Why no in-game auction house?
" This sentence is why every debate regarding this topic gets sidetracked, and everyone gets misunderstood. There's no auctions going on on poe.trade. There's no automation. You do not bid against other players (most of the time). Even if your "bid" gets accepted, you don't HAVE TO pay anything, and may back out any time. There's nothing even close to an auction. People are throwing around the word/abbreviation "AH" left and right, as a common term for all "trading mechanics", and a lot of people gets lost in translation. An Auction House? No thank you. (Better) In-game trading mechanics? Yes. Sometimes, just sometimes, you should really consider adapting to the world, instead of demanding that the world adapts to you.
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" I agree with you until you get to your own desires. They are pushing SSF (which effectively kills the community and player interaction experience). This leads me to reason that they may as well implement an actual auction house (with the instant purchasing/bidding etc) because the player interactions that do occur are usually frustrating and tedious in the current state of affairs. The only reason to not implement an AH is to either 1) drive players away to other games or 2) drive players into SSF. If I wanted to play a game SSF, I sure as fuck wouldn't play POE. I'd play an actual action/adventure game with actual story development (dragon age, elder scrolls, etc). |
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" GGG know that "the easier trade gets, the more mandatory it gets". The balance between player progression (loot dropping) and the environment, is at a fine place right know. If you put in a LITTLE effort, you can easily reach T12-13 within a relatively short time. If trade gets easier (read: AH), more people will trade and prices will be pushed down. Needless to say, the accessibility of gear will "explode" (in lack of a better word). It is naive to think that easier trading and better accessibility of gear, won't affect the environment (monster damage/HP) - whcich, directly, will make trade even more mandatory - and the center of all balance. And no, they are NOT trying to push SSF - neither am I. I do trade from time to time, and I - as many others - know that trade is the most powerful tool there is in this game. To make it too easy, WILL (in my eyes) hurt the game as a whole, and make the AH the center of everything. Yes, YOU can sell your items easier and sell your items easier, but the environment? The in-game progression? Those will suffer. Again, the balance is fine now. You CAN throw yourself into the market, flip, earn and be a full time trader if you want - but you have to put in the time and effort. You CAN play through almost everything without trading, again - with a little effort. Or you can do as most people do - somewhere in between. Why even use a wisdom scroll on items, if you KNOW (all the time) that there's an upgrade waiting for you two clicks away - for 2 alchs, without the need of any effort? If you think loot is meaningless and crappy NOW, it would be even more so with an AH. Sometimes, just sometimes, you should really consider adapting to the world, instead of demanding that the world adapts to you. Last edited by Phrazz on May 21, 2017, 7:47:34 PM
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" Mate, if you believe the public statement as to why Blizzard removed the D3 AH you're not very smart. I don't mean this as an insult or to start a fight, but the public version is an outright lie. Blizzard shut down the D3 AH because the IRS was pressuring them due to all the money people were making selling items and gold on the REal Money AH that wasn't being Taxed. That's the ONLY reason it was shut down. None of the nonsense about the inherent flaws mattered a jot. People were making money hand over fist. I personally know two people who bought houses with the profits they made from that AH. |
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" There are many types of auction houses that have existed throughout history. You don't need an automated buyout to be considered an AH. Even so, I did say poe.trade is slightly worse in that regard. Buyouts are a form of auction house. Even if we look at D3 having an auction house... nearly every transaction was a simple buyout. So what is the difference then with poe.trade. I have to go to website, copy and paste a message, go into someones hideout, then open a trade window. The answer is time, it just takes a minute or two longer (best case scenario) then a typical automated system. Last edited by e1337donkey on May 21, 2017, 8:13:17 PM
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Because they want to hide the fact that the game is already pay-to-win.
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" And yet, they removed the non-RMT AH as well. So, your supposition doesn't hold up. If you facilitate inter-player trading to too great a degree, then you undermine the basic concept that make ARPGs popular. People "hunt" where the rewards are. People attempt to be as efficient as possible about said "hunting". If the best place to get upgrades from becomes the trading vehicle (whatever it might be), then people invest their time there and start to question why they're playing. 'A Balrog,' muttered Gandalf. 'Now I understand.' He faltered and leaned heavily on his staff. 'What an evil fortune! And I am already weary.'
