Player feedback on trading (both sides welcome)

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

"

Biznits wrote:

I don't want to delve into an argument against flipping [snip] but I don't think they would be so rampant or successful in a better system.

I agree with this part. I think flipping is a good thing, but I can only say this in the same sense of, for example, "poe.trade is a good thing" -- as a third-party filling a gap in the game. It is only good in the context of GGG failing to step up in the first place. Although I'm not 100% sure it would be worth the development cost, the situation would definitely be better if there was less of a gap to be filled in the first place... which would marginalize flippers and poe.trade.

Basically, flipping is like an elevated white blood cell count. It's a good thing, but only within the context of something bad happening. Another way to look at it is: as a symptom of a greater disease. Flipping as an economy's natural, market-forces defense against inconvenient UI and similar frustrations.

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One of the peculiarities with Diablo 3's influence on the genre is that the term "auction house" strangely has nothing to do with actual auctions. "Buyout house" would have been a more appropriate term. Path of Exile actually would benefit from an auction house, but emphaticaly not from a buyout house.

Actually I think the 2nd part is a very good point. My biggest issue is mainly to do with BO not a bidding type thing for an item. However that said, if you don't think the dev cost would be worth it to integrate the current system, why would it be worth it to add a 'AH'?

The asynchronous model I suggested earlier is basically an auction system. Speaking of, I'd like to revise a mistake I made:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Spoiler

1. Seller lists item. Sellers can put whatever they want in description (such as "b/o 5 chaos") but it's just words, nonbinding. Seller logs out.

2. Buyers make bids. These are binding and are held in escrow while the bid is still active, although buyers can retract bids at any time. If you bid and there is an identical of strictly uperior bid, your bid is rejected; if someone makes a bid strictly superior to yours, or the listing closes, your bid is immediately retracted. Buyers log out.

3. Seller logs in to see multiple bids on item. He can choose a bid, keep the listing open longer (at the risk of bids being retracted), or cancel the listing entirely. He chooses a bid, and the game places the winning bid in a remove-only tab in the seller's stash.

4. Buyers log back in. All buyers have new remove-only stash tabs; the winner has the item, others their losing bids.

Replace sections 2 and 3 with:

2. Buyers make bids. These are binding and are held in escrow while the bid is still active, although buyers can retract bids at any time. Only the seller, however, can actually see other buyers' bids, so no bidding wars can develop. Buyers log out.

3. Seller logs in to see all bids on item; however, if a bid is strictly inferior to another bid, the inferior bid is not shown, and if two bids are identical, only the oldest is shown. He can choose a bid, keep the listing open longer (at the risk of bids being retracted), or cancel the listing entirely. He chooses a bid, and the game places the winning bid in a remove-only tab in the seller's stash.

The reason for this, other than avoiding bid wars, is that bids can be retracted at any time. Your inferior or equal bid can become the oldest or best bid as a result of the other bid(s) being retracted. Thus, it is not necesarily the case that those bids will lose, so there is no need to reject them.

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@goetz: I honestly don't know whether it would be worth it. Like I said, if money were no object, it would be good to have and definitely make the game better. But it's up to GGG to figure out how to allocate resources to make the game as much better as possible given the resources at their disposal. I have no idea how much development cost would be involved for implementing a proper auction system.

@scrotiemcb

Of course the question that has to be answered before is it worth it monetarily to add some trade system or ah like thing into the game is which would you add.


Lets say the current system works and you agree with that, then you would think it being added into the game is a good thing overall and wont hurt anything.

If you don't think its good and some sort of asynchronous or automation is needed (with or without buyouts) then the only effective way to do this is add it into the game. This, as the thread has shown has opposition and people fear what may become of it.


I don't think anyone "fears" what may become of adding the current system into the game. So perhaps the answer to the question of trade system improvements lies on the system that won't have the largest effect of change at first. If they could work with the current software\site programmers (on contract or similar basis) the coding job might be smaller then starting from scratch, to add onto that if they do start "from scratch" they can (and should) keep in mind the ability to code the system in a way to which automation or asynchronous trades COULD work, just don't enable them at least not until XX time goes by and they can get feedback off of it.

This does a couple of things, it improves the security of peoples accounts and the ability for people to buy and sell items better, but doesn't actually do any of the work for them. Almost no one (that I know), including people in this thread would be against adding such system.

Secondly, it opens up the option for the system that is "working" now to have further improvements down the road if deemed necessary.


Regardless of what is added for trade system improvements, something is needed, so I don't think the biggest factor is "cost". It won't be until we have a large reddit post about someone getting their account scammed\stolen somehow (although it would be hard if you had correct different passwords for emails, but not everyone does) that GGG really notices the large hole in security these 3rd party programs and sites could actually get at some point.

I don't feel any changes to the trading system are needed. Security-wise, poe.trade doesn't use your password at all, and Procurement does but it's legit so it's not a problem.

Trading improvements would stil be nice, despite not being needed. But I doubt more than a small handful of self-found types would be converted by such improvements; most self-found types are that way because of playstyle preferences, not a desire to trade foiled by frustrations. It would just be smoother, and smoother is better. But it would be for people who trade, which isn't even everybody, and there are things GGG can do to make every play experience better.

