About "we don't want trading too easy" in the last PODCAST

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Ceri wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Actually, given that they're using a "unique item" system where everything usable is preformatted with minimal affixing, I think a really easy loot hunt, followed by nothing, is the appropriate design. Building around uniques you don't have feels shitty.

Yeah I see your point and sort of agree. Problem is, it makes the game so shallow and empty. Once you get your set stuff, there's literally no reason to play the game except for the fun of playing it. And luckily it's fun to play, but with no real item hunt I get bored very quickly. I see it as a massive lost opportunity.

This is why I see preformatted items -ironically called "unique" or "legendary" when "mass-produced" or "cookie-cutter" would be more accurate terminology... but I digress. Fuck it I'm starting over.

This is why I see unique items as being somewhat antithetical to looting. I don't think it's an invalid design for games, but if you're trying to be a loot-driven ARPG I'd do everything through affix layering. Everything.

I view preformatted items as having similar design challenges to cards in the typical collectible card games. Although the "collecting" part of those games is always bullshit and it helps a lot once you just have everything. But the point is, once you do have all the cards, good CCGs have plans to make choices between all those cards meaningful, so you don't get bored with itemization just because you have all of the items. In the same way, designing good "uniques" is about assuming your players will have all the items (D3 does this) and making the choices between uniques for each gear slot very difficult, with a very balanced offering and synergies between items to make difficult choices between synergy and raw power, as well as "hate" items which are very effective for specific encounters (D3 could do this better).

I mean, really, if I was designing an ARPG around preformatted items I'd just say fuck loot and make all quest rewards a choice between several powerful unique items, Descent Champions style. In this way collecting the entire set would be impossible, RNG wouldn't even be a factor, and players would need to choose between a series of powerful and mutually exclusive options. (johnKeys would love it.)

The thing is: the passive tree in Path of Exile already fills this role. It's already an occasional non-RNG choice between mutually exclusive build-defining options.

So unless I was also going to incorporate a completely different leveling system, there's no world in which I'd consider unique items to be a good addition to PoE.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

So unless I was also going to incorporate a completely different leveling system, there's no world in which I'd consider unique items to be a good addition to PoE.

What about the part that people like them?

Unique items no matter how much of a misnomer are integral to the rng arpg format. Ask someone about their memories of d2 and they will remember fondly shako, or finding soj or making ebotd not some randomly name generated rare item. Even the famous rares in poe are mirrored items with set stats.

The funny thing is Jay Wilson et al started d3 with the same principals of rare items or bust hence why legendaries were almost all entirely garbage on initial d3 release. Yeah that went great.

Very interesting topic. Kudos to the participants.

AH would not work in POE.

Not for any of the reasons listed really...but a more simple one: Currency value is NEVER locked in. How would the AH know that 20c + 1 fuse > 20c + 1 alch? The mobility and necessity of certain currency only appears as the community matures. As players hit end game, fuses seem to skyrocket in value where as in early league you can get decent fuse ratios.

But what about Perandus coins? That is the guaranteed baseline currency we've been waiting for!!

No. The only way Pcoins become a consistent currency is if Cadiro's offers become consistent. The PCoins value is in more flux then POE's existing currency in it's current iteration. If GGG wanted to lower price variation amongst uniques offered by Cadiro, then maybe this could be a "baseline currency". Until then...not so much imo.

Async Trade

Whether or not this type of trade is possible in this game is irrelevant to the fact of what synchronous trade does. The function of sync trade has a community feel to it. Speaking with an individual, going to their hideout, and trading are all part of what makes a player "not feel alone". If I just went to an async trading house and inserted some fuse to pop out gear from User# 122055, I personally wouldn't like it. I like seeing other people's hideouts. I like seeing what kind of build they are running and their MTX/Skin transfer combos.

Async trading adds a bit of community and humanity to the game. I like it like that. That little break from farming to briefly chat with someone and see their cool hideouts, etc is great to break up the monotony of grinding.

I've talked to a lot of cool people just by trading. Some people are simply "t4t" but I've met plenty that weren't...and I kinda like that.

