Complicated trade system makes this game frustrating for beginners

Hi

I've been playing this game now and then, usually taking big breaks in-between. I consider myself a casual player.

The toughest thing that I know about playing this game is the trade system. A player needs to invest huge amounts of time to study what everything might be worth, how to sell anything and how the value of an item keeps changing. I have no idea what to do with all my items that I get since I can't easily compare the price of an item without exiting the game and checking various sites, just to figure out that the item is worthless. Mostly I just don't bother anymore since I spend too much time outside the game instead of just farming.

I just recently found out about the poe.trade just by coincidence when I was watching a clip on Youtube. Now I'm trying to learn how to use this page and trying to buy what I might need. Everyone I've tried to contact tells me that they don't want to be bothered outside of Beast League.

Why isn't there a market inside the game instead so I can just buy the items listed without disturbing anyone? Most people don't want to be disturbed if the item is valued under 1c, even though they list them in trade for less. A market would save everyone time, reduce risks of scams and just make trading overall friendlier for new players that don't know how to get introduced to trading otherwise. People can just dump what they find in the market, look up a decent price compared to the rest and then continue farming again.

This has probably been suggested several times before, but when I type "Market" in search options I get forwarded to some huge trade section that I have no clue what it is for.

tl;dr - We need a market so beginners can get introduced to trading. There isn't any help or guidelines for them, and people don't want to be distrubed while Beast League is active which makes trading even harder.

Cross-server trading is difficult to do properly (If you've ever accessed a guild stash, you will see why), so GGG haven't implemented it yet. This would be a good solution for many people if they could implement it, so you didn't have to change servers just to sell something from a public stash tab.

Public stash tabs become public remove-only tabs when they transfer to standard. People who never have any intention of ever playing in Standard, and don't care about currency or items in standard, will still have their items listed for sale. This is a bit silly IMO, not sure why GGG haven't changed it so remove-only stash tabs can't be public.

Chris Wilson doesn't like the idea of a market because he is dumb thinks it would make the game worse overall. He wants trade to be as smooth as possible, while still requiring active input and interaction from both sides during the trade.

I understand why people favor player-interaction while trading, since it should in theory make the game more social. But new players don't trade at all. Nobody sells beginner items since it's a waste of their time, unless they are severely overpriced which again isn't beginner-friendly.

Getting to higher level doesn't solve the problem either. Things just get more expensive which requires more knowledge about trading, and I have achieved none. The game seems very dead since I rely on myself to acquire anything. Nobody wants to trade because it wastes their time spent in BL.

Having some form of market would help everyone, maybe except for the elite which seem to have a monopoly on the entire trade. A lack of a market makes most of the low-level uniques in the game pointless.

In the leagues, most of the low-tier and mid-tier uniques can be bought via poe.trade for 1 alc, or 1 chaos for good rolls, and maybe 10-20 chaos for max rolls. In standard, I agree the economy could do with a marketplace though!!

"

HungryKoala wrote:

I understand why people favor player-interaction while trading, since it should in theory make the game more social. But new players don't trade at all. Nobody sells beginner items since it's a waste of their time, unless they are severely overpriced which again isn't beginner-friendly.

Getting to higher level doesn't solve the problem either. Things just get more expensive which requires more knowledge about trading, and I have achieved none. The game seems very dead since I rely on myself to acquire anything. Nobody wants to trade because it wastes their time spent in BL.

Having some form of market would help everyone, maybe except for the elite which seem to have a monopoly on the entire trade. A lack of a market makes most of the low-level uniques in the game pointless.

Honestly I doubt "social interaction" is the reality of why an ah wasn't integrated at launch. It's far more likely a convenient cover word.

Given that players are constantly spawning items, inconvenience is utilized to help stem the flooding of items. I was checking values on some uniques earlier - and it wasn't odd to see over 1000 of a particular item posted.

Make special drops too rare, there's no sense of reward.
Make special drops too common, there's no sense of reward.

