BOE is the same as BOA from a trading or economy perspective, sure you will lose a certain amount of items as they are used but the majority will be hoarded by those playing the market, bought low sold high… BOE results in even higher price inflation historically. Let’s be honest with ourselves, ARPG’s have been around for decades and there are certain elements that work well, AH, API indexing from stashes, weighted RNG, chase items etc… if these components are not balanced and managed well the economy disappears such as we saw in WOW with BOA or D3 with the removal of the AH, or POE with no AH
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As a POE SSF player, make sure that the game doesn’t require trading. Not all players want to trade.
The biggest issue I had with D3 at launch as the only loot I ever got was via the auction house. I want to find my loot, not purchase it. When D3 released their expansion and removed the auction house, the game for me became much better. One could certainly argue it is too easy to get the loot you need in D3.
I want to be able to find my own loot, and craft/upgrade items if possible. I understand it will be more difficult but the game should be playable and not a horrible experience if I don’t want to trade.
Ken
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Ken, I have a different vision of what i would like for this game. POE and D3 were mismanaged messes and unfortunately only what is available now. I am here because i want a game with a better economy and i am probably not alone. it sounds like you want a game that already exists
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I suggested in another post to make legendaries modable. (just immagine the satisfaction of a perfected legendary with maximim added stats, thats what you play for isnt it ?) It was a common D2 “complaint” that people would all have the same build with all the same legendaries. They listened to the customer and made yellow items have a primary role initially in D3. That turned out simply not to be fun and they turned back to legendaries.
Trading does play a very important role here. Because D3 doesn’t have trading, the legendaries needed to be much more common. Because of that and the fact that you are not building wealth for your trading game, you very soon had little equipment goals anymore, so the ancients and primal ancients were needed. Unfortunately, it does get kind of boring after you have gotten your initial set in a few days.
I think trading is fun and legendaries are fun and i would try to make a system that incorporates both. I also think upgrading legedaries is fun. The question is how to make it all work well together.
I would consider not doing an AH for trading at all and just let it be a more personal experience where you create games called “wtb Itera Bow offer 6000 shatter stones”. If an AH is used, it should have certain limitations. Part of the D3 AH failure was that it was it was too good. It had all the filters and stuff and would be way to inviting to over-use (dump everything you find in there, get coins, buy what you need) D2 trading on the other hand had some charm. I have also played other games where you could literally set up shop while AFK, but thats more a thing for MMOs. Maybe an AH with a fee high enough that it will only be used for high-end items would be good.
I think upgradable legendaries besides being cool, could also be used to prevent this market saturation you speak about. Either make the legendaries bound as soon as you mod them, make them have a chance of fracturing or let them be upgraded by shards gotten from shattering the same legendary. (or a combination of those ofc)
I would keep legendaries be rare as they were in D2 and make the upgrading use only like 10 or so legendaries on average to make 1 perfect one. Not make it require so many that it only works if legendaries are common. If we have trading, they can’t be common. If we have no trading, i think D3 mistakes are going to be repeated. (either having yellows be the best items, which just doesnt give that same satisfaction, or having the legendaries be too common)
If they are rare but only need 10 for a perfect, in diablo 2 terms, that would make it very feasible to have perfect upgraded stormshields, shako’s etc and it would reduce them flooding the market. A perfect upgraded windforce or grandfather would be a dream only happening for a few on the server.
Part of the D3 AH failure was that it was it was too good. It had all the filters and stuff and would be way to inviting to over-use (dump everything you find in there, get coins, buy what you need) D2 trading on the other hand had some charm. I have also played other games where you could literally set up shop while AFK, but thats more a thing for MMOs. Maybe an AH with a fee high enough that it will only be used for high-end items would be good.
D3’s AH problem was rather multifaceted, but it was too good mostly because itemization was really bland/boring, with an overabundance of useless affixes because every build scales with CHC/CHD and main stat, and because there wasn’t much else, attack speed also scaled better than any of the stats I didn’t just mention.
There also wasn’t much other than the 13 item slots for a player to look to improve. Nearly no character specific customization post 60 (now 70), and no runes, interesting crafting, charms, or other alternate progress systems that involved choice.
This pushed over randomization onto the 13 item slots. Which is what made the AH so good. I tried playing without it, but ended up relenting, when trying to play a non-OP class in inferno, and not being able to find upgrades for a really long time.