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PolarisOrbit wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

So unless I was also going to incorporate a completely different leveling system, there's no world in which I'd consider unique items to be a good addition to PoE.

What about the part that people like them?

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ladish wrote:

Unique items no matter how much of a misnomer are integral to the rng arpg format. Ask someone about their memories of d2 and they will remember fondly shako, or finding soj or making ebotd not some randomly name generated rare item. Even the famous rares in poe are mirrored items with set stats.

The funny thing is Jay Wilson et al started d3 with the same principals of rare items or bust hence why legendaries were almost all entirely garbage on initial d3 release. Yeah that went great.

It isn't that preformatted items are integral to the ARPG experience; I've already given reasons why they're not. What is integral to the ARPG experience, and what players crave and love, is items that do really fucking cool shit.

My contention is that people were not particularly in love with the idea that the item that gave any class Teleport in D2 always had 15% of Damage Taken gained as Mana, or 14 Life gained on Kill. I don't even think the marriage of Teleport and Magic Find was that important. What was important was: it granted any class Teleport. It was a beloved item "affix" more than a beloved item; the only reason the runeword was so loved was because it was the exclusive source of the item mod.

Yes, D3 had legendary items. Yes, they were shit. Why? Thematic though they may be, they didn't do anything awesome. Without awesome mods, players won't even tolerate preformatted items.

If being a "yellowbug" means wanting every item to be bland, then I'm not one. I think absolutely every crazy mod on a unique item in PoE could be done better as a true affix, given the proper restrictions (for example, a specific low-level base only).

Players want, need and love items that do cool shit. This doesn't mean ARPGs need preformatted items. It does mean that ARPGs need a means to rein in the power of the crazier item mods. Formatted items in one way to rein it in, but not the only one. Just the laziest.

I see that most people who are against making trading faster and better uses the barter argument. Which i dont understand. we have the choice already to set a hard price that can't be bartered or leave it open. So what difference would it make again to make the hard price instant buy? none. My poe.trade prices can be met or skipped by the buyer. I don't bother sellers trying to barter, if their price is good i buy and if it's not i walk away and find another one that meet my requirement.

None of the trading option that we have right now are going away when it gets better so everything you can do now you will be able to do when it's improved. Seeing how the option on the trading tabs are i bet we will again be surprised by the ingenuity of GGG.

A few are still traumatized by the real money auction house of D3. I hated it as much as you guys and you have to separate it from the good auction house. The only one who lose with an easier trading system is the player. Especially those who cant put thousands of hours into the game and will be less inclined to stay with the game.



Cadiro and his coins is being mentioned and he is an Economy Mechanic that is not relevant here. Post in the podcast thread if you want to express yourself about it and be heard.




...and if we could leave the game mechanic of D3 out of here. Anything trading related in D3 or any other Hack n Slash is welcome but lets keep this on topic.

The existing trade improvements alone are enough to suffice for a while.

GGG really needed to implement this a year earlier and we would have seen a lot more people stick around. This, along with loot filters have vastly improved QoL and its a damn shame it took so long. Can anyone even feasibly imagine playing poe with out these 2 things at this point? People had to suffer through forum trading and shitty loot overload for 2 years.

I wish they had prioritized these 2 things over things like uber atziri and Act 4.

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nGio wrote:

The problem with D3 wasn't the auction house, it was the RMAH. The auction house was what it was supposed to be, a FAST way to move shit, so that you could get back to grinding. The people who lived on the auction house were able to make a profit, as intended. The auction house just got a bad name because of the RMAH. The auction house was noob friendly to sellers, because you didn't have to set a buyout. It was also good for the no lifers, because they could snipe low buyouts and ninja bid as something expired.

Disagree. I never touched the RMAH, and the regular AH ruined D3 for me. I played hundreds of hours and every single item I found that was good for me character, I could buy something even better for 10k to 100k gold, which took virtually no time to farm.

Millions of players + infinitely random loot + no item sink (in softcore) + easy AH = complete disaster.

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Very interesting topic. Kudos to the participants.

AH would not work in POE.

