Player to Player Gifting

Feedback and Suggestions
34

It is. Although in practice it’s not a gift, it’s a trash disposal since the stuff being sold isn’t something anyone would be interested in, even as a gift.

Remember when I said above that I liked the D2 practice of just dumping stuff on the ground for the newer players to get? You could do that in MG. Just sell a bunch of stuff you want to get rid of for 0 gold and let the newer players get it for free.
In that case you’re not trading (nor are the zero listings about trade at all either), you are giving things away.
But now that we have a minimum gold cost, it’s never gifting, it’s always a trade.

For a trade to occur, stuff has to flow both ways. If it flows only one way, that’s a gift.

Not quite. I’ve often had friends that were very inexperienced and to which I gave a lot of stuff and not once did I get anything back from them.

And even disregarding that, the situation that you describe isn’t even. Most often than not, the more experienced player is giving away valuable things and not getting much in return, when he gets something at all.

When it’s your birthday, people give you gifts. The fact that when it’s their birthday you also give them gifts doesn’t now make it a trade. Otherwise everything is a trade and we should delete the word gift from the dictionary, by your definition, because nothing is a gift.

A gift is simply something that is given freely with no expectation of a return. It doesn’t matter if social practices pressure you into giving gifts back, which you may or may not do.

This would still be an issue with your system. All of them would now have 2 resonances, but the first guy still has 3 items he wants to give while the other 2 have nothing to give.

Personally, I think all we need is a trial period of active play together and after that time they’re your friends and you can trade freely between them from then on.
It sucks when you have a dozen items you don’t really value much anymore but you know your friend would find awesome to have to get him started on that new build he wants and you can’t do anything about it.

I think it’s actually detrimental to the game. I have brought plenty of friends over to D2 and PoE in my time just by convincing them to try and handing them decent starter gear to make their initial experience smoother.
This is impossible to do in LE and quite likely many players’ friends won’t be trying LE because of this.

I think you have a rose tinted view of group play in LE because you mostly play with your wife. So you very often play together at the same time.

This isn’t the case for most players where your schedules and theirs don’t often coincide and you end up playing alone more often than together. Many times your friends are even from other countries with different timezones.

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35

Mostly, agreed.
Not always though.

So then the ‘trade mechanic’ acts as a ‘gifting mechanic’ suddenly, doesn’t it?

So do you think the ‘gifting mechanic’ is often used as a alternative ‘trade mechanic’ when using it long-term between people?
Because a trade includes ‘you get something, I get something’ and that is the end of the definition. It doesn’t include a timeframe, a size or anything at all. The trade can also be ‘I give you any item useful to you which I don’t need and you do the same’, which is already ‘a trade’ by definition.

Just because you name a mechanic in a specific way doesn’t mean it’s not handled commonly in the actual common-sense way.

True, by definition.
In actuallity nothing has changed.

Unless you wanna say that if you give someone a brand new car and in return he goes and grabs a sandwich from the grocery store for you on the way to pick it up is ‘a trade’ suddenly.
I know by law it is since a exchange of goods in some form happened… but let’s be reasonable here and use a actually senseful description which isn’t solely needed to be written down to avoid shenanigans… but to actually take into consideration the ‘real situation’ here.

A trade is when at least two people exchange things which for both sides offers a perceived valuable result

You see what I did there? This argument I make there isn’t adherring to ‘goods’ solely, but it also adhers to feelings for example, as well as it can for goods. Also it isn’t limited inside the system itself but applies ‘overall’. As well as not by time.

This inherently means that the ‘gifting’ system is a exchange of equivalent value. A unspoken ‘contract’ commonly between people. ‘If I get something good you need and I don’t… then I’ll give it to you. And you do the same!’

Also yes, includes often birthdays. Your example further down is in reality not often an actual ‘gift’ but a postponed trade.

Gifting does exist but it’s relatively rare, which makes it such a meaningful thing under normal circumstances.

Which would automatically make the gifting system not even come into action under normal circumstances, yep.

And as you say, this is not a common thing to experience under friends, especially because of different schedules.

36

As I said, you’re taking this to an extreme and that just means no gifts exist ever. Because you can always argue that when you give something you get back the good feeling of doing it.

But if you’re not so literal and narrow-minded, you accept that a gift and a trade are very different things.
If you have a community based on trading, that means that when you need something you need to offer something or equivalent perceived value in return.
If you have a community based on gifting that means that when you need something someone will give it to you and when someone needs something you might give it to them, even if the perceived value is very uneven.

