Alpha? The game has been out at least a year in Korea, afaik.
This is what I was trying to get at before. Loot in its current state is simple enough for a program to figure out. Just feed a program your loot filter, tell it to only generate matching âshowâ or ârecolorâ items, and jack up the base quantity/rarity to compensate. Then output the results in the NPC shop window or on the ground (as drops). Itâs even simpler for commodity/fixed mod items like uniques, runes, and glyphs.
And itâs not a centralized economy because different people have different filters for different builds. The player (or softcore build guide creator) still decides what constitutes good loot, but on an individual scale. Thereâs no need for trade if every drop is something you would have bought anyway. Unless someone argues that âyou should drop items irrelevant to your buildâ.
Different modes like Softcore, Solo/SSF, Hardcore, Masochist are already basically separate games. Ditto for âleague mechanicsâ; in PoE some people spend all league deep delving or heisting, others boss and skip mobs, still others spam maps and skip bosses. Some even skip the league entirely only to come back later or bang out a seasonal event (like Endless Delve). This isnât like a PvP game where splitting the playerbase also hurts matchmaking. More ways to play the game means more players unless itâs a âvertical upgradeâ that forces the new ways on everyoneâs core progression (like Syndicate unveils).
Youâre right about the easy early progression. Players have reported overgearing easily in early chapters only to hit a wall around 7/8, then again in empowered monos. Trading/better loot would probably trivialize the easy parts even more, especially with the loot we have now. But it would also enable people to keep playing beyond walls where theyâd normally quit.
Both extreme highs and lows could be solved by balancing the difficulty directly. Itâs just that the developers buffed the middle instead of nerfing the end. You can get around it by overleveling in monosâŚwhich is basically just another way to get better gear and more levels. I wouldnât want optimal gear (traded or otherwise) to become a placeholder for balance.
In this particular case itâs worse, because basing it off a loot filter means that players can find ways to exploit it and it puts a burden of âbest filter to useâ on players. It just reinforces the ânet-deckingâ aspect a lot of people complain about with regard to ARPGs. Since we know the game will at least have MP, this will create a wide discrepancy in the power of players you encounter who are even at similar levels of progression simply because someone who has their filter optimized compared to someone who doesnât use one would have too extreme of an effect.
The burden to use a good filter already exists. Players keep asking for it, but the equivalent of FilterBlade is already impossible because every build wants different affixes, items, and class idols. I originally suggested that base droprates be buffed in a separate SSF mode. Currently a âgoodâ filter will result in a ghost town, because desirable drops (e.g. one of the two class affixes build X wants) are still fundamentally rare. You basically have an availability curve that starts high (no filter) and approaches flatline very quickly. My version would decrease more linearly while buffing the base loot. If you had no filter, youâd see more random class affixes, rare affixes like flat damage or pen, and higher tier items. If you had a âHide allâ rule, now you wonât even see the 3d models on the ground.
With trading itâs a stair step down- 100% availability if you want and can afford it, or 0% if you donât want or canât afford it. This kind of binary progression supports a vastly greater player power discrepancy. Not everyone has the time or game knowledge to âget richâ. This is quite painful in games like PoE that are not just balanced around trade, but also around the best and most high profile players (e.g. streamers). You can easily hit a point where the next upgrade costs multiple times your wealth for a marginal build improvement. The last thing youâd want is for the âmarketâ to take notice and price your build through the ceiling. Thatâs an accident waiting to happen when everyone draws from the same scarce supply of something. If itâs scarce enough, even the âwealth creationâ of people farming it will be too slow to keep up.
LE doesnât have to become that kind of game. If you want to play a build, you shouldnât have to ask questions like: Is this build âtoo metaâ? Does it âneedâ expensive enablers? Can I afford to finish this build before itâs nerfed? Developers have fundamental control over supply, but they canât predict every meta shift and resulting shortage. This is the part where âcentralized economiesâ fail. So I say - why try to predict it? Buff everything, and let players decide the kind of game theyâd like to play.
