Floored by the power spike of TRADING. This will ruin the game.

I can see interesting points on both sides. I've often thought SSF should have like a 10x drop rate for currency. They won't do that as long as SSF can transfer into standard, but I'd be totally OK with removing that option for it.

One thing I'm curious about is what the pacing without trading you want is? How long do you want to farm for your next piece of gear on average? How do you mitigate rng a bit so that can consistently happen? If you want it to take say an hour to farm a piece of great, how is that really different from farming for an hour to find something valuable enough for your next upgrade?

I kind of agree there's an interesting magic about finding your own gear but not sure how to balance it with the necessary rng to keep you grinding. Maybe re-implement the smart lot system they experimented with but only for SSF?

Personally though, trading and the economy are a very very very large part of the reason I played PoE1 for thousands of hours. I'd be sad if that wasn't an option in 2 (and am seriously concerned about the future of 1 at this point).

"

grepman#2451 wrote:

"

Xenus_Paradox#7530 wrote:

In no other Diablo like is trading or heavy crafting necessary prior to endgame.

GGG needs to decide if they want this to be "PoE 1 but less zoom zoom" – in which case they need to reverse course on the dumbing down to make it more accessible – or if they want it to be more accessible – in which case they need to reverse course on all the systems that make it a slog to play.

neither trading nor heavy crafting are required for endgame poe2 or poe1


but not using tools that drop in poe2 (transmutes/augs, regals, exalts and especially vendor stock refreshes) will slow your progress there by a good amount. not unlike last epoch where not using forge will make your progress slower

Lost Epoch has deterministic crafting so you don't have to gamble on RNGsus smiling on you.

The underlying problem here is the power swing of affixes on gear. They need to squish the numbers on many of the affixes to make the difference between a mediocre item & decent item much more reasonable. I talk about this in my suggestion thread.

"

FuriusGeorge#1058 wrote:

The underlying problem here is the power swing of affixes on gear. They need to squish the numbers on many of the affixes to make the difference between a mediocre item & decent item much more reasonable. I talk about this in my suggestion thread.

One of the biggest offenders is resistance. Trying to balance out resistances is a nightmare, and getting that on an item with even a few other mediocre stamps will drive the price through the roof.

It's one of the most unfun mechanics in the game because everything is balanced around having all three elemental resistances capped and you get a stacking debuff as a "reward" for progressing.

The fact that we are still using a mechanic from Diablo 2 20 years later completely unmodified is fucking incomprehensible to me.

vanilla D3 tried this, to the same result.

"

crazyfingers619#3901 wrote:

Someone raised a great point earlier, and this phenomenon is duplicated in most all other games.

People love when there is a new league. When everyone is set to 0 and everything is FAIR.

People may not be aware of the affect of trade on a game, but they can FEEL it. They can see everyone else around them advancing fast, they can see the content being chewed up at a rapid pace. They know they are gated from reaching further into the game as other players zoom through it.

With trade no no one enjoys a huge % of the content. Those who do not engage are hard blocked and suffering intensely difficult content all the way through. THose who are trading are zooming through and it feels like a slog.

If the game isn't balanced around self find the balance falls apart.

It's FAIRNESS that is fun, it's the grind that is fun, that feeling of self discovery, that rekindled value in the drops you are finding because YOU KNOW that you can't trade for that yet, you have to find it.

It is demonstrably true that trade robs the player base of self discovery and self actualization which is core to the gameplay loop of the ARPG.

If we did away with the trade window and to give your items to friends you had to drop it on the ground for them to pick it up like the old days, I think we'd be in a much better spot with trade. That simple change would return trade to a kindness and something you engage with trust with others.

At this point I have to believe you're trolling. A ton of people have come in here and told you that they find trade fun, and to stop projecting what YOU find fun onto others, and you have continued to shout into the void instead of responding to them. I personally love trade and its impact on the game, but I'm not demanding GGG remove SSF.

Good luck getting new players to trade using an external site. I told my friend who's playing PoE for the first time how to trade, and he was like nah i'll craft my own gear.

"

crazyfingers619#3901 wrote:

Someone raised a great point earlier, and this phenomenon is duplicated in most all other games.

