Trading! or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bazaar!

Final replies here because I sense we are reaching a point where we basically have to agree to disagree.

  1. We describe as if trade was a constant because the belief is that many players would choose to do the things that get them the most returns even if it’s not fun. That’s the worry about an efficient trade system, that someone may feel complied to play the auction house than the game. From your reply I know ure not that type of player. But I posit that players like you are the exception rather than the norm.

  2. I agree for many things we won’t know until we try it. If you check my post history here you would know that I’m not a fan of auction houses/bazaar but I’ve also made it clear I’m willing to see the team implement their vision and try it before commenting further.

  3. Simply insisting Chris is wrong doesn’t lend the impression that you’re open to other’s idea. Why is he wrong? (But never mind. No need for us to delve further into this).

  4. My point wasn’t to compare. But if like you can check me out on Poe forums. Same handler. Just saying that I’ve experienced everything you described in your original reply to me (because you thought I must have started more recently).

  5. When I said community/public multiplayer I literally meant that POE is more of a solo game than anything based on its league/challenges design. I didn’t mean to conflate it with trade. I agree the player interactions is better experienced through parties and/or guilds. I’m not an advocate for player interactions through trade.

  6. @Cygnus bazaar idea is novel and interesting. But I’m not optismtic that the team could come up with an implementation that would execute well. But like I said, whatever the team wish to try, I’ll experience it, and feedback again.

I think you’re right in terms of my idea. I think it would be kinda groundbreaking for an online game, but it would take ALOT of work and testing and tweaking to get it to work, and these lovely folk already have a busy schedule.

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It is safe to say in the context of all the economy/trade handling ideas, Cygnus’s idea significantly stands out to be fresh, unique yet to be handled with care to the max to get the best of it imho. It indeed requires very tight tweaking and to be well-thought and fleshed out to get the benefits right on the startup and rooted. However, if EHG can ever pull this idea off among many others, undoubtedly the outcome shall be big enough to pay off way-way worthy of having it that the title may live up to its name alone for that matter, for years to come.

I hope devs wouldn’t steer away from this nonconventional approach by comprehending that as a risk and instead as an innovative move to turn the potential into opportunity in this competitive field.

This is going to be such an interesting experiment!

One small suggestion I have is to extend the Bazaar listing time if someone places a bid in the last 5 minutes to prevent Bots from sniping the item. So a bid during the last 5 minutes extends the Listing by another 5 minutes.

a fixed ending time will result in the servers getting hit hard in the seconds/milliseconds at the very end of the Listing and it will hit a point where players with the best latencies will best be able to time the ending of the sale. Conceivably the Listed Item Best Price could change hands dozens of times in the last second and the only happy party will be the person who won the item.

RMT companies will attempt to do their business by turning a very low priced item ie. “A Rock” into a commodity being bought and sold for very large amounts of $$$ Gold. So the system has to be aware of a rough price or a price range for an item to see if it is being exploited.

Can wait!

If I can’t trade end game BiS items what’s the purpose of trading at all?

That is not the intention @trollpeis

A very small proportion of items will not be tradable. With the exception of white items with no affixes, an item being a higher rarity doesn’t mean that it will be more powerful. In this regard Last Epoch will be more similar to Path of Exile than Diablo III.

This thread is quite old now and may not have been phrased as well as it could have been in a small number of places - leading to it giving a more restrictive impression than our current intentions. We’ve been discussing either giving it an update or posting a new thread on the subject, but our upcoming beta release has kept us busy.

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Having no Special Input at that time (Maybe a bit later), I just want to throw into that - while fluid in development- the idea`s seem appropriate at that time. They surely Need to be balanced between Intention/Goal, and actual causality and Impact on Players and economy, balance the pros/cons of that and being willing to make changes and Adjustments.

As for the 5 Item Limit and the Fee on Bidding. No one knows how this would work out, really, in matters of how pragmatic it is (beside the Intention to “Keep the flow and balance within the market” vs. “what is the Player experience and how does this Limit to ensure the market is functioning Limit the Player experience”. I can see how this makes sense, I can see how this can lead to Frustration too.

