Good point show me said numbers please… the official ones at best.
The thing is everybody who likes trade is assuming and guessing the game will die if there is no trade. This set of people… ah you get it I’m sure.
The whole topic is like beating a dead horse and EHG needs to come up with the announcment on trading because even I can’t bare the whole back and forth anymore 
.
D3 is a fundamentally more basic game with a lot less min maxing and without a plethora of stats.
It has a very basic gearing system in conjunction with a very simple skill system.
All of that leads to being “finished” with your character way faster compared to other games like LE or PoE.
Is that a bad thing? No, not necessarily. It is just different.
I think EHG will have a rough idea of how long it will take to “gear out” a character and having trade or no trade will have an impact on all the balancing surrounding it.
Just because a game has “good drop rates” and it being SSF friendly doesn’t mean the player retention will be bad.
It is just about balancing it in a way the devs and the community wants it.
Just to add to the discussion, it’s also important to add that most people that play ARPGs usually do not play then like MMOs (as in dedicating multiple years of effort in a single character).
The vast majority of people that i know that play ARPGs plays in short bursts where they will play the game for 1-2 months, develop a character and quit for a time to play other games only returning to to the arpg after a couple months/years for another burst.
And that’s not a problem! For some reason the “new generation of gamers” fed by the whole “game as a service” of the past decade created the illusion that you need to play the same game daily and forever or you are losing your time (which is incentivized by all the “daily bonus” and stamina/dungeon entry system that became the norm in the game industry recently).
If you can play a game for 10 hours and have fun by doing it, the game already succeed, you don’t need to play a game forever as a job for it to be considered good.
I think that’s unreasonably harsh. The way you say it, they’ve been actively communicating about trade as it was I kickstarter/etc then done an about turn. What happened was that they made a few statements (kickstarter and the ~2 dev blogs about trade) then gone radio silent until this thread. People filled themselves with expectations based on the scant messages from EHG about trade then, understandably, some of them lost their #### when it turns out that EHG have largely changed their minds (or at the very least not figured out how to fit a square peg in a round hole).
Now, I suspect that if EHG had been (painfully) transparent about their internal discussions as they happened, I think that people would have been less surprised about the change but that process would have taken resource away from developing the game to manage the community and respond to them/us, so they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
Also, hindsight is a wonderful thing, as is armchair developing when you have nothing at stake and don’t have to do the work.
Huge L.
This is exactly what I want! 100%! Bravo! 
The trade system has killed my PoE experience, as even the SSF experience has been crushed by the balance for the trade system.
If you allow trading it will always end up as the primary way to get gear, there is no way around that.
If you allow grouping, it will always end up as the primary way to advance in the end-game. There is no way around that.
See, we can both play the sensationalist doom-and-gloom game.
I can’t find evidence about this personal oppinion of yours sorry. For me personaly trading is and always was the secondary way to aquire gear.
That’s because
Most people take usually the shortest/easiest path, which is usually trading.
I don’t take this for granted even when human nature makes it the most likely case. Then again there are players who play hack and slays for the story and people who play ssf and so on and so forth. I can’t say for sure “Most players trade!” because I have no eveidence to proof this statement.
Hi, this is RPGIGAN, a youtuber w/ over 7k subscribers focusing on D2, D4, POE, and LE (admittingly not much Last Epoch, only because I’m sure to play much more when 0.9 comes out!)
I’d like to give my input on trading in the game’s future. I often have the most fun in POE crafting items to sell for in-game profit. Those are often my most popular videos by views. Many people play the economy for generating game revenue more so than just farming. Crafting in Last Epoch is excellent; as good as POE. This is something D2 was always lackluster in (crafts are essentially rolling runewords, blood crafting jewelry with pure RNG, etc), but targeted crafting drew me into Last Epoch when I first got it, back when items would have fracturing potential rather than forging potential.
I think there is an easy fix to this dilemma over trading in the game: Simply release two types of leagues/ladders at a season.
Free market version: unlimited open trading. This is great for people who want to play a truly min/maxed build and buy a lot of their gear, or for people who want to craft for profit in the game or showcase crafting like on my YouTube channel.
Example name: “Free Market” or “Open Bazaar” etc
Party trade only version: Perfect for people who want a SSF playstyle, or to only trade amongst their friends. Friend trading could be locked to people who have been your game friend for at least 1 month to minimize RMT “friending.”
Example name: “Item Self-Found” or “Hunter-Gatherer” etc
Thanks for considering my request!
Have You considered barter trading? The currency being exalted items/uniques/shards (not legendaries) + crafted items being non-tradable? This way You ensure items must be picked raw from the ground + you ensure there is need to craft them for making BiS.
For instance:
I need T7 flat phys 2-handed sword (either to use or slam onto legendary), another “trader” needs at least T6 life helmet, which I luckly have. We trade with eachother, everyones happy. I have my crafting base, he has his helmet.
Chance that someone finds perfect item for his build is very low, there is always almost need for crafting. This is where trading shards may help. There are rarer ones, there are rarer uniques also, I think it’s possible to balance it somehow (or maybe the market will balance on it’s own).
It gives “extra” value to for us worthless exalts, “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”.
There can be either automated system for exchanging or just a system for listing things. I search for something I need, find it, write to the guy if he wants to trade, easy done.
Because bartering is an abomination that was rightfully consigned to the ash heap of history when people invented money.
Well, that is not bartering 1 cow for 10 pigs, that is bartering 1 exalted item for another exalted item. It’s nice you know that people invented money, now learn why did they do it. I don’t see that happening in virtual game with resetting economy system.
On a related note did you see how much loot the solo and mp streamers dropped. I think I recall some of the streamers implying that it was to easy, solo or not
MP is super busted right now. The difference is exponential thanks to multiple systems favoring MP over solo and each system is a powerful advantage in it’s own right.
Drop rates over the weekend almost seemed like they were double what we have in 0.8.5
Doesn’t matter, if person A has X and wants Y but nobody else has Y and wants X then person A is a bit stuffed. What X and Y actually are is irrelevant.
Because its a lot easier to trade your X for currency then that currency for Y. That way you decouple the need for 1 person to have both Y and want X. Its a fairly simple concept and it works pretty well in PoE with its leagues resetting the economy every 3 months.
I guess you’ve never played leagues in PoE.
The biggest problem of people who AGREED with this decision is not understanding that the DEVS PROMISED TRADE in this game, so if they not doing things that they promised,why not to return money for not making game that most of players was waited.So easy to refund the game and make their vision of small indie game that they are releasing 2 YEARS.Waited too much for new classes , trade and MP, but this vision of Co-OP non Trade game.sorry but no. So think about refund or make what was promised at start when you drained my money for rainbow dreams