Player feedback on trading (both sides welcome)

I know people love to demonize the AH in D3 and blame it for everything. I don't think the AH itself was the problem, far from it in fact. D3 was, and is although to a much lesser extent, plagued by really poor itemization. Back in vanilla at least 99.9% of all dropped items were unusable garbage, pretty much like in PoE today but even worse. This meant that very quickly, the useful items that did drop found their way to the AH, and the rest is history. Very soon the only way to find a decent upgrade was to browse the AH, or grind 1000 hours with little hope of finding something similar. That was really poor design, and it killed the game for a lot of people. It truly boggles my mind that Blizzard didn't see that one coming.

In many ways, PoE are repeating the same mistakes, at least they did in the past. I think now we're in a far better position since the arrival of the Masters. I was almost leaving the game prior to that patch, but since I've found the joy in the game again and I'm really happy they did what they did! The Forsaken Masters patch was truly a milestone in the design of PoE, I have to say.

That said, I'll reiterate that the current system only works well for people who spend a lot of time in game. That may be intentional, but the point I want to bring forward is that I think this is a bad design. In a sense it makes the trading game an exclusive feature, that shuts out a lot of potential players. You may think this is a good thing, that this is a hardcore game made for hardcore players, but I disagree. It's bad for the game as a whole since it shuts people out. Like it or not, the majority of players today are casuals that can afford to spend a couple of hours per week on their gaming. There's certainly no need to go all-out Blizzard with things and dumb it down for 5-year olds, but a certain amount of QoL is required to succeed in the long term. And since trading is such an integral part of this game, I feel it's the most important part of the game to improve so that everyone can enjoy it.

Also worth considering is that the way poe.trade works today it's effectively already an AH for PoE, from the buyer's point of view. You look up what you want, click the Whisper button, go in game and kaboom. Done in under a minute if you filter Online and Buyout only, like I'm sure most people do. By being against QoL updates for trading you're effectively saying that hey, I'm a seller and I don't want more competition - I like the current hardcore way of doing things that shuts out most prospective sellers and makes me wealthy. Am I right? ;)

Oh, and goetzjam - my unique isn't done yet. I've had several cool ideas but since the meta shifts so rapidly in this game I've rejected myself many times already. :D I'm now considering making a map, we'll see.. Divination card submitted though, let's hope it gets approved! No spoilers. ;)

"

I know people love to demonize the AH in D3 and blame it for everything. I don't think the AH itself was the problem, far from it in fact. D3 was, and is although to a much lesser extent, plagued by really poor itemization. Back in vanilla at least 99.9% of all dropped items were unusable garbage, pretty much like in PoE today but even worse. This meant that very quickly, the useful items that did drop found their way to the AH, and the rest is history. Very soon the only way to find a decent upgrade was to browse the AH, or grind 1000 hours with little hope of finding something similar. That was really poor design, and it killed the game for a lot of people. It truly boggles my mind that Blizzard didn't see that one coming.

Yeah I think I've touched on this topic about itemization being D3's biggest problem at release, not an AH. The AH only increased the flame because people could, with the game company's blessing sell items for real money. Not only that the company made money off each and ever sale, which is ok from a business standpoint, but from an ethical one it wasn't because it wasn't possible to get the gear you needed to progress without either tons of gold or real money.

Blizzard had one thing on its mind when it thought of the RMAH and its $$$, they knew D2 had a market for people spending real money on items, they wanted to put there hand in the cookie jar and in return us players got a shittier game because of the greed and the lack of forseeing gear threasholds. I seriously wonder if Blizzard ever played thru the game past normal at all.

"

In many ways, PoE are repeating the same mistakes, at least they did in the past. I think now we're in a far better position since the arrival of the Masters. I was almost leaving the game prior to that patch, but since I've found the joy in the game again and I'm really happy they did what they did! The Forsaken Masters patch was truly a milestone in the design of PoE, I have to say.

I agree, masters, ambush, atziri (although some people hate the idea of her) all were great for the game. I am excited to see what GGG can do to improve the game after Act 4 and what new leagues they have in store for us then as well.

