It's time for GGG to take back reigns of trade for the sake of the game

yeah i feel like the idea of winning in an arpg is so subjective. if ur having fun ur winning and i think most people who play this game a fair bit have fun playing it, thats why they play it.



so i play d3 on the american server cause the friend i play with is american. it started for me at 1am on saturday, so were now half way through day 2 of the new diablo 3 season.

ive fully levelled 2 characters, i have about double the paragon xp the lead dev of D4 managed to grind out in 10 years of D3 and almost all my gear is ancient. any upgrades now will be very slight, the only real power increase from here in is gonna come with the gradual creep of paragon levels and fully augmenting my gear pieces in the cube. and this is while carrying my friend and power levelling her second char for her because shes a snail.

thats it rly, the shine has kind of gone from the season, we got all the items and then we upgraded almost all of them to ancient. the only exciting thing that can rly happen now is a primal ancient drop of a key piece of gear which is highly unlikely.




i was having a lot more fun before i got all my ancient gear. im still having fun but the season has peaked and were now on the slow comedown towards me forgetting about d3 for another 4 months.

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Phrazz wrote:

I gave my thumbs up on this idea in that thread.

Sure, there are some negatives to this idea: Less people would craft, less 90%+ items in the market, higher prices of the good items remaining.

I'm not sure if 'once' is the right restriction here, but I'm very in favor of some kind of limitation. 2 times? 3 times? I don't know. But as I wrote in that thread, which of course is a very subjective statement; I hate the mirror system in PoE and think it's directly stupid that an item can yield you 'infinite' income through the use of mirrors.

That said, there are two main ways of looking at the market in PoE:
1) A tool to let you buy what you want, and sell what you don't want.
2) An area to master, through organized cooperation, where knowledge and effort can make you rich

GGG clearly wants the latter. They clearly want you to speculate and play the market - or at least, they want the opportunity to be there. And as long as that is the case, there will be several "TFT's" out there. Also, a Mirror of Kalandra is pretty iconic to PoE - I can't see them nerfing it, or making it less iconic in any way.

Yeah, on the surface it sounds good to have a certain amount of times an item can be mirrored before it is locked. The count would need to be high enough to still make it worth it. From what I understand, making of those items takes a ton of patience and tolerance for failure (outside of the actual upfront cost).

I was trying to think about any downstream impacts, but the mirror market feels pretty compartmented from the rest of the market so I can't think of anything offhand.

The current system has only one risk for the seller that I'm aware of: someone else making something better. No one is going to mirror the 2nd best item. So once something surpasses it, it no longer prints money, and the base value of the item is nowhere near as much as it took to make it. So, the risk really is making the item and making enough money off of it before someone else does something better.

Alternatively, you can look at the Mirror of Kalandra for a solution. GGG loves volatility and they could infuse that volatility into the Mirror itself. You could make it have a X% chance to poof the item. Alternatively, Tainted Mirror of Kalandra :)

I don't know what the right answer is. Unintended consequences here probably exist and we've just not thought it through thoroughly enough.

I will say one thing about the idea though, it will do exactly nothing to stop RMT. People will RMT for the best and most scarce items. Changing the mirror market only changes what the top end things are. RMT'ers likely chase the best of the things available. Lowering the ceiling wouldn't change that. Cheaters are going to cheat. This idea does nothing to stop that from what I can tell.

"

Nubatron wrote:

Yeah, on the surface it sounds good to have a certain amount of times an item can be mirrored before it is locked. The count would need to be high enough to still make it worth it. From what I understand, making of those items takes a ton of patience and tolerance for failure (outside of the actual upfront cost).

i feel we could make an argument the game would be better off if it wasnt worth it to make literal perfect items like that at such insane expense? theyre a bit gratuitous, ugly.



but heres a thing, i dont think they should mess with it. the mirror has a huge value, headhunter was the hype, its a mid thing now, mageblood is the new hype, but its worth half what it was. shavs was the hype long ago its almost vendor tier now.

what hasnt changed is that a mirror is the diamond carrot. that item has held the integrity of the item chase in poe through thick and thin. in starvation and in excess the mirror has been there to make sure theres an insane hype drop in the loot table. i think we could debate if the game is better if this or that with high end crafting, but rly all that is minor things compared to the service the mirror itself has done to keeping this game afloat, keep a lottery win carrot on the table.

if you fuck with a mirrors functionality, esp by nerfing it like this, you severely dent its desirability, thats gonna smash its value and youre gonna ruin the one thing that has been a rock in all seasons for this games sense of high value. it would be suicidal to mess with a mirror.





if u wanna stop high level crafting mafias from rmting freely then just ban them. if you want to stop unsightly perfect items being crafted in leagues then change the broken mechanics allowing them to do it like synth imprinting. theres other ways to skin the cat that dont involve jeopardising the one thing that has held a value and desirability essential to the game across the board for the last 10 years.

