Why I think cross-league trading is just as bad as real-money trading

Supply in Cross-League Trading

Hardcore side: An item available for trade eventually becomes an item not available for trade; with most cross-league trades this is immediate, but arbitrage is possible. What this means is: reduced supply, in a league that already has a built-in method for reduced supply (the Hardcore death item-sink).

Softcore side: Usually, an item not available for trade becomes available for trade. This is because most cross-league trades are from hardcore players who have died and thus suddenly have Default-league wealth... wealth that would normally go virtually ignored in their stashes, as they're not really Default players. This means increased supply, in a league that has no real method for reducing supply.

Conducting in cross-league trades amplifies the effect of inflationary forces upon the Default economy; these forces wreck enough havoc on Default without further amplification.

There's a very good chance that the problems with the Default economy are not so much the fault of multiboxing or botting or RMT sites -- the common scapegoats -- but instead a product of rampant cross-league trading, an activity that many players consider perfectly harmless, when its economic consequences (when conducted on a large enough scale) are anything but harmless.

Out of curiosity why would people dying in hardcore harm the soft-core economy? Unless i am mistaken, this would mean more (good) items available in SC which should mean they become cheaper. Which in turn means it becomes easier for newer players to get decent equipment.

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Not only are you exposing yourself to being scammed, you are also damaging the integrity of the game environment ....

How so? Neither currencies nor items actually flow from SC->HC in such a trade.

Such trades do seem kinda sissy-pants to me, but that's a different matter.

It would seem that HC defaults are likely to be much more damaging to the SC economy than any HC economic damage, which would appear to be wholly impossible with a cross league trade.

--C

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GusTheCrocodile a écrit :

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VoxelSquid a écrit :

In order for a competitive game to be fun, there has to be a level playing field in which only in-game performance matters to determine who wins or loses (or scores higher or lower)

PoE is built around luck; it will never be a game in which only the performance of the players matters. If you somehow remove cross-realm trading, you'll be transforming this game that's unsuited for serious competition into...a game that's still unsuited for serious competition.

The fact that there are 'pro' players like kripp who consistently win races tells us there is a certain element of skill.

Another sign there is skill is that some players can create a HC character and not die till their character is level 80ish, while other plays can create HC characters and never make it past cruel.

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Jsbeer a écrit :

Out of curiosity why would people dying in hardcore harm the soft-core economy? Unless i am mistaken, this would mean more (good) items available in SC which should mean they become cheaper. Which in turn means it becomes easier for newer players to get decent equipment.

This inherently means that the number of even better items in softcore is going to always be diluted. A person who dies in hardcore automatically adds all of their equipment to the economy of SC, unless they don't sell them. So every player who dies with Kaom's in hardcore just added 1 more Kaom's to default. That drives all prices down.

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the_real_seebs a écrit :

I would agree that cross-league trading is a thing which can create problems, and which can create problems of a category similar to those created by RMT. I don't think that makes it "just as bad".

Cross-league trading does not create an unambiguous and huge advantage for players who have real-world money. Therefore it is not just-as-bad. It may be bad, but it is not as bad.

Yes, I guess I can agree that from a practical perspective, cross-league trading is not just-as-bad as real-money trading.

However, with this thread, I was trying to show that the underlying principle of cross-league trading (allowing external factors to influence in-game reasources) is the same. I just wanted people to realize that cross-league trading does causes at least some degree of harm to the game.

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Also, thanks to Scrotie for the excellent economic analysis of the situation!

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Courageous a écrit :

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Not only are you exposing yourself to being scammed, you are also damaging the integrity of the game environment ....

How so? Neither currencies nor items actually flow from SC->HC in such a trade.

Although this is true in a hard sense, in an effective sense it is not; cross-league trading transforms the Hardcore player's "worthless" death-to-Default items into a usable commodity. This makes the Default economy feel the full force of inflation due to Hardcore-to-Default death-based transfers.

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NotRegret a écrit :

PoE is built around luck; it will never be a game in which only the performance of the players matters. If you somehow remove cross-realm trading, you'll be transforming this game that's unsuited for serious competition into...a game that's still unsuited for serious competition.

The fact that there are 'pro' players like kripp who consistently win races tells us there is a certain element of skill.

Another sign there is skill is that some players can create a HC character and not die till their character is level 80ish, while other plays can create HC characters and never make it past cruel.

The fact that Kripp wins races or that someone can get to level 80 doesn't necessarily mean they have more skill. This game is very time intensive. Kripp wins races because he has a lot of time to study the game and find the best builds and methods of winning. If you had the same level of time dedication as him you could be level 90+ too and potentially win races. He didn't say that luck was the ONLY thing that matters and skill is not the ONLY factor either. Time played is a huge factor as well, not only on a single character, but overall.

Time = longer time to learn what works = better performance overall

In races that time translates in optimized builds/methods and that wins races. Luck comes into play as well, but having a clear plan is far more important.

I'm not sure I'm following

Is it something like this scenario?

P1 wants to sell an item in default
P2 tell him that if he receives this item in default league, his Hardcore character will give something to P1's character in hardcore?

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wonko33 a écrit :

P1 wants to sell an item in default
P2 tell him that if he receives this item in default league, his Hardcore character will give something to P1's character in hardcore?

Yes.