Items are available in a “List” and players can get those items because they are in that list and easy to search (a little tricky to actually do, thanks to GGG…)
That list of items does not need to be Trade for Profit, as I clearly demonstrated already.
It is charting above Warframe, PoE and pretty much all other PvE focused games other than GTA in Steam at the moment, so I’d say the player base is there, maybe not as big as initially expected.
It is the only ARPG of its nature to pull this off, Warframe appeals to a certainly in part overlapping demo, but also a very different subset of players due to it quite simply being a different genre, namely FPS, even if the game does revolve around loot-grinding.
I’ve played it in the past as well, i’ll bet you good money that the vast majority does not engage much with Trade there either, and the game lives off very active whales on top of a very high turnover rate in a f2p environment - again, not comparable here.
Let’s try this again: LE has a box price. It is by definition not depending on a pure live service model. Furthermore, there are also plenty of examples of other games that run on live service models that do not have a trade economy (hello, billion $ genre MOBAs for example).
Because D2 had a fullblown barter system which necessitated a very cumbersome interactions and only few people interacted with it to a large degree. You should know this.
Let’s generally tone it down a bit here, I think we can all appreciate that we have different viewpoints, and everyone believes their own experience to be the most valid. There’s no need to start sniping at others over it.
Simple numbers would seem to prove that, with PoE league participation alone. Your argument was that trade keeps retention alive, the opposite is indicated by the high spikes on launch, and the rapid deterioration afterwards.
Look, I’m a pretty dedicated and “hardcore” ARPG player myself, at least I used to be (these days my schedule is a little more laid back). I would politely and respectfully submit that maybe the perception that Trade being such a big deal is quite hyperfocused on the more dedicated, small core of the playerbase, and not how the majority plays.
Because just based on my experience with countless other players and friends over the decades, and trying to look outside of my own bubble, that seems to be the case. Like I said earlier, a majority definitely wants that added excitement of “value” in an ARPG when a piece of loot drops, but the majority also doesn’t want to bother with market awareness, cumbersome trade mechanics or wasting time searching for buyers and items on the market.
This shit again? You didn’t demonstrate anything other than a failure to understand basic economics. Your system doesn’t let people find what they want–only look for something within what’s available. It’s a terrible idea and continuing down this line of argument will inevitably veer wildly off-topic.
Come up with a proper argument, not a failed concept. Getting tired of arguing about this nonsense with you and will likely block you if you continue with it.
I think it’s time for a little time-out on this discussion for now, there’s no need for hostility, whether or not somebody is perceived to misunderstand something.
I’m going to take a little break myself, might pick this up again tm.
I want to add that i thoroughly enjoyed the discussion up to this point, and I think it was quite insightful and rich. So cheers for that.
Destiny is actually a pretty good example of a game that does revolve around loot, has a box price (or used to have one), and does not have an economy and does very well indeed.
This is multiple levels of false and bad assumptions.
The box price is irrelevant. As for MOBAs, they are dying out and they produce new content constantly. They would not survive on a “once every 6 months” schedule. You also have an overly narrow definition of content when it comes to D3, but want to use MOBAs as an example? Also, “MOBAs aren’t ARPGs. You can’t compare them!”
Not very consistent there. You can’t have it both ways.
It was only acceptable because of tech/design limitations at the time, but people evolved it to D2jsp, which removed the pure barter aspect of it. Barter systems inevitably go this route too, because players prefer active economies–D2, PoE, Warframe, etc. They all tried to be barter at first, but the player develop resources to correct it, and the games saw huge explosions in popularity once that happened, even if they were already great games.
I already explained that one. Also, he was talking about something completely different from what you are. His is utter nonsense.
I don’t think it’s just dedicated players at all. Lots of casual people engage with trade too. They just aren’t active traders, per se. However, they get to enjoy the availability of gear and the ability to accumulate more wealth because of those game economies. In the same way that a minority of whales pay for the majority of f2p players, it’s the minority of these dedicated traders which enable the casuals to have so much available on trade for their builds. The difference here is the the traders are less of a minority than the whales.
This is why I continually say that those cumbersome elements are unnecessary. Having a proper in-game trading system is preferable. ESO uses a multi-vendor AH-style system to mitigate the ability for people to manipulate the market and many players are satisfied with it. Items are still available, but comes with some inconvenience of finding traders with the item you want, or possibly several to do price comparisons. I personally would prefer less diffusion in the collective AH, but I think it is another approach that more or less “works.”
Its MTX system is egregious, though. From what I have seen of it, the loot wasn’t very involved or interesting either. It’s why I never bothered to get into it. I watched it until launch, hoping it would be good, but it ended up having a ton of issues, so I never picked it up.
