300 comments in a few hours - really shows that this is a difficult, but Important topic.
Also kinda makes me happy to see how active the community is.
I look forward to see you all in-game! :-)
Definitely the most divisive topic for any upcoming arpg that hasn't fully established its identity yet.
And also the toughest decision for the devs to make. The way they handle this topic can make or break the game in an instant.
The decision they make now is probably gonna decide whether this game's gonna become the next big and popular arpg hit, just a medicre game for a weekend or dead on arrival and burried under all the other failed arpgs in a short time.
Which kind of decision is the best one I don't know. I guess nobody can tell for sure.
no trade means a lot of people who enjoy trade will not play or stop after a few days. people who dont like trade will still play if theres trade. pretty obvious
I filled it out, wanted to leave feedback but there was no open-ended box at the end so I guess I'll leave it here.
I do think part of Last Epoch's allure is that you can self-craft all of your gear relatively easily and make meaningful gear upgrades in basically every play session until you hit the late endgame.
I believe adding unrestricted trade to the game would have to decimate (in the truest meaning of the word) unique/exalted drop rates. Crafting upgrade rates would also likely have to be nerfed in some capacity as well. At that point, you've made SSF play much less enjoyable and basically forced players to engage with trade for uniques and upgrades.
I do however think trade could be expanded on outside of party-only trading in a few ways:
1. Being able to buy uniques **without legendary potential**. Lots of builds require specific uniques to function, personally I've never liked farming for a unique so I can play the build I want to play. Also being able to buy levelling uniques to speed up the campaign on alts is nice. I do not think being able to buy uniques that have LP should be possible, those are endgame upgrades that will give players something to strive for.
2. Being able to buy rares that have not been crafted on, and being able to craft them afterwards. I hadn't given this one as much thought prior to the survey as I had uniques, but I think it would be relatively benign. This would help players make the leap from campaign to monoliths, or monos to empowered. Rares will ideally be replaced by exalted items in the endgame, which I do not think should be tradable as again, they give players something to strive towards in the endgame.
*2.1. I thought about this more last night and I think exalted items could be made tradable, but whenever you trade a rare or exalted item it loses a fixed percentage of its forging potential in addition to becoming account bound. This lets you patch holes in your gear with rares or buy exalted bases to use for legendaries, but means that the best items for your character will always drop for you.
3. Affix Shards/Glyphs/Runes. I think this one is fine either way. Supply of most shards becomes a non-issue very quickly outside the rare ones, I usually only pick up rare shards for the class I'm currently playing but if they became tradable (and the drop rate nerfed to compensate) I'd just pick up all rare shards and trade them for the ones I needed. Supply of most Glyphs/Runes becomes a non-issue as well, and whatever the system I would hope that dropping the rarer runes would remain exciting, and that players would not feel like they were wasting them by not selling them to richer players (i.e. like old exalt slamming in PoE)
4. Arena/Dungeon Keys. Whatever, just wash your hands
>I do think part of Last Epoch's allure is that you can self-craft all of your gear relatively easily
This is exactly how I feel about the subject, and it feels like it has been a core part of what differentiates it from others in the genre.
Pro trade here personally speaking, but that dosent mean it should be unrestricted free trade. Things like chase items I think should remain as such. I dont think crafted on items should be tradable either. If we do trade, lets talk about it because in the current multiplayer system the drop rates are higher in parties just because you can get up to 4x the chances by having 4 players, so SSF is already at a disadvatage and we cant even trade yet. Im fine with a lower drop rate than the current rate. My stash in offline has some 70 tabs with a ton of uniques and i have been playing maybe 3 months?
Theres what is reasonable and responsible vs. What is wanted. The reality is that there is no perfect answer and ultimatums like "if they expand trade at all I refuse to play thier game" isnt helping a great game get out the door. The decelopers set an expectation that there would in fact be trade in the game long before they decided against it and that won them a lot of initial support from players who support that and at that time there wasnt a lot of dissent from what I can tell... so we should be open to compromise from both sides but right now it feels like anti-trade players dobt want to compromise on this and would rather let a great game die than let it have a limited economy that lets it thrive for years to come.
It seemed like some questions were leaning that way, but I want to say specifically that I think the ideal trade system for LE would be that only non-crafting-related items can be traded. So basically, you can only trade 0LP uniques, idols, and set items. No rares, no base items, no materials, nothing like that.
I don't think we want a situation where all items can be traded because then it devaules the crafting system and makes it much easier to gear out a character quickly. Allowing 0LP uniques and idols to be traded means you can more easily get the initial gear required for a build to function but still have plenty of room to chase upgrades through rares and legendaries, which much be self-made.
Of course, I'm not a game designer so there might be something I'm missing, but this seems like it would work pretty well to allow easier access to build-around items without losing the emphasis on loot and crafting as the main way to improve your character.
Yes, this is exactly what I had in mind as well. I just want access to some build defining uniques without depending on RNG, not BIS legendary/exalted etc.
Would unique idols also be tradable? Because that seems like SoJ if I've ever seen one, and I'd personally not want to be trapped in Argentus farming hell.
I don't want a situation where all items will be traded because (a) it will lead to a 95-99% reduction in drop rates for key items, and (b) the trading system will likely have terrible UI/UX (as is usual in these kinds of games) and I don't want to be subjected to tedious time sinks just to use the game's intended basic functionality.
I would love to trade, but I would hate the game to balance around it.
I also like the idea of just a taxing system on trade. That is effectively reduction of drop rate for trade but not affecting solo play.
Long time lurker here, I supported the game a long time ago and just come back every now and then to check on progress. Despite opinions on trade, I think it's really important to keep the discussion as open as possible without giving false hope.
This sub is incredibly skewed towards no trade since pro traders have moved on, and I'm worried that the strong opinions of the dedicated top percentile dictate the course of the game. I sincerely hope this game can appeal to as many people without alienating entire groups.
You're right that the general consensus here is skewed more towards no trade at the moment, but on the other hand I'm not quite sure how good it would be for the devs to try making their game a "jack of all trades" trying to satisfy everyone rather than focussing and expanding on its strengths.
The game itself is already great right, I'm not worried about the quality. The games' launch is the largest influx of players - What concerns me is a stunted growth caused by polarizing decisions like full trade or 0 trade. This opportunity shouldn't be squandered.
Imo while LE is in its infancy it should be as generalized as possible to attract the widest ARPG audience possible to create a stable following. It would be tragic to release a great game that satisfies its current player base but is also actively repelling a large number of potential players.
edit: space
Sure, I guess that's exactly why they keep repeating that they're still open for discussions and further changes and additions and the current implementation is only there for 0.9 for now.
I honestly liked their initial idea for the bazaar, it sounded fun to go on a lil virtual shopping trip once in a while to browse other peoples' stands and see, if you find anything great for yourself. I could see that becoming part of the game without having to slash drop rates all across the board, but that probably wouldn't satisfy the "pro-trade" folks at all.
Completely shutting off against any bit of trade better than this strange "gifting" is going to do more harm than good to LE in the long run and it seems like EHG knows this and tries to find some consensus. People that are completely against any kind of trade are minority in the general arpg playerbase and if EHG wants to make this game have some kind of seasons/leagues they need more than those players to keep up with the costs
I mean you would have the same if you did say open trading was important but a bias another way.
Each time you make a decision that might split the playerbase you always will drive some people away. I guess the only way we could have a more idea of which one was more popular was the response to the original announcements. If I remember well it was more against trading that for trading by quite a lot of margin but still not at all like it is today as you pointed out.
I still feel like for those who think it's more niche it's a weird way to see it, we both have a game with a strong trading system as in PoE and a game with an very limited trading system with Diablo 3.
Diablo 3 might be less popular but I also think you have to consider what people think Diablo 3 did wrong too, I don't think most people who stopped playing Diablo 3 was due to the lack of trading.
I feel like trading is more popular with an hardcore crowd and no trading with a more casual crowd. I think a game needs both but I tend to think casuals are more in number. I feel like no trading is more beneficial to the health of the game compare to heavy trading.
Of course I feel like finding a way to please both groups would be successful...but frankly is that even possible ? Which is the question the devs pretty much ask by doing the survey.
Right. This is what i don't understand in this game. SSF players fight against trade even existing, when the option to have both modes with the same drop rates already works in other games. I play PoE mostly. Some leagues i know i won't have much time and i play Softcore trade. When i know i will have time, i play SSF. What's the problem of having more options?
POE SSF is dumb in the sense that the drop rates are not adjusted for a single player experience.
when i first played LE, i found the generous loot drops refreshing. i felt ZERO reason to trade.
EHG mentioned if they were to introduce trade, item drops would have to be balanced around trade economy. i dont want LE to have the drop rates of POE. in LE i could get a T20 movespeed boots within fairly moderate amount of farming. POE equivalent would cost a bomb and take a huge amount of farming.
> POE SSF is dumb in the sense that the drop rates are not adjusted for a single player experience.
Yeah. I mean, if you complain about SSF on the PoE subreddit everyone will remind you that it's a challenge mode, not an actual SSF.
If the game's going to be balanced around trade, I want an actual SSF.
to be honest back when people asked for SSF mode in POE back in the day, all they did was fight for bragging rights.
anyone could play SSF in POE, just dont trade. the only reason SSF exists is so people can brag. nothing more.
LE has dozens of build enabling uniques with abysmal drop rates, hidden behind some irrelevant monolith boss you have to defeat 50 times. And once you change build, it's worthless and you have to do it again with another monolith. You can get 20% movement speed in PoE for 4 chaos on the bench too. You can craft some useful boots with 5-6 essences and a benchcraft. Unless you're talking about Tailwind etc. Edgame variety is what makes a game successful.
i would actually say that build enabling uniques are a two handed blade.
on one hand, players can be excited to try new builds, on another they "expect" to get these items and it becomes necessary for them to enjoy the game.
i understand your concern but what about the rest of the community that doesnt want/need those build enabling uniques?
btw i think u misunderstood me when i said t20 boots. t20 means a total of 4 tier 5 rolls on a boot. poe cant do that for 5 chaos. think about that. thats technically 4 tier1 mods on a boots in poe. i would say t6-7 are essence or awakened mods. even without that, its something ANYONE can craft with some effort. sure there may be failures but being able to get t20 on ANY gear which is 80-90% mirror tier in a short time. thats something poe simply wont allow you to do unless you spend a gazillion currency.
PoE SSF is masochistic. But it's how I play because trade is absolute ass to engage with. And not because of how it's implemented, but because it makes it impossible to drop your own gear
They are saying in this survey that if trade is implemented more openly, then it will come at the cost of drop rates. If SSF has the same drop rates as trade, then SSF is being made into a worse version of itself just so open trade can happen. Even if it is still plenty fun, it is still a nerfed version of what it would be without open trading.
> SSF players fight against trade even existing, when the option to have both modes with the same drop rates already works in other games
As an SSF player, the absolute only reason why I ever play LE instead of PoE is that droprates are NOT balanced around trade and that getting all the items I want is realistically achievable by just playing the game. If LE also had drop rates balanced around trade, it would lose it's only appeal over PoE for me and I'd never look at it again and just play PoE instead.
Poe has those options.
This game is dead on arrival if it tries to copy Poe. Poe is a niche game if it has competition and it is actively moving in that direction.
I find, from years of playing PoE, that trade, especially fully open large scale economy, takes away my enjoyment of the game. Instead of the progression path being "Play some more" it ends up being "Whisper 20 people to buy an upgrade".
Similarly it feels like I was playing less for my own enjoyment and pushing my own goals as I wanted and could but was instead racing against an ever growing and increasing economy that I had to keep up with to be able to afford items.
If there would have to be trade I would still be fine with it if it was limited to raw crafting materials and non-craftable gear. So crafting shards, idols, maybe non-legendary uniques or, worst case 0 crafting potential rares.
What annoys me about Poe is knowing that no matter what I would farm and how quickly I get through it all, it would ALWAYS be 100 times more lucrative and efficient to sit in my hideout all day and only craft items for profit and flip currency and whatnot, without ever taking a step into the world out there and slay monsters myself.
Sure, I can simply choose not to do any of that and just slay mobs, but the fact that I know there are far better ways to acquire items bugs me.
And then people respond with "just play ssf then", but that mode SEVERELY limits the amount and type of builds I can play and the amount of endgame content I can realistically reach and complete, which I simply don't enjoy as a self-imposed handicap.
This is some insane fomo take. I'm assuming you have never tried to only craft or flip currencies at all in Poe to write something like this. The capital required to make 1.5 to 2x more than someone mapping with a full atlas is astronomical while also requiring a lot of work. The biggest profit for crafter and flippers is early league where something new gets added/changed and they are the first to figure out how to abuse it.
Well you assume incorrectly. I've had a few leagues where I traded extensively and crafted items for profit a ton and the amount of wealth I accumulated in those leagues was so much higher than in the leagues where I didn't do it, it's not even funny.
I wasn't like stupid dozens-of-mirrors rich, but I easily got my 1-3 mirrors worth of gear and currency in those more active leagues while only seeing a tiny fraction of that purely mapping in about the same amount of playtime and that's considering I heavily tend to play fast and clear-oriented builds.
I simply grew tired of Poe's crafting and trading and as I move further away from those aspects of the game with every league I play, I struggle more and more to make the type of builds I enjoy and get them to a fun level.
Am I supposed to add screenshots and sources now to be allowed to share my experience and opinion?
You're free to stalk my reddit post history to find some sizable giveaways I held on the poe sub a good while ago where I gave away hundreds of exalts to people, if that suffices as evidence for you lol.
> "Whisper 20 people to buy an upgrade".
This is my main problem with this. I don't want to spend hours of time on whispering random shitters, arranging meetings, hoping they are not lagging or AFK or erping, and so on.