I'm more concerned with that other kind of balancing for the economy. That is: build, item and skill balance; adding additional viable affixes to rare items; encouraging broader diversity.

And also more concerned about off-topic stuff like promoting occasional single-target 4L skill use instead of nonstop AoE spam. And making the game a litle less about spike damage and a little more about attrition. Above all these was desync, but thankfully that's soon to be a thing of the past.

I won't go into detail on how either one of those could be comprimised in a public forum, but feel free to PM me if you are concerned they don't have a security risk involved, even if it is minor.

Goetz you asked why I talked about my experience with D2 a few pages back and how it was relevant.

It is relevant because it is a game in the ARPG genre which is considered to be a classic. The trade system in that game was rudimentary at best. I seem to remember dropping items on the ground more than anything. D2 never tried to be anything but an ARPG. It never tried to be "Econ-Simulator 2015"

And you know what?

It was loads of fun.

After writing that post I loaded up my old copy and started slaying demons in a LAN game. Loads of fun still.


The key here is that D2 didn't balance drops around some developer created economy afaik. The top 1% of attainable items were very much sought after of course and would require trading for, but most of the gear your build depended on was VERY easy to get on your own. You could level to 99 with this self found gear if you wanted, and fairly safely at that.

Some of the statements in this thread saying that economy is so very important in this ARPG genre I feel miss the point.

Is POE an always-online ARPG with multiplayer interaction if you want it, balanced around self-found?

Or is POE a grind based economy simulator which forces multiplayer interaction if you want to survive the content at a reasonable pace?

At this point I feel like it leans more towards the second option except for extreme cases.



And a side note somewhat related to economy. Why does every modern game have to be such a competition all the time? Given the more mature nature of this community do we really need to have a game designed around so much ham-handedly forced "competition"? No, I don't wanna race or dominate markets. I wanna kill demons and not die to bullshittery implemented to kill racers.

Many of the balance/design decisions made in D2/D1 would get it labelled a casual game nowadays.

"

BrainHP wrote:

The key here is that D2 didn't balance drops around some developer created economy afaik. The top 1% of attainable items were very much sought after of course and would require trading for, but most of the gear your build depended on was VERY easy to get on your own. You could level to 99 with this self found gear if you wanted, and fairly safely at that.

Some of the statements in this thread saying that economy is so very important in this ARPG genre I feel miss the point.

Is POE an always-online ARPG with multiplayer interaction if you want it, balanced around self-found?

Or is POE a grind based economy simulator which forces multiplayer interaction if you want to survive the content at a reasonable pace?

At this point I feel like it leans more towards the second option except for extreme cases.

Where you see balancing around economy, I see balancing around not being easy. I don't see the economy as an overwhelming drop rate influence.

Diablo 2 was very carebear difficulty, so of course you could level to 99 with self-found gear easily... just like you could do anything in D2 easily.

Path of Exile is deliberately attempting to be more difficult than D2. Not just in gameplay, but itemization as well. We agree that PoE's rate of gear progression is "grind based" (I mean, what did the devs name themselves?) and that it's difficult to "survive content at a reasonable pace." But why jump to the conclusion that "forced multiplayer interaction" is the cause?

Trading is the biggest scapegoat in all of Path of Exile culture. People focus on those who make great profits, to point at them and call them "evil," but trading as a whole is a zero-sum game. Whatever advantage players gain by trading is, on average, the same as if you had six or so characters on the same account and used the stash to move items between them. Any profit beyond that comes at the expense of another trader.

Being good at trading can be outrageously profitable, but merely deciding to trade is no more profitable than deciding to use your stash to support multiple self-found characters.

And that last bit is definitely something that gear progression should be balanced around. You have a stash, you can use it... so either share items among your own characters, or share them with other people's. It isn't forced multiplayer interaction, it's forced multi-character interaction, which is extremely common in difficult rougelike games which have multiple back-to-start-but-keep-some-stuff deaths and no doubt inspired how PoE's Hardcore functions.

If you're not rerolling, no wonder you're having a bad time.

Couple things I disagree with in your post Scrotie.

Roguelike is a label which has gotten applied to way to many games recently. Classic Roguelikes certainly DO NOT have shared character item stashes. Some might have corpses you could possibly find, with the items being somehow cursed or otherwise rendered unusable right away. Often there would be a difficult creature encounter based around the corpse mechanic.


Stash/Gearing stuffs:

When I, and I feel like many others talk about self-found they include using the stash. I opened my wallet just like many others to buy extra tabs.

If I make 6 characters and level them to 75 how long will that take? Seeing as POE is designed to be a difficult game, lets assume one of those characters at least will die before 70.

If I make one character and level it to 75 and use and possibly abuse the trade system to gear it up how long will that take?

Lets say the minimum threshold is for the lvl 75 character to be able to fairly safely run lvl 68 white maps with the gear they buy/find.

Which path takes more time?