People love when there is a new league. When everyone is set to 0 and everything is FAIR.

People may not be aware of the affect of trade on a game, but they can FEEL it. They can see everyone else around them advancing fast, they can see the content being chewed up at a rapid pace. They know they are gated from reaching further into the game as other players zoom through it.

With trade no no one enjoys a huge % of the content. Those who do not engage are hard blocked and suffering intensely difficult content all the way through. THose who are trading are zooming through and it feels like a slog.

If the game isn't balanced around self find the balance falls apart.

It's FAIRNESS that is fun, it's the grind that is fun, that feeling of self discovery, that rekindled value in the drops you are finding because YOU KNOW that you can't trade for that yet, you have to find it.

It is demonstrably true that trade robs the player base of self discovery and self actualization which is core to the gameplay loop of the ARPG.

If we did away with the trade window and to give your items to friends you had to drop it on the ground for them to pick it up like the old days, I think we'd be in a much better spot with trade. That simple change would return trade to a kindness and something you engage with trust with others.

Until they improve crafting to be better than slot machines and make that abundant, trade is here to stay. I play trade but I play it like SSF, only trading for shit that is aids to farm for.

Trading will never go away in poe1, 2, 3, 4, 5 its like telling Chris and Jonathan
to make an option to skip campaign and jump into end game straight away, aint gone happen has not in 12+ years of poe.

For them trading in d2 was one of the best things in that game, and tellin them to remove trading is like telling them to aganst one of the core Philosophy in designing poe and poe 2.

Heck you prob have easyer time trying to convince them to aoe vakum currencys like gold.

"

KaosuRyoko#1633 wrote:

I can see interesting points on both sides. I've often thought SSF should have like a 10x drop rate for currency. They won't do that as long as SSF can transfer into standard, but I'd be totally OK with removing that option for it.

One thing I'm curious about is what the pacing without trading you want is? How long do you want to farm for your next piece of gear on average? How do you mitigate rng a bit so that can consistently happen? If you want it to take say an hour to farm a piece of great, how is that really different from farming for an hour to find something valuable enough for your next upgrade?

I kind of agree there's an interesting magic about finding your own gear but not sure how to balance it with the necessary rng to keep you grinding. Maybe re-implement the smart lot system they experimented with but only for SSF?

Personally though, trading and the economy are a very very very large part of the reason I played PoE1 for thousands of hours. I'd be sad if that wasn't an option in 2 (and am seriously concerned about the future of 1 at this point).

Thanks for the reasoned response.

Maybe some sort of heightened loot drop table for SSF players? Like maybe they have a much higher chance of getting the rarest items, but this drop would disable once you got a drop for a period of time.

So it would be a bit of a unique play experience. You would have access to little bits and pieces of great gear, but you wouldn't be able to just magically have a full kit that fits one build, it would take lots of farming over time to start reaching peek power by getting those rare drops over many months of time.

It would be a fun dichotomy, the trade characters would be much stronger out of the gate, but the self made NO TRADE characters could become stronger in the long run (aside from the absolute top traders of course), as they would have access to more of the absolute best gear due to rare drops over time.

Here's a crazy idea... what if both leagues had access to unique items that fit the play styles.

What if the no drop league had a set of items that allowed for fun crazy builds, and the Trade league has slightly higher caps on straight stats. I feel like this might suit the mindset of both playerbases better, and many of us could enjoy both for the different experiences they provide.

For me, I love the thrill of killing a boss and wanting that big drop. That's what I played diablo 2 for, and that's what I want in POE.

I'd be interested to see the numbers, but I really do feel that most players enjoy the thrill of the hunt, they don't want to be plugged into economy simulators and the #'s show this time and again. Whether it be old school World of Warcraft vanilla servers. Whether it be a new league, players WANT that experience of playing for their own power without people fully kitted out around them.

Trade is the opposite of that fresh fun feeling, it's enetering a server and having tons of tools at your disposal to destroy that experience, but if you do not indulge in it you have that huge feeling of FOMO, fear of missing out. Everyone around you will be participating in end game features, and you will feel lesser than if you do not partake in trade and reach the end game grind they are participating in. All the trade all the social features compel us to skip the greatest bits of enjoyment of a video game.