Last Epoch Trade Survey

Developer Blog
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Imo trading always has been a total disaster in Arpgs, but i know people will as usual ask for it, hope they understand it comes with a natural destruction of loot rates.

Trading makes trading almost mandatory for casual/normal players, precisely the ones the most vulnerable to economy, current LE’s main problem for them is you have to rely both on luck and spamming the same monolith again and again while target farming the unique you’re looking for, the rest is reasonnably reachable for everyone.

Imo EHG should focus more on that point and get rid of the few people complaining about almost having to trade system. And even so, imo, it’s not such a massive issue, ARPGs rely on luck, so be it, trading generally sucks anyway.

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68

Yes, and inflation/manipulation makes a lot of items virtually unavailable to even the semi-casuals. Every. Single. Time.

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69

No it doesnt, it generally makes them more available and this doom talk regarding economy in these games is utterly ridiculous

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I feel the survey is missing a very important nuance - that many players (including myself and most of my friends) would like having a trade system between friends without having a full blown trade economy. Thus I found it very hard to answer the questions in the survey. The questions have no weight attached to them - if I responded negatively to most questions it would seem I am against trade - which is incorrect.

I am fully aware what a full trade economy will do to the game. I don’t want that and my friends don’t want that either. We just want the ability to occasionally swap good items we find with each other. Its the core of having fun with friends and finding loot.

The gifting system announced does that, but it has the limitation of having to be online and in party together. We are busy people with lives, we’ll try to play together as much as we can but live gets in the way more often than not. This restriction is just not good for our enjoyment.

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71

The game has a core reason to play related to trade/crafting, even with a decreased drop table, that most other games don’t have: affix shards. Every item is worth it, but with a decreased drop rate it gives perfect reason to learn how to use the filter system, play efferently, target-loot certain bases, and use shards to craft, compared to GGG’s “no time = no currency, no craft, no reason to play” v i s i o n.
Progress here is far smoother, and any level of time nets benefits (even if it’s just pooling shards for when you have more time), even if it means you don’t get the end-item you were aiming for in a handful of attempts.

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This is a welcomed thread. Indeed looking further for opinions could lead to a solution to (try) satisfy the majority.

I already do the survey and this time, I’ll try to suggest something different that maybe is already mentioned here on the topic/forum.

For me always mentioned that is amazing to be able to sell my valuable “treasure” that I get from a monster/boss/chest reward. Doesn’t mean it needs to be a Rare/Exalted item. Could be crafting materials (or not), keys and other type of miscellaneous items that still doesn’t exist.

I don’t really care to buy the BiS item from other player. I personally like to try to craft gear by myself. I don’t know at what point the rest like to craft and sell good items, but need to take on count that LE have a crafting system that is more deterministic compared with PoE.

EHG says “keeping Last Epoch’s loot system rewarding for solo play”, so basing on this:

  • What if we don’t trade equipment, just the rest of the items like keys/crafting materials/others that still doesn’t exist? (I’ll call them Miscellaneous items)
  • What if the only equipment items we can trade are the Uniques, with 0 LP and only being able to be traded 1 single time? (so no re-sell value).
  • What if EHG from now on, create many “miscellaneous items” so they can be used for trading purposes and have a more diverse drop pool? These miscellaneous items should be items that help the player to “juice” their monoliths in different ways: make events on monoliths appear (PoE example: Delirium, Legion, Blight, etc), NPCs to help you/need your help (PoE example: Alva, Einhar, Niko, Jun), and whatever comes to their minds.

These items will lead the player to get a specific reward they want on a monolith, basically itemize the “Echo Rewards”. The player uses it or sells it if don’t need it.

In this way, the player will search on market for misc. items that will help focus on getting what they want, without directly giving what they want through trade. Players will always need to farm it, but instead of farming a specific item for +100 hours, that time could be reduced thanks to items that help to target your desired item, providing a trading option for players who want an economy system and without being mandatory for solo-players.

Also, the drop rate will never need to be reduced since the equipment will not be tradeable. Crafting materials drop rate shouln’t be touched also.

EDIT: I want to make clear something. Having a market of miscellaneous items doesn’t mean 10 different type of items. I’m talking about a lot of different type of items that change your strategy on your monoliths/dungeons/whatever. I “imagine” a really big market of miscellaneous items.

GGG with PoE itemize many things (example: maps, quality for maps [chisel], rarity of maps [Magic map, rare, unique], change the map [Orb of Horizon, Harbinger’s Orb], etc.), so LE can do the same (not ALL of course), and make that tradeable. The equipment? Depends of our loot, crafting materials and a bit of luck. LE today is not designed to trade equipment between players because the craft is much less RNG than PoE is, that’s why I suggest this time to remove the ability to trade equipment (except Uniques), but create a pool of no-equipment items tradeable. Thoughts?