When it becomes more efficient to grind the economy than to grind the items there is a problem imo. What purpose does the economy in PoE serve exactly? It isn't moving items around efficiently for the entire playerbase. It isn't limiting the spread of items for the entire playerbase either. You have a percentage who are able/willing/motivated to use the current system and another percentage who can't be arsed to truly participate on an equal level.


People who are invested in the current system like it because they are familiar with it and are often rewarded by the imbalance in market participation. People who enjoy and use the current system to their benefit exist in a sort of insular sub-society within this game. Social sampling is a very strong tendency we all naturally tend towards. It's the same with the very wealthy in the real world. The system worked for them and the people they regularly interact with, so how could anything be wrong with it?



The other point you made was about calling people who make great profits evil. I've never done that sort of thing and have no issue. IF the game is designed to be easier to gear by playing forum threads and third party software that's a game design issue and not the fault of the player.

For example, in WoW I used a very common add-on to track and manage my AH activities. I completely dominated the markets for about 8 months during which time items and money became inconsequential to me. I was even able to get progression raid gear for gold. Best items in the game? No problem, and I did basically nothing but play the AH. I played a spreadsheet simulator. I inflated the economy on that realm for certain items to crazy degrees. I bought a second account just so I could cap gold on it too. This was before I knew even how threat worked. This was totally supported by game mechanics. This is doable in PoE too to a certain degree. There are numerous guides on making quick profit in PoE.

PoE.xyz and 3rd party software function in a similar way on PoE as in WoW, though there are some additional hurdles which may or may not affect the very serious traders. Having to be online is no hurdle if you play many hours per day for example. No standard official currency makes it different as well, but since everything seems to trend towards trades for Exalts or fractions of Exalts that isn't much of an issue either. Instead of a "buyout" button you have a poe.xyz search bar and a whisper. Small speedbump which forces a certain minimal level of character interaction, but to call most of the trades I've been involved with as anything more than fleeting contact would be lying.


Like I've said in other threads, really great game held back for me by a terrible trading system and lackluster death mechanics.

"

We agree that PoE's rate of gear progression is "grind based" (I mean, what did the devs name themselves?) and that it's difficult to "survive content at a reasonable pace." But why jump to the conclusion that "forced multiplayer interaction" is the cause?

I don't think it's the cause, but there is a relationship. If one single playthrough is not designed to progress through the game without having to repeat or "grind out" certain areas, it's because GGG has balanced that playthrough between game difficulty and drop rates accordingly. If that's truly GGG's intention with game design, as it sometimes looks like it is, that's fine. You would have to do much less of that, however, if you had access to multiple playthroughs. So while no one is forced to play in any particular way, the pace of the game without trading (access to other playthroughs) may be overly laborious and feel unnecessarily difficult. Especially in a highly competitive environment and one that resets regularly (no access to your own previous playthroughs), I can see why people might feel forced to play a game (trading) that isn't properly a part of the original game. This again begs for development manifesto from GGG: Is the game meant to be inhumanely boring with an isolated playthrough (essentially making trading necessary and fundamental to every player experience) or is solitary progression meant to be sufficient but not an ideal game experience (trading is ok, not fundamental)? Lately they've been trying to make the game more palatable for beginners and single playthroughs, and I wonder if their overall game design is changing or just catching up.

"

Trading is the biggest scapegoat in all of Path of Exile culture. People focus on those who make great profits, to point at them and call them "evil," but trading as a whole is a zero-sum game. Whatever advantage players gain by trading is, on average, the same as if you had six or so characters on the same account and used the stash to move items between them. Any profit beyond that comes at the expense of another trader.

I agree it usually takes a whipping for other issues. That last line though really seems to undercut the idea that there isn't a lot of "evil" in trading. Throughout you've mentioned the service that flippers provide, but we're really limiting our understanding if that's the only way we view actors in the market. There are other factors, like price gouging, misinformation, deception, etc. very often present in the practice and thinly veiled behind excuses like service provision.

"

Being good at trading can be outrageously profitable, but merely deciding to trade is no more profitable than deciding to use your stash to support multiple self-found characters.

And that last bit is definitely something that gear progression should be balanced around. You have a stash, you can use it... so either share items among your own characters, or share them with other people's. It isn't forced multiplayer interaction, it's forced multi-character interaction [snip]

I think you're right on here, as this is what I've been getting at with the idea of playthroughs. I asked, and would still love input from true-blood self-found advocates, whether pure self-found would also limit stash between characters. There is a difference between characters on the same account and other people's characters, but there's a ton of similarity in the the sharing as well. As mentioned previously, the creation of new temp leagues puts barriers between characters on the same account, but the only barriers between foreign characters appear to be transactional difficulties. People rightly fear an AH that removes transactional difficulty without instituting any other reasonable barrier like human interaction, transaction charges, etc. I think Brain's opinion that something is wrong when it becomes more efficient to grind the economy than to grind the game is more than just a legitimate opinion. I think that scenario is injurious to game integrity, so I consequently think that can serve as one guideline in the discussion going forward. While I fully support QoL improvements, how do those take place without imbalancing the efficiency between playing the market or playing the game?