The Game Being Balanced Around Trade Is Getting Extremely Tiresome

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Frostride wrote:

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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).

I don't disagree :)

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AcrylicHercules wrote:

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. 🤷

It's still the same mistake though, it ignores that items have intrinsic value. You don't need to trade them at all for them to be rewarding to acquire. Requiring trade is a significant disincentive to play for me. It's a PvP mini-game with haggling and I hate it. It's not what I'm looking for in an ARPG.

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AcrylicHercules wrote:

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.

I agree with their philosophy, and disagree with your ideas.

You actually WANT smart-loot? Smart-loot is one of the single WORST widespread implementations in games today.

The thought of that turns my stomach.

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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.

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. 🤷

This right here struck me hard.

Ultimately, we play video games to have fun. Balancing the game around a system designed to be not just not fun, but painful...

I dunno what to say... Someone needs to tell Chris how backwards this is.

I've been saying it for ages.

Just do a 5 times per day trade limit, unlimited trade in friendliest, cooldown on friend invites

And then REBALANCE the loot tables and difficulty according to that

Currency flipping will be gone, price fixing gone etc etc.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

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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.

I understand there is considerable blowback going on about loot, but SSF started at a time where loot was notably worse and harder to get than the current league. And to be quite honest, I don't really notice any real differences. In fact, I feel like the drop rates have been slightly elevated after the updates relative to prior leagues (not taking into account the league mechanic). Sentinel was an absolute loot piñata and Lake of Kalandra is a desolate desert with an awful reward structure -- especially when you take into account how rippy and time consuming it is at higher difficulty levels. Sentinel vs. Lake of Kalandra is absolutely night and day difference in risk/reward.

But the core game drops a lot after the changes; so I don't get it. Of course people experience the game differently so I won't say they're wrong. I just don't personally experience a significant drop in in the drop rates and am progressing about the same as I normally would other than missing 2 out of the 3 weekends with vacations which obviously has a huge impact on progress.

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AcrylicHercules wrote:

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.

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AcrylicHercules wrote:

This seems so mind-blowingly backwards to me,...

I wouldn't call it backwards; this "philosophy" simply operates under a different premise. It presoppses that envy and greed are far better motivators. It would be more fitting to call this "design-philosophy" subversive, since the urge to play, i.e. having fun and experiencing joy, something inherently innocent, child-like and positiv, is subsequentely turned into something negativ and you are in a sense tricked to focus on negative emotions, thoughts and/or concepts.

You are then not playing with, but against.

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Cleverbeans wrote:

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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bㄴaㄷkㅁut wrote:

I agree with their philosophy, and disagree with your ideas.

You actually WANT smart-loot? Smart-loot is one of the single WORST widespread implementations in games today.

The thought of that turns my stomach.

Well, the choice is solely between - a form of it at least - smart-loot or a more convenient trading system topped with a vastly more functional crafting system then we have now, limiting the outcomes through different means.

It's not possible to not want one of them in the current state of the game, that leads to this exact situation we have now.

Obviously there's other ways to achieve a reasonable outcome nonetheless, not without severe changes from the base of the system... and GGG is a little bit lazy in that regard.

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Nubatron wrote:

I understand there is considerable blowback going on about loot, but SSF started at a time where loot was notably worse and harder to get than the current league.

There literally was never a time in the game were content versus loot-acquisition was in a worse place since 2.0

Yes, loot was harder to obtain... there was no content according to it though, hence no need.

Also the variety of loot raised massively, hence the chance to get the loot you actually need is vastly inferior.

You have to take that into consideration as well.

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Nubatron wrote:

But the core game drops a lot after the changes; so I don't get it.

Depends on what 'lots of loot' is for you.

Is it currency? Then only quality currency at the current state, otherwise in comparison it is lower.

Rares? Definitely vastly higher, but actually useless since the mod pool has been so heavily diluted getting a decent item and then one fitting for you even remotely is harder then farming some mid-tier uniques.

Is it other stuff? Well, fossils are down a bit, oils are down, splinters are down. Maps are also down.

So outside of rares I don't see an improvement, and more rares definitely is not an improvement in the first place.

Edit:
Fractured items and Synthesized bases are actually the only upside... though given we lost crafts heavily reliant on getting a great outcome they've also been made less valued in comparison. Can't craft without the respective consumables for it.

I don't understand the demand for us to have player-to-player interaction trading.
I hate this part of the game and don't even talk to the people I'm trading with.
In, Out. Maybe a "ty".

I don't care. Why isn't this automatic?

Trade in a multiplayer game where nothing is lost will always end in problems.

Old school MMOs you lost your gear, it's total durability went down each repair and eventually had to be replaced. The modern RPG player is fixated on gear more than the character though.

GGG has made this situation worse by making levels trivial and passives less and less potent. To be fair though, this is in response the 3rd party services showing up like PoB and trade sites. These things allow players to forgo knowledge of intricacies in the game and simply paste what they want from someone else. So now 90% of your character's performance is the gear.

In EQ you still had 70% of your potency naked. Even in Diablo 1 you could beat the game with white weapons if you were high enough level. Warriors got Crit with levels, Rogues got armor/accuracy and Sorcerers had spells. They could intermix also with Warriors using Flame Wall or whatever.

It's a pretty scuffed situation at this point with build enabling items being so rare you may never see one the whole league as a drop. Yet at the same time they want players to play more. Reducing drops and thus the builds players are able to make obviously isn't the action to take.

More weight needs to be placed into the player's choices. Not RNG. This is why I was opposed to removing Prophecy. Questing for a build enabling Unique item would be quite viable. Kill X map boss in style, Kill Y boss in style, Kill Z boss in style = Item you want. Instead we farm Div cards.

Which sounds more fun to you?

Harvest was a similar interaction. It was just basic fighting but over time you're working towards a deterministic result. In the end that's what this game needs. Trade be damned.