Item Gifting Development Update from our Principal Game Designer

[Macknum]

@Iridium

We are all here because we care about Last Epoch. Not about PoE. Not about Diablo. Not about any other game. We want Last Epoch to succeed and voice our concerns, because we are worried. Not because we want this game to be a clone of another game.

Yeah but you see what LE is. Let’s be honest here… the devs made up their mind and they want to push their agenda down our throats if we like it or not. If you dislike it refund the game if you can and be done with it because you wont miss much if the devs of LE don’t go into overdrive.
It’s their game and it’s their narrow minded beliefs that brought us to this point and it’s legit because they are the devs after all. Are they worng? Hell no they do only wrong for players who like trade. Do they care? Nope they don’t and that’s obvious because they had hundrets of of posts about the topic and came up with a bland sad excuse of a trading system that’s so fubar I would be ashamed if I had anything to do with it.

If this keeps going and they kill the patient with teir cure then so be it. Lokk at Warhammer 40k inquisitor Martyr. It was a totaly different game in Beta/EA stages and the “Me want another generic hack and slay game!” crowd changed it into the game it is today… a niche shitshow people play because Warhammer 40k.

Noone is able to please everyone while it is easy to do right here and right now. Make open trade servers and no trade servers and be done with it. This will split the playerbase yeah but that’s the only way to tell what way will work for the most people.

[Macknum]

BTW I ask myself how an announcment like this “Fear not, friends will be able to freely gift items between each other as long as they have been friends for a reasonable amount of time.” can still be found on the kickstarter page in the trading section when everything they wrote there was changed and make them look like they don’t care to update it. If you get the wrong people in they will start with all the liar and scammer sprech noone needs.

Then again it’s good to see that EHG ISN’T perfect and either not up to the task given or fickle about their descission making in the past present and most likely in the future.

[Luck]

Bold decision, but respectable choice!

[frankmcdank]

There is a difference between playing a game and playing a virtual job, which is what grinding currency is.

[solarise]

Funnily enough… I don’t care much about trade. I quite like playing SSF, and I only dabble in trading occasionally, usually after I put way too many hours into an ARPG. I guess it provides some longevity for me.

But like you’re saying, there’s this combination of different issues that is starting to make me wary. Kickstarter still has this front and center - “Player economy is one of the most enjoyable aspects of this genre for many players and we want to do it justice. Last Epoch will have a Bazaar system in which players will be able to anonymously buy and sell items from other players using the gold they’ve found on their adventures.” Ouch. Just ouch. This needed to be removed years ago tbh. But now, after this update, it must be removed ASAP. Should have been removed many times now. I’ve seen so many comments pointing this out… This is quite misleading. Why is it still not removed, does nobody at EHG have 5 minutes of their time to correct the text on their Kickstarter? Or is it on purpose at this point?

By the time 0.9 comes out, it will be what, a year without content? Longer? Early access game. With practically no updates for a year. I hear an alarm going off in my head. I see Wolcen and Star Citizen flash in front of my eyes.

And what do we get with 0.9? Uh. “Multiplayer”. A year of man-hours, spent on “multiplayer” that 10% of this community even wanted in the first place, except it doesn’t even have trade, so only a tiny percent of this community will even care in the end.

And that’s if (huge IF) 0.9 actually gets released in March. Which… Well… Why should I even believe it will at this point. Oh and then… Diablo 4 is apparently releasing in June, with the beta starting earlier. So the timing couldn’t be worse. (And I’m not saying Diablo 4 will be good, nor am I personally going to play it at launch. But anyone who thinks a very popular ARPG releasing won’t somehow pull players away from another, unfinished, not popular ARPG… Doesn’t want to see the unpleasant truth)

[Llama8]

@Iridium

into a still very much unfinished game?

Oh, you mean an early access game? What about that makes you think that LE would be in a “finished” state?

@Iridium

People won’t be able to keep up with each other, playing in a group becomes pointless, therefore you can’t “gift” to help out

As I said before, yes and no. Your friends with worse gear can still join you in your higher corruption content and get the drops as they occur, they just might want to avoid facetanking stuff of their defences can’t cope with it (only an issue if they’re melee which is probably 1/4 of builds).

@Iridium

This super limited, uncreative “gifting” system?

At this point, is there any trading system that hasn’t been done in many other games before? So calling gifting “uncreative” is a bit silly since it could be applied to anything else they came up with from the bazaar to a full AH.

@phil2022

I’ve read, friend. But just can’t believe this is the truth at all. Sorry.