Just wanted to say i’ve seen your reply and will respond at a later time.
However you have to agree that it is an example of loot based PvE ARPG without trade that is doing very well.
I don’t know how well it’s doing, so at most I can take your word for it with an asterisk.
Assuming it’s true, does that mean we should expect LE to have such egregious MTX too? Or is it not easier to just include trade–like they said in their kickstarter?
Edit:
From reading around a bit, it seems to have a somewhat okay player base, but not a super excited one. Some of the changes they made (especially “Sunsetting”) also make the game an auto-nope from me, as if lack of trade wasn’t bad enough (though isn’t usually a deal-breaker for me, but depends on game).
From what I can gather, Bungie has their hands full, basically holding on by their nails. If they don’t come out with some big wins this year, I would expect it to lose at least half of their players in the following year, and half again in the next (as this is often the trend with such games).
I’m not quite sure about MTX part, but is it that much different to Warframe? Seems to be pretty similar with a mix of cosmetics + premium items?
Edit: regarding player base, it might not be huge, but above other ARPGs, as for retaining it, I would not speculate on that.
Warframe has a lot of things you might want to use platinum (premium currency) on, and some of those could be seen as p2w in minor ways–most of these also have non-paid ways to get them, just not as many as you might want.
However, the way trade is set up, you can farm for stuff people want and sell it to them for platinum, so you can easily just f2p your way through the game and let the whales help pay for you.
If you couldn’t trade in this way, I don’t think the game could have survived on its current model.
It’s worth mention that people sometimes do just barter in Warframe. Of the games that tried to offer/encourage this system, it’s the only one I’ve played where people actually do–even if uncommonly.
I still don’t get why people are even talking about paid box, MTX store, etc. as that has nothing to do with “Can players trade loot with each other without there being an economy around it”, which is the title of this thread, and has been proven to be possible to do. The only argument against it is that people don’t like it. I mean, not really an argument, per se, but a perfectly valid opinion.
Your failure to comprehend the context of the discussion doesn’t make it invalid to the topic. Get with the program or keep your peace.
The truth is that the online ARPGs fanbase can be easily divided among two extremes(and the majority is probably somewhere in the middle):
1- The players who play for the journey. Usually they play semi-ssf and many play in hardcore. Each character has it’s own story and the fun is seeing how it gets to the destination.
2- The players who play for the destination. Usually they rely heavily on trading, play most of the time only meta builds. Their fun comes from completely min-maxing the stats of a character.
Right now LE is clearly appealing a lot more to the type 1 crowd. While PoE nowadays clearly appeals a lot more to the type 2 players(in the beggining PoE favored a lot more type 1 players , but it evolved completely towards the other side of the spectrum).
But in the end it’s up to the devs to decide which side they want to pick, or if they are going to try to aim at some place in the middle (which is insanely hard to do if they intend to release content in the same frequency as poe does).
My vote goes to balance LE like it was a roguelike(focus on the journey), since i got really disappointed with PoE being balanced like it is a mmo(focus on the destination).
3- The players who really could care less about the video game, and enjoy some sort of alternate reality where Trading is its own game (which they love and enjoy). They insist that all games should have some sort of economy-based trading system, because becoming super rich by trading is the game they are playing and enjoying, not the actual video game itself.
We need to forget about Type 3 players, there is no reason to cater to them whatsoever. They create conditions in the video game which require Devs to divert time and energy to dealing with their “mini-game” (aka Trading Economy) instead of developing new content and features for, you know, the ACTUAL video game.
Personally I’ve always enjoyed trading in RPG games. Loved it in D2.
Action house and multiplayer with dedicated servers are the reason I backed this game.
Just a shower thought - trading often feels like interacting with an NPC anyway. So galaxy_brain.jpg why not just massively buff the NPCs/drops in a separate “easy mode” for more casual/mainstream players? Basically the feeling of faster or more deterministic progression without the negative interaction (scams/BM). Then have a regular SSF for those who “play for the journey”. I’m sure this has its own cons but it seems too obvious a possibility to ignore.
Softcore SSF
The idea that you’re going to overgeneralize the player base into such narrow, one-dimensional categories is a non-starter, a bad premise.
Players are multi-dimensional and have various levels of various priorities. Think of it more like this diagram, but replacing the qualities here with things like:
https://i.imgur.com/hTt5oIJ.png
People will be all over the place, so trying to especially exclude a player whose priorities are different just because you don’t think that’s important would be terrible design. The best games try to push each of these elements as much as they reasonably can. Sometimes they fall short in a category or two, but no game is really perfect.
Even in PoE, where people often emphasize the importance of trade, it’s not actually required. A player who doesn’t want to engage with it doesn’t have to.