POE.trade is an auction house

As much as POE players want to be disillusion and not admit it POE.trade is nothing more than an auction house. While i have only used it maybe 5 times myself i have tried very hard to avoid it but the intense RNG in this game (similar to diablo3 at launch) makes it really hard to find the items you need for your build. While this game seems to have gotten a bit better at finding your own items for efficiency its still easier to just hitup this auction house site and get your items.

I dont think people have a good understand of how the auction house worked in diablo3. They seem to think blizzard loaded the auction house with items for people to buy with real money. This is not the case. Everything in diablo3 just like world of warcraft was player found items. The difference between an auction house and something like poe.trade is you have to whisper someone in game and they come to you open a trade window you put in the items and transaction is done. I have not once even had a conversation with anyone i have traded with, theres no sense of personal connection just a tedious step of waiting for the other player to respond to a whisper or he may no longer have the item.

Im sure in some cases people may be able to barter or give a mix of items instead of the request chaos or regals for example if you dont happen to have the exact currency requested.

But youre lying to yourself if you think this is anything other than an auction house. I was watching a streamer recently who told me some of the big traders on poe just run bots to handle the trading automatically for them and GGG supports this. I dont know if thats true or not I certainly havent run into that the people ive traded with appear to human but as i said i havent talked with any of them.

I feel everyone is against an AH because so many people blame it for diablo3s initial hickups. The reality is just like POE diablo3 had way too much RNG. They had this dumb concept of getting a max lvl item that could roll a range of lvl 1-max lvl stats would mean more grinding for the players to make the game last longer. instead this meant filling the loot pool with 99.9% trash and never being able to find an upgrade. The added negative of when you finally did find a good upgrade oh its worth $20-100 if i go sell it rather than use it.

I really dont think having an ingame AH would really take away from POE, most people are already using poe.trade as build guides suggest and the insane RNG on completing season challenges pretty much means you need poe.trade to fast track it as i have been grinding it solo and in the end just to get my portal effect i said screw it and traded for a few oils.

And the people who were saying they just want an ingame browser to use poetrade thats even dumber of an idea just make a damn auction house. its been going fine in wow. not a single person has ever accused wows auction house of ruining the game even at its height of 15 million players. If anything the wow auction house has kept me subscribed for the past 6 years due to it allowing players to make gold easy enough to buy game time

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archonmagus wrote:

But youre lying to yourself if you think this is anything other than an auction house. I was watching a streamer recently who told me some of the big traders on poe just run bots to handle the trading automatically for them and GGG supports this. I dont know if thats true or not I certainly havent run into that the people ive traded with appear to human but as i said i havent talked with any of them.

Literally 9/10 currency trades I do are with bots. And it's gotten progressively worse each league. To the point now where it's pretty much expected if you pm any of the top 10-15 listings for any given currency trade.

It's so blatantly obvious to tell. Basic hideout, no map device, fills the trade box in seconds, etc.

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Hell, I bought some Xoph beach stones the other day, one guy had 20~ listed. Obviously a bot.

I had to leave the group and pm him for each individual listing for the trades to be acknowledged. Standing in his hideout and doing that 10 times...

I got bored halfway and started throwing in random stuff, it just sat on the trade window until it was right, every time.

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The simple fact is GGG doesn't even provide a function to report them. (Saying e-mail us is pathetic) Hence the 'supports' comment. Some of them have been around for multiple leagues.

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archonmagus wrote:

I dont think people have a good understand of how the auction house worked in diablo3.

I played Diablo 3 when it was new and when it had the Auction House running. I understand exactly how it worked. So do most of the people I've seen objecting to the idea of an AH existing in PoE. That specifically includes Chris Wilson, PoE's lead developer.

He wrote a response to you, and to everyone else who fails to understand how much of an impact an AH would have on the core game play loops. His response covers pretty much every single thing that you, or any other proponent of an AH have ever proposed. It's called the Trade Manifesto, and you can find that here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2679445

I'm certainly not telling you that you have to agree with what he said in there, but if you want to argue the issue, you need a much better understanding of the nature of his ojbections to it.

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archonmagus wrote:

They seem to think blizzard loaded the auction house with items for people to buy with real money.