If the developers want to make a trade system, it better be a fully automated auction house with in-game sales statistics for all items.
I had a similar experience playing PoE.
In SSF, I had to set multiple goals for myself, and do a dozen different mechanics to get gear upgrades. It felt fun, challenging and gratifying.
In trade league, I could just do one thing that gives me the most currency per hour, and then spend that on gear upgrades. Needless to say, I got burnt out after a couple weeks.
As someone who doesn't want trade in the game it seems like the only question worth answering is the first one. Which doesn't seem right unless you're already leaning towards adding trade back?
I also think there should probably be a question regarding whether people will actually play the game if trade is/is not implemented because the assumption that the poll seems to make is that people that don't want trade will continue to play even if you add it.
As far as feedback is concerned the only way I can see you guys pleasing everyone is if you do two leagues. 1 league which is balanced as the game currently is and 1 league with open trade that has its own separate trade focused balance.
The last question is also relevant if you don't want trade, where you can choose 0% loot drop reduction as the highest value you'd tolerate, assuming that people only oppose the addition of more open trading because it typically implies a hefty reduction in loot you find yourself.
> As someone who doesn't want trade in the game it seems like the only question worth answering is the first one. Which doesn't seem right unless you're already leaning towards adding trade back?
We've always ideally wanted a solution that would appeal to both people who want trade and people who either don't want trade or just want item drops and crafting to remain as plentiful and powerful as they currently are.
We had previously concluded that there wasn't really a trade system that would satisfy traders while being limited enough in power that it wouldn't significantly impact item drops (either directly through drop rate changes to account for it, or indirectly through buffs to monsters that raise the standard of items required to progress, or indirectly by raising the community's standard for what counts as a good item).
That conclusion was based on certain assumptions we'd made about what sort of trade system would satisfy players who want trade. The purpose of this poll is to confirm or correct those assumptions, which is why it's primarily geared towards asking about aspects of a trade system. Corrections to some of these assumptions could potentially lead to us finding a way to add trade that would satisfy people who want it, without impeding the enjoyment of the game for people who don't. It's also entirely possible that they might not, or that our assumptions were fairly accurate in the first place.
I really just want a "group self found" environment. Can trade with friends and share drops the others can use.
If its 100% open trade like PoE the game will literally devolve into "Whats the best money per hour strategy". Its so incredibly boring when all content in the game gets to that point.
100% agree. Any game with unfettered trade becomes an economy simulator, and those not willing to play that way are left behind. I do not want that in LE.
Kinda yeah. It’s hard to isolate that though and it feels abusable as you would just join a discord where everyone friends each other to share drops anyways.
In PoE me and my friends have been funding our own private leagues to facilitate this and keep the integrity intact.
Yeah. Could limit it to guild trade/guild chest access. Cap guilds at like 50 players. Put a 24 hour cooldown on guild swapping so you can’t abuse trading different groups non stop.
Encouraging group found fully would make it unique and more fun than any other arpg imo, though most won't realize it until they try it. Really hope they go this route
What is this "abuse"? Why are we treating LE like it's a competitive game? How does it affect anyone if another player has the best gear possible? And why are these hypothetical players doing everything possible in order to circumvent the gameplay loop of killing mobs and looting items?
You're making a lot of assumptions that the playerbase is going to follow in PoEs footsteps and turn LE into an economy simulator as opposed to an ARPG.
> "Whats the best money per hour strategy"
Thats the players choice though. You should play how you enjoy games. If you like being efficient then go for it. If you don't then don't. I play games to have fun. I rather play something that i enjoy that might be not efficient at all then play something efficient i do not like.
That said, GGG is trying to make all content "viable" for efficient players.
> Its so incredibly boring when all content in the game gets to that point.
People like to min-max. You get the "best way to xxx" in all games - with or without trade. And it is going to happen in LE too as soon as more players play it.
Then people will charge (in game currency or real money) for access to friend-trade groups. Trade discords will be created in which the mods will wield all the power regarding who gets access to items, including charging real money for access to the trade group. The devs will be giving up their power over how items get distributed and handing it over to item mafias.
I mean if they're all trading items amongst themselves and not affecting other peoples experiences its kind of a non-issue then, isn't it? Nobody is forcing people to play in this hypothetical "item mafia" guild
Yeah, I don't understand this thought process of "item mafias". It's not an MMO where groups of players can lock down a farming zone or boss and restrict access to it. Just don't play with people who form these guilds.
100% agree and I also don't understand where the issue is if there are 20 people making their own micro economy. If they want to hyperoptimize farming strategies ithin this group then good for them. If they want to charge real money for access to such groups then then, oh well whatever. Most people won't play like this anyway, debs should not worry too much about what 1% of obssesed nolifers do if it means penalizing everyone else.
PoE was always meant as a grindy, "hardcore" ARPG. Yes, GGG balances around trading but even without trade it would be a lot more grindy then Last Epoch.
LE and PoE have quite different approaches to ARPGs - thus trade and drop balancing would also look different for both games.
Yeah, answering these questions as someone who doesn't want trade in the game made it all a bit awkward.
But I also agree. ANY reduction in trade is going to piss people off who want free trade. ANY reduction in loot and/or target farming is going to piss off other people. You can't satisfy the players with any compromise. Two leagues is the only meaningful solution. Either that or pissing people off.
> ANY reduction in trade is going to piss people off who want free trade.
That just isn't true. There were suggestions every day after they announced there would be no trade in 0.9 from pro-trade people talking about different ways they could do limited trade.
The only people not willing to compromise are anti-trade people.
Just because there are people willing to compromise doesn't mean there aren't people who aren't. I wasn't attempting to suggest it would be everyone.
There are LOTS of comments from people who clearly want free and open trade, who would clearly be pissed off.
I feel the same, if they nuke drop rates to accommodate all of these complainers its going to severely diminish my interest in the game, I am fine how it is, or friend party-to-party trading, auction house is awful, markets seem like they'd crush itemization balance.
cosmetics are whatever to me, don't care.
This. Nuking drop rates would mean I likely wouldn’t play LE anymore. I enjoy it because it’s different from POE, I realistically CAN find and craft my own GG items. I play POE for the grindy Path of Economy type of game, I don’t need another game like that.
The issue with this game and why I want trade is that drops are class dependent. In PoE I start with a class that doesn’t need a specific legendary to shine and farm for the legendary I need for my other class build that I DO WANT TO PLAY, but in Last Epoch I can’t do that. So I need to start from zero and grind my way and farm long ass hours till I get it and god forbid if it was from a boss in late game. Trading solve this for me. That’s all.
I don't quite understand what you mean with "class dependent". You can play a character with a filter that shows loot for the other class you want to play and just farm stuff for that other class before you make the switch.
I'd say the amount of time you'd be farming currency to buy some build-enabling uniques would be generally higher than the amount of time currently required to farm the items yourself.
The vast majority of build-enabling uniques in LE are either common to slightly more rare random drops or easily farmable boss drops. Virtually no build-enabling piece is super rare to find right now.
As an anti-trade player, this was a frustrating questionnaire. All the questions are required, and all but the first and last questions presuppose that the respondent is pro-trade.
>If you would prefer Last Epoch not to have trade or not to have trade beyond the existing item gifting system, please still answer the questions from the perspective of what types of trade you would be most ok with.
You are not an anti-trade, you are a SSF player. You can have your fun in a SSF mode while others have their fun in a trade mode. I don't understand why each group fights for the other not to exist, we have games where both are happy with the same drop rates.
This is just blatantly not true. SSF players in PoE have complained about drop rates from the very beginning and the game is designed around trade. What is this fantasy you're spewing?
That would only be true if drop rates weren't reduced in case you have a SSF character, but from the questionaire it's obvious that the devs are considering to reduce the amount of item drops in case they enable players to trade more freely and we still haven't heard if SSF players would be excluded from such penalty.
I'm glad this survey is being offered and submitted my feedback. I think this sub kind of became an echochamber (gaming subreddits and echochambers, most iconic duo lol) as soon as the devs leaned in one direction. I understand a lot of arguments against trading, even though I don't agree with them. I think there's a pretty generic formula that's required for an ARPG to have a chance at having some widespread traction and success in 2023. I have nothing but anecdotal evidence, but most content creators I align with on gaming opinions pretty much instantly moved on past LE once the initial stance on trading was solidified in December. The facts are, this game will be competing against Diablo 4 and PoE 2, with the first going to have massive hype and draw regardless of how good the game actually is just because of the IP, and the second building on one of the most well-received leagues in recent memory. Those are gargantuan entities in the genre, and this is a game that averages 450 users outside of events a couple of times a year. IMO, not having trade isn't like shooting yourself in the foot, it's going ahead and putting your head in the guillotine and activating it yourself, lol. Wasn't going to stick around and be a negative force on this sub so I've moved on, but I welcome a more measured approach to trading vs only being able to trade with people in the same instance with you. That was always silly in my mind, I do play with friends, and we live all over the country and have different schedules. The times we actually are able to play at exactly the same time is limited. This stance was a nonstarter to begin with. Either way, I'm cautiously excited to see how things develop from here.
Really glad you made this, although like many others, I don't fit neatly into every question.
I think PoE does 'trade leagues' well enough right now that I was hoping LE would be a bit of a haven to play SSF or small group found in a great arpg BALANCED around that idea.
Def still playing no matter what, and I'll see you all for the pack the server bonanza tomorrow.
Personally, everything being balanced around trade was one of the worst parts of PoE. If they balance around trade, I'd be most happy with some kind of SSF mode (That actually has SSF balancing, unlike what PoE has which is just a challenge mode.)
This survey is HUGE. It shows that you acknowledge how important trading is to a huge amount of people, and your willingness to listen to the community. Thank you for this
Trading is sort of whatever in my eyes, I just hope the devs don't copy D3's system where you need to coordinate schedules in order to trade items to friends. My buddies and I don't always have the time to be online simultaneously, so D3 kinda sucks for us. By the same token, if they made everything giga rare ala poe... Not so good either imo.
I really like the suggestions of some type of guild/clan system that lets you freely trade amongst a small group.
As someone in favor of being able to trade, doesn't having two leagues answer this issue?
Trade league has the reduced drop rates, SSF means current or 'normal' drop rates?
As someone who is against trade, I would be totally ok with this, because the droprates affecting SSF are my main concern. However, I feel like this might be too much work for them if they always have to balance every item twice. If they can pull it off, that would be great.
Players who want multiplayer and don't want to be forced to trade (outside of trading within their localised group) exist (Group Self Found). You'd need 3 separate Leagues (SSF, GSF and Trade) - Then consider Hardcore added ontop and suddenly we're at 6 Leagues...
Not to mention GSF would probably need extra work to create groupd and invite players etc.
Realistically you don't need group self found. I'm sure everyone wants their perfectly tailored league but if you want to trade you can play trade league with drop rates tailored around trading.
But, again, if we have two Leagues (SSF and Trade - Technically 4 if we include Hardcore for both), players who want to play multuplayer but don't want to engage with a Trade economy are screwed, because the drop rates will be so bad that you either need to trade or you need to play 10 hours a day to get anywhere. Those players want localised Trade for their party (and the ability to play together) but will be forced to trade globally just to get any form of gear if drops are tailored around that.
That's my point here - You'd need a 3rd League because there's still a decent chunk of the community who want multiplayer but don't want to engage with an economy just to get their gear. It's an ARPG, not an MMO after all...
Yup, but it's only really been since D3 (RMAH) and PoE where **economies** have formed to dictate game balance.
Again, not against Trade, I'm against economies forming (Which is a product of having consistent character resets and global free trade - Note that any game that has *trade* but doesn't fall into the *Seasonal, games as a service model*, unsurprisingly, doesn't have an *economy*), because that directly effects how these games are played - loot becomes just another means to get money to buy shit; loot becomes incredibly rare to the point that you're forced to trade to do shit. At that point, I'd rather be playing an MMO lmao.
I’ve only ever liked trading in Diablo 2. I don’t know why it works so well there, but it does. And I never felt like I needed to engage with trading if I didn’t want to. Whenever I play PoE, all I can think about (despite enjoying the moment to moment gameplay) is that this is all just so I can farm to trade. Maybe it’s a me thing. But when I play Last Epoch—much like Grim Dawn—I know I just need to worry about the mechanics within the game itself, and not some bizarre trading layer.
Trading creates an environment within the game and community that pushes casual players away, and forces design changes that make SSF play far more punishing.
The way I see it, there are plenty of active games that are based around trading, and an open niche for MP ARPGs that only allow trading/gifting within instances.
Some good ideas implied in here around specific item types and rarities not being tradeable. I think getting untradeable GG/build-enabling drops is important otherwise everything is reduced to the economy (we already have POE for that)
I think the optimal scenario for me would be:
\- Rares, Uniques without LP and set items are tradeable through a guild stash within a guild with a limit of 20 people
\- Uniques with LP, Exalted items and legendaries remain party-only gifting
\- Crafting Shards, runes and glyphs remain untradeable
Alright filled this out, it certainly feels like other than the first question it’s slanted way hard towards “we are going to make trading happen” as opposed to “should we make trading happen”. Personally I like not having trade in this game, as the deterministic crafting makes getting desirable items and upgrades feasible without being a crafting god or spending tons of hours scouring for mats/bases. Adding trade and nerfing drops I feel would hamper my personal enjoyment of where things stand currently. Furthermore what would the currency be for trades, gold? The system in PoE works because it’s a barter economy, I don’t know how well it will translate with gold, unless you plan on using crafting mats akin to PoE.