Ultimately, if D3 had more interesting items, and had other tradables (runes, charms, relics, etc) in addition to the item slots, the drop rates could have been adjusted better, so that some items were still rare and might require the AH or trading another rare item to get (if you really wanted it), but that most of the playerbase could find upgrades for a sufficient amount of time before the min-max phase without needing to visit the AH.
So far, the game systems in LE seem to have the forethought and depth to allow the Bazaar to exist without having the same issues that plagued D3. They’ll also have a much more involved community with an Alpha and Beta phase to iterate on the rules and restrictions, which should help a ton.
Bit late here, just played through the Alpha and urgh, this trading system sounds horrible to me. Of course, I haven’t played it, so it’s all just speculation anyways. I’m a PoE vet, playing since open beta, for context.
Powerful unique items being available for 1c is one of the things I like the most about PoE. It might sounds stupid, but I don’t like grinding very much. In fact I hate it. What I love in ARPGs is theorycrafting builds. Cheap powerful uniques that are available for 1c are usually out of meta. That means to properly utilize them, you at least need the ability to come up with a powerful build on your own. I like theorycrafting cheap builds for leaguestarts, rake in the monies, because everyone else throws away their currency by playing meta builds while I’m fully geared with a few ex and can farm high level content quicker than most people.
To me trying to “outplay” the meta is much more interesting than mindlessly grinding and playing the lottery.
And of course there’s the issue that (in PoE) uniques are very often build enabling. Grinding with a build you don’t want to play because the build enabling item you want isn’t available yet is the worst fucking feeling ever.
Looking at this with very PoE tainted glasses, I’d wish for the exact opposite. Make all gear but uniques untradable. This is of course not an option if Last Epoch is going for a more D3 approach to uniques/legendaries, but I personally hate the D3 approach, so shrugs.
Let’s look at a concrete example in PoE. Rare jewels. If you are crafting rare jewels in PoE, you don’t try to roll a good jewel for your particular build, you try to roll a good jewel for whatever build, sell it, and then buy the one you need for your build from the money you made. This of course floods the market with good rares, because you keep any good rare, not just good rares for your particular build.
Items in PoE like Atziri’s Disfavour that is just simply a unique axe that’s straight up better than most rares is simply dumb and should be removed.
Just my 2c.
I have played PoE since early closed beta (2 acts, no oversoul, trading by throwing things on the ground) and i hate the ease with which you can upgrade your character. It really turns me off when i know i can gear my char for endgame with 10 chaos, and 99,99% of the loot i find is essentially worthless. So i really like the direction 11h is taking with the Bazaar, i hope it will keep finding legendaries meaningfull. If not ill just play SSF as in PoE 
- not gonna miss out of what looks like a great game
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I just wanted to point out that one of the reasons there is so many “worthless” unique items in PoE is that they have overbuffed the drop rates of them at some point. Things like goldrim used to sell for exalted orbs in Hardcore and uniques in genral were more difficult to get because they were actually very rare. Additionally, there was less diviniation cards for deterministic farming. Because PoE has been going more and more casual over the years, they decided they they have to buff the droprates, they introduced more cards AND ontop of that they have been pushing the clear speed meta of clearng maps in 45 sec.
Imo well adjusted pace of clearing and proper drop rates of legendaries should be enough to keep those items valuable. So many restrictions on the trading is very off putting, like i really really dislike it and it would be probably the reason why i wouldnt give the game a proper try apart from just messing around now and then.
Without looking too much into this, I’m just going to throw in that whenever I hear restrictions or control over a game, I will be concerned. On the other hand, I’m all for trying a system the developers want to try because it’s not like they can’t change it especially if the community speaks out unless they want players to leave the game. You can’t make everyone happy but there is nothing wrong with trying your own vision in your own game and molding it to in a sense go half and half with your idea and community idea together.
My concern is, since everyone wants to compare with PoE, that this game is not free to play. I feel like the systems are almost backwards. What I mean is, I could see PoE since it’s free to play having LE type of system with the restrictions on trading and what you can trade whereas LE would have the openness of PoE’s trading except with the bazaar and not third party sites to search. LE is not a free to play game and I have never enjoyed a game that restricted me like items not being tradeable, waiting a certain amount of time until said item can be traded or items that are so rare like a Mirror of Kalandra that it almost feels like it shouldn’t be in the game. I understand the excitement one would get and rng plays a big role in these games, but I put thousands of hours in PoE and personally feel it’s ridiculous that I still have not had one drop. Not that I’d ever use it, but to me an item like that just doesn’t feel right in a fast paced arpg. I’ve played so long that if one dropped I probably wouldn’t get that excited and just say oh yay a mirror, guess I’ll just throw it in my stash and never use it. Chase or build enabling uniques or other types of items can be rare, but like others say, there are players who don’t trade which wouldn’t affect them unless the drop rates are terrible.
