Trade concerns between PoE1 and PoE2 from a (further) divided player base

So it's been announced that both games will ultimately be separate all the way up to endgame. I'm not going to argue about whether or not this was necessary as there is an entirely different thread for that discussion.

I'm here to talk about something I don't think anyone (at least those not in SSF) has considered, and that's how this will impact trading in the long term. We all know how much access to trade degrades over time as leagues drag on. Softcore players complete their challenges and quit, hardcore players die and quit. Now that we have PoE2 coming, we also have to consider that the community will now be split, ideally, in half. Half will be staying in POE1 to stick with familiar mechanics while the other half will be moving to POE2 in order to play the new stuff. I strongly doubt PoE2 is going to draw in a whole game's population worth of new players instead of simply shuffling a part of the existing playerbase. I believe GGG has acknowledged in the past that this game is meant for a more niche audience unlike D3/D4.

That means the symptoms of a decaying trader base is going to show up much sooner in a league's life span.

I think it would be important for GGG to consider economic balance in the long-term with this shift in player population. In more dire situations where one game's population dwindles greatly, this means also reconsidering what was written in the most holiest of scriptures by some forum regulars known as "but muh trade manifesto". The game was designed from the ground up with trade economy in mind, but if one game's active player base is too small to make that feasible which would likely result in everyone treating the game like SSF even if they didn't opt into the mode itself, this will have the consequence of making the game unfun for those who still linger.

I think it may be time to, once again, think about rebalancing the game economy to account for the future shift in active players. Smart loot, cheaper crafting, smart crafting, maybe even offline trading, something to account for a not-insignificant number of players not being in the game for a healthy trade economy.

I know that this statement is subjective, but SSF is an incredibly fun way to play PoE.

Trading is all about supply and demand and the price for rarer items will be reflected by the scarcity.

It may cost a bit more to get what a player wants but eventually, with enough time investment they should still be able to get the shiny pixels they desire.

Who know is the friction of trading gets too raw maybe GGG will get to a place where a marketplace for posting goods makes sense. Wouldn’t that be nice?

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Pizzarugi wrote:

Half will be staying in POE1 to stick with familiar mechanics while the other half will be moving to POE2 in order to play the new stuff. I strongly doubt PoE2 is going to draw in a whole game's population worth of new players instead of simply shuffling a part of the existing playerbase. I believe GGG has acknowledged in the past that this game is meant for a more niche audience unlike D3/D4.

I bet that PoE 1 will still be here but as LEGACY MODE, without further support or content other than minor bug fixes.

Itemisation system is completely incompatible without deleting ALL the stash tabs but currency.

Trade economy is honestly my biggest concern about them being separate games. I do think there won't be as many people to trade with since there will be a split. Maybe PoE 2 brings in so many new people it does not matter, that would be cool.

i think we need a commitment from chris, hes made it before, i think we need to hear him say it again, that he will never turn the lights out on poe1. he said before keeping a few servers active is such a minimal cost theres no reason to ever fully shut the game down.


so we need that commitment again, this stays forever. i think then they need to be real with us and acknowledge that over time player count will dwindle on poe1, and as it reduces they wont let the game slip into a state where designs made for a rampant early league trade economy are now existing in a very limited trade environment where they needlessly make the game tedious.

we need those little adjustments over time that respect the changing population of the game if and when that happens.



they cant just go full shitshow day 1, poe2 releases and they add back full force harvest and mirrors dropping every 3 hours in poe1 just running around the streets naked foaming at the mouth insane. dont make the game stupid and dont invalidate poe2 by making poe1 this "but i have 6 kids and a job and only 1 hour a week to play and i want harvest so i can have mirror tier gear" playground of nonsense that drags everyone back to poe1 and spoils them all.

but theres obviously content where "we made it tradeable so now its kind of shit because you can just trade for 1000 of it and run it all day" which doesnt cut it when now you cant trade for f all and you are ssfing this intentionally nerfed area of the game.

It's not about GGG promising they won't kill PoE1. Even if they promised that, it won't do anything to stop players jumping ship for PoE2. The problem will still lie in the fact that trade will be negatively impacted, for both games mind you, due to the community split.

GGG will eventually have to account for this, especially if they continue keeping PoE 1+2 as games intended for a niche audience.