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And that is strictly your opinion. Current games like Torchlight Infinite where they are trying to reign in that manipulation and inflation with a tax beg to differ. I played PoE from Metamorph to Scourge and the market manipulation was constant every league and well documented.

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I am logged into Torchlight Infinite right now. I do agree that the good uniques are extremely rare but everything else is abundant. As of right now in TI I have 3200 raw FE and I specifically hunted for big unique drops through rarity - I found a Hunting Butterfly Memory for Erika I sold for 2800FE for example. I crafted all my rares (3x 6T1 pieces) with self found materials and still have thousands more crafting materials

I am thinking of playing my Erika when I hit 100 (99.6) and ill use the 3000+ FE to craft an insane Dagger and buy some real expensive gear as I farmed really hard for it - thats the benefit of playing a lot and getting lucky I can sell things I dont want to fund my current build to then use that to fund another build,

I farmed for 2 weeks in Season 1 to buy Exquisite Box and honestly was really happy when I finally earned enough to use it. Do you not think 2 weeks of solid farming hoarding and selling isnt enough work for 1 item?

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Way to prove my point!

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Trading items for their market values isnt trade manipulation

In PoE the price of the Exalt/Divine will fluctuate yes and if Mathil makes a build a unique item will skyrocket for a short period but then reduce thats more based on community hype

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That isn’t what happens in PoE, you’re being quite disingenuous.

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POE is a blatant example of trade economy gone rogue.

Its virtually impossible to drop top tier gear from drop, unless you count some of the fixed uniques like Watcher’s Eye and others. Top tier gear is meticulously crafted with orbs and requires extensive knowledge of affixes and affix chance rates and tricks to come with particular outcomes. Its a top down economy where thousands of scrubs farm like monkeys every day, while flippers and market manipulators buy their orbs, craft the gear and sell for even more profit. The excess orbs eventually go to RMT sites, which eventually deflates the value of orbs even more.

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79

If you are referring to meta crafting gear where you are aiming for 6x T1 then yes you will spend a fortune

But mid tier crafting isnt anywhere near that. I spent 8 Divines crafting an Int Stacker Wand in Sanctum, and I missed the Aisling twice and failed to hit the prefix. If I did hit that prefix it would of been a 45 Divine wand instead of 8. I could of restarted the process all for 8% pen of just used it. I used it. I also crafted all my Int stacker gear with fractured bases and Essences/Exalts. Why is it a bad thing to know how % of numbers work in relation to crafts? its just maths

Also crafted my Bow on my Artillery Scion. Just spam Anger Essences until you hit T1 attack speed and T2cold/lightning then annul and multi mod and thats it, end game bow done to do all content

Some PoE players dont accept that imperfect Wand and will start the whole process again, typical GGG nature being not that bad to get 4-5 affixes but to get 6 will cost you everything unless you get insanely lucky. Thats why mirror tier items are created so people can just buy perfection if they have the budget

The game absolutely bombards you nowadays with crafting materials and options to make really ‘good’ gear

edit; Imagine for a moment the developers of LE ‘allowed’ players a way to obtain 4x T8 rares with perfect 100% rolls - basically hacked gear what would be the relevent time investment for this? because gear of this level exists in poe temporary trade leagues after less than 5 weeks of playing

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Now please go again through whatever you just wrote and tell me - did you realize when you stopped playing an ARPG where loot drops were exciting? Nowadays POE is literally a farming simulator. Kind of similar to classical chineese gold farmers in WOW, except instead of feeding the family you do it to progress further in difficult content.

You literally farm orbs and feed them into a slot machine. Except you also need to spend several hours learning how to pull the lever as well.

It is not bad having fun this way. Having fun is never bad and a lot of people enjoy POE. I enjoyed POE too, before things got out of control. But POE already exists and a lot of people like the excitement of getting their valuable items drop from monsters instead.