"

That said, I'll reiterate that the current system only works well for people who spend a lot of time in game. That may be intentional, but the point I want to bring forward is that I think this is a bad design. In a sense it makes the trading game an exclusive feature, that shuts out a lot of potential players. You may think this is a good thing, that this is a hardcore game made for hardcore players, but I disagree. It's bad for the game as a whole since it shuts people out. Like it or not, the majority of players today are casuals that can afford to spend a couple of hours per week on their gaming. There's certainly no need to go all-out Blizzard with things and dumb it down for 5-year olds, but a certain amount of QoL is required to succeed in the long term. And since trading is such an integral part of this game, I feel it's the most important part of the game to improve so that everyone can enjoy it.

That is the downside to not having automation, IMO it sucks because as a seller you don't make money if you don't have your "shop open" but many businesses don't make money without having someone there to handle the transactions either. I know some do and I know this isn't real life its a game, the point is the requirement of presence to complete a transaction is kind of a check in a system of balances to ensure that players are rewarded for being available to sell.

"

Also worth considering is that the way poe.trade works today it's effectively already an AH for PoE, from the buyer's point of view. You look up what you want, click the Whisper button, go in game and kaboom. Done in under a minute if you filter Online and Buyout only, like I'm sure most people do. By being against QoL updates for trading you're effectively saying that hey, I'm a seller and I don't want more competition - I like the current hardcore way of doing things that shuts out most prospective sellers and makes me wealthy. Am I right? ;)

Its not about shutting down competition its about reward for investment and time spent. I NEVER have a large or successful shop, hell 1/3 of my friends list is people i've meet thru trades, its the removal or the thought of removing the interaction when I do sell that scares me. But even when I buy you can do a similar thing and try to bargan the price down or get something else you need thrown in or for free, I mean its just going to sit in his stash anyway, right?

I'm not against QoL for trading, QoL IMO are improvements to the exsisting structure, I don't think removing the necessary requirement of being online to complete a transaction is QoL, that is a replacement suggestion.

It sucks that you? Or players that can't spend 4-5 hours per day or a few more on weekends can't benefit from finding items you would otherwise sell, but why should you be rewarded just for finding something? The current system rewards people that not only find them, but take the time to price them, list them and later sell them while remaining online to complete the transaction.

"

Oh, and goetzjam - my unique isn't done yet. I've had several cool ideas but since the meta shifts so rapidly in this game I've rejected myself many times already. :D I'm now considering making a map, we'll see.. Divination card submitted though, let's hope it gets approved! No spoilers. ;)

Cool beans, I'm always interested in hearing about designer unqiues and the process they go thru.

I'm not against trade per se, that being said, trade brings lots of exploits ("people gain wealth without doing anything worthy of it") that I'd like to make dissapear somehow.

The thing about making selling more desirable in game (via trade improvements) is that with more sellers, selling will become less desirable because of the heavy competition and market saturation. Unless there is some restriction to the quantity of items a player can put on the market this is going to look ugly.

In another subject, the problem with standard economy is that gear doesn't get removed from the economy. That's insane. It would be like having a car industry with indestructible cars that don't get phased out. Eventually, no one can sell anything unless it's strictly superior to anything else.

If orbs are the answer to gold, we need something similar for gear.

I wouldn't propose to bring things like durability (people will hate it), but some kind of mechanism that makes people to destroy (I'd say consume) their items on purpose would be the right solution. That would be like finding the philosopher stone, too, :P

Also, if items get destroyed, the drop rate can be incremented too, so people can find valuable things more frequently. That would bring the good feelings again in the game, I guess. Not that I played because of the loot, but finding things that you would use is fun, and it should come in some form (thanks GGG for Divination Cards!).

You make many good points, goetzjam. Good discussion. :)

"

goetzjam wrote:

It sucks that you? Or players that can't spend 4-5 hours per day or a few more on weekends can't benefit from finding items you would otherwise sell, but why should you be rewarded just for finding something? The current system rewards people that not only find them, but take the time to price them, list them and later sell them while remaining online to complete the transaction.

It all comes down to this, doesn't it? I'm not sure there is a good answer to this problem. In one way of course you are correct, it's only fair. In another way, it breeds inequality and separates players. Even if it is fair as you state, is it good for the game as a whole? I honestly don't know. Not that I'm preaching communism here, but still I quickly get this "us vs them" feeling, you know the good old pyramid scheme.

Is it not enough that players who invest much more time and effort progress further and have more success in general in the game? Naturally they will have more wealth due to finding more stuff, they will have better gear, higher levels and so on. All that is completely natural and absolutely fair.

