Something must be done about The Forbidden Trove Discord

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trixxar wrote:

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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.

Unfortunately soulbound items is another thing they've expressed not liking. Pretty sure that would apply to your truncated version of it too. Not saying I like it, but it is what it is.

As for not using TFT, well, I don't use TFT. For anything. I still have fun in the game. Sure TFT is powerful, but I don't feel 'screwed' for not using them.

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AcrylicHercules wrote:

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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

Yeah this is one thing a lot of players, especially newer ones, don't appreciate. A lot of these third party tools, and what support they get from GGG, were never intended. GGG was pretty much dragged kicking and screaming to today's PoE. They didn't plan it, they accepted it. Grudgingly.

Of course nowadays they won't say so anymore. Even their infamous trade manifesto is years old by now. Why not? Consider how much 'Chris' vision' has become a meme in the community. They know that pushing that is just going to lead to even more player hostility, so they do as Bannon did -

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Did I speak up? No. The pyre would have been my only answer. I did what I was told and drew the lines of morality where I could.

Replace 'morality' with 'player ability' and it applies to GGG. Consider, for instance, that they STILL haven't given us a larger Archnemesis inventory, despite that being one of the simplest and easiest improvements to make...

Btw, here's something that might give people an idea of what GGG are like - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3227414

That event was decried for being horribly paced, and he still came out top. And the above is just one example. Neon is another, and he's a senior developer.

It's often said that they don't even play their own game, implying that they're terrible at it. On the contrary, GGG staff are often some of the best players of the game period. But they're used to playing a VERY different game. One where they aren't so reliant on trade (trade was dead in that event, and it's no accident that SSF is one of the game features they were most happy to roll out). One that's far more grindy and just tougher in general. One without any crafting system comparable in power and/or control as Harvest. One where build planning tools are far more basic, if they exist at all. One that, to put no finer point on it, is more like unmodded Diablo. That's the ARPG background they come from

Now we hear them talking about Hard mode, and I guarantee you Hard mode would see a pathetically tiny proportion of the playerbase playing it. And yet it gets GGG support, despite the tiny customer base. That should tell you something.

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Phrazz wrote:

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

Yup, GGG can itemize crafts and have an auction house. Instead, I can get 1 reply back after whispering 20 people on the official trade site. If people want to quickly trade and get exactly what they need TFT is the best choice.

TFT is massive now. TFT is the Ebay for POE. GGG would have a hard time replicating its capabilities. I don't think GGG wants to spend any ongoing resources to maintain it too. TFT also provides the trade friction GGG likes. There is always the possibility that you will get scammed and lose your item. Call it the TFT "poof".

Also, I would be skeptical of what OP says happened. Some other complainers were in the wrong but only told their side of the story and lied about some details.

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Exile009 wrote:

another thing they've expressed not liking.

You can endlessly defend ggg as not liking any solution that fixes major problems in the game.

At some point its not really a logical defense.

If the trades are already occurring, just being controlled a self-interested third party who are perfectly willing to screw players over with zero repercussions, then saying 'Well GGG dont like trade' is nonsensical. Its already happening, just in a way that screws players.

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trixxar wrote:

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Exile009 wrote:

another thing they've expressed not liking.

You can endlessly defend ggg as not liking any solution that fixes major problems in the game.

At some point its not really a logical defense.

It's a logical defence in that if they're not going to do it, there's no point proposing it.

And if you still think they should do it, there's no point defending them for not doing so. Fundamental clash of ideas. Head, wall, bang.

bang, bang, bang, bang.

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As for this thread entire: this is what happens when you make a game that encourages immoral, ruthless behaviour between players and then don't have the resources to properly regulate it. And one of those resources is the desire to do so. GGG wanted the wild west; they got the wild west. Of course you're going to see factions form, discord channels with politicking, scamming and other underhanded techniques. If GGG don't disallow it, you'll see it. If it can be done within the system (and the system is largely outside of the game itself), it will be. The problem is GGG thought they could keep all the cut-throat behaviour to in-game -- Discord wasn't even a thing when they came up with most of PoE's core mechanics and systems. But if not Discord, then IRC or forums or whatever. GGG's vast inexperience is nowhere more obvious than in how easily players took over the running of the metagame. Instead of the metagame forming in response to what the devs do update to update, PoE's metagame is more like bureaucracy: whatever changes at the top, it's established enough to do the same thing as before with minimal changes.

The layers to PoE's metagame are impressive, daunting and ultimately exploitable as fuck. And exploitable things attract selfish arseholes who will exploit it for as long as they can. They will entrench themselves and build their own systems that withstand the fluctuations of external forces with ease. It's really that simple.

For me TFT is the product of GGG negligence of the trade interaction of the game.GGG become so reliant on 3rd party programs etc etc its really saddening.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

It's a logical defence in that if they're not going to do it, there's no point proposing it.

And if you still think they should do it, there's no point defending them for not doing so. Fundamental clash of ideas. Head, wall, bang.

bang, bang, bang, bang.

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GGG wanted the wild west; they got the wild west. .

Oh I agree, I was not proposing but I am saying TFT is not something outside their control, or something impossible to fix. Its fundamentally something they choose to make players deal with - either use it or deal with a game balanced around using it, you dont get to opt out.


As for the wild west, sure. Until a skill does 0.2% more dps than they like for less than 50ex and its hotfixed or cut by 90% the next league (people say this is exaggerating but I am happy to show the math, just ask).


GGG HEAVILY regulates anything they dont like (functional builds that work without insane investment), while effectively sponsoring things like TFT.

If thats your thing, then pay them. If not, dont.

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trixxar wrote:

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Exile009 wrote:

another thing they've expressed not liking.

You can endlessly defend ggg as not liking any solution that fixes major problems in the game.

I'm not defending GGG, I'm telling you it won't happen. There's a difference.

I can make an analogy to clarify, but that would involve referencing a certain world event that would immediately be struck from these forums by the secret police here. An aspect of GGG that I don't like but, as I said, it is what it is

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trixxar wrote:

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

It's a logical defence in that if they're not going to do it, there's no point proposing it.

And if you still think they should do it, there's no point defending them for not doing so. Fundamental clash of ideas. Head, wall, bang.

bang, bang, bang, bang.

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GGG wanted the wild west; they got the wild west. .

If thats your thing, then pay them. If not, dont.

The person you're responding to hasn't paid GGG in ages (afaik). And, while I have paid them more recently (for stuff I wanted), I'm hardly a whale myself.