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81

I am deeply in agreement with EHG’s early philosophy of item drop.
Therefore, so far I believe EHG is right about trade system. :smile:

Personally, Shopping game is enough exist one. :wink:

Edit
EGH→EHG :bowing_man:

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There is only one solution for us all. The community that I often see on in-game-chat loves Grim Dawn. There are also people (max 5% of whole community) that mention about “PoE is better…because have trade-system” but still play LE somehow. For me and those who love Grim Dawn it is clearly that we like SSF and possibility to obtain the best possible gear without trading and spending whole day on marke-place. I like to PLAY and kill monsters to drop unique items, gather them and makeing builds around them. I wish LE have NPC that sell me an very rare things for a reputation (or other value that I need to gather) I gathered in dangerous places. I don’t need other people to trade. But for those people that would like it - just make separate OPEN world-multi-player-online-AREA where they can join, trade, SCAM, steal, use BOTS, use third-system-programs…whatever. Just don’t make others like me - who want to JUST play offline - to suffer. Also don’t balance drop rates down because of trading. I’m playing longer then 2 years and didn’t drop single Bastion. I not want to spent next 10 years to drop one item after MP comes. And I don’t want to trade it. Just let me play how it is.

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I dont disagree, my earlier comment was I dont really care if there is no active trading in LE as long as the developers address some way to make boss uniques only farmable in some other fashion

But others players like myself also get dopamine from finding valuable things we can trade away for others so it works both ways

Seriously what are you actually talking about here, the whole point of consumable items to drop is to be used. Just because LE’s crafting is much more simpler doesnt change the fact you are still ‘feeding orbs into a slot machine’ do you want to know how many T18+ Staves I ‘bricked’ trying to get a 5th Affix from a Despair rune? It was over 12 staves and I gave up. Never hit it, thats me 'feeding orbs into a slot machine correct? Since I had no control on the outcome all I could do was click and pray for a result. I couldnt ‘block mods’ from appearing or use other knowledge in place to secure affixes or narrow them down

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Still I stand by my point to me it sounds like overcomplicated cherrypicking but maybe I missed something and I’ll reread the post again when I have more time at my hands :slight_smile: .

No problem farming 25h for an item IF i get the item in the end. I’m not that har into the grind anymore that I’m happy with .0006% drop rates from back when I played LI2 ^^. Kadala is BS true :slight_smile: .

Yeah but you have no options in LE you need to targetfarm the same old mind numbing boring content to get the target farm anyway Why should I need to do other boring content to finaly get the item I grinded for? I don’t want instant gratification but I don’t like needlessly complicated systems as well if you know what I mean :slight_smile: . I’m all for getting items while playing but in a timeframe that isn’t bonkers ^^.

Well I like trading as a general idea and I think it’s mandatory to have (almost) free trade with friends just so you know where I’m coming from because You are wrong here. Smart people will always play the market and get rich and richer no matter what. Not everyone is good at trade and market maipulation and those players will be shafted because a Bastion for example will sooner or later cost a bazzillion of whatever rubberducks are used as a made up currency. I don’t think your oppinion will stand a reality check at all but that’s just my oppinion :smiley: .

That’s all me as well as my friends and the community member of my clan want as well. I simply try to find a middle ground for everyone but I think it’ll never gone happen :smiley: .

Uhm it’ss like that in every game I played with free trade it’s simply supply and demand. If something is in high demand people need to pay a lot that’s true to every game of the past. There need to be a game system in place so items can only be sod for a said ammount and then there will still be rich and poor out there.

That’s why walking sim builds are so fun ^^.

How early are you talking? I think you ment the recent change of mind from their philosophy they advertised since kickstarter and what they shied away from not long ago.

Yeah EHG ends the circus and comes to a final verdict no matter the consequenses.

raises his lil fist (almost) free trade for friends ftw!*

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Its basically putting Kadala with guarantee uniques for a significant cost at the end of a Dungeon… if you want a needlessly complicated system I can show you pictures of peoples Harvest garden setups in PoE …you will go insane

LE isnt in the position currently now or in the very near future to just ‘allow’ free trading without serious changes to their core systems as everything will just not make sense, you do realise one of the most commonly traded currencies in PoE rarely gets used by players it just sits in a stash or gets passed to another player either accumulating/devaluing on a daily basis rarely do they leave the economy by a spread of players, most of the Divines are consumed by a very small percentage of crafters

The other is Chaos orb which I rarely even consume anymore, dont need them to reroll maps, or gear. you use them to add mods to your maps…they have little value these days, and why Divine orbs went to 300chaos as you can only fit 600chaos in your inventory per trade

If free trade was allowed in LE and someone found a Ravenous Void what would it be worth?

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I will say this when D2 original and the Expansion were released. I was able to trade freely. IT was fun I had mules and I was able to help friends. Decades later D2R gets released. And sadly a third party website ruined the trade market now players were able to use real money to buy items. I wish trading could have limits to prevent the pay 2 win mindset of many players today that is my greatest fear for Last Epoch.

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