I've never heard anyone make that mistake.

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archonmagus wrote:

The difference between an auction house and something like poe.trade is you have to whisper someone in game and they come to you open a trade window you put in the items and transaction is done. I have not once even had a conversation with anyone i have traded with, theres no sense of personal connection just a tedious step of waiting for the other player to respond to a whisper or he may no longer have the item.

Yes, and that difference, that friction is part of the design intent. The existing trade system (regardless of the fact that poe.trade or GGG's own trading site facilitate those trades) is designed to work well for small volumes of high value trades. Trades where both parties are highly invested in the trade being successful.

The thing that you, and others like you, misunderstand is: The existing trade system is also designed to work poorly for high volumes of low value trades. Trades where the seller has very little investment in making the trade work.

The inefficiency, that you mistake for bad design, is actually intentional.

While frustrating the player base is not (necessarily) the goal, player frustration is still seen as a driving motivator to discourage excessive trading. It's a "lesser of two evils".

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archonmagus wrote:

I feel everyone is against an AH because so many people blame it for diablo3s initial hickups. The reality is just like POE diablo3 had way too much RNG.

You're incorrect. The speed of progression (through content) is a function of level, passive skill points, and gear. The time it takes the average player (to progress) is one of the single most tightly controlled aspects of any ARPG. That goes for Path of Exile, it goes for Diablo 3, or pretty much any other ARPG you care to name.

That means, the speed at which gear you (believe you) need drops is part of that. There isn't "too much" RNG, there's exactly enough to meet the intersecting needs of the Game Developers and the Player base. Certainly there is friction between those two points of view, but the bottom line is just exactly that, the bottom line. GGG is a for profit business. Dwell time within the game impacts the likelyhood that a given player will spend money on the game.

This is perfectly reasonable, the question you need to ask yourself is whether or not you're getting a fair value (in entertainment) for the money and/or the time you choose to invest. If the answer is "yes" then everything is fine. If the answer is "no" then you should probably consider other entertainment venues, because the existing system (despite what you perceive as a mistaken element), serves the business needs of GGG.

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archonmagus wrote:

I really dont think having an ingame AH would really take away from POE, most people are already using poe.trade as build guides suggest and the insane RNG on completing season challenges pretty much means you need poe.trade to fast track it as i have been grinding it solo and in the end just to get my portal effect i said screw it and traded for a few oils.

I disagree with you. It would cripple the primary game-play loops. Chris Wilson disagrees with you. Blizzard disagrees with you.

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Lylirra wrote:

Q. Why is the auction house system being removed from Diablo III?
The gold and real-money auction houses have provided a convenient and secure system for trading, but it's also become increasingly clear that despite the benefits they provide, they ultimately undermine Diablo’s core gameplay. A big part of Diablo is the thrill of battling demons and finding epic loot. While buying epic loot in the auction houses might be more convenient, it doesn't feel anywhere near as heroic as plowing through a pack of fearsome-looking monsters and having them drop that one awesome item that seems like it was made for your character.

Source: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/d3/topic/9972208129

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archonmagus wrote:

And the people who were saying they just want an ingame browser to use poetrade thats even dumber of an idea just make a damn auction house. its been going fine in wow. not a single person has ever accused wows auction house of ruining the game even at its height of 15 million players. If anything the wow auction house has kept me subscribed for the past 6 years due to it allowing players to make gold easy enough to buy game time

WoW has nothing to do with Diablo 3, nor with PoE. WoW is an MMO. MMOs run on completely different rules and gameplay loops than ARPGs.

Yes, WoW has an AH, lots of MMOs do.

(To name just a few of the key differences):
WoW has a shared overworld where players compete for resources.
All gear (that isn't white qualtiy) in WoW is Bind-on-equip.
Top tier gear in WoW is Bind-on-pickup.
WoW is about large scale groups, working together to defeat elaborate boss encounters.

No MMO AH represents a relevant comparisson (to what an AH would do to PoE). Only Diablo 3 is relevant. Because it's the only ARPG that's ever tried it. And it's extremely telling that Blizzard, with their huge pool of talent to throw at any problem, couldn't manage to make an AH that didn't undermine core gameplay.

Here we go again...