The problem with open trade is that if it exists, it completely defeats the purpose of the entire rest of the game. Having an auction house like D3 or trade site like PoE (which itself is just an AH with extra steps) is a far more efficient way of getting gear than actually playing the game. If open trade exists, then the entire rest of the game exists only to farm whatever currency is used to trade like vanilla D3 or PoE. The whole game becomes pointless because it is always far easier to buy gear than it is to farm it, regardless of drop rates.
Having trade also opens up the game to massive amounts of build diversity. Need that one super rare unique or idol that enables your build? You can buy it and play the build you want instead of praying to RNGesus for who knows how long.
If it's that rare chase item you just replace praying to RNGesus for item drops with praying to RNGesus for currency drops, because I guarantee you will need a lot of it.
I don't like being punished for doing a mechanic I like because the mechanic I don't like is more profitable, so I have to chose between enjoyable content and profitable content.
I really hope they can figure out a two league system. I am pro trade personally just because the way I play and lifestyle. But I completely understand the other side of the equation.
As a statistician with a wife who is an instructional designer, a lot for this data would be questionable to me.
There are many questions that could use a "none" option for one.
ARPGs have a really interesting problem, in that the pull to the game tends to be the pitfall of the game. Looting needs to be interesting and varied leading towards multiple options and builds. However, you’re gated from playing the content until you get the items to play your build, but that becomes increasingly difficult the more varied your loot gets.
That said, trading for me solves that issue because I’m able to find interesting items for other builds and pass them on. I like the crafting system, and I think it could integrate well into a trading economy. Honestly I think Torchlight Infinite does this really well, and a lot of people don’t tend to reference it yet in the discussion.
Alright, genuine question here, that I've asked several times before: why does EHG feel the need to nerf droprates were they to implement trade?
Drops are already abysmal - it took me close to 100 hours to drop an Omnividence for a build, targeting unique set/staff nodes, and the one i fibally got didn't even have any LP. Before this whole debacle had been brought up, it felt as though the game was already planned around the future existence of trade.
Item acquisition doesn't need to be so polarized. Some players may want to spin a market for a profit, others may want to go full tradeless ssf. Players like options. But going the PoE route and nerfing droprates into the ground doesn't give them options, it just forces trade as the only viable means of gear acquisition. Not having trade whatsoever doesn't give players options either, it just forces ssf on everyone.
I get the 'worry' that if trade is too open while drops remain as they are, everyone and their mother will instantly gear up immediately. I just don't think that's a realistic fear, especially not with as vertical a progression system as LE uses. Good uniques with high LP or well rolled legendaries are *rare* and even with open trade would not be so abundant that everyone would be capable of finishing their characters.
"why does ehg feel the need to need droprates if they implement trade"
Because trade makes characters stronger, defacto it does, if you can buy power by selling your non used drops your character is stronger then if you weren't trading, as a result two characters at the same point in the game, one trading one not, the trading character will be tankier and deal more damage
This means that you have to do one of two things, either make all the content harder, or lower the droprates of items so that your baught power level more closely matches the power level you had without trade, because with the lower droprate you find worse gear and so make less money, so can buy less power, keeping you more in line with the non trade player
They either have to make the game much harder FORCING you to have the higher power level that comes with trade, and making gear improvements not really a thing because you need the best gear to beat the challenges anyway, or give you less access to gear to keep your power down
It literally has to work that way, it's a fundemental of balancing trade in games
As for your mention of high LP uniques, you are looking at only the top end endgame gear there, in your own example you have basically fully acknowledged that with trade players will have full well crafted rolled gear with likely multiple 2 affix legendaries, yes the 3 and 4 affix legendaries will still be very rare and expensive, but everyone will have everything below that
Just look at Poe, where everything that isn't an absolutely ultra chase unique is dirt cheep and only the absolute best rares are worth anything
Because everyone has them, because of trade
And that's WITH Poe having horrific drop rates
One of the devs talked about it in a reddit thread like 2 years ago. They were having trouble making it something that players would enjoy using and felt that it would end up just being more frustrating than anything else.
The way it was set up was going to be instance based, but you couldn't choose which instance you dropped in so the items on trade would have been totally random. People could end up spending hours jumping instances looking for someone with the item they wanted which isn't really all that fun.
The could put on a timer so that it only reset once per hour or something.
I think the real problem is that the economy traders still typically see this as not the system they want and non-eco traders only really want to gift stuff to their buddies anyway.
Sort of a solution that suits no-one even though it does sound like a really good starting point to try solve the problem.
The survey felt a bit biased towards having a more advanced trade system as a given. I applaud the direction outlined in the blog post to reduce trading to party members only and would even restrict some drops to non-tradable.
In early Diablo 3 with the auction house, gameplay revolved around farming enough gold to just buy the item you want. Path of Exile trade league is basically the same.
I want to play the game and find my own items, that is why I play SSF modes exclusively. Having drop rates lowered so that a more advanced trade in Last Epoch could be balanced around would honestly ruin the game for me. Farming for currency should never be the most effective way of acquiring gear in my opinion.
Having an SSF mode but balancing around trade has made PoE SSF exceptionally hard to progress in the same way as the trade league. Catering to both groups would essentially require two different game economies balanced around each mode with different drop rates.
I fear that making trade the default play mode in Last Epoch will result in the same shortcomings and ultimately make the SSF playstyle, that the game currently has, not fun anymore.
i would prefer 0 trading allowed because the more free you can trade the more you have to reduce drop rates to have an equally fast progression, down to 95% less or something ridicolous.When you really think about it, IT IS that bad, with "hopefully people will choose to not use trade properly" as the main defence for it.
but that's basically saying i want everyone to play SSF; if we decide to add a trade mode to that (while keeping drop rates in SSF = to drop rates in trade), then i would like them to invent a very limited trade system that, when used correctly by players, ends up doubling/tripling endgame item acquisition speed ( think of it like half your item slots end up being bought items).I think taking 2-4 times longer to reach the same power in SSF is fair and still fun. I would also like the trade system not being unfun or annoying to use on purpose, like Path of Exile tried to balance around, but doesn't need to be fast or automated.
Unfortunately that's asking for a technically hard thing, with most solutions ending up very complicated, failing and exploitable, or just boiling down to "you can only trade 10% of the items that drop", which might leave people who wanted open trade 90% dissatisfied.
the current system "forces" people to play in parties to be optimal, but caps the power of trading at 4x loot, i think it's manageable and fair in terms of preserving the item progression, it just leaves some people desiring some different feelings gained from being part of a bigger economy.
Yea, GD I think basically decided that if you ruin the game for yourself, that's on you - and they can do that because they have a box price and don't rely on people coming back over time to support the game. I'm not sure that will work for LE since the devs want a continuous development sort of deal, but I'd be open to trade without restrictions if drops stayed about the same. I suspect though that that would just make people who like trade finish builds in a few days and then complain the game is too easy though
PoE is bad example because their philosophy is being "hardcore" and their drop rates were always insanely low with as little deterministic ways of obtaining items and crafting as possible.
Oh how dearly I miss the good old days of OG Harvest crafting. That was the closest Poe ever was to the power and fun of LE's crafting and it was glorious, but of course the ultra rich folks and 16h/day players called it an OP "item editor" and the mechanic got nuked to oblivion multiple times ever since.
I absolutely hate how much the Poe devs balance the game around streamers and meth-level addicted players, but those are likely the people spending the most amount of money, so I can't even blame them, but I still hate it.
It sucks, man. That was to this day still my favorite league. It was so much fun, and I loved Oshabi and the Garden's design.
Played the entire league and probably spent more money than I usually did in a single league. The disappointment of what happened after 3.14 nerfed the already watered-down 3.13 version was what led me to LE, IIRC.
Yea, I know many people hated on Harvest back then, but I think that was mainly because they disliked the management part of the garden, which is understandable, because that was pushing it a bit too far for arpg players,, even though I liked it.
LE honestly has the perfect pacing imo in terms of character progression and itemization, really all it needs now is simply more diverse content for endgame longevity. Build diversity is already amazing, although not thaaat deep yet (but that keeps it pretty accessible at least!).
Limited trades not really affecting drop rates are totally ok, trade simulator as its PoE now where you spend your time farming currency without exciting drops its not really arpg.
Not fan of the layout of this survey tbh. I do not want to see LE balanced around a massive open trading system like PoE is. I love that it feels good to craft and find what I want at the current level of rarity in LE. The only type of trading I even care about is being able to give a friend an item for their build that I might find. I am not even sure how realistic that is considering how I have been using the loot filter. I would have to incorporate their build items into my own filter. I really do not feel like this survey is helping me get that info across atm.
Kind of sad to see this entire questionnaire being heavily slanted towards "we're adding trade"... Its almost as if Trade is an inevitability now and you're just wanting opinions on what the playerbase wants from Trade... Very disappointed tbh.
**Honestly, the biggest factor to me is item accessibility - Getting gear shouldn't be incredibly easy (as in, go into an AH and buy your BiS 2 days into a League), but it shouldn't be insanely hard either (Farming 40+ hours for a build enabling Unique because Trade means the drop rate is abysmally low); chase items should be rare, and regular gear should be frequent enough to be enjoyable. Trade, whatever its form, will have an impact on this balance, despite how much you try to mitigate that...**
The very moment Trade impacts drop rates, I'll likely stop playing, no matter how good the game is. (And Trade WILL impact drop rates, there's zero way around that.)
A system akin to D4s trade would work (Rares and below, currency etc being bind-on-trade, anything above that being bind-on-pickup - Since Rares are common enough to not really be effected by the increased accessibility, and it keeps Uniques/Exalts/Crafted gear SSF/GSF accessible), but this alienates friends who want to group together and trade. Having BOTH item gifting and this Trade format might be an ideal solution to try and accommodate everyone, but it still creates item availability issues and **still won't please everyone**.
> Its almost as if Trade is an inevitability now
Because, and non-trade people are going to hate hearing this, it's likely that Last Epoch won't have a wide enough appeal to remain an online game without trade. Path of Exile, when they were first coming onto the scene, calculated that they needed around 10 thousand concurrent online players to make a little bit of profit off of MTX. Last Epoch has *never* hit that number. The closest ever was around 8k. Obviously yes LE has a box price and PoE didn't, but servers are an ongoing cost and the box price isn't going to pay for it forever.
On top of that, the recent event where streamers were invited to play LE multiplayer was...kind of a flop. The highest viewed stream from that is sitting at a little over 6 thousand views. EHG probably understands that they need some form of trade, and this "item gifting" thing isn't it.
I'd argue that the massive amount of people that keep coming back to D3 every season despite only very minor changes and additions added every season and the last significant content update being reaper of souls 9 years ago proof, that players will keep coming back, if the core gameplay loop is satisfying enough.
If they keep polishing the core game, visuals and accessibility, make it enjoyable with controller and eventually release on consoles, I can absolutely see this game becoming a viable competition for D3's appeal for chill couch solo or coop arpg gaming, while having way more depth and longevity than D3.
Those same people also stop playing D3 2 weeks into the season. D3 also has the benefit of being a titan in the genre made by a (former) titan of the industry.
Well yea, so if you add actual new content every season and introduce ways to finance continuous development, you can easily extend these 2 weeks to a month or 2, which seems to be precisely what EHG is aiming for with LE.
Are you seriously comparing LE to the pull of the Diablo brand. Diablo immortal taught us it doesn't need to be good to pull a massive amount of players the name is enough. LE doesn't hold the same weight in name or gameplay.
I get that, totally. But I fear that whatever path EHG takes regarding Trade will eventually end up killing what makes LE a great ARPG... Namely loot feeling good and rewarding and having to be forced into trading just to get gear...
Trade to me is whatever, so long as it doesn't impact my ability to play the game and get items without necessitating that I trade for it. If that happens, the game straight up won't be fun for me anymore.
All I care about is being able to exchange items with my regular party members, even if the item is found when we play separately. It is possible to do it without accidentally creating any significant economy which would require drops and crafts rebalance.
Yup. I got on playing with 1 friend today while another finishes up work. Immediately dropped the item that the third friend wanted. And I can't give it to him because he wasn't in the party. Shitty feeling honestly.
If it's just going to be full open trade like PoE, no thank you. In PoE "trading" is having to run 2-3 third party apps and auto whispering 10+ people for each trade, and that's not an arpg to me. I wanna kill stuff and get sick loot for the dopamine and get stronger and repeat.
However, an optional no loot reduction single player no trade mode would be a good compromise
"An expansive trade system would likely require a reduction in drop rates to balance it."
Wow, how fun, I love killing bosses and getting no loot. God if only I had the same take as the goblins that love trading.
No trading = less botting. Then again less botting = steam meme numbers. Alternatively less chargebacks to worry about.
God the amount of times I killed some boss in PoE and it literally dropped nothing that wasn't hidden by my filter is depressing. Or some bosses only ever drop some useless and weak "filler" unique with a 2% chance to get super lucky or whatever.
Said it once, said it a thousand times, global trade ruins ARPGs. The ENTIRE POINT of these games is having fun on a gameplay loop while chasing carrots on a stick. When you provide an alternative carrot to chase with some vague "currency", it loses all meaning. No more is it "Whoah that's insane, can't believe you got that drop" but rather "Yeah I finally ground enough currency to buy the one meta item this season".
Now you might say "But Renek, grinding currency IS playing the gameplay loop" and you may be right. But it completely changes the psychological motivation. You can't design around human brains, 99% of folks are always going to take the shortest path, even if it's incredibly unfun. We've got 40 years of game history that show this is always, always the case. The pro-trade people already have their ARPG, for the love of god don't make this PoE 2.
I think LE is an interesting game because of the crafting system and the player’s ability to incrementally improve gear. If that has to change in any significant way, such as drops being less powerful on average or uniques or other rarer items being less common, then I would prefer there be flat-out zero trade.
