Please no AH or bazzar. Instanced party trading is okay

Feedback and Suggestions
1

From what I have read so far, the developers have not made a decision on how trading will work in multiplayer. We might still have time to convince them that an AH or marketplace is bad and they should not put it in the game. This is what I found so far from the developers in the Q&A:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Will players be able to link Items in chat?
    Yes.
  4. 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.
  5. How will loot drops work in a party?
    Loot drops will be instanced, meaning that only you will see the items that are dropped for you. You will not see or be able to interact with other player’s loot. Loot will drop at the same rate and rarity that it does when not in a party.
  6. Can party members see the loot that drops for all other party members?
    No, we don’t want to clutter the player’s screen or the ground with items they cannot pickup. Items can be linked in chat to share your findings with your party though.

These are my opinions on each of these responses above:

  1. Please do not allow people to trade items with other players other than the current party they are in and only for stuff that drops with that current party in that instance. Do not create an auction house or a bazaar or anything that allows you make the game into an economy simulator/trading simulator. My reasoning for this is that you will have to balance drops around it otherwise every item will be too easy to get. I want to find items myself. I do not want to trade 50 items to earn enough currency to buy the 1 item I want. I want to play the game, not the auction house or trade site. You do a great job with the current game the way it is. I do not want this to change because of multiplayer.

  2. I like what you did with this. This is fine.

  3. Fine.

  4. Please do not nerf drops to accommodate multiplayer. Too many ARPGS make this mistake imo. This forces people to trade and play economy simulator. I just want to play the game and get items, not try to figure out how much each item I find is worth so I can sell it on the AH for max profits to save up to buy an item I want.

  5. Perfect.

  6. This is fine also. An argument could be made that seeing all the loot from your whole party will allow party members to ask you to pick it up for them. This is kind of allowing party play to be better than single player because you will be getting 4 or 5 times the loot to choose from. I think just keep it to where you can only see your loot like you said.

Anyways, if you guys agree please respond to let the developer know so they do not make the same mistakes as other arpgs. If you disagree I am open for discussion.

5 Likes
2

So, while I think EHG has proven multiple times already over the last couple of years, that they very much respond to feedback not only through communication, but also to actual actions.

There were so many things, that were purely implemented based on community feedback, I don’t even know where to start.

One of the statements in your premise however is something that I don’t like.

While the community obviously is a big part of an evolving game, LE is still in EA/Beta stage and I really think we should not try to discuss “what if” scenarios too much, when we literally have no clue what the devs intend of doing.

Let the devs do their work and see what they come up with. And when they are ready to share more details, that is the time to really give concrete feedback about it.

At the end of the day, a video game is the vision of a team of devs that want to create something bigger and we as a community do not see the whole picture.

We don’t know so many things that very likely intertwine with endgame modes, item acquisition etc.

One thing however, I really hope they offer multipel options:

This is something I already requested back when the FAQ released.

I really hope that non-instanced loot will be an option.
If you play coop with friends, non-instanced loot gives a much greater sense of “group accomplishment”. Especially for game modes, where you have big loot explosions at the end and then all members can see what loot the party has earned and you can coomunicate with each other and everybody collects the pieces they want.

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3

Well, we know that the Bazaar was removed from the forecast in the January 2022 Dev Update:

The dev’s also discussed trade, economy, currency for trade, etc in the interview they did with Zizaran, which you can watch below (I have it start at the trade question but there’s many other questions relating to trade later in the video that you can find timestamps for in the comments):

However, the short of it is that we’re still waiting on that dedicated post about trade before we actually know how it’ll work in Last Epoch.

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4

While I understand the general concern about turning the game into an “economy simulator”, I don’t think a blanket deconstruction of this is the answer. There are some people who play these type of games primarily for the economy aspects (I’m not one of them) so this would cut that style of gameplay off. If a player is totally against this, there’s nothing stopping them from playing an SSF style on their own. But why penalize others just because of one player’s personal preference?

As for myself personally, I love the idea of being able to freely trade with or give/receive items to/from my friends and guildmates. As long as there is a system in place for that, I’ll be happy. As much as people complain about PoE’s economy, at least they provide a nice Guild Stash option that makes it easy for players to drop things off for each other, which I really appreciate.