Not in the way youâre talking about. Thereâs a difference between someone using it to target particular items they are after vs loot actually being affected by it. I have seen at least 4 major archetypes to how people approach the loot filter, so this isnât something that is a current ârequirement/burdenâ at all.
This is a terrible and inaccurate take on trade, because you make it sound like one side of the âbinaryâ (which isnât even a proper analysis of how it works)âthe canât afford sideâis a permanent state. Itâs not. Selling enough items over time can make nearly anything affordable. Also, just because you canât afford item A doesnât mean that B isnât close enough, especially if itâs significantly cheaper. Youâre missing all the nuance here with your gross oversimplification.
This sort of thinking has been thoroughly debunked in basically every game ever. If someone would get bored because trade lets them have stuff too easily, this system would have the same problem, amplified exponentially.
Also, every game will have a meta. Fighting it is one of those endless death spirals devs should avoid. Seen way too many games become absolute dogshit over time because they had to react to every cry of âunderpoweredâ or âoverperformingâ based on subjective nonsense. If a game reaches a âgood enoughâ level of balance, itâs okay to have outliers that arenât too extreme. StarCraft Brood War went years without a balance update and saw many meta shifts over that time. Itâs a complete misconception that the meta is driven by the game balance alone.
This is just such a thoroughly bad take on trade.
Thereâs a difference between someone using it to target particular items they are after vs loot actually being affected by it.
Loot wouldnât be âaffectedâ by the filter in the way you describe. Itâs there regardless unless you take the extra step of âHide allâ at the bottom. Youâd just see more of it instead of almost nothing if you choose to hide irrelevant affixes and item subtypes.
this isnât something that is a current ârequirement/burdenâ at all.
That makes less sense the further you get into endgame. Even halfway into the story you will sort through far too much loot without some kind of filter. And this will only become more of a burden as loot is made more complex in preparation for trade.
Selling enough items over time can make nearly anything affordable. Also, just because you canât afford item A doesnât mean that B isnât close enough, especially if itâs significantly cheaper. Youâre missing all the nuance here with your gross oversimplification.
Your first point ignores the items that are most worth trading. You also take time investment and player commitment for granted. In both PoE and LE, itâs easy to get 1 âgoodâ mod, challenging to get 2, very difficult to get 3, nearly impossible for many players to get more. This is reflected by disproportionate price increases relative to the actual upgrade as you try to force more âunlikelyâ conditions (e.g. correct base, build relevant exalted affix, decent implicit, low instability). And itâs largely what I meant with the stair step analogy. You donât smoothly accelerate and you donât teleport as you implied; you âjumpâ to the next step as money allows (e.g. 1c, 5c, 20c, 1ex, 5ex, 10ex). Then you have certain chase items that almost nobody is supposed to have (e.g. HH, Orian). At that point you donât even need to restrict trading of such items because most players couldnât get them anyway. Thatâs still fine unless endgame content is balanced around people wearing such âunlikelyâ items and/or playing SSF meta builds that donât need the help.
You also have to consider that LE has fewer items than PoE. Many âchaseâ uniques have no budget, crafted, or âskill treeâ equivalent (yet?). You either have Exsanguinous/Last Steps or you donât go low life. You either have Bhuldarâs Wrath or play something less awkward than hardcast EQ. Corner cases like this are easier to normalize if you can just assume that anybody can get anything they want.
And speaking of nuanceâŚtrade is fundamentally unequal to players of different experience, and this is most apparent for the items most worth trading. It doesnât matter which ARPG - Warframe, LE, PoE - anywhere thereâs trading, players will spam in chat âIs this item goodâ? Letâs assume they found it in a high level area. They still canât âknowâ if an item is good without having played the build that wants it. They canât be sure âhowâ good it is without understanding the stage of the build itâs used for (leveling throwaway? cheap subtitute? endgame BiS?). Itâs easy to take all this game knowledge for granted if youâve played all the meta builds.
But getting around to so many different characters that far into endgame is unrealistic for most players, particularly for something like empowered monos. Keep in mind that this is for the (relatively) simple loot and crafting we have now. As more affixes/crafting steps/RNG are added (think PoE before and after influenced items) the system becomes even harder to understand.