Basically this means that, for gifting among friends to be considered a trade things would have to have an equivalent value, which is most often not the case. There is always one person giving away very valuable stuff and very often not getting anything at all in return.

Your view on gifting is basically very extremely capitalist, but that’s not what the word means in coloquial use.
A father giving a car to his daughter is not a trade, it’s a gift. No matter how much you try to hyperbolize it.

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37

And that is a prime example for an actual gift commonly.

Parent to offspring things are highly susceptible to being actual gifts rather then trades. A parent isn’t thinking about something like ‘hopefully they’ll take care of me when I grow old’ to do it but solely with the thought to help them out having a good life.

That’s a proper one, fully agreed!

But even along friends that’s surprisingly rare. Which is why I say ‘it’s more rare then you think’.
Not saying ‘it doesn’t happen’, quite the contrary, I imagine you’re far more prone to doing actual gifts. But circumstantial proof is not a universal truth. For you it might be natural… for many others it’s a foreign concept.
Mind you… I’m also the ‘free gifter’ often, doesn’t mean though that I can’t see how it’s not what people usually do. I just have a specific proclivity for it, good and bad following that.

38

But that assumes most players are on an equal footing, which isn’t true. Most often, as I said, you have an experienced player which hands out the good loot and he won’t get it in return.
If I already have 5 red rings, I will give one to my friend. But it’s very unlikely he will ever give me one red ring back.
In fact, it’s very unlikely he’ll give me anything back because I likely won’t need anything he can get.

The closest example you’ll get to what you want is 2 friends starting a new character together fresh, where each will gift drops to the other as need arises.

But even then, that’s not trading. It’s still gifting. Because, and this is the crucial part, for it to be a trade there would have to exist an expectation of giving back something of the same value. Which isn’t the case. You give it because he can use it and you don’t. Maybe he’ll give you something back, maybe he won’t. There’s no expectation that he has an obligation to pay you back.
That is what differentiates gifting from trading.

If I give you a car and then I expect you to give me a car as well in the future, that is a trade.
If I give you a car and then I don’t expect you to give me anything in return, then that’s a gift, even if you decide to also give me a car in the future. In that case, it would be 2 independent gifts of similar value and still not a trade.

Governments would all love your definition. They would be allowed to tax pretty much everything (even more than now). Luckily common sense presides (for now anyway) and gifts aren’t taxed.

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39

Yeah, but is that the core reasoning for the existence of this system or not?

I would argue ‘no’.

The core reasoning for this system is that - for example, many more obviously - 2 people which know each other want to play together in general. So when they are both online they do. But when one is offline the other might drop a item valuable for them and hence give it to them after.

That the other stuff exists is obvious, sure.
But we gotta start somewhere to at least begin a reasonable design. Then handling the exceptions.

The issue with the gifting system is that it already fails at the baseline.

Edit:
Also… gifts are taxed by the way in many many countries :stuck_out_tongue:

40

Why do we need a “design” at all? Why not just require x hours of active play with someone for them to be friends and from that point on you simply give each other whatever you want to your heart’s desire?
That’s the whole point of playing with friends and I’m kinda baffled as to why you’d ever want to restrict that past the initial trial period to prove you’re actually friends and not simply trying to RMT.

Only if they pass a certain value.
If I buy a car I get taxed during that trade. If I then gift it to you, you also get taxed because of the high value involved (mostly implemented as a way to fight tax evasion in the first place).

If I buy a DVD I get taxed during that trade. When I gift it to someone no tax is applied (although, according to you, it should be, since birthday gifts are just delayed trades).

41

No its not mike said it not intended this way. Which hes said a few times on stream. The intentions of it are for u to help out friends while actually playing together.

3ven patch notes state resonance is ment for players that frequently play together.

Its not ment for players to have a list of friends to just gift things too. If thats what one wants to do. Theres trading for that. Gifting isnt intended to be for this.

42

I think that’s a net negative for LE, though.

I’ve often pulled friends into PoE seasons back when I was still playing it heavily. And I pulled them in despite them being reluctant because I said “I’ll give you some decent gear and a couple exalted (back before the change to divines) to get you started”.
But in LE I’d have to say “Hey, I’ve got a really nice legendary Aaron’s will you can have, but only if we get lucky and drop the currency that will actually let me give it to you, otherwise you’ll have to hope it drops for you” and they would likely not play simply due to that limitation.

Being able to bling out a friend’s character isn’t a bad thing. Being able to give handouts to friends isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it often makes friends want to play together.

I understand placing limitations to prevent RMT. I don’t understand placing limitations to prevent friends having fun.

