Thoughts on Legit Item Trading

Grim Dawn General Discussion
1

There are a variety of ways to play GD when it comes to item farming. There’s fully self-found, there’s self-found + trading, there’s modded drop rates, there’s GD Stash, and more ways than that I’m sure (maybe someone out there uses custom crafting? :stuck_out_tongue: )
Personally I like the second option. I want to play the game as-designed, and part of the design of the game includes a multiplayer trade option. Plus I get to meet some nice people through trading.
I’ve heard some concerns about trading being a risk, because what’s legit for one player isn’t legit for another. The best example would be modded drop rates - some people using these would consider their items to be legit, while many would consider these items as not legit.
But I’m here to make a differing viewpoint to the “legit vs non-legit” argument. What’s the difference between one modded droprate person and two non-modded droprate people? If the community were larger, there would be a higher chance of finding someone with the item you’re looking for. As it is, it’s a pretty small community of traders, so if a few of them use modded droprate, it’s like the community is a little bigger, no different. The end result is the same: you found a person who got their items in a legit (to them) way, and traded an item or mats for it. Unless you feel like you have made a large personal contribution to the size of the community, I say it doesn’t make a difference how the person trading you an item farmed their item, as long as they believe it was farmed legitimately.

Post Script:

Of course, use common sense when trading with people. If the stat rolls are all perfect, chances are they GD Stashed it. Even if they didn’t, why would they give up a perfect item? Same goes for insane greens. I seriously doubt that anyone has ever crafted two pairs of “thunderstruck stoneplate greaves of kings”. If someone has had the insane luck to craft one of those, they sure aren’t going to trade it for anything.
Also, just look at people’s behaviour. If they have a list of items that they own, they’re probably legit. If they have any item that you need with 200 hours in the game, they’re probably not legit.

2

You can spin that further to ‘if the community were even larger than that, I could easily get any item in a trade’ and justify creating an item in GDStash that way.

I don’t really care whether you do or not, just wanted to point out that your justification stands on slippery ground…

3

“I don´t like cheating, but …”
Oh give me a break.
@ Dlesar: Your post is pointless. other than your half assed justification.

:rolleyes:

4

Well, maybe i can only talk for myself, but in my Viewpoint, the Reason why Trading is attractive is due i exchange one thing with the value of another piece. Of course an Item-Value not only come from how good / rare the piece itself is, but als what i want / need… so sometimes (in other Games) you trade things which worth more than you get, BUT you get an item which you want / need instead which might not worth the exact same.

However in general a huge of Worth / Value of an Item comes from it’s ingame Rarity plus the work a player spents on it(or atleast get it under the same circumstances / rule as any other player out there). And that’s why it does makes an difference, if i trade with someone who don’t put the same work / passion into the Game to get these Items and devalue items rarity by modded dropchances.
So no:

^ This Argument isn’t good. Even if we have a larger Community, the rarity, and value of the Items be the same, due they did put as much work / effort / passion into getting this as other “legit” “vanilla” players… you simply have more chances to trade… and you shouldn’t forget that these people look for an certain piece themself which than again limits the accessibilty itself. So no, even with an huge playerbase it will be never the same as if you use Grim Stash where you can get every piece of item with absolutely no effort…(i mean again - the things you trade you put also effort into it for yourself soooo)

5

This statement made me lol.

I don’t trade because I don’t want to risk receiving an item that isn’t legitimate, period. If I wanted to give myself specific items I wouldn’t trade either because there are plenty of programs that already offer this. I feel your entire post is a complete waste of time.

6

Legit means: playing the game out of the box, items that are found in the game as it is, no duping and backing up stuff.

7

Legit and non-legit have very specific straightforward meanings. Modded drop rates are clearly not legit and so trading with modded drop rates persons is also not strictly legit. Personally I hold a similar view to you, it’s not that bad as long as you pay a fair price for the item. The community is small and you may otherwise have to wait a long time to be able to purchase coveted items like mythical peerless eye of beronath. The only difference between the strictly legit person and me is that the former has to wait longer before being able to purchase an item via trading. Problems only arise if the price asked for is not fair (because the seller uses modded drop rates and may not care all that much).

8

You’re argument is nonsensical. In a larger community demand for items is also larger. Using a modded droprate increases supply in a non legit way.

9

IMO, trading in this kind of games is cheating, I don’t like and don’t use it.
Kills the fun

10

There’s a whole thread on the cheating thing: [thread=29771]HEXED: Why it bothers you[/thread]. It’s closed now, but there’s lots to read for those that want to re-hash the past. :rolleyes:

11

well the devolopers have implemented a trading function so it is part of the game

12

Fun for others is easy and pointless for some.

Heck I know people who only single player Monster Hunter G-rank because “other players make it too easy”

Odd, imo but hey have a good time who cares.

13

The reality is that anyone who trades – especially if it’s on a regular basis isn’t really “legit” even by their own standards. Since there’s absolutely no kind of attribute attached to the item itself to tell you if it came from a modded game or was created in GDStash, you’re just going off someone’s word. (I don’t see why anyone who uses GDStash would bother to trade at all – but whatever) People who play with mods that enhance drop rates know that “legit” players - who make up most of the people seeking trade and have the preferential treatment of a sticky thread - will refuse to trade with them if they admit to modding. So what to do then? Well, just neglect to mention that you use mods. Easy. Even when asked directly about it, simply lie and say you don’t use mods. The other “legit” party to the trade will be none the wiser. He’ll take your item, and then go post on the forums about how “legit” he is.

Setting aside that point, there is the matter of the whole idea whether trading is “legit” in the first place.