Trade has its problems but their current thinking is quite easy to see for now, that being that everyone quits after month 1 of a league so if you stagger the leagues you have 90%~ trade capacity on both games during all their busy periods.

Do I think it will pan out like that? No, but I also think PoE1 is vastly too trade dependant already and PoE2 could be a great step towards making the SSF experience a little more normal and reducing the trade requirement anyway.

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Pizzarugi wrote:

I think it may be time to, once again, think about rebalancing the game economy to account for the future shift in active players. Smart loot, cheaper crafting, smart crafting, maybe even offline trading, something to account for a not-insignificant number of players not being in the game for a healthy trade economy.

They can possibly do that going from a clean slate. PoE 1 was, as you say, designed for trade, but the problem was that... it wasn't... or rather, it wasn't designed for trade as it developed (the history is listed in the manifesto).

It was however too late... To fix it in PoE 1 would basically require rewriting all the loot systems, crafting system, existing items, and so on.
So, the trade manifesto had to be made. I don't think GGG liked it, but there was no way around it. Trying to hack in a solution would have been a disaster of complexity, and it would likely have failed.

PoE 1 trading needed the restrictions outlined in the trade manifesto. There was no way it could have had easy trade without destroying the game.

I'm hoping that GGG has designed PoE 2 with trade in mind, using all the experience they've gathered from running PoE 1 and its economy. My bet is they have, and that this is a major reason why they decided to separate the games... and their economies.

I'm also expecting PoE 1 to be relatively short-lived unless PoE 2 flops, despite what GGG say. Maybe two years or so if PoE two draws a majority of the players away. It may keep running for longer, but with little additional gameplay. If we're lucky we'll get league mechanics like the last (limited) ones, but no major ones...

Keeping anything alive in perpetuity is an awfully long time.

Eventually, PoE will be relegated to the slag heap of history like the rest of us.

A decade long promise to keep PoE alive may be good enough and reasonable (I picked an arbitrary time point), but the reality is that we will have all moved on from this game before CW shuts off the lights.

Like D1, D2, EQ, EQ2, and many many more titles that I have put thousands of hours into, there will come an inflection point when PoE gets added to the list of fond memories.

Maybe the inflection point will be June of 2024 we shall see.

In the meantime nothing lasts forever.

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Pizzarugi wrote:

It's not about GGG promising they won't kill PoE1. Even if they promised that, it won't do anything to stop players jumping ship for PoE2. The problem will still lie in the fact that trade will be negatively impacted, for both games mind you, due to the community split.

GGG will eventually have to account for this, especially if they continue keeping PoE 1+2 as games intended for a niche audience.

sure, im just mentioning keeping the game running long term as an adjacent issue to what you are saying, not as part of solving this one particular thing, because i think what you are bringing up is part of a larger conversation the devs need to have about the future of poe1 and a commitment to us as players to do right by the game.


they said they want to keep the game updated and they have baked in the money incentive to keep the game updated and good, keeping leagues going etc. cool.


but were not stupid, the population will decline over time, we know this. in an ideal world they support the game forever, its played by millions of people forever and makes a ton of money. yes, but it wont and we know it wont, they know we know it wont.

the game will gradually lose players, elements of the game based around a trade economy will fall apart, the viability of adding huge leagues that take a lot of development will become unfeasible. what is the plan to manage this? it might not happen for 10 years but eventually it will happen and we know it will.


i think they just need to come out at some point before the full poe2 launch and be real with us, no bait and switch, no ideal world take only and sweep the real conversation under the rug. just what is the full plan and make those assurances to us that if and when the game shrinks to these points theyre going to respect the people still playing and do the right thing to maintain the integrity of the play experience against a changing player count.




i dont mind if they get to a point where they say making new leagues isnt viable any more and they just rack up all the old leagues and say hey, we got 16 good leagues here, were gonna super charge them and put them on a 4 year cycling rota moving forward. thats a viable plan. i get that they maybe dont want to talk in these terms because they dont want us to think theyre giving up on the game but the kind of people who just intentionally misunderstand and twist what they say to find a negative take that makes ggg out to be terrible are always gonna find a way to do that. for the rest of us grownups just be real with us and do the right thing by the game imo.