With that said, I am not happy with restrictions especially in a game that was bought, even a small inventory because I usually farm for hours and hopefully won’t have to go to town every few minutes. I know there’s reasons like bots and rmt type stuff and I know you’re trying to look out for the community and health of the game but also don’t forget we still want to have fun and not feel restricted. This is all speculation though and still early development so we’ll see. Show us your system when it’s ready for testing. I’m sure it’ll at least feel a little refreshing being able to search for items in the game rather than alt tabbing or looking at another screen on another site
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I don’t have much more to add. But I’ll just say I’m quite leaning towards the arguments put forth here that supports a less restrictive trading experience. But certainly, let’s try out what the devs have in mind and iterate along the way in alpha/beta 
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sounds ‘smart’ and for sure going in the right direction. again, i think a ‘closed’ environment like D3 will not work in the future.
you are making a strong point here. it’s not just about the business model. The drop rate and the item classification (common, rare etc) AND the items stats is a subtle thing. Again, one D3 example : honestly the worst i think : these ‘primals’ items as i’m sure you’re aware of. basically super super rare items coming with max stats. Well, it’s dumb, 90 % of the time : you do not get an item for your class or anything useful, also, max stats yes but having a ‘primal’ item that is completely useless is a mistake, a big one. for example a primal set item should come with at least one or 2 primary stats. So sure, it keeps people in the game; farming like donkeys, but it’s ridiculous. That D3 ‘system’ completely killed the crafting ingame, why crafting when you can spend your days farming for that primal item… ?
I am having a hard time adding any additional arguments that would benefit the conversation. As previously stated “It’s not like they can’t change it”, I say go with what devs have envisioned and then go from there. I am impressed with the communication between everyone, makes me want to be a part of the community more. I totally look forward to watching as this game develops and maybe inputting something of value. Thanks all
That’s great to hear!
Glad to have you with us. 
Hello guys,
Wonderful game you have here and I just became a supporter. I do have a warning for some ideas mentioned, however:
In the old days Diablo II created a good item & trading system considering it was the best of its kind. Several people tried to copy it and changed the wrong things, but one group did a better sequel than Blizzard themselves. The game in question was Path of Exile, and although imperfect they certainly came closest than anyone else.
If I can offer one critique it would be this - don’t just look at systems “you” like and pick and choose, a narrow myopic view can lead to a very bad decision. Understand why other games did things and what their goals were. In the case of Diablo 3 - blizzard made the horrible trading system because they wanted to maximise their profit. They made a shallow stats, skills and item system, because they wanted to minimise cost of design & balance.
On the other hand GGG wanted to make a free to play game - and although amazing - that gave them a lot more economic problems, which the devs here are understandably concerned about. However, as someone previously said a lot of the issues were from the fact that it was FREE. A gold/currency farmer would only have to lose one account, or even perhaps one mule. A little time lost but no money. When he loses an account that’s a much bigger problem for him, especially since they tend to live in poorer countries. The reward for 11th Hour is that they improved the economy and were paid to do it (from the botter who bought their game). If you ever need new blood you can always have free weekends or a demo with a level cap, but we’re here to discuss the market… I mean bazaar.
BoE/BoPickup are terrible archaic systems which are not fit for ARPGs, and although some people defend them, they are also saying they prefer playing SSF (self-found aka 99% solo play). I don’t see the issue with a mechanic they’ll avoid/not plan on using.
For example I plan on playing only Hardcore mode - because to me without the risk of losing it all, there’s no challenge in respawning - but I would never advocate that you make a Hardcore-only game
PoE did get something very wrong however - I draw wisdom again from a previous poster - drop rates. Intuitively we think all uniques have the same drop rate, sometimes only certain bosses can drop certain things and that’s cool, but uniques having different drop rates - outside of iLvl/mLvl/cLvl requirements - is counter-intuitive. They should have just added more rarities. Example: unique tier items make something unique - change how skills behave, etc. epic tier items are just very powerful, hard to find items.
The bazaar limit isn’t a bad idea but what about the bazaar looks like an auction house, but doesn’t function like one. Instead of automated trades you have people whispering you (by clicking Buy it automates a message/item link) and they whisper you?