I don’t mind having some sort of larger AH or bazaar system in place that might allow me to obtain items that I would never be able to otherwise. I simply don’t play the number of hours others do, but it’s nice to have some sort of option to be able to try out a specific build that relies on certain unique items. Of course I’d prefer to get the drop myself, but as a semi-casual player I know there are certain things that will simply never be accessible.

5

BlockquoteWhile the community obviously is a big part of an evolving game, LE is still in EA/Beta stage and I really think we should not try to discuss “what if” scenarios too much, when we literally have no clue what the devs intend of doing. Let the devs do their work and see what they come up with. And when they are ready to share more details, that is the time to really give concrete feedback about it. > Blockquote

I would rather not wait until they spend months designing a system that I will not like and end up getting stuck with. I think giving our feedback before they make their decision on how they are going to deal with trade is the right approach. Ultimately it is their design and their game. They are going to have to make the decision they feel is best for the game. You can tell in the video clip that AndrewTilley posted that this is a big decision for them and they have been discussing it for a long time. I want to give them my feedback before they decide. If enough players agree maybe they will choose to finally make an arpg that doesn’t need an economy and the loot does not have to be balanced around trading.

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6

I would like to hopefully convince them not to do any kind of trading outside of your party while you are playing together. I know they haven’t decided yet as far as we know. That is my point. We need to voice our concerns now before they decide on something that we will not like. Well, at least I would not like :slight_smile: An AH or marketplace for me is just not something I want to deal with. I do not want to have to look up prices of items to figure out how much they sell for after every instance and list them on a trade site or bazaar. I do not want to have loot drop rates lowered to compensate for the ease of buying these items on a website or bazaar. Honestly I think it would be easier for the developers to not have to worry about bots and rmt and all the BS that goes along with trading.

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7

That is fair and kinda already what they did.

They released a vague plan of the bazaar which then generated tons of feedback and they pulled back.

But generally speaking I am not a big fan of having these super unspecific broad discussion about things we don’t know yet, because everybody wants something totally different.

And we need some cornerstones from the devs what they want or would like to have in their game.

Otherwise the discussions go in all directions and get super chaotic and overwhelming.

And while I totally see where you are coming from, one thing about the gaming industry as a whole, that I don’t like is: Many communities as a whole, think they know whats best for a game

And the sentiment:

Sounds like you want to gather up all the community and make decisions for this game.

While I am of the opinion, as stated above already, that we as players and the community often do not have the full picture or know what the best for a game.

8

Much like the other trade topic at the top of the board, instanced party trading is far too alienating to make sense. Not all of us care about partaking in mp, our ability to trade should not be predicated in partaking in a system we have no interest in.

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10

Exactly this. Why do I have to socialize just to trade an item? I feel like people are too scared of having an actual trading system in ARPGs nowadays. I mean this game is still in beta and even if a trading system like Bazaar or whatever they implement fails, they can reiterate over that since that’s not the final version of the trading system.

People don’t like PoE’s trading system because it is such a chore to do it. D3’s RMAH sucked hard too. I think we need something in between honestly.

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11

No. People don’t like it because then the drops have to be balanced around having trading. That means that loot drops get very much more rare and most players will just resort to buying all their gear and hope for lottery drops.

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12

Well I would like to think that developers always know what is best for their game. But sometimes they have tough decisions like this one. Blizzard couldn’t even get this right. I still don’t think any arpg I have played has gotten this right. POE has SSF but they balance drops around trade so while you are playing SSF you are not getting the loot you would be getting if the entire game was self found loot. I

Do you like the way the game currently is? I do. I enjoy just playing and crafting. I don’t want to play an economy or sell items to buy other items.

I don’t think they should nerf drops because of multiplayer and trading. You are kidding yourself if you think they can add an AH and not nerf drops. Please no trading.

2 Likes
13

Imagine PoE only having this sort of trade system, I would literally die if I had to group with a Necro sporting 20 minions and some guy playing VD with mtx. I get sloppy fps on my own, that would be enough for me not to play at all.