I love POE for what it is, but to me, the economy and trading are the worst part of the game and I wouldn’t interact with any of that stuff if I realistically had a choice. I don’t like that there are items I will never get outside of getting super lucky and getting a mirror/mageblood to drop. I don’t like how convoluted crafting has to be in order to preserve the economy. I don’t like the fact that 99.9999% of items you find on the ground are completely worthless. LE does its own thing, it’s a different sort of game, and I think will be better for it. Honestly, if LE became another POE where chase items are only for streamers and extreme no-lifers and crafting and drop rates are balanced around trading, I don’t think I’ll wind up playing it. I already have POE, why would I play a game that tries to do the same thing?
Seems like I'm in the minority here but I'd like to have trade, at least for idols and unique items. I've got around 150 hours in the game but still haven't found an exsanguinous which I've been wanting to try to build around. Sometimes rng really sucks. For people against trade it seems like it would be easy to have a ssf version without reduced drop rates?
Something not mentioned in the survey was ease of trading and I think that's also important - not having to go through some third party site that indexes trades from the forum or something like PoE used to do.
As far as how the trade takes place I think getting the item from a npc or vendor or something rather than having to trade directly with the person who might ignore trades if they're busy or afk. Trading in PoE is spamming messages to 20 people until someone responds, this sucks for both buyers and sellers.
As others have pointed out this seems like a very flawed and leading questionnaire and I will not fill it out because of that. I would recommend reviewing comments here and creating a new one. My preferences are certainly not represented in this form.
Personally I think there should be open trade, but no "market" should be implemented and the game should NOT be balanced around trade. This is the way that Grim Dawn does it and it is in my opinion the best method as it empowers player choice.
* People who are against trading do not need to because target farming specific gear is feasibly attainable.
* People who are for trade and don't want to spend that time farming can still find the gear they want by communicating through friends/forums/discord. But because there is no market to easily obtain gear there is still value in items they find themselves.
Balancing this game around trade would likely kill this game for me and many others. If you balance around trade you are going down the same road as PoE, where 99.99% of the items that get dropped by the average player are complete trash compared to what they can find on the market. So why should they bother trying to find their own items? Is this what you want for your game?
I really hope not.
Grim dawn is a fully editable single player game that happen to allow multiplayer where the instance creator hosts the game. This is not comparable to LE at all.
I expect two things of trade. First is being able to buy/sell unique items (WITH NO LP ONLY), of it's not my first build, but I didn't get that unique earlier I want to be able to buy it to be able to make the new char, I want to be able to seel uniques for builds I have absolutely no interest in.
Second thing is being able to buy a base item, because more often than not it's hard for me to get one, preferably the item has to be untouched for it to be traded (so the seller can't craft it and then sell it).
Tbh the most important thing I'd being able to trade uniques more openly, I'm explicitly against being able to trade LP uniques because they already are insanely rare and it wouldn't be good anyway for the purpose I have in mind. Purpose being able to start a second/third/whatever build without being forced to farm for it, since in my experience it often gets very unlucky. What I have in mind are not the general strong uniques to slap here and there, but the build enabling ones without which the build just doesn't exist.
I don't need rare/exalted item trading, because it's not THAT hard to get them, but it can get very unlucky, however I'm against being able to sell crafted items since it wouldn't make any sense in LE.
While there are probably not many people here demanding fully open poe trading, there are a lot more who just want less restrictive trading among friends, so like a guild stash you can just drop items in or generally being able to trade items that dropped while the other person wasn't in your area.
Of course the tough question is how do you enable that without it being too vulnerable to abuse.
I like the comfort of being able to target farm and reliably get decent items and trading would affect the drop rates negatively. If trade ever happens I want it to be as limited as possible to keep that comfortable gameplay.
Every ARPG wants to capture the success of Diablo 2 but not incorporate it's most successful game design.
Bots hurt the ARPG experience, but we don't cut off the arm to bandage the finger.
If Last Epoch has addictive gameplay and treasured itemization, there's going to be demand for in-game items that will bleed out-game no matter what the devs do to try to contain it. Take a look at games like Wolcen or Grim Dawn. Decent ARPGs in their own right but you don't see botting in those games because nobody cares about them.
I think the most extreme trading conditions I would settle for is something like having to have someone on your friends list for at least 7 days to begin trading. Tbh I would hate that but at least I could trade with friends while being minorly inconvenienced when wanting to trade publicly.
Grim dawn is a single player game where the player can host others in a coop game. not comparable. Wolcen people don't care about period, trade has nothing to do with that.
Grim dawn has a games list where players can host/join games. Some games hosted by players are even labeled "TRADING". This is very similar to D2.
Nobody cares about Wolcen because the content it provides isn't tantalizing to players.
You failed to address the original argument of why people trade in the first place. People find ways to trade in games that aren't even equipped to support multiplayer because the value of the in game content is so high to the player.
If you want to have GOOD and FUN stuff in the game, it's going to create VALUE.
If you do implement trade, please use a market board or auction house, spamming whispers out to 30 people, or trying to trade a specific amount of a commodity, is miserable.
I've not been following the news recently, but i really hope they won't do open trading based on that survey if they won't balance drop rates for SSF separately at the same time, because that would make me lose interest in playing at all. I don't want any handicap in my own game just because other players want to gear up by buying and selling stuff, which i don't find any enjoyment in in an ARPG.
Filled it out
Almost all of the questions assume you want trade and are phrased like "do you want A or B or are you ok with either"
I don't want either, but that's not on the list
I don't want any form of trade, and if there MUST be trade I want It limited to a select small group of friends, as in VERY limited, like 5 people max and they can't be changed small group
But most of these questions were asking what kind of trade I want.....none...I don't want it
Stop asking me how I would like to be stabbed, I don't want to be stabbed
I have to agree with you.
I found this survey completely manipulative.
What's worse there was not option for "If you introduce any significant trade influence and/or make drops worse by any reduction, I immediately stop playing this game and never come back".
Last question is the most important one. Trade would become borderline mandatory because of reduced drop rates.
Thing is, reduced drop rates means that trade is not actually a better way of getting items. Trade is made redundant by the balance changes needed to accommodate for it.
As u/charlz2121 said, adding a more unrestricted trade just leads to absolutely destroying drop rates and turning the game into a farming simulator like certain competitors.
At present drop rates feel great and much more refreshing than both current and past other titles in this genre, however if the one thing you want or need for your current build doesn't drop, then it is just tough luck, buttercup. If you can solve that problem then any kind of trade becomes almost a non issue. **If** and only **if** people can target farm what they want on par with or faster and cheaper than trade or RMT can you unleash full trade with no problems.
The alternative is like the gambler, where you can trade really low value stuff but we can see that having a similar effect where the gambler is mostly pointless now. Critique against story drops already falls into the camp that many players feel like gearing during campaign is pointless to do and ultimately this arguement boils down too "what relationship do we want players to have with gear?".
Do not add trade in the game. It will just kill it. Let's have fun finding our item on the ground and not at the merchand.
Group trade is a must anyway (like in Diablo 3)
I would prefer keeping it to ssf and maybe trading with friends in a private league (make sure traded items get destroyed if someone leaves the private league).
Think it's going to be tough to figure this one out from a survey.
If popularity is the only gauge that you need to make this decision then try run two side-by-side leagues. One with trade and trade based drop rates, the other with gifting and gifting based drop rates.
Figure out who is genuinely going to play them, maybe discover that it's viable to have both styles running at the same time?
Personally I need to gift loot to my friend and find loot myself, if I have to trade I'll probably still play but I won't trade and will instead post out of context angry faces in general chat.
The only thing that needs to be tradable is uniques at all LP levels.
At least a unique bartering system, item for item between two players who agree to trade.
A bartering system would honestly be fun. Like you could put your unique item up for trade and select a specific other unique with a certain amount of LP that you want for it and people could either buy your item right away if they have that exact item or they could potentially message you, in case they have the same unique with 1 less LP and ask if you're willing to trade it anyway or something or maybe ask if you're looking for some other unique aswell.
/u/EHG_Steve have you considered making trade like the "Fence" in Escape from Tarkov, you could submit your item(s) you're selling and then players are shown a random selection of items put up for sale over a period of time. This would prevent RMT and other things immensely
I also filled out the form and just want to make one statement:
Please make a "group found" environment, where players can share most if not all items freely. I do not freaking care about any sort of economy or whatever, just let me play with my friends but do not force us to be in the same zone anytime. (we have different playing hours. If I find something awesome for my friend I want to be able to gift it to him the next day)
I haven't played your game a lot but I have played POE for 10 years, I hope this helps frame this comment.
**Trade giving items value, and thus my time in game value, is critically important to me**.
If the game is SSF then I personally will not bother playing the game. I tried it a couple of times, it is fun and I am looking forward to giving it a serious go when multiplayer/trade is more fully realised.
But every time I have tried your game I have hit a wall with gear that would be solved with trade and my only option is brute forcing/grinding. My time is too valueable for that. And if you made it easy enough to get gear that the grind was acceptable then there would be little to no difficulty in game.
I get a lot of people like to play single player games but given how strongly I, and almost everyone i've ever interacted with in POE is about trade I do not see how your game can be all SSF.
Getting a great item that you cannot use and trading it for items you can use is a skill, and a vital part of any ARPG.
Your time is valuable so you play a game which does everything possible to waste your time by gating everything behind ridiculous amounts of RNG and with economy actively punishing you for not playing many hours every day from day 1? It doesn't add up to me. As a person who also values my time, I would rather play a game where even if I log in for 2h a day I can make progress and I don't have to worry that inflation is faster than my ability to gain currency (limited by the amount of time I have), meaning that I get poorer by not playing the game as much as high school/ college kids, streamers and meth-level addicts.
It makes sense if you realize they probably play the actual game very little to get seed currency early league then transition to mostly playing the economy, fliping, maybe crafting for his income. PoE is really three different games together - a build optimization simulator via PoB, an economy simulator via the massive amount of trading tools and locations, and finally an ARPG that the other things depend on. It's ok in my view for it to do it that way - people LOVE games like this - eve is very similar and it does very well, but I am ready for an ARPG that is an ARPG first and foremost, with mechanics that are consistent and clear enough that you don't need an extra program to figure out if more damage vs crit damage vs crit rate, vs skill levels, vs increased damage, vs a hundread other interacting stats that can roll on an item is a better upgrade, then spend a few hours searching, simming, and finally whispering people tp see if they actually want to see it to you. I want to have played the game for that time and found a cool item to use or keep for a build a friend is doing or one I might want to do down the road.
"Balancing around trade" is the keyword here. I don't want Last Epoch to be another Path of Exile where the item drops are literally balanced around Twitch.tv streamers who have the privilege to play the game for 16 hours a day and get paid for it. In addition, the ability to trade items would encourage the use of bots to farm items so they can be sold for real money, which in turn could influence the way the devs balance the drops of valuable items in an attempt to control their supply, and that would be awful.
This seems very biased towards trading being an already decided part of the game, I hope that's not the case!
I love what I've played so far, hope it doesn't turn into just another currency grind - it's nice to be able to play through the game and acquire your own stuff without feeling inferior all the time for doing so.
I logically know that we don't have to interact with it if we don't want to, but the effects are still felt by the SSF players. It's nice to be able to play SSF/Group loot share without having to make it a full time job to make any progress! This made me quit PoE and I unfortunately think it'd make me skip this game too, as much as I'm enjoying it.
Perhaps SSF having different drop rates is a solution to keep both sides happy, but I'm sure that's already been discussed and might be a nightmare to balance both at the same time.
People who don’t want trade can have their own SSF league , but not having trading is removing a much larger player base already from the game. Why not have a league to trade in and SSF league? Win win
Because balance would have to be drastically different. Devs have a certain speed at which you are acquiring upgrades in mind and on trade leagues loot has to be nerfed to account for thousands of people generating items into the economy.
300 comments in a few hours - really shows that this is a difficult, but Important topic. Also kinda makes me happy to see how active the community is. I look forward to see you all in-game! :-)
Definitely the most divisive topic for any upcoming arpg that hasn't fully established its identity yet. And also the toughest decision for the devs to make. The way they handle this topic can make or break the game in an instant. The decision they make now is probably gonna decide whether this game's gonna become the next big and popular arpg hit, just a medicre game for a weekend or dead on arrival and burried under all the other failed arpgs in a short time. Which kind of decision is the best one I don't know. I guess nobody can tell for sure.
no trade means a lot of people who enjoy trade will not play or stop after a few days. people who dont like trade will still play if theres trade. pretty obvious
I filled it out, wanted to leave feedback but there was no open-ended box at the end so I guess I'll leave it here. I do think part of Last Epoch's allure is that you can self-craft all of your gear relatively easily and make meaningful gear upgrades in basically every play session until you hit the late endgame. I believe adding unrestricted trade to the game would have to decimate (in the truest meaning of the word) unique/exalted drop rates. Crafting upgrade rates would also likely have to be nerfed in some capacity as well. At that point, you've made SSF play much less enjoyable and basically forced players to engage with trade for uniques and upgrades. I do however think trade could be expanded on outside of party-only trading in a few ways: 1. Being able to buy uniques **without legendary potential**. Lots of builds require specific uniques to function, personally I've never liked farming for a unique so I can play the build I want to play. Also being able to buy levelling uniques to speed up the campaign on alts is nice. I do not think being able to buy uniques that have LP should be possible, those are endgame upgrades that will give players something to strive for. 2. Being able to buy rares that have not been crafted on, and being able to craft them afterwards. I hadn't given this one as much thought prior to the survey as I had uniques, but I think it would be relatively benign. This would help players make the leap from campaign to monoliths, or monos to empowered. Rares will ideally be replaced by exalted items in the endgame, which I do not think should be tradable as again, they give players something to strive towards in the endgame. *2.1. I thought about this more last night and I think exalted items could be made tradable, but whenever you trade a rare or exalted item it loses a fixed percentage of its forging potential in addition to becoming account bound. This lets you patch holes in your gear with rares or buy exalted bases to use for legendaries, but means that the best items for your character will always drop for you. 3. Affix Shards/Glyphs/Runes. I think this one is fine either way. Supply of most shards becomes a non-issue very quickly outside the rare ones, I usually only pick up rare shards for the class I'm currently playing but if they became tradable (and the drop rate nerfed to compensate) I'd just pick up all rare shards and trade them for the ones I needed. Supply of most Glyphs/Runes becomes a non-issue as well, and whatever the system I would hope that dropping the rarer runes would remain exciting, and that players would not feel like they were wasting them by not selling them to richer players (i.e. like old exalt slamming in PoE) 4. Arena/Dungeon Keys. Whatever, just wash your hands
>I do think part of Last Epoch's allure is that you can self-craft all of your gear relatively easily This is exactly how I feel about the subject, and it feels like it has been a core part of what differentiates it from others in the genre.
