My suggestion to make trading vs crafting better.

To make the game less pay to win and crafting more competitive with the trade site. Here's my simple suggestion:

Only allow non-crafted items to trade.
If crafting has been done there should be a "crafted" status on the item and you cannot list it for sale.

This way you have to choose whether you want trade a dropped item or craft on it. It also prevents people from just buying a super uber maxed out item that someone else has crafted.

This will encourage people to do their own crafting and hopefully also encourages GGG to develop the crafting system to give us more meaningful ways to improve items.

Well, how do you acquire items in late end game?
For me it consists of sitting on the trade site more than actually playing the game. Surely this is not the intention?

I'd say the game is massively geared towards pay to win. You simply farm currency and pay for stuff you find on the trade site.

To say someone is good at the game when they just buy their stuff is completely ridiculous.

"

Evilsmiter#8011 a écrit :

Well, how do you acquire items in late end game?
For me it consists of sitting on the trade site more than actually playing the game. Surely this is not the intention?

I'd say the game is massively geared towards pay to win. You simply farm currency and pay for stuff you find on the trade site.

To say someone is good at the game when they just buy their stuff is completely ridiculous.

I very much like this take, but I think it's a bit over the top.

My caveat is that spending time and making currency off efficient farming is not without skill.

Sure you can probably rmt gear like some famous villain, but that's not necessarily the case for everyone with a 100+ div build.

Again, I am mostly with you, especially regarding the aspect of self-found gear being negligible.

"

Evilsmiter#8011 a écrit :

Well, how do you acquire items in late end game?
For me it consists of sitting on the trade site more than actually playing the game. Surely this is not the intention?

I'd say the game is massively geared towards pay to win. You simply farm currency and pay for stuff you find on the trade site.

To say someone is good at the game when they just buy their stuff is completely ridiculous.

How to gear in late endgame?
Gearing in this game (or any other ARPG for that matter) is an exponential curve. Each upgrade is exponentially rarer and more expensive than the previous one.

Depending on how much you play, there will come a point where trying to upgrade your gear is too time consuming and not worth it.
And that's fine. You don't need an impossibly strong character to cover all the content available.
At that point, you either keep playing with a different goal in mind or you create another character.

Sure, crafting needs to be more competitive compared to trading. But crippling trading is not the way to go, quite the contrary. We need to reduce friction on trading (for those who want to go that route), and improve crafting for the people who want to play more towards an SSF experience.

By the way, now that I think about it, your complaint and your suggestion make no sense together.
If GGG did what you asked for, not only trading would be several orders of magnitude more expensive, but finding good gear listed would also be several orders of magnitude harder, since items very rarely drop "finished" and there's some crafting involved in making them actually good.
You'd be making your own problem basically 1000x worse...

"

_rt_#4636 a écrit :

We need to reduce friction on trading (for those who want to go that route), and improve crafting for the people who want to play more towards an SSF experience.

Eh no you cannot have both.

"

_rt_#4636 a écrit :

Depending on how much you play, there will come a point where trying to upgrade your gear is too time consuming and not worth it.
And that's fine. You don't need an impossibly strong character to cover all the content available.
At that point, you either keep playing with a different goal in mind or you create another character.

Yes, absolutely. But this is more about HOW you progress:

how many items do you wear by source:

1) dropped useful, optimized by crafting (like Armorer's scraps and two runes)
2) dropped not useable, but made great through crafting
3) bought not useable, but made great through crafting
4) bought unfinished, optimized by crafting
5) bought finished

My main point is that the share of 1&2 is way too low for self-found gameplay to be viable, I'm not OP though. He wants crafting to be better, I'd rather have better drops - at least in SSF.

"

Solmyr77#1930 a écrit :

"

_rt_#4636 a écrit :

Depending on how much you play, there will come a point where trying to upgrade your gear is too time consuming and not worth it.
And that's fine. You don't need an impossibly strong character to cover all the content available.
At that point, you either keep playing with a different goal in mind or you create another character.

Yes, absolutely. But this is more about HOW you progress:

how many items do you wear by source:

1) dropped useful, optimized by crafting (like Armorer's scraps and two runes)
2) dropped not useable, but made great through crafting
3) bought not useable, but made great through crafting
4) bought unfinished, optimized by crafting
5) bought finished

My main point is that the share of 1&2 is way too low for self-found gameplay to be viable, I'm not OP though. He wants crafting to be better, I'd rather have better drops - at least in SSF.

Yeah, I understood that from your previous post.
I still say your complaint and suggestion make no sense together.

What you complain about: drops/crafting sucks and trading is the most viable option by far
What you suggested: make trading offers also suck

What you actually want is better drops and crafting, not worse trading.

"

onetruelai#7327 a écrit :

"

_rt_#4636 a écrit :

We need to reduce friction on trading (for those who want to go that route), and improve crafting for the people who want to play more towards an SSF experience.

Eh no you cannot have both.

It's not that deep. PoE is an easy single player PvE game. We can have both, it's just a matter of whether or not GGG wants us to have both

"

You'd be making your own problem basically 1000x worse...

If things remain as they are now, yes... But my point is they need to improve crafting so to be competitive with trading. By only allowing trade of dropped non crafted items players will have a kind of middle ground between outright buying and crafting. You can buy something with good basic stats and then work on the item to improve it.

Of course this also means there must be ways available to improve the item instead of just taking a lottery ticket and find out you lost and you'd just have to throw the item away. It doesn't have to be deterministic, which I know GGG doesn't like, but if you get a bad modifier there should be a way to reroll only that modifier. There's still RNG involved as you don't know what modifier will replace it.

What I call "pay to win" as it is now where you just buy silly OP gear is detrimental to the game and makes us play less, because we spend time on the trade site instead, as that has so much better pay off than actually playing the game.

Playing the game should always be more rewarding, especially for those who want to put time and effort into it.