Player feedback on trading (both sides welcome)

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goetzjam wrote:

@neronoah

I've seen your idea of durability before and I dislike the idea of it. You are essentially saying you can find an item, wear it and eventually it will become useless and you might have to downgrade when it fully degrades, which is the opposite of character progression.

orbs are answer to gold, and vaal orbs are answer for gear :D

First, I didn't propose to add durability (read again, in my understanding, durability is forced over items). I said there should be reasons to destroy your items on purpose so they get removed from the economy. Something like Ethereal Items in Diablo 2 could be a way (Ethereal Orb?), but drop rates need to be fine tuned so people can amortize their gear in time.

Second, Vaal Orbs are not an answer for gear. They were introduced because they were apropiatedly themed for SoTV expansion. If they were the answer, no one would bring the need for items sinks. They don't really destroy items most of the time, they just reduce value, and that's compensated because even more valuable items are created on the process.

Third, item deflation is a way to destroy progress too. The current situation with eternal items is bad.

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goetzjam wrote:

IMO if anything you've made it clear from your thoughts on D2 that D3 COULD support a trade system at least because the drops are fine for solo play. Unlike PoE Blizzard wouldn't have to rebalance anything to make trading niche, maybe not an AH, maybe just trading, but I can't play that game because part of the excitement I get from ARPG games is sharing loot with friends and that whole party and 2 hour limit is completely crap I can't play when they do always. :/

I am not against trading. All arpg games have trading, except maybe d3. But not all of them are balanced around trading/economy. And when people say AH, I always automatically think the game will need to be balanced around it. But if its not balanced around AH, I have no problems with it, even if its in the game.

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Ceri wrote:

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NeroNoah wrote:

In another subject, the problem with standard economy is that gear doesn't get removed from the economy.

Yeah. Remove Eternal Orbs already. And give the Mirror some kind of drawback, sheesh. At least make it limited, that an item can only be mirrored a set number of times. One? Not sure. But unlimited spamming of mirrors on perfect items in a permanent economy.. That is madness.

I'd also make hardcore leagues perma-death. That's the only hardcore mode I know of. But that is another discussion. :)

I've been playing for quite a while and I'm still not quite sure why Mirrors exist at all. It's like when SoJs were duped like crazy in D2 and they became the standard currency but sanctioned by the game itself. Atleast they should "steal some essence" of the item or something, maybe everytime you mirror an item it would have a chance of turning the original item into a mirrored verion (thus making the original unmirrorable anymore) and the more you mirrored an item, the more "essence" you stole so the higher chance it became a mirrored item. And yes to the permadeath as well.

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eudaemon69 wrote:

I've been playing for quite a while and I'm still not quite sure why Mirrors exist at all. It's like when SoJs were duped like crazy in D2 and they became the standard currency but sanctioned by the game itself. Atleast they should "steal some essence" of the item or something, maybe everytime you mirror an item it would have a chance of turning the original item into a mirrored verion (thus making the original unmirrorable anymore) and the more you mirrored an item, the more "essence" you stole so the higher chance it became a mirrored item. And yes to the permadeath as well.

GGG being inexperienced is the most probable explanation. At least I hope they have become a little more intelligent since then.

@nero

Sorry I mistakenly said your idea of durability, I know however I've seen that posted before.

From what you've suggested so that people can read how D2's eternal situation worked:

"

Ethereal occurs on about 5% of all weapons and armor. It is both good and bad.

The good is that it raises a weapon's damage 50%, and an armor's defense 50%.

The bad is that it lowers their durability by 45%, and the real kicker, it makes them un-repairable.
=

Essentially this creates a market for items that strait up outclass current items in power, but they will eventually "self destruct" However even in D2 there was ways to get around this, would there be ways in PoE to get around it as well?