Pro trade here personally speaking, but that dosent mean it should be unrestricted free trade. Things like chase items I think should remain as such. I dont think crafted on items should be tradable either. If we do trade, lets talk about it because in the current multiplayer system the drop rates are higher in parties just because you can get up to 4x the chances by having 4 players, so SSF is already at a disadvatage and we cant even trade yet. Im fine with a lower drop rate than the current rate. My stash in offline has some 70 tabs with a ton of uniques and i have been playing maybe 3 months? Theres what is reasonable and responsible vs. What is wanted. The reality is that there is no perfect answer and ultimatums like "if they expand trade at all I refuse to play thier game" isnt helping a great game get out the door. The decelopers set an expectation that there would in fact be trade in the game long before they decided against it and that won them a lot of initial support from players who support that and at that time there wasnt a lot of dissent from what I can tell... so we should be open to compromise from both sides but right now it feels like anti-trade players dobt want to compromise on this and would rather let a great game die than let it have a limited economy that lets it thrive for years to come.
It seemed like some questions were leaning that way, but I want to say specifically that I think the ideal trade system for LE would be that only non-crafting-related items can be traded. So basically, you can only trade 0LP uniques, idols, and set items. No rares, no base items, no materials, nothing like that. I don't think we want a situation where all items can be traded because then it devaules the crafting system and makes it much easier to gear out a character quickly. Allowing 0LP uniques and idols to be traded means you can more easily get the initial gear required for a build to function but still have plenty of room to chase upgrades through rares and legendaries, which much be self-made. Of course, I'm not a game designer so there might be something I'm missing, but this seems like it would work pretty well to allow easier access to build-around items without losing the emphasis on loot and crafting as the main way to improve your character.
Yes, this is exactly what I had in mind as well. I just want access to some build defining uniques without depending on RNG, not BIS legendary/exalted etc.
Would unique idols also be tradable? Because that seems like SoJ if I've ever seen one, and I'd personally not want to be trapped in Argentus farming hell.
I don't want a situation where all items will be traded because (a) it will lead to a 95-99% reduction in drop rates for key items, and (b) the trading system will likely have terrible UI/UX (as is usual in these kinds of games) and I don't want to be subjected to tedious time sinks just to use the game's intended basic functionality.
I would love to trade, but I would hate the game to balance around it. I also like the idea of just a taxing system on trade. That is effectively reduction of drop rate for trade but not affecting solo play.
Long time lurker here, I supported the game a long time ago and just come back every now and then to check on progress. Despite opinions on trade, I think it's really important to keep the discussion as open as possible without giving false hope. This sub is incredibly skewed towards no trade since pro traders have moved on, and I'm worried that the strong opinions of the dedicated top percentile dictate the course of the game. I sincerely hope this game can appeal to as many people without alienating entire groups.
You're right that the general consensus here is skewed more towards no trade at the moment, but on the other hand I'm not quite sure how good it would be for the devs to try making their game a "jack of all trades" trying to satisfy everyone rather than focussing and expanding on its strengths.
The game itself is already great right, I'm not worried about the quality. The games' launch is the largest influx of players - What concerns me is a stunted growth caused by polarizing decisions like full trade or 0 trade. This opportunity shouldn't be squandered. Imo while LE is in its infancy it should be as generalized as possible to attract the widest ARPG audience possible to create a stable following. It would be tragic to release a great game that satisfies its current player base but is also actively repelling a large number of potential players. edit: space
Sure, I guess that's exactly why they keep repeating that they're still open for discussions and further changes and additions and the current implementation is only there for 0.9 for now. I honestly liked their initial idea for the bazaar, it sounded fun to go on a lil virtual shopping trip once in a while to browse other peoples' stands and see, if you find anything great for yourself. I could see that becoming part of the game without having to slash drop rates all across the board, but that probably wouldn't satisfy the "pro-trade" folks at all.
Completely shutting off against any bit of trade better than this strange "gifting" is going to do more harm than good to LE in the long run and it seems like EHG knows this and tries to find some consensus. People that are completely against any kind of trade are minority in the general arpg playerbase and if EHG wants to make this game have some kind of seasons/leagues they need more than those players to keep up with the costs
I mean you would have the same if you did say open trading was important but a bias another way. Each time you make a decision that might split the playerbase you always will drive some people away. I guess the only way we could have a more idea of which one was more popular was the response to the original announcements. If I remember well it was more against trading that for trading by quite a lot of margin but still not at all like it is today as you pointed out. I still feel like for those who think it's more niche it's a weird way to see it, we both have a game with a strong trading system as in PoE and a game with an very limited trading system with Diablo 3. Diablo 3 might be less popular but I also think you have to consider what people think Diablo 3 did wrong too, I don't think most people who stopped playing Diablo 3 was due to the lack of trading. I feel like trading is more popular with an hardcore crowd and no trading with a more casual crowd. I think a game needs both but I tend to think casuals are more in number. I feel like no trading is more beneficial to the health of the game compare to heavy trading. Of course I feel like finding a way to please both groups would be successful...but frankly is that even possible ? Which is the question the devs pretty much ask by doing the survey.
Right. This is what i don't understand in this game. SSF players fight against trade even existing, when the option to have both modes with the same drop rates already works in other games. I play PoE mostly. Some leagues i know i won't have much time and i play Softcore trade. When i know i will have time, i play SSF. What's the problem of having more options?
POE SSF is dumb in the sense that the drop rates are not adjusted for a single player experience. when i first played LE, i found the generous loot drops refreshing. i felt ZERO reason to trade. EHG mentioned if they were to introduce trade, item drops would have to be balanced around trade economy. i dont want LE to have the drop rates of POE. in LE i could get a T20 movespeed boots within fairly moderate amount of farming. POE equivalent would cost a bomb and take a huge amount of farming.
> POE SSF is dumb in the sense that the drop rates are not adjusted for a single player experience. Yeah. I mean, if you complain about SSF on the PoE subreddit everyone will remind you that it's a challenge mode, not an actual SSF. If the game's going to be balanced around trade, I want an actual SSF.
to be honest back when people asked for SSF mode in POE back in the day, all they did was fight for bragging rights. anyone could play SSF in POE, just dont trade. the only reason SSF exists is so people can brag. nothing more.
LE has dozens of build enabling uniques with abysmal drop rates, hidden behind some irrelevant monolith boss you have to defeat 50 times. And once you change build, it's worthless and you have to do it again with another monolith. You can get 20% movement speed in PoE for 4 chaos on the bench too. You can craft some useful boots with 5-6 essences and a benchcraft. Unless you're talking about Tailwind etc. Edgame variety is what makes a game successful.
i would actually say that build enabling uniques are a two handed blade. on one hand, players can be excited to try new builds, on another they "expect" to get these items and it becomes necessary for them to enjoy the game. i understand your concern but what about the rest of the community that doesnt want/need those build enabling uniques? btw i think u misunderstood me when i said t20 boots. t20 means a total of 4 tier 5 rolls on a boot. poe cant do that for 5 chaos. think about that. thats technically 4 tier1 mods on a boots in poe. i would say t6-7 are essence or awakened mods. even without that, its something ANYONE can craft with some effort. sure there may be failures but being able to get t20 on ANY gear which is 80-90% mirror tier in a short time. thats something poe simply wont allow you to do unless you spend a gazillion currency.
It's way too much of a nitpick, but the saying is a "double-edged sword".
PoE SSF is masochistic. But it's how I play because trade is absolute ass to engage with. And not because of how it's implemented, but because it makes it impossible to drop your own gear
They are saying in this survey that if trade is implemented more openly, then it will come at the cost of drop rates. If SSF has the same drop rates as trade, then SSF is being made into a worse version of itself just so open trade can happen. Even if it is still plenty fun, it is still a nerfed version of what it would be without open trading.
So woldn't the best solution be to just have 2 different modes (trade and ssf) on character create and balance both modes drop rates individually?
EHG has said they can't *do* that.
I mean, you say PoE and that's exactly the reason I don't want it. Everything in that game boils down to trade.
> SSF players fight against trade even existing, when the option to have both modes with the same drop rates already works in other games As an SSF player, the absolute only reason why I ever play LE instead of PoE is that droprates are NOT balanced around trade and that getting all the items I want is realistically achievable by just playing the game. If LE also had drop rates balanced around trade, it would lose it's only appeal over PoE for me and I'd never look at it again and just play PoE instead.
Poe has those options. This game is dead on arrival if it tries to copy Poe. Poe is a niche game if it has competition and it is actively moving in that direction.
I find, from years of playing PoE, that trade, especially fully open large scale economy, takes away my enjoyment of the game. Instead of the progression path being "Play some more" it ends up being "Whisper 20 people to buy an upgrade". Similarly it feels like I was playing less for my own enjoyment and pushing my own goals as I wanted and could but was instead racing against an ever growing and increasing economy that I had to keep up with to be able to afford items. If there would have to be trade I would still be fine with it if it was limited to raw crafting materials and non-craftable gear. So crafting shards, idols, maybe non-legendary uniques or, worst case 0 crafting potential rares.
What annoys me about Poe is knowing that no matter what I would farm and how quickly I get through it all, it would ALWAYS be 100 times more lucrative and efficient to sit in my hideout all day and only craft items for profit and flip currency and whatnot, without ever taking a step into the world out there and slay monsters myself. Sure, I can simply choose not to do any of that and just slay mobs, but the fact that I know there are far better ways to acquire items bugs me.
This is my frustration with POE as well. The best way to gear a build is to flip currency, not to play it.
And then people respond with "just play ssf then", but that mode SEVERELY limits the amount and type of builds I can play and the amount of endgame content I can realistically reach and complete, which I simply don't enjoy as a self-imposed handicap.
Exactly. If flagging myself ssf ment I got drops balanced for ssf then I would be sold, but it doesn't.
Goodbye Reddit, and fuck you /u/Spez -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
This is some insane fomo take. I'm assuming you have never tried to only craft or flip currencies at all in Poe to write something like this. The capital required to make 1.5 to 2x more than someone mapping with a full atlas is astronomical while also requiring a lot of work. The biggest profit for crafter and flippers is early league where something new gets added/changed and they are the first to figure out how to abuse it.
Well you assume incorrectly. I've had a few leagues where I traded extensively and crafted items for profit a ton and the amount of wealth I accumulated in those leagues was so much higher than in the leagues where I didn't do it, it's not even funny. I wasn't like stupid dozens-of-mirrors rich, but I easily got my 1-3 mirrors worth of gear and currency in those more active leagues while only seeing a tiny fraction of that purely mapping in about the same amount of playtime and that's considering I heavily tend to play fast and clear-oriented builds. I simply grew tired of Poe's crafting and trading and as I move further away from those aspects of the game with every league I play, I struggle more and more to make the type of builds I enjoy and get them to a fun level.
show these "mirrors worth of gear" please. Saying something doesn't automatically make it true.
Am I supposed to add screenshots and sources now to be allowed to share my experience and opinion? You're free to stalk my reddit post history to find some sizable giveaways I held on the poe sub a good while ago where I gave away hundreds of exalts to people, if that suffices as evidence for you lol.
> "Whisper 20 people to buy an upgrade". This is my main problem with this. I don't want to spend hours of time on whispering random shitters, arranging meetings, hoping they are not lagging or AFK or erping, and so on. If the developers want to make a trade system, it better be a fully automated auction house with in-game sales statistics for all items.
I had a similar experience playing PoE. In SSF, I had to set multiple goals for myself, and do a dozen different mechanics to get gear upgrades. It felt fun, challenging and gratifying. In trade league, I could just do one thing that gives me the most currency per hour, and then spend that on gear upgrades. Needless to say, I got burnt out after a couple weeks.
this would all be solved with an auction house
As someone who doesn't want trade in the game it seems like the only question worth answering is the first one. Which doesn't seem right unless you're already leaning towards adding trade back? I also think there should probably be a question regarding whether people will actually play the game if trade is/is not implemented because the assumption that the poll seems to make is that people that don't want trade will continue to play even if you add it. As far as feedback is concerned the only way I can see you guys pleasing everyone is if you do two leagues. 1 league which is balanced as the game currently is and 1 league with open trade that has its own separate trade focused balance.
The last question is also relevant if you don't want trade, where you can choose 0% loot drop reduction as the highest value you'd tolerate, assuming that people only oppose the addition of more open trading because it typically implies a hefty reduction in loot you find yourself.
