First. That’s not what you originally said. You were clearly making a point about forum user base and that’s completely different from the point you’re making now. I would prefer you acknowledge you misinterpret my statement before changing course for your rationalization.
Second. Looks at the multiplayer dev blog replies to view count.
Not sure where this back-and-forth is supposed to take anyone. I simply mentioned that more people always read a topic than partake in it, in any form of social media. This will be the truth here as well, regardless of how large the numbers, and it wasn’t intended as any kind of grand debate point or topic of conversation, just a sidenote on the value of discussion, period.
It’s also just a side note for me to point out to you that this particular thread about your case against a trade economy isn’t reaching out to as many listeners as other threads in this forum. So the absorption of ideas and exchange in this particular thread is limited to the active participants.
I think it was never really the case for this thread to convert opinions of others. More some kind of listing of what would be the impact of trade in L.E, and other people brought the beneficial aspects.
On top we’ve been able to see that it’s indeed a very important question that has been raised, and that it matters for most of us, whatever our opinion on the subject might be.
All of this will help the devs to tackle this trade issue with great application. And i also think that people who got engaged in this discussion will appreciate more the EHG “solution” when it comes out.
Agreed. When MP releases, it shouldn’t have trade right away. It should just be drop items on the ground for each other. The game has a long way to go before trade has a place.
The purpose of oversimplifying it that way was to highlight the narrow box you appear to be putting ARPGs in, not to demean the genre as a whole. It’s one of my favorites.
However, using LE as the relevant example, it’s basically impossible to get excited for the loot because of the many issues mentioned before and the lack of trade to give value to these items. For a game centered around loot, this is a problem, so I hope that either they don’t stick to the 4-affix model or find more ways to make it interesting as well as adding interesting non-gear loot.
I would argue that most ARPGs used the box sales model, with trade as the least commonly shared attribute since many of these just used “drop item on ground” as “good enough.” Maybe LE is doing something different with the hybrid of that and the live service model, but in the long run it’s the live service side of it that will dictate the most important reasons and consequences for what happens to the game at a fundamental level.
As for bid/barter-only trade, that just sets off every alarm bell possible that it’s a bad idea. Bid-only strikes me as likely to be extremely unpopular (probably piss people off and put them off the game entirely) while barter-only invariably evolves to 3rd party AH-like listings on trade sites.
The only thing I see LE doing that makes it unique is having each skill with its own tree. Indeed, it’s the top reason I bought the game. Itemization has me concerned, though, because it’s too shallow and unsatisfying.
I’m pretty sure we both understand most of these points from each other’s positions.
I don’t think your reply actually answered the question, though, unless I missed it somehow.
Are you saying that the hybrid box/live model is what makes LE different from that narrow definition I have been criticizing? I don’t think it offers much on the player side of things. The actual gameplay is still entirely within that box.
To reiterate the question: Do you want to see ARPGs stuck in the loop of just kill monsters → get loot, or would you rather see expansion what can be done with the genre?
In some sense, I think D4 is going for some of those broader elements, exploring territory that many seem afraid to with the genre. I don’t trust Blizzard, so I don’t anticipate them succeeding at it–which would be a catastrophe because D3 is so largely responsible for people being afraid of trade in the first place. Would hate to see D4’s failure make them afraid of other ideas when it’s just that Blizz sucks and not the ideas.
I guess this is just a difference in personal preference. Because while I love PoE’s loot diversity, it’s also massively inflated, with too much of it utterly pointless too soon, and the 6 affix model with larger mod pool (many of which are utterly and completely pointless to any serious build) further adds to that.
Switch to LE where there may be far less variety right now, but loot has a much better chance of being interesting or useful, and this is a very good basis to start with in my opinion. Loot just feels better than in any other ARPG i’ve played so far, because it sits at a nice sweet spot between amount to % of potential value/usefulness, especially when incorporating LE’s specific crafting approach.
I’m sure there will be expansions to this, more items, more bases, more mods, and it won’t stay quite this simple. But to the point where Trade becomes a major factor due to too much loot being irrelevant? I should hope not, and don’t expect it either.
Most ARPGs use the box price model, but do not provide continuous updates, and the MTX are intended to keep that going - alongside the box sales, which while they will unquestionably plummet after release, new content always generates more sales.
Bid-only I agree, is probably the worst idea based on what we can think of. Barter-only is basically just the common approach used outside of an ingame AH to keep it in check, so I mentioned these two as likely candidates to be used, more likely than a buyout ingame AH in any case.
The combination of a fresh approach to crafting, a somewhat simplified approach to loot while still maintaining endgame chase goals, and the box price along with seasonal content, on top of the skill/passive system which is rather unique and draws upon a variety of inspirations to combine them, that’s what makes LE stand out imo. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but is trying to learn the lessons from past examples and attempting to craft the most fundamentally enjoyable core ARPG experience possible, that’s my impression.