Let`s say you want to get rid of your Sorcerers gear, and your Druids gear, and get into making a powerful Lich. With a 5 item Limit, you are heavily restricted time-wise. Not knowing how it may turn out in real-game, as a Player experience. I mean, you can create Problems by simply trying to avoid “that and this” Problem - e.g. botters, spammers, inflantation, etc. and therefor making a System inherently unfun or ineffective to use, or ineffective to use for certain things.

I mean, this is probably where in-game trading may be a possibility, or another function where you can “send out” that you sell full Sorcerer and Druid Equipments (probably 20-30 items in total), and People can whisper you or something. 5 Limit restriction, with its potential or theoretical inherent Pros, can have theoretical or practical Con`s, that could be or could not be dealt with at some Point, through additions or alternative Solutions.

Another idea, within the 5 Item Limit, could be: 5 Trades can be set on, that People can bid for. E.g. I offer 3 items, and I offer 2x2 sets. That is 7 Items total, but only 5 trades People can bid. So I can put online 3 items, and I can put online (on the Bazaar) the Equipment of my Sorcerer and my Druid, for a valid high Price to bid for. It will Count as 1 item, because it is 1 trade, but it includes each for example 10 items. You cant bid for one, but only for the totality.

Or you can enable that you either have a Limit of 5 Items, or you have 2 “listings” instead. Items will be directly on the Bazaar, meaning that Players can search for it by searching for specifics (e.g. “helm - strengh - vitality - minion resistance”. These will Show in the market and Count to your items. You can have 5 items max.

A listing would constitute of lets say 3 items, and it has a Topic. E.g. “Melee Sorcerer Item”. People can then go to “Listings” instead of “Search for Item”, and the Listing constitutes of “General”, and then one for each Class. So 6 sectors, General - Mage - Rogue - etc. You can choose whether a Listing will have 1 Price, or if it can be bid on each item. But for Purpose, having a listing have 1 Price would be better, because you can list more, but that should be the downside Maybe. Sell the pack or you dont sell the pack. Otherwise, sell the item. As a buyer, you also have the choice: buy an item or buy a pack. Packs could come with the downside that you dont Need all of the items. But then again, it makes more sense to put items in a pack that align with what People generally Need together (e.g. Melee sorc items), and the rest sell as items.

Ideally you could make the max. items on the Bazaar 6. One pack could hold up to 6 items. You can choose to sell 6 items or 2 packs total. One pack equals 3 items on the Bazaar. So you could e.g. list 3 items and 1 pack, or 2 packs, or 6 items. Pros: items can be searched for directly and bid for individually. Cons: Costs time and is limited highly, but more efficient in selling for particular Prices, and in a certain pace. Pros of packs: can sell more items at once. Cons: can not be searched for directly, can not set Price for items individually hence takes Maybe more time to sell

Since other matters have already been discussed full and frank, such as BoA etc. - one has to see how the middle-way turns out. That everything is tradeable to Long-on-the-F-list-People, could make it. I like both! But Im both a Trader and a “find it yourself-er”. So, from both standpoints, I wouldnt want be too restricted in both ways. To an extent. Just, finding an Ultra rare item you wouldnt use because you would never Play a melee sorc feels bad. Getting a super cool helm for your summoner that you couldnt find in months as a trade-off feels awesome though! The Question then would Maybe be how one can balance the trade-Offs of both sides, instead of causing bad Symptoms because you try to “avoid something” with a Concept design - but entirely creating a new Frustration therewith.

You could also add a function to BoA. E.g. destroying an item that is inherently BoA ( versus e.g. items that are BoA through Crafting) could give X amount of Gold, or this or that of high value. So that finding a very-rare-hard-to-find BoA item is NEVER a “no-win-situation”. And thats the Point. Or being able to re-craft a BoA item. E.g. find a BoA Helm for druid. I dont Play druid. You can reroll the helm to turn into another BoA helm. Maybe you are lucky! But some mechanic could be added to not makeultra-rare BoA`s into a Frustration-funnel.WHen you finally find that item that you dont Need at all. :stuck_out_tongue:

Hyped for the beat and to try it out!