Vaal orbs arent the end all be all for gear, but you have to admit it helps. The reduce the value of the item MUCH more then they can improve it, even if 1/10 chance is an improvement that nets a good gain the other 9/10 times will not make up the difference, otherwise it would only be logical to vaal orb every single item as the risk wouldn't be there, that simply isn't the case though.

Item deflation is ONLY a real issue in standard where no one wants cheap gear anymore, they have their characters setup and only can get larger upgrades. Eternals if anything open up the top end market to allow for people to continually improve until they have all mirrored gear and even then they can do so after that as well. If you can say that eternals deflate gear, masters being added does it moreso as it affects literally every item that possibly drops, if you are ok with removing masters from the game, then I can see how you would be OK with removing eternals, if not you are simply bais against one form of creating deflated high end gear and somehow don't have an issue with something that deflates every piece of gear.


@miljan

Sorry, I didn't make it clear if Blizzard did no other changes besides enable trading or an AH with NO BALANCE changes, would that be ok or not? I'd also like to hear your thoughts on Ancient items.


@eudaemon69

I think mirrors go and make the statement of "rares are the best items in the game" for PoE actually true. You can't mirror a unqiue, so if you can create copies of these insane 6T1 rare items it goes and helps that notion. I mean I think most standard players are aware of Loath Bane dagger, IMO it creates a whole another top level of rares and character progression.

Not everyone likes the idea of eternals or mirrors, but again people bring those into discussions of "smaller item value" which it doesn't really have anything to do with, if you or anyone can clarify that i'd appreciate it.

In regards to perma death for HC I think the main reason why GGG created this "go to softcore" situation is so more players can try and enjoy hardcore. Personally I think its a good thing, but I understand it has some negatives that might have been overlooked.

I posted pretty much this thread a few months ago and got quite a few shrugs. My thesis at the time was that as players mature into certain leagues, selling small value items becomes less worthwhile and over time new players basically get screwed as a result because they can't buy anything half reasonable (only exceptional). At the time I suggested that there needed to be a better-facilitated process for crappy to middling items, so they're worthwhile actually keeping and putting in a shop setup.

I maintain that view.

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davidnn5 wrote:

I posted pretty much this thread a few months ago and got quite a few shrugs. My thesis at the time was that as players mature into certain leagues, selling small value items becomes less worthwhile and over time new players basically get screwed as a result because they can't buy anything half reasonable (only exceptional). At the time I suggested that there needed to be a better-facilitated process for crappy to middling items, so they're worthwhile actually keeping and putting in a shop setup.

I maintain that view.

This is interesting you are saying if you start a month or two late in a temp league you can't get 1-5c items to buy and people are complaining that they can't sell those types of pieces (this might only be in standard, im not sure)

How fluent are you with using procurement\acquisition?


Also I understand this thread isn't the first or last to discuss trading, I was asked to make a separate one to discuss by a few people instead of derailing another thread.

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goetzjam wrote:

@nero

Sorry I mistakenly said your idea of durability, I know however I've seen that posted before.

From what you've suggested so that people can read how D2's eternal situation worked:

"

Ethereal occurs on about 5% of all weapons and armor. It is both good and bad.

The good is that it raises a weapon's damage 50%, and an armor's defense 50%.

The bad is that it lowers their durability by 45%, and the real kicker, it makes them un-repairable.
=

Essentially this creates a market for items that strait up outclass current items in power, but they will eventually "self destruct" However even in D2 there was ways to get around this, would there be ways in PoE to get around it as well?

Vaal orbs arent the end all be all for gear, but you have to admit it helps. The reduce the value of the item MUCH more then they can improve it, even if 1/10 chance is an improvement that nets a good gain the other 9/10 times will not make up the difference, otherwise it would only be logical to vaal orb every single item as the risk wouldn't be there, that simply isn't the case though.

