No, if trading will be limited or completely removed.
I am not sure, I hate trading and what trading does to the game but for some reason, many people enjoy it. I would love some Self Found option so I can play with other self found players, but also I want self found option to be actually meaningful, not like in PoE, where they just shuts all trading and call it SSF…
If you allow people to trade in the same way that PoE/D2/GD/etc has trading, then you’ll be able to have RMT. If it’s via an AH with bidding that makes RMT a lot harder (though I’m sure they’d figure something out).
Nowhere did I say the devs shouldn’t consider it. Nowhere. I simply cast my vote in regards to the title of this thread.
RMT will still exist even if there is no trading. D3 has RMT. All RMT stands for is “real money trading” and this is not limited to items/crafting materials only.
It’s not always about value. Sometimes it’s about convenience. Depending on what is tradeable, it could be anything from desirable crafting bases, to runes and shards, to specific Unique items. In games where there is heavily restricted trading, people sell entire accounts. In games like WoW, people sell raid slots.
If there is a way to get or do something for less effort, there is generally someone willing to pay for it, which means there is someone else willing to profit from it.
And this is fine. I don’t care about RMT either because I don’t participate in it, but I also don’t want my game experience to suck more because of anti-RMT measures (i.e. lower drop rates).
Even D3 has RMT. Account leveling, paragon farming, loot sharing, etc. People are very good at finding ways to sell anything and everything if they can profit from it.
The RMT in PoE is just stupid. There are even RMT sites that publish character builds on youtube, and if you follow the link to their site they openly advertise RMT. Sure, I can ignore them, but I also consider that these sites might be the first “resource” a new player finds, which means it can shape their entire attitude about the game. Especially if they come from a F2P background where buying power is essentially a standard practice.
Just a thought:
What if you could only trade with people on your friends list, and before they could trade they had to be on your friends list for 48 hours?
I certainly wouldn’t want to put down any $$ for something I had to wait 2 days to get.
A by-product of this might be people “staying friends” with RMT traders so that the next time they want to buy some gold or an item, they won’t have the inconvenience of waiting 2 days. Wouldn’t it be easier for the Dev’s to spot a character w/ an unusually large number of friends (and trades) and subsequently investigate them for RMT?
It certainly would complicate trading for people not actually friends.
Just a thought.
That’s an interesting take on the topic. I don’t think an average player would want to wait two days to complete a trade, though.
I think the devs need to determine how much RMT they consider an acceptable cost of implementing an economy, and then try to control the excess the best they can while not creating any absurd hoops that legit players would need to jump through.
Just off the top of my head -
Go with an Auction House-style trading interface. Bind gold and items to the player they dropped for, but allow items to be listed on the Auction House to be purchased with gold. Include optional listing fees/transaction fees to act as a gold sink.
This makes gold RMT harder because gold is not tradeable player-to-player. It would rely on the gold buyer listing items on the Auction House and the gold seller successfully finding and purchasing them (since the listings are blind).
This also makes item RMT harder because the item buyer would need to know exactly which listing they are purchasing, and it would also cost them their own gold in addition to the real money they paid. If the seller prices the item too cheaply, it could get sniped by another player. If the seller prices the item too high, the purchaser might not consider the loss of gold worth their money.
Yes, I know voice calls/streams are a thing and there would be ways to work around these kinds of restrictions. As I’ve said before, RMT will happen whether there’s an economy or not - the idea is to put in roadblocks that make it more of a pain to pull off while not asking your legit players to jump through too many hoops.
Ensuring all trades go through an Auction House interface could also make it easier for the devs to log/track transactions and spot trends that point to RMT accounts.
There are probably better concepts than this. This was just off the top of my head, but hopefully it expresses my point well enough.
I’ll be honest, I would rather have tons gold sellers and farmers “problem” than auction house in the game. I believe Auction House is more hurtful to any loot hunting game, not just LE, than some RMT and gold spammers on the chat.
Game can have or not have any trading it wants as long as i am not forced to be part of it.
Trade is a problem if drop rates are designed around it - if the game makes loot rare to keep trade values up (hello POE), if the game is like “we dont care that non of your stuff is worth anything if you want to skip playing the game” im fine with it.
If drop rates are high enough noone needs trading anyway - you can just find your gear and thats perfect.
Right now trading is of non value anyway. I can craft any 4*t5 item i want just by wasting 30 minutes to copy paste save games - so every item is 100% worthless if you are willing to not play the game. Why trade?