IMO, it’s probably a bit of both. They do want the majority of a player’s gear to come from killing mobs (teh horr0rz!!!), and they’ve not yet been able to come up with a trading system that a) still supports this, b) isn’t filled with ridiculous and arbitrary hoops the player has to jump through to trade & c) doesn’t necessitate nuking the item drops into the ground because trade is always significantly easier to get the gear you want when compared to praying to RNGesus (assuming b doesn’t apply). And to be fair I don’t think this a particularly easy circle to square, are there any games that have such nice drop rates and unrestricted frictionless trade? PoE certainly doesn’t (sucky drop rates plus trade that makes me want to go feral and gouge my eyes out), D3 doesn’t (no unrestricted trade, or shit drop rates plus frictionless trade back when it launched), D2 I’m not sure about but it didn’t have frictionless trade and it did have RMT/D2jsp/scamming (which is what lead Blizz to shove the AH/RMAH into D3 which then necessitated nuking the drop rates…), GD doesn’t have mp servers so the trade is similar to D2 but you can just edit your gear in if you want to trade that badly.

@phil2022

and people cannot be in the same place at the same moment

True, but people also don’t play for the entirety of a season so there will be plenty of time to keep up with 2 season-based games, not sure about 3.

@DirePenguin

And, that is the stupidest fucking reasoning… ever! You have to play the game to be able to afford to trade for items. You trade for items to play the game.

That depends, if there’s a totally unrestricted trade system like D2 or PoE, no, you can just use a third party site, whip out the banking card of your choice and dial up the gear level your bank balance can support. Thinking that that isn’t going to happen in a fully open trade environment is naive at best.

@Macknum

Lokk at Warhammer 40k inquisitor Martyr. It was a totaly different game in Beta/EA stages and the “Me want another generic hack and slay game!”

I’m very curious what it was like back then, I just can’t get into it.

@Iridium

By the time 0.9 comes out, it will be what, a year without content? Longer?

1 year, 0.8.5 came out in March with Dungeons.

[GiraffaGonfiabile]

@Llama8

At this point, is there any trading system that hasn’t been done in many other games before? So calling gifting “uncreative” is a bit silly since it could be applied to anything else they came up with from the bazaar to a full AH.

Well, the solution that is being proposed here is very much like copying someone else’s homework, since it was lifted straight up from D3.

You detailed the ideal targets of a trade system yourself (paraphrasing):

1. most of the item progression should come from mobs
2. is decently ergonomic for the player
3. does not necessitate nuking the item droprates

As someone who has interest in game design, I was very curious to see how they would approach the trade problem, especially since there has been an enormous amount of talk around the subject both on the forums and by the devs themselves.

Don’t get me wrong, this is an incredibly difficult problem, perhaps impossible.
But in this respect, the system that is being proposed feels like an admission of defeat.

[solarise]

@Llama8

Oh, you mean an early access game? What about that makes you think that LE would be in a “finished” state?

My issue is priorities. Of course players should be prepared for an unfinished game when buying into an early access product. So was I. I have no issue with 0.9 being delayed to March per se. I do have an issue with all other content receiving virtually no attention for an entire year, all in the name of a single system (multiplayer). Especially since… you can’t really “play multiplayer”, it’s not exactly content on it’s own… You still need to have other content, gameplay, that you will be playing in multiplayer, you know what I mean?

@Llama8

At this point, is there any trading system that hasn’t been done in many other games before? So calling gifting “uncreative” is a bit silly since it could be applied to anything else they came up with from the bazaar to a full AH.

I just expected more. Which might quite well be a problem with my expectations, not with the developer team. From all the posts and updates we had those past years, it felt like EHG was putting a lot of thought into this, like they were testing things internally, like they were really trying to come up with something great, something balanced, something that would please many players, a compromise of sorts. And then… this update… And it just feels like they gave up. This system doesn’t feel like the result of tens of hours of work. This system feels like something that was thrown together in 20 minutes. Like there was a meeting that went - “Hey guys, we already delayed multiplayer, and you know, we really need to put trading (or whatever alternative system) in, like yesterday. So how about we just do a quick vote and then move on already?” And this is what we got.

[DirePenguin]

@frankmcdank

There is a difference between playing a game and playing a virtual job, which is what grinding currency is.

I don’t want to rain on your marshmallow-cloud sky parade, but you do that already. How are you buying Stash tabs? How are you taking advantage of the slot machine, loot-dungeon? How are you gambling for items from the vendor?

You don’t have to remind me. You’re…cough playing a virtual job cough, grinding gold for in-game items. You must really hate playing LE. I mean, looking at it as a virtual job, and all. Your life must really suck, to spend your virtual hours working a job you don’t even get paid for.

[DirePenguin]

@Llama8

That depends, if there’s a totally unrestricted trade system like D2 or PoE, no, you can just use a third party site, whip out the banking card of your choice and dial up the gear level your bank balance can support. Thinking that that isn’t going to happen in a fully open trade environment is naive at best.

