The Case against a Trade Economy

This sounds like a band-aid to PoE’s garbage trade system, tbh. However, I don’t think trading uniques this way would be a good idea, because many of them have stat ranges to roll and someone could just swipe your good unique for a “worst in slot” roll of the unique you might be after–an especially bad deal if the reason you want that unique is to get a strong roll in that stat.

I’m generally against barter systems anyway. Haven’t seen one that I liked and it doesn’t make sense that we want to use a prehistoric economic system that humanity correctly moved away from.

There is a good reason everybody everywhere moved away from bartering when they invented coinage.

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Absolutely.

It’s actually funny. In D2 gold had no real value because it was too easy to create/lose, so players started using runes, then some of them made D2jsp–ultimately just using “points” as currency.

PoE tried to replicate this, but people just used the crafting materials as currency instead–to the point that they are actually so accepted as currency that people sometimes forget that they really aren’t (in terms of game mechanics).

Warframe was supposed to be a barter system, but people rarely do that. It’s all in terms of platinum. Even when platinum isn’t being directly exchanged, the value of the items are being weighed against it to estimate value.

If LE lets shards/runes be traded, they will likely become the default currency because gold has so few uses and low value. If these aren’t traded, the next most common (but somewhat valuable) non-gold item is likely to be–I’m thinking bases with perfect implicit rolls, probably, but we’ll see.

Perhaps it’s possible to make a barter system that doesn’t suck, but I find that doubtful. It seems way more practical and realistic to make a system that embraces trade economies and currency, then design it in such a way that it services the goals of the game devs and players as much as possible without trivializing the game.

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Sure, that’s possible. There are also ways to mitigate that.

Perhaps if you are online you can confirm the trade within x minutes, or it’s auto-declined.
Perhaps you can only trade while you are online.
Perhaps you can ‘rate’ the trader you recieved items from. If they gave you crappy items, you give them a low rating. And you can specify how high/low the trader rating you want to trade with is.
Perhaps items have an affix level, and you can chose to trade with items +/- 10% of your item. If you want a better item, you need to accept the risk of a worse item.
Perhaps you don’t care about the quality, because you just want ANY version of that item
Perhaps you can fuse multiple uniques of the same type to ‘reroll’ a new version of the same unique. You won’t care about ‘garbage’ stats, because you’ll be consuming them.

I can’t comment on whether or not it’s similiar to POE’s trading system, as I’ve never used it.

I just don’t think it’s a sound enough concept to try to fix. No offense.

However, I got a bit of a giggle at this idea…

You ever see that “social credit score” episode of Black Mirror? Yeah, definitely no way this could backfire… lol.

FOr me trade is a must and a part of any ARPG game. I dont have a lot of time and I would like to have the option to improve my gear / get other stuff if I need to. For some players this might demotivating, for others it is a motivating aspect of the game like for me.
I also enjoyed the feeling in D3 when I logged back in and saw that someone needed (and bought) the item I offered.

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If you just take the price tag off of the item, you still get that item you need, and you still feel good when you’re notified that someone took that item you donated.

And, no bots/gold farmers. Win-win.

Except that isn’t how it works, and he may not have cared to post the item in the first place if there wasn’t something to gain.

Then it isn’t about trading or satisfaction of helping players - its exploitation for profit.

Welcome to an economy!

Also, “exploitation?” Grow up.

Capitalism is founded in exploitation. Without exploitation, capitalism literally does not function.

Who needs to grow up? :slight_smile:

Don’t forget the cooperation.

Oh, yeah. You read about Marx in college and think you would even have video games to play without capitalism? Hilarious.

This is patently false. It’s a fallacy of composition. Just because it can occur in the system doesn’t mean the system is founded on it or can’t function without it. Capitalism is founded on the voluntary exchange of goods and services, usually through some medium of currency.

It’s no wonder you’re so wrong about everything trade and economics. You don’t even have good definitions or understanding of what the concepts are.

So yes, you need to grow up. :mushroom:

Capitalism without exploitation is called Communism.
Profit is literally exploitation.
Otherwise, every single corporation in the world would be a 501c3 (non profit).

Yes, I’m sure you’ll win over lots of people with that failed logic. :roll_eyes:

As fun as these threads have become, they’re also going nowhere given that neither of you will budge. It’s not a discussion, you’re both shouting at the wall.

Look, if a video game “economy” is purely fair (don’t ask me how to achieve that, but go with me here), then Player A is trading to Player B an identical value of what Player B is trading to Player A.

  1. If it is not fair, and one player makes out in the deal, then its not trading - its exploiting. Its profiting. Its gaining an unfair advantage with those 16 hrs/day you have that the other player doesn’t have.
  2. If it is fair, and the trade value is dead-on equal, then its not an Economy. Its just players swapping items with each other, and the concepts of “currency” and “profit” don’t exist, so there is no need to shoe-horn the trading system design into using those mechanisms.

So, do people want fair trade or do people want unfair profit and exploit?

Those that want to take advantage of other players are scum, and deserve no consideration or courtesy any moreso than botters, hackers or RMTers. I refuse to act like exploitive people deserve respect.

  1. What if both players trade a lower-value item to them and get a higher-value item from their point of view?
    That’s the ideal.
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I did say “I have no idea how to accomplish a measure of objective fairness”, though. :slight_smile:

To be fair. :slight_smile: (See what I did there?)

As long as you think “profit = exploitation,” you won’t have a persuasive argument to make on anything regarding trade. Llama provided a perfect example of why. Let me give you another, using PoE as an example:

Player [DogeCoin420] has an item I want, but it’s priced higher than 3 other players, say 70c. I can’t reach 2 of those players, but the 3rd one has an inferior version of the item for 50c.

For 1, What is the item worth?
And 2, If I’m happy to save some currency to buy the cheaper one or would rather have higher quality and pay a little more for it, Who is being exploited?
Lastly 3, If I value that item more than I do my currency and the other player values the currency more, again, Who is being exploited? (This being Llama’s point)

It’s not as simple or cut and dry as you try to make it sound. It’s why the Marxist theory of value is incorrect. You have a lot more homework to do, so stop trying to tell people they don’t enjoy economies, because most people clearly do. It’s fine if some people don’t, but that doesn’t make it some “plague on gaming” as you said earlier.