I'll separate in topics, wealth, trade, enjoyment, and difficulty and crafting. Some of them overlap, but whatever.

Trade topic: they insist that league is a way to restart the economy, to give everyone a fair shot, but the way trade is setup and how rampant RMT is, that statement is just an illusion. People who RMT get an advantage and dictate the inflation of the economy. Meanwhile, highly coordinated groups abuse trade to catapult ahead of the vast majority. And the third variable, people who ignore the game completely and play the market, also taking advantage of the majority, further inflating the market and buying out the first available resources. All of them, abusing trade to such an extent that making a new economy is completely useless and pointless, only truly giving advantages to RMT and hard grinders.

Wealth topic: extremely rich people only focus on getting richer. Real life billionaires are a fine example. Wealth generating wealth for the sake of wealth. That's exactly mirrored on PoE. People who craft only for the purpose of their items getting mirrored. And as it's been proving, to convert that ingame wealth into irl wealth.

Enjoyment topic: asking what is enjoyment to ten people might give you ten completely different answers. To me, trying to accommodate all the ten answers will always be somewhat impossible, but trying to give as much options as possible to those ten answers isn't a compromise, it's just that, options. Old games were hard because of hardware limitation, SNES and older platforms are a fine example, not that many levels, not that many content, but it was so hard, those same games that could be finished in less than 1 hour while speed running, took weeks if not months for some to complete. With those limitations gone from newer games, we saw the implementation of varied difficulties. Devil May Cry is the best example there is, multiple ramping difficulties which would teach you the game as you went along, requiring multiple game throughs to master the game, which not only was encouraged, it was the best way to teach the game.

Difficulty and crafting topic: PoEs difficulty is tightly attached to item rate acquisition, one which could 100% have higher rate for people that want to learn the game appropriately or just enjoy it in a more timely manner. Not only that, PoE has hundreds, if not thousands of builds that could be min-maxed. Implying that a triple or even quintuple higher rate of item acquirement would make those hundreds of builds easily acquirable is just a completely and utterly false statement, as the knowledge of crafting is imperative to do so, and having 1 or 1000 divines won't make that knowledge suddenly poof into your brain. POE barely gives the bare minimum, so you're forced to rely on sites instead of doing so ingame. Not only difficulties with higher item acquirement would encourage experimenting with crafting, it would provide a learning curve and stepping stone for newer players could actually stomach, and that would not only strengthen the community, it would bolster its numbers significantly.

Everything is woven together. Some people want power desperately, so they cheat, find shortcuts or ways to maximize the rate of acquiring it, or just want more of it for the sake of power. Meanwhile, the people that just want to enjoy the ride, suffer for it. I believe trade should be used to further your goals, but never for monetary gain or delusions of grandeur. As Chris said, PoE is a game in which you acquire powerful items, but that objective has been completely twisted. Crafting has lost its purpose. People farm mindlessly, not to use the currency they farmed, but to bypass it completely and buy power.

Options should be given to players that do not want to partake in that and want to truthfully acquire their power without having to commit ludicrous amounts of hours, something that in itself is an extremely unhealthy habit, that unfortunately GGG itself has been preserving with all their might. Players sleeping excessively low amounts if they want to remain competitive, getting ahead at all costs.

Last Epoch is trying to cut ties with that toxic behaviour, while also remaining true to the core gameplay, restricting trade, making it so you can't re-trade something you've bought which massively negates RMT, while also encouraging people that want to play SSF or with friends, by bumping loot drop, but not being able to trade, obviously. I believe those are great steps toward making a better game, something PoE should learn a thing or two to correct their most ingrained issues. Will they attempt something similar or anything else at all? I doubt it, but one can dream.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

"

awesome999 wrote:

The only way to win

This is projecting, you can't win anything so there isn't an only way to win. People play for entertainment if you view it as more than that it becomes a personal problem not one with the medium.

this is no different to when my nephew reacts badly to losing (or winning) when we play chess, it isn't chess's fault its because he's a child and hasn't matured enough to handle the mentality yet.

