Trade and Armageddon

General
1

Long post. I don’t do TL:DR so hit the back button if you don’t want to read it.

I empathize with the folks that are disappointed about trade. However, I do not sympathize with them. There’s a lot of far fetched hyperbole getting bantered about "I had high hopes for this game, “dead game” “I’m going to sue EHG into oblivion for fraud.”

I am a mac user, I’ve backed the game sense Alpha started (I missed the kickstarter by about three weeks, which irks me to this day. :D) I came on board specifically because I liked their vision and I saw they were going to support the mac natively. Rare and I appreciated that.

October 20, they changed that. An Update to Mac Support

This effectively DID have the strongest potential to kill the game for me because of the very new architecture mac was implementing in the future it was very likely I would not be able to run Windows natively on my mac anymore.

I expressed my disappointment. But here’s the deal and my catch why I can’t sympathize with folks (but let me re-iterate, I empathize a great deal with their disappointment.) They’ve done so many, SO MANY great things with the game. The entire gestation my number one complaint has been the graphics (I work in the visual arts so it’s kind of a sticking point for me.) The amazing growth from those early alpha days is stunning. The game play and the skill selection and options and the musical score and the creative endgame stuff (I still think legendries are really cool). Everything about this is working better and better. It’s gotten to be a better and better game.

But this trade thing, which is still in beta, still at 0.9, is the hill so many people seem to want to die on.

I get it. I understand it. But I just think with everything EHG has done over the last four years (and your also looking at someone who has stuck with Wolcen and you want to talk about a cluster-F?) I find it lacking introspection to know that we have at least one more full “.” to go before 1.0.

Why not just offer feedback and ideas without all the shirt tearing and the-sky-is-falling scenarios and see what happens? That’s rhetorical, by the way, I’ve read so much about this over the last week, I fully realize the internet just f’ing loves drama.

If you read this far, I appreciate it. I think the game is in a pretty darn good place. I also think it can get so much better. I’ll do my best to provide them with constructive criticism and this being their IP they can take that critique and do with it as they designate.

I like this game a heck of a lot.

12 Likes
2

As always, it’s okay to have an opinion and yours is yours.

Not getting mad about EHG scrapping Mac support is not a big accomplishment. It’s your decision for whatever reason. But you can’t walk around and say “Hey, I would’ve had a much better reason for being angry. But I’m not, so you shouldn’t, too”. This is a weird logic.

And to talk in analogies: I wanted to buy a red car. You sold me a white one and said “We haven’t finished the mixing of the red paint, but we’ll paint your car red when we’re finished.” And now you say “Oh sorry, we found red not to be the adequate colour to represent our products. But we will paint your car green”.

I’m disappointed and don’t like my car green. So I go to the forums and complain. People start telling me “What do you want? Doesn’t it drive? Doesn’t it have heated Seats? And look at the interior. Isn’t it grey and cosy, exactly as you wanted? And didn’t you use it already for a few hundred hours? So STFU. Nobody cares about your opinion on color.”

Yes, LE is fun. Yes, a lot of players already played a lot. Yes, it’s systems are nice. Yet, it has no trade. And some people wanted trade. It’s not about if the game works without trade. It would also work with only 1 playable class and 5 skills and one mono timeline and no dungeons. So maybe we should just delete everything?

A player driven economy is a design pillar of online games. People - the experts, developers all over the world - acknowledge this an talk about it in the GDC. And so people here have the impression that LE with missing such an important design pillars may not be as successful as it could’ve been.

2 Likes
3

I like your entirely rational view of the issue. I wish people would approach things like this more often.

The main thing that strikes me every time I read the threads about this issue is how differently I view the analogy you provided. I never once saw it as buying the car. I bought the promise of a car currently in pre-production and the devs provided me with a loaner until the full car is released.

