Why don’t we remove trading altogether?

EDIT: So I want to clarify some things. First, as another player mentioned, it makes the most sense to include the below changes in a separate league and keep all other leagues the same. It is possible to include these changes in current and upcoming leagues without removing trade. My only worry is that these changes would render the economy useless. Second, I don't play self-found, but I would like to avoid the necessity of a trading system. Not because I am not able to utilize it as I see fit to acquire the gear I need, but because I find it a tedious system in its current state. There haven't been many viable suggestions for improving trade so that it isn't tedious. This is why self-found leagues with deterministic loot are attractive. Finally, I want to apologize for what is apparently an inflammatory title.

Please hear me out and excuse anything that I don’t mention/go into detail about. I’m writing this quickly and my goal is to provoke a discussion. I know that this would be an enormous change to the game, but this might be the best solution to fix problems created by the current system.

First a question: Why do we even need trade to begin with? When you think about it, trading doesn’t add anything to the game other than combating the issues that are created by RNG. It’s just a poor system that only exists to provide players access to items with impossibly low drop rates. GGG has already started moving towards a model that facilitates self-found gameplay. Atziri is a perfect example of this. RNG plays a role in farming Atziri, but its constrained so that players can work towards a specific goal; that is to say that farming becomes meaningful. Master crafting also reduces the effect of RNG on gameplay, particularly during the leveling process. Divination cards are another example. I am only suggesting that GGG continue down this path to its logical conclusion.

Here are the changes that would need to be made if trade was removed:

1. Create loot tables for all bosses

For the self-found player obtaining specific build-enabling unique items is extraordinarily difficult, and in some cases, as with T1 uniques, nearly impossible. GGG has been moving towards a predictable loot model since the introduction of Atziri. Fighting dungeon Brutus would be far more exciting if he had a 2-3% chance to drop Abyssus, for example.

Boss fights will become worthwhile. Currently there isn’t much of an incentive to engage in challenging fights. Why would I risk an xp penalty or my entire character for what will most likely be vendor trash? Poe endgame is already comprised of farming, why not make it more meaningful and exciting? Why not make boss fights something to look forward to?

2. Increase the rate of currency drops

Crafting will play a much larger role in gear acquisition. Currency drops should be increased to offset the loss of access to useful rare items that players would normally obtain through trading. Item crafting in this game is extremely fun (in my opinion), it’s just so risky and expensive that much of the time crafting simply isn’t worth the investment.

3. Add more vendor recipes

In addition to increasing currency drop rates additional vendor recipes could be added to improve the chances of acquiring useful gear and currency.

Benefits:

1. Leads to meaningful boss fights
2. Crafting becomes more accessible/viable
3. RMT becomes impossible
4. Makes the game more friendly to new players who don’t know how to gain wealth in the current system
5. Increases the challenge of the game
6. Promotes a healthier community (where issues arise because of trading disputes)

I’m sure I’ve missed something in this post, but like I said, more than anything, I wanted to provoke a discussion about this possibility.

TL;DR The current trade system is the root cause of many issues in this game. Add changes that make self-found play viable/enjoyable for endgame.

You should also consider the implementation of divination cards helping towards farming for specific items. From my thread alone, we're already aware of cards that will award exalted orbs, chaos orbs, random minion gems (my own card) and there's word floating around for cards to reward headhunter belts and other such things.

How this helps farming is because these cards will only drop in specific areas (or from specific monsters, I don't remember).

In response to your suggestion to remove trading...
I'm the kind of person who loves options and the more options a player has, the better. Let's not remove trading, but instead let's add a standard and hardcore self-found league which will suit your ideas. This will give players the option to choose whether they want to play with the market or to play alone.

I like the idea of Loot Tables for bosses and/or maybe even specific rare mobs. This kind of reminds me of the old Phantasy Star Online days where every player had a "Section ID" that corresponded to different drops for every enemy in the game, especially bosses. It promoted the creation of more characters and cross play between different players with different IDs. Not sure this community would ever want to give up trading though. But I certainly think that solo play isn't really the easiest method of playing simply because of the time constraints of not trading with others for the gear you need/want.

I think the divination card system is a huge step in the direction to helping out solo players. Hopefully this will become something integral to solo play in the future to make it completely feasible to play by oneself :D

Such a waste of time writing this as GGG made this game with trading in mind. Sadly they also made this game with the worst drop rates in mind as well which makes POE good on the surface and a few month in but if youre in it for a few years you are bored to death and dont want any of it anymore.

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ImmaPokemon wrote:

Such a waste of time writing this as GGG made this game with trading in mind. Sadly they also made this game with the worst drop rates in mind as well which makes POE good on the surface and a few month in but if youre in it for a few years you are bored to death and dont want any of it anymore.

GGG has made stances on things in the past that they have since reconsidered. The only one I can think of right now is loot allocation. They were content to leave it on a timer and allow players to "ninja" loot items that were allocated to someone else, but after so many complaints about ninja looters, GGG eventually caved and gave players the option to choose allocation timer settings.

If the demand is high enough, GGG might reconsider their stance against self-found leagues. And like I said earlier, the implementation of divination cards looks like they're swaying already.