43

Because that is what EHG wants to avoid seemingly so you can’t potentially ‘sit out’ that timeframe - I know… nonsensical if we say 10+ hours for example, absolutely on your side there - and then potentially RMT this way.

Which yes, is beyond dumb to think… but that seems to be EHG’s thought process.

So I can only work together with up to 3 people but never more?
What if my group of friends includes a total of 5? 8? And we’re all playing together?

What if I do play a serious amount together with a friend, basically every second I’m online and the timelines overlap? But from 6 hours daily gaming only 1 hour overlaps simply because of different schedules?
After a month of playing together this way, daily (hence 30 hours total) you hence still can’t trust into it being a actual connection and not just a RMT BS excuse then?

I mean… we gotta stay reasonable at least in some way. The system clearly isn’t and it’s extremely limiting in the wrong ways.

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44

This is exactly what the devs have said they do not want. They dont want u building a circle of friends just to gift stuff to. Hence the whole point of the resonance.

I a big fan of grouping up cuz u want to and thats it. Iv said it befor there should be zero insentive to group up other than u want to. But why would u even need to group up if u can just gift stuff willy-nilly just cuz they are on ur friends list. It defeats the intentions behind gthe gifting system.

They want u playing together thats the intire intention behind the limited gifting outside of being in a party.

Its ment to encourage u to be playing with ur friends. Not just playing with them to unlock the ability to gift willy-nilly like this.

Iv pointed this out. Which is part of the issue here. Some are trying to use the gifting system in away its not intended for.

Resonance drops based on some arent dropping enough. Mainly obsidian.

Dont go assuming iv got rose tinted glasses on when it comes to the issue being brought up here. I know exactly what it is.

Just cuz i play in a party alot with my wife doesnt mean neither of us have never gifted items that needed a an obsidian/golden. Again i use these alot. Just cuz we play together all the time doesnt mean we are always in the same zone

Iv countered the issues being brought up several times with the whole intended purpose of the gifting system.

Edit the core issue here is the drop rates of resonance. Not how the system is set up. Reading on discord ask the dev channel. Drops is brought up alot.

Mike said this about it.

Resonances are a safety net and we have probably been too conservative with the drop rate. It takes quite a while.

45

I know this is what they said. I’m disagreeing with them. I see no benefit to this system.

If I already have a character that is farming 500c+, I will almost certainly already have a bunch of leveling gear.
This means that if I invite a friend to play with me, I immediately have a much higher power level on my alt. And there is no way I can raise my friend’s power level to match.

So I either nerf myself by not using my stash items or craft sparingly to try and maintain some balance between the characters, or my friend will just watch me steamroll content without doing anything and leave bored.
Neither option feels good.

What this system does is discourage bringing friends to play the game unless you know they will be playing very often to catch up to your power level.

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46

Just because the devs say something doesn’t mean it’s either good or bad. It just ‘is’. Has no meaning for game design of what the devs say, only how the argument the value of the existence and how it upholds against scrutiny.

Because the Obsidian ones are nonsensical, they limit exalted exchange and legendary exchange… nobody cares about legendary exchange anyway, but people do about exalted.

The issue is that the Golden one is for uniques… which are at end-game vastly more powerful then exalteds… so senseless in design by now.

The system worked in 1.0 when there was no Aberroth and no Uberroth existing, and even then fringe-cases like red ring posed an issue with it already, which was voiced out… and ignored entirely.

No. You missed the point :slight_smile:
Don’t tell other people what they talk about if you don’t get the point.

It is exactly how the system is set up and nothing else. The drop-rate is not the issue here.
That’s pure BS.

And yes, drops are brought up a lot, obviously… as always.
Still not the issue anyway.

The follow-up issue is that the disparity between character power and the gifting power need to be accordingly handled.

The system is to avoid RMT, that was the initial argument.
Does it do that? Yes it does.
Is it too rigid and vastly more lenient setups would do the job as well? Absolutely!

So that’s why people ask for it to be more lenient.

But even if we don’t talk about any of that at all… …it’s still hot garbage.
The RNG aspect of it is a bad design for a system which should be precise.
The bad design for access related to which resonances are used at which time are badly made.

Those 2 points need to be addressed, and you said nothing about those exact points yet. You said a lot about things which have no meaning for that specific aspect of design… which nobody which understands the core issues cares about since that’s a pure balance issue with a numbers game that’s fixed in 5 minutes tops when the system is properly in place.
Move number up/down until sweetspot reached. Simple as that.

First you gotta have a properly functioning system though.

Also that.
It’s one of the most group-unfriendly systems in the gaming environment existing currently.

