This is your evaluation of it, not an objective one. I found lots of value in farming this way and many people benefitted from my efforts. Endgame isn’t the only thing that mattered until later expansions when they made a series of mistakes that ruined the game–hence why I quit when MoP released.
Since ideas were asked for, I’ll bump my earlier one. There is an ingrained assumption (not pointing to anyone specifically) that “good” loot isn’t viable without trade. Because that is the precedent set by other ARPGs like PoE or D3. The developers of earlier ARPGs created that precedent, and the developers of LE have the power now to try different things in beta.
The biggest draw I’ve seen for trading is that a larger proportion of loot feels valuable/exciting. But relevant base loot and better vendors could also achieve this effect - without the rude interactions, unwanted haggling, pricefixing, outright scams, and mathilification of real supply/real demand trading on a large scale. For example: you only drop or get offered loot for your build, you buy uniques from the vendor, etc. Call it “Softcore Mode” or whatever you like.
I have been a developer and now a manager of developers for over 32 years. I can tell you point blank that the vast majority of developers are average, a few are bad and get weeded out, and then there are the very rare ones who are super stars. You remember them throughout your career.
So, don’t think that every dev team is “smart” and can “figure out Trading”, and when they come up with the same solution, don’t say “Well, that must mean that’s the best way in the genre.” It is not.
What is trading? Lets make a crude list of things (attributes) of trading.
- I have a valuable (rare, unique, whatever) item I do not need or want, or that I’m willing to part with.
- I seek out a different valuable item that I do need, and will trade mine for it.
- Currency simplifies this process, as barter is harder (we discovered this in real life as humans.)
I can’t think of any other attribute of trading to list. Specifically, the following are NOT attributes of trading:
- ability to profit (in-game or out) from farming valuable items
- ability to trade without playing the game as well
- ability to manipulate the trades of others by cornering markets, price fixing, price gouging, or price manipulation through deceit.
- Devs of the game having to adjust rarity, drop rates, item stats, etc. as a result of trading
As long as the system EHG comes up with upholds the actual trading attributes of the 1st list while also ensuring to nullify every item on that 2nd list, then it will be good for the game.
So, lets look at systems and how they measure up.
PoE: fails this test, because of price manipulation, cornering, deceptive sales, level 1 ultra rich characters who don’t play and level up. I’ve seen each of those things first hand.
Any game with a buyout AH: a buyout AH is subject to the same failures as PoE (I won’t relist them.)
So, what else is there?
Forget the system for a minute. Lets go back to the 1st list. Are there other ways for me to give up a valuable item I posses (got by playing the game) in exchange for an item I want for my build (which someone else got playing the game) that has none of the attributes of the 2nd list?
This is where a Product Manager holds brainstorming sessions with their team and gets ideas. No idea is too crazy. Write a sentence or two on a sticky note. Stick them on the wall. Group similar ideas together (but volume doesn’t mean validity). Discuss pros/cons of each idea, systematically. Push hard on vulnerabilities. Take the top 1 or 2 ideas and flesh out some details.
You can do this yourself. I have. Many years ago. And since. Computers are great things, they can automate otherwise laborious tasks. I find, in my experience, that most game’s Trade system are too manual / too much work for the human. This is unnecessary.
The game designers know precisely how rare every item is, down to 10 decimal points. They rarely ever publish their rarity/drop tables. Those tables are also subject to “tweaks” as versions of the software progress. But rarity and “power” are actually different. That’s where the subjectivity of “player value” comes up. Uber builds get published, and then certain gear “becomes” more valuable. Then, patches come, builds get nerfed, new builds rise to replace them, and that old “valuable” gear is trash now.
But is it?
Ask yourself - does the player-assigned “value” on gear, based on a Meta, really affect the “price” of the gear? If you want to get that gear, does the decimal value in the drop table suddenly change? No. Its exactly as rare as it was before someone published their bad-ass build which everyone rushes to copy. The only time a piece of gear goes up or down in actual value is when the drop table chance changes. Why? Why doesn’t this follow real-life where supply and demand matter? Answer: because in the real world, EVERY resource is finite. This is simply NOT true in an online ARPG. I can farm a boss for its drop over, and over, and over, and over again, and it keeps dropping. So, 1 “Wings of Argentus” might be “Rare”, but given unlimited ability to farm for it, there will be plenty to go around for anyone who wants one over time.
But is that even true?
Players who own one will, inevitably, quit the game, and new players will join who don’t have one. If you map the rate of getting that armor and distributing it to players who want it, you’ll quickly discover that the armor comes into existence (by farming it) almost as fast as it goes out of existence (sits idle on a retired/unplayed character, person quits game, etc.)