They said in their trade manifesto (which is old & they’ve said not up to date with their current thinking) that the AH would have limited numbers of slots per player, would be bidding rather than “buy now” & the “best items” (presumably legendaries) would not be tradeable. I’m not sure how you could RMT your way around that, but I don’t have any incentive to try & work around it & people are smart at breaking rules (though I’m still waiting for them to be smart enough to break the “no FTL” rule the universe has unfairly imposed upon us).
Yeah, that won’t be working in MP (as I’m sure you know).
Im fine with anything in MP - i wont play it 
As long as drop rates for SP SSF are good enough im fine.
i just tried the “save game crafting” but it feels so dull and boring im never could get me to waste my time more than 30 minutes…
Edit: after getting myself a beer…
playing on save files feels as exciting as trading in POE … i guess im to old to understand why people want to trade its boring in any game i tried it…
The only good thing about trading is that it can enable you to get that one build defining unique you need to get your build going - maybe game should have a solution for this? Like a vendor that trades “5 tier 1 items for 1 tier 1 item of your choice”? So trading would not be needed at all.
I think the devs mentioned something very very simialr in their outddated Economy Post, something along the lines of trading between people is possible that are befriended for a “reasonable” amount of time, which might be a time span for different things/rarities varing form maybe a few hours to days/weeks.
I certainly like the idea that restrictions are a little bit less for friends, even if that might bring some other disadvantages or ways to abuse the system.
As @Llama8 said your suggesstion is very similar to what the outdated economy post from thedevs looked like. And i think all of their ideas thoughts were very reasonable and i liked them. There is no way implementing a system that don’t has any thigns that can be abused and there will be always player who hate X or Y systems.
I am very excited, if the devs will do another economy post in the (possible near) future.
It certainly can feel good to trade items or even sell them. The exitment for loot drops that are valuable but not usefull for your current build is much higher if they is any reasonable economy going on.
And when you can buy stuff for your build or to fix resistances, dropping currency in any way(might be Gold in LE or what ever) feels more exciting too, for me at least.
I understand where you are coming from when you “buy your whole build” and BOOM fullbuild. But sometimes you just don’t get any good items for Slot X and it can feel good to trade your earned money/currency
So isnt the problem that the game doesnt offer you enough ways to fill the “gear gap”?
You should get the tools you need ingame by the game - not by trading.
Trading feels like a lame and very unexciting bypass for missing crafting and / or target farming options.
If i have to “farm currency” the game could simply give me an NPC that sells me any item i want for currency. Easier, faster, not more or less boring than trading.
I totaly see the point of “i need item X to make build Y work” - i simply dont like the solution most games offer. Give every “boss” a loot table - get them on the internet - let me farm a 20% drop from X guy instead of farming 10.000 gold to buy it from another player …
The problem with trading is that people that use it cut 90% of gear progression and cry that there is nothing left to do (after sinking 10 hours of playing and 20 hours of trading)- usually resulting in drop rates being butchered to make that crowd happy. You simply cant give a game “much to do” if you let your players shortcut 90% of it.
You are right, it can feel cheap if there are no other systems, but especially in the current state fo LE, with this very deliberate crafting system you can already “fill the gaps” if you want to.
I think it’s alwas good if there are multiple ways to achieve certain things, like for example replacing weaker gear parts easily in preparation for endgame(that’s the main stage fo any aRPG iconsider trading). When you finish story and struggle with some of the endgame content because you might have those few slots that are very bad.
After that and playing endgame already i most of the time play as long and as much until i get “my own upgrades via drops”
But as i said, if the economy is reasonable, trading has the big advantage that anything you drop, that is either tradeable or is currency/worth something makes it a littlebit more exciting. (maybe it’s just me if you don’t feel that way).
As long as there are enough common ingame ways to earn your gear i think crafting does not “hurt the game”, especially when some of the toprarity gear(i guess legendaries and possible T6 and T7 affixes, not sure though) are not tradeable anyway. if its remotely like that devs going into the right direction i would say.
Trading will just be a part of the gearing process, which is not mandatory.
I play Trade league PoE and also SSF occasionally, trading is awful in PoE as nobody responds
I played Grim Dawn for 2000 hours and never entered a single game with another player ever, sometimes it would of been nice to trade for an item but fundamentally is a single player game to me
I played in Groups in D3 just to get easy XP and stones - no other reason
I wont play with anyone else in LE
Trading in any game is fine, its just in PoE you can sit there buying things you want for hours. Trading is way too accessible but also not
I want there to be a bazaar. A place to sell and buy good. Not trade with other players.
I believe if a way can be implemented to keep the Buyer and the Seller anonymous it could cut down on RMT as items listed for sale would be open to anybody.