Not for any of the reasons listed really...but a more simple one: Currency value is NEVER locked in. How would the AH know that 20c + 1 fuse > 20c + 1 alch? The mobility and necessity of certain currency only appears as the community matures. As players hit end game, fuses seem to skyrocket in value where as in early league you can get decent fuse ratios.

But what about Perandus coins? That is the guaranteed baseline currency we've been waiting for!!

No. The only way Pcoins become a consistent currency is if Cadiro's offers become consistent. The PCoins value is in more flux then POE's existing currency in it's current iteration. If GGG wanted to lower price variation amongst uniques offered by Cadiro, then maybe this could be a "baseline currency". Until then...not so much imo.

Async Trade

Whether or not this type of trade is possible in this game is irrelevant to the fact of what synchronous trade does. The function of sync trade has a community feel to it. Speaking with an individual, going to their hideout, and trading are all part of what makes a player "not feel alone". If I just went to an async trading house and inserted some fuse to pop out gear from User# 122055, I personally wouldn't like it. I like seeing other people's hideouts. I like seeing what kind of build they are running and their MTX/Skin transfer combos.

Async trading adds a bit of community and humanity to the game. I like it like that. That little break from farming to briefly chat with someone and see their cool hideouts, etc is great to break up the monotony of grinding.

I've talked to a lot of cool people just by trading. Some people are simply "t4t" but I've met plenty that weren't...and I kinda like that.

GGG should be extremely careful when introducing new features in trade. I really hope they hired a skilled economist in their team. AH, as well as an asyncronous trade system, would not work with orbs because the only thing it would achieve is making trade more 'easy' and fast. Basically it would exacerbate the current trade problems, which are not caused by the trade being 'easy'.

An AH, if specifically designed to reduce scam, massive flipping and market manipulation (ask an economist on how to do and tune it!), would work with an universal currency, but in the current state of Perandus mechanics is not a good idea. There are several issue GGG should adress before introducing coins in standard.

Of course, in order to make the coins valuable, they should be linked somewhat to the real economy. Perhaps a 'slot machine' to get some random orbs and/or the chance to get a legacy item from Cadiro as a Zana mod would be two options.

I have said before that I believe trading should be difficult, but in terms of skill, not tedium.

Because trade is an person-to-person activity, what that means and must mean is: trade winners and trade losers.

A post above this one has, in bold, that an economy can avoid scams, flipping, and market manipulation if designed a certain way. Perhaps so, but would that actually be better?

Getting "scammed" usually means you willingly accepted a trade you later came to realize wasn't as even as you initially thought, so if skill applies to trading then players feeling "scammed" is inevitable. (A very small minority of "scams" are legitimately unethical; for the remainder of this post, I use "scam" to refer to regrettable transactions which had mutual agreement at the time.)

Flipping is trading something away for more than you gave to get it; if skill-based trading is to ever reward its traders past the limited scope of gear for their builds and currency for their maps, then flipping is a necessary part of that system.

If market manipulation isn't clever trading, I don't know what is.

I get it: you don't play Path of Exile to do PvP, regardless of how PvP manifests itself. Fortunately for you, most traders are in the same boat and trying to cooperate with you. But others aren't in the same boat, but just outside it; they're sharks. They want to nibble at you, feed off of you.

And that, right there, is difficulty in trading. Not the kind created by sheer boredom and tedium, but a difficulty not too unlike the difficulties of well-designed PvE. They're out to get you; don't let them.

Noobs get their asses handed to them - PvE or trade, doesn't matter. Seasoned players are a little more savvy but still get rekt occasionally - PvE or trade, doesn't matter.

If I could wave a wand and magically Increase the amount of scamming, flipping, and market manipulation opportunities in Path of Exile, I would. And among the principle reasons I'm against automated buyouts is because I know even more unskilled, naive buyers would be able to trade for the item they want without risk of getting scammed through completely voluntary mutual agreement.

If this would intimidate you into not trading, that's the point. Trade and farming should be balanced against each other, with risks to each, so neither becomes the predominant wealth acquisition method. Some of you are supposed to say "fuck trading" and give up on it, perhaps just for a little while, perhaps longer.

Thank you, scammers, for scam. You're the line of defense between PoE trade and D3-style risk-free trading.