trade in poe2 - DEVS, TAKE NOTE!!!

hello,

note: i'm a data analyst who's studied in-game economies across a range of game genres, so i'm trying to offer actual advice, rather than just complain. please consider what i have to say, as it might help improve your game. also, i claim no copyright to these ideas, so please freely use any of these ideas to make the game better.

i've been watching a youtube video about trade in poe2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVOfwMWhMvU

and i think the devs have got things a little backwards.

at one stage they said that "easy trade" would make players less likely to upgrade their equipment. but this only happens if players get better results from trading than upgrading. after all, why waste an exalted orb just to get "increased light radius" when you could spend that orb getting someone else's hand-me-downs that already have all the affixes you want?

perhaps a solution would be to make crafting more effective than just gambling against RNG. then "easy trade" would be less powerful, because players could get the items they want from engaging with the game, rather than having to resort to trade.

it was also said that "easy trade" would force the developers to reduce drop rates, but this is backwards too. if drop rates were higher, then trade would be less important, as players would find the equipment they need instead of having to trade for it.

the problem is that trading keeps found items in the game's ecosystem; i.e. they only have to be found once by one player, for them to be circulated around to many other players. this is the "exponential value curve" they were talking about in the youtube video.

but if you slightly nerf items each time they get traded, this slowly acts as an "item sink", which means players will constantly have to find or craft new items, because then you can't infinitely trade the best items back and forth all the time. it would also make players more proud of having the best equipment, as it means they worked for it themselves. trading would still help players fill the gaps in their loadouts, but they would still be motivated to strive for better items by crafting or battling monsters.

at this stage i think it's important to point out that end-game is totally different from playing through the main campaign. end-game players are more likely to accept longer wait times for tiny, incremental benefits; which is why it's so much harder to go from level 90 to 91 than it is to go from level 1 to 2. so by all means make drop rates and/or crafting the very highest level gear much harder, to be more rewarding to only the most committed players.

but by applying end-game philosophies to early-game play, you just end up forcing players to resort to trading, as levelling up at lower levels happens faster than collecting level-appropriate loot from battling monsters and crafting.

i offer a few solutions:

1. increase loot drop rates at lower character levels. this will disincentivise trading during the campaign, and increase engagement with the game, as players would be able to satisfy their loot requirements just by playing. feel free to adjust this towards the late game, to match the slower levelling-up rate.

2. charge money for the game. in the above youtube video, it was said that players need to buy premium stash tabs to engage in trading, and this means the company's revenue relies on trading. this is just mobile-game mentality, and is contributing directly to the ensh*tification of gaming and the internet as a whole. but early access players happily paid money for poe2, so maybe you can just sell the game like a normal product, so your revenue no longer relies on what effectively amounts to microtransactions. poe2 is a premium game, and deserves to be sold as a premium game.

3. when players trade an item, perhaps make one or more of the affixes drop a tier, or perhaps lose an entire affix altogether. this means the first time or two that an item gets traded it's still a good deal, but the more it gets traded the less useful it becomes. this allows people with one great find to share it with their friends, but people who engage more in trading than in actually playing the game will find themselves getting diminishing returns. this also helps to slowly get powerful items out of circulation, so players are more incentivised to find "fresh" items by playing the game.

4. make the solo-self-found league even more cut off from the standard league, such that migrating to standard league just isn't possible, and then ramp up the item quality and drop rate so they can actually have a good time without yearning for the trading system. in the youtube video above, it was mentioned that the "silent majority" rarely engages with the trading system at all, so you're just alienating them by forcing them to accept the same drop rates as players who trade.

5. make crafting more effective. for example, let players have more agency when it comes to choosing which affixes they get, but feel free to keep the tier in a random range that maxes out according to the player's level. that way, low-level players will find it easy to get loot that is appropriate to their level, but high-level players run the risk of getting low-tier affixes, which makes it harder for them; i.e. the game's crafting gets harder as the game progresses, without being hard for new players who just want decent equipment to get through the campaign.

ultimately, i want the game's philosophy to be that battling monsters and crafting is the best way to get loot, and trading is just there to fill in gaps in your loadout or complete a set for a specific build. the best way to make that happen is to increase drop rates, make crafting more effective, and nerf trading somehow. i think the above suggestions may just have that effect, and may make poe2 a much more fun game to play, without sacrificing company revenue.

thanks.
-az

hello,

i'm posting a reply to try to keep this topic fresh, because i really think there's some value here. hopefully i can explain it a different way this time.

there are a LOT of players complaining about the current loot system, and the developers have explained that they are limited by the player trading system. it is clear the main reason is that the player trading system doesn't have any "value sinks". this means any items that enter the player trading system keep being traded indefinitely, which keeps increasing the average value of traded items (compared to items dropped by monsters), and this pulls players away from playing the game for loot drops and gets them more entrenched in the trading system instead.

the developers have already solved this problem with in-game merchants, in the same way that nearly all games have done in the past; by making in-game merchants into "money sinks". that's why you can buy an item for 1000 gold but only sell it back for 10 gold. because monsters keep dropping loot and money, and you need a way to get rid of the excess without devaluing the whole economy.

in poe1 the developers solved this problem with the player trading system by resetting the economy every few months, but this is only a band-aid solution that doesn't address the underlying issue. in other games they addressed the issue by making certain items "soulbound", or "untradeable", but this is also just a quick fix.

i suggest adding a "value sink" to the player trading system by limiting the number of times an item can be effectively traded. this can either be done by using a hard limit on the number of times an item can be traded, or by reducing its value slightly each time it is traded until it naturally falls out of circulation. for example, if you remove a single affix from an item when it is traded, then players would have to engage in the crafting system to replace that affix, which brings players out of the trading system and back into normal gameplay.

players would immediately hate this idea, especially those who have benefitted greatly from trading so far, but it should be balanced by increasing drop rates for decent loot from monsters and/or by improving the crafting system to be much less RNG-based. once players notice they can get better loot from battling monsters, and/or once they realise they have more agency in the crafting process, they would start playing the game more than trading, because that's where the best loot wil be.

players could still trade certain items to fill gaps in their loadouts, or to acquire certain unique items, but they'll also need to spend some time at the in-game crafting system to buff it back up to full power. in other words, the player trading system would SUPPORT gameplay, rather than REPLACE it.

thanks.
-az

tl;dr: by nerfing the trading system, the developers will be able to buff the crafting system and/or monster loot drops, which are 2 things that many players have been begging for, and which can't be done with the current trading system.