So, did it actually matter that players (people) valued it “more” than its rarity at one point, and then at a later point, valued it “less” due to some Meta? No, that actually has no effect on the item itself.
End result: EHG could invent an Objective Value system. It can be completely invisible/hidden within the code. It could be based on actual loot table rarity, which could then adjust from patch to patch if they adjust rarity/drop rates. Players could post up items into the “Trade Bazaar” and be given partial value (50%, 75% whatever works) and then other players could buy it off the Bazaar (at 100% of its value - TA DA - gold sink.)
Can we exploit this? Lets see.
Cornering
- Can I buy every single Wings of Argentus which goes up and horde it? Yes, if I have unlimited character space, lots of stash space, pay money for multiple copies of LE.
- OK. Can I profit from that? Hmm, I paid 100% price when I took em, but I can only put them right back again for 50% or 75% of my money back. Gee, I actually LOSE money doing that.
Price Fixing
- Can I collude with other players to set a high price on items? Nope.
Price Deception
- Can I post a really rare item for stupidly cheap, trick others to do the same, buy those items for myself, and then cancel my item sale? Nope.
Level 1 Billionaire
- Can I engage in the “Trade” system without playing LE? Nope, I have nothing to put in, and I don’t have the cash to get back out. I also have no way to “play the market” to increase my cash. Cash literally only comes from playing the game.
OK, so how does this system “feel” in the game?
Selling: Right now, you either vendor items or leave them on the ground if you want cash, or you hoard them for “that build you’re gonna try someday” (<-- totally me!) With this system, you now have a new option: Sell to the Bazaar for more $ than the vendor offers.
Buying: Obviously, we aren’t multiplayer yet, but the thing is here, you go to the Item Bazaar, search, find an item, and buy it right then-and-there. No bidding nonsense. No waiting. Just “OH cool, I need / could use that!” (CLICK) Buy. Done.
And there is no “Traditional” economy like every other game thinks of it.
I like trade and want full trade.
Any devs reading this thread should realize the bias here. It’s a forum filled with people that are currently active in the game. That alone self selects for solo self-found players. I’m not active and I won’t be until multiplayer and trade are implemented. I would like to play the game, sell things I find to fund my character, and not have to use third-party systems to do it.
3 Likes
My only problem with “Objective Value” is that the second player feels unnecessary in this system. You could just as easily have the NPC itself sell Wings of Argentus. NPCs are already always “online” and available by default. Name whatever vendor restrictions you like, then compare their complexity with equivalent schemes to regulate player behavior. For example:
- Skipping the real game - add a quest/boss kill requirement for items like uniques
- Cornering - restrict the vendor stock of Wings of Argentus
- Price fixing/deception/level 1 billionaire - don’t add trading except between friends
Erm. As a manager of developers for 32 years, I am surprised you do not realise that it takes time to farm an item. Player time is not infinite.
2 Likes
You’re absolutely right.
Player Time isn’t a meaningful limiting factor. 1 player can farm more than 1 of a given rare item each day, and when that player already has the item (for themselves), any extras can get traded away for items they don’t have yet.
Just take a look at the insane inflation in PoE Standard League - “ultra” rare items abound in the thousands there, so the prices are hiked way up by greedy players (because PoE has a player economy).
A vendor can only imitate, not replicate. Nty.
It’s a one-sided look at it–that players only want buying power. That’s not true. They want to be able to get value from items they sell too, and there isn’t a vendor that can value items the way players do.
That depends on how rare the item is. Are you telling me I cannot make a drop rate so low that realistically an item only drop once in 2-3 days or a week on average?
It looks insane to you because drop rates are balanced around a 3month league.
Yes. There are plenty of rare items in standard. That’s because items are stacked over time based on league drop rates I mentioned above. And even then, it is not infinite. It’s the accumulation of 7 years (read: time taken) of league junk.
Dude. As an analogy, are you saying resources to code a program is “infinite”? Because I can code over, and over, and over and over again, and programs keeps churning out. So one computer software may be “rare” but given unlimited ability to code for it, there will be plenty of programs of every innovation around? You realise how bullshit that sounds?
I can see that now.
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How much can you give me at the cheapest price?
And if the price is too cheap will any boats rise?
This is why I love Gary.
Semi healthy discussion, save the above. It shouldn’t derail, though. Continue! 
Sorry. You’re right. 
It’s just that I couldn’t help dousing some of that superiority complex in the post I quoted.
