I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about having the stash for every character but in a mode that doesn’t allow trading with other players.
I am right there with you! Unlike PoE, I dont think crafting mats will be scarce, so I dont have to worry about finding a nice piece I will never use, but cant sell for mats to improve my gear. Everything you said aligns with how I view this game along with the others in the genre. Trading is just an extra, but that extra is an integral part of the experience for a lot of players. I feel for them, it seems trade enthusiasts have been waiting damn near forever for the highly anticipated trade system, after all it was the devs who put so much focus on discussing it with us. Its a lesson learned I hope, I am in my no means boycotting the game or have even a bit of ill will towards the team. They were ambitious, too ambitious it turns out. EHG has done a tremendous job with updates up till recently. I hope the team adjusts this gifting system and strike a middle ground with the trade peeps. This system aint it.
It’s not unique, it’s the D3 approach.
1 Like
Initial Harvest was THE best thing ever in PoE, gradually building up your items as you need them was the highest motivation to play longer that I ever had in the game.
I’m not sure what to think about it.
First impression is that I’m deeply disappointed. I always liked the trading aspect of MP games. You don’t need to “play the market”, neither does the game turn into a “economy simulator”. It’s just the simple thing to get value out if good items you can’t use on your own toon. Sell it and buy things you can make use of.
This way people get a dopamine rush when they find a really rare item they know it can boost their own build by selling it or exchanging it for the build defining gear.
For me it doesn’t matter if you can solo farm all the stuff you need. That’s just different. Having no trade leaves the whole online experience incomplete.
Now I don’t think LE is in a bad state currently with no trade. The droprates are nice for SSF. It’s ok.
But the game was sold as a MP experience WITH trade, with the Bazaar system. And when people here say “stick to tour vision, EHG, don’t listen to the naysayers”, I ask myself: “Where have you guys been, when they originally buried their vision of having the Bazaar as a trading system?” This was their vision.
What we got now is the result of EHG changing their mind and NOT sticking with their vision. Remember Mike talking about how he loved / loves trading and that they are working on finding a nice system? Obviously they have given in to the crowd that sees trade as something bad.
And let’s be honest here: It’s more convenient for EHG to not have to develop a real trading system when they already delayed the MP release because of the workload.
I’m not pissed, I’m not overly negative. But I’m also not a fanboy that just happily swallows everything that EHG throws at me.
I think the current community might be 50/50 on this. Because many people have learned to like the game for what it is. But this decision will impact the acquisition of new players negatively.
14 Likes
I am half disappointed with this news, I think it’s a really good idea to seriously limit trade which is going to enhance the value of farming.
However, it took more than a year to implement multiplayer without any other content update in the meanwhile, so I would at least expect the multi experience to be top notch, and I believe it won’t be the case with this form of « gifting » system which seems to me insufficient.
Let’s say I play the game with one or two IRL friends, but I have more time to sink into the game, which means more time to loot stuff, and in the end, having stronger overall characters and getting ahead of them in the corruption levels I farm.
If I can’t share any item I loot, that could be good for them, to help them improve their characters and continue farming with me at higher levels, that means I will have to play at their levels if we want to continue playing together, removing all the fun for me since the content will appear to easy, and the drops too low level.
A strict solution could be to choose one or two person at the beginning of a league, with whom you will be able to trade freely during all the season, at the condition that they also add you in their one or two friend group.
no vibrant economy will turn off the few hundred players left playing. so dissapointed.
2 Likes
Yeah, same thing, they see crafting as an extension of the slot machine that is loot, any deterministic choice is extremely hated by GGG, I’m still surprised they didn’t destroy meta crafting, too… deterministic!
I see the same thing with EHG and trading, they all know PoE well, and want to stay away of the trading economy effects, with the “all for the profit” mindset and currency farm strategies that overtake PoE experience, with the wealth of content and incredible bosses it has.
At the end each one stick to their guns, sometimes it aligns with us, sometimes doesn’t.
