed as I was playing PoE is as the level of power trade offers me in a mature market for someone basically just starting is so high its more reasonable for me to wait for chaos drops (or chaos recipe) to buy items than to try finding an upgrade and I lose that sense of ownership and middlestones in progression.

Just another opinion I wanted to add to this discussion.

4 Likes

Yeah thats your choice though and no one elses

In Sanctum, out of the rare pieces im wearing ive crafted my Belt/Boots/Bow (multimodded) and chaos spammed a ring as Chaos is so cheap you can afford to do it and other pieces of my gear are uniques/corrupted uniques worth multi Divines

The boots I crafted on day 3 by alt/aug/regal werent even on the market

You can also Exalt anything now and not care as exalts are worth 12c

Ultimately its you as the players fault for not learning the systems GGG gives you to improve yourself instead of your braindead ‘pick up chaos buy upgrade’ mentality

The reason why GGGs economy system is vastly superior still is because you CAN CHOOSE to play 75-90% SSF then just buy the shit you are missing to fill out your build and because the game is so robust you will almost never max a character even with almost near infinite currency and every crafting measure at your disposal

Not only that a league last 3 months tops, people play for 1-5 weeks usually and stop then come back later after a wipe to do it all again, wtf would I want to spend a week farming a Bleed % blessing? I actually have better things to do with my time even if its in the very same game

Absolutely, the crafting system in PoE has a very high barrier to entry (both for knowledge and for currency), so a lot of upgrades are found on the market.
Progression is also a lot less gradual in PoE, which is related to the fact that the act of playing the game and the act of upgrading the character are essentially two different forms of play.
Crafting is so convoluted that, unlike LE, you cannot do it between maps, and buying items also require a significant change of gear, which cannot simply be done inbetween content. So you tend to do it in short burst, where you upgrade a bunch of things at the same time.

I do not feel a particularly strong sense of ownership of items either in PoE or LE.

In PoE I tend to feel ownership only for the best items I crafted myself (the gloves in my previous example, but I also had an incredible belt that I ended up not using due to obtaining the mageblood) and for items that required a significant amount of farming to obtain (the mageblood).
PoE, being a mostly economic game in nature, I also tend to remember my “good investments”, i.e., items that I found for very low on the market, despite likely having a higher value. From those I get the satisfaction of knowing I made a bargain.

What is stange is that in LE, where everything is crafted by myself I do not feel a strong sense of ownership either.
I feel that might be due to the fact that LE’s crafting is very luck based and (in my opinion) does not require a lot of mastery to achieve the best items. So I feel that I did not much “earn” that piece of equipment, but rather that it was obtained by luck.
This is also related to the fact that a lot of exalted items are incredibly boring with respect to affixes. Most items ends up with the same mods, especially for suffixes. But this is an issue that LE will need a bit of time to grow up from.

2 Likes

Interesting, I have a similar feeling (no sense of ownership or pride in my items), but for exactly the opposite reason: I feel like LE crafting leaves very little to luck.
It takes a couple of minutes to get an item with all the “perfect” affixes you wanted. It cannot fail. Luck kicks in later on, when trying to push these affixes to high tiers, but at the start you will get them, 100% guarantee. That takes away a lot of the fun in finally getting the perfect combination, and it also makes all the items look the same (because let’s be honest, there are many affixes nobody uses, we all want the same ones).

I am playing Undecember right now, which is completely luck based. It can be frustrating, sure, but when you finally hit the 5/6 affixes you wanted after burning hundreds of essences, it is a great feeling, and an item you will keep and cherish for a long time.

The opportunity to directly trade an item with full affixes would probably change this feeling, I don’t know, I am pretty much SSF only, they can implement or not implement all the trades they want as far as I am concerned. :wink:

1 Like

This sounds like you should stay away from slot machines :D.

Luck is the factor and you feel the pain if rngsus is with you or not. For exampel I had luck with one toon and haven’t found any item upgrades for him after lvl 80. I have other experiences with almost all other toons I played and only found crap I exchanged with other crap.

As soon as items get balanced compared to skills and passives I’ll have an even worse time because I’m generally unlucky when it comes to games ^^. So for one crafting is luck based and for the other it’s a walk in the park.