GGG absolutely use psychological hooks to create enjoyment and drive in their game and it can cause problems for players with addictive personalities i'm not disputing that but largely it isn't the norm. Most players engage with a hobby for enjoyment not addiction.

There are players every league that play a handful of hours a week but will finish 40/40 with an absolute banger of a character don't try and make out that you have to play the game like a degenerate that is and always will be a personal choice.

Nope, I am probably baiting.

So you think people who think POE is hard and unfair are whiny spoiled brats?

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awesome999 wrote:

So you think people who think POE is hard and unfair are whiny spoiled brats?

Some of them? Absolutely, but that isn't what I said either I said that if you think this game is fundamentally toxic and asks an irrational amount from you it is a personal problem. It doesn't ask anything of you its a game you do it for entertainment.

If it isn't entertaining then absolutely you can and should be doing something else, that is not the same as requiring "unhealthy participation of such indulging activities."

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

if you fuck with a mirrors functionality, esp by nerfing it like this, you severely dent its desirability, thats gonna smash its value and youre gonna ruin the one thing that has been a rock in all seasons for this games sense of high value. it would be suicidal to mess with a mirror.

This would at most, at the very most, affect a few hundred to low thousand number of players. The amount of people that deal in this subset of the community is as fractionally small as you can get.

Hell the vast majority of players, and I'm talkin 99+%, have never in seen a mirror (me included in 10 years), let alone, significant multiples in terms of the economy.

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

if you fuck with a mirrors functionality, esp by nerfing it like this, you severely dent its desirability, thats gonna smash its value and youre gonna ruin the one thing that has been a rock in all seasons for this games sense of high value. it would be suicidal to mess with a mirror.

This would at most, at the very most, affect a few hundred to low thousand number of players. The amount of people that deal in this subset of the community is as fractionally small as you can get.

Hell the vast majority of players, and I'm talkin 99+%, have never in seen a mirror (me included in 10 years), let alone, significant multiples in terms of the economy.

no, it effects everyone, because a mirror isnt about having it, its about wanting to find it. thats its main purpose in the game, to be something you might find, not something you have found. if you actually find one it breaks the spell, that few hundred to low thousand are the people who the mirrors importance is not fully working on.

"

Draegnarrr wrote:

"

awesome999 wrote:

So you think people who think POE is hard and unfair are whiny spoiled brats?

Some of them? Absolutely, but that isn't what I said either I said that if you think this game is fundamentally toxic and asks an irrational amount from you it is a personal problem. It doesn't ask anything of you its a game you do it for entertainment.

If it isn't entertaining then absolutely you can and should be doing something else, that is not the same as requiring "unhealthy participation of such indulging activities."

Absolutely. They should go do something else so that wretched obsessed brats can be left to build their precious sand castles.

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

if you fuck with a mirrors functionality, esp by nerfing it like this, you severely dent its desirability, thats gonna smash its value and youre gonna ruin the one thing that has been a rock in all seasons for this games sense of high value. it would be suicidal to mess with a mirror.

This would at most, at the very most, affect a few hundred to low thousand number of players. The amount of people that deal in this subset of the community is as fractionally small as you can get.

Hell the vast majority of players, and I'm talkin 99+%, have never in seen a mirror (me included in 10 years), let alone, significant multiples in terms of the economy.

no, it effects everyone, because a mirror isnt about having it, its about wanting to find it. thats its main purpose in the game, to be something you might find, not something you have found. if you actually find one it breaks the spell, that few hundred to low thousand are the people who the mirrors importance is not fully working on.

Meh, disagree. The mirror was never a carrot for me. It's too obscure. It's more of a lifetime achievement award that you stick in your stash for the luls of when it dropped. It's not really functional for most people. I would suspect everyone outside this extreme power trading niche community, that folks do the same thing from a nostalgia point of view, or simply sell it immediately. Aint no normal player using a mirror.