Are We Stuck with High Prices "Forever"?

As many have noted, prices on the Trade Board appear much higher for similar items listed on the PC based market (poe.trade and poe.ninja for example) and recently I have begun to wonder if this is just the predictable outcome of an immature market, or is it being driven by basic differences between the two markets (in which case, it is not going away with time). Higher prices benefit net sellers at the expense of net buyers and classically are caused by demand in excess of supply. Higher prices can also arise from market manipulation and as the Xbox market is relatively small, it might be susceptible to price fixing. Hopefully growth will curtail the opportunities for effective market manipulation and I will put the subject aside (note, there will always be annoying behaviour on the trade board). The subject of this note is pure speculation on my part regarding why there might be excess demand in the Xbox market compared to the PC market.

What if the reason for lower prices on the PC markets is just the extra supply provided by the use of bots? If so, then one could say that we on Xbox are experiencing PoE as it was meant to be experienced - stuff has value and the best stuff has real value. And short of Xbox botting becoming a thing, or GGG changing the "rules", we will continue to enjoy said experience.

But if it is the lack of botting that actually preserves the purity of the PoE experience on Xbox, then all those barriers to effective trade that are in place do little other than generate loads of frustration leading to despair and anger. So as noble as the intentions behind the Xbox trade nerfing might be, the frustrations put in place may be counterproductive to the PoE experience and hence player base growth.

So is botting a real thing on PC?
Is botting not a real thing on Xbox?
What are the relative effects on prices of smooth trading versus extra supply?
Should we not let
higher prices = longer to gather currency = extends the path to end game gear
be the limiting mechanism as opposed to choking the trade process?
Are the current trade restrictions suppressing any negative behaviours that may need to be handled otherwise if the trade restriction go away?

Honestly, for the most part, I don't mind the TB. I think for gear, it can be a fun little game to find the gear I want and it's awesome when people make offers on my gear. Now, you'll see some of my other posts showing frustration regarding the TB, specifically with fusings and this is VERY recent. Like, I'm frustrated yesterday and today. You will see price fixes. Go through the listing and you'll find countless stacks of 20f listed for 15c. They may not be the same person but I would be willing to bet many of those are. And in that case, the person has WAY too much power over the market by influencing others to follow suit. There is no competition between sellers there.

Now, that aside, I will talk about what I believe our market really should look like. Many people have talked about this "Buyout" option and honestly, I'm not convinced that is the answer. I personally like (And I've talked about this before) the intelligent conversation (Gentleman's agreement) between buyer/selling. I believe the asking price is what a person would love to get for an item and if the buyer thinks the price is reasonable, should have no issue with putting up the price. But, I also think that bargaining needs to be more prevalent. If I list my Belly for 4ex, I believe you have every right to bargain with me. Too many times, I've offered a fair price only to receive a decline with no msg. Then I have to be the one to counter asking what they really would take for the item. If a buyer comes back and says I'll buy your belly for 3ex and that's too low for me, I should decline. But I should also put in the comment, "Add another 45c and it's yours." If the buyer thinks that's fair, he'll do it.

Obviously, I just explained bidding when you know what's it's all about but in my head, that's the true power to this type of currency. 1c means something different than your 1c. We have 2 different uses to it. So if I'm selling my belly, it's because I see it as only being money. You see if as the future of your build. How important is that money to me and how important is that belly to you. That's where we start a conversation to come to an agreement of how much these things mean to each other.

I agree, that the level of communication is to limited atm. But ofc if I want to sell my belly for 4ex and not bargain, I should also have an option. And after receiving 30 offers with 1-10c or a colorfull smartie offer with each currency in, then i also so many times don't have the will to be polite and write a message, also to a 3 ex offer. I mean the combobox for negotiable price and fix price is already in, it just needs some feature behind. And yeah most offers are ridiculous, like < 1 c for enlighten or empower. ppl who search for those skills, should also know their value, so it only leaves you to assume, they try to take advantage. This makes this trading experience just so toxic.

I was actually thinking about making a 3rd party site, offering fix exchange rates with dunno a small margin like 10% between buying and selling to finance the effort. like 20 fusing sells for 11 chaos and you buy 20 for 10 chaos, as a standing order. But yeah I am not actively playing anymore, just waiting for some positive patch notes, but maybe someone else would give it a shot.

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filix wrote:

I agree, that the level of communication is to limited atm. But ofc if I want to sell my belly for 4ex and not bargain, I should also have an option. And after receiving 30 offers with 1-10c or a colorfull smartie offer with each currency in, then i also so many times don't have the will to be polite and write a message, also to a 3 ex offer. I mean the combobox for negotiable price and fix price is already in, it just needs some feature behind. And yeah most offers are ridiculous, like < 1 c for enlighten or empower. ppl who search for those skills, should also know their value, so it only leaves you to assume, they try to take advantage. This makes this trading experience just so toxic.