To take your analogy further, I expect that people who pre-purchased the Tesla Truck are 100% not going to get everything that was originally promised and I expect Telsa is going to have to refund some of them.

but this is $35 - its, even for me in a country where the exchange rate to the $ sucks, a miniscule amount of money compared to going to the cinema for a single 3h show with popcorn and I have 2k hours in the game. Even if I were in the no trade = failed game boat, I still wouldnt complain, I’d say oh well, its been good and thanks for the entertainment and move on.

but thats just me.

5 Likes
4

I get your stance on the topic but i want to mention thing you might want to consider as well.

We are talking about one topic right now the trade in LE and the “let down” felt by some community members. This isn’t a LE problem this is a industry problem. Look at how many broken promises and non delivering of features we had all over the industry… it’s important to point that out because in every other industry people would be sued and fired quadrillions of times.

2 Likes
5

Yeah, thats a much bigger issue and I dont personally think its restricted to the gaming industry - I think it applies to a much wider set of industries with the common thread of being predominantly technology based. Promises are made and usually ideas sold without any fundamental substance or true tangible value behind them (crytpo anyone?).

I mentioned this is another thread - I think all of this failure to deliver is coming to a head with people being far more frustrated and angry about things - and potentially taking it personally - compared to just accepting the losses as was the norm in the past. I think the general atmosphere brought about by a more polarised society and the stresses of the world economies etc means that people are fighting more often than not.

Sometimes its good to stand up to crap and people taking you for a ride, but other times its also important to understand proportional appropriate responses and consider that if you dont want to get burned, dont sit too close to the fire.

3 Likes
6

Yeah I’ll stick to the trade example for this post:

They envisioned LE with a bazar and free trade with friends in mind and changed it after a bit of backlash and problems with the system itself… no problem so far. They got a ton of feedback on the matter I can’t even tell how many trade threads rose in the past but there were many with a ton of suggestions.

Now we got gifting and with my rusty english skills I read the announcment as “This is final take it or leave it!”. I’m simply not okay with a gifting/trading system like this in place after all the feedback and time they had to come up with something good.

It took me days to get back to the live streams and to watch them through to get the info that gifting in place right now isn’t final. FFS why didn’t they say so in the announcment or answered this in the thread? :smiley:
A ton of drana could’ve been avoided this way and that’s my biggest issue after all because I simply don’t care anymore.

2 Likes
7

They definitely could have handled that a little better. Even a single line just saying “Gifting is our first real implementation of how trading may work in LE. We will test it with 0.9 and see how the community likes it.” would have helped.

1 Like
8

I didn’t say it was a big accomplishment. And yes, it is my decision based on precedent set by EHGs on-going development standard. And your analogy would work better if it was make and model not color that was swapped out. Because I ordered a Ford and they sent me a Chevy. You ordered a Ford but got a red one instead of a green one and with the stipulation that the green is temporary for now, and they’ll work on getting closer to a color of your choice, maybe not exactly that ‘shade’ of red, but they want to work with you on it.’

This I absolutely agree on. It’s also why I think this issue has manifested such hypberbolic commentary. I actually think it’s even bigger than the industry and goes to something much deeper in consumerism in general but that’s too far off topic.

However I don’t believe ‘every other industry people would be sued or fired’ because those industries don’t typically put out beta products. That IS specific to this, and a few other industries (my own industry being another, and it bugs me to know end.)

Simply put, I think this comes down to how far ‘benefit of the doubt’ goes. EHG has fully demonstrated to me they are not even close to being Sam Bankman-Fried (how’s that for hyperbole) but there seems to be a lot of reaction like it is. Even if this time they didn’t explicitly state this is a work in progress, every thing else, every other communication that has been the NORM. How many times have we seen statements like ‘well, never say never’ or ‘we’re not doing that now but it could certainly change in the future’.

It’s quite literally part of their work plan.

This issue is a huge hot button for people. As I said, I empathize. From the moment I saw the announcement I thought "cool, we’ve got something initially concrete that we can sink are teeth into, give feedback and see where they go with it.’

