Auction.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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kurosaru wrote:

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.

The funny thing is I am not a "wower".

I am not even saying that it has to be an AH.

All I am saying is that a trade system has a purpose and function in facilitating trade in an economy and facilitating trade brings about substancial benefits to a well functioning economy which is what every Dev wants for their game.

The Dev already indicated they have their own ideas for a complex trade system but not yet announced. I am quite happy hearing this and just hope that their trade system will have adressed the 2 key points I made in earlier posts which is

1) centralized listing of WTB and WTS whether it be an NPC, AH, website etc etc

2) ability to complete transactions without the parties meeting (ie Seller and Buyer not having to be logged-in and in same instance at the same time in-game).

I am open minded enough to wait and see what they have planned for this crucial part of the game economy and I am sure some of the issues I mentioned went through their minds already.

Also their concept of league is an already available and built-in compromise : those who are in Iron Man league for example can be restricted from using the more complex functions of the trade system.

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Taurus1979 wrote:

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.

I hope that is exactly not the case.

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PsychoRomeo wrote:

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Taurus1979 wrote:

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.

I hope that is exactly not the case.

If such a feature were implemented I would leave PoE in an instant and I'm confident many others would follow. The RMAH in Diablo 3 has split the community right down the middle, has pretty much killed hope for "fair" PvP and has totally destroyed any prestige gained from other players for having top tier loot.

It would seem GGG have been pretty clear that they will not support the buying of power ingame which I praise them for to no end. The number of F2P games I see that are god awful due to the terrible balancing of real cash against ingame items is absurd.

GGG seem to be a group of relatively hardcore gamers who want to develop good headroom in their games for other hardcores. An RMAH dashes that at the most basic level.

An AH of some kind would be much appreciated, there is no fun in spamming trade forums/chats to get the one item you're hunting after. Of course, providing said AH was reliant purely on ingame currency.

Edit: Also you seem to be under the illusion that people will genuinely make fair amounts of cash with such a system. Please, for the love of gaming look at some Diablo 2 loot farming websites and see what they are selling items for - end game loot is selling for a dollar in many cases. So ingame when we have millions of effective gold farmers trying to sell goods we could expect things to be selling for next to nothing.

Hardly a reward, more like an insult.

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Piggy wrote:

An AH of some kind would be much appreciated, there is no fun in spamming trade forums/chats to get the one item you're hunting after.

I completely disagree. You speak of hardcore gaming as if you are a hardcore gamer, I don't understand why you would start wanting some easymode thrown into your game.

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PsychoRomeo wrote:

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Piggy wrote:

An AH of some kind would be much appreciated, there is no fun in spamming trade forums/chats to get the one item you're hunting after.

I completely disagree. You speak of hardcore gaming as if you are a hardcore gamer, I don't understand why you would start wanting some easymode thrown into your game.

There is absolutely nothing testing in spamming trade chats, it's not hard, it's not complicated, it's certainly not skilful and it doesn't promote actually playing the game itself. If anything it's entirely the opposite of hardcore.

The lure and challenge of PoE should be tough boss fights, fast paced PvP (with wagers I hope) and trying to push your ranking higher. That's what makes a game hardcore, the ability to clearly measure top level players against each other, not based on who is willing to spend hours and hours repeating themselves in a chat but who is the better player.

I would go as far to say that having no AH promotes real world transactions for ingame items as well. When players are faced with paying $0.50 to a website for an item or 3 hours of typing in trade channels for just a chance of getting what they want I think it's safe to say many players will pay the dodgy website. As a legitimate player I definitely do not want that.

It's not even like the loot is appearing from nowhere, someone somewhere had to get it. Perhaps an AH which relies on bidding only, without "buyouts", would be preferable. That way players would have to firstly have to wait the bid time out and secondly have to actually have the winning bid. Or maybe an AH where you are only allowed to make a certain number of purchases per day/week.

Regardless I feel having to rely on channels/forums for trades is wildly outdated and while definitely oldschool certainly not hardcore or skill based.