A plea for official bots

I must say I expected more responses to this.

For me at least, it would completely fix trading. That is because I don't mind the "player interaction", I mind the "no interaction" and price fixers. And trading for rares does not suffer from these effects, so I feel that needs no fix.

Is it because people feel trading can only be solved with an "all or nothing" fix (or no change)? Or do they still believe I meant farming bots or RMT? Judging by the amount of threads complaing about the current trade system up right now, I would have thought any suggestion would be either discussed/dissembled or start a flame war.

This lack of discussion really baffles me.

I think whats community still not ready for even thinking about it.
Ideas about AH are more closer to minds these days.

NPCs sell stuff, some with reasonable exchange rates, some with more unreasonable.

GGG must have data about the sales (if they don't, community has them through poe.ninja ). If they would add NPC to sell some regular stuff with fixed rates, it would be interesting to force market into pricing some stuff to undercutting NPCs.

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Marxone wrote:

...If they would add NPC to sell some regular stuff with fixed rates, it would be interesting to force market into pricing some stuff to undercutting NPCs.

The advantages of a bot over an NPC:

GGG can change their prices on the fly, without an update to any games files on server or client.

Also, they can add/remove any number of these bots any time. So if a new currency is introduced, they can just start a bot or fifty to allow trading it.

"Player interaction" is almost the same as with real players: You still need to go to someone's HO and see his MTX. You still cannot do this offline (making trading trivially easy), you still lose a portal, etc... Except you won't ever get ignored, the player is never AFK or in a delve/lab/whatever.

Most of my trades could have been with bots and I wouldn't even know: C&P the whisper, get a party invite, trade items, type "ty", usually read a "ty" in reply, done.
This is especially true for maps and currency, it's only when trading for odd rares that I ever get to chat to the seller or buyer.

GGG don't decide the price of the economy apart from NPC ( 'minimum' rates ).
Players decide the prices, it's all up to the players, not to GGG.

Otherwise there is no point in having no universal currency over orbs imo.

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Fruz wrote:

GGG don't decide the price of the economy apart from NPC...

True, and not necessarily a good thing.

They could influence the prices by running trade bots at rates they consider desirable. And like I said, these bots could even counter inflation, because they can actively destroy currency without creating occasional mirror-worthy rares as a side effect.

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SisterBlister wrote:

The advantages of a bot over an NPC: (...)

I was just about to ask this. Glad I read the posts.

Though I'm still not convinced it's the best solution. I'd much rather have an NPC where I can freely exchange the orbs I don't need for the ones I do. Then again, I'm always in favor of solutions that don't rely on "Player Interaction (tm)".

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SisterBlister wrote:

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Fruz wrote:

GGG don't decide the price of the economy apart from NPC...

True, and not necessarily a good thing.

Your opinion, so far it has been worth it and it's imoh much, much more interesting than having one fixed currency.

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鬼殺し wrote:

Your disappointment in the lack of discussion of your feedback seems a habitual thing, Sister. I get it, but maybe...just maybe it's because it's not a very good idea to propose a half-baked trade solution when the trade situation is basically rancid sushi by now. Sorry. :(

Ah, but to me this solution would not be half-baked. I feel it would be a good compromise between making gearing up via trade too easy and making buying standard consumables too annoying.

As to the disappointment: I guess I'm still not used to the idea that complaint-threads get so much more activity than suggestion threads. Is it because people like the opportunity to show their superiority by telling the complainers that they're just whiny kids and gotta git gud? Sure, such trolls exist, but I hardly expect them to make up the majority of people on forums. Besides, my proposal leaves lots of room for trolls to come out of the woodwork, but I haven't even had an entertainig troll in this thread. Really weird.

@Fruz: Not sure where the "currency vs standard gold" argument comes in here. I also much prefer GGG's solution, but how does that affect the price of fish here?

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SisterBlister wrote:

@Fruz: Not sure where the "currency vs standard gold" argument comes in here. I also much prefer GGG's solution, but how does that affect the price of fish here?

Because you would prefer seeing GGG set prices, which would bring the market much closer to a standard gold system.
Because orbs have their inherent value, beyond being used as currency, which depends on a number of things.