Many people have just immediately jumped to ‘dead game’, ‘i’m out’, ‘talk to my lawyer.’

Too each their own, I guess. I’m merely lamenting the fact that we still have a long way to go to release, we can still give lots of constructive feedback, we can still guide this to something that fits in with EHGs vision of sharing (GOLDEN RULE: Does not detract from the actually act of playing the game) and get something that could be better than anyone knows.

So, as I said, I’ll be playing the game as long as I have the architecture to do it, and am looking forward to seeing where it ends up at launch.

3 Likes
9

As you pointed out, the change to Mac Support was because of a change that Apple made by moving to an entirely new infrastructure that made continued support of Macs significantly harder and more resource intensive. I don’t think comparing a change that was out of EHG’s hands with one that was entirely in their hands is a fair one.

Here are some other changes EHG has made that are more comparative:

  • Changing the box price from $15 to $35 at launch
  • Removing Gates of Memorium and Epoch’s Call endgame systems and seemingly replacing them with Dungeons
  • PvP disappearing from the roadmap
  • The demo disappearing from the roadmap
  • The Passive Grid system being replaced with a more traditional Passive point system

I’m not saying whether I think they were right or wrong to make any of these changes, just that there’s a better list of changes that are clearly in EHG’s hands. I personally don’t think the comparisons are particularly good for a variety of reasons that culminates in this change being far more visible and impactful to a larger part of the audience than any of the other changes. For my two cents, I also don’t think these kinds of comparisons are meaningful and are just used as a strategy to tell people who are upset that they should not be upset instead of trying to address their concerns, which is never a promising strategy.

2 Likes
10

I mean at this point there really is no addressing concerns. its a boogeyman just like PoE and the infamous powercreep.

We can sit here and discuss the benefits of no-trade for days, but any person who wants a trade economy is gonna ignore your points and go “yeah thats cool, but trade tho” there is no middle ground, there is no compromise, its trade or bust with these people.

I think the trade problem is unfortunately just the beginning of the problems that will exist as LE tries to become its own thing, as it will just be focused on comparison wise to other games in the genre, instead of where it currently exists which is a middle of the road game.

2 Likes
11

Yes, it will be compared to other games in the genre that have features players want. No, because some of those players want trade and don’t agree with your points against trade doesn’t make it a ‘boogeyman’. Saying there’s no middle ground while others are offering suggestions for alternative trade systems that literally compromise from a free economy to a more restrictive one that fits the original intentions of the bazaar system strikes me as insincere. Many people in the LE community want that kind of compromise and were attracted to the trade goals of EHG because it strikes a good balance.

From where I stand, it seems like there’s a lot of people who want to just flat out negate any concerns around trade that aren’t their own instead of listening and trying to understand why something like trade might be important to them. This also goes for anybody who wants trade and doesn’t care about the SSF experience. It’s OK that people want trade, and it’s OK that people want a balanced SSF experience. We don’t need to dismiss one group for the other.

1 Like
12

If we intend to quibble on all of our hyperboles then I’ll quibble that many of the changes you denote were done BECAUSE something about the architecture/structure/conditions WAS out of LEs hands so they had to come up with a good alternative. FOR INSTANCE, the pricing issue, as an estimate would’ve been done without necessarily knowing HOW BIG things were going to get for LE. So, quite simply they could’ve just said, ‘whoa, we’re never going to be able to do this on this little money. Should we just refund everyone and abandon the game or do we need to change our pricing?’

The Apple thing could totally be in their hands. I mean, heck they promised it right. So they should just also redo the game in this new architecture. I mean, right? /s

All in all, the communicated quite well about all of these.

Does it make excuses for anything? No, of course not. Again, I go back to ‘benefit of the doubt.’ Your’s is lower than mine. That’s not a right or a wrong. Just an it is was it is. @DiceDragon says it quite astutely in his comment after mine above.

13

Im totally for middle ground. The “people” you are talking about are 100% a minority.