Cheers1

I am just looking for a game closer to Diablo 2, I have played a lot of D3 and POE. I like POE way more than D3 due to item trading being available with some kind of economy. I like the direction Last Epoch is taking in regards to having a bazaar but limiting the amount of items for sale should be based on character level. For example, you can list only 1 item when level 10 or below and list only 5 items between levels 11 - 25 and able to list 10 items between levels 26-50. List 20 items (or higher or unrestricted #) above level 50. Something along these lines would be better imo. Also having bind on account items, I kind of disagree on that methodology as you might find really good epic gear but it isn’t for your class so you should be able to sell it and get something as epic but for your class. I am also seeking that nostalgia of finding a unique item that is awesome for most builds (For example in Diablo 2 “Unique Shako”).

This is fantastic, this is the best ARPG trading design that I’ve seen yet. There will be some tangible value to mid-tier items, but finding your best stuff won’t involve sniping items off an auction house at the last fraction of a second. Well done.

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My 5 cents of criticism - Forced only one currency, which can be obtained in interaction with any NPC trader in the city can mean only one - the trade will be dead or prices will be above reach usual casual player, which can farm gold 12 h every day in week…
In PoE is one advantage of every currency - usability to modify items and objects in environment (Strongboxes all kind). Gold should give such ability with spending it. Any tax trade „to drain gold market” will be not such reasonable and fun as many possible usabilites when spent it in game.

Let’s face the fact; you made Last Epoch a clone of Path of Exile and I see several aspects that can make this better, but this system will surely make people go back to Path of Exile way sooner than you might think.
You basically want to limit the maximum real life value of your best items to what? few bucks? The main reason why people get involved in meta-crafting, mirror services, endless grinding etc. in Path of Exile is because there is sometimes outrageously high real life value behind those items. Even if they do not plan to RMT, this gives them a good damn reason to do it eitherway. If you basically skip that part it just doesn’t make sense from the “grinder’s” perspective.
5 auctions, which can’t be closed until they expire/end is plain stupid too. Basically you want to kill trading completely.
Just let people do whatever they want, trade freely etc. but as suggested in another thread, have a separate currency for purchasing items on the Bazaar. This would make people actually play the game for the “tokens” instead of just power leveling a character to lvl.60 and rmting all the beast gear few hours after creating their account

As a seller, you may have up to 5 listings on the Bazaar at a time and once a starting price and closing time have been set you will be unable to prematurely remove the listing. Other players will then be able to bid on your listings and once the bidding window is up the winner will receive your item and you will receive the gold they bid on it.

I love trading in Wow, 2007scape, (even diablo3 at the time)… but man, 5 listings is like barely trading. I’d argue for runescape-style, where you can have a set number of listings per item category (mostly to stop players from buying out all of 1 item and then artificially setting the price). Like 5 weapons, 5 armor, 5 mat of X…

Bidding is a really boring mechanic in my opinion, and also can lead to items selling for near nothing. I think 2007scape GE with the option to buy-instantly, or even if no one is selling, put a buy price, and other players can sell at a lower price, but then instantly sell to high price and make more money is a lot better.

I know grinding for items is fun, but due to variance, you could grind for (hyperbole) a year and not find the item you want, but have millions, billions of gold to buy said item… if only you could sell the other good items (but not for your class) to other players.

Anyway, regardless, it’ll be awesome fun to trade with other players, but as someone who loves trading (and playing), I don’t know if I’ll even bother with the Bazar if it’s bid-only and has a max of 5 items.

I hate trading. In the end, it’s just makes content a lot shorter. Being able to complete all content or builds, easily within a league/cycle, just puts pressure for more frequent content, skills, classes etc. This can quickly lead to a drop in game balance/quality, just so you can keep people interested for a short period of time in every new cycle, which is what happened with PoE.

