My premise is that people worry too much about trade. Titan Quest and Grim Dawn have trading and drop rate was built for single-player as far as we know. GD is more open on that. TQ is a bit more shaded since it was released in a time where Diablo 2 was king, so drop rates were naturally abysmal. Of course, those 2 games, all saves are local, so trading was kinda worthless either way. You had Torchlight 2 which had trading and a small economy. Wolcen also had trading, and was balanced around trades. That being said, since the game flunked hard, they added loot reroll mechanic that are build oriented.
But then you got games like PoE and D2R, that I appreciate, that are also balanced around trade, and trading is everything. It’s fine for those games, but I don’t think this fits Last Epoch.
Hence, my comment. Allow players that want to trade, to trade, but leave the loot and target farming alone so players can still reliably find the items they want through grind. Players that will want to trade will trade, players that will want to just play will play, and everyone will be happy.
That still doesnt explain what a bot is here, is this a good thing thats a part of a game mechanic, or something someones setting up with an api, or literally a bot used to farm gear and sell it etc…
Only saying this to try and point out that the survey is really not written well, if your explanation still doesn’t illuminate if this is a inherently negative, or a potentially postitive thing (i.e. something that is intended or not), then the survey question itself is incredibly flawed.
Ill definitely say that I personally, and based on a few comments so far, other people, did not read that question as that. And instead read it as being about bots that aren’t intended.
That type of bot I’d love to see more than any other implementation, because its different and new and interesting.
First I want to say that I really appreciate this survey. Most surveys I see put out just don’t ask the right questions or have good answer choices. I felt like this survey asked questions on every part of trading that concerned me.
I believe trading should be open and easily accessible. I want to search by item type and affix to find exactly what I’m looking for and buy it instantly. I don’t believe you need to do anything about item drop rates at all for this, there’s already a lot of RNG when it comes to finding a particular affix on a particular base which is why trading exists in games like this.
The only balance to this was thankfully addressed in the survey. I want drops to be freely traded but once an item is crafted on it should be locked to the player. Keep the hunt for better gear there even with trade by still requiring a player to craft to make what they need. Crafting should always be the second step whether you get an item from a drop or from trade. Crafting should always be that extra RNG that doesn’t always work out.
With respect to bots that aren’t intended. I still remember in PoE trading with a bot being one of the most pleasant trading experiences.
They always answered immediately even for very small trades, so you were not wasting time whispering sellers that were not responding.
I see this post and the survey as a positive, regardless of the outcome. Hopefully enough people complete the survey so that they can get some idea of exactly what the split is in the community.
It was an interesting survey and hits on quite a few key points. But I believe it may miss some viable options such as:
The use of bind on trade in order to remove flippers from the market
Limiting the number of trades an account can perform over a period of time to reduce the volume and make people think before making trades.
Rather than limiting what can be traded by rarity, it can also/instead be limited by item slot (ie. chest, weapon …)
Trade could not just be limited to friends, but to say a guild or community. (This probably has too many negatives though)
One problem area the survey addressed is whether you should interact directly with a player to make a trade. GGG has explained many times that there really are two ideal ways to implement open trade and not have it completely supplant actually playing the game.
The first method is to make it a pain to find the exact item you want but make it really easy to make the transaction once you do. This is accomplished by limiting the parameters you can use to find the item and thus making you sift through a whole bunch of them to do so. But once the item is found you can make an automated purchase in the game and never have to meet the player selling it. The LE Bazaar was a pretty extreme version of this as you had no way to see everything being sold and relied on RNG to find a vendor that had it.
The second method is to make it really easy to find the item you want but make it somewhat painful to actually complete then trade/purchase. This is how POE handles it (outside of china). In POE you need to message the player, if they are even online, and tell them you want to buy their item. They may be AFK or what you are going to pay may not be worth them stopping what they are doing. While being ghosted can be a pain, and some things such as maps needed their own third party sites to make trading them easier, it works to reduce how often trades occur.
Diablo 3 went with a terrible solution of making it pretty easy to search for items(in game) and implemented an AH that allowed you to buy it instantly once found.
Anyway, so anyone that wants all items to be tradeable, easy to find in the marketplace and able to make the trade without seeing the person selling it is asking for trouble.
Personally I’m fine with incremental adjustments to trade as long as they take an open minded approach. I’m mostly concerned about the game having a solid, active playerbase so they can add great updates for years. And I think a more expansive implementation of trade is almost certainly required to get that healthy population.
Since feedback is being looked at and the survey doesn’t give much detail for those against trade, here are my thoughts. I would much rather have an expanded crafting system where you can break down gear you don’t want to have a deterministic way of getting gear you do want. I don’t want it to be easy, I just want it to feel inevitable.
I also feel like those players that were so adamant about multiplayer keep moving the goalposts. They raged over getting MP because “they just want to play with their friends”. Once that happened, or was at least in the works, it quickly became about being able to trade with friends.
That’s very misrepresentative, peopel who have been wanting MP, while being around int he community/playing the game, have (for those wanting trade) constatnly been saying they want trade as well. You probably missed the outcry/posts when they said bazaar wasn’t coming, and then when they said gifting would be the only thing. This isn’t new, we’ve been talking about needing a real trade in the game ever since bazaar was canned.
are they ?
i’m enjoying Last epoch a great deal without trading.
i fired up D2R just for kicks, and apparently it has trading. i wouldn’t know, i haven’t tried to trade.
it’s ok if YOU think trade is fundamental to ARPGs, but there are absolutely people who do not agree with that opinion.
EHG is going to make a business decision, unfortunately. will they end up with more players by having a trading system ? they can’t make everyone happy.
Thanks for the clarification.
I see I was starting from a very different point of view.
From my point of view, player interaction = social interaction, so bots would be automatically disqualified from being considered player interaction, even if they are set-up by a player.
Maybe read the whole thing instead of quoting a single sentence out of context. My conclusion is literally just that trading should be in the game like nearly every other ARPG, but the core loot balance should be the same.
I have no idea what you mean. I did read the whole thing.
You literally lead with a statement, a declarative statement no less, that it’s fundamental to the game and then go on to say a trade system should be in the game.
i disagree.
so you are saying you do NOT think that trade is fundamental to ARPGs ? i’m so confused.
edit: i could be confused, but i didn’t see that there was a lot of room for interpretation in what you wrote.