This sort of thinking has been thoroughly debunked in basically every game ever. If someone would get bored because trade lets them have stuff too easily, this system would have the same problem, amplified exponentially.
People already get bored when they hit progression walls. Youâre implying a tremendous amount of skipped content in order for âehh too easyâ to beat âtoo hard rqâ. Numbers can be balanced to values other than 0% or 1000%. You should also remember that my system exists in a game without trade. Both of them combined would probably be balanced in ways that feel individually terrible to compensate.
they canât predict every meta shift and resulting shortageâŚwhy try to predict it?
Also, every game will have a meta. Fighting it is one of those endless death spirals devs should avoid.
That is literally what I said in different words. When you have an economy, the initial focus shifts from âwhat would be fun to playâ to âwhat is affordable/abundantâ and âwhat is strongâ. Not all items are âliquidâ, so there is loss aversion at stake. You can buy into a bad/unpopular build and sell it back to the market for much less. You can invest into a farm thatâs not profitable and now it impacts a whole range of builds that would otherwise have been financed.
Now, if youâre a company like GGG thatâs ok. Your vision is of this hardcore game where itâs ok for people to waste time or suffer because that keeps it âdifficultâ. But my impression of LE is of a quite different game where QoL and player feedback matter. If something is simply very unfun for many players, youâd expect it to get some attention under this model even if itâs âbalancedâ on paper. And when that âsomethingâ is as complex and dynamic as a meta or economy, itâs like playing whack-a-mole, unscrambling eggs, etc. There are so many âunintended consequencesâ that the most elegant solution becomes âdonât go thereâ.
StarCraft Brood War went years without a balance update and saw many meta shifts over that time.
Youâre leaving out the UMS maps that kept it alive for regular players. Not everyone was a professional tournament player living in a gaming house. This was before my time but SC2 had the same issue. Players like me enjoyed the story but could never get into the apm fest, âmacroâ busywork (âYou must construct additional pylons!â) and formulaic build orders of multiplayer. Instead we played with mods like BGH (Big Game Hunter - increased rewards, hero units, bosses, zombies, etc.) or custom maps like Nexus Strike/Tyaâs Desert Strike or Star Battle. Or we played another story like the Mass Recall mod (SC/BW campaign in Sc2 engine). In the case of DS/ladder there wasnât even âprogressionâ.
That moment-to-moment content was what we played for. In neither custom maps nor ladder did we have to worry about âaffordingâ some item for longer than the spam of a single play session. You could (especially in low ladder) get up to mass carriers/BC inside of an hour. âLootâ matters far more in ARPGs by design. Itâs not so trivial as in an RTS to obtain one single piece of good gear, let alone a whole build.
The complaints in PoE every league about older skills/items being untouched arenât just for karma. Because when you donât have a lot of mechanically varied content or deep narrative, the itemization becomes the content, and letting it rot literally reduces the replayability of the game.
2 Likes
Loot filters and Trading have very little (if anything) to do with Player Retention. Retention is controlled only by 2 factors:
- Rate of new content
- Time
EHG can control 1. But they cannot control 2. At some point, everyone leaves a game theyâve played âto deathâ.
If EHG was smart (and I have no reason to think they arenât) then they should be planning around Rates (i.e. rate of new players vs rate of people quitting) and trying to elongate the play time. Trading, so long as it exists in some form, will help a little, but its a tiny, tiny factor. The much larger factor is new content, including âSeasonsâ or âLeaguesâ or whatever they will call them with unique mods to the game (Iâm using PoE Leagues as a baseline) to âspiceâ up the basic game that people have played through to level 100 fifty times already.
I mean, think of your 100th League. Think about âIâm going to play this game⌠again⌠with some new build (or just my old favorite cause it hasnât been nerfed), and I want to grind through it.â I mean, at that point, are the nuances of the trade system even a factor to your willpower to go through it all ⌠one⌠more⌠time⌠?
