Auction.

whether Auction House or not

an efficient trade system should do 2 things in my mind :

1) Avoid the channel spamming by sellers and buyers of what they want to sell/buy which is very inefficient.

Therefore, you must have a centralized listing of what is available for trade (supply) and the price (in item currency) that is offered for it (demand)

2) Avoid the requirement for both buyer and seller to be online and in same location/game to do the transaction.

Therefore it must be automated when the criteria of the trade is met ie Seller put up the item for sale and buyer put up the required price for the trasaction.

"

deoxys wrote:

2) Avoid the requirement for both buyer and seller to be online and in same location/game to do the transaction.

Therefore it must be automated when the criteria of the trade is met ie Seller put up the item for sale and buyer put up the required price for the trasaction.

I completely disagree.
Trading is an active thing, not a passive one. Trading should be something you have to invest time in, just like grinding or hunting. That shouldn't be handled by bots, and neither should trading.

"

PsychoRomeo wrote:

I completely disagree.
Trading is an active thing, not a passive one. Trading should be something you have to invest time in, just like grinding or hunting. That shouldn't be handled by bots, and neither should trading.

I think you misunderstood my meaning. I am not talking about bots here.

Think about an AH for example. The seller put up what he has to sell on his own time. The buyers bid or put up what they want to offer for it on their own time. But they never have to be logged in and in game at the same time to do it.

And the transaction can occur without them having to meet or even chat at any point in time. And thats the important part I wanted to express.

As I have seen in D2, having to be online at the same time and in the same game instance to do a trade is a very inefficient way to trade and leads to a very inefficient economy.

Inefficient means 2 things :

1) Trades are missed (ie do not happen) because for various reasons (ie real life events, timezones difference etc etc) buyers and sellers happen to log in on separate time.

2) Prices vary a great deal depending on who is logged on and playing at that particular moment since those who are not playing at that moment cannot offer their vision of value for an item in the form of an offer or a bid.

"

deoxys wrote:

I think you misunderstood my meaning. I am not talking about bots here.

Think about an AH for example. The seller put up what he has to sell on his own time. The buyers bid or put up what they want to offer for it on their own time. But they never have to be logged in and in game at the same time to do it.

And the transaction can occur without them having to meet or even chat at any point in time. And thats the important part I wanted to express.

As I have seen in D2, having to be online at the same time and in the same game instance to do a trade is a very inefficient way to trade and leads to a very inefficient economy.

Inefficient means 2 things :

1) Trades are missed (ie do not happen) because for various reasons (ie real life events, timezones difference etc etc) buyers and sellers happen to log in on separate time.

2) Prices vary a great deal depending on who is logged on and playing at that particular moment since those who are not playing at that moment cannot offer their vision of value for an item in the form of an offer or a bid.

Getting a trade handled by a third party bot program and getting a trade handled by an in game market board mean exactly the same thing to me. It's like setting a bot to auto-run through a dungeon. If I wanted that much automation I'd go play an idle game.

Maybe I take multiplayer games more seriously than you, but I play to be immersed in a world and feel like an active part of it. An automated click-and-sleep auction house does not do that for me.

One of the reason Diablo has a small stash size and no in game trade system is because the developers did not want item-hoarding to be a major aspect of the game. They wanted a more iron man challenge approach, where you have to deal with what you get as you get it.

This is the way I see it.
No auction house:
Trading through player-player interaction only.
Difficult and time consuming -> very rewarding
== Frustrating and challenging -> very rewarding
Bartering/haggling -> dynamic -> not boring
Player to player interaction in a multiplayer game (whoa, novel concept)

Auction house:
Automated trades only.
Find item, look at average sell price, post.
Find item, look at average sell price, post, repeat.
Go to sleep.
Repeat 2&3.


One thing that I think you haven't considered is that D2 had instanced towns, (from my understanding) PoE will not.

