I agree having both would be an ideal situation if Trade can be implemented in a good way, I just disagree Trade is required for LE to be sustainable or successful (regular content updates would already put it well ahead of other smaller ARPGs with box prices), or generally a baseline requirement for the long term health of any ARPG.
I simply feel the content pipeline is the far more important aspect here.
More important? Absolutely. To the exclusion of the other? No.
See, the same way you could argue we haven’t seen a compromise solution between the extremes of Trade applied yet, I think you can similarly argue we haven’t seen a well-designed SSF game attempt a content pipeline in this way yet either. My money is on that constant flow of content being the key to growth.
I just don’t believe it’s sustainable. The logic doesn’t check out.
SSF is a niche market. It’s why games like Torchlight, Grim Dawn, and Sacred–despite being good games–were never massively (commercially) successful. If you’re going to have a “games as a service” model, which this is–make no mistake–you need to appeal to a broader market. Even with MP, it still faces the problems I just described in my last few posts on the topic. Further, for this “games as a service” model to work, you need a way to monetize it, which means you need a very large player base because, statistically, only a tiny minority of them pay enough to keep the lights on–Pareto Principle in MTX is quite widely documented and understood. Box copies alone won’t cut it. I see this “SSF” model having lots of hype on release and rapidly losing its player retention. Each cycle will recover some of that temporarily, but will ultimately still lose more than it gains back.
That’s my intuition on it anyway. I agree it hasn’t been tried, but it’s not the kind of thing I would invest into as a model either–regardless if it’s from the perspective of a financial investor, a developer, or even a player.
Basically, without trade, it ends up being just like D3. It will try to provide content updates regularly, but will eventually be financially forced into a position where that is no longer viable.
Some key differences you’re neglecting here: those smaller games monetize exclusively with box price, and do not churn out regular content. The service-based monetization is part of PoE precisely because it’s an F2P model, LE is not going down this road.
LE is in a unique spot in more ways than one. It’s going for box price and monetization with cyclical content, which imo is the smart move because as you correctly state, pure service-based monetization wouldn’t work without faster content turnover rates than have been proposed.
I think the 5-6 month Cycle schedule with a box price could actually work pretty well to service a new approach to the genre in the long run, especially if monetization is purely cosmetic.
I will repeat that we simply disagree on D3 being comparable here, they just do not provide the content required to draw or retain or even grow an audience, and haven’t for a very long time.
A friendly reminder to everyone to please stay on topic. This is a great discussion, let’s keep it that way.
Thanks.
The D3 comparison is that LE would end up in the same position eventually because the player retention would decline below financially sustainable levels, so the content cycle would close. While I think it’s better for the devs to have a longer content cycle–have even suggested on many occasions that PoE should move to 4 months–that comes with the drawback that player retention could dip even deeper. 5-6 months is just not realistic, imo.
Just try to imagine that. You’re 3 months into a cycle, and basically done with all the characters you were interested in, or maybe just burnt out. You have to wait another 3 months for the next cycle? Then that one introduces some really unpopular/disliked mechanics or content, so you just aren’t inclined to play. You now wait almost 6 months for the next. What if this one is also not great? You’re up to/over a year between content updates that you actually want to see.
This is why trade is such an important counter-balance. Even if you don’t like the current cycle’s content much, it might still be fun to play on the trade side of things. You at least have reason to farm out and sell items for the current meta builds. The economy can be its own means and ends to enjoyment of the game when the content falters. This has happened for many players several times in PoE’s life. It’s also happened to players in Warframe. Trade keeps the game alive–at least on life support–until the necessary changes can be made to truly revitalize it.
Trying to without trade is just a slow form of suicide (for a “games as a service” model).
I do agree that Trade can play an important role here, but at the same time you have to consider that the models you’re comparing are not quite the same. D3’s content pipeline dried up because they went into maintenance mode pretty soon after 2.0.
As for the league/cycle schedule, I would agree that an economy would be essential to maintain retention for longer spans - if the game were relying on ingame monetization, and not coming with a box price. With a box price, you’re in a very different situation imo and can afford to not have to fish for constant new spikes - quite to the contrary, with regular content releases that aren’t break-neck pace you can reliably generate new waves of box price sales, which significantly reduces the pressure on the content itself, imo.
I’m aware we’re drifting here a little in the topic btw, but I do agree that you cannot really discuss the ramifications and implementation of trade without considering what it’s connected to, and its intent in the game design.
To go back to your point about PoE, I think you’re mistaken that Trade is the main thing keeping it alive, it’s the resets along with new content that generates the spikes imo.
Well I agree, but LE is precisely not doing that model.
Edit: I’m aware i may sound a little contradictory here, on the one hand I claim Trade isn’t that important for retention, on the other I state it can be relevant. I’ll just restate that while it can certainly play a factor, I think it is just vastly diminished in importance to ongoing content delivery.