Item deflation is ONLY a real issue in standard where no one wants cheap gear anymore, they have their characters setup and only can get larger upgrades. Eternals if anything open up the top end market to allow for people to continually improve until they have all mirrored gear and even then they can do so after that as well. If you can say that eternals deflate gear, masters being added does it moreso as it affects literally every item that possibly drops, if you are ok with removing masters from the game, then I can see how you would be OK with removing eternals, if not you are simply bais against one form of creating deflated high end gear and somehow don't have an issue with something that deflates every piece of gear.

The idea is not to have item drops, just to gate max power behind "durability" brought by orbs to entice people to destroy their items, at every level of item progression (and probably give reasons to use that power, without any rune that can revert the effect, of course). Anyway, it was more theory that anything. There should be better solutions out there to introduce item sinks.

Vaal Orbs helps, but it's not enough. Also, it won't help once an item obtains an insane corruption, so in standard, it will make things worse with time.

Personally, I think that Eternal and Mirrors should be left alone and sidestepped. They have done harm, but I think it's late to remove them, and it would be more elegant to create reasons to pick up rares (my idea of ethereal means that having a non mirrored rare could be stronger that a mirrored rare, so people would identify items; also, if items start to be consumed the drop rate for good things can be increased).

Anyway, don't focus too much in my suggestion, focus on the "we need item sinks part". And yes, it's a standard problem.

Since it seems that d2's economy gets brought up quite often as an example I feel like my experience might be of value here.

I played the ever-loving crap out of d2. online, offline, hc, sc. modded, you get the idea.

My main source of information on the game was from the hardcopy manual and people I befriended in d2.

This was back in the dark days of the internet for me, keep in mind that the whole online theorycrafting scene was pretty minimal as far as I was concerned. The idea of setting up item trades on a website would have sounded ridiculous to my teenage mind.

The important thing is that I was killing demons and having a blast. Cool gear dropped fairly often, but that wasn't the main place I got my some of my most memorable d2 experiences.


People would make open games...and get this....

Drop items on the ground for people to take and use! People would drop mountains of gold, more than you could hold.

Items exceeding the value of SOJ's!! before the massive duping, or perhaps before I was aware of it.

People would create mule characters for the sole purpose of saving gear to throw a free item party. Limited stash size and muling was a bit of a pain but people would do it over and over just to give things away. Amazing.
It felt so cool to drop a couple stashes full of items on the ground for people to pick through. The epeen inflation alone was enough to cause mild dizziness!

These were amazing games, I made most of my game friends there, learned tons...and they were happening nearly all the time.

Trading in D2 and the expansion of course had its problems, and of course the RMT and duping issues which came later get a ton of attention.

But man alive, some of the best times and social experiences I had in d2 were in free item or free rush groups. Either giving or receiving it didn't matter. Often it would end with getting the honour of taking a person on their first cow run and reading line upon line of laughter.

This gift economy was amazingly pro-social. Blizzard didn't design/balance for this, it was emergent gameplay made possible by open mechanics and a decent droprate.

These of course... were different times, before the spambots and racist spammers and crazy duping and RMT. I just don't see this part talked about all that much for some reason.

@BrainHP

Interesting story, I think a lot of what you described was essentally how the game worked in closed beta (both the original and the new one) But the new beta shortly lost that lust as GGG basically opened beta for anyone that was willing to throw pretty much any amount of money their way, IMO this was a mistake but they need players to play to get feedback and testing.

Now beta revolves around pretty much the same economy we see on live.

I'd like to hear more specific thoughts on the trade system in your eyes and its affects vs just previous D2 experiences (although I always enjoy hearing about that, it isn't exactly the intent of the topic)


@nero

I'll try to to focus too much on the specifics, but in general do you think GGG should change the way trade works or the economy in order to cater to a problem of inflation in gear, specifically one that is pretty much exclusive for standard?


Worth noting I played in bloodlines the last time around, skipped the one month (with mtx ones, I've got all the armor sets i need) I wouldn't consider myself an exclusive league player or an exclusive softcore player I think I probably play both evenly.