Ladder vs Non Ladder

bapcja wrote:the effort that went into this post is commendable, but i dont see how any of the proposals would be better than simple "tg counter resets with seasons end". not that it matters, the veteran player clique would never let go of their hoards and means to dominate every season.

That is the point, there isn't a nice solution, and surely a "tg counter resets with seasons end" isn't any better since it would fall under 4a. It would be slightly different if there was some programmable and worthy use for the hypothetical "inactive tg". But it would hardly solve a problem while also introducing another one.

4a) Hard reset of capitals
Possible negative consequences of this are:
Temporary half-assed solution.
Pitchforks, angry mobs and fire, a lot of it.

why is it half assed? because people who rub elbows with the dev team will threaten to quit?

if there was some programmable and worthy use for the hypothetical "inactive tg"

there doesnt have to be any. let it stay as a second counter under active tg, so people can show off their trader cred on the forums and thats good enough.

another solution could be to rebalance gold for the nth time, so it actually becomes a viable trade good. (oils become catalysts, vendor prices greatly reduced and so on)

bapcja wrote:why is it half assed? because people who rub elbows with the dev team will threaten to quit?

Cause it's a system that would be built on annoyance and fear (for everyone): annoyance in having to do a donation every time you need something for fear of loosing your purchased TGs, if something happens irl and you're unable to play after an investment then you'll be unjustly punished. Also managing to do a big sale would result in nothing outside of that season, thus lowering a lot the players interactions with the Trade platform and themselves. It really does no good, and rendering the TGs already obtained useless is quite unethical.

bapcja wrote:there doesnt have to be any. let it stay as a second counter under active tg, so people can show off their trader cred on the forums and thats good enough.

I disagree, it has to have an additional value. "trader cred" not gonna cut it for what is lost right away and taken away from the economic layer of the game in the long-run.

bapcja wrote:another solution could be to rebalance gold for the nth time, so it actually becomes a viable trade good. (oils become catalysts, vendor prices greatly reduced and so on)

Virtual gold is already important, but for it to become a viable trade gold the whole project would need to be scaled back massively. Diablo's virtual gold doesn't pay for development. Sadly not a solution.

tg bought with real money couldve been just made permanent. another currency the forum user could trade 1:1 for tg at any time via forum interface.

Nonladder Discord: https://discord.gg/9EwWu5p8
Not super active, but better than nothing.

The only idea that I've been able to come up with, is a short TG lock at the beginning of each season.
Essentially lock all TG transactions for 1-2 weeks (or whatever period of time that seems appropriate) at the start of a new season starting, I believe there would be a couple of benefits to this.

1: Trade could still happen but it wouldn't be tied to the hoarding of TG from previous seasons, meaning that people would actually have to put in effort if they want to get ahead. Some people are perfectly capable of that as it is but using TG basically means that they can "cut the queues" on various types of material farming, fragments, trophies, sigs etc.
2: It introduces a short buffer period where the more uncommon items can drop without instantly being bought up by the people with the most TG -> if you want the pricy items early, you need to have farmed something of equal value -> equal opportunity for everyone but not equal result. If you're a literal Median XL god gamer, then you should still be able to get ahead, which is the way it's supposed to be.
3: Progression of the entire player base should generally be a bit slower, adding more longevity to each season.

Like I said initially, this is not supposed to be a solution, just an improvement to the current system. There might be holes in this idea but I haven't been able to find them really, other than "this hurts me because I have a gorillian TG and cant get ahead as fast anymore" but I can't really take such a complaint serious. The idea of having the very endgame being tied together with trading is NOT a problem and never was, but having TG carrying over through seasons completely removes the notion of a fresh economy on season starts.

I'm personally not a fan of straight up removing TG, as it would basically kill half of the recurring online player base. TG carrying over unhindered is part of the reason why a notable portion of the player base is done playing in 3 weeks and I really consider some modification to trading/tg to be integral in extending the lifetime of each season.

I think it could be more important to look at your desired endgoal and rethink possibilities to reach this goal. What are we trying to achieve here (is everyone even on the same page about this?)

The main goal I see brought up is to stop the same small group of players from dominating the TG, and with this the general, economy for online play.

The thing is, there are some factors that tell me that changes to TG won't change this much or even at all.

Every one of these people probably have more playtime in a single season than a casual like me has over my entire median XL experience. They reach endgame faster, they farm more, they simply have more because they do it better and spend more time on it than the average casual. So with or without TG, they'll be running fauzt when I'm doing K3K so to speak. This means that likely they will hold most of the items that people would like to trade.

They know and help one another for favours. I'm single player because I dislike server ping and the multiplayer experience wasn't all that much for me. So I look for shit like a last malthael set piece for days or weeks, because, I have to find this myself. At the start of the season, TG or not, if one of these guys finds a great rune in their normal hellforge, it's very possible that they simply say to their buddy who can use it: "ok you can have it, as long as you give me <your first drop of item X> or <the first great rune you get>, ...
I can't make deals like that on SP and even if I were MP I couldn't because I don't spend the time ingame to get to know people like that.

So in general, changing the TG system will probably not have the desired effect, since 1. these people whose monopoly you are trying to break up actively keep this together (not with the very purpose of running a monopoly, but just because they can, and it's easy for them). And 2. they spend another form of currency that I and many others can't afford: time. More time spent equals more items, compound interest, etc etc.

To really make the economy fair here you would need a lockout system (only run dunc 3x a day), or equalize the item distribution via coding (the less time you spend ingame, the higher chance you have to find set/SU/SSU/SSSU for X amount of time based on how long ago you logged in or something).

I think the most important thing here is that you have to keep in mind that you can get away with giving a specific group people more and still keep everyone happy. But taking something away from a specific group will without a doubt rustle some jimmies.

syllab wrote:So in general, changing the TG system will probably not have the desired effect, since 1. these people whose monopoly you are trying to break up actively keep this together (not with the very purpose of running a monopoly, but just because they can, and it's easy for them). And 2. they spend another form of currency that I and many others can't afford: time. More time spent equals more items, compound interest, etc

You make a good point about whatever "balance" comes to the TG, those who focus their energy in a group effort by pooling their resources to get on top will continue to do so. And really, who's to say that's an incorrect way to play the game? If there was some sort of race with big prizes that could only be obtained by those who fork tons of TG over, then it might be an issue.

But currently the biggest downside is whatever top meta items pop up at the beginning of the season are going to get snatched up by those willing to over spend on it. Wizardspikes and Xis runes and whatever might be hard to come by in the first few days, but over time as long as a good population keeps playing and trading then you can usually get most of what you need.

Making lockouts or any drop regulation based on trade would kill this mod. One improvement that would be nice pertaining to the auction house, is limit the amount if times it can be refreshed to the 20 min mark. It's very frustrating to get into a bidding war that lasts over an hour. I'd rather just lose to a last second high bid than stretching out the inevitable.

I just stick to singleplayer, I want to play the economy game I will go to Path of Exile :'). Having a lot of fun still with MedianXL in singleplayer though and I hope the devs don't forget about us