I’m not sure what expansion of ARPG gameplay you want, given that your stated premise is basically to make loot more diverse à la PoE but add more convenient Trade. That’s not a significant deviation, certainly not of the basic gameplay.
I’m not sure anyone is “afraid” to experiment with the genre, it’s just that certain things work and people like familiar things that still bring some innovation. D4 is indeed trying to go for something somewhat new and untested. I will reiterate though that while D4 is going for open world content and MMO elements, it is also not going for an MMO-style economy, by all accounts, and not going for any sort of AH or marketplace either, at least base don what has been presented thusfar and i’m aware of.
I have listed many of them already. It doesn’t have to be all of them, ofc, but there’s no shortage of ways they can go about it. PoE is very hit and miss with their loot, but it’s partially because they have so many “Collect X thing to create one of Y” that so many drops just feel worthless. Another part looks bad from one side, but is actually good for the game as a whole, and that’s the fact that there is so much build diversity that most items won’t fit your build, but many might fit some build.
LE isn’t far from this either, but letting literally any affix appear on any base for types it can appear on means you get so much trash. In the long run, this should be narrowed down, but if they did it before introducing a lot more item variety it would only make itemization look precisely as shallow as I view it rather than at least having some appearance of more options–which I think would turn many people off.
If I saw a lot more attempts to use certain features and they just didn’t work, I would agree. The lack of attempts to me is evidence of fear. It’s not surprising, but it is disappointing. Many of these studios are beholden to publishers, and publishers tend to be risk-averse, which often translates to an aversion to innovation.
I saw a Ted talk a long time ago from someone who produced games, and it was about the ways typically approach him to pitch their ideas versus how they should approach him. The gist of it was that he didn’t really care about what the game wanted to do on the gameplay side; he just cared how it would reach a large audience and be profitable. It sickened me. It was so backward. Bring quality first and profits naturally follow. (If you’re not familiar, look into the history of FF7’s development and how it succeeded in spite of that.)
I don’t fault a company for using some familiar territory as the foundation, but the games that fear exploring new territory often end up boring very quickly. I can’t think of anything more tragic for EHG than to fall into this trap. I hope they don’t, because indie devs are in a particularly advantageous position in this regard. If an indie studio is also risk-averse in this way, it’s the worst of both worlds.
Edit: I realize I missed an important point, you asking my same question in reverse.
With this I meant more like having other content/activities in the genre than just the basic loop we’re all familiar with–the “box” as it were.
This could mean an entirely, more in-depth crafting system with more interactivity, a rework of the campaign into something more exploratory (especially making use of the Chrono Trigger inspiration for the timelines), more emphasis on MP game modes and challenges (dungeons come to mind), another arena with a different model that focuses more on tough single enemies (think Star Ocean 2) that doesn’t drop loot, but gives you a reward at the end based on how far you got, etc.
Something that would be really special, though probably requires the game to be much more developed (and probably older by the time it happens), is a pre-PoP EQ-style Epic quest for a unique class item. The kind of thing that takes a couple weeks to complete because so much goes into it.
Similarly, I hope this game moves away from WoW-style quests in favor of more narrative quests that tell the story while you progress through them. I think of games like Warframe and Cyberpunk 2077 for this kind of thing. Screw the !/? nonsense.
D4’s open world idea seems cool, but l’m afraid they will go the way of Torchlight 3 and make the game too basic, especially since their attitudes toward trade pushes them that direction.
A properly balanced trade system that is accessible and available would be new territory for the genre and would serve to compliment many of these other ideas as well.
I think there’s room to explore all kinds of options for more content eventually, such as some of those you mention, but they’re not really contingent on a Trade economy existing. In fact, many of them would serve to give a game more reasons to play despite a lack of market value to drops, such as a heavier focus on narrative, variations of the questing system, and various new challenges and game modes.
If Trade works, sure it compliments every activity in the game that produces loot, but the key draw here is the existence of those activities, not Trade imo. There are also points where they can conflict, such as quests providing too much smart loot, undercutting interest in raw drops and Trade/Crafting at the same time. Which is why gear rewards in quests aren’t very prevalent in ARPGs, and usually sparse and basic.
I’m not sure the general nature of sharks and publishers in capitalism has much to do with creative risks in this case. In general that’s an issue, sure. But I’d rather argue the inverse applies here: if studios had a good idea to capitalize and deliver on that AH-type economy in an ARPG, they’d jump on it, because I don’t deny that a large portion of the playerbase vocally yearns for it (even if I really do think it’s a case of “you think you do, but you really don’t”). But they don’t, not even the smaller indie studios that are trying to capitalize on innovation and delivering something new to attract an audience.
