GGG must address TFT

The rot of TFT has grown for far too long. To be clear, I think the overwhelming majority of the activity on TFT is perfectly reasonable. The problem is that the owners of the private discord haven't grasped that TFT has become a community service and treating it the same way they used to as a private discord is selfish, cynical, and does a disservice to the people playing the game they claim to love.

As with flask macros, the right way for GGG to address this is to fix the problem in the game that is causing the community to do bad things. The trade site could easily be improved to offer bulk trade and service sales, including account-validated vouching (which no community site can ever reproduced). I can confidently say "easily" because community members have recreated some or most of these tools multiple times already via the API (wealthyexile, poestack, exilence, the tft bulk trade tool, etc). GGG could hire a single developer that maintained an open source project for a trade tool and the community would make it incredible in no time. There are also in-game ways to address the majority of use-cases for TFT: itemized Aisling slams, itemized invitations from fragments (make an item that is created from 4 fragments which can then be put in the map device, perhaps this item could be created in the premium stash tab for fragments, more monetization while fixing a huge problem yay!). The list goes on.

GGG is very good at making this game exceptional, so they could surely do a better job than me of imagining ways to address this problem. They just need the will to act on it.

TFT should be dismantled. it shouldn't exist. people in there have been accused of RMT'ing, and other stuff. TFT helps but also hinders the player base. GGG just needs to step up and make a proper trade system. It's due time, it's been due time. I agree though they just need the WILL to act on it and do it.

As I see it, player base outrage is at an all-time high with everything around that private community.

almost all streamers are talking about it, it's a bad rep GGG.

With PoE2 coming out, and Last Epoch releasing, this issue is something, I personally feel, GGG should acknowledge, or maybe not directly, and revamp the core system, and trade so that 3rd party owned toxic community is no longer needed.

Or release a new trade manifesto or something, change how the mirror works, it's nonsense and completely ludicrous how an item can be copied a million times with no downside. balance it maybe.

I have to start by saying that in comparison to 95% of the community, my knowledge on PoE isn't great. But I feel like I should voice my opinion on this as well and offer some feedback. I've been playing on and off since Blight league and I always got help from Youtubers or guides from places like Maxroll. If the game was just thrown into my hands and said "Figure it out" honestly I wouldn't know where to start.

I feel that puts my in a good position to talk about my frustrations with PoE. I've got almost 900 hours in the game now and I would still consider myself a novice. But some of these 3rd party tools such as Path of Building have made my life so much easier, but that in itself is a problem. The information provides by a tool such as Path of Building SHOULD just be provided by the game itself. I don't want things to be over simplistic like Diablo 3 where you just hover over an item and if its green then equip it. But there should be at least some sort of comparison to show what stats are going to change positively or negatively. I really shouldn't have to be loading up 3rd party tools to do this for me.

The people that created these tools are amazing and have my gratitude, but they shouldn't be having to do this. Its almost like Bethesda letting modders fix their game for them. I have a bookmark folder on my browser for 39 different websites for tools and information that the game itself should just provide. Things such as Awakened PoE, PoE Ninja, PoB, FilterBlade, PoE DB, PoE Wiki, PoE Regex, PoE Stack, Exilence Next and WeathlyExile just to name a few.

I've had friends that are interested in my complex ARPGs that have been wanting to play PoE but as soon as I tell them what's required to get started or what its like towards the end they just don't even try. I believe ALL of the tools, websites and information I've listed above should just be within the game by default without having to access external sites or tools.

For example a encyclopaedia of all the affixes that can roll on certain gear just listed in game, basically PoEDB. A actually customizable in game loot filter like Last Epoch has. A built in PoB that displays changes to gear on the fly. A in game interface that shows the current prices of items listed on trade and of course a actually working trade system for bulk buying and selling.

I'm not sure if this is a unpopular opinion, but I would be perfectly happy with a World of Warcraft style auction house (NOT THE DIABLO 3 ONE!) where we can just list our items for sale and just buy directly from other players. I understand this eliminates the "sense of community" of the game. But I would honestly prefer it to having to wait around for items to sell or messing around with invites or being overwhelmed by trade requests when I could just be playing the game. I believe the buying and selling of ALL items should be done through a system like this. As far as I'm aware, this is basically what Last Epoch is doing and I've heard its widely been praises by ARPG lovers.

When it comes to services, I really can't speak on the matter because I've never taken part it in, but I've already heard some great opinions like NirodhaDukkha said about a account-validated vouching system. At least services can maintain this "sense of community" when it comes to trading.