When I look at the troubbleI have to get a T20 item with a base that is decently rolled I don’t care for any items I have because they are mostly trash items I wear to get to caps I need and that’s it. The only time a drop in LE felt greate was my first exsang after 180h playtime. Everything else was just another trash item in the great heap of trash items LE is throwing at ya.

1 Like

I must say, this thread has given me a renewed appreciation of how much the individual experience can vary across players. and how much different players want different things from the game.

My feeling is that getting or not what you want is almost entirely up to luck in LE, you cannot really master the system because the “correct” way of crafting something is rather intuitive. This is what I meant when I said luck-based, the opposite of skill-based.

Yeah, thats why i fear the homogenization of the genre (just like how the majority of MMOs that came after WoW are essentially equal to each other because wow systems were perceived as the “success model”). There are already"economic-balanced ARPGS" in the market, so i don’t feel the need of adding one more into the pool.

In my opinion the best approach is free trade while balancing the game around SSF, simple ignoring all the “economic consequences” and allowing players that want to trade to freely trade and allowing the players that want to play SSF to not feel rigged. This way the only group that will be dissatisfied are the players who play “economy games”, but those can play any of the other ARPGs that focus in this aspect, so it’s fine.

The truth is there is no system that will be approved by 100% of the players, but what i’ve seen in the gaming industry is that trying to appease everyone create really shit end products, so it’s always better to determine who your target group is and develop the game exclusively around them. Focusing on keeping your target audience instead of trying to attract everyone. Great examples of this approach are Factorio, Dark Souls and Dwarf Fortress, since they are all games that focus hard on a small target audience and are able to keep that audience happy despite not being approachable by a big group of people, while also proving that B2P model can make money (unfortunately chinese corporatism requires infinite profit growth which doesn’t work in this model, but that’s another story).

Agreed with everything except

This would also come with “consequences” that are not solely economical and might even disrupt party players or solo players.

Especially for the design space that the devs have for upcoming features and game mechanics.

1 Like

It will shorten the playtime drasticloy when people get their gear fast and realise there is no content to play outside of grinding the same boring monolith/maps for a little chance to get the blessing you want and an even smaller chance to get a good roll or the unique you are target farming with a good base as well as a good roll and more then 2 LP.

Right now LE has a lot to deliver tobecome a good game and trading is just the tip of the problem iceberg. Sadly diehard fans don’t see this yet ^^.

2 Likes

Not sure if you wanted to refer to me specifically or if you really think a lot of people think that. But even excluding me I think there are very few people, even the “die hard fans”, who deny that LE does not have that much endgame variety yet.

But i still think that LE has one of the better, if not the best, foundations for a good endgame.

I am also confused, because you are one of the people who at least posted 1000 times that they want to trade with friends, but then again you are also against free trading or doesn’t it matter to you? Or do you jsut want something to keep LE successfuly in your eye or what can I conclude from your comment?

I think that the better solution is to make a party filter system (PFS).

hear me out, that the filter is designed for a group based on what each one is targeting and it comes with the presets for it in the color/sound/text, and size. All members of that party must agree to the PFS. The party can then change the PFS based on the content they are running. If a party member ninja’s other player’s target item, then there can be an issue, but if the ninja is looting something that both want then a barter or rock paper scissors game can be worked out.

The biggest issues I have always avoided in designing trade systems. open = RMT and the horde of RMT money makers outside the game. The more players spend on RMT = the less money for development which equates to where RMT is the thing. This will break a business and result in some serious issues with the legal system.

I designed one of the first persistent DB trade systems in which the items were saved in that game world for the expansions of Neverwinter and Neverwinter Nights (1 & 2) I know firsthand that unless there are some levels of Bind on Account, Bind on Equip or Bind on Pickup that exploiters will do their thing because they simply cannot stop themselves.

LE’s current monetization cannot handle the RMT/exploiters in its current format. Without future revenue, this will be a dead game before it launches.

I quoted you for the quote :D.

If people want to play it. The problems of LE begin far earlier then in the endgame from my point of view but that’s another topic.