I can play the what-if boogeyman game as well. With party gifting, it’s naive to think there won’t be RMT carry/boost services. As I stated above, cancel the whole damn game, because that evil spectre is looming overhead with anything online. Hell, even without MP, there are leveling services where you provide your account information, and they play for you when offline. I mean, how far down the “oh noes, there might be RMT involved” rabbit hole are we going here?

I can’t wait until the first character wins a tournament, or ladder by account-sharing. Then the White Knights here are going to lose their collective minds, wondering how their pristine, sterile incorruptible world was infiltrated by intrarweb badguyz.

because trade is always significantly easier to get the gear you want when compared to praying to RNGesus

On this point. Once again, if your drop rates are so terrible that trade is virtually the only method of obtaining your items, then your design is flawed from the foundation. I haven’t played a game where I’ve relied strictly upon trade to do 100% of my gearing. Why? Because that would involve doing an obscene amount of farming, playing a character I’m obviously not even wanting to play, because it doesn’t have any of the gear I want. I mean, do these doomsday scenarios even get thought-through, before presented as the most common, everyday case if open-trade exists?

If I have to rely 100% on trade, just to play a game, that game is already shit, and I’m not playing it. I mean, sure you can attempt prop up POE, but that game is built around trade, and their currency items, so it’s a non-starter as an apples->apples comparison.

[Llama8]

@GiraffaGonfiabile

Well, the solution that is being proposed here is very much like copying someone else’s homework, since it was lifted straight up from D3.

That’s what I’m saying though, at this point everything has been done before…

@GiraffaGonfiabile

Don’t get me wrong, this is an incredibly difficult problem, perhaps impossible.
But in this respect, the system that is being proposed feels like an admission of defeat.

Yeah, you’re probably right on both points.

@solarise

My issue is priorities. Of course players should be prepared for an unfinished game when buying into an early access product. So was I. I have no issue with 0.9 being delayed to March per se. I do have an issue with all other content receiving virtually no attention for an entire year, all in the name of a single system (multiplayer).

That’s because it’s taken them that long to convert 2-4 years worth of content from SP to MP. They could have kept on working on other content but then that would have kept on pushing MP back even further than it has been & they’d be pilloried for that instead. They are damned if they do & they’re damned if they don’t.

@solarise

I just expected more. Which might quite well be a problem with my expectations, not with the developer team.

Fair enough.

@solarise

From all the posts and updates we had those past years, it felt like EHG was putting a lot of thought into this, like they were testing things internally, like they were really trying to come up with something great, something balanced, something that would please many players, a compromise of sorts.

Yeah, they have & as we’ve discussed, it’s really ####ing hard.

@DirePenguin

With party gifting, it’s naive to think there won’t be RMT carry/boost services.

Yeah, but since the drops are more random, even if it’s for the boss uniques it’s not a sure thing.

@DirePenguin

I can’t wait until the first character wins a tournament, or ladder by account-sharing. Then the White Knights here are going to lose their collective minds, wondering how their pristine, sterile incorruptible world was infiltrated by intrarweb badguyz.

And I would laugh too.

[ExsiliumUltra]

@DirePenguin

I can’t wait until the first character wins a tournament, or ladder by account-sharing. Then the White Knights here are going to lose their collective minds, wondering how their pristine, sterile incorruptible world was infiltrated by intrarweb badguyz.

This comment has nothing to do with Item Trading and is a strawman.

My main concern around trading is how the more open it is the more it attracts bots. Bots in turn distort the direction of the game, and take valuable time away from the developers, which reduces the amount of time they are able to devote to interesting content and QoL features, thus reducing my enjoyment of the game.

[Macknum]

That’s why you need a solid trade foundation but EHG showed they don’t even want to try to get trading done and that they don’t care. We get a dumped down D3 trading system and it’s called gifting. The idea isn’t that bad to begin with but to sell it as the whole system is a realy bad joke.

On top of that this is the first time EHG uses politic sprech and hide behind some phrases and isn’t communicating at all even ~5 days after putting this out in the open and having 350+ replys.

I rely dont like the whole situation right now.

[TolleWurst]

@ExsiliumUltra

@DirePenguin

I can’t wait until the first character wins a tournament, or ladder by account-sharing. Then the White Knights here are going to lose their collective minds, wondering how their pristine, sterile incorruptible world was infiltrated by intrarweb badguyz.

This comment has nothing to do with Item Trading and is a strawman.

My main concern around trading is how the more open it is the more it attracts bots. Bots in turn distort the direction of the game, and take valuable time away from the developers, which reduces the amount of time they are able to devote to interesting content and QoL features, thus reducing my enjoyment of the game.

