I agree with you on this one 
I think it’s likely that the majority don’t even care one way or another and will just play the game however it is, regardless of trade or no trade.
I hope EHG gets useful info out of the survey and I really hope it isn’t abused.
I never said that people don’t pay for item carries. I said that the value proposition would be far to low to support a stable market around it. This is especially true when looking at a ARPG. You can’t stop RMT completely even without trade or multiplayer as people still buy and sell accounts. You can put systems in place to make it so unprofitable that it naturally phases itself out or is done by such a small section of the player base it has little to no effect on game health.
My argument is and has been that restricted gifting benefits outweigh the small amount of risk it would generate if handled correctly.
As for soulbound grouping. Again it is not possible to scale past the group cap. If the group cap is four the dev team would only ever have to balance around loot acquisition of 4 players. You could have 1 static group or a million static groups. Soulbound grouping is a closed circuit economy that only involves the item drops in the zone the group is completing and the people in the group. You can’t ever impact more than 4 players at a time. With only the group cap to worry about loot acquisition for groups could very easily be tuned to fall in line with single player acquisition. If that has to be balanced at all. I’ve personally had no issue in any loot based game I’ve played acquiring loot at a slower rate than a group.
The point I’m making about RNG in LE is that drop rates for most items are so high you can almost guarantee them in a specific amount of runs. I’m talking upper 90s if not 99.9% for most items with enough time investment. Could systems be introduced to improve item acquisition even now? Sure. For example:
I could see a system where upon reaching level 100 timeline bosses drop tokens. These tokens could be exchanged for an item that unlocks an Uber boss fight for their timeline and that Uber boss drops 1 chase unique for that time line guaranteed.
Pity systems like the one I mentioned above do probably need to be in place if not for chase items, at least for stop gap versions of those items when seasonal content becomes live. That being said its been my experience that most items are reasonably obtainable given enough time.
RMT is objectively wrong, especially if it diminishes the experience for others.
Would you want to deal with the global chat of Last Epoch turning into a bot fest like PoE? I certainly wouldn’t.
Everything else you said is fine, I guess.
Amazon and Ebay both spent $$$ to build the infrastructure necessary to facilitate trade, so I’m sure they would agree with me.
The suggestion is not to trade for currency. The suggestion is that every trade comes with a market fee, an amount of gold you pay to the market for facilitating the transaction.
For example, you have item A, and you want to trade it for item B. Because you are trading for item B, you pay the market 1,000,000 gold to facilitate the trade. You do not pay the other player; you pay the market that makes the trade possible.
For me the biggest issue with no trade is that it will almost certainly mean the game will only be a niche player in the genre. And if it becomes too niche, it will impact everything from content creators to EHG itself if they can’t sell enough copies and MTX to support continued development at a scale players really want.
Another issue is that some top tier rolled items (such as 4LP of a specific item) are designed to basically never drop for you in a seasons duration. And so, without trading it’s kind of a bummer to have such chase items that are completely unobtainable during the season without trade (and a large population of players). Such rarity works better for non seasonal games AND for items that aren’t best in slot for any builds. The hardest to find Diablo 2 holy grail items really are just for collecting rather than using.
My issue with gifting is that it works OK for a group of friends but in PUGs you may end up with selfish people that won’t share with you even if you share with them. And if you get a godly item you can only get back what those people with you are willing to give.
Free trade lets you get fair value for the item. This expands the game greatly for people that love to craft and want to spend crafting currency to make an even better item to sell.
Can you please provide some examples or other sources of information that suggest this is true?
But I feel like that exactly what this survey is for.
EHG wants to see how they can alienate the least players, while still holding true to their vision.
“Trade” is multi layered thing and different people expect different thigns from it.
On top of that, you don’t really know if its gonna be “niche”, because despite the outrage (which was expected), there are actually quite a few people actively supporting the direction of gifting.
So while there might be a lot of players that gonna be alienated, there might be as well a lot players coming in, because they try something different.
I personally think that this whole thing will give LE a little bit of a rougher start (with less peak numbers early on) but over time if they keep the game in the right track, they will show and prove to people, that it can be done differently.
If people start realising trade is not the only solution to the main reason they wanted to have trade, they might give LE a chance, even if they initially didn’t play the game because of no trade.
Yeah, and I’m sure d4 is going to be a “niche player” because it isn’t going to have the trade system you’re describing either.
Of all the arguments on the subject, this is by far the most ridiculous. There’s no evidence that most people care about having a full blown auction house like you do. In fact there’s more evidence that people don’t want that.
