Something must be done about The Forbidden Trove Discord

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DiabloImmoral wrote:

TFT has Chris Wilson's full endorsement and support given his actions since Harvest so it's not going anywhere. It's a core part of the game like poedb and poe.ninja. This is unlikely to change since adding the conveniences of TFT to the game would reduce trade friction for regular folks too much, and nobody but a coalition of popular streamers (never gonna happen) has the ability to push people towards an alternative.

Yeah people saying GGG has no culpability here is pretty crazy.

Intentionally made a bad trade system, points toward TFT in official posts on balance (acknowledging they balance around TFT users and suggesting it as an option people need to use if they want to make endgame items), and make no improvements to trade to make TFT unnecessary.

I've used TFT only twice and I used an alt account to do so.

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Also, doing something is very easy. Improve trade and make Harvest crafts tradeable items. Make an orb that removes lab enchants from one item and puts it on another to remove the lab running / item trading problems. Allow direct trading of items by going to someone's hideout while they are online or off.

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DiabloImmoral wrote:

TFT has Chris Wilson's full endorsement and support given his actions since Harvest

That is a very wonky way of looking at it. Just cos the ability to do what they do hasn't been shut down doesn't constitute an endorsement. By that logic, GGG also endorses RMT. People only say this because they keep demanding GGG make it easier to trade Harvest crafts (like above^), which they clearly don't want. Not giving you the Harvest tradability you want is not an endorsement of TFT.

Anyway, as to OP, I don't use TFT. Ever. And I can play the game just fine. TFT are a bunch of elitists who think they're pivotal to the game, but they're really not. You can play PoE without using them, indeed I'm pretty sure most people who play this game (who're pretty casual) have never used them.

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Exile009 wrote:

By that logic, GGG also endorses RMT. People only say this because they keep demanding GGG make it easier to trade Harvest crafts (like above^), which they clearly don't want. Not giving you the Harvest tradability you want is not an endorsement of TFT.

Where has GGG acknowledged they balanced around RMT, as they did with TFT?

Where has GGG pointed at RMT as the best way to progress, as they did when saying TFT produced the best items?

GGG wants a bad ingame trade system, and points you to TFT in official posts from the lead designer. It doesn't get much more endorsed than that, unless you want them say it word for word "You should use TFT for high end crafts and progression."

TFT is poison.

My jaw dropped when Chris mentioned them in the interview, where he was totally OK with balancing around the existence of third party trading. It is hands down the most unprofessional and distant thing he has ever uttered. I was baffled, seriously.

TFT is like a freakin' mafia. Sure, you can trade with them - and they want to be trading with you. They have a large network and everything is totally OK - until it isn't. Then it becomes clear that they aren't run by morals or rules, but they do more or less as they wish. They don't have to answer to anyone. They can't be sanctioned.

To indirectly give so much power and control to regular individuals with personal interest, is just fundamentally idiotic. And it's 100% on GGG.

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trixxar wrote:

and points you to TFT in official posts from the lead designer. It doesn't get much more endorsed than that, unless you want them say it word for word "You should use TFT for high end crafts and progression."

They don't 'point you to' TFT, they point AT TFT aka they acknowledged its existence and effects. Yes, they'd have to say your quote for it to count as an endorsement. And what would you have them do, which follows THEIR desires NOT yours? They don't want tradable Harvest crafts, they want Harvest to be entirely self-farmed, and not trivially accessible either. So how would you propose they do THAT while killing TFT? If you have any good suggestions along those lines (that don't involve making the best crafts so common that it just plunges the TFT market) that kills TFT, then you can blame them for not doing it.

Edit:- To be clear, I don't think Chris' words were ideal either. But I'm more focused on what should be done about it. And whatever suggestions for that there are have to be in line with GGG's desire for Harvest to not be as powerful and accessible as some people seem to want it to be, or else they can't really be said to be hypocritical for not doing so. Of course the simplest solution is to just kill off Harvest completely, but 1) I'm not sure if that's actually what they want, and 2) they've faced player protest every time they've previously nerfed it, and it doesn't die down cos people keep complaining about it for months.

Just another example of why I no longer contribute financially to GGG. Is it necessary to partake of this type of trading? No. Is it highly beneficial to a group of players to do so and does it impact the game? That's a resounding yes.