I think either:
a) He’s lying about his “credentials”
or
b) He’s fallen prey to the same echo chamber logic that I have been criticizing and now echoes it further
or
c) He just isn’t giving this stuff sufficient critical thought due to his (self-contradicting) biases
How else do you explain someone with his alleged experience and position pushing communistic trade while repeating stuff we have seen in other dev’s manifestos without any original thought/input? Not just that, his “ideal” system for trade wouldn’t even work as something build-enabling and useful to players with any kinds of actual goals.
It’s all too inconsistent.
Well, except that i’ve vocally stated that i’ve preferred Trade in every ARPG i’ve played, and typically welcome it. This thread isn’t coming from a professed SSF-lover, but someone who has experienced the ups and downs and various attempts at economies in ARPGs throughout history, and who has arrived at the opinion that it’s probably not really worth the hassle, overall.
Yeah, I think the SSF “bias” is probably there, but overstated.
Going back to this idea:
I think most players have some 1-10 rating of where they probably fall in their preference for SSF vs Trade, Single Player vs MP, Fast vs Slow combat, etc. I think very few players are straight up 0’s and 10’s in these categories.
Now this is a wild premise to base your MMO comparisons on, and kind of explains why you consider it valid, imo.
We’re discussing the core progression mechanics here in an ARPG. The entire game is loot-hunting, therefore any element that affects that process is relevant in balance and design. Your personal choice of gameplay in an MMO is a very, very different matter here, because while you may have enjoyed doing that, the game was neither balanced around it, nor was it the crux of player progression and what the vast majority would look to (which is group play, dungeon gear, raid progression at whatever level you’d prefer).
To me, this is kind of like stating that you enjoy just sitting in A9 Blood Aqueduct, farming happily, and the trade economy never affected you (because it’s not necessary to “progress” for that gameplay), therefore it can’t really be a problem. That’s basically the equivalent. You weren’t engaging with the progression elements of WoW doing that, not in the slightest, and engaging in a small part of the overall economy (which overall doesn’t have much effect on core progression elements there).
It just seems to me that you don’t really acknowledge the fundamental differences here, and insist that because your preferred way of playing isn’t affected, it should be a non-factor for everyone, while ignoring that the game is being designed in a very particular way to funnel the majority into specific, intended activity loops. Sure, you can engage in whatever else on the side which doesn’t take part in that loop, and enjoy that, but the game isn’t balanced around that and it doesn’t affect anyone else. So this comparison really falls flat for me.
The opposite is the case when discussing the SSF/Trade dichotomy, because both cannot exist in the same game without massively affecting one another. You cannot implement an economy in D3 2.0 smart loot, anymore than you can have the type of Trade in PoE and balance SSF around it (hence why SSF is a byproduct for a niche audience which enjoys the “puzzle” aspect of PoE’s complex layers of crafting and RNG without the help of Trade, but isn’t the intended way to play).
We are talking about very different things here, and I think you base your notion of, essentially, a free-for-all Trade economy on a very subjective and I would argue niche view of game activities without considering the larger picture.
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Gotta stop you right there. This isn’t the only activity I enjoyed in the game. It’s just to illustrate how there’s little difference in the gameplay outside of the camera angle. Also, trying to imply that WoW isn’t also loot driven is an extremely wild take.
The rest of your post comes across invalid since your premise behind it is some weird assumption that I only did one activity. I did everything in WoW with almost every class (except Arena, I guess; didn’t enjoy it).
Player Time is actually an incredibly important factor which every good dev team must consider. How do you want your players spending their time, how much of X is tolerable/desired, what should the player be spending the majority of his/her time on?
I didn’t say it’s the only thing you did or did not do, but you took it as the example of why an MMO economy is transferrable to an ARPG, and that comparison does not work in the slightest. You’re cutting out a portion of niche gameplay, not balanced around or designed for at all, and transplanting it into a different genre which basically has similar gameplay mechanical aspects, but fundamentally different considerations to what players should be doing, when.
Of course MMOs are loot-driven, but primarily, and especially in WoW’s case, they are driven by group activities and loot goals that are not obtainable via an economy.
You could argue that an economy up to raids for everything is fine and works and could therefore be applied to an ARPG in the same way, but again, you’re also neglecting many other factors here. For one, quest rewards being a major factor in gear progression. MMO progression does not rely on you finding raw drops to progress, but on rewards, and in many cases, doesn’t even require you to progress your gear at all until late game. Not so in an ARPG, where from the very first minute of the game the loop of “x drops, let’s look at it and see if it’s an upgrade” starts - and that’s the key difference here, that is the single most important aspect of ARPG gameplay loops, and not so in typical MMOs (most certainly not WoW).