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47

So you mean there is no RMT in LE? Wait, but I thought… I thought… this was the reason the Marked crashed on every new cycle release… oh well.

By the way, do people really care about RMT? Or rather, is it really harmful to any given game always?
Idk… something doesn’t add up…
See, there was no time when there was not RMT in PoE, yet, the game only seem to grow…
Does it mean PoE would be even bigger if there was no RMT possibilities there, or would the game be way smaller by now?
We’ll never know.

While in LE, seems like every action they take to prevent RMT is hurting legitimate players a lot more than RMT’s.

48

So your point seams to be " don’t worry about the white collar criminals that open trade draws, if new player that see you can just go buy gold and items for irl$$$ and they get their credit card scammed, then they only have themselves to blame" . Yeah, I think the game does not have as many active players because it still lacks content to keep people playing past a few weeks into a season. If games with itemization that have a participatiin cost like a box price or pay for convenience like stash tabs, and a very good share of the numbers they have is because of rmt amd all that it entails? Then I think that is a very strong case to have various goverment bodies around the world investigate the industry.

49

I didn’t imply that three items was all I was able to achieve. I was giving you feedback because you seem certain that my frustration with the system comes from some malevolent place.

As for you being fine with the way it is, and having used many more times, I personally don’t care. My suggestion is perfectly reasonable. As I’ve said in other replies, if the developers run across this post and take implement any changes to modify gifting, fantastic. If they don’t, I will continue to play Last Epoch and love it.

I will never understand why people insist on turning suggestion posts into arguments or taking positions of moral superiority. You were so quick to conclude my intentions and motivations without asking any questions or giving suggestions to enlighten me to possible solutions. TL:DR You aren’t here to help, just to be right.

How are people who play Circle of Fortune going to trade? I play Legacy exclusively , you have a fix for the trade economy there? Wait, are you about to type out a response saying I should only play MG if I want to exchange items with my friends? Oh, and let me guess, I need to play cycle because that’s the only right way to play the game too? You just keep accusing people with all the confidence in the world. You literally have no insight whatsoever into how myself and the two other people play.

You’re wrong. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

My suggestion is literally to address this! Like what have you been on about this whole time?

You just wanted to posture, for literally no reason. You get it and you went as far as to accuse me of trying to use the system outside of it’s intended purpose. You could have led with this quote instead of trying “counter” the post and it would have been of great benefit.

Removing golden resonance just makes sense. You can gift just about anything you want to that drops while you’re in the same zone, and what you can’t, obsidian covers. It’s like you didn’t read what I said and formulated a counter against it. Then you went on to address it in a response to someone else and act like it was your own idea. “Edit”, what?

I think all things of value have been said. The discussions have been great dives into the nature of trading, RMT, and communication. I’m fortunate to have had such great minds participating. Good luck with everything you do. I’m going to go back to playing LE and wait to see what happens in the near future.

50

No, I’m saying there is no RMT happening - or at least so little it does absolutely have no effect - through the gifting mechanic.

So it does what it is supposed to do.

You cannot combine ‘this system’ and ‘this game’ for showcasing outcomes. The game is not only a single system, it’s a combination of hundreds of systems interacting with each other.

This one system here does the task. The issue is it does it a bit… ‘too well’.

Why?
Because there is a more important task underneath it after all, and that is to ensure the enjoyment derived from group-play which is derived from basic functionality seen as the norm nowadays. And there it fails… since the limitations can’t uphold this functionality.

In order:
People don’t care about RMT personally, outside of perception when others brag about progress they haven’t personally earned. De-values personal achievements as those often derive a large portion of their value in comparison to others. Which is normal.
Is it harmful? Yes, in the vast majority of situations it is.
Miniscule amounts don’t cause problems, but if RMT actually is profitable and hence large-scale networks doing that catch wind of it being profitable (which they test at all large-scale games) then that is a direct increase in bots. A increase in bots means a reduction of value from effort comparable for normal players in a market situation, a direct impact to MG hence.
Second-hand it’s a massive increase in costs for servers since those instances the bots take up need to be open after all. Also it is a massive increase in costs related to hampering the number of bots so they don’t flood the game.

Many games before in the history of live-service games have fallen victim to rampant RMT and hence either were at the risk of shutting down or actually shut down.
A prime example is ‘SilkRoad Online’ which didn’t do anything against RMT until botting was so prevalent it was hard to find actual players. This caused costs to rise substantially and too much effort to be put into solely handling the cases… which hampered the development substantially and led to the downfall of the game. Bad management in botting.
WoW struggled a while with rampant botting.
OSRS still does and nearly shut down more then once as it got out of hand so severely that there were times new players couldn’t even find a single copper ore rock which wasn’t botted to hell in over 400 servers back then.