So remove trading because a certain population can't figure out trading (yet)? How exactly does trading affect people who can't figure out trading, or choose not to trade? I don't understand how the self-found crowd is affected. Does it bother them that other people are killing bosses quicker or getting better items with more ease?

Do you think everyone was a good trader when they first started the game? It's something you learn over time and can greatly benefit your gameplay. Sorry but this notion is ridiculous and quite frankly will never happen.

What exactly are the "problems created by the current system"?

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Pizzarugi wrote:

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ImmaPokemon wrote:

Such a waste of time writing this as GGG made this game with trading in mind. Sadly they also made this game with the worst drop rates in mind as well which makes POE good on the surface and a few month in but if youre in it for a few years you are bored to death and dont want any of it anymore.

GGG has made stances on things in the past that they have since reconsidered. The only one I can think of right now is loot allocation. They were content to leave it on a timer and allow players to "ninja" loot items that were allocated to someone else, but after so many complaints about ninja looters, GGG eventually caved and gave players the option to choose allocation timer settings.

If the demand is high enough, GGG might reconsider their stance against self-found leagues. And like I said earlier, the implementation of divination cards looks like they're swaying already.

Divination cards are pro trading, not anti trading. You wont get the item from the cards faster than you would be able to get it by finding it normally.

How about no?

No trading would ruin it all.

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comm_il_vec wrote:

So remove trading because a certain population can't figure out trading (yet)? How exactly does trading affect people who can't figure out trading, or choose not to trade? I don't understand how the self-found crowd is affected. Does it bother them that other people are killing bosses quicker or getting better items with more ease?

Do you think everyone was a good trader when they first started the game? It's something you learn over time and can greatly benefit your gameplay. Sorry but this notion is ridiculous and quite frankly will never happen.

What exactly are the "problems created by the current system"?

There are some people who will never grasp trading and maximize profits. Take myself for example. I've been playing since closed beta and I still have a terrible understanding of an item's value and I lack the patience to put things up in the shop board of the forum, hoping someone will discover it via poe.trade. I can buy items via trade just fine, but the only way I've made money was by picking currency up off the ground and trading up via vendors. This playstyle has a very high frequency of draining me of all my money.

And I highly doubt I'm the only one with this problem.

Let's not even get started on the clusterfuck called trade chat, having to spam messages repeatedly until someone finally sees something they want.

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comm_il_vec wrote:

Does it bother them that other people are killing bosses quicker or getting better items with more ease?

No, that's what devs are for. If certain builds are incredibly successful, they will balance it by either nerfing vital equipment or tweaking vital passives. Take ondar's guile for example, or reduced mana gems no longer affecting auras, or EB or MoM changes in the closed beta.

What bothers people like me is that, due to how RNG works in the current system and (sometimes) poor grasp of the market, we're practically gated from ever accessing high-end maps due to obsolete gear that can't handle them.

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Pizzarugi wrote:

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comm_il_vec wrote:

So remove trading because a certain population can't figure out trading (yet)? How exactly does trading affect people who can't figure out trading, or choose not to trade? I don't understand how the self-found crowd is affected. Does it bother them that other people are killing bosses quicker or getting better items with more ease?

Do you think everyone was a good trader when they first started the game? It's something you learn over time and can greatly benefit your gameplay. Sorry but this notion is ridiculous and quite frankly will never happen.

What exactly are the "problems created by the current system"?

There are some people who will never grasp trading and maximize profits. Take myself for example. I've been playing since closed beta and I still have a terrible understanding of an item's value and I lack the patience to put things up in the shop board of the forum, hoping someone will discover it via poe.trade. I can buy items via trade just fine, but the only way I've made money was by picking currency up off the ground and trading up via vendors. This playstyle has a very high frequency of draining me of all my money.

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comm_il_vec wrote:

Does it bother them that other people are killing bosses quicker or getting better items with more ease?

No, that's what devs are for. If certain builds are incredibly successful, they will balance it by either nerfing vital equipment or tweaking vital passives. Take ondar's guile for example, or reduced mana gems no longer affecting auras, or EB or MoM changes in the closed beta.

What bothers people like me is that, due to how RNG works in the current system and (sometimes) poor grasp of the market, we're practically gated from ever accessing high-end maps due to obsolete gear that can't handle them.

You don't even need to maximize profits. Simply turning items you find into some sort of profit could greatly benefit you. Abstaining from trade can gimp you slightly, sure, I can agree with that. Does it solely prevent you from doing end game content? No. There are people who went self-found and have succeeded greatly simply because they know what they're doing and which builds are more conducive for that playstyle.

But it really isn't all that difficult to trade items that you find. People will buy them if the price is right and on poe.trade with a buyout. 1-2 chaos buyouts are wildly popular and they add up quickly. I don't know if a guide exists to help people learn the workings of trade, but I'd be willing to put together an easy guide to assist. I think the more people that trade, the better off everyone is, which is why I think removing trade altogether is a bad idea.

Regarding the second point, I'm not talking about build mechanics. I'm talking about 2 people running the same build; one who trades, one who doesn't. As mentioned previously in this thread, measures are being taken to help reduce the impact of RNG on those with self-found playstyle. I'm totally fine with these measures. Removing trade is not the answer.

EDIT:: If anyone is aware of a trading guide that exists, could you point me towards that thread?