The reason this interests me is that I've been on top of the pyramid in other games. I've always loved trading and in some games I even did it exclusively. I've dominated economies to the point where all competition just packed up and left. This is all in the past, it no longer interests me. But I've seen how damaging it can be for a community to have a few dominant players basically rule an economy, and I'm kind of afraid it could happen here too. This is why I think it's very important to have a fully open economy where everyone can participate.

The way I envision what little Chris has told us is that it will be some kind of forum-based interaction, where you can place offers on items and you can respond to them later if you were offline at the time being. I believe he stressed there would be no buyout feature, just an easier way to negotiate bids through the forum / in-game. Sounds to me like some sort of mailbox where offers pile up for buys and trades, and you can deal with them whenever you want. That sounds perfect to me.

"

NeroNoah wrote:

In another subject, the problem with standard economy is that gear doesn't get removed from the economy.

Yeah. Remove Eternal Orbs already. And give the Mirror some kind of drawback, sheesh. At least make it limited, that an item can only be mirrored a set number of times. One? Not sure. But unlimited spamming of mirrors on perfect items in a permanent economy.. That is madness.

I'd also make hardcore leagues perma-death. That's the only hardcore mode I know of. But that is another discussion. :)

"

goetzjam wrote:

Glad to have ........ion if so why, if not why not?

The founders of this game where players of d2, yes, but they got a lot of wrong impressions from the way they played.
Chris him self posted that he played d2 with alt f4 and because of it, they balanced POE and dmg of mobs around people using atl + f4 (because they though that is a normal thing), witch is a very wrong impression to get from d2, as blizzard never intended for people to alt f4 out of their game, nor did they balance the monster dmg or anything around it. Just a simple example how you can get some basic thing very wrong. Heck its good that they didnt played with bots, because if they did, they could think its a normal thing and you would see bots support in PoE also.

But the thing is that as I said, blizzard never tried to make a economy system in diablo. In fact majority of player economy was made possible thanks to people duping high level runes.

GGG went other direction yes, they implement mechanics in the game that needs currency to get fixed or are just RNG based. The problem with PoE is not only in currency it self, its in mechanics for what you need that currency. You can have a simple example of items. You will have normal progression and RNG on items with mods you need to have on them, like any other arpg game, but in PoE they added linking, number of sockets and colors of sockets in the game to add one additional layer of RNG, making progression and getting items a lot worst (and as the only way to customize your build is through gems that are also items as there is no skill tree). And it was done solely for currency sink.

You can have another example of map system. You will have people need to do low level boring content to get to higher maps only because GGG want to push people to trade or use currency as a sink. Another thing is that unlike d2, where runes are deterministic crafting materials that will always give you same bonus or if put in right order give you exactly that item, in PoE they added RNG on using curency on items for only reason to be a sink for economy. And there are a lot more things like this in PoE.

They added masters with deterministic crafting, but because of economy the system must be worse than RNG average chance so the prices of things are a lot higher than a average chance to craft something, or need to have other limitations.

If d3 had AH it would not be fine, because you would be playing more a trading AH game than a arpg game. And that is the core problem why economy doesnt add anything in games like this. Because if you ask a person what is more fun, to kill monster and get loot, or to spam the chat/look at AH and get loot, most of them would say the first case. Because people come here to play a arpg game, not a trading game. And with a economy we all know the drop need to be low so it doesnt flood the market.

I mean PoE has the worst drop rates of all arpg out there. Literally. The only game that had worst drop rates was d3 on release, and people hated the shit out of it as one of many reasons. Blizzard understood what makes the game more fun, and its not trading its getting the loot yourself, so they removed it.

AH/economy can not be fine in any arpg, including d3 in its current state because it means devs need to nerf and balance the game around it. From drop rates to implementing bad mechanics that dont add anything to the game and acts as currency sink. It means you can not balance the game around player progression, but around economy.

"

Ceri wrote:

"

NeroNoah wrote:

In another subject, the problem with standard economy is that gear doesn't get removed from the economy.

Yeah. Remove Eternal Orbs already. And give the Mirror some kind of drawback, sheesh. At least make it limited, that an item can only be mirrored a set number of times. One? Not sure. But unlimited spamming of mirrors on perfect items in a permanent economy.. That is madness.

That won't solve the problem. It will make it slower. Also, you would be creating pseudolegacy items. Expect a shitstorm.

There is a need for a more creative solution.

"

NeroNoah wrote:

That won't solve the problem. It will make it slower. Also, you would be creating pseudolegacy items. Expect a shitstorm.

