Player feedback on trading (both sides welcome)

The vendor system is fine but the trading system is aweful.
Having to use third party software to sell items is a true pain and may put people away from the game.

I don't see yet any bad side of auction house.

"

EzBreesy wrote:

The vendor system is fine but the trading system is aweful.
Having to use third party software to sell items is a true pain and may put people away from the game.

I don't see yet any bad side of auction house.

Have you read any of the arguments against an AH?

Or even the original post that suggested adding the current system into the game so you can list your items without using 3rd party software?

A number of good points of concern have been made about an auction house. In general it removes transaction difficulty. Between the current system and an AH, the latter removes a greater relative proportion of difficulty for the seller. This makes for easier access to items, but also greater ease of profiting off of items. This alone makes a huge motive for inappropriate behavior. The AH may not necessarily cause market failures, but you better believe you'll see a lot of inefficiency and negative experiences come up simultaneously. There may be productive ways to limit those things, but they would need to be carefully thought out (transaction fees, time windows, forced human interaction, actual auction/bargaining etc). Just instituting an AH isn't a productive idea. Personally, I'm skeptical whether the underlying person-to-person individual freedom of an auction house can achieve the improvements you really want.

I believe it was Scrotie who mentioned the negative affect of an automated AH. I think that's a seriously legitimate concern. As we were just getting at, simplifying transaction difficulty to that level oversimplifies what could be an enriching process. If item/choice diversity were deeply rich (and sidenote: I personally really REALLY think it should be in PoE), the barter process would give players a chance to manifest preferences, playstyles, builds, etc. A better AH would resemble real auctions, but that requires someone to host it. GGG can't do this. Even Blizzard, the fattest wallet in gaming, hasn't even tried. One appeal of my suggested guild trading system is that guilds could fulfill this kind of role or reduce the # of direct players in such activities to a point where it becomes more feasible. I think part of the reason the forums were the only system GGG provided has been to allow this kind of bartering.

The actual trading system is so bad that every player use the party system to trade, they create party with name like "WTB ex 1:30c". Not only we have a very bad trading system but player compensate via screwing the party search.


Any other system (action house...) will be better than the current system who is inadequate.

Only reason players defend the actual "system" is because they fear changes.

On standard I just counted about about 55 public party who was trade advertising and ZERO actual party with message to do maps or farm. It need to be fixed asap.

Edit: actually one party poped with "farming final boss".

"

EzBreesy wrote:

The actual trading system is so bad that every player use the party system to trade, they create party with name like "WTB ex 1:30c". Not only we have a very bad trading system but player compensate via screwing the party search.


Any other system (action house...) will be better than the current system who is inadequate.

Only reason players defend the actual "system" is because they fear changes.

On standard I just counted about about 55 public party who was trade advertising and ZERO actual party with message to do maps or farm. It need to be fixed asap.

Edit: actually one party poped with "farming final boss".

Using standard as an argument is actually quite stupid.

Standard will have less parties because most people are already geared, have other friends online or are in larger guilds and don't need public parties.


Anyone that uses trade chat or party board as arguments that the "system' sucks is just ignorant. The "system" people are talking about is using poe.trade and one of the 3rd party programs. Yes people hate change, but people also realize that systems have failed in the past around automation, even the core principle goes against the whole idea of an ARPG game.


It doesn't need fixed "asap" but it does need some priority after Act 4 hits.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

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.

Damn, Scrotie, I cringe every time I see you go here.

For a start, what you are saying is advantage of trading = advantage of having several characters on an account sharing gear. If you were to monitor 2 accounts from creation, the trading account has access to the drops that several thousand people find and care to 'share' from the get go, the number of available items increases in quantity, variety and quality quickly and exponentially. The character sharing account still only has access to gear that a single person finds, the available gear from the stash for the characters is minuscule in quantity and variety compared to what the guy who trades has access to, which means the quality and suitability is far, far, FAR inferior.

Now, I'll give you dues in that long term, like thousands of hours in a permanent league, the character sharing account does grow its own personal poe.trade and can in some respects have better access to gear. A point I often make is ~what at first limits a self found player in builds (hoarding of gear and thus not selling, not buying, not liquidating and re-buying a different gear set) is precisely what enables the making of builds long term~ but this ONLY is a thing long term, like really fucking long term.

Even then, with nearly every build enabler, nearly every OpieOP T1 unique, dozens of 6 links, GG dps weapons of every type, with tab after tab after 150 tabs of gear with varying stats, alphas howls chromed in every permutation possible, etc, etc, etc, the player will still face hurdles that are a few seconds browsing poe.trade, a few minutes trading and a few chaos in cost for the other guy.


Shav's? Kaom's? Void Battery? Crown of Eyes? etc, etc? They are the easy parts to a T1 build for a self found player. They come, in time. The jewellery that enables a gear set to work with x mana, x mana regen, minimum x accuracy, min x of y resist? You might not be so lucky there.
But it is easily available on poe.trade.

People often look at a character of mine and have doubts I found the gear, because they are looking at big ticket set-stat uniques that would cost them a fortune on poe.trade. If they look further they will see that still, after over 10,000 hours of hoarding and never, ever doing a single UNID recipe, the accessories are what they would replace for a few gumballs.

For a young self found account, the hurdles come early, how can I use these boots, they are an upgrade but I loose dex, if only I had another pair of gloves with dex...