As a player I would think twice before I list every junk item in the hope of getting some gold, because people will be whispering me constantly. Also it requires you to be online and therefore there’s no instant access. Maybe that gives you some helpful ideas But please no BoP/BoE/BoA before understanding why those systems were made, I think your goals, 11th Hour Games, are vastly different.
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Hi Mastery, welcome to the community and thank you for your support. You raise some very good points and I have to say that I agree with your concerns. We don’t expect to get it right on the first try. I’m sure that the plans we have for the Bazaar will evolve as we experiment with it at scale. It’s actually one of the systems that we want to get up and running fairly soon so that we can start testing it out. Currently, we are planning on having certain situations in crafting where it binds the item to your account but makes the crafting guaranteed to work. We are planning on having most (if not all) items that you find out in the wild be tradable on the Bazaar or giftable to your friends.
We really like the GGG trading system a lot and want that same sort of market to happen. You’re right though, we are trying to avoid gold sellers being a thing. We are also trying to avoid players needing to go to another website or program (e.g. poe.trade) to set up a trade.
Most of the devs (myself included) are more much responsive on our discord.gg/lastepoch/ if you are interested in diving deeper into it.
This POE trade manifesto was brought up recently in POE reddit. I actually think it is instructive design philosophy for a successful arpg, and thought to share the link here:
I am not sure the idea of a bazaar is compatible with the ideas within. But will give EHG’s vision of a bazaar the benefit of doubt and experience it before I feedback further about trade ideas in this game.
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I agree having a bazaar, or open game trading without the need to rely on third party sites is a great idea. In the case of path of exile having to use a 3rd party site was both annoying and also encouraged and made it far easier to manipulate the market. D2 had an even bigger problem where everything was relied on d2jsp where scamming was rampant since FG was an entirely different system from d2 itself… which brings me to
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Having gold as the main currency just isn’t a good idea from my experience. The inflation that grows when gold is the main currency in games pretty much always ends up destroying large parts of the economy Being a new player years after the game was released means that all the gold you get ingame is of close to no value. Items tend to retain value far better which is also why an itembased trading system needs no sinks. Even though tons of goldsinks can be added, usually the most effective goldsink is taxation of trading. This pretty much is just a way to discourage trading, which i dont think is a good idea in itself. Then you have other problems with your propose of how to implement the taxation and trading system. For starters it hurts a player who geniuenly wants an item and is willing to offer more than the first offer but is discouraged by the increased taxation because he was late in finding the offer, that goes against the idea of the bazaar (open market). Secondly there is times when you need considerable time in order to find a person who actually needs such a specific item, for example it took me 8 months until i found a buyer for my 68stat cold sorc amulet, the system you are suggesting, what time would it limit the trade to? It would possibly pretty much destroys the market of nieche items and turn it into RNG(an item valued at 100x could be sold for 1x because its such a niche item which leads to flipping fest)
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Even though I understand the desire to dismantle RMT, the way to go about doing so isn’t destroying trading, that would just mean that you have given up, ill get back to this point.
The 5 item option is also counterproductive, you will simply have people with many alts. One way to make “mid” level items retain value is by them actually being “useful” in the long run (in the case of diablo 2 tons of early game items retained value because they were great items even in end game, example runes, soj, shaco, titans, the list is huge) or gatekeeping the highend items to a much larger degree (very hard drop rates), or alternatively making them fit niche roles, where there isn’t alternatives depending on build even if you level higher. As for items maintaining value later on is a completely different story.
Besides gatekeeping the best solution to help maintain item values, is to disable a full on public list trading system (namely the bazaar you are talking about) and make trading a bit more of a social-interaction, similar to something like ragnarok online where you had to go around opening peoples trade windows manually but instead of prices perhaps you have to actually manually talk and trade with them. This makes it more difficult to find cookie cutter items, and unlike PoE the API should not be made public. The idea isn’t to limit trading but to make it require more of an effort and not turn it into a worldwide open list.
Most of the things are more or less debatable and difficult to create a perfect system. Plenty of games have managed to make even a pure gold system work without even a taxation system (runescape etc). But the absolute worst idea is to make items untradeable, the concept is wrong on so many different levels. Regardless of how you do it you will pretty much destroy the logevity of the grind either by simplifying it or making it discouraging in these 2 ways:
In my opinion a game needs alot of gatekeeping on itemization and making it simple to get the stuff you want is a bad idea, if you don’t do that then you fail to create logevity and the desire to fulfill the journey of putting together a character/build. I would go as far as to say even some build-enabling mechanic items should be gatekeeped pretty hard (to create desire). When i was a kid trying to scrape everything together until that day i finally was able to get an enigma for my barb was an incredible journey. If you hold the same opinion then having stuff be untradable is will be a desire killer since it would be extremely discouraging to find an item other than the specific you are searching for since you can’t trade up for it, I would’ve never been able to get together an enigma in D2 if it wasn’t because i scraped together everything i found and traded towards that goal. The game simply becomes too RNG and even great item drops won’t give any satisfaction since they are useless to you if lets say you have 2 of them already (or if you don’t play that build/character).
