POE2 Multiplayer vs Solo-play incentives and SSF

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DarthSki44 wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

the majority of people playing in trade league dont trade.

ggg have said the majority of players never trade, yet the majority of players are not in ssf. people just play the game and dont trade

Did you just make this up, or was there a direct source / interview that a Dev said this officially? I'd like to see specifics and context, that trade league doesn't have trading for the majority of players.

there is no full stats for the player split but when people look at levels on visible ladder etc it usually works out ssf is about 5% of the population of the trade league from what ive seen.

quote from chris in the manifesto

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Most players who play Path of Exile never trade. Out of the players who do trade, most only complete a few trades in a league.

so traders are a minority, and within that minority the amount who actually trade in a significant way where it really effects their power are a minority within that minority.

but 95% of players are in the trade leagues.




people just play the game. a guy signs in, makes a char, they either end up in standard or the league, they have no intention of trading but its not what theyre thinking about. so many times i see new players asking for help in global chat on standard, they just installed the game a few days ago and theyre playing through. they dont know what ssf is, they dont know how or why or what to trade, dont even realise theyre better off in a league, dont rly know what a league is even. it makes sense. theyre not looking to become a trader in the game and theyre also not making a decision to wall themselves off from ever being able to trade or play with other people. they may intentionally become part of one of those groups 100, 200, 1000 hours down the line when they even understand what any of that really means.


no one comes to poe for the first time thinking i wanna be the guy who rushes 4 voidstones and then sits in my hideout rolling sextants 5 hours a day and bulk selling them on TFT so i can make mirrors. people come to the game and think oh this looks fun ill kill some monsters and find some cool items. later they might mke friends in global, find a crazy item and realise they can trade it, want to make a build and think oh this excites me maybe i can buy the unique that enables it etc etc. some people dip their toe into trade eventually and then a lot of the hardcore players that love the game get really really into the whole trading community scene and eventually become the insane sextant roller. but i think most players just come to the game thinking they want to hack n slash some mobs and get some loots and thats what they do?

that seems to be what the data we have access to suggests is happening and to me it makes sense. i came to the game from diablo 3 and i just wanted a game to play for a weekend, i wanted to explore some dungeons and find some fun items. i had no intention of being a trader.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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DarthSki44 wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

the majority of people playing in trade league dont trade.

ggg have said the majority of players never trade, yet the majority of players are not in ssf. people just play the game and dont trade

Did you just make this up, or was there a direct source / interview that a Dev said this officially? I'd like to see specifics and context, that trade league doesn't have trading for the majority of players.

there is no full stats for the player split but when people look at levels on visible ladder etc it usually works out ssf is about 5% of the population of the trade league from what ive seen.

quote from chris in the manifesto

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Most players who play Path of Exile never trade. Out of the players who do trade, most only complete a few trades in a league.

so traders are a minority, and within that minority the amount who actually trade in a significant way where it really effects their power are a minority within that minority.

but 95% of players are in the trade leagues.




people just play the game. a guy signs in, makes a char, they either end up in standard or the league, they have no intention of trading but its not what theyre thinking about. so many times i see new players asking for help in global chat on standard, they just installed the game a few days ago and theyre playing through. they dont know what ssf is, they dont know how or why or what to trade, dont even realise theyre better off in a league, dont rly know what a league is even. it makes sense. theyre not looking to become a trader in the game and theyre also not making a decision to wall themselves off from ever being able to trade or play with other people. they may intentionally become part of one of those groups 100, 200, 1000 hours down the line when they even understand what any of that really means.


no one comes to poe for the first time thinking i wanna be the guy who rushes 4 voidstones and then sits in my hideout rolling sextants 5 hours a day and bulk selling them on TFT so i can make mirrors. people come to the game and think oh this looks fun ill kill some monsters and find some cool items. later they might mke friends in global, find a crazy item and realise they can trade it, want to make a build and think oh this excites me maybe i can buy the unique that enables it etc etc. some people dip their toe into trade eventually and then a lot of the hardcore players that love the game get really really into the whole trading community scene and eventually become the insane sextant roller. but i think most players just come to the game thinking they want to hack n slash some mobs and get some loots and thats what they do?

that seems to be what the data we have access to suggests is happening and to me it makes sense. i came to the game from diablo 3 and i just wanted a game to play for a weekend, i wanted to explore some dungeons and find some fun items. i had no intention of being a trader.