When you seek an item by browsing trade threads in forums, you are going outside the game to obtain the item. You’re not “putting in the work" to get that item naturally in the game, and there is no guarantee that any given player you trade with has either - even if they don’t use mods. To see what I mean by that, imagine finding two potential trading partners as follows:

  • Player A is “legit”, but just has good RNG luck. He got the item you want to drop at level 92 with his first character. Now he has just reached 94, and rather than spend any more time farming for the item you have, he decided to seek trade instead.

  • Player B uses a mod that buffs drop rates. But still RNG is RNG. He’s been farming for 80 hours since hitting level 100 to get the item you have, hoping he wouldn’t have to resort to trade (which might be why he installed a drop enhancer in the first place). But item still hasn’t dropped, so he finally gives up and seeks trade. He happens to have the item you’re looking for, that dropped for him around level 98.

Question: Who put in the most work here? Clearly it’s Player B. But a “legit” player are will prefer Player A’s item, even though he absolutely did not work as hard trying to get the item as Player B did.

So it’s not necessarily about “putting in the work”, is it?

What you’re really doing when you trade is simulating extra playtime. When you browse the trading thread, you’re essentially combing through thousands and thousands of hours of extra hours that you did not personally put into playing the game. Well, in practical terms this is precisely the same thing a drop enhancer does.

Now for some items, I would argue that trading is definitely not “legit”. This comes into play when we’re dealing with an item that only drops from a specific difficult enemy, or if the item is a reward from completing a difficult challenge/quest. Suppose I want an item that only drops from a particular superboss. However, I don’t have a build that can efficiently farm the superboss – or maybe I can’t kill it at all. So rather than grinding for items to make my build better so I can farm the superboss more efficiently, I decide to take a shortcut and just go trade for the item instead. An example of this would be me trading for all 4 pieces of the Lokarr set without ever having to kill Lokarr myself. To me that’s a lot less “legit” than trading or modding drop rates for pure RNG items, because I would be avoiding a specific challenge in the game to obtain the item.

In general, whether you farm for 100 hours in a vanilla game before getting your item through trade, or you farm 200 hours in a modded game to attain the item from a random hero monster without trading – the bottom line is that you are artificially enhancing your ability to find items. Getting your item via trade doesn’t make you more “legit” than the modded player. In fact, in some cases just the opposite could be argued if we’re using the “put the work in” logic. The RNG element creates absolute equality between the two methods – at least when it comes to the vast majority of items in this particular game (i.e. random drops that aren’t linked to specific challenges). The only players who can truly proclaim their “legit” status are the ones who are self-found only with no mods.

14

The reality is that 1) Trading function is implemented in the game by the devs 2) There exists an official Grim Dawn forum

The basis of legit trading is trust and honesty. Sure, one should be aware of the risks of getting screwed - but at the end of the day it is up to your own consciousness if you decide to trade or not.

Trading is a very good feature in a single player game community if you ask me. It can bring people that never would have interacted otherwise to do so.

15

Modding tools were created by Crate, and there are official modding forums. Boom, mods are “legit”. See how that logic works?

My post wasn’t to condemn trading, or say it’s a bad thing. The point of my post was directed toward the virtue signaling “legit” players who pretend they’re in a different category than other players that make any use of mods.

In general, whether you farm for 100 hours in a vanilla game before getting your item through trade, or you farm 200 hours in a modded game to attain the item from a random hero monster without trading – the bottom line is that you are artificially enhancing your ability to find items.

^ Truth.

16

That is also true, that modding is an integral part of Grim Dawn, hence it is very difficult to say what is legit or not.

And why should one care at the end of the day how other people play?

What could be done is to establish some kind of status that we have on this forum attached to our nick-name like

“Pure” (don’t trade, don’t uses mod)
“Pure trader” (trader with players that do not uses mods)
“Enhanced player” (player that plays with mods that increases drop rates and/or trades)
“Creator” (player that creates items and chars in mods)

17

“The end result is the same: you found a person who got their items in a legit (to them) way, and traded an item or mats for it.”
This is not the same end result as GD Stashing because there’s no other person involved and you didn’t trade for it based on someone else’s price.

Actually, my post does have a point:
“But I’m here to make a differing viewpoint to the “legit vs non-legit” argument.”
Not to prove that my viewpoint is correct or not, but to offer the viewpoint.

That’s a fine way to play the game. If you played any online game then I’m sure you never traded either because the items could have been botted, thus not legit.
Again, my post isn’t a waste of time because I offered a viewpoint and you reacted to it.

18

Thank you for actually refuting my argument with logic instead of just calling my post pointless. I appreciate that, and you have a good point.

19

I overlooked this response. That actually makes sense.

But in the case of GD, would it really make much difference? Let’s have a look at the main soft-core trading threads.

SC Item Trading Thread (#3)

This is the “non-legit” trading thread.

  • Started 3/13/16
  • Presumably includes base game players and AoM players
  • 446 replies

AOM SC Legit trade thread #1

  • Started 10/11/17, more than a year and a half later
  • Only AoM players
  • 1,854 replies

Doing some math here:

Non-Legit: 0.46 replies per day
AoM Legit: 4.70 replies per day

The AoM Legit thread, despite being about over 1.5 years younger than the Non-Legit thread and being restricted to AoM only, has more than 10x the activity vs. Non-Legit.

If we’re to take all of this at face value, then the “non-legit” trading community is so small that bringing them into the fold would have a very negligible impact on the supply of items available for trade.

20

yes, you did not need to pay a price, but you can always just drop a legendary item you have or 10 Ugdenblooms or whatever the generally accepted price is on the floor and exit the game, thereby destroying them.

Now this is basically a complete simulation of a trade without needing a second person, and you still simply created the item. I did mean this scenario initially, but left out the ‘destroy your end of the trade’ part.