Let me dispel some of your illusions about auction houses.

Well, I figure that the #2 legit problem with trade at the moment is that you pretty much need to choose Online Only in PoE.trade, because you can't count on someone who is offline to respond, ever; you could be waiting for days, or more likely waiting for Godot (seller isn't coming back until next league).

That's why I made this suggestion thread. You can't really force players to come back once they've quit, but maybe they can shoot you a quick message explaining they're not playing anymore, or when they'll next be online.


The #1 problem, of course, is cheating Online Only searches by appearing online despite being offline, but GGG says they're working on this. (An AFK mode indicator would also be nice.)

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

Well, I figure that the #2 legit problem with trade at the moment is that you pretty much need to choose Online Only in PoE.trade, because you can't count on someone who is offline to respond, ever; you could be waiting for days, or more likely waiting for Godot (seller isn't coming back until next league).

That's why I made this suggestion thread. You can't really force players to come back once they've quit, but maybe they can shoot you a quick message explaining they're not playing anymore, or when they'll next be online.


The #1 problem, of course, is cheating Online Only searches by appearing online despite being offline, but GGG says they're working on this. (An AFK mode indicator would also be nice.)

I read your post and i found it flawed.

Why do all of that when they could simply implement an in-game "mail service" where you could leave a message for somebody.

I don't understand the desire to make it yet another 3rd party system, when it could be implemented in the core game for all players to use?

Just link the pm system from the forums to the in-game mail system and let it cross-over.

Peace,

-Boem-

It actually needs to be third-party, because buyers need confidence that their messages will reach a seller who might not log into PoE again for weeks. If the seller was guaranteed in-game, then or anytime soon, there wouldn't be a problem.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

It actually needs to be third-party, because buyers need confidence that their messages will reach a seller who might not log into PoE again for weeks. If the seller was guaranteed in-game, then or anytime soon, there wouldn't be a problem.

Basically giving false hope to buyers?

I think your being EXTREMELY optimistic if you think a person who has quit PoE or given up on a league is going to look at his cell-phone, read a message for a trade and go

"Well, i guess i have to go log on and talk to that person or let him know my status"

Instead of

"Delete inbox message", carry on.

I bet a ton of people have "pm's" on the forums about trades, but simply don't give a fuck about the forums and are unaware of them as a result.

Integrating it in-game and seeing what happens would be the logical first step in my opinion. If you make it easy and accessible, it will be utilized.
If you obscure and hide it, like currently or force restrictions on people(need to log in on the forums) it's not going to function like intended.

Anyway, i don't see any good coming from a messenger system that contacts people out-side the game, since obviously those people have better things to do.

Peace,

-Boem-

edit : typo

edit2: your plan looks to me as moving directly to plan B when plan A was never really realized or sufficiently invested into.

"

Boem wrote:

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

It actually needs to be third-party, because buyers need confidence that their messages will reach a seller who might not log into PoE again for weeks. If the seller was guaranteed in-game, then or anytime soon, there wouldn't be a problem.

Basically giving false hope to buyers?

I think your being EXTREMELY optimistic if you think a person who has quit PoE or given up on a league is going to look at his cell-phone, read a message for a trade and go

"Well, i guess i have to go log on and talk to that person or let him know my status"

Instead of

"Delete inbox message", carry on.

Oh no, that would be silly.

Instead, I have some confidence that someone who hasn't quit a league yet, but who just happens to be offline, might try to respond in a timely manner. Maybe just with when they'll be back.

I'm assuming buyers are pretty impatient, but might have 10 minutes of patience for the right price.

Actually, some kind of autoreply when you're logged out would be kinda cool.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

Actually, some kind of autoreply when you're logged out would be kinda cool.

Which seems appropriate in-game in a mailing/pm system.

"hiy i would like to buy X from you when your back online"

auto-reply mail

"i usually play around x/x Y time"

Then the buyer can move forward, either wait for the appropriate hour to make the trade or move on if it is to long of a wait.

An in-game system has a lot more potential, since people can engage with it directly when they join the game instead of being oblivious.(like the current trade ordeal is)

Peace,

-Boem-

It seems like a lot of the objections to AH, or even "automatic" buy outs, as in an online shop, is that bots and RMTers will completely take over. This would be analogous to high frequency trading IRL, and yeah, it would completely blow away the real users/buyers/sellers.

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.

AH sounds like it could cause all kinds of craziness, but some kind of system where someone can drop items for a fixed price and let them be sold without personal interaction would make life a lot easier. What's wrong with a bit of convenience?



Some of the other arguments revolve around items only being worth X currency because the current system makes it hard to buy/sell. That's a pretty weak argument. If that's the only reason an item has value is the effort it takes to buy or sell it, then the item doesn't really have any inherent value.

