GGG's argument about AH/state of trade that is grinding my gears - 2018 edition

"

Boem wrote:

"

The_Scourge wrote:

"

Sickness wrote:

If people trade more it will shit the balance away from self-crafted and self-found gear.

Most likely the best thing I've seen from Sickness in 6 years of posting. Brilliant stuff.

1) what balance?

2) GGG moved themselves to this position, well before PoE trade came along.(Crafting yourself was never more rewarding then participation in the economy of PoE, it wasn't five years back and it still isn't)

I'm not saying i would mind a change like that, but by virtue of enabling trade within their game they themselves veto'd against it.

We have SSF for that type of game-play.

His argument is baseless and illogical.

Peace,

-Boem-

read it again. :P

"

The_Scourge wrote:

read it again. :P

Don't have to, i ignored the shit and tried to pull a somewhat relevant discussion out of it.

Peace,

-Boem-

"

Phrazz wrote:

"

Boem wrote:

Do you play SSF?

Peace,

-Boem-

It is note worthy that the balance between trade and drops has little to do with SSF. It has to do with how mandatory trade is in the main leagues. If trade becomes so easy and convenient that they have to adjust the drop rates, it becomes more mandatory too. People that trade 24/7 don't care, of course. Others care a lot.

"

Boem wrote:

I want players to find the "market place" conveniently, i don't want trading itself to be more convenient.

I agree.

I was trying to gauge his actual in-game experience with crafting and self-found progression since he seems to be adamantly supporting how great it is.

I actually have experience with all those forms of progressing the game and i can tell you that crafting is a "1 in 10000 odds" of getting something of relevance.

His current "stance" on the mater is that people should be forced to craft more and self-find gear even in the early progressions.

1) this already happens when a league launches, everybody starts with nothing and needs to progress(so there is no need to enforce that further from a design perspective)

2) item progression comes at a halt for most characters at around tier 75 (if your know what your doing, else it already happens a lot sooner)

3) niche builds have a hard time even in the current model to gather items trade/self found. Since trade supports meta current builds and crafting is a crap-shoot.

There is absolutely no benefit for GGG and PoE as a whole to force it's community members to craft items at for example level 50 of a character progression.
And GGG is to blame for that.(linking system, crafting tiers, base item tiers etc etc)

I find Sickness his arguments based on ignorance as far as i can tell. Sure it's an opinion but it doesn't seem to hold very much relevance when he ignores that crafting is already a relevant part of the game even with the current trade model and the same for self-found gear.
Hunting your own item progression was introduced with SSF, in a trade-league it is very much standard ALREADY that the market will provide you with better items then you will realistically craft/find.

And people that want to trade, will trade
people that want to craft, will craft
people that wanna do both things a lot or very little, will do so on their own accord

All of these things will happen irrelevant of how trading is presented to the player.

Peace,

-Boem-

You think that my argument is based on ignorance simply because you do not understand my argument.
What you need to understand is that I am not making the argument that external trading is objectively better for the game, I am making the argument that the reason why GGG did not add ingame trading is because ANY change to the ease of trading will affect the balance betweenn self-found/crafted.

When you have accepted that fact the argument you should be making is that the effect on self-found/crafted vs trading by adding an in game system is outweighed be the benfits of not relying on externalities.

"

Sickness wrote:

You think that my argument is based on ignorance simply because you do not understand my argument.
What you need to understand is that I am not making the argument that external trading is objectively better for the game, I am making the argument that the reason why GGG did not add ingame trading is because ANY change to the ease of trading will affect the balance betweenn self-found/crafted.

When you have accepted that fact the argument you should be making is that the effect on self-found/crafted vs trading by adding an in game system is outweighed be the benfits of not relying on externalities.

No i shouldn't, because i disagree with your conclusion.

Removing the pre-requisite to alt-tab does not make "trading" more efficient.

It makes finding the market place more efficient.

GGG's aim is to make the "action to trade" less efficient, which is demonstrated by the fact we don't have a trading system that facilitates off-line buyout's or instant purchases without player interaction.