Well I wanted to read a bit more about this, but all we are left with is conjecture from a few lines in a very dated manifesto.

If it's really less than 5% engaging in trade (which makes the TFT numbers more confusing), then I'd argue that investing resources, or even having trade in the first place, is a total waste of time and effort for a realitivley tiny amount of players.

Without evidence, and only circumstantial data like total items up for trade or TFT membership and transactions, I tend to think trade is a bigger deal than a 5% afterthought.

In addition, going on how Chris talks about how sacrosanct the economy is, how vital trade is, and how the entire loot drop system is based on trade, to have it be represented by a small fraction of the players seems like a huge disconnect.

What am I missing here?

its not 5% of people trading.


5% is what people estimate the population of ssf leagues are compared to their trading equivalent league from the ladder data we have. so if 2 million people play a league then maybe 100k are in ssf. standard has about 15% of players according to chris so 300k in standard. i think these are fair guestimations given what we have been told.

the amount of people trading is unclear, its almost certainly more than 5%, we just know that the majority of people never trade and the majority of people who do trade only do it a couple of times and hence dont get any significant advantage from it over a self found player.



in the post chris mentions that the players who trade significant amounts overlaps greatly with the forum and reddit populations and that they are part of the 10% of the player base who takes part in these advanced systems.

that might suggest that the population who significantly trades, full on tradecore players, are maybe 10% of the player base.






that would actually make sense and fit with the tft numbers.

chris has stated even the worst performing leagues in recent years have had millions of players playing them. so were dealing with multiple millions of players every league, even the worst ones, the best ones might be what? 3+ million people?

theyre not the same people every league. i know about 50 people who play this game, i think maybe 6 of them have logged in and played during this league. some of them wont play another poe league for the rest of this year, theres probably at least 10 people who didnt play during this league who will play later this year. people come and go, its not exactly the same millions of people every league.

if 3+ million people play a popular league, how many total different people have played during tfts life? 5 millon? 10?

tft has 500k users collected over the years. thats 10% of 5 million. i think the numbers might be higher than that, i know that 500k ppl on tft are not the sum total of dedicated traders in this game, many of them have never been to tft.

of that 500k tft have i would imagine only 50k might be active in any given league, and it wont be the same 50k every league people will be coming and going. it wouldnt surprise me if they have 200k people on there who dont even have poe installed any more.










with regards to what trade brings to the game, i dont think we would be here having this conversation today if this game was not built around a trade economy the way it is. if it is 10% of people who heavily trade that is probably the most dedicated core 10% of players who stick with the game, provide the majority of its funding, have kept this game alive and that comes from the community aspect of it.

even you are here now talking to me, being social, you are still engaging with this game at its points of social interaction. we are social animals, without this shared world in game this would just have been another grim dawn type thing. mutiplayer fps games stick around for years and years and years being mass played, single player ones release and for the most people play them and uninstall within a month. why do most people want to have a partner who they live with? shared experiences generally feel more meaningful, theres a reason isolation is often used as a punishment.


this is the only action rpg this tradecentric and its the only one that has survived this well for this long.


i dont think i even want to trade in poe2, i wont play ssf because i want to party with my close friends and share items but my days of investing into the trade scenes are fast coming to an end. i dont say all this because i dont appreciate self found, im more drawn to non trade than trade these days myself. i just think the trade scene being a success will be essential to poe2s longevity. its the engine at the core of the games player interaction and these human interactions are what most people stick around for even after the grind play has gone stale.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

this is the only action rpg this tradecentric and its the only one that has survived this well for this long.

Well that is...certainly an opinion, a myopic one, but one none the less.

I did find it interesting how you seamlessly advocated that the game as being "trade centric", while also fully selling the idea that it's likely a slim minority that do so. What did you settle on? 90% don't trade with 5% or so not even in trade league. (SSF)

Again, if true, which I have doubts, then trade isn't a hill GGG should even remotely come close to dying on. Certainly not when it comes to loot balance if 90% of players end up on the wrong end of the stick.