Granted, there are some people who don't want to deal with people, but still want return on good items they don't need. That sounds like me when I say "I want food before the restaurant closes, but I don't want to run".

Well I guess you are entitled to your opinion and preference as to how you want to play the game. I can certainly respect that.

I have a different vision and hope the dev will be able to acommodate both visions with their concept of league. You seem to be the kind of player that will go to the cut-throat league from the get go so maybe they will restrict the player in such a league or a different league (ie a no complex trade system league for example) from using the more complex trade system.

For me a successfull trade system is about facilitating trade so that items end up in the hands of the player who has the most need for them or who can best use them.

And the more you facilitate trade in an economy, the less hoarding you are going to get because items find themselves in the hands of players who will use them and not get stuck in a player inventory (ie hoarding) because he cannot find a way to use them or a good trade to exchange them for something he can use.

People dont hoard stuff because they want to. Either they can find good use for the item or they want to find a good trade for the item. What happens when trading is cumbersome and difficult (or what you call challenging) ? trades dont happen.
If trades do not happen then what ? the item stays in the inventories finding no good use thus the feeling of "hoarding".

"

PsychoRomeo wrote:

Player to player interaction in a multiplayer game (whoa, novel concept)

Also to respond to this :

I agree that player to player interaction in a multiplayer game is to be encouraged 100%.

The difference is in my view this interaction should be about having fun slashing through hordes of monsters and planning how to bring down a boss or how to clear a dungeon efficiently. Or taunting each other in a good pvp match.


It is not about :

1) spending 2 hours spamming the chat channels with Want-To-Buy and Want-To-Sell ads every 5 min with a script (a kind of bot no ?) because you have no better alternatives to find trades.

2) Or arguing/pming a player for hours trying to find a price.

3) Or wasting an hour listing and showing him what you have for trade for a certain item and at the end finding that you have nothing he wants and thus no trade is possible.

4) Or newbies getting scammed with bait and switch tactics from less honorable and more deranged individuals.

to name a few of the inefficiencies resulting from a lack of a well thought out trade system.

"

deoxys wrote:

It is not about :

1) spending 2 hours spamming the chat channels with Want-To-Buy and Want-To-Sell ads every 5 min with a script (a kind of bot no ?) because you have no better alternatives to find trades.

2) Or arguing/pming a player for hours trying to find a price.

3) Or wasting an hour listing and showing him what you have for trade for a certain item and at the end finding that you have nothing he wants and thus no trade is possible.

4) Or newbies getting scammed with bait and switch tactics from less honorable and more deranged individuals.

to name a few of the inefficiencies resulting from a lack of a well thought out trade system.

Maybe I'm an RPer in denial.

I dislike the idea of an auction house, and I even dislike the idea of trade chat channels, because they are doing work for me that I feel I should be doing myself.

I view trading as a skill that can be practiced. Some people are good at it and some aren't. The 'inefficiencies' are obstacles that can be overcome, in the same way that a boss monster can be overcome. I'm no super economist expert trader businessman, so maybe I'm missing something, but I find trading rather synonymous with dungeon crawling. The more you do it, the more tricks you end up learning. Maybe you learn a specific type of monster is weak to fire, just as you learn that a specific type of item is really useful to a certain class. Future fireballs are aimed at that monster, and future trades are aimed at that class. That, to me, is playing a game.

I knew people who take trade in multiplayer games very seriously, and will make very detailed charts regarding prices of items they are interested in, plotting trends and the like, so they can make more money.
I also knew people who will run tests with different equipment, different skills, and different monsters to find out in more detail about the kind of damage they can do, and how they can become more potent.
I see these people as the exact same kind of person. Very dedicated people, who invest a lot in something difficult because it is rewarding.

Adding an auction house to me is like saying "Thankyou for your crafts Mr. Masterwork Blacksmith, however we are replacing you with a machine that will consistently pump out average-caliber swords with much less hassle". To me that sounds unfair.

