The Game Being Balanced Around Trade Is Getting Extremely Tiresome

I would love nothing more than to play a dozen or more builds every league in SSF. But being unable to acquire the gear or currency needed in a reasonable amount of time makes that impossible for a huge majority of builds.

This bothers me more than anything else in the game. GGG's obsession with rng based crafting and "anti-deterministic" rewards probably makes more people quit leagues early than anything else. Lots of people dont like trading, they just do it because they have to if they want to play more than a handful of builds.

And to make matters worse GGG seemingly contradict themselves with their design philosophies which leads me to believe they dont understand this. If you want players to find meaningful items on the ground, you have to stop balancing the game around trading.

The current state of PoE is really no different than the auction house days of Diablo 3. The fastest and most cost effective way to get gear is to buy it. And in actual gameplay you are constantly pressured with how much currency/hour you are making because that matters far more than anything else you are doing.

Game will never be balanced around SSF - when it was added it was made clear it's an extra handicap for people who want to make the game harder rather than an easy mode loot pinata option.

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RandallPOE wrote:

Game will never be balanced around SSF - when it was added it was made clear it's an extra handicap for people who want to make the game harder rather than an easy mode loot pinata option.

I am aware of this. My point is that its a terrible way to balance a game.

Pretty much. I've always believed that this was GGG's biggest mistake. And it's why this game is getting all the hate nowadays. Most people who are upset now, are directly connected to market play.

Honestly I have no idea why Chris is so adamant about trade. It brings nothing but frustration to the game. Let's hope he won't regret his obsession.

I remember watching this portion of the "Designing Path of Exile to be Played Forever" talk at GDC 2019 and just shaking my head. I don't understand this perspective at all.

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So many games these days just remove trade. They're like "oh there's gold sellers, we can't deal with that, we're just going to get rid of trade". This is not the right direction. You need to have trade in your games that are about items because that way the items have some value.

If you find an item, and you're the only person that can ever consume that, it's not really something that you've achieved that you can feel good about having. It doesn't have any weight to it.

If you get a game where you get an item where you could give to your friends if you wanted to, but you're not going to because it's your item, but you could give it to them, that's something you feel good about having.

And the ability of the item to actually transact with other players is a critical part of that item having worth in the economy and representing your accomplishment.

In other words, the intrinsic nature of an item and how well it can help your character is not what gives an item its value. An item's value comes from how much somebody else might want it.

This seems so mind-blowingly backwards to me, but it does help explain why we see such opposition to the "smart-loot" idea of dropping items skewed towards usefulness for the character that drops it.

If they wanted trade to be the focus of the game wouldn't they put in some sort of trade system? I just don't understand how they'd balance around a part of the game that isn't actually in the game. I don't mind trade existing but it has literally never crossed my mind to do it. I just don't experience any sense of accomplishment by buying something. Anyone can buy stuff, it's not special. I want to earn things. I guess you can't expect business majors to realize that money isn't a meaningful measure of value.

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Cleverbeans wrote:

If they wanted trade to be the focus of the game wouldn't they put in some sort of trade system? I just don't understand how they'd balance around a part of the game that isn't actually in the game. I don't mind trade existing but it has literally never crossed my mind to do it. I just don't experience any sense of accomplishment by buying something. Anyone can buy stuff, it's not special. I want to earn things. I guess you can't expect business majors to realize that money isn't a meaningful measure of value.

I think what GGG values most is the possibility of trade, not necessarily the act of trading. If you read what I posted above, Chris really believes that item value and sense of accomplishment comes from having things that you can trade, but don't.

In other words, they want trade to be a possibility, but they don't want you do to it all the time. So, they created a system where you can trade if you want to, but it's purposefully painful to do so. They're afraid that building a system where trading is fast and easy would imbalance the game in the wrong direction.

But then they go and balance the rest of the game assuming that you will trade for what you need any time you hit a wall. Go figure. 🤷

Back when people were fighting for a SSF option a long while ago, I was against the option. I didn't feel like it was worth the risk that once SSF was put in place, the next step would be for that player base to push for a separate balance and drop rate for that league. I also felt like SSF was already available as a playstyle with a little self-control -- but that's a separate debate that isn't worth the time.

I've been pleasantly surprised to be wrong over the years as for the most part, the SSF crowd has accepted that the league is an option that includes a hardship and they've not been terribly vocal about it.

From time to time though, a thread pops up like this one and I cringe a little because it reminds me of what I thought would happen on a massive scale. Fortunately, it is pretty rare.

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AcrylicHercules wrote:

In other words, they want trade to be a possibility, but they don't want you do to it all the time. So, they created a system where you can trade if you want to, but it's purposefully painful to do so. They're afraid that building a system where trading is fast and easy would imbalance the game in the wrong direction.

Hah, created a system. More like a system emerged on accident. If not for the option to show items on the forum, trade would be just sad times 10 and likely the pinnacle bosses wouldn't exist (cause on average no1 would have the gear to kill them).

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Nubatron wrote:

Back when people were fighting for a SSF option a long while ago, I was against the option. I didn't feel like it was worth the risk that once SSF was put in place, the next step would be for that player base to push for a separate balance and drop rate for that league. I also felt like SSF was already available as a playstyle with a little self-control -- but that's a separate debate that isn't worth the time.

I've been pleasantly surprised to be wrong over the years as for the most part, the SSF crowd has accepted that the league is an option that includes a hardship and they've not been terribly vocal about it.

From time to time though, a thread pops up like this one and I cringe a little because it reminds me of what I thought would happen on a massive scale. Fortunately, it is pretty rare.

I dont think the SSF crowd was ever concerned that much about the loot drop rate, because really, it was fairly consistent with the solo players in trade league. It was less rng, and more time investment and being smart with atlas passives, and league mechanics.

However now the drop rate has changed, especially with currency, and if you combine that with the Harvest nerfs, SSF has suddenly been plunged into a pretty poor state that cannot be lessened through trade.

Really this league has unbelievably united the playerbase, unfortunately it's because of how negative it is.

3.19 is a hit to everyone, a big hit, to Solo Trade, Group play, SSF, HC because of AN. Is truly astounding how bad the situation is currently.