Iâm here (instead of playing PoE) not because of their bad trade. The game, itself, eventually got stale. Itâs point 2 above. It will happen to everyone at some point. Trade just has to exist so that on your 20th, 30th, 40th league you know that you can try a new build and there is a mechanism in place so that you can get a hold of some of the rarer and/or build-defining items youâll need to enjoy it.
1 Like
This thread is basically just 2 groups of people:
-
People who play and enjoy the current single-player experience OR who have casually played an online ARPG with a trade economy and feel that itâs balanced unfairly against them, angrily watching as people with more time to invest progress faster than they can
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People who have played online trade ARPGs for years and are trying to explain to these casual solo players that an economy is a necessary part of a successful online competitive ARPG that wants to grow over time
None of you are changing each otherâs minds, but here is whatâs going to happen:
The bazaar will be implemented at some point much to the dismay of those solo players but theyâll eventually realize the game didnât change that much if at all for the style of game play they are chasing.
Pro-trade players will interact/give feedback to make the system better and they will be grateful for having another mechanic that gives them more ways to play.
Trade isnât going to burn people out, it isnât going to cause a bunch of problems for people who prefer a more SSF-style approach, and it isnât going to ruin the way you want to enjoy the game however that may be.
Both camps will be happy with the game and this thread will thankfully die. I trust EHG to implement this system though I assume not perfectly at first, but most of all I trust them to develop it over time from the hopefully valuable feedback they get.
Can we /thread now
4 Likes
Not really thou, There is a third group, who are fine with trading being introduced, and even want it to be implemented. What we donât want is the game to be balanced around trading.
We donât care if trading accelerate players progressions, or if people start flipping and playing monopoly or whatever.
We care about they changing the game to try to stop people from doing that.
2 Likes
I mean, there are nuances too. I firmly want the ability to trade items. I firmly do not want the gameâs item drops to be balanced around trade. I firmly do not want a trading system which can be its own little mini-game, where players can artificially manipulate market prices.
I honestly could care less if a âlegitâ player (as I would define it) has tons of free time, plays 16 hrs a day, and puts tons of items up for trade. Doesnât bother me one bit. However, as soon as that playerâs presence alters the ability for others to get loot (either through drop rate changes or by market manipulation), then I have a problem with it.
I actually agree with this. I assume youâre referencing PoE because it seems like they balance the game around trade and do whatever they can to stop people from exploiting the market. I think thatâs good to an extent, but where ggg loses me is that they base every design decision on how to keep people playing longer, seemingly not even discussing how something feels to interact with.
They balance the game around people having easy access via trade, making trade a 100% necessary thing to repeating the most profitable/best content, while simultaneously refusing to make any changes to make trade more pleasant to use because easier access to items = players get what they want too fast.
Theyâd literally you rather be miserable but still play because youâre addicted than for you to enjoy using systems and maybe quit a few days earlier every league. Itâs pathetic. Not to mention that the philosophy has been all but disproven. 95% of the feedback I saw during the great harvest debacle was that people would rather get strong items fast because it means they can experiment and actually play the game for the gameplay. It makes more builds viable and people actually burn out slower as a result. Taking away deterministic crafting was horrible for anyone who didnât play 8+ hours a day.
This would be my advice to EHG as well. Donât follow in their footsteps, you have a chance to improve on those systems and actually make the mechanics in your game pleasant to interact with and your player base will be grateful (hopefully).
3 Likes
casual solo players
This is exactly backwards in PoE. Itâs the minority SSF players who are ok with slower progression despite loot being trade balanced. Basically the equivalent of going vegan in real life. And itâs the majority Softcore players who are used to buying most of their gear (often all at once to get the resists right). Streamers often craft better gear in SSFHC racing events/gauntlets than most casuals have in Softcore. Itâs no coincidence that even the racers like Steel, Zizaran, etc. switched to Softcore in Ultimatum, after Harvest was gutted. I myself played Softcore every league since Delirium when I installed; the only exception being 1-week Endless Delve.
95% of the feedback I saw during the great harvest debacle was that people would rather get strong items fast because it means they can experiment and actually play the game for the gameplay. It makes more builds viable and people actually burn out slower as a result. Taking away deterministic crafting was horrible for anyone who didnât play 8+ hours a day.