Actually here's a real example. When I played Runescape all those years ago, and I wanted to make money, my day would look like this:
Sail to island, fish for lobsters (a pretty potent and efficient healing item)
Cook them all, fill inventory
Run to the edge of the wilderness (PvP area), advertise the sale of lobsters

Here's what would happen. The nature of this PvP area was that you dropped all of your possessions when you died there. So healing items were really good to have, but it's difficult to carry them around while still taking home all of your spoils. Also, you wouldn't bring any money with you because if you died you'd lose it. So when I would sell my lobsters there, I'd get paid in goods and spoils and equipment of the slain, which would often get me a higher yield than selling them for money in the unofficial trading area.
This all changed when some Great Exchange (or something) was added, which was practically a market board. I could no longer sell my lobsters near the wilderness because you could just post all your spoils to the market and fill up on healing items without ever needing to pull money out of your bank. That's so automated and stale.

To play a game is to follow a set of rules though a set of obstacles. The more rules or obstacles taken out, the less of a game it becomes.

That all being said though, I realize now that my case probably appeals only to a minority, and not the average run of the mill level 80 doom knight (or whatever that WoW class is called).

Regarding scams, specifically switches, I think it should be difficult enough to pull off such that if a player of any experience level is stupid enough to fall for it, they deserve it.
However, regarding simply getting overcharged because they don't know an item's general worth, that's a learning experience. In the exact same way that dying because you didn't know that glowing red thing that was charging at you was a kamakaze monster is a learning experience.

To me, a successful trade system is not one that makes it successful for you.




Rereading all this and reflecting on my gaming history vs. the games of today, maybe I'm just sitting on a rocking chair complaining about the music being too loud.

"

PsychoRomeo wrote:

I knew people who take trade in multiplayer games very seriously, and will make very detailed charts regarding prices of items they are interested in, plotting trends and the like, so they can make more money.
I also knew people who will run tests with different equipment, different skills, and different monsters to find out in more detail about the kind of damage they can do, and how they can become more potent.
I see these people as the exact same kind of person. Very dedicated people, who invest a lot in something difficult because it is rewarding.

I guess what those two have in common is their "spade" tendencies if Bartle's taxonomy is to be applied. Diamond/spade compared to club/spade.

I like your angle on the situation though. It's far more thought out than most.

Im not sure if it counts or the idea/notion has been entertained but. After reading the posts in this thread all ive seen is.

RPers : AH is bad
Wower : AH ftw

yes both have clearly made good and bad point for/not having an AH in a game, but ive not seen anything id consider a compermise so to my own point.

In a game I played many moons ago, Hopfully many of you have heard of it. DragonRaja it has a very interesting AH/Trade system, in the sense only a Master of X Job skill could put items onto the AH and rare materials but everyone could by from it.

You could be max level/skill of all jobs at the same time but only a Master of one, needless to say you could only list what you were a master of.

You could freely trade any place, anytime and that was the general method of getting items, materials and various other items required, There was no dedicated trade channel. Instead there was a NPC you'd goto pay X amount and make a anouncement nationwide but you were limited to 1 every few mins, in addition to it wasnt cheap.

So what kind of trade system did we end up with? if you were after a special item you sucked up the price, and made a nationwide anouncement "Looking for someone to make X, have mats/paying Y for X" ~ <user>.
Else you head to the nearest main town and ask around, and finally if it was a rare/hard to make item you'd check the AH for it and hope someone was a Master of the skill to make it.

Also to be a Master of a skill was equiverlant to leveling the job skill to max level another 2 times but each level was like doing the last level each time.

----

Im not suggesting PoE adopts this just consider it food for thought. Because at the end of the day AH and Player-2-Player trading both have their own pro's and con's and a good game/economy should strive to find the best of both worlds.

I hope they do an auction house like they are doing in Diablo 3, with both ingame and real money, so the player can get something out of the game if the player plow down some effort.