Auction house will never exist in POE

Just accept it

The best we can hope for is an integrated POE.trade in POE and various trade improvements

Such as

Faster API -

Better updates to when people are afk or offline -

Being able to trade from your hideout without needing to go to another zone -

ETC

Stop asking for auction house GGG just ignores threads like this

They have already flat out said - NEVER

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Unquietheart wrote:

The existing trade system (regardless of the fact that poe.trade or GGG's own trading site facilitate those trades) is designed to work well for small volumes of high value trades. Trades where both parties are highly invested in the trade being successful.

The thing that you, and others like you, misunderstand is: The existing trade system is also designed to work poorly for high volumes of low value trades. Trades where the seller has very little investment in making the trade work.

The inefficiency, that you mistake for bad design, is actually intentional.

While frustrating the player base is not (necessarily) the goal, player frustration is still seen as a driving motivator to discourage excessive trading. It's a "lesser of two evils".

There is only one big flaw in what you described, the game has been balanced around crafting and blocking content access for years now.
And the way they proposed you to craft/access content is making a lot of high volume low value trades.
The current trade system punishes everyone that want to actually engage with all the cool things the game has implemented over the years while benefiting those who just trade once for their full gear, grind random maps for a week, say the game is too easy and quit. While those who want to access content or craft their own gear either have to bore themselves to death with the shit trade system OR use bots/macros/etc to do the trading for them.

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Chalace2 wrote:

Literally 9/10 currency trades I do are with bots. And it's gotten progressively worse each league.

What you mean is better. Bots actually answer you in a timely fashion, and they generally have what you want in bulk rather than two at a time. And they always buy the currency I don't want at prices I'm just fine with! You become middle class by accepting a middleman, try it sometime.

What it's actually time for is GGG to admit that "player interaction" is deeply unwanted by most of the playerbase. The very nature of currency trading is such that it is best managed by automation. This is how it's done in the real world, and there's nothing wrong with it being done this way here.

I wonder if I'm the only person who realizes how crushingly stupid it is when people complain about the "rich getting richer." Firstly, this is a game. Nobody's starving. The rich should get richer. Success gets a reward, that's how a game works. Income inequality is only a real problem in real life. Secondly, and far more importantly, we all start from zero every league, including the bots. You have exactly as much opportunity to be the rich guy getting richer every three months. You don't because they're doing something that works and you're not.

And that's okay. Unless you want to try some really weird build that is enabled by a 5ex item, (which is a goal you chose, you don't get to complain when it's unrealistic) everything you need to beat the game is in your hands. I beat uElder with a completely trash build this league. I knew it was trash, because I usually get stuck between yellow and red maps, but the buff fairy visited me, so it worked. It visits everyone eventually. Just keep trying.

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Mortyx wrote:

There is only one big flaw in what you described, the game has been balanced around crafting and blocking content access for years now.
And the way they proposed you to craft/access content is making a lot of high volume low value trades.
The current trade system punishes everyone that want to actually engage with all the cool things the game has implemented over the years while benefiting those who just trade once for their full gear, grind random maps for a week, say the game is too easy and quit. While those who want to access content or craft their own gear either have to bore themselves to death with the shit trade system OR use bots/macros/etc to do the trading for them.

Sadly exactly that.
I can only agree here, crafting your own gear is a chore, an utterly boring chore.
I would LOVE to engage more in it, I want to slowly over time upgrade one of my character to the best of the best... but I can't unless I don't play the game and instead just watch trade all day long.

That's definitely not the right way to go.

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Kulze wrote:

I can only agree here, crafting your own gear is a chore, an utterly boring chore.

Really? REALLY?
At least half of my friend list does love crafting their own stuff.

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Kulze wrote:

I would LOVE to engage more in it, I want to slowly over time upgrade one of my character to the best of the best... but I can't unless I don't play the game and instead just watch trade all day long.

At this point you should take a look into mirror because this is not a problem in general.

He's kinda got a point. To the best of my knowledge, the most powerful crafting technique right now is still fossils. Delve requires specializing for Delve. If you want to play the game any other way, you're buying fossils. That's horrible. I've never done more than fairly basic crafting with essences and the bench because of how tedious it would be to collect a workable amount of crafting currency.