About "we don't want trading too easy" in the last PODCAST

I can't fathom why anyone would want trading to be hard. Trading should be quick, painless, and easy. It should take as little time as possible so you can get back to playing the actual game.

 You can all put up good arguments as to why trading should remain hard and that directly buying an item in a one to one trade session is good but then answer this question. Looking at the Steam PoE Charts from March 4th forward, why are there about 3 times as many players playing daily on Ascendancy and Perandus League? You can't attribute that much higher daily player totals just to new realms coming on-line so more worldwide access to PoE is available. Certainly the Labyrinth can't be that great to draw in more players. There has to be a general favor of many players that they like to get some quality high end gear once in a while. Add to that the power creep that Ascendancy sub-classes provide and it all adds up to some wonderful new builds that many more have access to. For me it's currently the ability to cast 3 fire totems simultaneously and then lay down a mob melting wall of Magma (Magma Orb + GMP + Spell Echo + Fire Penetration) with only a 4L. That has never ever been possible until now and some of Perandus' wares will provide gear for many more new builds that just wouldn't be possible for most without him.

 I should think that GGG would want to keep PoE opened up to a larger arpg audience like they have now and reap the financial rewards of having a larger player base.

the easier trading is, the less stuff is worth

it's not just the perandus league making items cheaper this league, the ease of trading is also increasing supply without increasing demand

"

Maswasnos wrote:

Trading should be quick, painless, and easy. It should take as little time as possible so you can get back to playing the actual game.

Painless, agree 100%. Quick and easy? Not so much.

The thing is that players tend to gravitate towards whatever gameplay gives them the best return on in-game reward per unit time. Make a skill a lot more powerful than others, players spend lots of time using it (even though it kills faster). Make a zone more rewarding than other zones, players spend lots of time running it (even though they farm faster). Make trading too quick and easy, and players spend lots of time trading. You say you want to get back to playing the actual game? If trade is too stronk, you probably won't... not until you're done with all the quick, easy trade-based improvements - a list which only grows the easier trade becomes.

I'm not saying trade should be teeth-grinding hard, but recognize that it's a balance thing. Trading shouldn't be a lot easier than farming, or it will be overused (and farming shouldn't be a lot easier than trading, or it will be underused).

"

Kythers wrote:

the easier trading is, the less stuff is worth

Wrong. Easier trade leads to more exaggerated supply/demand ratios. Low-demand high-supply items become cheaper. High-demand low-supply items become more expensive.

However, it's also important to look at the trade improvement itself. Public tab API, for example, is a seller-side improvement (doing what Acquisition does, but still) and leads to more supply.

but the difference here is that the examples you listed are mutually exclusive. ie you can't use both skills at once, you can't farm multiple areas at once. but you can trade and play the game simultaneously if asynchronous fast trading is released. so now you're spending more time playing the actual game than doing bullshit like "my h/o" taking 15seconds out of your life every time (longer than 15s for those without an ssd), even if "trading is more strong"

"

Juicebox360 wrote:

you can't use both skills at once, you can't farm multiple areas at once. but you can trade and play the game simultaneously if asynchronous fast trading is released.

Not really. That's not playing the game while you trade, it's playing the game while you wait; you could just as easily be eating, sleeping or at work during the waiting process.

When I talk about time spent trading, I mean active time, consciously engaged in the trading process. Some amount of this is still unavoidable. And if trading is vastly superior to farming, it's always farming while you wait on trades, because as soon as you have actual things to do in trading BAM you're gone, no more farming, gotta focus on trading which is Priority #1.

Things are already quite a bit like this. Being more so isn't wise.

The ability to haggle to a lower price, the ability to realize when you've underpriced an item and get a lot of simultaneous interest, the ability to offer a different currency than the seller requests... all of these things add dynamics. They allow clever players to get more out of trading than the less clever (as well as the passive "the price is the price" crowd). Since skill checks are the best kind of difficulty and design opportunities for skill-based difficulty in trading are sparse, getting rid of what little we have is a bad move.

You can't haggle with an automated buyout. There's no way to make that work. At all.

You can haggle with an offline player but leaving PMs is a very slow communication method, and more importantly you're taking the gamble the player will log in again sometime this league, when a lot of players don't. We really need an offline equivalent of the /dnd autoreply so offline sellers can indicate when they'll be back online. I would also like to see an option to allow in-game whispers to be delivered to offline players immediately through email or text, and convert email/text replies into immediate in-game whispers to the original whisperer; this would give sellers some degree of communication ability while offline, and allow them to indicate that they're still active sellers.

Something like a web-based trade window, or an in-game poe.trade style indexer, would also be nice but it sounds really development intensive compared to the communication suggestions. So really, outside of better comms, I don't think further trade improvements are necessary or desired.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

When I talk about time spent trading, I mean active time, consciously engaged in the trading process. Some amount of this is still unavoidable. And if trading is vastly superior to farming, it's always farming while you wait on trades, because as soon as you have actual things to do in trading BAM you're gone, no more farming, gotta focus on trading which is Priority #1.

