Trading Idea - Partial Item Sink

Background

A while back I wrote a lengthy exploration on trading as it effects Path of Exile. That post, Thoughts on Trading laid the groundwork. Briefly summarized: (1) The game's economy should be inefficient enough that playing is competitive with trading, (2) There are different methods of achieving inefficiency, and (3) POE's sole source of inefficiency is to make it hard to find another person to trade with.
I advocated the idea of introducing some kind of exchange tax to replace (or supplement) this inefficiency, but did not propose any specifics.

In this topic, I will outline an exchange tax which achieves the above goal. I call it the "Socket Tax." First I will explain what it is, then I will attempt to justify it.

The New System

(1) Rare items (yellow) lose their sockets upon being traded to another player
(2) Improve odds of currency orbs achieving high quality results, particularly socket-fixers
(3) Optional: Eternal Orbs make items immune to trade tax (upon trade, instead of losing sockets, the item will lose Eternal Orb's protection)
(4) Optional: Unique items (orange/brown) lose sockets upon being traded to another player

Justification

The Socket Tax achieves a few things:
-Makes items you find more valuable to yourself than to others
-You can either trade for a good socket arrangement or for a good list of affixes, but not both
-Increases currency sink over time, particularly for easily acquired socket-fixing orbs (since sockets need to be rerolled after each trade), but for other currencies too
-Items which are more valuable for their sockets than their mods could be Scoured before trading
-Sets a floor on minimum value of item worth trading
-If Eternals preserve items, then 'perfect' items which have both mods and sockets could change hands intact; of course the item would have to be worth more than an Eternal Orb!
-If Uniques immune to tax, allows players to 'opt-out' of the change

The Socket Tax also avoids the pitfalls of a currency sink which require standardized currency (to deduct a percentage of it) and fail for item-item bartering. Technically the Socket Tax is an item sink, but due to POE's unique mechanics, this item sink can be recovered by currency usage. This gives the Socket Tax the fine-grained manageability of a currency sink. It's the best of both worlds.

Items that are more valuable to one's self than others is an indicator of positive inefficiency (possible discussion of positive inefficiency v. negative inefficiency later). It increases personal connection with items because items are more likely to have a story behind them. It makes time spent farming more likely to be useful to the person doing the farming, instead of to the person who is looking for a buyer to an item they already have.

Compensation

So far I have been talking about all the negatives which has no doubt left many of you skeptical. The benefit we gain in exchange for paying a trade tax is improved crafting.

Since the Socket Tax is expected to increase crafting, the item sink is practically converted into a currency sink. This is where the precise magnitude of the tax is specified. Since no additional sources of currency are being proposed, the pressure on existing sinks should be reduced to compensate. The primary beneficiaries would be Socket-fixers, but it could extend beyond that. GGG are the only ones in a position to determine exact numbers, but a rough estimate to give an idea of the scale: I expect to see a reduction in number of Fusings, Jeweler's, and Chromatics to get the same rare results (6L, 6S, or rare color combination) would take somewhere in the range of 25%~75% as many orbs. It is possible that affix-rollers (Transmutation, Regal, Chaos, etc.) could bias against unfavorable mods, though less likely.

GGG could approximate the degree of change by logging all trades for a week or so before any announcements or adjustments are made. Then calculating average number of socket-fixing orbs that would have been 'lost' if the trade took place under the new system. Subtract this from the input of orbs into the economy during the same time less their current sink. This would be much more accurate than my guess above and ensure that the transition is as smooth as possible.

Conclusion

A very interesting suggestion well worth looking at I'd say.

I'd say it especially has merit when replacing the current inefficiency as this is one that actually poses the player with interesting choices on what to do with found items and whether or not to buy items knowing you'll have to craft the sockets yourself.

The current inefficiency on the other hand I don't consider interesting. I see no merit to spamming trade chat or browsing out-of-game sources for sellers or buyers who may not ever be online during your playtimes.

"

You can either trade for a good socket arrangement or for a good list of affixes, but not both

as you described it, you can only trade for good suffixes and affixes if you don't have an eternal orb.



i would put the selling player before the decision to lose either the sockets or the suffixes/ affixes.

if implemented this way, eternal orbs will skyrocket in price. i wouldn't make an excuse for the tax.

you need a way to block people avoiding the tax by throwing items on the ground and you can't remove sockets on items thrown away because this would prevent the item exchange in permanent allocation parties. you would always have to trade with a penalty (possible thoough).


just my 2 cents