Chris Wilson on Auction/bartering developed in China

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vio wrote:

in poe's system of no mandatory item sink or item degradation, the main question is how to make players sell their midgame junk to the ingame trader rather than offering it to other players.

reason being that supply of these items is always higher than demand, if all items end up on the market they would be so cheap that it spoils other player's item progression for no real costs. item price deflation is the worst effect for an ingame economy.

This is it. Path of Exile's economy doesn't actually work; there's no real item sink and over time all equippable items will approach zero value. That's why they're constantly pushing the temporary leagues; they know their system falls apart after a while and they hide it with constant resets. It's also why they don't want a usable trading system - trading efficiency accelerates items in the market approaching their true value dictated by supply and demand.

This is the same situation as Diablo 3, so in that sense it is true an auction house would appear detrimental. It's just not because it would break the economy, but rather because the economy is already broken and an auction house would accelerate that. In a game with a functioning economy with appropriate sinks a robust trading system is largely beneficial - Guild Wars 2 has the most usable trading system ever created in an MMO as far as I'm aware and that game's economy hasn't blown up. (That system does have other issues, but it's not really applicable here)

People would actually get bored at the same rate that they do now. Perandus showed us that giving players more items means they will just create more builds. Which is the biggest part of this game.

Let's face it, we have an Auction House right now... it's just a poor mans version. Spending less time trading and more time entering maps/killing monsters. There is nothing to be gained by the "Hello, I want to buy your item for x currency." Ignoring all the times the person is offline, afk, in the lab, doesn't respond, etc... When you finally get a response, it almost always ends up in a "Thanks" "ty glhf" which is just a courtesy atm. That's not player interaction.

Yes, there are times where you do interact with players.. but it's not often enough to justify this.

Plz no ppl are just gonna search it all day long looking for under priced stuff to flip.

Trade being difficult is a good thing for the market.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

There is a cost to trading. It costs you time. Remove that cost and the market will be flooded with items that people wouldn't want to bother selling currently. You would be able to find what ever gear you might need with no cost. None. It would be essentially free.

When stuff is free, people stop valuing it. When they stop valuing it, they quit playing.

It's not about "interaction". It's about cost. The interaction is just the excuse to hide the cost.

I think a AH or consignment shop would be fine... but they need to include a posting cost or they'll ruin their game.

This is a decent post and I agree with the concept. An AH isn't necessarily a problem. The problems come from how the AH works. There should be some kind of fee for the seller. It does what is quoted above but also makes the seller post items they actually want to sell and not artificially inflate prices. There also should be a way to track past pricing data.

In efficient markets, like the one that exists in this game, the buyers and sellers should be able to have the same information. In a system where only the sellers know what items have sold for the buyers are at a disadvantage.


And as always this concept of an economy being "ruined" is just foreign to me. Call it ignorance but IMO an economy just is. It isn't good or bad, it reacts and reflects the supply and demands on the market. Stop trying or worrying about protecting something that doesn't need to be protected. If an item suddenly becomes demanded because its on BOTW and the price shoots up it doesn't mean something is wrong.

Hey, it's just a bloody computer game, not a weird adaptation of real life into a vitual imaginary world.
Game's supposed to provide fun, a tool to get distracted off some real world activities. Not a toil, sadistically designed to make you suffer. Nor an economy 101 study.

So, implementation of AH should simply be treated as a QOL, a tool to decrease player's time out of the process of theorycrafting and slaying hordes of mobs in joy.

If there's AH price of exalts would have dropped by 14.492 chaoses per lot...the influx of items would have inflicted inflation by 2.446 points on annual basis...are you fucking nuts, or what?

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CalamityAOE wrote:

Plz no ppl are just gonna search it all day long looking for under priced stuff to flip.

Trade being difficult is a good thing for the market.

No it is NOT A FUCKING GOOD FUCKING THING.

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Mysterial wrote:

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vio wrote:

in poe's system of no mandatory item sink or item degradation, the main question is how to make players sell their midgame junk to the ingame trader rather than offering it to other players.

reason being that supply of these items is always higher than demand, if all items end up on the market they would be so cheap that it spoils other player's item progression for no real costs. item price deflation is the worst effect for an ingame economy.

This is it. Path of Exile's economy doesn't actually work; there's no real item sink and over time all equippable items will approach zero value. That's why they're constantly pushing the temporary leagues; they know their system falls apart after a while and they hide it with constant resets. It's also why they don't want a usable trading system - trading efficiency accelerates items in the market approaching their true value dictated by supply and demand.

This is the same situation as Diablo 3, so in that sense it is true an auction house would appear detrimental. It's just not because it would break the economy, but rather because the economy is already broken and an auction house would accelerate that. In a game with a functioning economy with appropriate sinks a robust trading system is largely beneficial - Guild Wars 2 has the most usable trading system ever created in an MMO as far as I'm aware and that game's economy hasn't blown up. (That system does have other issues, but it's not really applicable here)

These statements ignore the other factor required to push items towards zero value - player population. Even if a game has a fully automated AH the rate to zero value would still be completely dependent on the population of players that have access to producing a supply for a given segment of items. And this is where people's assumptions that a PoE AH would be comparable to D3's AH is incorrect, even if they were functionally similar.

PoE has a tiny overall population compared to when D3 had an AH and the % of PoE's population that reaches endgame is much smaller even still. D3 didn't start until endgame and in PoE, what is it, less than 5% even reach endgame and that is split between 4 leagues.

So even if there were a fully automated AH in PoE it would only end up being a QoL improvement with a relatively minor effect on inflation and item devaluation simply because there aren't enough people farming endgame to produce enough items.

They would have to implement it in a way that discourages bots obviously but other than that it wouldn't be that much different than what poe.trade does now in terms of accelerating items to zero value.

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Nephalim wrote:

Because AH killed diablo 3.

No, them tieing drop rates to the AH did though. Then them removing the real money AH finished killing the game.

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CalamityAOE wrote:

Plz no ppl are just gonna search it all day long looking for under priced stuff to flip.

Trade being difficult is a good thing for the market.

To a point yes, but they do not have to make it such a horrible experience. They could implement an item mailing type system for one, that would make trading a much more pleasant experience, atleast for low value items.

I tell you what, if GGG makes trading any more inconvenient AFTER releasing these new convenience features such as premium stash tabs...I'm not wasting my time on this anymore.

It's bad enough that every fucking piece of gear my character wears comes from trade on every end-game build...don't make it so that shit is hard to "look for".

Everything in this game is fucking trade...yet trade function is left archaic and ancient. If you make it hard to find gear...and hard to trade for gear...then what the fuck are we actually doing here?

My frustrations with the game, as of late, has been with having to trade to get everything. I know I don't want some loot fiesta bullshit like D3, but I am also not happy in the method gear is acquired in POE.

It doesn't feel good or rewarding having to gumball currency or trade for currency to then get bigger currency to then maybe buy something you want EVERY TIME FOR EVERY CHARACTER FOR EVERY GEAR SLOT.

Whatever...this game is a good time waster for now, but I have been ACTIVELY looking for a replacement for this game. Maybe Wolcen can do something cool. Maybe LostArk or Guardians of Ember will hold something for me. I really hope one of those games steals me away from this constant fuckery of player starvation and skinner box experiments.

I'm just tired of the constant focus on trade and claiming this is a trade game....but never fucking improving trade. Instead of improvements, devs stating that leaving it in a shitty condition is intentional and part of some sort of hippie game-developer philosophy.

Fuck your rules of 3 and fuck fundamentals of archaic game-design for a genre that is so niche that only one or two game developers are actually at the 'forefront of ARPG design'.