2 Likes
This is by far the most reasonable and valid concern about the lack of trade i’ve seen so far in this thread and something i didn’t really consider being myself rather happy they want to move away from the crappy PoE economy and abysmal drop rates. I hope the devs read your feedback and consider your suggestion.
Just a quick reaction to the “one year to implement multiplayer” part thought. During that year they basically re-built a completely different game client with parts probably being re-built from scratch so i’m not really that surprised it took them a long time and i think/hope future updates will come at a higher rate now that the “hard work” is finally done.
1 Like
I dont like that gifting system too much because in my opinion it is too limiting. If a good item drops that one of my friends would probably need and he misses the session I cannot give it to him later on. I would have preferred an AH system with a restriction of how many items you can trade for like 5 items simultaneously up for sale.
This system will make farming extremely tedious on top of the normal grind until you reach the endgame.
3 Likes
I like the idea of choosing friends you can trade with before the league.
The ones that are playing a single player game that, also, doesn’t have a “vibrant economy”?
As I said above, yes and no. You can still pull your friends through your higher corruption content allowing them to have higher chances of getting exalteds/etc. As long as they aren’t trying to be melee and help with the clear they’ll be reasonably safe if you’re murdering everything (for maximised drops). The mono quest echo bosses will be harder since those require ability to execute mechanics with thinner safety margins, but you can still farm monos to help them get better gear. It’s not going to be as bad as you think, though it’s not going to be as easy as unrestricted trade would be.
I think friend trading could be a really good idea, but not limited to league/season content (or whatever they end up calling it). I think it should be something more along the lines of someone who’s been on your friends list for an amount of time (say 3 days) that you can then trade with freely, etc. The time lockout would likely dissuade any kind of actual trading between anyone but the most serious people and allow you to free trade with your friends. I’m sure I saw this method I’m mentioning in another ARPG before but I can’t for the life of me think where/which one it was…
Im gonna be honest, this gets brought up a lot, but I think this is an entirely fabricated problem.
if you actually cared about enjoying the game with friends, but you can play 8 hours a day, and they can play 4, you should be spending the 4 hours after your friends log off I dunno playing another character?
What if your friends dont want hand outs? is the fun sucked out for you too if they dont?
I feel like so many ARPG players are even looking at couch co-op with this lens of efficiency before anything else. Yes it is a waste of your time to farm low level content with your friends. But if its fun, who cares? Games like GW2 have level scaling mechanics so you can play at your friends level and not just blast everything ruining their experience.
There is so many games that did well where the focus isnt on maximum efficiency, and I feel like so many of the problems presented here are really not so much “problems” as much as they are simply causing you to take a hit to efficiency.
There is a very good comment on the reddit thread of this announcement of a group of friends who had that one friend keep playing after everyone went to bed. Went into online public lobbies and got handed tons of endgame over powered items. He showed up and was like “look guys I got you extremely op gear!” and everyone just… Stopped playing. The game was beat, the progression and adventure was over.
I think EHG is very much trying to foster a MP experience that isnt just “LE but more loot and broken party set ups” they are trying to make the MP experience a rich stimulating experience that isnt just “follow your op friend who is deleting the game” or “you started the cycle a week late, here is a full set of exalted items”
like tbh, me and my friends all play poe, we never party other then for “rota” style, which is extremely degenerate, and is the “split farming” strat mentioned by EHG.
its not that we wouldnt want to play together, I played an aura bot one league and my friend a damage carry, and we got extremely rich and had a really good time. But it never fostered that fun experience, its was just another exercise in minmaxing. No one actually plays path of exile MP for fun, they play it to gain something.
Where as LE we will have instanced loot, no fighting of that exalted orb that dropped. Even if one person gets slightly more lucky then the other, we always have gifting. There is no economy, so there is no focus on “omg this has to be efficient or im losing economic ground”
instead you just play the game because its fun, and if its not fun to play with friends, then thats fine too.