That, for the person who trades is a simple look up on poe.trade for a pair of shitty gloves that happen to have dex along with the shitty stats that are on yours.

Hoarding gear, long term, alleviates the problem and it is fun shuffling gear about to make things work. Far more fun, I'd say, than just buying the quick fix, but that's just me. But it only shifts the hurdle. Every character and every build I have and have had has been at a point, where, for dozens if not hundreds of hours they have had a certain optimisation to carry out, a slight respec, an awaiting upgrade, but need, for example 20 more lightning res, or just 3 more dex, or 5 strength. There's a quick fix just 20 alteration shards, or 2 chaos, or even an exalt away, or ....a few hundred hours.

Now I'm not complaining, here, don't get me wrong, I love this, but I wonder sometimes, Scrotie, are you really missing this? Because "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 just don't even know..

"

TheAnuhart wrote:

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

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.

Damn, Scrotie, I cringe every time I see you go here.

For a start, what you are saying is advantage of trading = advantage of having several characters on an account sharing gear. If you were to monitor 2 accounts from creation, the trading account has access to the drops that several thousand people find and care to 'share' from the get go, the number of available items increases in quantity, variety and quality quickly and exponentially. The character sharing account still only has access to gear that a single person finds, the available gear from the stash for the characters is minuscule in quantity and variety compared to what the guy who trades has access to, which means the quality and suitability is far, far, FAR inferior.

The benefit is the exact opposite of "exponential." The 2000th character added to a sharing system makes virtually no difference at all, while the 2nd character makes a world of difference compared to just one. We are definitely talking about a diminishing returns system here, which is about as far from "exponential" as one can get.

If you have an argument, it is based on shear volume, not rate of growth. Even if the diminishing returns are so severe that 100 characters sharing items is only twice as efficient as 10 characters... then are 10,000 four times as effective as 10? And so on. I do believe the diminishing returns are drastic - indeed, more so than this - but if 2000 characters sharing is "only" twice times more effective than 5, it could still be an issue, because a doubling is not to be taken lightly.

But the diminishing returns don't kick in until higher numbers. I believe very thoroughly that the multiplicative advantage of a single account with as few as 4 characters sharing items is at least 3x as effective as a single character, 8 characters at least 5x, etc, and thus the contrast with "big economy" sharing is dulled correspondingly, but I wouldn't say the 4-8 character account is equal in efficiency to thousands of players. Perhaps good enough to get by, perhaps close enough not to get all in a huff about "big economy" sharing, but not strictly equal.

I really should have clarified that earlier. "Whatever advantage players gain by trading is, on average, only slightly more than if you had six or so characters on the same account and used the stash to move items between them" - that's something I can stand by in good conscience.

Regarding Standard stuffs: it is a really, really old economy, and the economy is a catch-up mechanic (that is, it benefits new stashes disproportionately compared to old stashes when it comes to escalating progression). So of course you're going to get some really good stuff from a new-stash perspective for just a few Chaos in Standard. Couldn't be more different in a fresh temp league. As goetz pointed out earlier, the average progression of a Standard stash sets the bar for what is unsellable and what, just above that, is available for stupid low prices.

Actually, a logarithmic model (I can't help but rub it in: the mathematical inverse of exponential) might actually fit rather well. Under such a model:

1. log(1)=0. Which does a real good job of estimating the value of items you can't use yourself if you only have a single character.

2. Each of the following item-shares below would have double the item-sharing utility as the one listed immediately before it (note that item-sharing utility is not a straight drop rate multiplier, but a value-of-drops-you-can't-use-yourself multiplier):

• A single account with two characters
• A single account with four characters
• A group of up to 6 friends who party together, with a total 16 characters between them
• A large guild with a well-maintained guild stash
• The entire poe.trade economy as we know it

That actually looks somewhat realistic.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is that log(1) is definitely not where you want to be, and you should at the very least be able to get yourself to log(4).

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

But the diminishing returns don't kick in until higher numbers.

I agree with this, I had actually said as much but it looks like the line got lost in an edit.

It was something like exponential until finally levelling off.

I'm still failing to see how the growth of available gear via trade, meaning the number of different permutations of stats is not exponential, never mind the opposite.

When a pair of gloves can have 6 affixes out of a huge pool, when each of those affixes have tiers and when each of those tiers have a range, then we have a number of different bases per slot, then we have a number of different item slots, then we have implicits (including vaal), then we have sockets, then we have links, then we have socket colours, how on earth can the number of different items not exponentially grow with thousands of people looting? Unless I'm just not using the term perfectly literally in a mathematical sense, then fair enough, but my point remains.

Regarding temp and perm leagues, it is only in permanent leagues where one can even begin to compare a character sharing account to poe.trade, after thousands of hours and even then, as I demonstrated, the account will still be searching the stash and failing to find a needed ring that's there for a few alterations on poe.trade in a temp league a few days in.

"

goetzjam wrote:

Anyone that uses trade chat or party board as arguments that the "system' sucks is just ignorant. The "system" people are talking about is using poe.trade and one of the 3rd party programs.

Did you just read what you wrote or play the game at all ? Having the party board screwed is the direct result of the actual in game trading system who is inexistant, hence players who don't want to use poe.trade to sell items 95% of players screw the public party.

I've talked with some players telling me they vendore ilvl70 unique because they don't want to waste their time with this "trading system".