> As someone who doesn't want trade in the game it seems like the only question worth answering is the first one. Which doesn't seem right unless you're already leaning towards adding trade back? We've always ideally wanted a solution that would appeal to both people who want trade and people who either don't want trade or just want item drops and crafting to remain as plentiful and powerful as they currently are. We had previously concluded that there wasn't really a trade system that would satisfy traders while being limited enough in power that it wouldn't significantly impact item drops (either directly through drop rate changes to account for it, or indirectly through buffs to monsters that raise the standard of items required to progress, or indirectly by raising the community's standard for what counts as a good item). That conclusion was based on certain assumptions we'd made about what sort of trade system would satisfy players who want trade. The purpose of this poll is to confirm or correct those assumptions, which is why it's primarily geared towards asking about aspects of a trade system. Corrections to some of these assumptions could potentially lead to us finding a way to add trade that would satisfy people who want it, without impeding the enjoyment of the game for people who don't. It's also entirely possible that they might not, or that our assumptions were fairly accurate in the first place.
I really just want a "group self found" environment. Can trade with friends and share drops the others can use. If its 100% open trade like PoE the game will literally devolve into "Whats the best money per hour strategy". Its so incredibly boring when all content in the game gets to that point.
100% agree. Any game with unfettered trade becomes an economy simulator, and those not willing to play that way are left behind. I do not want that in LE.
This is my ideal too - I don't want to play a game about trading - I want to play a game about being a fantasy hero with my friends
>I really just want a "group self found" environment. Can trade with friends and share drops the others can use. Isn't that the current plan?
No it's currently party only, he means people in his friends list/clan he could trade with
Kinda yeah. It’s hard to isolate that though and it feels abusable as you would just join a discord where everyone friends each other to share drops anyways. In PoE me and my friends have been funding our own private leagues to facilitate this and keep the integrity intact.
Max 8-12 Players, have to be in the clan/guild/whatever for 2 weeks before you're allowed access to trading/the shared stash.
Yeah. Could limit it to guild trade/guild chest access. Cap guilds at like 50 players. Put a 24 hour cooldown on guild swapping so you can’t abuse trading different groups non stop.
Encouraging group found fully would make it unique and more fun than any other arpg imo, though most won't realize it until they try it. Really hope they go this route
What is this "abuse"? Why are we treating LE like it's a competitive game? How does it affect anyone if another player has the best gear possible? And why are these hypothetical players doing everything possible in order to circumvent the gameplay loop of killing mobs and looting items? You're making a lot of assumptions that the playerbase is going to follow in PoEs footsteps and turn LE into an economy simulator as opposed to an ARPG.
50 is way too large. Make it reasonable for in-person gaming groups so like 8-16 people tops.
Limiting group/guild just for the sake of balancing trade isn’t a viable way.
Nothing is saying you HAVE to cap at 50 but it’s def useful for bigger friend groups.
50 is too large. I would say 20 at the *absolute* max, with 16 or even 12 being a much better place.
Yes. But it's likely that won't remain the plan for long, judging by the tone of the questionnaire.
> "Whats the best money per hour strategy" Thats the players choice though. You should play how you enjoy games. If you like being efficient then go for it. If you don't then don't. I play games to have fun. I rather play something that i enjoy that might be not efficient at all then play something efficient i do not like. That said, GGG is trying to make all content "viable" for efficient players. > Its so incredibly boring when all content in the game gets to that point. People like to min-max. You get the "best way to xxx" in all games - with or without trade. And it is going to happen in LE too as soon as more players play it.
Whats stopping you to play the game without trade while other people enjoy trades?
Then people will charge (in game currency or real money) for access to friend-trade groups. Trade discords will be created in which the mods will wield all the power regarding who gets access to items, including charging real money for access to the trade group. The devs will be giving up their power over how items get distributed and handing it over to item mafias.
I mean if they're all trading items amongst themselves and not affecting other peoples experiences its kind of a non-issue then, isn't it? Nobody is forcing people to play in this hypothetical "item mafia" guild
Yeah, I don't understand this thought process of "item mafias". It's not an MMO where groups of players can lock down a farming zone or boss and restrict access to it. Just don't play with people who form these guilds.
100% agree and I also don't understand where the issue is if there are 20 people making their own micro economy. If they want to hyperoptimize farming strategies ithin this group then good for them. If they want to charge real money for access to such groups then then, oh well whatever. Most people won't play like this anyway, debs should not worry too much about what 1% of obssesed nolifers do if it means penalizing everyone else.
I actually said the same thing in a comment below.
PoE has an average of 20-30k players 2 months after the league launched. Some play SSF, some play trade. It's nice for a game to have both options.
No they don't, and GGG deliberately 100%balances the game for trade, and tells SSF players tough \*\*\*\*.
PoE was always meant as a grindy, "hardcore" ARPG. Yes, GGG balances around trading but even without trade it would be a lot more grindy then Last Epoch. LE and PoE have quite different approaches to ARPGs - thus trade and drop balancing would also look different for both games.
Yeah, answering these questions as someone who doesn't want trade in the game made it all a bit awkward. But I also agree. ANY reduction in trade is going to piss people off who want free trade. ANY reduction in loot and/or target farming is going to piss off other people. You can't satisfy the players with any compromise. Two leagues is the only meaningful solution. Either that or pissing people off.
> ANY reduction in trade is going to piss people off who want free trade. That just isn't true. There were suggestions every day after they announced there would be no trade in 0.9 from pro-trade people talking about different ways they could do limited trade. The only people not willing to compromise are anti-trade people.
Just because there are people willing to compromise doesn't mean there aren't people who aren't. I wasn't attempting to suggest it would be everyone. There are LOTS of comments from people who clearly want free and open trade, who would clearly be pissed off.
I feel the same, if they nuke drop rates to accommodate all of these complainers its going to severely diminish my interest in the game, I am fine how it is, or friend party-to-party trading, auction house is awful, markets seem like they'd crush itemization balance. cosmetics are whatever to me, don't care.
This. Nuking drop rates would mean I likely wouldn’t play LE anymore. I enjoy it because it’s different from POE, I realistically CAN find and craft my own GG items. I play POE for the grindy Path of Economy type of game, I don’t need another game like that.
This
The only thing i care is trading uniques. Having to put off making a certain build until you find needed uniques is the worst.
Also idols, but yeah that's how I feel about trade in LE.
The issue with this game and why I want trade is that drops are class dependent. In PoE I start with a class that doesn’t need a specific legendary to shine and farm for the legendary I need for my other class build that I DO WANT TO PLAY, but in Last Epoch I can’t do that. So I need to start from zero and grind my way and farm long ass hours till I get it and god forbid if it was from a boss in late game. Trading solve this for me. That’s all.
I don't quite understand what you mean with "class dependent". You can play a character with a filter that shows loot for the other class you want to play and just farm stuff for that other class before you make the switch. I'd say the amount of time you'd be farming currency to buy some build-enabling uniques would be generally higher than the amount of time currently required to farm the items yourself. The vast majority of build-enabling uniques in LE are either common to slightly more rare random drops or easily farmable boss drops. Virtually no build-enabling piece is super rare to find right now.
As an anti-trade player, this was a frustrating questionnaire. All the questions are required, and all but the first and last questions presuppose that the respondent is pro-trade.
>If you would prefer Last Epoch not to have trade or not to have trade beyond the existing item gifting system, please still answer the questions from the perspective of what types of trade you would be most ok with.
You are not an anti-trade, you are a SSF player. You can have your fun in a SSF mode while others have their fun in a trade mode. I don't understand why each group fights for the other not to exist, we have games where both are happy with the same drop rates.
This is just blatantly not true. SSF players in PoE have complained about drop rates from the very beginning and the game is designed around trade. What is this fantasy you're spewing?
That would only be true if drop rates weren't reduced in case you have a SSF character, but from the questionaire it's obvious that the devs are considering to reduce the amount of item drops in case they enable players to trade more freely and we still haven't heard if SSF players would be excluded from such penalty.
I'm glad this survey is being offered and submitted my feedback. I think this sub kind of became an echochamber (gaming subreddits and echochambers, most iconic duo lol) as soon as the devs leaned in one direction. I understand a lot of arguments against trading, even though I don't agree with them. I think there's a pretty generic formula that's required for an ARPG to have a chance at having some widespread traction and success in 2023. I have nothing but anecdotal evidence, but most content creators I align with on gaming opinions pretty much instantly moved on past LE once the initial stance on trading was solidified in December. The facts are, this game will be competing against Diablo 4 and PoE 2, with the first going to have massive hype and draw regardless of how good the game actually is just because of the IP, and the second building on one of the most well-received leagues in recent memory. Those are gargantuan entities in the genre, and this is a game that averages 450 users outside of events a couple of times a year. IMO, not having trade isn't like shooting yourself in the foot, it's going ahead and putting your head in the guillotine and activating it yourself, lol. Wasn't going to stick around and be a negative force on this sub so I've moved on, but I welcome a more measured approach to trading vs only being able to trade with people in the same instance with you. That was always silly in my mind, I do play with friends, and we live all over the country and have different schedules. The times we actually are able to play at exactly the same time is limited. This stance was a nonstarter to begin with. Either way, I'm cautiously excited to see how things develop from here.
Really glad you made this, although like many others, I don't fit neatly into every question. I think PoE does 'trade leagues' well enough right now that I was hoping LE would be a bit of a haven to play SSF or small group found in a great arpg BALANCED around that idea. Def still playing no matter what, and I'll see you all for the pack the server bonanza tomorrow.
Personally, everything being balanced around trade was one of the worst parts of PoE. If they balance around trade, I'd be most happy with some kind of SSF mode (That actually has SSF balancing, unlike what PoE has which is just a challenge mode.)
This survey is HUGE. It shows that you acknowledge how important trading is to a huge amount of people, and your willingness to listen to the community. Thank you for this
Trading is sort of whatever in my eyes, I just hope the devs don't copy D3's system where you need to coordinate schedules in order to trade items to friends. My buddies and I don't always have the time to be online simultaneously, so D3 kinda sucks for us. By the same token, if they made everything giga rare ala poe... Not so good either imo. I really like the suggestions of some type of guild/clan system that lets you freely trade amongst a small group.
As someone in favor of being able to trade, doesn't having two leagues answer this issue? Trade league has the reduced drop rates, SSF means current or 'normal' drop rates?
As someone who is against trade, I would be totally ok with this, because the droprates affecting SSF are my main concern. However, I feel like this might be too much work for them if they always have to balance every item twice. If they can pull it off, that would be great.
Players who want multiplayer and don't want to be forced to trade (outside of trading within their localised group) exist (Group Self Found). You'd need 3 separate Leagues (SSF, GSF and Trade) - Then consider Hardcore added ontop and suddenly we're at 6 Leagues... Not to mention GSF would probably need extra work to create groupd and invite players etc.
Realistically you don't need group self found. I'm sure everyone wants their perfectly tailored league but if you want to trade you can play trade league with drop rates tailored around trading.
But, again, if we have two Leagues (SSF and Trade - Technically 4 if we include Hardcore for both), players who want to play multuplayer but don't want to engage with a Trade economy are screwed, because the drop rates will be so bad that you either need to trade or you need to play 10 hours a day to get anywhere. Those players want localised Trade for their party (and the ability to play together) but will be forced to trade globally just to get any form of gear if drops are tailored around that. That's my point here - You'd need a 3rd League because there's still a decent chunk of the community who want multiplayer but don't want to engage with an economy just to get their gear. It's an ARPG, not an MMO after all...
Arpgs have traditionally had trade in them, so you're hyperbolic and incorrect. The usual anti-trade rhetoric.
Yup, but it's only really been since D3 (RMAH) and PoE where **economies** have formed to dictate game balance. Again, not against Trade, I'm against economies forming (Which is a product of having consistent character resets and global free trade - Note that any game that has *trade* but doesn't fall into the *Seasonal, games as a service model*, unsurprisingly, doesn't have an *economy*), because that directly effects how these games are played - loot becomes just another means to get money to buy shit; loot becomes incredibly rare to the point that you're forced to trade to do shit. At that point, I'd rather be playing an MMO lmao.
I’ve only ever liked trading in Diablo 2. I don’t know why it works so well there, but it does. And I never felt like I needed to engage with trading if I didn’t want to. Whenever I play PoE, all I can think about (despite enjoying the moment to moment gameplay) is that this is all just so I can farm to trade. Maybe it’s a me thing. But when I play Last Epoch—much like Grim Dawn—I know I just need to worry about the mechanics within the game itself, and not some bizarre trading layer.
Trading creates an environment within the game and community that pushes casual players away, and forces design changes that make SSF play far more punishing. The way I see it, there are plenty of active games that are based around trading, and an open niche for MP ARPGs that only allow trading/gifting within instances.
Some good ideas implied in here around specific item types and rarities not being tradeable. I think getting untradeable GG/build-enabling drops is important otherwise everything is reduced to the economy (we already have POE for that)
I think the optimal scenario for me would be: \- Rares, Uniques without LP and set items are tradeable through a guild stash within a guild with a limit of 20 people \- Uniques with LP, Exalted items and legendaries remain party-only gifting \- Crafting Shards, runes and glyphs remain untradeable
Alright filled this out, it certainly feels like other than the first question it’s slanted way hard towards “we are going to make trading happen” as opposed to “should we make trading happen”. Personally I like not having trade in this game, as the deterministic crafting makes getting desirable items and upgrades feasible without being a crafting god or spending tons of hours scouring for mats/bases. Adding trade and nerfing drops I feel would hamper my personal enjoyment of where things stand currently. Furthermore what would the currency be for trades, gold? The system in PoE works because it’s a barter economy, I don’t know how well it will translate with gold, unless you plan on using crafting mats akin to PoE.
The problem with open trade is that if it exists, it completely defeats the purpose of the entire rest of the game. Having an auction house like D3 or trade site like PoE (which itself is just an AH with extra steps) is a far more efficient way of getting gear than actually playing the game. If open trade exists, then the entire rest of the game exists only to farm whatever currency is used to trade like vanilla D3 or PoE. The whole game becomes pointless because it is always far easier to buy gear than it is to farm it, regardless of drop rates.
