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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!).
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ok so lets say we have a 3 player party. 2 of us got into a zone and started blasting, an item dropped and i looted it. Then 3rd member came into the zone.
Will i be able to trade the item with the 3rd player or not?
Will i be able to trade the item if the 3rd party member didn’t come into the zone with us?
Also will the “gifting” be a opt-in/opt-out option? I don’t want my friends spam me with white hats and go crazy with the notifications.
“You were the Chosen One! It was said that you would destroy Blizzard, not join them! Bring balance to the ARPGs, not leave it in darkness!”
I’m not satisfied. This system sux. There is alot of people who play with friends when they are online, but play alone when they are not available - we have jobs and families. So now, when I will have free evening to play and I find something my friend needs, should we just call it bad luck? No. That sux.
If you want to stop people from grinding for economy, make farmable items not tradable - specific uniques which drop only from one boss. If you want then - farm boss alone or with friends. In this situation it should be possible to trade/gift loot in party. Great. But I dont like this system for any items.
Joy of crafting? Sure, I agree. Make crafted items not tradable/party tradable, but make raw bases tradable. They are random items, so to get them you have to play a game normaly, not target farm them.
To sum it up:
- make farmable boos-drop specific uniques non tradable to asure joy of finding.
- make crafted items not tradable.
- make random drop uniques and craft bases tradable.
Why you choose easiest solution?
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Ill just point out, that for the most part this is a fake narrative for most items.
For most high LP items, there is a “BiS” if you roll a 3lp exsang and you dont put Vit/%Health/Health(Armor) on it, its never gonna have value to trade for one that does. I dont want your nasty damage/class specific mod 3lp exsang. The only exsang anyone wants is one with health.
This is going to be true for almost all uniques, a 1LP bastion either needs Reduced damage taken on block, or Block effect. Any other modifier you put on it is garbage and has less value then a 1lp that is uncrafted.
These types of items are not rares that are tailored to each build, and its not PoE where builds want extreme varieties of stats. Everyone wants pretty much the same stuff which is defensive scaling.
Edit: Also im open to having trade for rares, sets, and 0lp items. But im pretty sure the intent since the get go was never to allow end game chase items to be traded which seems to be what everyone focuses on. Even back when the bazaar was the core trade from kickstarter days, they stressed they didnt want you to be able to buy the rare powerful items.
Don’t like this one bit. If i drop a bastion of honour on a rogue i want to be excited i dropped rare item because i could trade it for something great for my build . this system is far too limiting. i understand that you don’t want a full fledged economy but do this by making certain items untradable, enable trading for the other items. removing trade (or limiting this hard) will make sure a lot less people will actually play the game, its a bad bad decision for me.
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I sometimes wonder if it is really that hard to have two seperate realms, one for SSF and one for multi, both with their own drop rate settings… 
Anyway, what I’m really looking forward to are the attempts of the players to cheat the system. I wonder what this games Siggard’s Stealth will be.
As the game, and genre, progresses we are losing depth and features rather than gaining them. I honestly don’t like this a bit.
How about an alternative that would “lock” or “suppress” the affixes of the traded items and require players to do or complete certain events to unlock or incite the affixes? Call it “activation requirement”.
Boss specific items could require the “buyer player” to kill the said boss on top of killing X (amount of) monsters or clearing Y event.
On top of that you could even add a “trade token” requirement to complete a trade which would rarely drop from certain activities and require both selling and buying parties to spend a trade token each (or more depending on the item rarity maybe). Trade tokens could have a decaying effect to prevent stacking up gazillion of them and/or a cap limitation.
“Trade token” could prevent flippers from going crazy. If it decays or caps at a limited number “trade” cannot be the main way to obtain items but could still exist as an option.
“Activation requirement” would encourage people to keep playing the game even after they obtain the item from the trade. Would give you guys, developers, extra wiggle room to render certain zones or mob types “farmable” even if they are not the optimum farm targets.
You would have an economy that would require players to keep playing. The game would have more features rather than less and more importantly it wouldn’t feel like a restricted game.
Honestly, no trade or D3 style trade feels like the worst thing you can do to an online game. The above is just an example on top of my head. A lot more can be done to enrich the game.
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You let the players to “play the market” or you don’t. A middle ground is hardly a good option.
PoE is PoE mainly because its free market. You can trade nearly anything you drop. And there is satisfaction in that too, and there is enjoyment and excitment in dropping an item not because you gonna use it but because it’s valuable for the players and you can sell or exchange it.
Knowing items are tradable is part of the reason why finding them feels exciting. This being said, is totally acceptable that you follow your philosophy.
The problem is its not a simple as just “SSF is for self made progress, and multi is for trade/grouping”
There is people who want to group, but have instanced loot and progress their own gear.
They have brought this up a bit, that the current “Solo” presented in game is not SSF like in poe, it is no shared stash, that character is completely blocked from your account. So they would need to rethink what “Solo” is.
I would love if a dev had the time/desire to balance multiple gamemodes, but its just not possible. The few games that have them, people just opt into the one that has the easiest path to loot, or one suffers dramatically because the devs only balance it as a side project.
I know, but still LE already has enough features that sets it apart.
And while the majority of people thought they will implement trading more simialr to other similar games, I think that this trading system i nconjunction with the rest of the game can set it apart from other games.
My group and I are in the same boat. Just another experience to caution the purchase of early access titles that promise one thing and then drastically change for the worse over their early access period.
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