Let's talk about "Trade"

General
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Look, I really didn’t wanna have to open a thread about this oh-so-sensitive topic for a multitude of reasons, but I think it needs to be done and no one else is doing it, so here we go…

tl;dr version: this isn’t real trading and you need to change it asap before everyone who came here thinking the game had trade starts leaving en masse.

OK, now allow me to explain myself.

Who am I and why do I care:

I am a life-long gamer who has spent a fair amount of time (think several dozen thousands of hours) in RPGs. My favorite genre is, in fact, ARPGs. I have no way of tracking how much time I’ve spent on PoE, but it’s definitely above 10k hours by now. The actual number is probably a lot higher than that, but I have no way of knowing for sure. I also spent around 10k hours on Barb alone in D3 and God-knows-how-many hours on D2 and LoD. Played Baldur’s Gate 1 when it first came out; have played Torchlight; know what Grim Dawn, Titan Quest and the rest are. I want this game to be the best game it can be because chances are I will be spending a fair amount of time on it as well. Well… at least if the long term replayability is there, which I’m honestly still unsure of.

The problem:

This is NOT a player-driven economy. It really just boils down to that. I could write several paragraphs complaining about search features (which I imagine EHG is working on), prices or whatever else, but I think that first sentence pretty much summarizes everything that’s wrong with the current Merchant’s Guild system.

You should’ve NEVER tied Reputation to the price of items. Whole system just feels janky and rushed. There is no way you would’ve kept said system the way it is if you had feedback from people who were interested in the supposed trading aspect of the game.

Truth is there is very little “trading” and only lots of reputation grinding. Especially when I can get almost any LP/Unique item for 0g, which leaves my fellow “trader” with 0g. This, combined with the fact that we can’t even resell or simply “trade” (e.g. give to a friend) items we’ve bought from The Bazaar, absolutely beats the whole purpose of having a trade feature in your ARPG, which is generally to barter: you start small and work your way up.

This is what made Diablo 2 be Diablo 2. This is what makes PoE be PoE. If you were trying to create a “spiritual successor to Diablo 3”, you have succeded. But if you planned on taking on PoE as the best ARPG in the genre, you have failed miserably. Sorry, but I don’t think sugarcoating helps either of us right now, and yes, I know how many copies of the game you sold.

My proposed solution (or what I would personally do if given the chance):

  1. First off, remove the Favor requirement from items purchased. Listing items could still keep the Favor requirement, but tying Favor to the price of the item is what makes “Trade” feel more like a gimped SSF where I am just grinding monsters for Favor so I can afford the 0g item I’m after. Gold drops or item prices are not the issue; the Favor requirement is.

  1. Add an NPC or dungeon reward to work as a Favor dump. Both factions need this. Personally, I’m not level 10 yet, but I do see that once you reach level 10, there is pretty much absolutely nothing to do with all the excess Favor. Saw one guy in Global chat claiming to have over 200k Favor and nothing to spend it on. I do not look forward to getting to that point where the “reward” I am getting for killing monsters simply stops mattering. Do not even try to compare Rep/Favor to actual character XP. This is more like if I couldn’t loot the stuff the monsters drop after a certain point or being able to pick it up but not being able to use it. If that were the case, then why would I grind - much less rush - to get to that point? Kind of a “reverse reward” if you will. Much of the fun in an ARPG comes from becoming more and more efficient, not less. Give us a Favor dump fast (and no, please, do not point at the gambler).

  2. Maybe add a minimum gold price to items. I say “maybe” because I am not entirely sure how this would be implemented and with too many restrictions we would end up in the same spot where we started: a non-player-driven economy. Obviously a 1g minimum on all items would give the same result. However, adding thresholds to each item by type, rarity, LP amount or w/e else might be a smart move. Big “maybe”.

And that’s about all I got for now. I could probably come up with more improvements to the system, but I don’t mean to digress or derail the thread by talking about too many things at once. This thread is about trading and the Merchant’s Guild and I would like to keep it that way.

So yea… I know I’m not the only who’s displeased with the fake trade experience. Wondering what other people think, especially traders. Big disclaimer: this thread will likely be ambushed by trolls, SSF-only players who don’t want traders to have an advantage and maybe even Blizzard shills who are trying to keep this game from becoming better than it currently is. Game has an incredibly solid foundation, but dropped the ball as far as trading goes… and that is a huge aspect for players who played ARPGs before the existence of D3:ROS. Please try and keep things civil.

<3,
-Bunter

2 Likes
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I’ve been a rabid advocate for trade from the beginning and I’m getting everything I want out of the system as it currently is. This sounds like it was written by someone who wants to play Trade: The Game instead of Last Epoch.

“Grinding for this one totally arbitrary currency is totally fine, but grinding for this other equally arbitrary currency is not”.

If I wasn’t already dying of laughter at the idea of D2’s trade being good I’d split my sides open.

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if you can trade items for gold only, then theres no trade in the game.

trade needs to be player based and players need to decide what the currency is and how to trade it.

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Players having that level of control and power over trade and the economy is what makes POE’s trading shit.