I’m not sure. Having a (or multiple) bots carry me in 1000+ corruption while I get all the loot also sounds kind of delightful. I mean they have way better reaction time than me and in a 4 man party with 3 bots I always get the all the loot and the bots are always there, so no “Oh shit, Jim can’t play today so I guess we all won’t play lol”.

Of course I’m not 100% serious but don’t think bots are only used to automate tiresome tasks like mindless farming all day long. They can also be used to do hard tasks. Just look at TAS runs. No human can ever compete with a machine if it comes to not only endurance (farming all day long) but also when it comes to reaction time.

Just as a side note about the uses of bots.

[FrodoFraggins]

@Macknum

That’s why you need a solid trade foundation but EHG showed they don’t even want to try to get trading done and that they don’t care.

I think they care. They just feel the cons of D2/POE trade is far worse than their benefits. As a D2 and POE lover I couldn’t really disagree more.

But at this point, 0.9 gifting is locked and I’m really curious to see the feedback they get from people that don’t keep up with reddit or the forums. If gifting stays for 1.0 then I’ll probably only play SSF as I don’t want to feel forced to group all the time, which is exactly what the gifting system does.

Any MP ladders you are on is basically you competing with people that can organize 4 man groups to great benefit. But hey maybe the impact on ladders will only be for VERY early in the season as the game isn’t super stingy like POE.

[XLVI_carpo]

And what exactly would that be??

Currency comes from… drops.

Currency can be acquired by selling items that cone from… erm… drops

There are already post about how to improve the target farming aspect of the game. And what’s the suggested solutions?

• Add a special currency you farm to spend it in items at a NPC vendor
• Add special mechanics to acquire blueprints that need specific crafting mats - aka currency - to craft

Not to mention the crafting systems that let’s you farm crafting mats (currency anyone?)

And in the main endgame system in order to get better loot you have to fill a progress bar (stability) and another progress bar (corruption). Just that you do not buy your items directly for that. You on top need to play the slot machine to get something for that “currency”.

There’s even one entire dungeon that revolves around farming gold (whoops… currency) to spend it at the end.

So by your definition the game is even worse that work. Becaus you constantly need to farm stuff but cannot directly invest it into items. Instead you go to the casino with that hard earned money and spend it on the chance to get something valuable for your build.

Just to clarify:
I don’t think LE is not fun. But some arguments here that people want to dismiss the discussion are really bad.

[Macknum]

@FrodoFraggins

I think they care. They just feel the cons of D2/POE trade is far worse than their benefits. As a D2 and POE lover I couldn’t really disagree more.

If so they would’ve made a good system and shout from the hills and everywhere else they can that this system is a placeholder and will change in the future.

Right now the offer free to trade to organised groups and that’s that. If said groups have a lot of time at their hands it gets even worse because they’ll be ahead of the curve by a lot. If said groups are beta testers or have already hundrets and thousands of hours ingame they’ll be at theri second or third toon while Bob the casual still is confused by skilltrees and asks himself why he didn’t get the mastery.

That’s not caring from my point of view that’s mostly catering to the 1% and the cellar dwellers… like me :D. I can play 24h a day if I want to but Bob the casual with 10-20h a week… well don’t even start the game ^^.

[desrocchi]

@XLVI_carpo

Not to mention the crafting systems that let’s you farm crafting mats (currency anyone?)

The difference is that an in-game mechanic is fixed and adjustable by the devs, an open market is completely outside of their control and the only way for them to react to it is adjusting the droprates.

I’ve always been ok with separate mechanics for a solo and multi character so that the traders get their little dopamine rush by buying low and selling high, but that requires keeping updated 2 games instead of 1 so I don’t think it will ever happen.

[phil2022]

I will make my suggestion here not expecting to be read by the devs but hopefully it will.
3 systems, 2 of them won’t give you any work whatsoever cause they are already developed. These 3 system will have hardcore variation for a total of 6. Here they are to please the majority of players:

Solo: No trade, no need to balance drops, exactly the game is right now.

Coop Limited: The system you’ve developed, no free trade, instance trade only, no need to balance drops, everything the game has right now with coop instanced.

Free Trade: A system with auction house, free trade without restrictions but all the drop rate are reduced globaly by a pencentage, like 80%, for example.

Players will have plenty information about each system on character creation to choose.
End of the history. No “PR”, no “vision”, this will please the majority of the players with open doors, instead of closed ones. Think about it.

[Llama8]

@Macknum

don’t even want to try to get trading done and that they don’t care

That’s not true. Trading that isn’t painful (PoE) or ruins the non-trading loot experience (also PoE & D3 on launch) is not a trivial thing to do.

@Macknum

they’ll be at theri second or third toon while Bob the casual still is confused by skilltrees and asks himself why he didn’t get the mastery

Casual players will always be behind the curve compared to more hard-core players. Do you think that its unreasonable that playing more gets you more knowledge/game experience and loot?