Big rant from me I know. But I really do believe if I didn't have to be looking at tools or websites outside of the game every 5 minutes to find information or trading and it all be within the game system I think PoE would be one of the greatest games of all time for me. But as it stands right now it does lose a lot of points just for stuff like that.

TFT is sadly an attempt to fix an issue with the game. Until GGG itemizes all encounters/crafts/services and features a better way of bulk trading those through the trading site there will be people trying to make solutions to the issue. Sadly players will also jump to the opportunity to use such "features" nefariously. I just hope GGG can find ways to lowering the impact of the issues going on right now.

Personally I think a few things would help the situation:

1. Make items that are in high demand for map juicing and such into multi use item and reduce the drop rate so that you don't have to wait around for someone to have hundreds of them to prep your maps. If a player has a couple for sale those should cover at least 10 charges each(much like sextants have charges only increase the charge amount).

2. Make all services like Aisling or bench crafts itemized so that the players can use the trading site for them instead of a 3rd party site. This will also reduce the scams and error crafts (where people brick your item because they misclick something). I don't care if you have to make those things slightly more rare due to the trade site availability.

3. Make all uber encounters use seperate fragment types so that newer players don't feel like they have to sell the normal encounters in bulk to the tird party site users just because it isn't "worth" doing the encounters on normal mode.

4. Make items only mirrorable once. This will benefit the end game item variety, give the second/third best crafts a much higher potential and at the same time hinder the whole mirror-mafia shenanigans going on(or at least stop the need for a mirror service style economy). Noone holding the power of a community tool should control the whole end game item-scene at same time with the possibility to blacklist whoever they want to to keep that control. That's just asking for trouble.

imagine a world in which you don't need any third party tools to play the game comfortably and any functional those tools are providing now is implemented within the game itself by GGG
imagine

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lolwut32 wrote:

imagine a world in which you don't need any third party tools to play the game comfortably and any functional those tools are providing now is implemented within the game itself by GGG
imagine

This

Look I agree, and I hate that it exists....plus I have never and will never engage or interact with it. I don't even like that discord or reddit are things to begin with. I prefer all my interactions with PoE to be either in the game or on this website.

But posts like this are ridiculous.

There is NOTHING GGG can do about TFT. Asking them to "address it" or "do something about it" is ridiculous. TFT is entirely disconnected from GGG and frankly its even disconnected from PoE in its own way.

They can improve their game but there is almost nothing they can do at this point to deter people from using or continuing to use TFT. It has been the convenient and efficient option for too many people for far too long.


GGG can only attempt to make "holes" in PoE 2 game design not be as gaping as to need something like TFT to fill it.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

Look I agree, and I hate that it exists....plus I have never and will never engage or interact with it. I don't even like that discord or reddit are things to begin with. I prefer all my interactions with PoE to be either in the game or on this website.

But posts like this are ridiculous.

There is NOTHING GGG can do about TFT. Asking them to "address it" or "do something about it" is ridiculous. TFT is entirely disconnected from GGG and frankly its even disconnected from PoE in its own way.

They can improve their game but there is almost nothing they can do at this point to deter people from using or continuing to use TFT. It has been the convenient and efficient option for too many people for far too long.


GGG can only attempt to make "holes" in PoE 2 game design not be as gaping as to need something like TFT to fill it.

Sorry but this is wrong, I believe when people are asking GGG to "address" the issue, we are asking for solutions within the game to not have to rely on TFT. Not for them to deal with TFT directly. It is not ridiculous to ask GGG to notice a issue with their game design and fix it. If there wasn't a issue with their game design then third party websites and apps wouldn't be needed. These things are a response to problems GGG created. Third party provides a solution that shouldn't be necessary.

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djwhitty wrote:

Sorry but this is wrong, I believe when people are asking GGG to "address" the issue, we are asking for solutions within the game to not have to rely on TFT. Not for them to deal with TFT directly. It is not ridiculous to ask GGG to notice a issue with their game design and fix it. If there wasn't a issue with their game design then third party websites and apps wouldn't be needed. These things are a response to problems GGG created. Third party provides a solution that shouldn't be necessary.

It is by and large the minority of posts about tft that say or request this....even in this post, most of the responses are talking about dismantling TFT, the bad behaviors of TFT moderators that GGG should "deal with", etc. That is way more common than someone actually offering suggestions for how to FIX the game itself. THere's also so many posts HERE about being banned on TFT and "GGG should do something!!!". It is endless.

I do admit that this OP though DOES stay focused on improving the game itself.