In the last two dev streams, Mike has stated that there will be some form of trade in patch 0.9. What that looks like we don’t yet know.
Q: We should have some form of trade in 0.9 though, right?
I just want to be clear on what the definition of the term trade is. When you say some form of trade, the question that I’m answering is – will there be any method by which items can move between characters in some way? That is the plan, yes. What that looks like, any details of what that is…no information. Though, the plan is to have some way where items are transferred from some character to some other character in some situation, somehow. I hope that was clear.
Source: YouTube Link
Q: Do you plan to release multiplayer and trade soon?
So multiplayer is coming with our next major patch and the form of item transference between players, whatever that looks like, will be with that initial drop. We don’t have any timelines on when that will be specifically because it’s very much a when it’s ready thing.
We’re currently in closed testing for our multiplayer systems with a group of Community Testers. The Community Tester program is an open application process that has an almost 100% acceptance rate at this point, I think, but it just takes a while to get in. If you’ve submitted to that and you’re not in yet, I apologize. We’re working on it and we’re working on making the process faster too because we’ve got way more applications than we thought we’d have. Apparently there’s a lot of people that are interested in it. If you do get into that, a note in general, it’s still not a finished product yet and there’s a very long list of known bugs that I strongly recommend reading first before you start reporting bugs because most reports I see are on that list. Yeah, so we’re still working on it and there’s no details yet.
Source: YouTube Link
Q: When can we expect trading to come? Sometime after 1.0?
There will be a method by which items can be transferred between two players in 0.9, when that comes out.
Source: YouTube Link
What we do know is that they’re currently working on trade and whatever that method of trade is will be tested with the Community Testers in the coming weeks to gather feedback on before it’s unveiled to everyone in a development blog.
Q: With multiplayer, how is Last Epoch going to deal with “ease of access” to gear? There are criticisms of the trade systems of Path of Exile (free trade to all) and Diablo 3 (essentially 0 trade). What are long-term and short-term plans for Last Epoch in relation to trading gear and crafting materials?
Judd: We’re mindful of how our systems up to this point have been created to enable a great solo experience. With the Monolith giving an amount of target farming paired with our directed crafting system, gear drops in multiplayer will be individual and a core goal for trade in Last Epoch will be to ensure that it does not significantly take over progression from those systems. Again, when it comes to trade, we’ll be trialing a version of trade in the coming weeks within our CT program that we hope to get good feedback on.
Zizaran: Cool. It’s going to be a hard problem to solve. It must be interesting entering a genre that has so many other games in it as well.
Judd: Oh absolutely, and trade is so incredibly important to how progression in these games come about. We completely understand the implications that implementing any type of trade inside of these games have and we’re approaching it very carefully and thoughtfully with all the experience from the other games in the genre before us.
Dan: Yeah, a lot of the time talking about trade we recognize breaking down all of the problems that other games have made numerous attempts at systems and we kind of had history to understand it.
Source: YouTube Link
Q: What are the plans for trade?
Judd: Yeah, we know that people are anxiously awaiting information on trade. It has huge implications in games like this. We won’t be unveiling our updated plans for trade today, but I will say that our first trial of trade is going into the CT build to gather feedback on within the next week or so. I will say that our main goal with trade has always been to ensure that it does not become the main or always best way to obtain gear, upgrades, and sidestep the item hunt and crafting system we’ve poured a lot of love into. So those are the main goals and we have a trial for what this will be. Hopefully we’ll get good feedback on this when it comes out in the near future for our CT program.
Dan: Yeah, I think you were mentioning that, you know, something that we talked about before – you don’t really want to promise things about a trade system before you’ve actually had a chance to test it, try it, and get good player feedback. So we definitely want to make sure we do that this time around.
Source: YouTube Link
4 Likes
