Trade in Legends of Firestorm
With our kickstarter campaign now ticking away slowly in the background I wanted to write in a bit more detail about what I expect to be quite a controversial design decision we've taken for Legends of Firestorm. That is... to abandon trade and all forms of item transfer between players!
Why abandon trade?
Our main reason for this is that we want to be able to balance the game around an individuals journey through the game world. That is to say we want to be able to think in terms of "So this player has defeated boss X and quest Y so they should have (or be able to attain) item Z".
What about limited trade
In other games this is approached via different binding types on loot (so bind on pickup items vs. bind on equip etc) We wanted to take this a step further and effectively make everything bind on pickup, so that we can extend the player-centric balancing mentality to any crafting or other overworld item hunting.
No Trade?
We feel that over all this will allow us to really focus the game on what it's about. Going out and exploring the world and fighting monsters! As well as having side benefits of avoiding the often steep learning curve associated with player to player trading.
Anyway I thought I'd post this up here and see if people had any thoughts on it!
I personally think it is a pretty bad idea. For example "we can extend the player-centric balancing mentality to any crafting or other overworld item hunting." This means the ability to sell crafting materials is not an option? I think item trade is a great thing, possibly make equipment non-tradeable?
Hey, thanks for your comment
My dislike with trading crafting materials is it makes it difficult to balance without ending up with long term grinds due to a mixture of bots and high level players farming low level items. I look back at games like final fantasy VIII where i thoroughly enjoyed hunting and collecting items, then compare that to a game like WoW where it rapidly becomes a huge chore. My hope is by eliminating trading we can make the hunt for items to make that new potion a far more enjoyable affair and less of a grind! That said I'm very open to discussing the ideas and issues around it. :)
you should probably include a link to the kickstarter in every update.
Oops good point, I've added a link. Thanks for the heads up
So you want to make an MMO without the only redeemable feature of MMOs?
That's certainly pretty weird.
If you want to make a player journey-centric game, make a singleplayer RPG. Possibly with 2-4 player grouping.
That way, you could even make a much better game over all.
Hmm well i certainly wouldn't agree trade is the only redeemable feature of MMOs. The games I've had the best long term experiences in have been MMOs due to the community and spirit of approaching challenges with a team. I also love how MMOs can provide a kind of escapism where you can interact with other people as a character you build and grow within the world rather than as real yourself.
Just to be clear this game is quite far into development, so we certainly wouldn't consider making it single player. We could certainly add trade or an auction house if we felt it was the right decision but right now i'm feeling fairly confident that no trade will lead to the more enjoyable game over all!