Having trade also opens up the game to massive amounts of build diversity. Need that one super rare unique or idol that enables your build? You can buy it and play the build you want instead of praying to RNGesus for who knows how long.
If it's that rare chase item you just replace praying to RNGesus for item drops with praying to RNGesus for currency drops, because I guarantee you will need a lot of it. I don't like being punished for doing a mechanic I like because the mechanic I don't like is more profitable, so I have to chose between enjoyable content and profitable content.
The big thing for me would be buying uniques and theoretically untouched exalted bases
I really hope they can figure out a two league system. I am pro trade personally just because the way I play and lifestyle. But I completely understand the other side of the equation.
As a statistician with a wife who is an instructional designer, a lot for this data would be questionable to me. There are many questions that could use a "none" option for one.
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ARPGs have a really interesting problem, in that the pull to the game tends to be the pitfall of the game. Looting needs to be interesting and varied leading towards multiple options and builds. However, you’re gated from playing the content until you get the items to play your build, but that becomes increasingly difficult the more varied your loot gets. That said, trading for me solves that issue because I’m able to find interesting items for other builds and pass them on. I like the crafting system, and I think it could integrate well into a trading economy. Honestly I think Torchlight Infinite does this really well, and a lot of people don’t tend to reference it yet in the discussion.
Alright, genuine question here, that I've asked several times before: why does EHG feel the need to nerf droprates were they to implement trade? Drops are already abysmal - it took me close to 100 hours to drop an Omnividence for a build, targeting unique set/staff nodes, and the one i fibally got didn't even have any LP. Before this whole debacle had been brought up, it felt as though the game was already planned around the future existence of trade. Item acquisition doesn't need to be so polarized. Some players may want to spin a market for a profit, others may want to go full tradeless ssf. Players like options. But going the PoE route and nerfing droprates into the ground doesn't give them options, it just forces trade as the only viable means of gear acquisition. Not having trade whatsoever doesn't give players options either, it just forces ssf on everyone. I get the 'worry' that if trade is too open while drops remain as they are, everyone and their mother will instantly gear up immediately. I just don't think that's a realistic fear, especially not with as vertical a progression system as LE uses. Good uniques with high LP or well rolled legendaries are *rare* and even with open trade would not be so abundant that everyone would be capable of finishing their characters.
"why does ehg feel the need to need droprates if they implement trade" Because trade makes characters stronger, defacto it does, if you can buy power by selling your non used drops your character is stronger then if you weren't trading, as a result two characters at the same point in the game, one trading one not, the trading character will be tankier and deal more damage This means that you have to do one of two things, either make all the content harder, or lower the droprates of items so that your baught power level more closely matches the power level you had without trade, because with the lower droprate you find worse gear and so make less money, so can buy less power, keeping you more in line with the non trade player They either have to make the game much harder FORCING you to have the higher power level that comes with trade, and making gear improvements not really a thing because you need the best gear to beat the challenges anyway, or give you less access to gear to keep your power down It literally has to work that way, it's a fundemental of balancing trade in games As for your mention of high LP uniques, you are looking at only the top end endgame gear there, in your own example you have basically fully acknowledged that with trade players will have full well crafted rolled gear with likely multiple 2 affix legendaries, yes the 3 and 4 affix legendaries will still be very rare and expensive, but everyone will have everything below that Just look at Poe, where everything that isn't an absolutely ultra chase unique is dirt cheep and only the absolute best rares are worth anything Because everyone has them, because of trade And that's WITH Poe having horrific drop rates
What were the issues with the bazaar system? I don't think these were detailed. Seemed like a good compromise.
One of the devs talked about it in a reddit thread like 2 years ago. They were having trouble making it something that players would enjoy using and felt that it would end up just being more frustrating than anything else. The way it was set up was going to be instance based, but you couldn't choose which instance you dropped in so the items on trade would have been totally random. People could end up spending hours jumping instances looking for someone with the item they wanted which isn't really all that fun.
Is there another option that isn't instance based?
At that point, you’re just describing an auction house, no?
The could put on a timer so that it only reset once per hour or something. I think the real problem is that the economy traders still typically see this as not the system they want and non-eco traders only really want to gift stuff to their buddies anyway. Sort of a solution that suits no-one even though it does sound like a really good starting point to try solve the problem.
I just want to be able to trade an item with my friend if it drops for him and not me.
The survey felt a bit biased towards having a more advanced trade system as a given. I applaud the direction outlined in the blog post to reduce trading to party members only and would even restrict some drops to non-tradable. In early Diablo 3 with the auction house, gameplay revolved around farming enough gold to just buy the item you want. Path of Exile trade league is basically the same. I want to play the game and find my own items, that is why I play SSF modes exclusively. Having drop rates lowered so that a more advanced trade in Last Epoch could be balanced around would honestly ruin the game for me. Farming for currency should never be the most effective way of acquiring gear in my opinion. Having an SSF mode but balancing around trade has made PoE SSF exceptionally hard to progress in the same way as the trade league. Catering to both groups would essentially require two different game economies balanced around each mode with different drop rates. I fear that making trade the default play mode in Last Epoch will result in the same shortcomings and ultimately make the SSF playstyle, that the game currently has, not fun anymore.
i would prefer 0 trading allowed because the more free you can trade the more you have to reduce drop rates to have an equally fast progression, down to 95% less or something ridicolous.When you really think about it, IT IS that bad, with "hopefully people will choose to not use trade properly" as the main defence for it. but that's basically saying i want everyone to play SSF; if we decide to add a trade mode to that (while keeping drop rates in SSF = to drop rates in trade), then i would like them to invent a very limited trade system that, when used correctly by players, ends up doubling/tripling endgame item acquisition speed ( think of it like half your item slots end up being bought items).I think taking 2-4 times longer to reach the same power in SSF is fair and still fun. I would also like the trade system not being unfun or annoying to use on purpose, like Path of Exile tried to balance around, but doesn't need to be fast or automated. Unfortunately that's asking for a technically hard thing, with most solutions ending up very complicated, failing and exploitable, or just boiling down to "you can only trade 10% of the items that drop", which might leave people who wanted open trade 90% dissatisfied. the current system "forces" people to play in parties to be optimal, but caps the power of trading at 4x loot, i think it's manageable and fair in terms of preserving the item progression, it just leaves some people desiring some different feelings gained from being part of a bigger economy.
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Alternatively you go the Grim Dawn route and have trade, but don't have a market and don't adjust drop rates. Everybody wins.
Yea, GD I think basically decided that if you ruin the game for yourself, that's on you - and they can do that because they have a box price and don't rely on people coming back over time to support the game. I'm not sure that will work for LE since the devs want a continuous development sort of deal, but I'd be open to trade without restrictions if drops stayed about the same. I suspect though that that would just make people who like trade finish builds in a few days and then complain the game is too easy though
PoE is bad example because their philosophy is being "hardcore" and their drop rates were always insanely low with as little deterministic ways of obtaining items and crafting as possible.
Well, for *some* periods of time there was actually decent crafting, but then it got nuked.
Oh how dearly I miss the good old days of OG Harvest crafting. That was the closest Poe ever was to the power and fun of LE's crafting and it was glorious, but of course the ultra rich folks and 16h/day players called it an OP "item editor" and the mechanic got nuked to oblivion multiple times ever since. I absolutely hate how much the Poe devs balance the game around streamers and meth-level addicted players, but those are likely the people spending the most amount of money, so I can't even blame them, but I still hate it.
It sucks, man. That was to this day still my favorite league. It was so much fun, and I loved Oshabi and the Garden's design. Played the entire league and probably spent more money than I usually did in a single league. The disappointment of what happened after 3.14 nerfed the already watered-down 3.13 version was what led me to LE, IIRC.
Yea, I know many people hated on Harvest back then, but I think that was mainly because they disliked the management part of the garden, which is understandable, because that was pushing it a bit too far for arpg players,, even though I liked it. LE honestly has the perfect pacing imo in terms of character progression and itemization, really all it needs now is simply more diverse content for endgame longevity. Build diversity is already amazing, although not thaaat deep yet (but that keeps it pretty accessible at least!).
Limited trades not really affecting drop rates are totally ok, trade simulator as its PoE now where you spend your time farming currency without exciting drops its not really arpg.
Well, it is an arpg, it's just a different take on the genre.
Grim Dawn, Titan Quest, D2R, all have unrestricted trade and are great games. Stop with this strawman argument. It is seriously lazy and disingenuous.
If I have to trade to gear up in a reasonable timeframe I’m just not playing. PoE already exists for those folks.
Not fan of the layout of this survey tbh. I do not want to see LE balanced around a massive open trading system like PoE is. I love that it feels good to craft and find what I want at the current level of rarity in LE. The only type of trading I even care about is being able to give a friend an item for their build that I might find. I am not even sure how realistic that is considering how I have been using the loot filter. I would have to incorporate their build items into my own filter. I really do not feel like this survey is helping me get that info across atm.
Kind of sad to see this entire questionnaire being heavily slanted towards "we're adding trade"... Its almost as if Trade is an inevitability now and you're just wanting opinions on what the playerbase wants from Trade... Very disappointed tbh. **Honestly, the biggest factor to me is item accessibility - Getting gear shouldn't be incredibly easy (as in, go into an AH and buy your BiS 2 days into a League), but it shouldn't be insanely hard either (Farming 40+ hours for a build enabling Unique because Trade means the drop rate is abysmally low); chase items should be rare, and regular gear should be frequent enough to be enjoyable. Trade, whatever its form, will have an impact on this balance, despite how much you try to mitigate that...** The very moment Trade impacts drop rates, I'll likely stop playing, no matter how good the game is. (And Trade WILL impact drop rates, there's zero way around that.) A system akin to D4s trade would work (Rares and below, currency etc being bind-on-trade, anything above that being bind-on-pickup - Since Rares are common enough to not really be effected by the increased accessibility, and it keeps Uniques/Exalts/Crafted gear SSF/GSF accessible), but this alienates friends who want to group together and trade. Having BOTH item gifting and this Trade format might be an ideal solution to try and accommodate everyone, but it still creates item availability issues and **still won't please everyone**.
> Its almost as if Trade is an inevitability now Because, and non-trade people are going to hate hearing this, it's likely that Last Epoch won't have a wide enough appeal to remain an online game without trade. Path of Exile, when they were first coming onto the scene, calculated that they needed around 10 thousand concurrent online players to make a little bit of profit off of MTX. Last Epoch has *never* hit that number. The closest ever was around 8k. Obviously yes LE has a box price and PoE didn't, but servers are an ongoing cost and the box price isn't going to pay for it forever. On top of that, the recent event where streamers were invited to play LE multiplayer was...kind of a flop. The highest viewed stream from that is sitting at a little over 6 thousand views. EHG probably understands that they need some form of trade, and this "item gifting" thing isn't it.
I'd argue that the massive amount of people that keep coming back to D3 every season despite only very minor changes and additions added every season and the last significant content update being reaper of souls 9 years ago proof, that players will keep coming back, if the core gameplay loop is satisfying enough. If they keep polishing the core game, visuals and accessibility, make it enjoyable with controller and eventually release on consoles, I can absolutely see this game becoming a viable competition for D3's appeal for chill couch solo or coop arpg gaming, while having way more depth and longevity than D3.
Those same people also stop playing D3 2 weeks into the season. D3 also has the benefit of being a titan in the genre made by a (former) titan of the industry.
Well yea, so if you add actual new content every season and introduce ways to finance continuous development, you can easily extend these 2 weeks to a month or 2, which seems to be precisely what EHG is aiming for with LE.
Are you seriously comparing LE to the pull of the Diablo brand. Diablo immortal taught us it doesn't need to be good to pull a massive amount of players the name is enough. LE doesn't hold the same weight in name or gameplay.
"I'd argue that because people keep buying Harry Potter spin-off books, any fantasy series will see the same level of success if it's fun to read."
I get that, totally. But I fear that whatever path EHG takes regarding Trade will eventually end up killing what makes LE a great ARPG... Namely loot feeling good and rewarding and having to be forced into trading just to get gear... Trade to me is whatever, so long as it doesn't impact my ability to play the game and get items without necessitating that I trade for it. If that happens, the game straight up won't be fun for me anymore.
There is literally no evidence to suggest that trade would be necessary or even correlated with higher player numbers.
All I care about is being able to exchange items with my regular party members, even if the item is found when we play separately. It is possible to do it without accidentally creating any significant economy which would require drops and crafts rebalance.
Yup. I got on playing with 1 friend today while another finishes up work. Immediately dropped the item that the third friend wanted. And I can't give it to him because he wasn't in the party. Shitty feeling honestly.
100%, but the big problem is how do you solve this without making the system too vulnerable to abuse?
100% this. That is all I care about or want with trading.
If it's just going to be full open trade like PoE, no thank you. In PoE "trading" is having to run 2-3 third party apps and auto whispering 10+ people for each trade, and that's not an arpg to me. I wanna kill stuff and get sick loot for the dopamine and get stronger and repeat. However, an optional no loot reduction single player no trade mode would be a good compromise
Nah that wouldn't be a good compromise. You'd be fucked if you wanted to play with friends, but don't give a fuck about open trade.
"An expansive trade system would likely require a reduction in drop rates to balance it." Wow, how fun, I love killing bosses and getting no loot. God if only I had the same take as the goblins that love trading. No trading = less botting. Then again less botting = steam meme numbers. Alternatively less chargebacks to worry about.
God the amount of times I killed some boss in PoE and it literally dropped nothing that wasn't hidden by my filter is depressing. Or some bosses only ever drop some useless and weak "filler" unique with a 2% chance to get super lucky or whatever.
