I would argue that your two favorite items also don’t have any real unique stats.
Orian’s Eye and Ravenous Void are just glorified DR Stat Sticks.
Yes they give their DR/Defensive properties through somewhat “unique” ways, but at the end they don’t really change that much in your build, except stat budget.
Could you clarify what you mean by this? Are you saying you cannot enjoy the game if you don’t have easy access to extremely powerful gear? You can absolutely “enjoy builds” without completely minmaxed endgame gear, but this reads as if you believe otherwise.
Kids are expensive, mine will be out of college just as I am getting ready to retire. If I want I can work a few more years just banking money.
Our mortgage should be paid for as well. Best of luck. You are an accountant, so you have a step up.
Yeah, they are just best in slot for almost all builds. Nothing too special though.
I never said easy access to gear. I have put in 1200 hours worth of my time into this game. From 1200 hours of worth of playtime, from my point of view the droprates are awful.
If I play a build, I want to enjoy it to the fullest. With no trade, I could not care less about, droprates need VASTLY improved. This is especially true if they intend to do seasons.
I do not want another PoE with awful droprates. I do not like PoE at all for some reasons and that is one of them.
Was the FAQ updated to match new information, or was #2 originally included in the July '21 post? I can’t remember.
- What will the trade system be like?
Our current plans regarding the trade system are still a work in progress and have been altered since information about the previously planned Bazaar system had been released. More information will be released in 2022.- Will players be able to give their friends items?
If they were playing together in the same party when the item dropped they will be able to gift one another the item.- Will players be able to link Items in chat?
Yes.- Are you changing loot drop rates or crafting because of multiplayer?
Perhaps. But if so, not drastically. We want the drop rates to be mainly balanced around self-found and feel we are doing a decent job of this right now. Because of the way the trade system is planned to work we don’t believe this will throw off the balance of the item hunt drastically.
Thank you for clarifying.
Having build-enabling uniques/items be more accessible (such as smite on hit idols) is something I absolutely agree with. However, there still needs to be chase.
Having a small number of exceptionally rare items (like ravenous void) to aspire for is a good thing. I also think 4LP being practically unobtainable on higher level uniques is fine.
If they can find a way to allow for easier access of build enabling (not chase) gear while simultaneously keeping very rare drops exciting, that would be ideal.
(I don’t think trade is the answer for that, but I don’t want to get into another trade discussion right now.)
It’s possible it’s just not probable.
I’m not senior enough to be obscenely well paid & I’m not career-focussed enough to be particularly senior.
I may be the only one , but my problem is not included there. I don’t need surety nor care about finding something valuable I can’t or don’t want to use , for me is having to repeat the same content many times because there is loot that only exist in bosses loot tables.
I want trade to be able to buy something after I’m bored of repeating the same activity, so I can go and continue enjoying the game doing something different.
and I have played 10,000+ hours 
Look. To figure out whether players like to trade or not, just look at the numbers on:
If our beloved LE is left without open trading, will it develop? No! Because the absolute majority of players (tens of thousands, not 1-2%) want to trade freely.
I think the solution is simple:
a) make servers for solo players (1% so what, they are also fans of the game)
b) who wants to play and interact ONLY with their friends: rents a server (his own world) and plays there only with his friends, without trading and external interactions
c) everyone else (90%+ people) play in the same world during the league, trading is free
Soooo = everyone is fine, everyone is happy.
One game, everyone loves it and no one quarrels. Right? right. The same approach is used by many other projects, including PoE. And yes, it is thanks to the leagues with open trade that this game has gained such wild popularity among the masses. The online numbers speak for themselves: the vast majority like to interact with all the players where they want, when they want, without any restrictions. It’s just a fact.
Instead of urging developers not to add free trade at all, maybe you will start thinking not only about yourself? Most players are FOR TRADING. Let’s call on the developers together to make different game modes so everyone can have a good time!
(I apologize for my English. I translate through a translator)
Here! Here it is a problem on the face = the chance of things falling out. No one wants to farm one monolith for months in order to knock out 1 thing. It’s boring and tedious. Especially if leagues are introduced. I want to try several builds in time, and not quit my job and family in order to find a couple of things for just one build.
It is probably worth not only adding various game modes that take into account the interests of the players. But it’s also trite to raise the chance of things falling out.
If you’re basing an argument around completely imaginary statistics, you probably don’t have a good argument to begin with.
Operating under the assumption that you must completely min-max a build before moving onto a different one is going to only cause frustration and burnout.
I personally do not want trade to be in the game for a few specific reasons:
RMT Spam and Security Risks
Spam
RMT sites need to advertise and there is no better advertisement than a free global platform known as the chat window. The more popular and profitable the game the more incentive an RMT player has to spam the chat to hook customers.
Bots
Bots usually lead to large nerfs to drop rates once they have automated large swaths of them into efficient farming machines. They also can lead to large market swings where player owned bots manipulate the market as they see fit. No longer is the economy player driven, but directed at the whims of someone with a collection of bots capable of buying faster, generating more resources per hour, and operating longer than any one player. Bots are a side effect of trade but become more so when money is involved for RMT.
Security
Then there are RMT sites that look to rip off players by stealing their credit card / personal information for supposed goods within a site. These sites can range from blatant goods for services to more innocuous third party sites that offer fake game news / guides to steer traffic to their RMT ads. While most informed users can avoid these scams the sheer number of them can hook even the most vigilant users. Even after avoiding these phishing attempts some people believe money for power is a fair exchange regardless of the cost and will use these sites to subvert the in-game economy.
RMT also means an increased incentive to hack EHG directly. Account information is already under threat as a universal commodity. This risk factor increases when digital goods can be tied to accounts that have an established monetary value tied to them. The increased risk leads to the need for more resources dedicated to security and customer service and less on the actual game.