That said, I'm with you on PoE2. The way PoE does trade, I think they would be better off with a very limited version of that. But lets be real. That's a pipe dream. Trade will be in PoE2 and part of their balance. (even if 9 out of 10 don't engage with it)

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DarthSki44 wrote:

I did find it interesting how you seamlessly advocated that the game as being "trade centric", while also fully selling the idea that it's likely a slim minority that do so. What did you settle on? 90% don't trade with 5% or so not even in trade league. (SSF)

Again, if true, which I have doubts, then trade isn't a hill GGG should even remotely come close to dying on. Certainly not when it comes to loot balance if 90% of players end up on the wrong end of the stick.

That said, I'm with you on PoE2. The way PoE does trade, I think they would be better off with a very limited version of that. But lets be real. That's a pipe dream. Trade will be in PoE2 and part of their balance. (even if 9 out of 10 don't engage with it)

nah like 10% are probably hardcore traders is what chris seemed to be suggesting. he said the majority dont trade, and the majority of traders only do a few trades. so 10% are the hardcore 100s of trades per league type peope, who knows where the other numbers fall. maybe 20% trade a couple of times and then 70% never trade? 30% and 60%? its obviously somewhere around there.


the sense of value in items largely comes from trade. it doesnt matter if you trade or not, if you have a mirror it has a sense of value for almost everyone and that comes from other people desiring it even if they have no real use for it themselves.


that core of people who are heavy traders, they may only be 10% of the player base but they may make up 50% of the hours /played in game.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

this is the only action rpg this tradecentric and its the only one that has survived this well for this long.

Well that is...certainly an opinion, a myopic one, but one none the less.

its the truth.





the idea of trade balance i dont think rly holds up. i dont think much is balanced around trade at all. a game like this expands to accommodate different levels of players, not everything in the game is for everyone. the top content and the top items are only there for the top players. the top players in ssfhc are beating the top content in added difficulty race settings, so the games loot works in ssf, it works in ssfhc under harsh conditions in extremely limited time frames.

if people cant manage it then its just not for them, its for the people who are better at the game. they didnt add the uber bosses for everyone to beat, they didnt add magebloods and T1 rolls for everyone to wear.

90% of players are not on the wrong end of the stick, 90% of players are playing the game with a level of difficulty that ggg probably intend and the 1% who are in mirror tier gear are playing an absurd joke of a game where they ez mode everything and all balance is completely fked. the game is not balanced for them, the game is balanced for the 90%.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

90% of players are not on the wrong end of the stick, 90% of players are playing the game with a level of difficulty that ggg probably intend and the 1% who are in mirror tier gear are playing an absurd joke of a game where they ez mode everything and all balance is completely fked. the game is not balanced for them, the game is balanced for the 90%.

You don't think this is something GGG should fix? Like 5 years ago? The 1% you mentioned aren't just playing their own game, they influence balance patches and market more than other 90%.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

the idea of trade balance i dont think rly holds up. i dont think much is balanced around trade at all. a game like this expands to accommodate different levels of players, not everything in the game is for everyone. the top content and the top items are only there for the top players. the top players in ssfhc are beating the top content in added difficulty race settings, so the games loot works in ssf, it works in ssfhc under harsh conditions in extremely limited time frames.

if people cant manage it then its just not for them, its for the people who are better at the game. they didnt add the uber bosses for everyone to beat, they didnt add magebloods and T1 rolls for everyone to wear.

Droprates in endgame are balanced around trade OR crafting because GGG is trying (in vain) to respond to excesses of 1% players. Referring to the "top players" doesn't prove loot works in ssfhc, those are players who already know how to break the game and what builds work with minimum reliance on hard to obtain gear.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

i just think the trade scene being a success will be essential to poe2s longevity.

Of course, this is a self-sustaining problem.

The flipside is that games that don't focus on multiplayer/trade don't need this longevity of hyper-popularity in the first place because they don't get any worse as player numbers decrease.

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Echothesis wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

90% of players are not on the wrong end of the stick, 90% of players are playing the game with a level of difficulty that ggg probably intend and the 1% who are in mirror tier gear are playing an absurd joke of a game where they ez mode everything and all balance is completely fked. the game is not balanced for them, the game is balanced for the 90%.

