Black Market

Hello all, I've come back to Path of Exile after about a years break. I just started to get into selling/buying gear and I've come to learn that it's a serious pain in the ass... I was always curious why GGG never implemented an auction house style system for poe. I could understand some of the downsides to something like that (look at diablo 3 for example) but at the same time I think GGG could add their own twist to it.

I had an idea about an NPC quest line, similar to the Masters, where this NPC is essentially a smuggler/black market prospector. You run into this NPC in the same fashion as other Masters, but only in the later acts (I'm thinking act 3-4 on Merciless). His or her quest's could be something like collecting a special piece of gear that drops from a special enemy in the map, giving him/her an item of a specific rarity, clearing enemies from an area around a "loot stash" quest location, or marking smuggling crates buried around the map, etc. Pretty much along the lines of the current Master quest types.

Once you level this new NPC up a bit and invite them to your Hideout you of course receive his or her special hideout device. Depending on your level you gain X amount of maximum Catalog Stash Tabs within the device and a single Tab unlocked. You can then add items into this inventory, BUT at a cost of currency similar in concept to the current master devices (more on that later). Once you add the item you can then apply a price to it (Kind of in the same way you would in a Premium Account Stash Tab). The second functionality of the Black Market "Catalog" device would be the ability to search through (maybe with a lighter version of poe.trade's filters) the items other players have stored in their Catalog and of course purchase them for the listed price by simply dragging and dropping the cost in currency from your inventory into a slot within its UI... whether or not the owner of that item is online. Selling and buying Items could also slightly increase the experience level of this theoretical NPC.

When it comes to Upkeep and the cost of adding items I was thinking something like paying in set currency amounts for each stash tab... like 1 chaos orbs for another full stash tab and one regal orb for a quad tab, and maybe even something like 1 chaos + (1 Chaos * Current Stash Tab Amount). Then, every time you place an item inside it becomes "Logged" for a price. Once logged the item cant be removed without paying a "Recall" currency fee. Logged items can be freely moved around within the inventory space, but can only be placed inside your personal inventory if you have the appropriate Recall currency amount on you. Maybe a good price would be 1 alteration orb to "Log" an item and 2 to "Recall" it.

One downside is that this system does remove haggling... but i think if they add "alternate payment amounts" it would even out. For example if you have an option for "Absolute Price" and you set it for 10 chaos orbs... Then can also set up something like an "Or" option followed by more logical conditions like "Any Amount combination" of "Currency [X]" and "currency [Y]" so you could say I want to Sell this Item for 10 Chaos or any combination of Chaos Orbs (x Currency) and Vaal Orbs (Y currency). Alternatively you could also just say 10 Chaos Orbs OR 30 Orbs of Fusing OR 20 Alchemy Orbs. Not sure if I'm making much sense, but essentially a system that allows for at least 2 additional selling prices for each item would be a great way to retain some form of haggling.

Currency gained could be added to a single "Remove Only" stash tab within the Catalog Device's UI or directly linked to your Premium Currency Stash tab or a normal stash tab within you Account. Once your normal stash tab becomes filled your items are no longer displayed to other players until you make space for more currency.

Another potential feature of the NPC could be a "Sales Report" where you are given a log of every item you've sold and all the currency you have gained since the last time you checked.

I think it would be pretty awesome to sign into POE one morning and find a couple dozen Chaos Orbs waiting in my Catalog Device's "Remove Only" Stash Tabs :P

So, what do you think of this idea? It would require investment and players would have to actually work for the ability to use it. It may not be a complete solution to various problems that the current system has, but I think something like this would remedy at least a good chunk of the clunkiness the current Trading system has. I don't believe this would remove the need for a service that utilizes GGG's Stash API, simply complement it. Early game players would not have access and it would require some investment to get rolling. But once it does I feel it could really open up some cool shit for late game :)