I was actually thinking about making a 3rd party site, offering fix exchange rates with dunno a small margin like 10% between buying and selling to finance the effort. like 20 fusing sells for 11 chaos and you buy 20 for 10 chaos, as a standing order. But yeah I am not actively playing anymore, just waiting for some positive patch notes, but maybe someone else would give it a shot.

Yeah, if I see a notification pop up with a stupid offer, I wont waste my time going to Oriath to decline it and I wont throw a msg in there. I'll decline it when I get to town.

But if somebody throws an offer for 3x in there, hopefully they are being serious in that, they want to buy it and are willing to haggle.

Question: how do you even access the combobox? I can only change the number of currency and type of currency. I see the other drop down but it's subdued for me.

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SonofRooster wrote:

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filix wrote:

I agree, that the level of communication is to limited atm. But ofc if I want to sell my belly for 4ex and not bargain, I should also have an option. And after receiving 30 offers with 1-10c or a colorfull smartie offer with each currency in, then i also so many times don't have the will to be polite and write a message, also to a 3 ex offer. I mean the combobox for negotiable price and fix price is already in, it just needs some feature behind. And yeah most offers are ridiculous, like < 1 c for enlighten or empower. ppl who search for those skills, should also know their value, so it only leaves you to assume, they try to take advantage. This makes this trading experience just so toxic.

I was actually thinking about making a 3rd party site, offering fix exchange rates with dunno a small margin like 10% between buying and selling to finance the effort. like 20 fusing sells for 11 chaos and you buy 20 for 10 chaos, as a standing order. But yeah I am not actively playing anymore, just waiting for some positive patch notes, but maybe someone else would give it a shot.

Yeah, if I see a notification pop up with a stupid offer, I wont waste my time going to Oriath to decline it and I wont throw a msg in there. I'll decline it when I get to town.

But if somebody throws an offer for 3x in there, hopefully they are being serious in that, they want to buy it and are willing to haggle.

Question: how do you even access the combobox? I can only change the number of currency and type of currency. I see the other drop down but it's subdued for me.

Ja same for me. Just the presence alone gave me some hope it might be used at some point.

People are buying currencies/items for real $ on pc, so yeah, there are thousand of bots ingame.

Too many people leave the price blank then have the nerve to bitch about offers they get. You leave it blank, you will get lowballed and it's your own fault. Put a price in there and if someone gets close, then consider it.

I always lowball no buy out items because I figure they are too stupid and lazy to know the price themselves so I have at least a 50% chance that they will think it's lower than it is.

I put a price on anything I expect to sell and will occasionally take lower offers but other times decide my price is not flexible. I get at least 20% of people offering me more than I asked for too. I used to think this was because it was underpriced but I think it's a combo of them wanting you to hurry up and accept and them thinking they are bidding against others (you almost never are).

Now what messes everything up, is the people putting in absurd prices, then the next guy prices based off that and we end up with many items being listed at stupid prices. Double or triple the price of PC and I'll assume it's reasonable. 10-20X PC price and I'll never buy from you and anyone who does is stupid.

I think this is debatable if someone is stupid,if he pays a lot for an item he needs for progression or just waits days, for maybe getting it cheaper. Its a question of personal preferences, abilities and priorities. If someone has only 2 days a week to play and cannot really enjoy because he is missing an item, i would say its well worth paying for it, if he can afford it, and spend those 2 days enjoying the game and making probably more currency in the end, than he could have saved by waiting.

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filix wrote:

I think this is debatable if someone is stupid,if he pays a lot for an item he needs for progression or just waits days, for maybe getting it cheaper. Its a question of personal preferences, abilities and priorities. If someone has only 2 days a week to play and cannot really enjoy because he is missing an item, i would say its well worth paying for it, if he can afford it, and spend those 2 days enjoying the game and making probably more currency in the end, than he could have saved by waiting.

Maybe. I mean it's pretty hard not to know something is needed for your build while leveling, so you can do your shopping that way. If you wait until you can equip it, then yeah you are probably gonna have a bad time on prices.

If we're talking about consumables, like maps, then yeah, you gotta do what you gotta do on that.

LOL, you really have to ask the question if botting real on PC or the Xbox.....
Any smart use of a good search engine will find the who's whats and hows, and no google is not going to find any of the 2017 botting tools or API tools.
As an example, there are a few Chinese bots for the Xbox that handle all things from trading, auto flask, and yes even auto log or auto quit POE.
As for PC google will tell you how it was done in 2012. GGG latest fail was the whitelisting of the API tools, lol funny how things are still sold before hitting poe.trade.....


Let not even get into RMT/gold forums. I believe that what keeps the lights on for the company.



As for the broken Xbox AH, This league I've only listed 3 high-end items, such poor use of a stash tab but dealing with all the shit that flows from the AH is not worth my time. Not that it's worth logging in to the Xbox version anyhow. By the time all the bugs they introduced in 3.1 are fixed the league will be over.