Incredibly disappointing. I strongly feel like a multiplayer ARPG without the ability to trade will not have the staying power and draw as others that do. This is the Grim Dawn route. This takes away intrinsic value from items and subsequently a huge part of what attracts people to loot finding, and ultimately I feel like this will prevent LE from competing in the market with the other big ARPGS.
If I get some really exciting rare item drop, it no longer has that value, it’s just going to sit in the stash and collect dust until I maybe decide to make a build using it. Why would I get excited about any item drop other than the exact items I need now? What is fueling me to find items other than getting a piece of gear that has 1% better stats than what I am wearing every 80 hours? This is exactly what Diablo 3 did, and it’s the precise reason why Diablo 3 is dead 3-5 days out from each season launch. There’s this huge dopamine rush from gearing up quickly that massively tapers off, as does the incentive to play. This “search for items for my character” gameplay loop doesn’t have a replayability factor like what an economy introduces.
This is a change for less dedicated, more casual players. Obviously, everyone’s opinion should matter, but really casual players do not carry a game to success. The dedicated player base who wants to invest the hours does. These are the players who want to sink thousands of hours into your game because it has that replayability factor and hits on the right reward systems, and taking trade out of your game completely eliminates one of those important systems.
I hope I am wrong, but this feels like a bad decision and might be detrimental to the success of the game. I am a lot less excited for the future.
See the notice through my Steam and came just to say… that i’m very disappointed.
Disappointed because of what I was expecting will never happen. This means LE is automatically a bad game or something? Of course not! I just also need to understand that this is the type of game the company wants. And is totally fine.
But to be honest, I was expecting to have a trade economy like PoE (but not with the mess!! A really well done trade system) because MY playtime is different when the game offers you “treasures” of great value when there is someone looking to pay for it. For example with what I mean with playtime, looking through my steam I have fun with Torchlight 2 for 103 hours, Grim Dawn also for 103 hours (never notice the coincidence), FATE for 185 hours and, Path of Exile for… 1453 hours at the moment.
But this is just me and my thoughts, so I don’t want anyone yelling at me for my preference, I know I have PoE to trade. I’m sure I will be back to play Last Epoch when there is more content to spend time and will totally worth it giving what they did so far, but knowing that there will never be a trade system, I take it as a negative point because it will not engage me like PoE did… Unless they try something new or creative (an intelligent trading/haggling system with NPCs?). I hope there will be something that could replace it. Or there won’t be and it won’t matter anyway. Time will speak.
Good luck with the development, I will be expecting for new fun content!
I feel like this will backfire pretty bad for multiple reasons, unfortunately…
Anyway, there are still some things I would like to know (maybe they have been answered already and I didn’t see it):
What happens if you group with people and just “drop” an item from your inventory? Not one you found during this group play but just at some other point in time. Will they be able to see it? Will they be able to pick it up?
Are there any plans that allow us to somehow “make use” of uniques we don’t need? Or rather, when will something like that be implemented? It already feels bad having multiple “very rare” items and people on the forum and Reddit saying how they farmed so many hours and never found them, yet you will not be able to give/trade them the item. Not only that, but it feels even worse hoarding these items without having any way to profit from them, kinda like the problem with gold before the first gold sink was introduced.
Does the person you want to gift the item to have to be in your group (or zone, whatever) while the item dropped or can you gift it to someone that joined later on? And will the ability to gift be gone once you (or the other person) leaves the zone?
But honestly isn’t this the game loop already in PoE and D3 or basically every other ARPG with trade for it’s seasonal event? You go league starter to get the early currency and chase items. Then you play your 2nd real build for a few weeks or up to a month and then quit. Those that don’t capitalize aka FOMO, terms that can damage the ARPG or MMO experience, then spend a factor of time more farming up for their build. Then they use that finished build a couple of weeks and then quit. If you look at the Steam charts a league is basically dead week 5 and the body starts to rot progressively over the next few weeks as people move on.
If you just watched the Ziz, Steel, Mathil, Quin podcast and how much of their discussion revolved around trade, nerfs/balancing, and not see how trade will break the game experience we enjoy now don’t know once the genie is out of the bottle there’s no putting it back in.
Start with this system and iterate on it equals success. Open trade from the get-go and watch LE turn into something mediocre IMO.
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However, we want Last Epoch to be an ARPG that, at its core, is about going out in the world, killing enemies, and finding awesome loot, not one where playing the economy is the key to success. We strongly believe that this approach will make the game both a more enjoyable co-op experience and a more balanced solo experience.
Full agree!
…but I think trade UI should be similar PoE for players who want item trade, not only gift for anti scam.
By the way, I’m looking forward to this Gift system.
I expected this weak form of trade based on how devs were communicating (and also, how they stayed quiet about it…). To me is great, and I understand how so many PoE players are disgusted with this revelation.
I hope they dig into it a bit more, is way too restrictive even for the case of giving a leg to a friend.
