Item Gifting Development Update from our Principal Game Designer

Have to say, this is a terrbile idea. You’re basically making “trade” the little item sharing section from World of Warcraft after a raid.

I’m so dissapointed, I had such a false hope for this game.

The whole point of ARPGs is to see who can get lucky , and then how they can liquidate big drops to progress faster. You’re offering none of that now.

We can’t even do gambles anymore. Like trading a bunch of 3 LP items and Exalted’s and then streaming the dungeon runs to make them legendary for our viewers and seeing what gets “fused” .

You’re actually removing literal content from the game in the hope of controlling an economy. WHICH . ISN’T. MEANT. TO. BE . CONTROLLED

That’s why you have leagues, so you can reset and tweak.

Lead Designer takes a massive L here, probably a game killing one.

The point of ARPGs is to kill monsters to get better items to make number go bigger, because that feels good.

The split currently is in the philosophy on how to primarily achieve that. Drops or trading. It is clear, that EHG’s vision is the drops angle, so that is how they’re designing their game.

And the doom and gloom is getting tiresome.

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That’s wrong an you know it. Noone said they want trade as a primary way to obtain gear and most people I read here want trade to get key items they are to unlucky to drop because of rng and others want to trade with their friends with less restrictions.

Trading as the primary source of item aquisation aka farm gold and buy the disered item from a vandor was never mentioned afaik.

Moving in cycles is tiresome. We have to complete opposite oppinions on one topic for whatever reason and only a few people on each side are willing to move a bit and everyone else stick there heads in the sand. We need an answer from the devs what will happen or if gifting stays as it is and untill then this discussion will stay the same cycle.

The person I responded to literally said, that ARPGs are about “liquidating big drops to progress faster”.

One problem also is people ignoring the fact, that EHG plans to introduce more ways to target-farm items, which should alleviate RNG problems too.

Another problem is people ignoring the fact, that lessening restrictions for trade between friends will create an attack surface to exploit to force an economy onto the game, even if it wasn’t intended to be there and could severely impact game balance.

I’m not against finding a compromise, but so far, I have not seen any convincing proposals, which couldn’t be exploited to force an economy.

Permanent, immutable tradable friends list? Yeah, sounds good in theory, but what if you have a falling out with friends from that list and you now can’t remove them?

Trade tokens? Would be farmed by the trade partners prior to trading. Would take some time, but I don’t doubt people would do it anyway. Time never really is a deterrent to players.

Time on friends list before trade is possible? Same argument against as above.

Caravan? AH/Bazaar with extra steps.

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It’s still rng… you know games that increase the probability of getting an item or an item upgrade? Some people get things done at 20% and some people fail until they reach 95%+ chance. Rng is rng and untill they introduce a 100% chance.

Then again people ignoring the fact that we don’t know numbers yet.maye it’s a 1% drop rate and with target farming we get 1.1% drop chance who knows?

People ignore more efficent gameplay has the same drawbacks because efficent players have a higher ammount of items/h not to begin with full 4 player groups who understand the game and who make use of sysnergies and so on and so forth… those groups have a good amount of more items and can freely trade. This is exploitive as well shrug.

Free trade for everything but Exalts and LP uniques and gold. People can get their build enabeling items faster and still have to play the game to get the good stuff. There is no devaluing of the endgame and everyone and their mum will be happy to have some items to get through the story faster on their second third or twentyfifth toon.
Item gifting can exist on top of it for gear restricted to trade.

Who is hurt by this and what economy will be based on vendor trash items? Still people have better times to get the stuff they need for their squirrel build or an Exsang setup or to get a bastion or a piece of set because they never drop the last setpiece missing.

Still each item is worth 500g so noone is hurt and everyone who want’s more then this… don’t know it’s a bit much to ask for tbh.

EVERYTHING can be exploited to some extend and this is a never ending story that can only be stopped if we don’t invent or develop new stuff.

There are possibilities to find a middle ground but trade lovers must get a grip and say yes to restrictions and trade haters must take a step back from the viewpoint that trade impacts droprates or creates an economy. There are ways to work arround or to minimize the impact if we just want to but therefore both extremes of the trade love/hate spectrum must start to move already.

On the other hand EHG can dictate the way and give us a final verdict what they want to have in the future. They could even make a poll or whatever what might be intresting because if only the 10 people like some form of trade the whole discussion is useless :D.

I don’t think we come to a conclusion untill EHG formulated their politican sprech update on the topic what might take a while.

Tbf, I have completely forgotten about this proposal, which probably shows, that it isn’t enough for most people pressing for trade, but I personally would be fine with that.