There is a need for a more creative solution.

Oh I totally agree. But not doing this right now will only make it worse.

I think they have a tiny window of opportunity in doing this now before act 4 releases with all the new base types and such. Get rid of the eternals before they hit the live servers and there might be a chance to slow this down to manageable levels. Probably not, but it's still a better solution than doing nothing.

Then they can work on a better and more creative solution for the future. :)

As others have mentioned the current system is doable if you're willing to adapt but it took a third party creation to make it even remotely feasible. Poe.trade was an absolute god send for this game IMO. Trading was a royal pain in the ass before that.

For me one of the fun aspects of games like this one and and D2 was trading. I love acquiring gear for chars I haven't even built yet. THAT is what keeps the game fresh for me. I enjoy having 14 or so 70+ chars to try different gear and builds out on. And while poe.trade made trading much easier there are still times it's just not enough. For those of us that work, have girlfriends/wives etc we can't be online all day in the hope you'll catch that seller online with JUST the right item because you each live in different parts of the world.

In short I don't necessarily want to see an AH but I would love to see an option to at least interact with a seller/buyer besides playing the waiting game. I would hope that GGG can at least acknowledge the fact that the more people are able to trade the more they are able to roll new chars and eventually spend more cash on the game. I am proof of that.

So many things to respond to, I'll be as brief as possible and hopefully not miss anything I wanted to address.

@neronoah

I've seen your idea of durability before and I dislike the idea of it. You are essentially saying you can find an item, wear it and eventually it will become useless and you might have to downgrade when it fully degrades, which is the opposite of character progression.

orbs are answer to gold, and vaal orbs are answer for gear :D


@ceri

Thanks for the kind words, I can appreciate everyone that has posted in this thread for not making it just another trading system sucks shitpost. :D

Yeah it comes down to what affects you, most of my post are something to do with my feedback and experience. Naturally everyone wants the game to cater better to their needs, its not selfish to admit that we all know that people when posting feedback are completely bias.

Its a fair point to mention those that play more can also sell more so they are or can be rewarded that way. Hadn't really thought about that when making this post until you mentioned it. At the same time having the ability to sell items without being online enables the market to be "flooded" with a lot more items cause a deflation of value on items, which doesn't improve the situation for the little guy at all, its kind of a double edge sword.

I think everyone can participate into the economy of PoE, especially if GGG would add the ability to list and sort for (find) items in game, as long as it isn't automated selling\buying. It wouldn't hurt to list your items and get transactions when you are online, you never know who will search for items that will meet the requirements when you are online. I don't see setting up a shop as a bad thing if you only are online for a limited amount of time, even in that small window you can still benefit from selling.

I really should find previous post, audio and reddit threads where he's said anything about trading, but yeah a trade system where you can offer and complete trades using the forums CAN be ok, but it HAS to be limited or essentially can just be an AH just on the forums. When I initially heard it it reminded me of Valve's Steam trade system.

Here are the screen shots:



Of course you substitute out the cards or whatever in picture for items\currency.



Eternal orbs are not the reason why cannot sell 1-5c items in standard, not sure why that has been mentioned. I know perfect mirrored gear is insane, but IMO its a good insane :D


I really wish GGG moved hardcore death character to the softcore league at the time. This will remove the whole market people do for illegal trades after they die while keeping standard fresh from constant dumps throughout the temp leagues. Of course temp league softcore players are going to hate this idea. No matter what you do someone is going to dislike it :/

@miljan

Seems like you disagree on a core level with a lot of what the devs are trying to accomplish here. TBH its perfectly fine to do so, especially because you are civilized :D

Again I don't agree with you, I think it works pretty well having an economy. Yes PoE could be a good ARPG as a solo self found game, I don't think that is the direction they should go with the game.

I don't think they added links in PoE specifically for economy, but rather as an interesting way to scale gems. Yes it does have an economic impact in the game, but again I like the idea of it.

D3 has drops catered to your character, I am confused on how it couldn't support an AH in the 15% chance you have of finding something not useful to that character you just let it rot?

IMO if anything you've made it clear from your thoughts on D2 that D3 COULD support a trade system at least because the drops are fine for solo play. Unlike PoE Blizzard wouldn't have to rebalance anything to make trading niche, maybe not an AH, maybe just trading, but I can't play that game because part of the excitement I get from ARPG games is sharing loot with friends and that whole party and 2 hour limit is completely crap I can't play when they do always. :/