Items should have relative “fixed” prices
You cant sell a common item for 50k gold…
Perhaps limit the number of items per ACCOUNT you can put in the bazaar in the last 24 hours
To keep People from selling there gold to RMT websites by buying a bunch of items
Limit the number of items that can be bought per ACCOUNT in 24 hours
Set a threshold that red flags an account E.X. someone buy maximum amount of items all for max price.
IDK im sure that there are ways to see/find/stop RMT or limit it to a point where its just not worth doing.
Maybe im ignorant but I don’t see why anyone would RMT in Last Epoch
People RMT in PoE because -
the game is free to make an account, if you get banned you simply make another account so there is no outlay to get started
the game is worldwide, you have cashed up Westerners and pitifully poor people from countries all playing on the same server. 10$ to me might be nothing but to somone else its food for 2 weeks, this drives people to RMT as they can make consistent earnings by selling off their PoE currencies - if they get banned they just make a new account
Last Epoch costs $40 or so, this is huge for someone living in a country that is poor, its again asking someone to pay a month of rent on the risk they COULD RMT and make the money back but could also get banned before that happens losing their $40, theres too much risk so they wont bother
Theres no risk for players, infact if you cheat and get banned in PoE, GGG will allow you to make a new account and move all your MTX, you can even get ‘free’ name changes with them if you have scammed enough players
I actually agree with your point. My example was more aimed at a middle road between open trade and trying to at least slow down RMT.
I’d even take your point one step further and say that open trade in any capacity hurts a loot hunting game, because it provides a route for players to instantly bypass the loot hunt. However, I realize a lot of players get some enjoyment out of bartering/trading, and their enjoyment of the game is no less valid than mine.
This essentially sums up my view on an economy, regardless of the form it takes. Drop rates should be generous enough for a player who doesn’t want to trade to be able to gear up in a reasonable amount of time. If the “trade barons/baronesses” and “merchant princes/princesses” end up complaining that they can’t get top price for their stuff, I find it hard to be sympathetic.
I’ll admit I haven’t looked at that in a LONG time. I should have probably re-read it, even if it is out of date.
The best items being bound sounds similar to how the WoW economy functions. You “RMT your way around it” by buying a spot in a raid and the RMTer giving you first choice of anything that drops, or by buying a specific boss drop and then attending a raid with the RMTer until the item you paid for drops.
Yeah, this is what I don’t understand about PoE. GGG are almost religiously against implementing an AH interface in spite of the rampant complaints about non-responding traders, price fixing, scamming, etc. because it would make getting items too easy.
I’m as casual as they come in PoE and even using the pittance of currency that drops for me I have no problem participating in trade when I choose to, and the items available for the small amounts of chaos I have on me at any given time can still be significant enough of an upgrade to short-circuit the reward loop of the game. All an AH interface would do is make it less tedious to sift through price fixers and AFKers, and avoid scammers. ANY TRADE already makes gearing up “fast and easy”. I feel GGG are just being stubborn for the sake of being stubborn and hiding it behind the whole “Wraeclast is a dangerous place, trade at your own risk” crap. Therefore I largely avoid participating in the economy at all.
People use the same argument for D3, and yet people RMT there. They can’t RMT items (outside of grouping with more of the same class and sharing loot with the “buyer”) but they can still sell leveling services or accounts pre-filled with crafting mats, or things like that.
Essentially, for anything with the potential for someone to say “I don’t have the time/desire to…” there’s someone offering to sell it. If there weren’t a market for it, these sellers wouldn’t exist.
Unless it changed, LE is going to cost around $15 at release? That’s not much of a barrier for entry, and certainly not a big deal to a RMT seller who can make that back in one transaction.
Right, and didn’t one of the GGG founders run a major D2 RMT site? GGG knows how easy their game is to RMT and outside of whatever detection system that kills currency drops on an account, they don’t seem to care about it much.
While I don’t believe the tinfoil-hatters who say GGG actually runs one or more of the PoE RMT sites, I do believe they acknowledge that the existence of a RMT-based economy might actually help bring people to the game, and keep people playing, so they take a public stance against it to maintain a sense of community goodwill while internally realizing they’ll never stem the tide, and it probably helps them in the long run anyway, so they devote more resources to their 3-month development cycle than trying to crack down on RMTers.
Yeah, but when there’sa reasonable economy & you’re taking part (buying/selling), you’ll be able to buy an upgrade much easier than dropping one so that dose of endorphins from dropping a useful piece of gear (or one that can be made useful via crafting) will be much fewer and further between.
And, if someone is going to say that “trading is detrimental to the item hunt”, so is crafting.
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