Player to Player Gifting

Feedback and Suggestions
21

Fair point and great advice, but I am not referencing just my own posts. More or less drawing attention to the vehement rejection associated specifically with the suggestion forums. People will often times partially read a post, generate a counter argument, and immediately set the tone as hostile.

As an example. Never was there an attempt to support RMT, and the post, regardless of using the word “trade” for gifting, specifically referenced the resonance system as the focal point.

I absolutely made the mistake in not anticipating the pedantry that would be used in formulating responses. Using the word trade to describe the action of exchanging items seemed logical to me at the time, still does, but given the Merchant’s Guild faction and the gifting system need to be distinguished for people who are only going to skim the content, in the future I will use this experience to not make that mistake with other material.

I didn’t. Never once did I refer to the current trade system as in the trade faction mechanic. Obviously I went over this above, but hopefully you can understand why I would say there are misunderstandings. What I said had to be read in it’s entirety to understand what it was about.

22

You have to be grouped to gift something to someone. Unless your friend needs idols or unique items without LP, you are definitely going to be locked in for 3 hours to get the obsidian resonance to make that exchange. It is awful. I’m sorry, but the whole point of this post is to remedy that.

I don’t know why you are standing on “anything in return”. The circle of friends using this to exchange items are doing so for items that take weeks to get. We stay in the party to ensure we can all benefit for the entire, inconsistent experience. It is very much a trade. Otherwise, it’s as if you’re suggesting that unless you play trade economy you shouldn’t be allowed to trade items with people you play with. It’s not like I could confidently even be in MG and sell an item to my friends for 1 gold, and expect the same, so what do we do? We use resonances, because that is what there is.

Obviously it can used to gift an item to someone, but how is that functionally going to happen? A new player, you group with them for three hours to give them what? Your friends, obviously if you play together everyday you can passively build resonances up but then what? That applies to what percentage of the playerbase exactly?

I just fail to see why you are trying to counter everything you just did. If you use the system regularly then I really don’t think you would confidently oppose changing it. Being comfortable with what you have and then opposing something being changed based on a hypothetical dilemma is a waste of everyone’s time. Unless you’re just playing devil’s advocate for effect? I am genuinely interested in your motivation.

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23

Damn i really can’t stress enough how hard this hits. It slaps, it slaps my face off.

24

Yes i have used the system. In fact i use it alot.

2.4k hrs? How is it u have only been able to gift 3 item in all that time. Iv got 1.1k hrs and have gifted way more than that. Even with using resonance. Something is not adding up.

The system imo is fine the way it is.

25

No they are not for trading. They are for gifting.

Trading and gifting are two different system in LE. Devs even said gifting is not tradting. Even said its called gifting because ur not trading.

Trading is when both parties get something in return.

Resonances are not used in MG aka trading

Its actually not. Very very few players are complaining about the system. If it was at all that awful. We would see alot more post a out it like this one. But we dont

That system is fine i use it alot.

The way gifting was before where u had to actually be in a party and the same zone when an item dropped. And that was it. Alot of players didnt like.

Hence why resonance became a thing. To allow (in a limited way) to gift items to friends when ur not partied up with them in the same zone. Or when parted up and not in the same zone.

Its also this way to prevent a small circle of friends type of trading to form. The intentions is to encourage u to play with them not form a trading friends group. Cuz if u want to trade go MG. This is the same thing the devs dont want to happe. With guilds were it becomes trading among guild members and not using MG

26

U would be wrong. Iv said many times in different threads how often i play in a party.

If its being used as intended. And. Not in away to have some sort of trading between ur friends list. Its fine.

Resonances were added to give some limited way u can help ur friends out when ur not partied up with them. Its also there to prevent a small circle of friends trading economy from forming. As well as encouraging friends to be actually playing together.

When gifting was first added there was no way to gift items outside of being in a party and in the same zone whe. It dropped. Alot of players didnt like that. So Resonances became a thing. Very rarely do we see people complaining about gifting now. Iv seen two people since they were added on this form do so.

27

Yeah & I can see that the rng nature of the resonance drops sucks but apart from that I think tour main difference to the devs is how much gifting you want to be able to do with your friends, which is fair enough.

Because that’s what trade is versus charity or giving someone a gift/present.

Then if that’s what you’re mainly using gifting to do then is the drop rate of the relevant resonance sufficient? Or do you need to play together for weeks to get them to drop?

That is generally the meaning of trade. It’s unfortunate that they had to remove the in-person trading as that would have made it trivial to do what you want. Unfortunately RMTers were using it so we (you) can’t have nice things.

I do do that a fair bit, but I also feel a strong urge to correct people when they’re wrong (like Kulze & his view of trade/gifting).

28

Imo the drope rate of it is fine.

If u play together constantly no doesnt take weeks to get obsidian resonance. At least in my experience. I cant say for others.

It may take weeks if one doesnt party up frequently.

29

Thats exactly what it should be. If ur not trading u shouldnt be able to just gift items freely. Thats what trade is for.

As for ur view on trading no gifting is not trading. Trading keans u get something back in return u dont get anything back in gifting

30

No, in general, no ‘for’ here applicable.

It’s just the setup of the system being garbage… not the limitation of it.

The one-sided movement of items rather then a exchange is absolutely fine… but to be completely clear… what exactly is the system supposed to do?

It's meant to not allow a free exchange but instead one based upon joined time and effort invested together.
Not more, not less.

Now my question:
Why is a time-based system without the RNG garbage included less valid?

Because all the current system does is screwing over people. One person might get 2 of the good resonances… the other none. The one having none might’ve the item the other wants though. That’s garbage, plain and simple.
Also the limitation of what those resonances include are utterly nonsensical.
Do you want to tell me that a Red Ring is less valuable then a 2 LP legendary ‘The Kestrel’? Because that’s how the resonances work.
Also why the heck is a exalted item with a T6 common affix as hard to gift as a legendary item?
And why is a unique boss-drop item of the rare variety easier to gift?