The vast majority of posts on the topic are “if there is no trade, the game is dead and worthless” or the other side which sing the praises of no trade.

It is a boogeyman because we have two very successful games, PoE which has full trade, and D3 which has no trade. There is no wrong answer.

Just like there is plenty of games where players go super saiyen and they dont lose players from “power creep”.

The problem with middleground comes from the Devs talking about in the gifting post some of the problems with open trade, and other forms of trade, but no one seems to care what the devs have to say. The devs have since day 1 aired on the side of caution when it comes to trade. Because they have always been very much against a full economy, so why are we not listening to them now?

What it sounds like to me when it comes to trade, is that trade compromises a key aspect of other pillars of their core design, and to let it go too far would be to compromise on more then one of the other pillars.

LE has always sold itself as a game for everyone, there is a little bit to do for min maxers, some stuff to do for casual players, and everyone in between. Trade compromises that, its why the gifting post talks most about fun first. Because trade compromises fun.

edit: for example, its pretty clear I lean against trade. Im all for rares/0lp uniques and even maybe exalted being full trade. But Im 100% against LP uniques being tradable. And id like to keep boss drops as something you farm instead of something you just skip farming to buy because “eww imagine farming yucky bird man for his armor” is lame af. And All I ever see people talk about is “how do I get 3lp drops if no trade?”. You dont, you go target farm them.

4 Likes
14

Not true. I totally understand them. I’d just like them to be constructive and not shirt-tearing, end-of-the-world doom and gloom. Give your feedback. Have your say.

EDIT: Should add, the people who are flat out negating concerns around trade fall in the same category. It’s a work in progress. Feedback should be given by everyone. If you don’t want trade, give feedback without they hyperbole.

15

I’m not sure what ‘hyperboles’ you’re talking about.

I didn’t make any exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally and I didn’t accuse you of doing that either.

It’s true that the original pricing underestimated how ambitious the game would become. It’s also true that the ambition was entirely within EHG’s control. Note that I’m not saying it was wrong for them to make this change. Ultimately, I agreed with it, but it’s more comparable because it was a choice they made that wasn’t forced upon them by an outside change. It’s also a change that was less impactful to others because a) it didn’t affect Kickstarter because they got their keys regardless and b) it didn’t affect anyone who bought the game already because they paid $35 for it. Because it didn’t affect anyone who already had an investment in the game, it was for the most part a non issue.

Now THIS is hyperbole!

Benefit of the doubt of what? What are you giving them the benefit of the doubt of that I’m not?

Yes, these are the posts I’m talking about. But I don’t think they’re the vast majority and I don’t think because they exist we should assume that there is no compromise. That seems like a similar line of thinking to me as the one described above.

I have concerns when people invoke D3 as a successful game without trade. There are a host of issues with that, but the main one being it’s Blizzard who has a loyal following of players who will overlook many issues with their games and still play it. LE doesn’t have that so cutting out a large portion of the player base seems ill advised to me, especially with how much growth has occurred at EHG lately which means they need to bring in a lot more money.

Yes, the devs addressed open trade, but they also never promised open trade (and in fact did the opposite from day 1), so that always seemed like a strawman to me. They also stated that they ran into issues with trade systems, but never described those issues or looked to the community for feedback on those systems. It’s a black box right now so I’m not sure what people are supposed to glean from it. I made a trade video months ago describing an AH style systems that I believed could work but in the dev post all they did was state that they looked at an AH but never addressed any reasoning behind why they think it should be off the table.

That is how it’s described, but again, there are no specifics for players to make an informed opinion around and a lot of ideas by the community that seem to work really well. How are we supposed to unify these seemingly contrary positions?

Without trade, it can be argued (and I think pretty successfully) that there isn’t something for everyone anymore. I think it’s been in the design plans since kickstarter because it was considered a necessary condition in order to be the kind of game that could appeal to almost every ARPG fan. I also disagree that trading by necessity compromises fun. I had a lot of fun with the AH in WoW and I’ve never seen a good argument as to why MMO style economies can’t work in an ARPG.