I still want to trade with friends and nothing changed there and in some of my other posts I already stated games with free trade systems and somehow none of these games was hurt by trading. Sure PoE is kind of a mess when it comes to trading (3rd party crap) but the playernumbers speak for themself because if it was as bad as I think or other players make it the playernumbers should be worse.
Sometimes I think people forget how many games of the isometric hack and slay genre had trade in MP and haven’t suffered from it. Just compare Grim Dawn with LE (sure it’s a bit unfair you don’t need to tell me) next April I’m almost sure GD will have a higher population then LE even when GD has local save files and editiors.
D2 people praise as the best of the best games in the genre had free trade. No idea if this was changed in the remastered edition. Strange people think this was the best hack and slay even when it had free trade.

I’m just a bit sick of it tbh and I think it’s time for the devs to take answer some questions. The thing I want to point is simple… Trade is only one of the problem LE has that’s all :).

If you find some very very good item in LE you can make your own build around it while in POE, for 90% of players it is just sticking to a guide someone else made for them and telling them what items they need to buy. Sometimes, items that were cheap a league ago get very expensive because some build gets hyped and all people want to have this item now. It is hard to compare these games :slight_smile: I like the approach of LE.

I like making new chars in LE. In POE I hate it! Hard to compare these games

People playing the same build in POE amost wearing the same items in the end. Optimized and dictated by some guide. Leaders and followers.

But thats not the problem of PoE. Thats a community problem.
You can do the same thing in PoE, it’s just more complex to understand what build is good because there is way more content and items+mods. For casual players its too overwhelming looking up all the stats and items, thats why they follow guides.
If you give LE 5 more years the same thing will happen here with additional content.
I dropped Entropic Devastation from Uber Shaper + Sandstorm Visage and made my own version around it with Shockwave Totem to abuse Sanctum mechanic. There is no guide around it, but it worked perfectly.

Again, community problem. People like to play efficient and reach their goals faster without thinking too much. BTW there was a time where everyone played EQ Werebear in LE and the forum was full of guides and questions related to this build. Why? Because during that time there was nothing similar in power until Lizard came up with a new idea^^

True

I like it in both games. Just dont follow the meta and play what you prefer to play :slight_smile:

1 Like

So can you in PoE. (But I will grant you that it takes more experience, as the game is more complex)

And the same in LE (not sure about 90%, I’d settle for “many”).
Check the comments on any “beginner” build posted on these forums, you will find plenty of questions along the line of “Help!!! You only say where to put 20 points, then mastery, but I have 22 now and mastery not unlocked yet, WHAT DO I DO WITH THESE TWO POINTS???”
Some people panick if they have even the smallest decision to make in character building. Takes the fun out for them. Oh well.

As pointed by Trikster, it doesn’t come from the game, it comes from the players.
I don’t really get it, but I tend to think we should let them enjoy the game the way they want. Trade if they want, blindely follow a build if they want. To each their own.

I might be single-minded but i can’t see any consequence besides the “economic consequences” by allowing players to freely interact with loot.

Just to make clear a little more what i am trying to express:
Player plays a lot and trade a lot = he gets to the endgame really fast and is “done” with the game.
So what that player can do is changing his approach to the game, which means playing either SSF, hardcore or masochist or a combination of the three.
The game, gladly, already has multiple ways to “customize” the difficulty of your playthrough. So i can’t really agree with people that say “trade will make the game too easy”. If trading is making the game less fun to you, as long the game is not balanced around trade, you can choose to not trade, or choose to trade less.
For example in PoE i only trade for items that are almost impossible to find, everything else i craft/drop myself, and i don’t need a gamemode to enforce that on me, i can freely choose to play that way, because even thou that’s not “efficient” it’s more fun to me.

That’s why i ask to keep choices free, each player should know what is the most fun way to play for each player, that’s why Skyrim and Minecraft are such masterpieces, they allow the players to fully customize how they want to approach the core game experience.

I would also be fine if they created a separate mode where drop-rates are lowered (to balance the ability of trading) for those who want to have a more “economy heavy” game. But that should never be the core of the game, it should only be alternative gamemode.

Because the moment you balance your base game around a side aspect of your game (in this case trading), you limit your game to that and screw with all other options.
Just how playing SSF or Hardcore in Poe is restricted to just a few build options out of millions that are possible in trade.

Also just to be clear i am completely fine with how they will implement trade in the game for now, i just think it’s not really necessary.