6 Likes
100% the D3 system, yes. While I dealt with it in D3 fine, it still probably wasn’t the most ideal as items I found for my friends were often when I was running solo and therefore could not trade it with them at all. This is the main issue I had with this system in D3 and I will definitely feel that here, but I don’t know that they can do any other system without creating an economy, which is counter to what they want for their game (which I agree with honestly). Hopefully they’ll be adjusting drop rates accordingly with the lack of trading system, in the end I’m kind of happy to see where it goes.
Also I think everyone needs to remember that even after 0.9 releases, WE’RE STILL IN EARLY ACCESS which means things can still change from there. If the system is not successful I guarantee EHG are not just gonna sit on it and let it ruin their game. I mean look at how they overhauled the crafting system due to players feedback of the existing one before it.
I wouldn’t worry about trying to change their minds now, and counting chickens before they hatch and all that, wait and see how it goes and how it feels and if it sucks let them know then. They will change things for the better, they always do, I have faith in them that far at least. If they were talking about this for launch maybe I’d have a bit more anxiousness over it but it’s just 0.9, we have plenty of time to go from there. Breathe my dudes <3
2 Likes
I am not 100 % convinced my friend will have fun waiting for hours doing nothing and trying to avoid getting one shot during our session, especially since i might play again when he is off and thereby renewing the problem, but that’s just my opinion.
2 Likes
I get your point, the thing is that the improvement is what gets me excited in ARPGs.
I am a competitor and I enjoy playing only one character to the maximum of its capacity before trying a complete new character, because I don’t have enough resources to think and fully optimize two characters at a time, and if I can’t do that, then I don’t see the point. That’s just how some type of players play en enjoy their game and I am one of them.
That’s why I don’t enjoy so much creating another character in addition to the one I already play with my friends.
And I don’t do that to show off at all, I played every single ARPGs but I never showed off any items to my friend because I don’t care and they don’t care. We just want to push the content as far as we can go with our character and our min / max strategy.
And my point was, it’s never fun for either player to have a major difference in equipment, and thus in content you can farm, and that it could be nice to have a possibility to compensate that, and increasing interaction between players, since it’s called multiplayer.
Doing that by allowing a form of limited trade (in number/ week for exemple) and with a very restrained number of people, might please a part of the community for the reasons I gave previously and also allowing a rewarding farming by preventing intensives form of trades from emerging like in some others ARPGs.
1 Like
I don’t want this to come over as a rant of some sort! So, if it does then I apologize in advance.
Having the ability to trade with others is a defining feature of the genre. Otherwise, it could very well be an offline singleplayer game. Saying you don’t want to become PoE is also not a valid argument because there are no currency items so at this point we would more likely have some kind of a bartering system, which is something I was very much looking forward to.
Let me give you an example if I would farm a 2-3LP Exangs and upgrade it but ultimately not having the “perfect” mods for my build I would very much like to trade it for another one that has the right mods. And I’m talking about trading items 1:1 here, just to be clear.
Another example. Rolled a pretty good piece of gear, the only problem it has is a mod that is of no help on it but guess what,I can’t roll over it because I don’t have that specific shard.
Some could argue about powercreep, but let’s be honest for a moment. By the time I’m doing these trades I’ve already done all the content and I’ve already overpowered all the difficulty the game has to offer.
L.E. Also, the curent iteration implies that you must play with others. I don’t have any friends to play this game with so that basically means no trading/gifting for me.
I’m no game dev, obviously. I don’t have the perfect solution. But I do know that having options is WAY better than being limited or not being able to do stuff at all.
4 Likes
A restrictive trade system would have been the middle ground between those to groups and the ground I would have wished for. Instead of going for a compromise you decided to accommodate just one group. Fair enough.
Personally, I just wanted to be able to trade 0 LP uniques and sets, because as you, EHG, said I like to play with a build in mind. And if I am unlucky I can play 200h without getting a common drop. Now today I don’t mind, but if I think ahead, and it is like in D3 where season characters don’t have shared stash… well then I’ll be forced to choose between playing the build I want or season rewards (FOMO!).
2 Likes