I think this position is reasonable and within the philosophy of EHG when it comes to trade. Only thing that would need to change is 3lp, 4lp, and multi exalted affix drop rates would need to be substantially lower or there would need to be a way to improve their rates through gameplay, but that’s obviously a very solvable problem.

2 Likes
16

What does a loaner have to do with anything? You paid for the car, full price. Now, in the middle of production, they decided to drop some of the options…maybe even the options that enticed you to purchase the car in the first place. Sure, you got to drive something in the meantime, but you’re still not going to receive the product you initially paid for, in the beginning.

Pretending that you wouldn’t be upset about it is just dishonest. And, to be frank, this is what further infuriates those who are upset… the white-knighting, while (hypocritically) pretending everything is hunky-dory. I guaranfuckingtee everyone soapboxing on about not being upset have, at one point or another, been pissed off because a drive-thru got their order wrong. Hey, nothing to be upset about… you got something to eat, didn’t you? It shouldn’t matter if it was what you initially paid for, or not.

3 Likes
17

Mostly because it invalidates playing the game. You had fun with the AH, but how many others loathed that drop rates sucked and they were better off just buying it from the AH?

Trading is fun for some, and a game ender for others. The biggest question is how many people will actually not play if there is no trade? For some people cheating is fun, but its very unfun for the majority, so we ban cheating. Its all about finding the comproised balance that allows for people to have fun.

if your only fun is derived from a market experience perhaps the game isnt for you, but if you like both killing monsters and a market experience, then the game can find something fun for you.

There is so much I dont like about certain games, but I play them because they have stuff I really do enjoy. I think trade can be that for lots of people, as in, they will be able to enjoy LE even if they grumble about not having trade.

18

That’s not really how it works in MMOs. The best stuff isn’t tradable, but there’s a lot of items that can be purchased through trade that are meaningful.

It also never invalidates playing the game and often enhances it. If a player doesn’t like content A where a particular item they need drops, they can farm something else that is useful to another, sell that, and then trade for what they want. Often times this leads to scenarios where people get to farm where it’s more enjoyable instead of being stuck farming where it sucks because of the alternative path that trade offers.

I think when people state that trade ‘invalidates playing the game’ they’re usually thinking about a PoE style system where everything is wide open and playing the market in totality is a viable strategy (although in reality it very seldom occurs so even this line of thought is kind of questionable to me).

4 Likes
19

Hence the /s. :smiley: And I mislabelled on the other one above that. I meant metaphor in that case, not hyperbole. quibble on metaphors.

Well, I see benefit of the doubt as what curtails the hyperbole (back to hyperbole now) of the heightened emotionally reaction and vehemence of many of the posts I see (which granted isn’t everything is somewhat in an echo chamber, etc). When I’m given more benefit of the doubt, I’m less apt to respond with less doom and gloom hyperbole and more apt to engage in it constructively.

Yes, I realize, you have the one’s who are totally fine with NO TRADE and they likely fan the flames as well, so to be fair, this absolutely applies to them as well.

This is still all an example of an end-product that is already completed. They have already perfected what is on the menu and when you ask to order that you most certainly can expect to get what is on the menu. A game, ESPECIALLY coming from a Kickstarter is anything BUT a finished product. You’re warned. EMPHATICALLY ON EVERY KICKSTARTER page that the outcome could vary because of some many unforeseen circumstances.

I certainly agree the ‘white-knighting’ issue of those who think it’s hunky-dory isn’t constructive either but can we stop with having this dissolve into…

Never mind.

@DiceDragon is 100% right. This was an attempt to instill some ‘perspective’ into a topic that I think the outliers (on both ends) have lost site of. That’s my perspective, which of course, is not even remotely the only perspective. You all have your own.

20

You’re quibbling on semantics. Just FYI…

I even posted a thread about this aaaaaages ago asking why they generally didn’t seem to work I arpgs.