I think some people who like trade settled on this as a good option why I brought it up. I don’t want endgame to be devalued and I want to be able to get a build enabeleling item without depending on luck or after hundrets of hours or have a bad luck streak. Buying vendor trash isn’t hurtfull BUT it enables some freedom untill the harder part of the game beginns.

That’s why I like the idea of beeing able to trade uniques and items up to T20 with one sealed affix max because all the realy desireable stuff is out there to be dropped and to be farmed. No ideas EHG mentioned in their announcement is invalidated because you need to play the game to get the good gear and their idea of target farming is still in place and I think (I have no idea how comlicated it is to code it to be honest because I have 0 experience) it might be on the easier side to implement while they don’t lose any time they already invested in gifting.

Maybe that’s just me but I think that’s a win:win situation and I can’t see this hurting anyone but the doom and gloom sayers on the trade hater side of the spectrum. There is no need to change the droprates and everyone knows the worth of the items… 500g max aka not even worth to pick up if you have it allready what makes it “hard” to build an economy arround it.

Then again I’m maybe wrong so please come forth and tell me what might be hurtfull about this option to give it a thought and find a solution.

If you don’t use gold or some other currency, what would you be selling your not-exalt-or-LP-uniques for? 'Cause bartering is just bad.

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Gold is something to bot and RMT for even when it’s completely useless. Bartering isn’t the best option and makes trade a bit less desireable but then again trade should be only a secondary option to aquire loot anyway what makes bartering a very good option thou.

Actually bartering, if properly executed, in theory, fits perfectly an ARPG that wants to focus on item acquisition, i will just trow a raw idea here:
Mechanic:
1-Adds a random shrine that opens a portal to the “bazaar”(or any other random encounter that fits the game). In the bazaar players can insert one item into the shop (which is an auction house UI for easy of understanding). ==> this is where you “sell” items.
2- You can interact with a bazaar NPC in the city, which allows you to browse items other players have put into the bazzar (you cannot insert items in the bazaar from the city thou). ==> This is where you “buy” items.
3- When you put an item in the bazaar you must choose what are the parameters of the item you want to trade your item for. This means you would for example say that for your 3lp Ribbons of blood you want a 3lp Ring of the third eye OR a 3lp Humming bee OR a 2lp Chronostasis.

Additional Rules:
1- To make the system less convoluted and preserving “item progression” you would only be able to trade items of the same “quality”. So for example you would only be able to trade Uniques for Uniques, Sets for Sets, exalted for exalted, double exalted for double exalted, etc.
2- You can set up to “x” possible parameters for your item (the lower x is the simpler the system is, at the cost of “usefulness”). For example in Poe.trade you can restrict parameters of an item down to every single variable it has, which means “x” is infinite in this case. If poe only allowed you to search for one affix, it would be x=1.
3- The UI would probably look close to the filter UI (when setting parameters). This means you would be able to allow rigid or soft “offers” for your item. For example let’s say you want to trade your t7 critical damage two handed sword for a t7 critical damage staff, you would be able to choose to accept any two handed staff or only accept “dragon staffs” with t7 critical damage or accept only “dragon staffs” with t7 critical damage AND t5 critical chance.
4- You can remove items from the bazaar at any time.
5- As long you enter the bazaar while in a party with another player you can trade any one item with that player instead of “using” the bazaar. (solves the party-play issue).

The biggest challenge. besides net-coding, of such a system is making it “easy” to understand and use. Since messing with so many parameters can be hard for a lot of people. Even thou in such a system people could, in theory, become a “buyer only” player and not messing with the “selling part” at all, limiting themselves for searching for the items they want and seeing if they have what the seller wanted.

I needed to reread this 5 times to say “I think I understand what is written here.” but I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed.

I think your idea is totaly overcomplicated and needlessly bloated and far to easy to manipulate. On top it offers the trade of items that shouldn’t be tradable from my point of view. Rng for aquisition is a bad thing, at least I think this way, because we already have enough rng in the game.

Let’s see what other people throw into the ring :).

You could have a special currency used ONLY for the Auction House, diamonds or void shards or whatever. Not dropped or found anywhere else. Undecember is like that.
The result is that to be able to buy anything, you MUST have sold something of equal value first, meaning you must play the game first before you can power-up through trade and get the items you were too unlucky to find.

You would just need to give a tiny amount to the first character of an account finishing the campaign, to get the system running.

(I know, Undecember uses it because you can also buy the currency for real money. Obviously we don’t want that, but get rid of that part and the system works.)

