Imprint Trading - What's the deal with GGG making it so hard?

AFAIK normal trading of imprints has not been possible for a while. No one really cared to ask why this was the case, because anyone that wanted to could do it by using the guild stash. It wasn't a huge hassle aside from having to leave and join guilds a few times. But with patch 1.2 Forsaken Masters, this option was removed.

There is now only one remaining way of "trading imprints" which is:
1. Seller uses an imprint of his item and trades the item to Buyer
2. Buyer uses an eternal to make his own imprint of this item
3. Buyer trades the item back to Seller
4. Seller uses another, different imprint of the item
4. Seller trades this different imprinted item to Buyer
5. Buyer uses an eternal to make his own imprint of this item
6. Buyer trades the item back to Seller, and this process continues until Buyer has all of the different imprinted versions of the item as well as the original.

If GGG's goal was to stop imprint trading, it definitely did not work as you can still effectively achieve the same goal using the rather annoying process above.

If their goal was to deter imprint trading and make the quality of life harder for those in the business of buying and selling top tier items, then it's definitely working. It's a lot more expensive now for the buyer to get imprints as he must waste an eternal for each imprint he wants and there are more opportunities of getting fucked over due to the item having to change hands multiple times instead of just once.

AFAIK, GGG has not released an official stance on imprint trading and whether or not they want us to engage in it. Since they're very evidently making it hard/expensive to trade imprints, my conclusions are that GGG believes either:
1. Imprint trading should not occur (in which case why not release an official statement on the issue?), or

2. It was previously unfair that a new buyer of an item was able to get "free" imprints, and the 1 eternal per imprint additional cost (as well as increased risk of getting fucked over) was a response to this previous injustice.

#2 seems incredibly unlikely, as before the cost of an original crafted item very much reflected the order of mods and the available imprints to go with it. It was a built-in consideration for the price of the original item.

Which leaves the most likely conclusion being that GGG does not want imprints to change hands. Why?

Would love a response from GGG, but would also love a discussion on the topic ^^

Don't forget the most likely option #3: GGG never considered people trading imprints, and this was affected as part of a different/larger code change.

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pneuma wrote:

Don't forget the most likely option #3: GGG never considered people trading imprints, and this was affected as part of a different/larger code change.

Good point :) I always figured since you couldn't legitimately trade imprints via the trade screen it must have been intentional, but perhaps not.

Really hope they change this, it's a relevant issue to a decent chunk of players.



Barring that, at least let us know that they just dislike imprint trading or something - any official comment would be good.

#richpeopleproblems

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JakeAlmighty wrote:

Really hope they change this, it's a relevant issue to a decent chunk of players.



Barring that, at least let us know that they just dislike imprint trading or something - any official comment would be good.

+1 I just want some kind of answer!

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Bhai wrote:

#richpeopleproblems

Not even rich, More like Bill Gates mega wealthy.

can be done via guildstash afaik.

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JakeAlmighty wrote:

Really hope they change this, it's a relevant issue to a decent chunk of players.

AFAIK, a decent chunk of the ingame economy wealth distribution does not necessarily mean a large number of people :)

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JakeAlmighty wrote:

it's a relevant issue to a decent chunk of players.

yes, around 0.001 % of the playerbase.

( not to say that it cannot be changed if it doesnt work as intented, but there are bigger priorities )