Trade Decreases drop rates overall
Users experience this system directly with equipment grades ranging from common - unique. This system expands as characters become higher level. Gear drop rate is now not only effected by equipment grade, but also potential power. This leads to a secondary tier system where uniques and gear with more powerful affixes have their drop rate divided by power level. Secondary tiers form the foundation for the idea of chase items adding another tuning knob for item worth Devs can play with.
This can be a difficult scale to balance when you only have to calculate the drop rate of one player at a time. Throwing multiple people at the the problem makes it all the more difficult. As an example lets say there is a unique sword that players are saying takes to long to farm.
You gather your player driven data to see how many times the sword has dropped over a period of time, how long most players take to acquire said sword, and how long it takes to clear content that drops the sword. You measure that up against your desired time for an item of that power level to be acquired and adjust the drop rate accordingly if at all.
Now take trade into account where access to the sword increases exponentially. Now not only are you factoring in the prior data mentioned, but also other factors such as:
If you balance the drop rate around a player base of 100k and find that only 1k of the player base actually wanted the sword those players are going to be in for a bad time.
Are bots focusing in on a niche sword market? Is a streamer build causing more demand? Did a skill change suddenly make that sword BiS causing a meta shift?
Now you’re stuck with acquisition rates that can dramatically shift much faster than single player drop rates, and require far more changes and monitoring to make sure supply and demand meets your design goals. So what do you do? You could spend resources globally adjusting drop rates behind the scenes, or you could just balance drop rates based on perceived averages. Neither solution is appealing to me.
Time should be spent playing the game and not the market
If you trade without currency you get the mess that is Borderlands where you need a spread sheet of rare affixes, uniques ( and their rarity tier), and a slew of third party options to post your wares. Item for item trades are convoluted, all but impossible to advertise in game, and require a large amount of time out of game to establish some type of item worth.
Items for currency like in POE can be easier to assign value to as a certain gold standard is usually developed. It still runs into the same issues of needing to do a whole lot of work outside of the game to figure out what item is worth what and why. It is also more prone to market manipulation unlike systems that trade item for item like Borderlands.
Currently LE doesn’t have these problems. I am able to play from start to finish without ever considering a third party tool. My loot filters are slowly whittled down to a fine point until they only show exactly the items I want for my build and never have to include other junk because “it might sell well”. The experience is seamless where I play to earn exactly what I want.
Conclusion
Expanded trade can lead to more spam, bots, and security risks for consumers thanks to RMT incentives. More resources have to be taken away from the game to provide for more security and customer service to counteract the increased risk. Drop rates have to be lowered and often changed without warning to counteract the exponential increase of item availability. Again more resources have to be dedicated to drop rate fluctuation to ensure item acquisition is meeting design goals. Lastly I want to play the game as is without worrying about spreadsheets and third party tools. Player driven economies can be convoluted and time consuming, offering problems for item acquisition that were never an issue before being implemented.
You’re describing P2W. You may feel like you deserved it because you worked hard in life, but this is a game. By definition it’s an escape from reality. RMT makes real life bleed into the game, and most people are justifiably against this. Especially if the game has a degree of competition to it.
Moreover I have to disagree on your philosophy. I think the grind (journey) is part of the fun of the game. Short cutting that because you’re willing to spend money where others aren’t feels really cheap and empty. But I’m glad you’re being honest about an unpopular POV.
If I play a game to have fun, I want to have fun. If items do not drop for me in a timely manner then I have zero interest in playing the game and will be honest with my friends about it.
I can basically buy whatever I want in PoE but refuse to play it and have told my friends that as well. Stuff does not drop in that game. Guess what, stuff doesn’t drop in this one for me either.
A question for you, and others that also want easier loot. What are your goals in the game after you get the loot?
I understand the idea of quitting once progress seems to stop. Not being able to get a drop that progresses your character after X number of hours can be frustrating. Once you get those items though, aren’t you at the same point where that is the problem to an increased degree?
Okay, your BoH and Ravenous Voids have now dropped. What are you now playing for?
The hunt for desired items is most of what makes this game fun.
I personally don’t get a lot of enjoyment from this game without the carrot on the stick. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of parts of the game that are just fun in their own right. That may just be me though.
This ^^ I agree with dictan.
My personal preference would be expanding the gifting system a bit.
Then maybe allow free trade for a limited time window after drop (12-24hours) for items that meet certain criteria.
Is it just me or do people not understand rng?
While most unlikely let’s use this as an example for rng. If you are unlucky with your rng you have a very high chance to never see all farmable items in 1000h while other people might have every item dublicated with 2+ LP in 500h.
That’s a stupid system by itself because a player who played double the amount of someone else should have double the benefits. We play the same game and we need the same skillset to beat said game and people are okay with getting screwed over by a random number generator?
You need stupid D3 levels of droprates to get everything you want in a meaningfull time frame if you have a life besides all the gaming and do we realy want to go there? Just wake up and get the point that rng is an outdated abomination of a system that hurts some players more then other and nothing you’ve achived is worth something because you got everything by luck… no skill involved.
I think so, yes. Not everyone of course, but I suspect plenty of people.
Personally, I don’t think of it as “getting screwed over”, but rather as “getting lucky sometimes”.
RNG is the core of the genre and I think if you’re playing an ARPG, then you need to be willing to accept the highs and the lows.
Of course, its not this black and white and nor are humans.
If something is practically impossible, but not theoretically impossible, how do you set the players expectations so that they dont get disappointed and frustrated?
This may be controversial, but I would argue that people who write build guides might have a responsibility to ensure they don’t use those items.
An early thought, which requires deeper consideration.