I can see the bulk of items becoming almost worthless, uniques more or less maintaining their price (because they are fairly standard items), and top end items increasing in value. The low end stuff won't sell for much because it's abundant, and will eventually become vendor trash. Eventually, there will be a clear definition of what is worth selling, and these items will have their market price. Nothing wrong with any of that, there will be true market value and supply then.

"

Mal_function wrote:

It seems like a lot of the objections to AH, or even "automatic" buy outs, as in an online shop, is that bots and RMTers will completely take over. This would be analogous to high frequency trading IRL, and yeah, it would completely blow away the real users/buyers/sellers.

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.

AH sounds like it could cause all kinds of craziness, but some kind of system where someone can drop items for a fixed price and let them be sold without personal interaction would make life a lot easier. What's wrong with a bit of convenience?

So basically, knowing the increased risk of botters and RMT, you think GGG should just go ahead and enact easier trade anyway, and just tell botters "challenge accepted, come at me bro." And then fight them.

Well, a corporation with vastly superior resources and manpower tried exactly the same thing, and it wasn't even close, the botters won hands-down. I mean, I have faith in GGG and all, but I just don't think they could MacGyver their way to a victory while deliberately putting themselves at a disadvantage.

"

Mal_function wrote:

Some of the other arguments revolve around items only being worth X currency because the current system makes it hard to buy/sell. That's a pretty weak argument. If that's the only reason an item has value is the effort it takes to buy or sell it, then the item doesn't really have any inherent value.

I can see the bulk of items becoming almost worthless, uniques more or less maintaining their price (because they are fairly standard items), and top end items increasing in value. The low end stuff won't sell for much because it's abundant, and will eventually become vendor trash. Eventually, there will be a clear definition of what is worth selling, and these items will have their market price. Nothing wrong with any of that, there will be true market value and supply then.

The core problem there is RNG streakiness. There are currently several mechanics within the game which ensure farming has a certain soft cap on how little you can make per unit time farming. If you massively devalue the common stuff, and increase the value of the extremely rare drops, the resulting feel is that RNGesus is even more of an influence than ever, and if you're not quite lucky you can grind for a very long time and get absolutely nowhere. Over a very long period of time, the average wealth/hour gained farming would probably remain roughly the same, but it'd be even spikier than it is now.

Players would also be able to buy much better gear on the cheap than they can now, and it would be even longer before they could realistically hope to farm a piece which upgrades any of their gear slots.

Considering that RNG streakiness is already a rather major cause of player complaints, further aggravating the situation by making loot feel more streaky and upgrades less common would probably cause significant amounts of players to quit in frustration. Although I guess there would be an odd duck or two who would actually enjoy the lottery feel even more than they enjoy how loot drops presently.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

So basically, knowing the increased risk of botters and RMT, you think GGG should just go ahead and enact easier trade anyway, and just tell botters "challenge accepted, come at me bro." And then fight them.

Well, a corporation with vastly superior resources and manpower tried exactly the same thing, and it wasn't even close, the botters won hands-down. I mean, I have faith in GGG and all, but I just don't think they could MacGyver their way to a victory while deliberately putting themselves at a disadvantage.

I'm interested - what was that situation?

All I'm saying is that putting in a bit of throttling would take away most of the problems with bots. Sure, you will never stop them, but you can detect them and slow them down to give real players a chance to compete.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

The core problem there is RNG streakiness. There are currently several mechanics within the game which ensure farming has a certain soft cap on how little you can make per unit time farming. If you massively devalue the common stuff, and increase the value of the extremely rare drops, the resulting feel is that RNGesus is even more of an influence than ever, and if you're not quite lucky you can grind for a very long time and get absolutely nowhere. Over a very long period of time, the average wealth/hour gained farming would probably remain roughly the same, but it'd be even spikier than it is now.

Considering that RNG streakiness is already a rather major cause of player complaints, further aggravating the situation by making loot feel more streaky would probably cause significant amounts of players to quit in frustration. Although I guess there would be an odd duck or two who would actually enjoy the lottery feel even more than they enjoy how loot drops presently.

I'm not really sure how RNG comes into this. If anything, I think easier trade will deemphasize RNG due to greater availability. There's enough low end stuff being dropped that anyone can get what they need without buying. As you move up the range, items start having an inherent value that makes it worth buying and selling. That applies right now, but it's hard to discover where that point is. High and top end items will be the same as they are now, they will have a clear rarity and value.

Uniques are a bit of a special case, because they are much more standardised. I reckon they will maintain their value overall. Sure, there will be more of them on the market, but there will also be more people willing to buy as well.