You don't think this is something GGG should fix? Like 5 years ago? The 1% you mentioned aren't just playing their own game, they influence balance patches and market more than other 90%.

no, its not broken theres nothing to fix. they influence balance patches that change the 0.000001% of the games content that they are abusing and it gets fixed so that its in line with everything else, which is fine for everyone.

people want the game to become an absurd joke, that has to be possible, there has to be items that make that possible and what is motivating people to play, what makes the game exciting is that people want to obtain those items and that power. and they get a bit of it, theyre supposed to get a bit of it and they do get a bit of it, but the intended balance is that theres always the next bit of it, the step up from where they are.

intended balance is that a player feels like theyve become powerful enough to absolutely crush the thing they were struggling with yesterday and want to become powerful enough to crush the thing theyre struggling with today. a player experiencing that is in the correct balance state. that top 1% of people fall out of the balance state because they get to a point where they crush everything, then theres no content left for them to chase so the whole intended balance state and motivation setup of the game falls apart for them.

the game expands to meet the player, maps are hard, until theyre not then harder maps are hard, then red maps are hard, guardians, pinnacle bosses, the game attempts to offer a range of content and a range of items and the intention is there is always something beyond you that you are striving for.



when i say theres content added that is not for most players, thats not actually true in the sense that what i really mean is theres content added that is not for everyone to find or beat. but that it exists is there for everyone because it is aspirational content, you want the mageblood and you want to kill uber maven and have her drop the imbalanced guard impossible escape. but for most people that is the intended design, that they want it, not that they actually get it because theres nowhere to go after that. thats where people are left to make it up for themselves, become belton make 75 mirrors in 1 week and craft a 6xt1 mirror service item.

the fact he can do that does not mean the game is balanced around him. they meta shift for the top 1% to keep them interested, so that this league theyre trying to do something new compared to last league because they already beat all the content in the game. everyone else who hasnt beat all the content in the game still has that goal of beating the next thing, of getting those dream items. you meta shift for the top players because that gives them a new set of dream items and build ideas to aim for. youre keeping them happy because the game is not designed for them, if the game was designed for them they wouldnt have beaten all of it already. the game is too easy for them because its designed for that guy whos playing in self found gear with a very sub optimal self made build struggling to beat this new t15 map boss hes never played before. meta shifts effect a tiny, tiny portion of the games balance and content.


the top 1% influence the market, yeah sure, they make really good gear super cheap for everyone because they flood the market with it.

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Echothesis wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

the idea of trade balance i dont think rly holds up. i dont think much is balanced around trade at all. a game like this expands to accommodate different levels of players, not everything in the game is for everyone. the top content and the top items are only there for the top players. the top players in ssfhc are beating the top content in added difficulty race settings, so the games loot works in ssf, it works in ssfhc under harsh conditions in extremely limited time frames.

if people cant manage it then its just not for them, its for the people who are better at the game. they didnt add the uber bosses for everyone to beat, they didnt add magebloods and T1 rolls for everyone to wear.

Droprates in endgame are balanced around trade OR crafting because GGG is trying (in vain) to respond to excesses of 1% players. Referring to the "top players" doesn't prove loot works in ssfhc, those are players who already know how to break the game and what builds work with minimum reliance on hard to obtain gear.

yes it does prove loot works, because the content they are beating is content added that only people like them are supposed to be able to beat.

you can beat the campaign, the entire map system from tier 1 up to 16, all the unique maps, do depth 300 delves, t16 alvas, beat the mastermind, beat the normal version of all pinnacle bosses etc with self found gear, and if you are good as the game you can ebat all that in self found gear easily. thats 99% of the game.

the other 1% of the game was added for the 1% of players who are elite enough to get there and beat it to have something to push them and as content that is beyond the everyone else to give them a goal to keep pushing for, a reason to want the better gear that was added for them not to find. you dont intend everyone playing the lottery to win the jackpot, but you do intend the jackpot to be a motivator for everyone who plays.

when uber bosses were added chris said these bosses are supposed to be insane, if you play them you will die, dont complain theyre not supposed to be someone everyone can beat this is optional content for insane people. its jackpot content and mirror tier gear and t0 uniques are jackpot items.

people complain that trade is awful, that theres way too much friction and we need auction house etc. the devs have made trade that way because they dont want to balance the game around trade, so they have made trade as inefficient as they think they can get away with on purpose.