This strikes me as a bit confused. You want more item variety and Trade value with a more openly accessible means of Trade, but at the same time want affixes to be narrowed down, ie more smart loot functionality? That doesn’t really synergize well, as we discussed before.
I think you have it a bit twisted. It’s not that I want class-based smart loot. I just don’t like items with completely incompatible affixes, or where the presence of those affixes is extremely dubious. Finding an exalted polearm with a crit implicit whose exalted affix is dot damage, for example, is like, “Yay… more trash, just shinier.” I don’t see such items as “valid” in the scope of loot variety–it’s just filler.
No, I understand that. Smart loot in respect to items rolling more beneficial and usable affix combos, on the right bases here. It’s just that if you reduce the mod pool too much, and increase the chance of more widely usable combinations, you simultaneously compound the issue of loot being too simple (which you dislike), as well as undercutting the potential value of Trade, as if these items have such a high chance of naturally dropping (with LE’s crafting being a powerful tool to further improve them with a bit of luck), Trade becomes essentially pointless.
If you want that sense of trade excitement, you need to push the balance in itemization towards more RNG, not less, in order for loot to be exciting in market value, and for trade interactions to be desirable. Otherwise it’s just fluff on the side.
This is why I think this is a bit conflicted, because you simultaneously want better loot from an SSF perspective, but also want an open trade environment. That doesn’t really click.
I think the other approach is to have a wider variety of usable affixes, and to have more of them on gear. I’m extremely skeptical about the long-term potential of a 4-affix system. However, I’ve also said that I would prefer most trade to be non-gear items and for gear from trade to let you get reasonably far, but not the top end stuff–that should be for more challenging content/rewards. I want a balance between them. So far, only a few MMOs have made an honest attempt and reasonably succeeded. Most other games (of any genre) became gunshy after D3.
It’s worth noting that PSO2 has a really convoluted, yet interesting and in-depth crafting system. I don’t think LE should copy it directly, but there may be elements worth borrowing.
The problem here if you assume a trade environment that works relatively open up to a specific point (such as we discussed), is that you’re kind of creating two separate games. You’d open up the game to be extremely accessible and “easy” up to, let’s say early Echoes. And then the game would fall off a cliff for anyone who enjoys trade, as well as for the majority of casual players who suddenly are forced to engage more with the filter and crafting system if they want to progress.
This would probably lead to a greater discrepancy and stratification in the player population than even PoE has, and it’s hard to imagine how that could work.
Even if you, for instance, expand it to a 5 affix system and more mods, an open trade environment would still speed up progress to an almost unreasonable degree, only to run into a wall at the cut-off point. I doubt this approach would please either people interested in trade, or those just looking for a consistently enjoyable ARPG experience.
This is only true if gear is the only important thing to trade. I don’t want it to be.
I think it works just fine. Going back to old school WoW, people would gear up through trade, crafting, questing, and drops to gear up for heroics. Some of the tradeable gear was about as strong as some heroic drops, but only in specific slots. Most of it required running the heroics. Same with raids. Conversely, a few pieces in these areas of content that dropped were tradeable, but vast majority was not. It’s a proven model.
The only hang-up I see is that randomly/procedurally generated gear is often seen in binary terms by the players, though this is more of a perception problem than an actual gear quality issue in many cases, but I see this creating a spectrum of quality:cost across this section of the economy, and those historically are healthy aspects of a successful in-game economy. As for the “stratification” of the population, this always happens. Pareto Principle is OP.
The closest example I can think of for a game with randomly affixed gear and an AH was D&D Online, and that system worked quite well (though the game suffered a number of unrelated issues that makes it very niche these days). No comparison will be perfectly 1:1, but this one is about as close as I have seen that actually worked.
Be that as it may, either buying finished gear or the means to finish gear is the main catalyst that trade provides in this scenario. PoE similarly has more to trade than just the items, it does nothing to change the challenge inherent to balancing trade with drops though.
Again, apples&oranges. You kind of have to account for player types and expectations here too. In an MMO, the playerbase is far more diverse, and people play for more and different reasons compared to an ARPG. More people may just care about RP, about cosmetics, they may not care about min/maxing their characters but more about immersion in the world, or just being little crafters. Nearly all of this falls to the wayside in LE and any typical ARPG, which LE is.
I can see what you want - but what you want is more of an MMO, and not a straightforward ARPG. LE is not going to be this. You may have more luck with D4 in that regard.
