Let me dispel some of your illusions about auction houses.

"

Mal_function wrote:

One way around this would be to put in a limitation in the number of transactions a user can complete over a certain period of time. You can't eliminate bots/RMTers, but you can throttle them to a reasonable speed. You look at what a real person is capable of, and set that as a limit. So, to pick some numbers out of the air, you allow only one transaction per 15 seconds, 100 per hour, and 500 per day. I'm sure if GGG wanted to they could spot bots, their activity will be a lot more predictable than a human.

Free game. Unlimited accounts. Limiting is not realistic.

I think Poe AH has reached a legendary "HL3" level.

My perspective on trade in PoE is that it's a chunk of the game that has potential to be useful, but my brain just recoils from the current state of it. The in-game listing looks like spam city, and the requirement for both parties to get online at the same time to complete the transaction makes me scratch my head. I really don't want to go there, so up to now I have been playing SF.

poe.trade looks like a useful way of finding items, but you can't complete a transaction there.

In terms of why would I trade at all, well, sure there are a few uniques that I would like to acquire so I can start some new builds. I have multiple copies of some uniques, and would be happy for someone to take them off my hands for a chaos or two rather than vendoring them as I do now. I don't have anything valuable to sell and don't have the currency to buy gg items. I do not want to spend all day trading, for me the gameplay's the game and trade is just something to get that odd item. I would trade a bit if there was a neater way of doing it.

I get the comments about bots, but it just feels like the actual players are being held hostage by the fear of bots. You have two camps in the game, a group (like myself) who won't touch the current system, and another group who have gritted their teeth and got stuck in, or just embraced it. It would be good to have some system to bring these groups together a bit.

Anyhow, I am happy to wait and see what GGG come up with over the next year, and until then will stick with SF.

"

maxor wrote:

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

So you shouldn't be asking for 1-click buying. It's never going to happen.

Why?

People who want an easy way to buy and sell items dont care if the flippers method of manipulating the current system is destroyed by an AH. And why should they.

If the drops rates are based on every one having access to trading than every-one should have access to trading its not rocket science and there is no logical argument against that.

The only real point of discussion is whether or not trading is fairly implemented so that all players reasonably can access it.

In my tiny opinion fixed price player shops where the item and the price are locked for what ever time period (like it the real world shops) is the best solution.

did you just equate access to trade to one-click buying ? they arent the same thing

automated buyout is akin to making trade from one of important factors in the game to the only factor in the game.

Thanks grepman, I was trying to figure out how to address that.

Auction house being third party (as it is now) vs in-game is an access issue, but a rather minor one - just hang around in global chat, it'll be mentioned. Being online and available for trade constantly vs having a job and/or family is an access issue. Buyout vs haggling is not an access issue.

I still feel the #1 issue is that no one wants to deal with sellers who aren't online, for two reasons:
1. Sheer impatience, they want the item NOW
2. There is no assurance the seller will log back in, ever. Perhaps next league.

Buyouts do address point #1, but in this case the cure is worse than the disease.

However, there is a lot that can be done with point #2, such as integrating the whisper and forum PM systems, forum PMs getting pushed to email or text message, the ability to reply to those emails or texts to automatically whisper a reply in-game, the ability to see if sellers have email or text pushes enabled, or even something as simple as setting an away message while you're offline. Taking care of that will make it less of a gamble for buyers to wait for a seller, if it's the right item for the right price.

"

mark1030 wrote:

"

Zinja wrote:

There is nothing Bad that AH will do that the game is not doing to itself already.

Except an auction house would do it at warp speed.

I think the current course is doing this faster than what an AH could tbh.

"

"

mark1030 wrote:

"

Zinja wrote:

There is nothing Bad that AH will do that the game is not doing to itself already.

Except an auction house would do it at warp speed.

I think the current course is doing this faster than what an AH could tbh.

I don't see why you would think that to be the case.

Right now for an item to be traded it requires both participates to be present and available. An in game auction house would not only dramatically increase the accessibility of listing items for the public to buy, but it changes trade from a synchronous "face to face" activity to an asynchronous one.

Just so people understand the scope of what this changes realize that something like phone calls are a synchronous activity while texting, emailing, and basically the entire sphere of social media is asynchronous communication.

Do you believe people spend less time on their phones now that they don't have to make calls just to communicate with other people?

"

mark1030 wrote:

"

Zinja wrote:

There is nothing Bad that AH will do that the game is not doing to itself already.

Except an auction house would do it at warp speed.

Yeah ? So people will know the prices quicker and won't buy overpriced garbage .

Sorry but my time is important to me.

Making me spend hours extra in trade situations because of the player having to be online and me having to party to trade (the only difference between .trade and auction house).

Basically just adding(ok not adding but not removing) blank time sink because people might bot AH easier and rmt might be a bit more under demand?

Penalizing legit players to fight cheaters is a terrible concept.