Thankfully, EHG recognizes that Trade Lord is not a valid way to play an ARPG.

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Also a good point. Kinda goes back to the whole “player-driven economy” thing. I get this feeling that devs just don’t want trade in the game but were forced to add limited trade to lure in a certain crowd. They knew their sales would suffer if they didn’t.

Problem is I wouldn’t want PoE with an auction house either because that’d just attract RMTers and their filthy bots. In that sense, I’m OK and even kinda agree with the Favor system, since there should be a limitation or requirement to keep these people out of the economy.

To be clear, I am not against Favor itself, but mostly the way it’s tied to item prices when making a purchase and the effect that has had on the economy only a week* into release. I have a feeling that if this isn’t changed soon, it’s gonna be bad for the game’s health in the not-so-long-term.

edit: hm… no discussion happened. If you guys at EHG eventually see this feedback, I just want you to know I am very much enjoying the game. That said, I do believe that if you want to please traders (and indirectly extend the game’s replayability and/or reach) then you should consider making several changes to the current MG system. Hope this reaches you in time. :slight_smile:

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It seems like they put a lot of thought in the most important faction, the one that regulates drops, and just rushed the faction that merely regulates trade.

I hope they tune up the MG for the next Cycle, because I like trading with people, but as for today CoF looks better so far.

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While I do like PoE a lot and I love D2 (which I still play to this day) the trading in both those games was very toxic. The system they have is ripe for sniping, price fixing and, above all, scamming.

Trade in LE is simply a tool to get the gear you want, rather than being an endgame mechanic like it is in PoE, where many players spend the whole league just trading and flipping items.
The most important part of making trade in LE something actually enjoyable for the majority of players (those that don’t simply want to get rich by playing the market) is that you can’t resell the items you buy. Instant trade is great to stop price fixing, but it’s the fact that you can’t resell items that makes trade better in LE.

The market is still adjusting itself. I expect it is vastly different in cycle than in legacy, because in legacy you have lots of players with loads of gold that don’t really care about making a profit but rather advancing rank, so they don’t mind selling good stuff for cheap. In cycle, this shouldn’t happen as often.

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No. Just no. POE’s trading is shit because the actual mechanics of it force you to be physically standing in front of the other person in order to facilitate the trade itself. The resulting experience is often miserable and frustrating. It has zero to do with player-controlled value.

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Did u really say it looks better? I personally got better loot in 5 days of trading than in 5 years of gridning early acess. i have several 3-4 lp items, fully slammed after several attempts with lp chance below 0.027%, and being rare in uniques in general. CoF doesnt come even close in power to trade. And the items that i bought are still available for other people on the market

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You could copy/paste LE’s interface into POE tomorrow and it would still be shit if it did nothing to prevent a small group of jackasses to manipulate and control the market to the detriment of every other play.

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I agree. Such a convoluted and unfriendly system.

It’s getting lots of negative talk in chat too. People do not like the MG implementation. (not remotely surprising because the palavar around it is terrible and the UI of the Bazaar is really really bad).

(p.s. I like it somewhat because it works well for Legacy players like myself who can walk to the Bazaar and just spend a couple of million on whatever unique I had been missing for some legacy build I had on pause from 6 months ago. To me MG is nothing more than a unique shop, and I have money to SPEND! But anyone looking for legit and meaningful trading seems to really dislike it)

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I don’t think it is that. I think they just didn’t think through design properly. My feeling is:

Merchant Guild design is good for Legacy and terrible for Cycle
CoF design is the opposite; good for Cycle and terrible for Legacy

Are you playing Legacy or Cycle?

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That is the point, though. MG isn’t meant to be legit or meaningful trading. It’s meant to be just a way for you to get your gear, rather than a goal you pursue the whole cycle. As you said: it’s meant to be a shop. You sell stuff on the shop, you buy stuff on the shop. In this regard, MG is extremely well implemented.
Many people don’t like it because they like to play trade as a game mechanic, rather than a resource, which is something LE doesn’t want.

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Who are you referring to? The LE devs? Because the players certainly seem to want it.

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Who are these “players” you say don’t want it? I’m a player and I don’t want it. One of the main reasons I stopped playing PoE was the toxic trade. I don’t want to play the market to get currency to play the game, but because there are many that want it and do just that, their market is toxic.

I don’t want LE trade to be like that. I just want exactly what LE delivered: somewhere where I can sell my things and buy other stuff, without worrying about sniping, price fixing and scamming.

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I am on cycle MG and its absolutely insane gear market

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I said the players want it.

I played PoE for many years more than I would otherwise have, because of the awesome trade.

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Yes, that’s fine. Different players want different things. But LE doesn’t want the people that make trade their endgame mechanic. And many players don’t either. Not every game needs to appeal to every type of player.

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Surely LE making items only tradeable once in total is more than sufficient to stop that? No need for all the other hurdles.

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Yes, that would be fine with me either. But I’m pretty sure they made the reputation/favor system for MG as well to make it more balanced with CoF, otherwise MG would be would be even stronger than CoF than it already is.