As long as the "action to trade" requires certain uncomfortable steps or actions, they have succeeded in their goal.(though arguably, community pressure is already making their stance crumble as demonstrated by adding the "off-line/on-line" functionality to trading, which was a big barrier that decreased the efficiency of trading)

Guiding more people to the market place holds no relevance to the efficiency of trading in itself. It just increases the volume but does nothing to the steps required "to trade".(still need to whisper a person, still need to haggle/bargain and you still need to visit them in order to conduct the transaction which are all barriers to block efficient trading)

All of these barriers/steps are time consuming which force the player to decide whether he will trade or simply play the game.

Which chris refers to as "easy trading" being the absence of all those barriers and simply pressing a button somewhere and having the item instantly.
Which i am against since it would negatively impact the economy within the game and the player-base.

Peace,

-Boem-

edit :

Do you think GGG currently balances drop rates of both items and currency around the assumption players have the ability to trade or not?

Because currently your saying that they do not do that, which seems a wrong to me.

Rather then try to debate points I am just going to describe my own experience take it with a grain of salt or what have you.

So when I began PoE some years ago, Id say about 6 months before they added act 4 give or take I did my initial run it was pretty quick into cruel dif that my build started to struggle. I was in whatever soft core seasonal league was going on at the time. I think it was the one that added the spawning monster chests loot pinatas.

Id already been studying both the in game trade chat, and the trade forums, and picked up pretty quick on how some where pretty blatantly over charging. obviously trying to take advantage of new players like myself who chose to not take the time to inform themselves. I didnt have alot of good drops, I was in fact often scraping my way up to regret orbs via the vendor currency exchanges as I noticed those had a pretty stable value comparable to the chaos orbs everyone seemed so into but I had yet to see.

I chose the trade forums rather then the trade chat. I would write down names of traders who listed clear buy outs and didnt charge more then a few chaos for what seemed to me damn fine uniques compared to the largely week rares I was finding.

I even managed to find a guy selling one of those challenge reward alt skin robes of a thousand ribbons which the 3d art for took my red and black fancy and got for a few regrets. I still see those sale on standard to this day for an exalt or more. So I consider it a great new comer trade score of mine.

Im pretty casual my highest character has struggled and used several of the total skill resets to push even into the early 80s. Serious loot farming is simply above my grade and I hold no complaint about that. Its pretty typical for me in MMO.

However I am a talker, and a pretty good trader. I have managed to aquire through the trade forums just about every nifty little unique I want and managed to make some fun builds around them.

My last session of regular play a while back just before the new 10 act version came out I even managed to do a goal Id had sense I began to make a goddess unleashed sword. It was a long term goal Id set myself and even as a filthy casual I did it. And yes I know I could of likely bought one for less then the resources and time I put into it. but then it wouldnt of been MY Goddess but a 2nd hand one discarded by someone that didnt appreciate her.

By partaking in the active trade Ive made a few lasting friends on PoE. Including a nice korean guy who I ran into when I came back again most recently a month or so back, who when I told him I was farming for an oni goroshi he flat out gave me one not because he didnt value it but because he values me as a friend and knew of my fondness for my trilogy of the goddess swords Id built a scion around last time Id played actively.

So to sum up, people are ignorant only if they choose to remain so, I find taking part in trade to be a value to the community as it does encourage interaction and weed out the more anti social sorts who put greed before all else. If you make the mistake of finding something that seems rare even to you and not take the time to ask those you have befriended and trust what its value is that is the price of not being social and making good allies.

Granted I am a guy who my first month of guild wars when it launched built a fortune off of finding a single black dye drop during the tutorial area and using the nest egg I got from its sale to start buying items Id see people look for and then contact them and resell at a modest mark up. In my prime there I was on many peoples friends list because they knew if there was a weapon they wanted if I didnt have it in stock I would find it cheaper then they could and my middle man fee was modest compared to most.

IMO that is alot like how it works on poe. The best traders dont try to get top value they try to keep the prices moderate and inventory moving out constantly to make room for more.

Honestly my biggest complaint in poe is those who use templeague tabs to hoard the alt art uniques because they never play standard and dont care about the community enough to take some time to circulate them to standard players who would have their play time and love for the game grow mightily if they got such fun little uniques for a good price.

