The Case against a Trade Economy

Yeah, I’m aware of the Gambler’s Fallacy. But what’s the probability of getting 1 thing that has an X% probability in Y attempts? Is it 1-(1-x)^y?

You’re misinterpreting the gambler’s fallacy. Here is a succinct definition, “The gambler’s fallacy is the irrational belief that the probability for a series of outcomes is the same as the probability for the last outcome in that series of outcomes.”

What I’m referencing is a series of outcomes altogether. Over 10 tries your odds are 40% as a whole. Gambler’s fallacy is saying, “Since my first 9 were misses my 10th attempt must be really high odds!”. This is false. Your 10th attempt still has a 5% chance of success. So it is a matter of perspective. Gambler’s fallacy is a zoomed in perspective that looks at an overall probability and makes an incorrect assumption about an individual trial. This is different from zooming out and looking at all the runs as a whole, which makes no claims about individual run probability. Only the entire trial set together.

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Thank you, this is what I was (poorly) trying to get to.

I’m trying to establish why going for an open economy wouldn’t quite work with the current iteration, and that it’s somewhat unreasonable to assume that EHG are planning to drastically change the game in multiple aspects to accommodate such a desire. Hence why I believe some aren’t really considering the ramifications of what they’re envisioning, and why i’m arguing along the lines of it being more complicated than just slapping on Trade.

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I’m not misinterpreting anything. I’m taking into account that it’s NOT just an individual run probability because we’ve now included the possibility for others to be farming the same item or even a similar valued item. Hence the discussion about adding trade in the mix. The bottom line is each person that attempts that item is still subjected to the same drop rate, period. Running it multiple times does not change the drop rate. Now let’s just for sake of argument agree this all revolves around that item dropping once and only once. How valuable do you think that item is going to be not only to yourself but to the others that were running it? I would think this would tend to go up as the amount of time dedicated to the run increases coupled with the # of people involved for each subsequent run.

Again, this isn’t an easy solution for EHG to solve but I don’t think it’s simple as saying “trade has no business in an ARPG” which is what prompted the discussion.

if Last Epich wants to have a comunity as big as posible gane needs to have:

1.Multiplayer
2.Trade
3. PVP
4. Seasons
5.Ranks PVP
6.high pve content
7.Auction House
8. Aspects and pets

if game has all this it will get diferent ppl with diferent interests

every point u take off is less users, the comunity will have.

if there isnt trade and pvp i wont play for sure. and there will be other ppl who wont play if there isnt ranks or seasons…

And devs can make a gane with all this separating servers, or type of chars. If finally devs decide to take off any of this features they just will be limiting number of total players.

Not sure what you’re basing this off of.

The most successful ARPGs of all time had neither auction house, nor PvP ranks, barely a semblance of actual PvP, Trade only in pretty restricted forms or not at all.

The secret to success for a new game from a smaller company is to focus on the core aspects, and to nail those. Excel at what makes your game unique and appealing - if you try to please too many at once, the product will inevitably suffer. Even larger companies with much bigger budgets and resources consistently fail at this task.

Once your business is going well based off that solid work, you can look at expansion of the scope and new game modes.

Drop Rate (expressed as a % chance to drop) is set based on the SSF mode of play. This means that any given item (whether unique/set or just an exalted w/ specific mix of affixes) will be available to players at that rate, even if it drops more for Player A and less for Player B.

When you introduce Trade, you add the ability for players to do the following:

  1. Smooth out that drop rate (because Player A can sell their extra to Player B who has trouble farming it)
  2. Increase the “life” of such items. This is called “saturation.”

This means that the Drop Rate the Devs wanted is now, in effect, higher than it was intended to be, because these items are more proliferated across the player base as a whole. This then causes Devs to lower the drop rates to balance. And THAT is what screws over SSF.

Again, this has been posted dozens of times in this thread, and people keep saying its too hard to go back & read it all. Trade nerfs drop rates which affects SSF. That is why EHG has decided not to include Trade in LE.

Er. Somewhat, yes.
It’s simpler than that: you just can’t have very accessible and satisfying SSF mechanics like powerful crafting, or heck, even low RNG in itemization (because only 4 mods for example) as well as an open trade economy. For some of the reasons you mention, and others.

And like I said before, the game doesn’t need it either. LE succeeds at engaging the player in crafting and fiddling with your own loot filter, to a degree PoE never does. It’s much more functional and accessible that way, hence comparing it to PoE constantly doesn’t make sense. The two games work very differently, and trade fulfills different purposes.