The relatively novel/unique thing they did was to make the currency/currencies used in trading also used for crafting to (indirectly) take the currency out of the economy rather than just have circulating round and around eternally until the economy gets reset every x months. I say indirectly since that currency would eventually find its way into the hands of a (skilful) rafter who uses it to generate a profit/more currency.
Doesn’t really matter from a definition standpoint. I’m unlikely to see a £50 note (mainly because I use cards and don’t like carrying too much cash around) but that doesn’t make it any less of a currency than the £10 notes (& coins) that are more likely to fill my wallet despite the £50’s relatively low “drop rate” for me.
Indeed.
I’m kinda ignoring most of it tbh. In addition to having a job that requires me to actually work (teh horrorz!).
Surely if the devs say X is against the ToS then thats kinda the definition of wrong?
What if my mate carries me through something and I buy him a beer? That’s RMT, is that objectively wrong?
They’re not wrong for getting enjoyment out of their games in that way. Per the ToS it is wrong.
There is a very large difference between playing with a friend and logging into a website to pay someone you don’t know / a bot to give you things. The former is fine, the latter is not. Being disingenuous about the definition of RMT and its connotations doesn’t make it any less wrong.
D4 lets you freely trade rare items that can be a base for BIS items (fixed)
Diablo 4 has the name “DIABLO” in its title and they can advertise it freely to people using their launcher. They also will have lots of paid advertising.
If you think LE and D4 are playing under the same rules well, I doubt you do so I won’t continue.
Free trade, or mostly free trade, doesn’t mean an auction house. I would never suggest an auction house. Ever. So next time don’t make stuff up.
Actually there isnt, if you give someone anything outside the game its RMT, just because you know them doesnt change anything, you are just moving the goal posts here
The only reason someone wouldnt get banned for telling the developer they got items IRL for carrying someone is because they dont tell them, if they actually did they would be banned
That is incorrect.
Where are these players coming from? Are they coming from the two biggest ARPGs on the market in POE and Lost Ark?
The gifting system kills a common way many people like to play POE. Which is to often play solo, on their own time, and mostly group up just to trade. This method guarantees you can keep improving your character even if what you specifically need doesn’t drop.
Now people who hate trade can still play Solo mode and never feel gimped by traders if LE adds real trade.
And so limiting trade is a nail in the coffin for players that need trade. While having trade and a Solo Ladder means they can choose to play Solo or choose to not trade if they want to group but not trade.
One reason I’m concerned the game will become niche is that I’ve seen a grand total of one non LE content creator dedicate time to these two events. And that person is GhazzyTV. Zizaran and ZiggyD have both posted videos in the past but nothing regarding these events. Zizaran was critical of the limited trade when speaking with the devs.
There is no hype from outside of the existing community and that’s a problem. Now maybe things will turn around big time for 0.9. And I hope they do. But after that D4 is soon in the market
The other reason I think an ARPG with no open trade is that POE is clearly the big boy right now and trade is a cornerstone for that game for all but the masochists. Lost Ark is number two in the genre and they have an AH. D3 was biggest when they had an Auction House. D2 was the big boy and survived in no small part due to the ladders with a refreshed economy (and unfortunately D2JSP). It’s simply more exciting to find good loot even if you can’t use it yourself. Get rid of that and you replace it with bad feelings when that occurs.
why don’t you quote what you’re referring to rather than post entire blogs?
Glad to see you going and verifying what you are posting. I upvoted your question. Sorry, no beer. And complete coincidence that I saw that, not stalking.
While I agree that the goal posts are being moved, I would be really surprised if EHG banned somebody because their mate bought them a beer to get them some items.
Apart from the fact there is an item called Beer in the game (implying they are pro-Beer), identifying and acknowledging a breach of the ToS and determining and enforcing the consequences for a given breach are separate.
Consequences dont have to be as black and white as your post suggests.
But that is by design. That doesn’t mean a ARPG without open trade can’t be big.
There are a lot of players that feel forced to play trade in PoE, because it is designed and balanced around trade.
People still play it because there are few alternatives. A lot of people I know and a lot of people here in the forums already talked about it. If there are more alternatives, they will play and test them.
Yes LE needs to compete with games like PoE, but they also can co-exist in a healthy way.
There will be a lot of overlap of both player bases but there will also be people that will enjoy LE more, if it stays Solo friendly like it is right now.
Sidenote: I wouldn’t consider Lost Ark a ARPG, it’s an mmo with isometric camera, the overlap in player base is not that big. (when it released in the west it was marketed alot like an actual ARPG and alot of ARPG lovers tested it, but not actually that many stickied around.) Because at its core its 95% MMO with some action combat that together with the camera perspective is reminiscent of ARPG’s.