Yes, but if the only source for the currency is to sell something (in the AH presumably) & the only way to buy stuff on the AH is with the currency, where do you get the currency from to make your first trade? This feels like a chicken & the egg situation (or in my case, I can’t get a job at a local insurance/financial services company because I don’t have experience in the industry, but the only way to get experience is to work for one of those companies). It’s impossible to get the currency because nobody has the currency to buy stuff with so the seller can’t get any of it to buy things that they want.

But you’re still left with the issue of what happens if the person who has the item you want doesn’t want any of the items you have to sell. That’s my big issue with bartering (& why people invented money ~6,000 years ago).

That’s why I mentioned you need to give a tiny amount to everyone to kickstart the system, like when your first character finishes the campaign.

Undecember is p2w af and to get said currency you simply buy it with rl money. It’s the worst system I ever encountered.

Farm on… if we keep meaningfull restrictions in place and allow only non LP uniques to be traded and up to rares we all know what these items are worth. Some people might want to trade a bastion for a rare item with BiS stats and if you don’t have said item you can still ask if someone else is trading one or you have to aquire it in the intended primary way by farming. I don’t see a problem because supply and demand will balance each other out.

A currency will be a better solution for sure but who wants a good for nothing currency? Some items might be worth more to some people but this would introduce the so much hated economy. In the example I read the most about people only want to trade vendor trash and leave the good stuff out of there aka exalted and unique items with LP on.

If we use any currency for it this will enable RMT in a bigger scope and people who hate trade will be rightfully mad again. Then again what if someone want to trade an item to a friend for free? That’s a nother thing to think about.
To me the whole trade idea is a solution to get key components to play the endgame if you are unlucky all the good stuff should be only available through playing or gifting in party play to make playing the game the only way to get “precious” items aka exalts and uniques with LP :slight_smile: .

I understand all the mechanics that came up from tokens to caravans and whatnot but that’s just another form of rng. I personaly would be very unhappy if trade is kept behind rng for the lucky ones or as common to make the whole mechanic that was developed useless.

I think restricting trade to “vendor trash” is a good way to go. I could stop making my hundrets of hours for a Exsang example and shut up finaly :smiley: . 0LP uniques don’t hurt anyone I think just as an example.

I totally read that. Not sure how I feel about the only source of currency being fresh accounts.

Sure, but the game supposedly is happening thousand of years ago xD. Jokes aside, yeah the only reason to add a bartering system is to have trade while not developing into a proper economy.

I just dropped the idea here, i don’t think it’s the best either, but i personally would like to experience how clunky it actually is in a “real” scenario, i don’t think i ever saw or played a game that implemented this.

And in the future.

But an economy would still develop, it’d just be inconvenient to most (like PoE’s).

Take PoE’s & make it significantly worse since you aren’t trading item X for currency, you’re looking for a specific other item (or subset of items). The larger the community that participates in trade (that’s called an economy @Irrelevant) the less friction (difficulty in finding another person who has the item you want to trade for one of yours) there would be.

Sure thing but we know vendor trash A is worth 500 and vendor trash B is worth 500 so the price is always 1:1 for each item there is no need for a currency because the items are the currency.

Currency itself makes the whole thing easier what about this… Rune of Wealth… shatter a unique Item into Unique dust. Said dust can be used to trade or as a substitue currency in the dungeon to roll for items (forgot the name atm ^^). Just to clearify I look for a solution that makes the least work with the least impact on the game as well as no impact on endgame while being the least exploitive (still we all should know right now that everything is exploitive) and the best outcome for everyone in the love/hate spectrum of trade.

As an option: You can still trade item vs item or item for free but the above example would reduve the ammount of items that will be traded because this way shattered items become the currency. On top of it the currency will be used to gamble for items so to speak so you lose it very fast as well.

As a reminder I still make this example with the restriction in mind that exalts and uniques with LP aren’t tradeable and we talk about rares (tops) and 0 LP uniques and set (not 100% convinced that’s a good idea) items.

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That is one way of looking at it. Since you can’t buy vendor trash B from a vendor (at all), the fact that it can be sold by me to a vendor for 500 gold makes that the floor (the lowest price I’d accept). Why would I give you my vendor trash B for your vendor trash A if I didn’t want a vendor trash A?

Sets aren’t, currently, end game items so having them tradeable probably wouldn’t do anything bad.

I also like the idea of shattering “useless” uniques for something that could be used for something useful. You could even have the amount of stuff you get be based on the amount people are shattering those uniques, so you common vendor trash uniques would give relatively low amounts while your rarer uniques that people don’t get as much or might actually want to use shock! (and therefore not shatter as much) would give more.