Imo, trade in arpgs is a mistake. And before someone says “play solo mode”, I have a better option. Make items tradeable to people that were in your party when the item dropped and have a completely separate mode with free trade, for newcomers or people who like trading as an endgame.

You realise that means the same thing as solo mode right? People who trade will go to this “trade mode”, the mode you’re left with will be the de facto “solo mode” whether you call it that or not.

No, I mean all modes (hardcore, masochist, normal), have group trade only as I mentioned above. For me, that’s ideal.

i said it in another thread. if you want to encourage people to play the game as opposed to trading, then you must make playing the game best way to progress, not making trading bad.

you do not want to have these 2 scenarios,
1- Trade is horrible, BUT still the best way to acquire gears (aka PoE now)
or
2- The gears you want don’t drop, & these gears can’t or very hard to acquire via trading due to trade quantity limitations.

It is undeniable by now that the reason behind the success of PoE and trade in PoE is the free market. Nearly all you can win in the game is tradable. For better or worse, this is one of the pillars of PoE. Part of the excitement of finding a valuable item is to know that you will be able to sell it and buy what you need.

Does the free market favor real money trading? This is the key question. At first glance it would seem that yes, it does. But I have my doubts. All of the games that restricted free market have failed to decrease bots and RMT, not to mention eliminate them from the game. Unfortunately, bots and RMT will always find a hole in order to make their things in an online game.

That being said, I have hopes the bazaar will be different to all of what we saw in the genre, and how knows, maybe it is the best option to keep most players happy. Time will tell.

I’ve been a giga trader since forever. I enjoy making money and I’m almost always the top 0.001% in every MMO game. I played 2007scape for a month only because I like trading in the auction house - that’s all I did and I enjoyed it! Most of my Path of Exile goals were around accumulating wealth to test my trading skills, I made around 1 Mirror every 2 days. If the trading is crippled, I doubt my enthusiasm about the game will stay as it is right now. I have never RMTed myself simply because I don’t have the need for it.

One thing that you have to understand is that real money trading will never disappear. Even if you remove trade completely, there will be probably as much or even more RMTing. People use RMT to bypass time-consuming aspects of the game, be it either not willing to grind or not willing to learn. People offer RMT services or goods because they have found methods which are far efficient than what an average people can come up with.

If you want to design your game around avoiding RMT, you’ll most likely end up making more users unsatisfied with the limitations rather than making people happy from being completely aware that they’re not in an environment which is RMT friendly.

Absolutely all popular games have RMTing, yet I have never heard it being an issue for the majority of the players. All that has come out of it has been a few individuals being envious about someone’s achievements and use RMT as a slur.

If you don’t believe me, take a look at Path of Exile’s forums( Reddit is more modded but still has plenty of highly upvoted angry threads) where the trade is also artificially limited and forced. It’s a MESS for over a year already and for the last few months has gone exceptionally bad.

The Path of Exile’s trade manifesto which has been linked everywhere hundreds of times is extremely flawed, filled with contradictions and readers often without understanding it give their support rather due to the appeal to authority. Decrypting the whole manifesto for you would steal 2 hours of my precious keystrokes from my life.

In my opinion 2007scape and WoW have done trading the best. Trading itself is a fun aspect of the game if it’s done right and does not lock content away from you.

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Correct me if I’m wrong, but your idea is to create central planned economy with neural network in charge. It doesn’t matter who is in charge in such system it will fail eventually.

For such system to operate optimally it have to have entirety of knowledge about needs of every individual. But there are problems:

  • individual knows for sure about it’s needs only
  • that knowledge can’t be fully formalized and transferred since it can be based on intuition, etc.

That means what knowledge in economic are dissipated. No one know everything and it is not possible to gathter that knowledge in one place.

The Bazaar already sounds better than PoEs trading system. Don’t get me wrong I’ve spend thousands of hours playing PoE but the trading system is so frustrating. Usually the reason I burn out on a league quite fast.