"

Mal_function wrote:

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

So basically, knowing the increased risk of botters and RMT, you think GGG should just go ahead and enact easier trade anyway, and just tell botters "challenge accepted, come at me bro." And then fight them.

Well, a corporation with vastly superior resources and manpower tried exactly the same thing, and it wasn't even close, the botters won hands-down. I mean, I have faith in GGG and all, but I just don't think they could MacGyver their way to a victory while deliberately putting themselves at a disadvantage.

I'm interested - what was that situation?

All I'm saying is that putting in a bit of throttling would take away most of the problems with bots. Sure, you will never stop them, but you can detect them and slow them down to give real players a chance to compete.

Diablo 3 had massive botting. Massive. It's really hard to emphasize how rampant it was.

Of course, botters are a lot smarter than you give them credit for. All the measures you're talking about would only work until they figured out how you were selecting candidates for bans. As soon as they figure out the rules being used to identify them, they blend in. It's no problem at all for a single bot to only do a few transactions a day, because a bot farm has hundreds of separate bots on separate accounts.

"

Mal_function wrote:

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

The core problem there is RNG streakiness. There are currently several mechanics within the game which ensure farming has a certain soft cap on how little you can make per unit time farming. If you massively devalue the common stuff, and increase the value of the extremely rare drops, the resulting feel is that RNGesus is even more of an influence than ever, and if you're not quite lucky you can grind for a very long time and get absolutely nowhere. Over a very long period of time, the average wealth/hour gained farming would probably remain roughly the same, but it'd be even spikier than it is now.

Considering that RNG streakiness is already a rather major cause of player complaints, further aggravating the situation by making loot feel more streaky would probably cause significant amounts of players to quit in frustration. Although I guess there would be an odd duck or two who would actually enjoy the lottery feel even more than they enjoy how loot drops presently.

I'm not really sure how RNG comes into this. If anything, I think easier trade will deemphasize RNG due to greater availability. There's enough low end stuff being dropped that anyone can get what they need without buying. As you move up the range, items start having an inherent value that makes it worth buying and selling. That applies right now, but it's hard to discover where that point is. High and top end items will be the same as they are now, they will have a clear rarity and value.

If by "deemphasize" RNG you mean the average player spends more time trading than they used to, and less time farming, then yeah, you pretty much nailed it. But the point is that time spent farming will emphasize RNG even more than before. It's truly a balance thing: you can farm, or you can trade, and whichever is the more productive, given your levels of skill at both trading and farming, that's the one you're going to end up doing more, unless you're particularly strong of will and do what you want regardless of how the game rewards you. Make trading much easier and that players feel more nudged into doing it, even if they don't like it (unless you simultaneously make farming much easier).

This is why emphasizing cultivated skill in trade is important. It's really hard to do this (more on why below), but when you can pull it off, it creates a situation where cultivated skill is rewarded, and a lack of that skill isn't. This better helps put those who genuinely enjoy trading and are willing to cultivate that skill into positions where they trade to gain wealth, and those who do not enjoy it into positions where they farm to gain wealth, because without the cultivated skill they aren't good at trading. This is different from making trading harder merely by making it more tedious or frustrating; in those cases, even players without skill can trade well, assuming they're willing to put up with a certain amount of bullshit.

Basically, "PvE" difficulty in the trade system is bad design - such as simply waiting for someone to be online, or spamming trade chat. "PvP" difficulty in the trade system, however, is good design, because it creates difficulty where the more experienced trader has the advantage. (Yes, this means noobs who don't know what they're doing should get brutally fleeced by players who actually know what they're doing.)

However, creating opportunities for cultivated skill is very difficult, because the community works to cheat-sheet their way through almost every trading challenge. Indexers essentially provide immediate and accurate answers to the valuation of almost all items. While evaluating the correct price for an item in a vacuum is actually extremely challenging, simply using the same answer as the rest of the community isn't a display of skill in the slightest. To use my earlier example, if the only difference between the "noob who doesn't know what he's doing" and the "player who actually knows what he's doing" is that the latter knows what poe.trade is and the other doesn't, well, that's not skilled-vs-unskilled.

Trying to stop the community from doing this is virtually futile. I've described why earlier in this thread. Essentially, unless such tools are provided in-game, third-party indexers and similar tools are inevitable.

The point is, having two different paths to wealth is fine, so long as players along both paths are enjoying themselves. If you make one path much easier than the other, then you're probably going to have players not enjoying themselves. To correct against this, you need to make them both difficult somehow, ideally in a way in which those who do enjoy themselves walking that path can find methods for alleviating the difficulty and becoming better at playing the path they're on.