Things are already quite a bit like this. Being more so isn't wise.

The ability to haggle to a lower price, the ability to realize when you've underpriced an item and get a lot of simultaneous interest, the ability to offer a different currency than the seller requests... all of these things add dynamics. They allow clever players to get more out of trading than the less clever (as well as the passive "the price is the price" crowd). Since skill checks are the best kind of difficulty and design opportunities for skill-based difficulty in trading are sparse, getting rid of what little we have is a bad move.

You can't haggle with an automated buyout. There's no way to make that work. At all.

You can haggle with an offline player but leaving PMs is a very slow communication method, and more importantly you're taking the gamble the player will log in again sometime this league, when a lot of players don't. We really need an offline equivalent of the /dnd autoreply so offline sellers can indicate when they'll be back online. I would also like to see tools which allow in-game whispers to be delivered to offline players immediately through email or text, and converts email/text replies into immediate in-game whispers; this would give sellers some degree of communication ability while offline, and allow them to indicate that they're still active sellers.

at the very least, allow offers to be automated. that way, if i'm afk or offline, and someone offers 2fus for something i listed as 1c, then when i'm back, i can review new pending offers and reject them with a note if i don't like them or accept them if i do. then if i accept it, the item is automatically transferred.

this way, it still offers the possibility of
1. haggling (you can reject with a note offering alternate prices)
2. playing the market
3. paying with alternate denominations of orbs (again, reject with a note saying you accept alt currency)

while still letting me play the game without a hitch and again, not having to getting out of a fucking map or lab run just to hotfoot it back to my hideout and trade. that's all i ask.

as for dealing with players who "quit" for a league and leave their wares to rot, this is controversial, but a public stash tab is public after all, and ggg has the right to do with your items as they wish. there should be an auction house, and i mean AUCTION house, not runescape's grand exchange. if your account isn't logged on for longer than two weeks and you haven't received any meaningful experience gain within that window either, the game should automatically place your public stash tab items up for public auction, with pending offers being posted as the first bids. this would punish those who use public tabs as indefinite stash space while moving product that would have never moved in the first place. if no bids are placed, the game will return the item to your stash for another two weeks. if bids are placed, the game will route all proceeds from the auction directly to your stash.

That auction idea is terrible. Really, auctions are terrible, because on the buyer end you have bot-assisted sniping and on the seller end the whole idea is trading items for prices the seller wouldn't normally agree to. Trades should always be at the mutual consent of both parties, where both offers and items can be retracted at will.

Asynchronous with seller-initiated exchange sounds good (in the past I've made many a thread advocating it), but I've since realized it wouldn't work. Buyers won't make offers on items from offline sellers when they could make offers on items from online sellers, unless those offers are garbage compared to online seller offers. Plus the whole "quit players" gamble from the buyer perspective. At best you'd have a lot of dev effort poured into a de facto second-string system.

The dream, as I see it, is not an asynchronous trading system, but a synchronous trading system which can follow you anywhere - making seller availability as easy as, say, keeping your smart phone on you (or even normal phone with an SMS-based system). Under such a system, offline sellers can, at least sometimes, be every but as responsive as the online kind, and buyers could get their items fast... all without taking the haggling aspects out of trade.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

The dream, as I see it, is not an asynchronous trading system, but a synchronous trading system which can follow you anywhere - making seller availability as easy as, say, keeping your smart phone on you. Under such a system, offline sellers can, at least sometimes, be every but as responsive as the online kind, and buyers could get their items fast... all without taking the haggling aspects out of trade.

i could settle for something coupled with that and the ability to transfer items and currency directly from the stash. i'm just tired of having to drop what i'm doing just to trade. my main is an animate weapon character and if you're not familiar with the mechanics of that build, it's heavily a momentum-based build. so if i have to come out of a map to trade and i've got a small army going, i'm going to lose that inertia when i portal out.

doesn't just apply to aw either. anyone who's gone lab running has had to deal with potential buyers messaging them in the middle of it, only to have to discouragingly answer "sorry lab atm". that's lost profit for the seller and lost time for the buyer.

"

Kythers wrote:

the easier trading is, the less stuff is worth

it's not just the perandus league making items cheaper this league, the ease of trading is also increasing supply without increasing demand

 Ok, so Perandus League plus trade stash tab has increased higher quantity of high quality uniques available and thus the prices are lower (standard supply and demand economics). Other than those who bought top uniques before Perandus League at the higher prices and now are unable to sell for more than they paid and will lose currency I don't see how that's bad for PoE overall. Playing the PoE commodity market is a gamble just as playing any real life commodity market. Prices go up and down based on supply and demand. I see nothing wrong in what Cadiro Perandus has done for PoE. In fact I think it's great and so do many other players that will never ever post their approval of Perandus League except by the fact that they are playing longer than in any previous temp league and that should be sending a loud and clear signal to GGG that most are liking him.