So the system is simply badly designed, it’s utterly and entirely nonsensical to argue against that aspect.

It is, it has no RNG and it is based on the relative power of the item - as I already urge for the MG system to be designed around - so it doesn’t create nonsensical situations.

So a 0 Gold listing without any return were hence gifted items.
Now they’re 2k listed items which hence are basically still gifts as 2k Gold is even for a beginner ‘free’.

Yeah, albeit I go a few steps further.

The implementation of the resonances themself makes absolutely no sense after all.
As mentioned above… why is a T6 common Affix exalted item with a garbage base harder to gift then a Red Ring, or the drop-table from Uberroth? Makes zero sense.

It is one of the worst group systems I’ve ever encountered in my whole gaming time… and that says a lot when you ask someone which has over 75k total hours invested into gaming, which is a gaming addict, which is a person dismantling systems in-depth as that’s my personal enjoyment.

The current system is simply hot garbage.
Piss poor.
Underperforming at the expectation of underperforming even.

‘Oh… I have a resonance by now… you have a resonance by now… you gimme that… I’ll give you this!’
Voila… trade.

We don’t need to mess around with terminology here, group-play with friends is also a give&take, hence a exchange quite often. Even if you solely play for fun together. It’s not one side solely giving to the other commonly, when playing together it’s a exchange. Hence you ‘trade items’.
Simple as that.

Very very few players are group players in this genre.
So… duh?

Circumstancial evidence is no evidence. It’s a baseline guideline at best and has to be cross-referenced with other experiences and then followed up by actual opbjective testing to see if it even upholds.

Duh?
You’re comparing garbage with other garbage.
No shit Sherlock! I mean… that’s kinda obvious :stuck_out_tongue:

How about ‘a good mechanic’ rather then a choice of sub-par ones?

Which would be bad for what exact reason?
That’s what group-play leads to… unless you got 2 people, which is then a simple back&forth.

Which actually is the same with resonances… just sub-par as an experience.
One guy might drop 3 items his friends need… but he only got 1 fitting resonance for 1 of em… the other 2 have fitting resonances to gift him stuff but have nothing.
That’s just a shit experience no matter how you twist and turn it.

Even exchange possibilities for same timeframe invested. And the respective exchange value needs to be higher according to play-time needed to acquire it.
Everything else just makes zero sense, never did, doesn’t do now and never will.

Yeah, tell that my friend which couldn’t gift me a single item I needed for 27 hours of play-time together as not a single of those resonances dropped. I had nothing fitting for him but 3 resonances in the same timeframe. The obsidian ones.

Wow… great experience.
Clearly works as intended!
If it’s intended then I question the mental capacity of the creator, it’s just a badly designed system.

Yeah, which is fair, the quantity of gifting being adjusted is a major aspect.

But for that we first need to create a baseline to allow low-value items to be exchanged easier then high-value items.
Which isn’t even remotely upheld in the current system.

Exact same issue as MG has with Favour by the way.

So you mean SSF simply then?

Because that’s what you’re asking for… why have a group if you can’t interact with the group? Makes very little sense commonly.

The big selling point of the game could be that it’s adjustable to the type of player.
Want a community-wide trading aspect? MG is for you! No need for gifting at all.
Want a group-based play only and no ability to exchange items outside of your group? CoF with gifting.
Want a SSF experience? No gifting… then group-play is nonsense by design anyway.

Never had the thing where you’re not a fan of the trading experience (market-based) but simply enjoy your time with a small group of friends?
That’s what the gifting mechanic is primarily to be used for actually. Because that’s the core part which the majority of people will go with.

Why does gifting from groups especially in MG make no sense: Because group-play is causing a increase in rewards since the person with the highest corruption level pulls along the others, which commonly play with synergizing builds. Be it buffing ones or those removing DPS from members through for example minion walling. So you already get rewards that you then can use in trade. You don’t need the gifting per-se, it’s a inherent upside in-built.

It only is important for CoF because of the high variance in loot drops. ‘Oh, I dropped a off-class item which is actually for your class, and it’s decent! Here, take it!’ or ‘Oh, I found this great item 5 minutes after you left which is perfect for you!’

Hence why I'm saying that the current system is awful. It doesn't allow to be used based on how rare an item is to acquire or on the time spent together. It's based on a arbitrary nonsensical 2-step system that's faulty beyond end while also putting the time-aspect into RNG. A double shit-whammy.

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31

I have no clue what you just said but resonances suck and should 100% be changed how they drop and/or how they work.

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32

Its not. Especially if that exalted item drops while in the same zone with the person u intended to gift it too

33

Do you actually have a clue how the system works then?

Golden resonance allows you to exchange rare and unique items.
Obsidian resonance allows you to exchange exalted and legendary items.

That’s it.

So gifting a Uberroth unique to a friend is easy as can be… but giving them a T6 exalted with a trash-tier Affix on a trash-tier base is magnitudes harder.

That argument you made alone does showcase your lack of understanding for the issues on this topic entirely.

Your comment is factually wrong since exalted and legendary items are at the same level for the resonances.

Here you go for the in-game guide’s explanation:
https://www.lastepochtools.com/guide/section/resonance

Golden Resonances are the more common of the two. They allow you to gift any normal, magic, rare, set, or unique item.

Obsidian Resonance are much rarer, and allow you to gift exalted and Legendary items.

Edit:

Since I didn’t mention it…

Playing together in the same zone does not cause the gifting mechanic to come into effect at all.
Hence nonsensical to argue that it’s easier to provide someone with it when that has no relevance for the system at all.

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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.

1 Like
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).