ggg are not trying in vain to stop the top 1% doing what they are doing. they are trying to keep things fresh for them by making the thing they are doing this league different to the thing they were doing last league. its wrong to think they are trying and failing to stop them being overpowered. the lottery is not trying to stop the person winning the jackpot being rich, you accept when you add a jackpot that someone is going to win it and the intention is that person becoming rich, if they didnt then the jackpot wouldnt be doing its job as a motivator for everyone to play.



what you say about those players knowing how to beat the entire game without hard to obtain gear. yes, exactly, you do not need to obtain hard to obtain gear to beat all the content, you just have to be good at the game. so the game isnt designed around hard to obtain trade gear at all, its just designed around being good at the game.

drop rates are not the reason people cant do X content, theyre just not good enough at the game. people just need to accept that, accept they are in the right balance state where they want this better gear. yes, we get it, we all want that better gear than we have thats what the game is conditioning us to want, people need to stop sulking and pretending the game is not balanced correctly for them because they cant get it. it is intended that you want something you dont currently have, if people cant make peace with that then maybe an arpg is not the healthiest thing for them to play because the core of the game revolves around wanting something you dont have, an endless state of hunger is the intended design state, if youre not happy when you are hungry then youre never gonna be happy in a good arpg. what happens to an arpg player when they run out of things to be hungry for is they stop playing, if thats the point people want to get to then they can skip right to it and just uninstall the game. im not saying that to be mean or petulant or confrontational, im not trying to attack anyone or put myself on bad terms with anyone, i love all you guys and i want us all to be happy together talking and playing the game, i hope no one uninstalls.

but it never ends until the game ends, i can ez mode uber maven thats like the hardest boss in the entire game, i can beat every uber pin boss with ease, i own the most powerful mirror tier bow and wand ever made in the game, i own legacy uniques worth 4 mirrors. in the league right now I own 5 magebloods, 4 of which are rare foil variants, i have 15 kalandras touch rings 5 of which are foils, why? cause im gonna sell them on standard, and use the divines to buy and craft even more gear because im still hungry, i still want the next thing, i want more, always more. it never ends, when you get what you want you stop wanting it, you want the next thing, and the next, and the next. we filter out loot right now that was the dream goal finds 8 years ago. everyone said the game would be amazing if they just let us craft with exalts, stop the drop rates being so low let us all craft, now anyone can exalt items, everyone can play the game for a week and craft an item that would have been mirror tier in 2014 and no one cares. they stopped caring the minute ggg changed the game balance and allowed them to do it, they wanted it, they got it and instantly stopped wanting it, now they want the next thing they dont have.


people need to understand it never ends and realise that hunger is not their enemy, its there to be enjoyed. that feeling of oh, ill be happy if they can just change the drop rates so i can get that thing i want... no, you wont, because you have the thing everyone wanted yesterday and youre still not happy. the day you stop wanting the next thing youll have no reason to boot up the game and youll go play something else.

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GusTheCrocodile wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

i just think the trade scene being a success will be essential to poe2s longevity.

Of course, this is a self-sustaining problem.

The flipside is that games that don't focus on multiplayer/trade don't need this longevity of hyper-popularity in the first place because they don't get any worse as player numbers decrease.

but people tend to play those games for 20, 50, 200 hours and then stop playing. poe provides a game that stands up for that long, easily. it just also has more. poe is not a worse game than those games. its just a game that aims to be more than something you just install, play through, finish and uninstall, it intends to be the live service dream, and while everyone and their dog is chasing that dream in the gaming industry and failing, and failing to make good games as a result, poe is that game, poe is the success of it, the actual game that is supposed to work that way, does work that way and is made more amazing because of it. this is the game those other studios wish they could make, a game like anthem wished it could last 10 years and grow its population every year.



poe doesnt need longevity to do what games with no longevity do, it just wants longevity and we want it to have longevity because we want to play it for the next 10 years.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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GusTheCrocodile wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

i just think the trade scene being a success will be essential to poe2s longevity.

Of course, this is a self-sustaining problem.

The flipside is that games that don't focus on multiplayer/trade don't need this longevity of hyper-popularity in the first place because they don't get any worse as player numbers decrease.

but people tend to play those games for 20, 50, 200 hours and then stop playing.

Really? How many hours of football do football players tend to play? How old is chess? I said "games", not "ARPGs" quite intentionally. (Yes yes, football is multiplayer, but a reduction in football players is coming off a much larger number/degree of ubiquity than a reduction in POE players)