Chalk up another one disappointed with this decision. I don’t always play at the same time as my friends so this basically keeps the game SSF for my situation. Hope they relax the restrictions somewhat but if not, best of luck with the game moving forward.
What a disappointment. I come from a 20 year old game with a simple trading system. I wish we could have the new classes over multiplayer. As a solo player I hope yall have plans for multiplayer seasons other than just a ladder.
I approve of this decision. Trade is a suck on every game it is in for anyone that solo plays. It forces devs to reduce drop rates.
Contrary to what some think, it doesn’t help with making item drops feel better. It massively reduces the number of items that drop that feel exciting because they have to be so rare that they aren’t flooding the economy and worthless.
The game does need more systems in place to work towards items. A sense of inevitability. Constant all or nothing drops gets boring the same as easy character completion. If players could make incremental progress towards some items it would help a lot.
i havent been following or logged into the forums for ages.
i see many people who have commented how they are unhappy about the decision to remove trading.
EHG team, please do not be discouraged, i m pretty sure a vast number of these people do not realize the implications of enabling trade (which involves rebalancing drop rates- usually making drops shit for single players). many of them do not realize what they are asking for.
EHG, i love how you guys make a super lengthy post explaining in great detail the pros and cons and reasoning.
you’re really making a good game i really respect and admire your decision as i know there definitely will be backlash.
i personally am totally FOR your decision.
Thanks EHG
You do realize it was the devs who set the expectations for the users in respect to trade, no? This topic has been going on for years, and gifting is the end result. One day you will be able to empathize hopefully. Trade talk should have not been discussed in the length it was, when in hindsight, it was clear the devs bit off more than they could chew.
As a SSF player, its whatever to me. Trade is an important part of arpg’s to many people, it shouldnt be difficult for you or any other user to understand why a sizable portion of the player base would react like they have.
I love this system, I can totally see the focus on making sure that this game doesn’t repeat the mistakes of others arpgs.
Totally understand all the points being made in the post.
Please, add an option in the character creation menu that allows sharing resources and items between the characters in one account without being able to trade with others players.
dude, i come from POE. i am a filthy casual that can farm maybe 50 exalts each league. the crafting system in POE imho is almost useless to me as its almost always better to just save up and buy gear from players.
i enjoy playing LE because i can self sustain. i dont play SSF on POE because SSF on POE is retarded. i am thoroughly trade reliant on POE. i dont remember the last time i dropped a rare item in poe and went oooh thats so awesome, i dont remember the last time i exalt slammed something good.
as i said many people do not realize what they are asking for.
i would ask you this, would trade even be relevant if everything you needed dropped for you normally? trade is especially important when things are scarce.
if my enjoyment requires taking away people enjoyment from trading so be it. i enjoy generous loot and self sustaining. if people prefer trading over killing mobs and getting drops, play a trade/economy simulator. why are they even playing an arpg? if their enjoyment comes at my cost.
game devs want their games to be enjoyed one the way they design their game. i believe the way i enjoy the game (killing stuff , getting drops) is the way the game devs intended their game to be enjoyed.
i’ve played grimdawn where trade is available but not enforced but i dont trade anyway. i’ve played many arpgs. ultimately i find the games that i have the most great time are those where i dont feel the need to ever rely on trade. i will admit, having the option to trade can be good but i m not willing to pay the price of having my item drops nerfed as a result
Like you I have suffered with PoE’s trading system for a couple thousand hours, the tedium finally hit a point where it was either SSF or saying bye to an amazing game with the most bullshit trading system imaginable.
I honestly do not think trade is needed for LE, the game fits a particular niche much like Grim Dawn, and holy shit, I love Grim Dawn.
This is neither here nor there though. The issue is the devs made a cardinal mistake, getting players hopes up. Without a doubt there are people who saw some gameplay on youtube, visited the forums, and read about the trading system that has been discussed here from the beginning of time. These people took the devs for their word. bought the game in good faith, and today are finding out the system that has been given so much attention, turns out to be literally nothing.
This is not a player having unrealistic expectations issue, this is the devs not communicating properly with us, the people who support the game because of what they were told would be there by launch. Im guessing this is the teams first big project, and I hope they learn from this that some things should be left of the back burner until an actionable plan of implementation is in place.
Tomorrow is GGG’s day for redemption btw, hope you have a good time with the league if you still play! I called it quits once I hit maps in Kalandra, just like EHG, GGG has been having real issues with communication, and as a result, saw the worst retention numbers yet. I like LE, I dont want the devs to go down that road.
Yeah exactly. I refuse to believe that they only just now decided that trade was the root of all evil in arpgs. That is something that deserved a big post plastered all over the place the moment they decided on it. I know it wasn’t a cash grab or a bait and switch, but to a lot of people it’s going to feel like one. They deliberately market to poe players quite heavily and neglecting this little detail is not something that is going to sit well with people regardless of if it makes a good or a bad game.