I agree 100%. I have NEVER been able to craft or even just find really key items for my builds in POE like I can in LE.

It’s literally apples to oranges.

Correct but let’s be clear, the drop rate is the same for both players.

This is completely incorrect. Player B acquiring said item faster than Player A and selling that item to Player A does not modify the drop rate. Even if it did, you’re looking at it from one direction and not both directions, ie: if the drop rate can be modified in one direction (which I don’t believe it can be) then it must be able to be modifiable in the other direction.

I absolutely agree that increasing the life of an item is possible with trade but that only becomes saturation when the item pool exceeds the intended value of iterations in the lifecycle OR the duration of the lifecycle both of which neither you nor I are aware of what those values are. Suffice to say though, just because that issue might exist is not a red flag to state “trade shouldn’t exist” because it’s obviously a modifier or value that can be altered.

This is solely your opinion but the fact is EHG is in control of the drop rate. Even if trade were to be added, which as we’ve discussed and have shown by other ARPGS, MMO’s, games in general, it’s absolutely possible to have, they’re ultimately in control of the values. Adding trade does not equate to nerfing drops for SSF.

It seems you somewhat miss the point. Yes, other ARPGs have more open forms of trade - but they are also designed around that fact, with drastically different itemization models and weaker tools. You wouldn’t be able to have the kind of crafting accessibility we have in LE now, for example, with a low barrier-to-entry type of trade (such as P2P barter or an AH).

I didn’t say it modified the drop rate. I said it smoothed it out. It makes it more uniform across all players, instead of the (expected) spikes where some players are lucky and get an item faster and/or more of it, while other players are unlucky and don’t get one.

Also, with trade, you need to look at player retention. New players joining do not have said items, and player leaving do. If older players give away/sell those items to new players (which is often the case for major traders) then the saturation rate gets even higher. In order for saturation to not be reached, items need to permanently leave the trade pool, either through Binding, destruction, or player quitting w/items in tow.

With SSF, such saturation does not and cannot occur, because every player is an “island”, and whatever they have, they have, and new players do not have access to it.

This is EHG’s philosophy, as per their post about not having the “best” items available via Trade and their details on The Bazaar posted thus far.

Why? Please explain. I don’t disagree but I don’t think anyone is suggesting an AH situation nor is anyone suggesting (again) that trade just be dropped in as is without any sort of adjustments.

Failing to see the difference. Would you not agree that even minor adjustments would be modifications to some degree?

I couldn’t agree more as trade is often a motivator for new players and long term players.

Yes! We agree on this completely! This was never in doubt that items would need to have a lifecycle.

We nearly agree here but every player is an island is not due to saturation and stating that it cannot occur is an opinion. If item lifecycle is in place such as binding, that does not affect SSF which means the island remains intact.

I also agree on EHG’s philosophy about not having the best items available via trade but we’re not talking about the best items, we’re talking about any items, all items, etc. If you want the best items locked down simply make them non-tradeable but I don’t know that I agree with that being the best approach.

Again, this post stemmed from the statement that this was a case against a trade economy. There’s already one-a-coming whether you like it or not, deem it as such, or fail to acknowledge what it is. :slight_smile:

You may not be, but plenty of others have in the thread, even quite recently. So i’m not always exclusively commenting for your sake, just for clarification. Also as a disclaimer, this is ofc also just my opinion, i wouldn’t try to argue that i’m objectively 100% correct.

In any case, you need to look at the core gameplay loop, and how the availability of trade affects that. The easier it is to convert anything that drops into value, and the easier it is to bypass raw drops as well as crafting to progress, the shorter the actual gameplay loop becomes, and the harder it is to maintain a healthy balance in loot/crafting/RNG/progression.

In some games, like PoE, it works somewhat due to countless layers of mechanics, currencies, and RNG, on top of a massive item pool and showering you in basically 99% trash and casino tokens. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy it too, but that’s basically what it boils down to. LE works somewhat differently.

In LE, I can essentially say “I want to try this skill now, and build differently”. I gamble some appropriate bases, or set my filter accordingly, slap on my glyphs/runes, and craft the gear i’ve theorized within minutes to a functional level. You’re naturelly enticed to engage with the crafting system and your filter to progress, and rare (as in, Uniques or Exalts) drops entice you to try new things because it is so easy to respec, change things around. There is a very low opportunity cost, and it makes loot feel quite rewarding, intuitive, and motivating far beyond what it would be, if Trade were a major factor.