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" I can see why you might think that, but it's not a supposition. It's a fact. At the time, there was public documentation from the IRS talking about Blizzard and Diablo 3 that was dated just before the announcement they were shutting the AH down. As to why they took the Gold AH down? It was tied into the Real Money AH in the sense that it wouldn't work without it. The entire dynamic of the game was based around being able to buy your equipment. Drop rates were terrible (a lot of people like myself enjoyed that dynamic though) and if you were lucky enough to get a great drop, it probably wasn't for your class or your build. That's why they completely changed the game. Jay Wilson was head of development at the time and it was all his brainchild. They couldn't change one without the other. It was shut down because of money, nothing else. |
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" Mmm... a fact eh? Okay. Citation Needed. There's a lot of buzz out there certainly, but a casual search does not turn up any public documents from any legitimate sources. Activision Blizzard is a publicly traded company. They're required to report their earnings publicly. If there were real, factual issues surrounding the RMT-AH that concerned the IRS, then there should be either IRS documents, US SEC documents, or press releases from Activision Blizzard. Alternatively, there should be reporting on the issue from valid news sources, like Reuters, Bloomberg, Associated Press, Dow Jones Institutional News. etc. Come up with a citation and I'll give it a look. If you don't have a citation, then you don't have a fact. You have hearsay. Blizzard has thousands of employees, their legal department alone is probably bigger than all of GGG put together. I'm sure that their legal team and their accounting team both went over the RMT with a fine-tooth comb before letting it go public. It's entirely possible that Blizzard was, indeed required to file 1099-Misc forums for everyone they paid out money to via the RMT system. But those people were not Blizzard employees, they were private individuals, their tax reporting status is their own legal responsibility. Not Blizzard's. " The two AH's were perfectly capable of functioning independently. The ONLY change that would have been necessary would have been to disable the front end, the website that allowed you to trade on the RMT. All that would have been necessary would have been to disable the button that allowed you to switch from the Gold AH to the RMT AH, and the RMT front page. It wouldn't have actually been necessary to even touch the backend databases at all. They had months to prepare and an army of coders (Between D3 itself, the Fintech specific team, the Authentication team, and the Battle.net team) who could have worked at it. If they had wanted to they most certainly could have kept the Gold-only AH running independently of the RMT-AH. And they didn't, they took it down. For reasons they were happy to explain publicly. As I said above, a simple Google search will take you to the Blizzard FAQ on the subject, or to the Wired Magazine article, or to the Forbes Magazine article, or to the ARS Technica article. " Show me a Citation then. And finally, the D3 RMT-AH issue was simply an example of the underlying problem of using an AH in an ARPG environment. Regardless of what the situation with Blizzard actually was, you still have not addressed the fundamental problem: Making trading too easy undermines the primary motivator that makes ARPGs popular. Water runs downhill, people gravitate to the easiest solution. Developers nerf drop rates when AH supply becomes too large and too easy to get, which in turn forces even more people into the AH system in order to procure upgrades allowing them to continue to progress through content, creating a vicious cycle. And then people stop playing, because it's no fun grinding endlessly just so you can buy something from an AH. You're looking for a conspiracy that simply doesn't exist. 'A Balrog,' muttered Gandalf. 'Now I understand.' He faltered and leaned heavily on his staff. 'What an evil fortune! And I am already weary.'
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First i thought they cared about the game and trading.
Its probably behind-the scenes RMT going on which would suffer if AH released. There is no logical answer as to not have an auction house. You dont want people using it for loot hunt despite everyone ALREADY DOING THAT with poe.trade? Disable it till you are level 80 then so people "wont use it for loot during leveling" to save one of the pathetic excuses. Everyone thats not a completely braindead mongoloid knows that 99.9% of items dropping are shit,and the last 0.01% is items not getting picked up cause they are gonna be shit anyway. Last edited by potis on May 22, 2017, 7:50:54 AM
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