In LE, crafting is not intended to be used to craft fully endgame ready gear from the ground up, it’s there to adjust drops. It’s also heavily tied to RNG same as drops, as the entire point is to keep you playing and hunting for as long as possible (which is a good thing). Quests fall away, so does crafting in this respect, as it’s not an activity you can fully focus on to this degree, we are left with just drops, as most ARPGs are, along with the random nature of it as the entire point is, again, to hunt gear.
What you’re referring to in WoW is not a cut-off point, but multiple pathways as means to an end - that end being participation in group content. In LE, trade as you would want it would simply speed up the core game up to a point where it stops - but the core game doesn’t change, and continues on, just without that crutch.
Btw, I think you might enjoy Lost Ark, which goes for more of a hybrid approach.
Again, this is the kind of territory I would like to see ARPG expand into without going with the p2w or mobile-style monetization that kneecaps every previous attempt at it–because those are cash cows, not games. However, saying that LE shouldn’t be trying to reach the broader audience is basically the same as saying you do think it should stay in that tiny box.
Also, you can drop the apples/oranges nonsense, seriously. The core idea can be used in either just fine, so the fact that they are different literally doesn’t matter.
I mean, this game has already failed to do that for me, which points to some glaring gaps in its central design. I’m willing to give EHG the time to fill those gaps, but trade fundamentally offers at least one more reason to. You can’t just say the point is to hunt gear without giving that gear significance. The current drop/craft system doesn’t do that very well.
You’re also just making a case of “The game works like this now” and using that to say “*The should work like this always” to the exclusion of these other features. That’s a piss-poor argument, because if it did, this game would be relegated to Wolcen status indefinitely.
For many players it’s the opposite. They may like raids or not, but they do them because they want to deck out their characters in the best gear for its own sake. As you said, there are many types of players. It’d be dishonest to attribute only one motive to why they do a certain thing.
As for the core game somehow stopping at a certain point, only some of the gearing would. You should still have a full economy of other valuable loot: consumables, cosmetics, collectibles, crafting materials, pets/mounts (maybe), etc.
I was looking into that, but it’s not out yet.
That’s not actually what i’m saying, i’m simply saying in regards to an economy, specifically, you cannot compare 1:1, because of what I stated. Different and more varied activities than “just” the process of killing and looting, because MMOs are simply not ARPGs. Crossover exists and can exist in the future, absolutely, i’m not saying this isn’t possible and should never be done. It’s when looking at LE specifically and comparing to typical MMOs like WoW, as you have, where the comparisons just do not work for a variety of reasons.
Fair enough on you not enjoying it. While I agree it needs some improvement and expansion, I enjoy it for what it is right now and look forward to it being developed further. If the foundation is already this satisfying, I am optimistic for later on.
My argument isn’t that LE should stick to the current state in perpetuity, it is that the basic principles of what is important in the gameplay won’t change, and was elaborating on the difference in the function an economy serves between an MMO and a very straightforward ARPG without MMO elements such as LE.
The point is that for these other player types, an MMO typically offers a variety of different options to engage with - an ARPG does not. And neither will LE. You keep comparing to a hypothetical game that combines these aspects, but LE is not that game. It is a very typical and “pure” ARPG, continuing the traditions of the genre.
You seem to think that I don’t understand what you want, I do. I’ve played some of those games myself, I know what you’re loosely envisioning. I’m telling you LE is not that game.
As for your examples, to further illustrate that point:
Basically, what you want is a very different game, if LE ever had a chance of going down that road we are long past it, because it would require fundamental reworks of significant portions of the game.
Quote me with egg on my face if it does happen, btw.
Coming this Fall to EU/NA, apparently. It’s on my radar, but I’m not a fan of Asian games in general.
Actually, the DDO example is really close because it didn’t have much besides running the dungeons to kill/loot. It didn’t even have a persistent open world to explore/farm. Everything was instanced.
Not sure what makes you so certain of this. If anything, this seems like the easiest and most obvious thing they could include to broaden itemization.
This one could go either way, but was just an example of how they can make the economy more meaningful, as many games do.
PoE is actually a terrible point for you to use because the crafting mats are the economy in a very direct sense. They are the base currency and all valuations of loot are in terms of it. LE will hopefully be different in this regard, but I’m skeptical because gold has so few uses, sinks, and limited means of acquisition–something being low supply and low demand usually means low value.
It really depends on the game. I blame the Asian market for why everything now is overly monetized with loot boxes, MTX, and “DLC” (which don’t actually expand the game at all)–basically, all the things I hate most about mobile games and Korean MMOs. However, despite the presence of some of these things in certain games, some of my favorite games are from this market.
So I take it that there will be a “Super Glue” scroll that has a chance to fix a fractured item and that will be what everyone trades for, right guys?
the alpha technical test is out today. i got a key and i’m going to test it.
i think if you buy a pack you have access to it as well, or if you have amazon prime you can ask to be selected.