What EHG is currently postulating in the Bazaar, as they explained it, is a way to have some form of trade (alongside party trade) which does not endanger that balance and functionality. If you allowed for barter and/or an auction house (in this context, they are essentially the same), it would endanger that.

The Bazaar is by definition not an economy. Since you cannot refresh player shops, cannot search them, or access the entire supply of items up for trade at any point, on top of restrictions to what can be traded, it is essentially just checking another ingame vendor, only the chance for “good” items will be higher. Since you cannot plan for any returns from such an exchange, it cannot fulfil the function an economy would have on drop tuning, for instance. Drops/crafting would still be your primary means of progressing, with the Bazaar probably being a fun little sideshow.

This goes for any RNG based loot system and we are in agreement that neither of us want the core gameplay loop shortened. I just don’t agree that because you’ve added a new mechanic such as player trading that it inherently will shorten it. Yes, Player B may have what Player A wants and Player B may have spent less time attaining said item(s) but what about the item(s) in return that Player B wants that Player A had to go after not to mention the time Player A already spent trying to get said item(s), if any? This is a bi-directional effort and trust me, I do understand the impact of twinking and low level character acquisition of high level gear.

Agreed on the crafting piece but I don’t necessarily agree that it’s “motivating far beyond what it would be, if Trade were…” and I purposely left off this last piece because no one said “major” factor but I’ll say ANY factor.

I 'm sure you’ve read it but the dev blog post clearly states it as “THE ECONOMY” and “Player economy”, despite your definition.

i cant understand why all this ppl is speaking about economy and item saturation!!! seems crazy!! if game hasnt got trade there is not gonna be saturation , economy and nothing cuz comunnity will be smaller than actual comunity!! Cuz half of ppl playing right now are just playing cuz we think there will be trade , multiplayer and pvp. and if devs dont add this features game is gonna be a fail even b4 release.

game has a lot of potencial but just cuz we think its gonna be better than other options we have on market.
Now we got d2r , d3 and comming soon d4, there is also poe and what i liked more of LE as many of my friends is:
-game is faster and has an easier knolwledge curve than other rpgs
-more drop than other arpgs
-faster progression and easier
-ladder to compare high end progression
-easy craft allowing to add stat desired
-mana nearly infinite in nearly all builds

and ofx all this ppl expect trade and pvp, if not u just got a single player game.
why adding multiplayer if u cant pvp? why mp if u cant trade? why u want to gear better if is not to compite against other ppl ? no1 cares about having better gear just for having it. No 1 will farm , and gane after 3 monts will be dead

If devs are looking for a game with a small comunity of single players then yes , dont add pvp, dont let trade , but that wont be what most ppl is expecting about an arpg.

If u make a new game with less features then other arpgs ( hack and slash) of market, u are not gonna get more than 5% of those players… u need to improve actual arpgs if u wanna get its players.

and LE seems to have all what actual rpgs got with faster prigression+ item easier craftable+ more drop+ custom skills+ free respects , and thats the reason of beeing so interesting, but of course was cuz we all thought its was gonna have rest of features.

If LE has better things but has not got the most important ( pvp and trade ) its going to be a BIG FAIL cuz all players will remain in d2r or d3 or POE or POE2 (also comming soon)

So much to unpack in this whole post but let’s just focus on a couple of things. You do not have to make a game with more features to attract players. You just need to make a good game. Also, where on earth did you get the 5% value?

The game “needs” neither of those things and I think most folks here would agree that they’re definitely not the most important.

Gauss Curve

i am teacher of economy and maths on barcelona university , i have madden many market studies and nearly all markets rules have a similar behaviour

just time will determine how many users has the game, but i am completly sure that number of users will depen much more from features than from quality

its very easy to understand if u got a base of 100 potential players and 50% wants pvp and 50% wants trade and 50% wants better quality

if u make a game with pvp and trade and quality u have a potential market of 100

if u make a game with just one of those features ure potential is much smaller

if u are looking for a small comunity very specialized its ok , but if u are looking for a big comunity and a game who gets more than 25% of hack and slash players of world u need to add all features that rest of games have and more than them and have better quality than all them!!!

The video games market was worth over $90 billion in 2020 and PVP games value was worth $74,6 billion. No1 can think without pvp will be more players.

And if u got pvp , u need trade cuz 75% of ppl who wants pvp wants to develop char as fast as posible to start with pvp as soon as they can.

You can argue with other aspects of game, but if u look for a big comunity u need maximum features.