That leads to option 2, which is the only other option make the game simple where every item you could desire can be found grinding fairly easily. If you have good stuff be untradable then this becomes the only option otherwise the grind will be hell and unrewarding. There is no need to argue about this one, it pretty much destroys all human psychological desire to work towards a goal/build, its free handed candy. It isn’t a bad idea but you won’t have a long player retainability.
Then there is another aspect to the whole retainability equation, and that is how do you monetize the game. This is where diablo 2 failed really, it had too much player retainability due to the perfect balance of itemization / trading BUT it was a 1 time purchase game meaning in an economic perspective it was a money sink due to server upkeep and endless free entertainment after purchase. The main goal of a game with longevity should always be tons of microtransactions(cosmetic) or expansions to go hand in hand.
Trading is almost as important part of the game as itemization, it should not be taken lightly. Even if it is taken lightly, i hope you never in any shape or form agree to untradables, its such a flawed concept. In a similar fasion binding on account is also pretty flawed.
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I disagree completely. However I am not going to write out a long post. To keep things simple what me and many of my friends hate, what games like this come to be, is having to take forever to get a build defining item. I think making those items untradable while having the drops similar to d3 is a wonderful idea. I loved everything about the latest version of d3 except the fact that there is zero build diversity. If this game can give me early game trading and build diversity while keeping other people from playing monopoly with high end items I will be a full supporter. I will say that the drop rates don’t have to be quite as common as d3.
So many awesome ideas floating around!!
I’ve got my own to add to the mix. (and i’ve never seen it done on ANY game)
What if the bazaar acted like an AI middleman that bought items for a price from players based on rarity, level and modifiers and then set the price itself to sell it based on those same factors (+10%) and sold everything anonymously.
For example - Player A has 3 items he wants to sell. A low level 2 mod item, a high level 4 mod item and a unique.
When he sells the 2 mod item, the Bazaar checks its current stores. It sees that this particular low level item have a base value of 100 gold, but there are lots of items in stock with those same modifiers, and two mods are pretty common. So it offers 75 gold.
The 4 mod item is checked against stores, and the bazaar sees that it has a “rare” (that is rare in the bazaars stocks) modifier on it.
The base price for that level item is 500 gold, but that rare modifier in addition to it having 3 other mods makes a big difference so it offers 900 gold.
Finally the unique. Its the only one on the market! This particular unique has a base value of 2000, but because its the only one in the bazaar, and it also has an amazing roll, the bazaar offers 4000.
Player B rocks up and buys all three, at 83 gold, 990 gold and 4400 gold respectively, and upon sale, player A receives his money.
Market saturation drives common items down, which deters sellers, resulting in either a natural plateau or natural fluctuation.
Market scarcity drives prices up, attracting sellers.
At the same time, buyer demand can mean that, maybe you do have a relatively rare modifier on a 4 mod item, but if its something no-one wants, it’ll just gather dust at the bazaar until you give up and vendor it.
Clearly thats a VERY indepth, math heavy retroactive system that also relies on developers setting appropriate base values (which i guess would reflect chance to drop) and modifier values (e.g. number of mods, rarity of those mods, rarity of that item type, rarity of those mods being together, rarity of THAT item having THOSE mods etc etc.)
But FULLY achieves all three main concerns.
Gold will always have value, and new players are actually at an advantage when buying in a busy market, but rare drops for anyone of any level can still be traded for a good price.
The absolute low point of an item would be set by the vendor sell price.
Also completely screws RMTs. They have no-way of selling directly to a player, and if they tried to co-ordinate sales with a player, the rarity of the item would mean they cant even set the ingame price or who actually buys it.
The only issue i see is gold creep.
Maybe my idea in this thread of breaking down items to get components could be the big gold sink. Maybe shattering for components costs more as you level up, so end game you’re having to sink alot of gold in to get the huge amount of components you need.
I guess also rich players could also drive up certain mod prices on a rare item by buying out all the cheap items with that mod. But i doubt it would be worth it.
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