This was my experience of Ritual League. Casual players were making real money in Valdos/Vastir for the first time and/or finally experiencing Harvest crafting without the confusing garden. Experienced players were rerolling more characters all the way to endgame. But I disagree that this game state is only possible with trade after experiencing loot and crafting in LE: incredible implicits by default, Harvest augments in the crafting bench, upgrading mod tier just by augmenting again, etc.
This impression falls apart at design decisions that could have just as easily gone (and could still go) the other way. Consider the +X to skill Y class affixes; they could have made these +int/str/dex like in PoE but itâs artificially scarcer this way. Or the hardline stance on uniques being RNG/chase items. The more farmable/determistic such things are, the less youâd feel âforcedâ to buy them outright as in PoE. And if buying them becomes the trend, the âofficialâ droprates lose practical meaning outside of SSF, again like PoE.
I remember the âhighâ when dropping a Badge of the Brotherhood in Heist that Iâd never use but sold for 36ex - easily three of my builds. I also remember the frustration of spamming sellers while staring down T1 chaos resist/life at 2ex a pop. I remember resolving to learn to make ârealâ income forthwith and leveling Heist followers for a monthâŚand then quitting 20ex profit in because I hated the actual gameplay., and never touching Heist again. So donât misunderstand me, I donât argue against trading out of some puritanical SSF mindset. Iâm against its unwanted consequences, and Iâm for content that is intrinsically fun to engage with.
Hello my fellow travelers!
I really like this game and have some 100+ hours invested into this game already.
I had some time on the weekend and went through this thread. (More or less)
I work as a web-developer and just want to bring some more solution ideas to this topic.
Nobody likes spam by botters or thirdparties, and we also want trading not to be overpowered.
I thought mainly about avoiding these two concerns, when trying to find a solution, and came to the following:
Three different kind of actions at the same time:
-
Party Trading - this is obvious. The only thing third-parties could offer here are farming squads. (Like if I have no friends to play with in a party.)
Though I donât think people would seriously pay for this. So, lets assume this is fine. -
Quality Tier Gifting - I trade randomly a T16 Item for another T16 Item. (With filtering for one or two affixes at most)
This would allow me to reuse my higher-tier drops and possible get something useful out of it. For Example I am playing a physical damage build and I drop damage-over-time items.
This also cannot be abused by botters / farmers / thirdparties, as you cannot trade directly.
You simply submit stuff to the system / blackbox with 1-2 affixes and get back an item, if the offer can be fulfilled.
(Trading Item for Item)
Edit1: One could even make a booster pack system out of this gifting, like gifting gives you points to buy item booster packs, but I think that would go to far for a ARPG. -
Limited Shop Offer with Refreshing options - I can sell my items and buy items from other players, but I only see a limited amount of items at a time. I can refresh them for gold, as in the gambler. I cannot target specific items directly,.
Limiting the amount of items would also make it impossible for thirdparties or botters to abuse it. As you can only refresh it and not target a specific Item, you would want to sell to somebody.
Though you should also be able to filter for atmost 2 affixes, so you cannot directly search for âthe perfectâ upgrade, but rather shop for it. (Like in a real store, looking around)
What do you guys think about these approaches? Let me hear your thoughts! 
As long as this store also has people to ask whether they sell xxx or where the chocolate is.
2 Likes
- I think this is nice QoL. We can already pick up and drop items. Itâs not a stretch to imagine passing an item that way; might as well add a formal UI for it.
- This reminds me of gifting in Warframe. You would log in one day and find a booster or weapon or even warframe in your inbox with a note :). There was also a store-only restriction to prevent using it as an auction house. My only worry is gifts that feel âspecialâ are often also needed. Leveling/farming without boosters definitely felt worse in Warframe, and some base frames (e.g. Nidus, Harrow) took vastly longer to farm than to earn their platinum costs. I donât want LE to ârequireâ friends/guardian angels helping you out with the core gameplay; maybe cosmetic gifting would be harmless though.