If everything was quick and easy to exchange, the supply would severely outweigh demand. The inconvenience of trading helps to establish a base line of value - the time taken to communicate with a buyer/seller and the actual time spent trading essentially helps filter a lot of otherwise junk items alone.

Trading in games like this is naturally complex. With so many items and mods there's a great deal one has to learn. I'm in my second league now, and I'm only starting to get a sense of the economy.

And while you may hate the trading setup now - in this game's "predecessor" it was far more limited.

But muh pain, says GGG

It's not complicated, it's just dumb as a box of rocks because of stubborn people who fail to understand how a proper trading system works and how it is supposed to work in the "real" world. It all boils down to "WAAAH-WAAAH (the crybaby fanbois battle cry), we don't want to be like WoW and Diablo 3, we "hardcore" gamers here fam, D3 sucks, D3 auction house was bad, D3 did auction house wrong, DID I MENTION THAT D3 AUCTION HOUSE WAS BAD therefore no other game in existence can ever design a good automated trading system ever in the history of ever" and the mind-bogglingly idiotic statement "Trade system is designed like this because we "encourage player interaction". And by player interaction of course we mean:

"Copy/paste some bullshit from some 3rd party shite website, wait a few minutes to couple of hours for some shithead to answer you, assuming he doesn't try to scam or price fix you, so you can eventually get the item you want which means literally no player interaction whatsoever, you're just acting like a copy/paste bots anyway. That is assuming you're even in the same friggin time zone because MANDATORY online trading was such a "brilliant" idea. God forbid you're on Standard (like the filthy casual scrub that you are for not playing broken leagues like Bestiary) in which case another shithead will tell you to pay him 5-10-100 chaos just to be blessed with His Highness presence to log in his filthy standard character".

My goodness, what an enriching "player interaction".

"

HungryKoala wrote:

This has probably been suggested several times before

Only about a million or a billion times for the past 4-5 years. Thing is, you have a better chance to reason with a brick wall than with stupid people.

"

HungryKoala wrote:

We need a market so beginners

Ah, well, see, this is your problem. This game is not made for beginners. Only when you dumped a couple of thousand hours your opinion is worth something. And even if you're someone like yours truly with 5-6 thousand hours your opinion is wrong by default if it goes against the collectivist Borg hive mind of the fanbois who refuse to understand the simple fact that an automated offline trade system is probably the best change this game could possibly have. Won't bother explaining why because:

1) it has been explained about a trillion times already

2) when you have blinders it doesn't really matter what facts and evidence you present, stupid will be stupid

3) GGG are as stubborn as a mule, actually as a pack of mules and don't care

4) a few vocal fanbois will shout you down (just watch the responses I'll get)

5) "muh playur interacshun" (topkek).

Trading System is a pile of crap, I also wrote few forum posts about it.

having to know the price of items actually is one of the core requirements to success in poe.
you should be rather glad that itemisation is complex enough to support that.

...

there is a huge downward pressure on item prices in poe cause players neeed stash space to offer items for sale.


a autommated market using stash space to sell would make stash sales pay to win.
a automated market using separate space to sell would kill stash sales.

currently, stash isn't really pay to win cause you have alot of downsides for selling alot of items like interrupting your gameplay.

if you want a automated market you have to consider all those issues.

"

HungryKoala wrote:

I understand why people favor player-interaction while trading, since it should in theory make the game more social.

Requiring player interaction for trading has absolutely nothing to do with making the game more 'social'.

It has everything to do with limiting trade to a degree where it doesn't destroy the economy of a new league in a couple of days.

In a game where items doesn't get 'used up while being used', you simply cannot have a viable economy if trading is not limited by some other factor than supply... because supply is basically limitless...

In this case, the limiting factor replacing 'supply' is the interaction effort it requires to trade. This cuts away all the small-fry trade, severely limits the mid-range stuff, but doesn't actually have any influence on the high-end stuff where 'supply' actually do add as a limiter.

Given the design of the game, having the direct interaction requirement for trade is a well-chosen compromise. The only viable alternative is no trade at all...