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14

To steal a blurb from another thread;

So where does trading fit in?

https://i.imgur.com/zmRMIIv.png

Basically this taken from:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uE6-vIi1rQ

Essentially the tldr; is you cant have a rich loot experience while also allowing wide accessible trade. This is a cursed problem. if you can trade for loot efficiently then drops dont matter, and if drops are varied and come in large quantities to keep a solo player engaged then the market quickly saturates and you dont have items worth anything so the market place fantasy breaks down.

My solution to this problem is to simply limit what can be traded. Allow a full trade experience, but only with very utilitarian or minor items.

The items you can trade are shards, rare items, keys and uniques without LP.

this option allows gearing to be fleshed out by trading, you can buy mats, decent mid ticket items like t20s and build enabling uniques/set items. But legendaries, exalted and other chase items are locked from the market to prevent the best course of action to getting an upgrade being “lets buy 50 1lp bleeding hearts and 50 exalted amulets with exalted DoT and 50 keys to run it”

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15

I am sort of “stuck” in this whole trading discussion…

From a 100% personal perspective, I do not want trading beyond sharing drops in a single multiplayer instance - e.g. you can share drops that you find (not brought into) in a multiplayer instance with whomever you are playing with at the time and started the instance with you… Once you leave everything is untradeable forever. That would be my ideal trading solution.

I would also be 100% against any real money transactions involved in trading. The downsides of this vastly outweigh any positives and imho would ruin LE.

Beyond this is where things get tricky…

I understand those people who do not have time to farm for choice drops and would rather trade… In this instance, so long as there is NO way for these characters to compete on ladders/in cycles etc where someone can just buy their way to a min/maxed gear build, then I have zero issues with trading for best items as it affects no-one but the player who purchased the gear and improves their enjoyment of the game in a 100% individual way.

I have zero issues with the game drops being balanced for a non-trading environment… If the market is saturated with items for trade, then who actually cares? People who want to play without trading have zero problem… People who want to trade can find anythig they want without issues… If you dont want to trade, dont,… If you dont want to farm, dont… The responsibility is moved from the game to the player on how they want to play… Personally I think the trade option would ruin the game and reduce its long term appeal, but if its the players choice then its their choice…

The only issue i have is in competitive play,… If people want to participate in competitive play and trade then there needs to be some way to differentiate this participation to ensure fairness… E.g. in sport - e.g. strongman contests, if there is an open category where people can take performance enhancing drugs etc… then thats fine and anything goes… but its an entirely separate category from natty atheletes competing against other natty athletes on a fair playing field.

To ensure that trading doesnt impact on things in a detrimental way for competitive play, I would say that in LE there could be different ladders that are controlled… If you want to compete in a multiplayer environment:

Open - trading allowed, shared stash
Closed - no trading, shared stash
Self Found - no trading, no shared stash

Etc…

EDIT: I would not want to be in the developers shoes wrt. makng a decision on what to do about trading… cause nothing they implement is going to be good enough for everyone…

16

The devs seem to want trading but do not want an ECONOMY

No, it does not work that way, that is impossible

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17

Honestly, I dont think the devs want trading… I think players are demanding it…

How would a very basic version of trading that allows sharing drops with other people in a multiplayer instance/map need an economy?

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18

In that instance the “economy” would be shrunk down to the size of the player group, since those are the only players you can trade with. If there was unrestricted trading (or even the bazaar as originally communicated), the “economy” would be the pool of players who choose to engage in trade (much larger than in the instance where you can only trade with the people in the party when the item dropped).

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Players do not want that though, they want to trade things they got outside of the instance

And if that happens then economy is the result

20

One way to open the door on trading a little bit, without kicking the door down completely, is to limit trade to a SLIGHTLY larger group of players.

An example I would use here is ESO’s Trade Guilds. They are limited in size and number of items that can be posted for sale…

This has two effects:

  1. It saves from the Guild AH being full of garbage to sift through,
  2. It limits availability to enlisted players only… I abhore this system in ESO, but COULD work well in an ARPG.

There is middle ground for LE somewhere, they just have to be smart about it.

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21

What do you mean by “enlisted” players? Players within the guild? If so, it would require a cap on the number of players in a guild.