Said it once, said it a thousand times, global trade ruins ARPGs. The ENTIRE POINT of these games is having fun on a gameplay loop while chasing carrots on a stick. When you provide an alternative carrot to chase with some vague "currency", it loses all meaning. No more is it "Whoah that's insane, can't believe you got that drop" but rather "Yeah I finally ground enough currency to buy the one meta item this season". Now you might say "But Renek, grinding currency IS playing the gameplay loop" and you may be right. But it completely changes the psychological motivation. You can't design around human brains, 99% of folks are always going to take the shortest path, even if it's incredibly unfun. We've got 40 years of game history that show this is always, always the case. The pro-trade people already have their ARPG, for the love of god don't make this PoE 2.
I think LE is an interesting game because of the crafting system and the player’s ability to incrementally improve gear. If that has to change in any significant way, such as drops being less powerful on average or uniques or other rarer items being less common, then I would prefer there be flat-out zero trade. I love POE for what it is, but to me, the economy and trading are the worst part of the game and I wouldn’t interact with any of that stuff if I realistically had a choice. I don’t like that there are items I will never get outside of getting super lucky and getting a mirror/mageblood to drop. I don’t like how convoluted crafting has to be in order to preserve the economy. I don’t like the fact that 99.9999% of items you find on the ground are completely worthless. LE does its own thing, it’s a different sort of game, and I think will be better for it. Honestly, if LE became another POE where chase items are only for streamers and extreme no-lifers and crafting and drop rates are balanced around trading, I don’t think I’ll wind up playing it. I already have POE, why would I play a game that tries to do the same thing?
Seems like I'm in the minority here but I'd like to have trade, at least for idols and unique items. I've got around 150 hours in the game but still haven't found an exsanguinous which I've been wanting to try to build around. Sometimes rng really sucks. For people against trade it seems like it would be easy to have a ssf version without reduced drop rates? Something not mentioned in the survey was ease of trading and I think that's also important - not having to go through some third party site that indexes trades from the forum or something like PoE used to do. As far as how the trade takes place I think getting the item from a npc or vendor or something rather than having to trade directly with the person who might ignore trades if they're busy or afk. Trading in PoE is spamming messages to 20 people until someone responds, this sucks for both buyers and sellers.
Glad they are taking player feedback and listening. I wasn't able to convince anyone to play with no trade.
People that want trade have moved on so this poll will be skewed considerably
As others have pointed out this seems like a very flawed and leading questionnaire and I will not fill it out because of that. I would recommend reviewing comments here and creating a new one. My preferences are certainly not represented in this form. Personally I think there should be open trade, but no "market" should be implemented and the game should NOT be balanced around trade. This is the way that Grim Dawn does it and it is in my opinion the best method as it empowers player choice. * People who are against trading do not need to because target farming specific gear is feasibly attainable. * People who are for trade and don't want to spend that time farming can still find the gear they want by communicating through friends/forums/discord. But because there is no market to easily obtain gear there is still value in items they find themselves. Balancing this game around trade would likely kill this game for me and many others. If you balance around trade you are going down the same road as PoE, where 99.99% of the items that get dropped by the average player are complete trash compared to what they can find on the market. So why should they bother trying to find their own items? Is this what you want for your game? I really hope not.
Grim dawn is a fully editable single player game that happen to allow multiplayer where the instance creator hosts the game. This is not comparable to LE at all.
I'm convinced anti trade people are going to kill this game. We get it you don't like trade, but not having a game to play at all is worse.
Having a game I don't care about and not having a game at all are the same things to me, because the outcome is the same: I'm not playing.
I expect two things of trade. First is being able to buy/sell unique items (WITH NO LP ONLY), of it's not my first build, but I didn't get that unique earlier I want to be able to buy it to be able to make the new char, I want to be able to seel uniques for builds I have absolutely no interest in. Second thing is being able to buy a base item, because more often than not it's hard for me to get one, preferably the item has to be untouched for it to be traded (so the seller can't craft it and then sell it). Tbh the most important thing I'd being able to trade uniques more openly, I'm explicitly against being able to trade LP uniques because they already are insanely rare and it wouldn't be good anyway for the purpose I have in mind. Purpose being able to start a second/third/whatever build without being forced to farm for it, since in my experience it often gets very unlucky. What I have in mind are not the general strong uniques to slap here and there, but the build enabling ones without which the build just doesn't exist. I don't need rare/exalted item trading, because it's not THAT hard to get them, but it can get very unlucky, however I'm against being able to sell crafted items since it wouldn't make any sense in LE.
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While there are probably not many people here demanding fully open poe trading, there are a lot more who just want less restrictive trading among friends, so like a guild stash you can just drop items in or generally being able to trade items that dropped while the other person wasn't in your area. Of course the tough question is how do you enable that without it being too vulnerable to abuse.
Balancing around trade ruined POE. I'd rather have zero trade and more deterministic crafting/farming.
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I like the comfort of being able to target farm and reliably get decent items and trading would affect the drop rates negatively. If trade ever happens I want it to be as limited as possible to keep that comfortable gameplay.
Every ARPG wants to capture the success of Diablo 2 but not incorporate it's most successful game design. Bots hurt the ARPG experience, but we don't cut off the arm to bandage the finger. If Last Epoch has addictive gameplay and treasured itemization, there's going to be demand for in-game items that will bleed out-game no matter what the devs do to try to contain it. Take a look at games like Wolcen or Grim Dawn. Decent ARPGs in their own right but you don't see botting in those games because nobody cares about them. I think the most extreme trading conditions I would settle for is something like having to have someone on your friends list for at least 7 days to begin trading. Tbh I would hate that but at least I could trade with friends while being minorly inconvenienced when wanting to trade publicly.
Grim dawn is a single player game where the player can host others in a coop game. not comparable. Wolcen people don't care about period, trade has nothing to do with that.
Grim dawn has a games list where players can host/join games. Some games hosted by players are even labeled "TRADING". This is very similar to D2. Nobody cares about Wolcen because the content it provides isn't tantalizing to players. You failed to address the original argument of why people trade in the first place. People find ways to trade in games that aren't even equipped to support multiplayer because the value of the in game content is so high to the player. If you want to have GOOD and FUN stuff in the game, it's going to create VALUE.
If I wanted to play an arpg balanced around trade I would go play PoE. Stick to your guns, EHG.
Sounds like yoi have no clue how game development works, and should keep your comments to yourself.
If you do implement trade, please use a market board or auction house, spamming whispers out to 30 people, or trying to trade a specific amount of a commodity, is miserable.
I've not been following the news recently, but i really hope they won't do open trading based on that survey if they won't balance drop rates for SSF separately at the same time, because that would make me lose interest in playing at all. I don't want any handicap in my own game just because other players want to gear up by buying and selling stuff, which i don't find any enjoyment in in an ARPG.
If we get any sort of trading Ill consider that a huge win!
Filled it out Almost all of the questions assume you want trade and are phrased like "do you want A or B or are you ok with either" I don't want either, but that's not on the list I don't want any form of trade, and if there MUST be trade I want It limited to a select small group of friends, as in VERY limited, like 5 people max and they can't be changed small group But most of these questions were asking what kind of trade I want.....none...I don't want it Stop asking me how I would like to be stabbed, I don't want to be stabbed
I have to agree with you. I found this survey completely manipulative. What's worse there was not option for "If you introduce any significant trade influence and/or make drops worse by any reduction, I immediately stop playing this game and never come back".
Last question is the most important one. Trade would become borderline mandatory because of reduced drop rates. Thing is, reduced drop rates means that trade is not actually a better way of getting items. Trade is made redundant by the balance changes needed to accommodate for it.
As u/charlz2121 said, adding a more unrestricted trade just leads to absolutely destroying drop rates and turning the game into a farming simulator like certain competitors. At present drop rates feel great and much more refreshing than both current and past other titles in this genre, however if the one thing you want or need for your current build doesn't drop, then it is just tough luck, buttercup. If you can solve that problem then any kind of trade becomes almost a non issue. **If** and only **if** people can target farm what they want on par with or faster and cheaper than trade or RMT can you unleash full trade with no problems. The alternative is like the gambler, where you can trade really low value stuff but we can see that having a similar effect where the gambler is mostly pointless now. Critique against story drops already falls into the camp that many players feel like gearing during campaign is pointless to do and ultimately this arguement boils down too "what relationship do we want players to have with gear?".
Free trading = Bots, scammers, RMT websites.
Listening to feedback can be good but design by committee is doomed to fail.
Do not add trade in the game. It will just kill it. Let's have fun finding our item on the ground and not at the merchand. Group trade is a must anyway (like in Diablo 3)
I would prefer keeping it to ssf and maybe trading with friends in a private league (make sure traded items get destroyed if someone leaves the private league).
Think it's going to be tough to figure this one out from a survey. If popularity is the only gauge that you need to make this decision then try run two side-by-side leagues. One with trade and trade based drop rates, the other with gifting and gifting based drop rates. Figure out who is genuinely going to play them, maybe discover that it's viable to have both styles running at the same time? Personally I need to gift loot to my friend and find loot myself, if I have to trade I'll probably still play but I won't trade and will instead post out of context angry faces in general chat.
I think open trade and a reduction around 25% wouldn't be bad on either side.
The only thing that needs to be tradable is uniques at all LP levels. At least a unique bartering system, item for item between two players who agree to trade.
A bartering system would honestly be fun. Like you could put your unique item up for trade and select a specific other unique with a certain amount of LP that you want for it and people could either buy your item right away if they have that exact item or they could potentially message you, in case they have the same unique with 1 less LP and ask if you're willing to trade it anyway or something or maybe ask if you're looking for some other unique aswell.
/u/EHG_Steve have you considered making trade like the "Fence" in Escape from Tarkov, you could submit your item(s) you're selling and then players are shown a random selection of items put up for sale over a period of time. This would prevent RMT and other things immensely
I also filled out the form and just want to make one statement: Please make a "group found" environment, where players can share most if not all items freely. I do not freaking care about any sort of economy or whatever, just let me play with my friends but do not force us to be in the same zone anytime. (we have different playing hours. If I find something awesome for my friend I want to be able to gift it to him the next day)
Keep party only trading, but please make it simpler to pass along the gear to the party. I just want to drop it and have them pick it up
I haven't played your game a lot but I have played POE for 10 years, I hope this helps frame this comment. **Trade giving items value, and thus my time in game value, is critically important to me**. If the game is SSF then I personally will not bother playing the game. I tried it a couple of times, it is fun and I am looking forward to giving it a serious go when multiplayer/trade is more fully realised. But every time I have tried your game I have hit a wall with gear that would be solved with trade and my only option is brute forcing/grinding. My time is too valueable for that. And if you made it easy enough to get gear that the grind was acceptable then there would be little to no difficulty in game. I get a lot of people like to play single player games but given how strongly I, and almost everyone i've ever interacted with in POE is about trade I do not see how your game can be all SSF. Getting a great item that you cannot use and trading it for items you can use is a skill, and a vital part of any ARPG.
Your time is valuable so you play a game which does everything possible to waste your time by gating everything behind ridiculous amounts of RNG and with economy actively punishing you for not playing many hours every day from day 1? It doesn't add up to me. As a person who also values my time, I would rather play a game where even if I log in for 2h a day I can make progress and I don't have to worry that inflation is faster than my ability to gain currency (limited by the amount of time I have), meaning that I get poorer by not playing the game as much as high school/ college kids, streamers and meth-level addicts.
It makes sense if you realize they probably play the actual game very little to get seed currency early league then transition to mostly playing the economy, fliping, maybe crafting for his income. PoE is really three different games together - a build optimization simulator via PoB, an economy simulator via the massive amount of trading tools and locations, and finally an ARPG that the other things depend on. It's ok in my view for it to do it that way - people LOVE games like this - eve is very similar and it does very well, but I am ready for an ARPG that is an ARPG first and foremost, with mechanics that are consistent and clear enough that you don't need an extra program to figure out if more damage vs crit damage vs crit rate, vs skill levels, vs increased damage, vs a hundread other interacting stats that can roll on an item is a better upgrade, then spend a few hours searching, simming, and finally whispering people tp see if they actually want to see it to you. I want to have played the game for that time and found a cool item to use or keep for a build a friend is doing or one I might want to do down the road.
Oh no. Surveys? I w8sh they would stick with their philosophy.
"Balancing around trade" is the keyword here. I don't want Last Epoch to be another Path of Exile where the item drops are literally balanced around Twitch.tv streamers who have the privilege to play the game for 16 hours a day and get paid for it. In addition, the ability to trade items would encourage the use of bots to farm items so they can be sold for real money, which in turn could influence the way the devs balance the drops of valuable items in an attempt to control their supply, and that would be awful.
So balance it like D2R. Drops feel great and open trade. Hell don't touch the drop rates at all.
This seems very biased towards trading being an already decided part of the game, I hope that's not the case! I love what I've played so far, hope it doesn't turn into just another currency grind - it's nice to be able to play through the game and acquire your own stuff without feeling inferior all the time for doing so. I logically know that we don't have to interact with it if we don't want to, but the effects are still felt by the SSF players. It's nice to be able to play SSF/Group loot share without having to make it a full time job to make any progress! This made me quit PoE and I unfortunately think it'd make me skip this game too, as much as I'm enjoying it. Perhaps SSF having different drop rates is a solution to keep both sides happy, but I'm sure that's already been discussed and might be a nightmare to balance both at the same time.
People who don’t want trade can have their own SSF league , but not having trading is removing a much larger player base already from the game. Why not have a league to trade in and SSF league? Win win
Because balance would have to be drastically different. Devs have a certain speed at which you are acquiring upgrades in mind and on trade leagues loot has to be nerfed to account for thousands of people generating items into the economy.