- This sounds like PoE Ritual shop window but with better endgame offerings and more potential for FOMO. If you arenât fussed about good upgrades in every slot then this might be fine. If youâre attached to a certain item and thereâs 20 lookalikes, there might still be one left hours later. If itâs one of a kind (including very particular resists), expires when you log out, is seen by other people, etc. then the pressure is on to buy now before itâs gone. This can feel bad if you âjust want to playâ and donât have much time.
1 Like
Seem like some decent ideas.
Party trading is kind of a slippery slope. Balancing party play in an online ARPG with trade is a nightmare. You want party play to have just the right amount of benefits without making solo play vastly inferior. Adding trade to only parties will definitely encourage party play, but it might be somewhere close to the line of party play then becoming too rewarding to not do. Not to mention we donât know what kind of quantity / MF / density bonuses there might be for party play. The other thing about party trade only is that people WILL pay for services. There are pages of posts on JSP where users are buying power levels, bounty games, GR services, Loot services, etc. If there is a way to âbuyâ progression, people will find it.
I donât personally care if someone wants to ruin their PVE experience of loot chasing by just buying services, go for it. Not that I think it should be encouraged or allowed whatsoever, but Iâve learned that people will always take the path of least resistance, some of those people are willing to risk a ban to do so. Itâs really hard to stop, and when it comes to services especially itâs a grey area when it comes to ToS. If someone wants to buy a power level to 100 and full exalted tier gear just to realize that then they have absolutely nothing left to play for thatâs on them. All of this is to say when it comes to party trade only: Itâs complicated.
Though I personally donât think the game needs it, I think the best course of action to address community concerns in this thread while still having an economy is to implement a daily trade limit. Since the game has a box cost and isnât F2P this is probably enough to cut down on alt accounts abusing the system. Again, if someone wants to buy the game many times over just to bypass the daily trade limit have at it. It wouldnât even be enough of a benefit to be worth doing IMO until you own a ton of copies. Any other system is going to be needlessly annoying to interact with, I think #2 and #3 sound good in theory but would just be increasingly more annoying to use.
1 Like
Absolutely not.
All these ideas to have âtrade that sucksâ are usually forgetting the purpose of tradeâto get specific items you want or need. Randomizing whatâs available just makes the entire system shitty. Why would I play LE when other games offer more and better on both the ARPG side of things and the trade side of things?
You canât assume either side would be happy with the arrangementâlet alone both sidesâuntil you see what it looks like in implementation. There are countless ways to take a good thing and do it badly. As mentioned earlier, if they did some kind of bid-only bazaar, thatâs likely going to make both sides unhappy and very few people will accept/appreciate it.
About the gifting, its more like the Idea:
Example:
I am offering my [T5: Melee Critchance, T5: CritStrike] Weapon for any 1h-Weapon that got [T5: DamageOverTime, T5: Void Damage].
Maybe the system is already offering it, or not. Whether my offer will be fulfilled, I wonât know.
About the FOMO with the Shop and the 20 lookalikes, I still think thats bearable trade-off.
I mean, I atleast get to shop certain Items I might need or find useful.
Well, If you want to get exactly what you want, when you want it, then LE is probably not the right Game for you, as this would enable a trade-focused economy which is not the goal here.
Looting will and should always be the best way and most encouraged way to get the best gear.
Thats also what EHG said.
And as I stated above, in Limited Shop Offer with Refreshing options, one should able to filter for 2 affixes, so you can narrow down the items you want.
Maybe even 3 affixes, but that could also be too much already. On the other hand, if I can filter for 3 affixes and refresh, I can âshopâ for the item I really want. (all 4 correct affixes)
We want to avoid that player X can directly sell player Y an Item, as this would enable botter and thirdparty websites.
Thank you for the feedback!
You got a good point, but I donât want to think of balancing party trading haha, thatâs surely quite complicated and I think EHG will find a suitable solution for it.
You give a good insight about what people would able willing to pay for!
Though even free trade limited by a daily trade limit is too âbroadâ or too âgoodâ, sadly.
I think botters / thirdparties could still easily make money for this, probably.
(People get really creative if its about abusing a system and making money from it)
Thanks for the feedback and your insights!