And many… many more games.

Agreed! 100%!
EHG is utterly horrible in terms of their botting/RMT management. They are inept beyond end.

But to be fair… their overzealous mechanics do cause such a strong reduction in RMT comparatively that otherwise - with their sheer ineptitude in that area, spoken plain and clear - it would likely have caused a shut-down of the game instead of a sale even with how awful the state of it would’ve been.

It’s still all the fault of EHG for bad designs and bad quality control to ensure solid systems… but it actually does what it is supposed to do.
It’s just not done in a great way :stuck_out_tongue:

Which is also not the right evalutation of @F0lk 's post.
It had the question of ‘how severe is the actual impact of RMT on a game?’ which nobody can fault someone not going in-depth with it through the history of gaming and the downfall of several games at the hand of bot-networks which were directly set up because of RMT.

Yes, absolutely.
I would also argue that RMT should lead to a law-claim for ‘business sabotage’ (through usage of bots and hence directly damaging the product through inflated costs without return) and ‘theft’ (for demanding payment for something done inside the game, which is only at the power of the company and hence withholds potential influx of money) with actual jail-time.
Because let’s be absolutely clear here… that’s what it is.

But hear the outcry of people stating ‘but haven’t you ever done something like that when you were younger?’… no, I never did, but even if… at that age it’s a perfect learning situation to be barred forever from your favorite game because you screwed up and not being at age to be held accountable yet which stops it from happening later in life when it actually starts to matter.
And if you’re at age then you should know better then to try to cheat any system where other people also have a part in it. It always comes at the cost of other people and hence has to be respectively treated.

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51

Off topic, but I played this game when I was a teenager and loved it. I wondered why it died, so unfortunate.

52

This is equivalent to asking “Is money laundering really harmful to the economy?”. And the answer to both is yes, if allowed to go unchecked.

If there was no RMT in PoE it probably wouldn’t grow much bigger than it is now. But if there were no RMT measures in place and RMT was rampant, then PoE would certainly be a lot smaller (or even dead) than it is now.
If a game has rampant RMT without measures to prevent it, then it becomes effectively a P2W game, except you give money to RMTers instead of the company.

At the very least, the chat spam is impactful enough to make people interact with the game less.

So there are 2 problems in regards to how a game approaches RMT:
1- The game doesn’t care about RMT at all and lets it run rampant. Bots become the majority, every channel is flooded with spam and it’s effectively P2W. Most players dislike this and leave.
2- The game cares too much about RMT and takes measures to prevent it that inconvenience players too much. You still have some RMT (it’s impossible to get rid of) and players are annoyed by the limitations imposed on them and leave.

Players will suffer through some limitations to avoid RMT. But they won’t when those limitations get in the way of their having fun too much.

So if I said to a friend that we needed to play together for 8h or so and after that we could gift freely, that’s acceptable. Saying that we need to play together and that we can only trade 1-2 items every few hours (if we’re lucky) isn’t.

The current system (minus the resonances) is basically what D3 had. But in D3 getting gear was so piss easy that it made no difference. I could get a friend to come over, carry him to level 70 in an hour, run a few T16 bounties and a few GR120s and he’d have all the gear he needed in a couple of hours.

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53

I do knkw what im talking about. This isnt the only form where this topic has been talked about.

Reddit as well.

Its all over the place people talking about the drol rates. Majority of people arent talking about how th3 system is set up.

Its not ment to be for trading hence why its setup the way it is. As well as RMT.

Cof is also the. Non trade faction. Why should players get the buffs of it and get to trade on top of it?

Yes u in fact are trying to use gifting for what its not intended for. U said it right here.

Could the system be improved absolutely. With keeping the goal of it still the same. It shouldnt turn into a gifting list. Where like DJSamhein said. U play say 12 hrs with that person then after u can freely gift items willy-nilly.

What i think should be done is what Kulze was saying remove the RNG of resonance. But instead of the system they talk about. Making it so say golden drop oh 1 for all party members per hr. Obsidian maybe every 2. This way it doesnt end up with one person get 4 Obsidian in a session and the other 0.

It should still insensitive playing with the people in our friends list and not become a glorified gifting list of people.

The question is how can this be improved and still meat the RMT goal and the playing together goal.

Anither idea would be allow for resonance at a reduced drop rate to drop for friends even when not in a party with them. But in a party u have buffed drop rates. Now that i think about it this one might not be that good

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