The whole concept of "won't it be fun to hide everything and let players/the community find things out for themselves" is so tired and lazy. The game relies so heavily on third party contributors it is actually a significant risk to the game. What happens if one day the Wiki falls over, PoB closes down, the Trade platforms get corrupted and TFT runs off with everyone's accounts and disappears?

That GGG seem content with this state of affairs is horrifying to me. If I was Chris, this is what would keep me awake at night.

My biggest gripe with all this is the continual underlying problem of the elite getting richer at the expense of everyone else, and ultimately the game being balanced around the top end. We're a long way from the early days of PoE and I don't think the game is actually in a better state in many ways.

At least on trade they did make their own trade platform, which is now standard. And wikis are typically community created, that's hardly just a GGG practice. PoB is a bigger issue imo.

Anyway, even I do think the TFT issue ought to be solved by just making Harvest crafts tradable, but they don't seem to want to do that. The thing is, I'd be quite happy if they further nerfed Harvest to do so, as those powerful crafting options might as well not exist for me since I don't use TFT. I have zero attachment to the power of Harvest - make it just a convenient way to change socket colors and do div card gambles for all I care. But I also know that every time they nerf Harvest, there is an outcry, and that outcry tends to last.

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Aldora_the_Summoner wrote:

What happens if one day the Wiki falls over, PoB closes down, the Trade platforms get corrupted and TFT runs off with everyone's accounts and disappears?

I think that state of affairs is pretty much what GGG's vision for the game actually is, lol. None of those things except maybe the wiki existed for the first few years of POE.

The trade sites are an unintended side-effect of the feature that allowed players to link to in-game items in the forums. The idea was to allow players to brag about their drops, but then somebody developed a way to scrape all those items into a searchable index and trading suddenly jumped from trade chat to online search. The scraping caused such a burden on the website that GGG was pretty much forced to create the official API, and eventually their own trade site. This was never their intention... They would prefer trade to be much harder and in-game.

Similar things have happened with other tools like PoB, where now GGG provides the skill tree JSON data along with each new league because the tools were going to be made anyway, and at least this way they're correct.

The reality is that these 3rd-party tools are going to be created and used no matter what GGG does. Even if they make Harvest crafts tradeable, TFT will still exists selling them in bulk, just like they do with bulk Maps and Fragments and all the rest. GGG cannot control what the player base does outside the game, and I don't think they should even spend very much energy trying to.

I'm saying this as a player who will never touch TFT, who would rather have more (and better) in-game trade functionality, who occasionally uses PoB, and almost never poedb. I have no trade macro, price overlay, Lab running tool, or any of the other myriad user-built helpers.

- edit spelling

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Exile009 wrote:

They don't 'point you to' TFT, they point AT TFT aka they acknowledged its existence and effects. Yes, they'd have to say your quote for it to count as an endorsement. And what would you have them do, which follows THEIR desires NOT yours? They don't want tradable Harvest crafts, they want Harvest to be entirely self-farmed, and not trivially accessible either. So how would you propose they do THAT while killing TFT? If you have any good suggestions along those lines (that don't involve making the best crafts so common that it just plunges the TFT market) that kills TFT, then you can blame them for not doing it.

1) Harvests make the item soulbound.

2) Or, if you want to make it so you can craft with Harvest then sell - Harvest crafts make the item not eligible to back to any account that has previously had it.

I.e. Player 1 finds a base, sells to Player 2, who crafts on it, then sells to player 3 who Harvest crafts it to be a high end item. Item can not be traded to any character on accounts from Player 1 or 2, but could be sold to anyone else ingame.

3) Harvest crafts are already tradeable on TFT, so be realistic and practical, and move the trades from third party to items. "That isnt what they want" but what they want is ALREADY not happening. Its just screwing players who dont use TFT.

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BrightestDay wrote:

Firstly, i'd like to say sorry about your bad luck.

with that being said, GGG has NOTHING to do with that 3rd party site.

threatening to stop supporting GGG for tft is like beating your wife for what the dog did.

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Beating your wife for what the neightbors dog did.

Now that being said all GGG has to do is make the harvests tradable like beastcrafting and we are all good. So, while I agree that GGG is making a mistake about this I will not go all "I won't play the game anymore".

BTW I am a huge power player with more hours than I want to admit. I have never used the Forbidden Trove nor will I. That is my protest and also my fear (and refusal) of being scammed.