"

Boem wrote:

All of these barriers/steps are time consuming which force the player to decide whether he will trade or simply play the game.

Exactly! But the descision is not "Do I trade 0% or 100%".
The more barriers/steps the more situations a player will simply choose to not trade. Delaying upgrades for example.
And having the trade listing be on an external web page is an extra step and barrier.

"

Which chris refers to as "easy trading" being the absence of all those barriers and simply pressing a button somewhere and having the item instantly.
Which i am against since it would negatively impact the economy within the game and the player-base.

Chris is explaining the principle that I have repeated enough times already. You are not getting it. It's not binary, reality is not that people either trade 0% of the time or 100% of the time.

"

Do you think GGG currently balances drop rates of both items and currency around the assumption players have the ability to trade or not?

Because currently your saying that they do not do that, which seems a wrong to me.

No I am not saying that. Go back and reread my posts until you come to a different conclusion about what I am saying.

Stop thinking in absolutes.

"

Sickness wrote:

"

Do you think GGG currently balances drop rates of both items and currency around the assumption players have the ability to trade or not?

Because currently your saying that they do not do that, which seems a wrong to me.

No I am not saying that. Go back and reread my posts until you come to a different conclusion about what I am saying.

Stop thinking in absolutes.

If GGG balances under the assumption people have access to trade then implementing trade in the engine itself does nothing to detract from their current balance value's.

If GGG does not balance under the assumption people have access to trade then implementing trade in the engine itself does detract from current balance value's.

It is in fact, that simple.

Your implying that if they put trade in the engine itself, loot and currency drops need to be adjusted.(balance of loot distribution)

Which would mean you believe they currently utilize balance value's derived from the assumption that people don't have access to trade.

Peace,

-Boem-

"

Boem wrote:

"

Sickness wrote:

"

Do you think GGG currently balances drop rates of both items and currency around the assumption players have the ability to trade or not?

Because currently your saying that they do not do that, which seems a wrong to me.

No I am not saying that. Go back and reread my posts until you come to a different conclusion about what I am saying.

Stop thinking in absolutes.

If GGG balances under the assumption people have access to trade then implementing trade in the engine itself does nothing to detract from their current balance value's.

If GGG does not balance under the assumption people have access to trade then implementing trade in the engine itself does detract from current balance value's.

It is in fact, that simple.

Your implying that if they put trade in the engine itself, loot and currency drops need to be adjusted.(balance of loot distribution)

Which would mean you believe they currently utilize balance value's derived from the assumption that people don't have access to trade.

Peace,

-Boem-

If GGG balances for the current level of trade activity then adding the trade system in game, which increases the level of trade activity, will affect the balance.

You are still stuck in the mindset that they either balance around trading or they don't.
That is wrong. It's not binary. It's matter of to what degree they balance around trading.

"

Sickness wrote:

If GGG balances for the current level of trade activity then adding the trade system in game, which increases the level of trade activity, will affect the balance.

You are still stuck in the mindset that they either balance around trading or they don't.
That is wrong. It's not binary. It's matter of to what degree they balance around trading.

So your telling me they balance the story content around a presumable 50% of the community trading and the other 50% not.(arbitrary non absolute value)

And also base drop rates around such an assumption.

Then why was story content/drop rates not re-balanced after the introduction of the "off-line/on-line" api extension?
Which made trading a lot more efficient.

I mean, they could instantly make the game follow the rule sets your describing. Yet they don't do that.

They could make masters 8 take half of the current experience to facilitate crafting, yet they refused to touch their experience requirements since they where introduced.(i'm talking about the lvl 8 modifiers that can block entire pools of mods, making crafting a lot more beneficial in therms of efficiency)

They could make all items drop white and increase currency drops ten-fold(arbitrary number) so people need to craft their own gear and interact with that system.

Your also implying they make loot and currency drops more plentiful as we near the end of a league.
Since in your opinion they don't balance around static perceptions or guide-lines but balance on real-time activity inputs.

They could, but damn do i hope they don't. That be a fucking mess, then again current balance is a mess.

Peace,

-Boem-