The AH dream is dead.
" Well, he is right - on almost everything. The easier and more accessible you make trading, the more necessary and important it gets. That's a no-brainer. And there's a HUGE part of the community that actually want a certain feel of progression in this game. Self-made progression. And to think that an AH won't affect these players in one way or another, is naive at best. But for a lot of players, this seems to be about instant gratification. "I want this item, I can afford this item, I should be able go get it when I want it". I'm tempted to ask "why the fuck should you be able to get this item whenever you want it", but I won't. I will just receive a rant about "the economy", and how important it allegedly is to GGG. Well, a good ingame economy(which was GGG "slogan" on grindinggeargames.com back in the days) isn't the same as "buy what you want when you want it". As he said, there isn't much "game" left, much progression, if all your items are being bought. Trading needs to be "cumbersome", in need of effort and "unreliable" (AFK players, offline players), or there NEEDS to be some sort of regulation of how often you can trade, how much you can trade and/or how many bought items you can wear. Or else, we can just remove item drops for 50% of the player base, and just have currency drop. Sometimes, just sometimes, you should really consider adapting to the world, instead of demanding that the world adapts to you.
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" I am interested in one thing - why should the progression be regulated by making player interaction regarding trading 'cumbersome', why not just lower drop rates if there is too many items on market, or in general balance the game ANY WAY BUT making a part of the game experience terrible enough to lock it out of desired fraction of players? I am getting this vibe from these discussions about auction house and the state of trading in PoE, that making trading unpleasant experience is repelling enough players for the economy to hold. I understand it works, but is that the right approach? I hate analogies, feel free to ignore this one (or just think on it for 3-5 seconds) but it seems like if servers couldn't take enough players, instead of upgrading them they could make the game bad and less fun so not as many people would play it and servers would be ok again... ✠ ✠
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We are going in cicles. The almighty Brevik sounds cool and stuff. But tell me what's the difference between obtaining an item from AH, or from poe trade? Does checking the site and manually trading the item affect accessibility at the slightest? If not, why should players get stuck at this primitive form of an AH?
The other way around is to delete poe trade and urge players to spam the trade chat like in the early days. Now that's truly fucked up accessibility. It fits Mr. Brevik's ideology and vision on the world the universe and everything. But are you ready for this? If not, then what, and how? The current state of trading isn't in a good shape anyway, it's hard to deny. So? This is a buff © 2016 The Experts ™ 2017 Last edited by torturo on Dec 16, 2016, 11:35:09 AM
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" Are you serious here? Instead of making you MAKE AN EFFORT to get what you want via trading, they should lower drop rates? And balance the game MORE around the "need" of easy trading? Wouldn't lowering drop rates make an even BIGGER part of the game terrible? And yes, I see "playing the game" as a bigger part than "buying items". Sometimes, just sometimes, you should really consider adapting to the world, instead of demanding that the world adapts to you.
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" The mechanics of the game need to change in order to allow for the availability of items as it is. In order to do endgame content, you need good gear. Once you have good gear, the content becomes much easier. The developers then change the endgame to make it more interesting for those with good gear. Which then necessitates the need for better gear. Players are reliant on good gear in order to play the game effectively. Increasing the amount of gear available increases player enjoyment. However, reducing the need for better gear through better game mechanics also increases enjoyment. Which is going to happen? Smarter mechanics that reduce the need for near-perfect gear, or increasing the availability of gear using in-game mechanics? At a certain point, you have to have access to the better gear to be able to play the endgame. I focus on the endgame because you have to be crazy to think that playing the game with sub-par builds with sub-par items, for the 50th time going through all the acts is interesting. If the developers are going to continue to change the endgame based on gear power, then availability becomes a necessity. It is frankly laughable that GGG lets the player base rely on 3rd party applications for its players to compete in the game. An auction house is completely necessary for the game as it is. For one, it keeps the players in the game. It also allows the players to compete in endgame content. An AH is practically in the game as it is. Players are already using the Party Board to advertise their items and currency needs. Players need currency to do some of the funner builds that they see on Twitch and other services. Want to do a Cospri build? How long do you think it would take to farm the currency needed to buy the items without selling a single piece of gear? Is that what players want to see happen when they only have 3 months to play in these leagues while also trying to level other characters? Making trading cumbersome, having afk players and other junk reduces player enjoyment. Those are not acceptable conditions to have in a game. | |
" I'm all for increasing availability of gear. What I don't understand, is why this have to be done through trading. What is so damn hard core about farming currency to trade, and so soft core about increasing the drop rates of certain items? Drop rates will NEVER be certain, instant of reliable. Trading is. The perfect scenario is always that skills trumps gear, but in PoE that seems impossible. But I may belong to a certain player group, let's call us "old school", that is directly turned off when things gets 100% available - all the time. You write alot about the "enjoyment" of beating end game content, and how reliant players are of items to "have "fun". But how long will this "fun" last, when you can gear up a character for 100 chaos in a minute? Where does the feel of progression fit in? The feel of accomplishment? The REAL fun for a lot of players? While you make it sound like every single player wants to gear up on the AH, because mainstreaming end game content is all the long for, there are a lot of players seeking "more". They seek a sense of progression. Accomplishment. And to those players, players that don't trade or trade once in a while, an "instant gratification-house" at the center of all balance, is death to this game. Sometimes, just sometimes, you should really consider adapting to the world, instead of demanding that the world adapts to you.
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" If there is no difference, why are people asking for an AH? " Brevik indirectly argues that trading indeed is in a good shape right now, it's not too convenient but also not too fucked up. GGG banning all political discussion shortly after getting acquired by China is a weird coincidence.
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" 100% serious, I play games to have fun. Making it so you need to put more effort in trading/f5ing some website rather than in the actual gameplay looks like terrible design to me. Balancing the game by making a part of game bad is making that part of the game, well, bad. And by bad I mean frustrating experience for many in this case. Or as Brazosrr put it: " I would also like to add one more thing that occured to me - making trading easy is not the only way to make it better. Removing/toning down trading could achieve similar result. It's just this so-so state we are now in, this third party AH afk/trollfest that is really sad to have in PoE. ✠ ✠
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" But you just advocated the same thing, only reversed. You advocated to make THE ACTUAL gameplay worse, by balancing the game and drop rates around easy trading. THAT would be frustrating. And to "tone down" trading sounds nice and all that, but how do you "tone down" trading, without introducing the need of effort or regulations? It's VERY interesting to to read how people only wants to "have fun be beating end game content with good gear", while they piss on D3 for letting you do that easily. It would be even easier in PoE if trading was fully automatic, and all you needed to do, was press "buy". So why is it that the drop rates of good gear in D3 makes it fun for two weeks, while an instant gratification-house in PoE would make it fun longer? Sometimes, just sometimes, you should really consider adapting to the world, instead of demanding that the world adapts to you.
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" Convenience and usability. Of course I'm aware that QoL features aren't a source of income but exactly the opposite, so usually get condemned. But the major problem is that this game is designed around economy and trading, so someone should act accordingly, at last. Or change the design philosophy. Anything. As poe trade is a primitive AH, proper implementation of the latter won't hurt competition, nor drastically affect this aspect of the game. AH is already here. This is a buff © 2016 The Experts ™ 2017 Last edited by torturo on Dec 16, 2016, 1:05:39 PM
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