Well no, a box price by definition already takes a huge chunk of the load off of the live service model not being the main source of revenue generation, which is what i said earlier.
In other words, PoE or any game going F2P with full live service revenue needs to throw everything including the kitchen sink at the customer to ensure sustainability (or even growth), a box price game does not and can afford to be less aggressive and pick and choose its targets.
It is. I’m not sure how else you can describe a content cycle + cosmetic MTX system, regardless if f2p or b2p (because box sales eventually reach a saturation point). That content cycle requires income to pay the devs, which is what the MTX is for, but that requires a large player base over time. There really isn’t a logical counter argument.
This is incorrect. You can’t view box price income as sustained income. It’s more like a temporary buffer. Whatever the game’s average sustained player base ends up being, only a tiny, tiny fraction of that will provide new box sales (the fraction of players who didn’t return but were replaced with new players).
MTX is the lion’s share of the sustained income in this model.
In either case, both ends of this grow more as (as a ratio) as the total player base expands, so they actually do need to make every reasonable attempt to push that growth. They don’t have the luxury to be choosey like you suggest.
I have yet to see any evidence that the # of players who will only play an ARPG if it has trade is greater than the # of players who will not play an APRG if trading is required for gear.
In my experience, the latter is a larger group than the former.
It seems your entire discussion as devolved into “How does LE generate ongoing revenue and/or player retention” rather than “Trading should be possible, but not an economy” which was the thread title.
I agree we’ve started to drift a little too much, we should bring it back on topic.
While this is all relatively connected to the topic, the start of the thread was more focused.
I concur with your experience, in my estimation trade is always relatively popular, but it is never the deciding factor for the majority, the core gameplay loop and ongoing content is imo.
No game “requires” trading for gear in this genre, for one. Two, you have seen that evidence. You just may not recognize or admit it as such, but basically everyone here is familiar with PoE. It has the largest player base, for the longest time, and has seen the most commercial success of any game in the genre.
This relates to the topic because the question essentially comes down to whether the game needs trade or not. It absolutely does.
I’ll briefly reply to this one, but then I suggest we leave the revenue question for another thread.
Basically, you need to calculate with fewer players being attracted (due to the box price hurdle), but them automatically spending an equivalent amount or more to the majority of F2P players. That model counts on a certain % of players converting into revenue, for most games it’s well below <50%. We don’t have to devolve into this here now, we can continue that particular topic in DMs or a different thread, if you want.
More players in PoE do not trade than do. PoE makes it that way with their ridiculous system.
As much as people say that each form of proposed trade may have certain drawbacks or issues associated with it, I’ve outlined a huge number of issues that go with not having it. The original argument was some form of, “Because trade inevitably carries very difficult problems, we might be better off without it.” My argument shows how there is no avoiding issues whether you include trade or not, but that the ones which involve trade still benefit the game in the long run more than the exclusion of trade.
I find that claim a bit suspect, but even if true, I still find their system to be a problem. However, the presence of trade still does far more good for the game than not having it would.
Trade was bad enough in PoE that people screamed for (and got) SSF mode.
I do agree with that other post in my thread about “As long as drops aren’t balanced around trade, then it won’t impact non-traders”.
The SSF thing is kind of meme, tbh. There was nothing stopping them from playing that way and they were always a vocal minority. They just wanted to have a tag to flex with. They got it because it was an easy way for GGG to satisfy them that cost them very little.
(On a more personal note, not sure why “I’m an anti-social no-life grinder” is a flex, but okay.)
Well yes, but you seem unwilling to acknowledge that PoE is also the only ARPG thusfar in history that has managed to deliver such a consistent and ongoing history of new content. That is in my opinion the single biggest difference to any ARPG that came before and, so far, has come after.
Insisting that Trade is the key factor here seems to me to be willfully disregarding too much else - especially when you consider that retention plummets in the weeks and months after release. If the economy were indeed the key aspect keeping people interested, the vast majority wouldn’t be “done” with a League after experiencing most of it - or as much as their interest and/or schedule allows them to.
I feel like you’re generally focusing too much on the more dedicated, 20-30+ hr per week player.
It does? I’ve not been convinced thusfar. You mostly sidetrack into insisting that Trade is the make-or-break aspect for the longevity of an ARPG (which I disagreed with), and that LE’s loot needs to drastically improve and diversify to accommodate an economy existing (which I also disagree with somewhat).
Here’s the problem: unless you’re doing a full-blown barter system (without a currency medium), this is a virtual impossibility. You cannot “just allow Trade” without endangering the core gameplay loop of “i enjoy killing monsters, i want to find loot, so i kill more monsters to find more loot”.
LOL sure. I’m sure SSF is more populated than League SC.