Player feedback on trading (both sides welcome)

@ten_of_swords

Interesting take on the trading situation. I completely forgot how large of an impact PA actually had on parties and gear progression amoung different playstyles.

I think its important to indicate that the majority of people probably wanted a PA and what did we get from it? Less parties then before and more people holding onto items to trade for currency or items they want. IMO this is an example of GGG giving the community what they wanted without thinking of the consequences. Imagine if the loot filter was around back then how much it would change things or imagine if trading was more difficult then it is now, you would be more included to give gear to those you play with vs trying to setup a shop and make currency to buy what you need. That whole sense of "togetherness" is gone with a PA system and a trade system like what we have now.

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I have always assumed this is why GGG has really been dragging their feet with improving the trade system. at the very least, you cannot deny there will be some risks to game balance.

I agree with this statement, when Chris had originally talked about a trade overhaul was when poe.xyz (now poe.trade) started to gain in popularity, IMO his idea of trades being convenient enough was added by 3rd party site, so the question on this is how easy does GGG want trading to be vs how easy do players want it to be?



I think overall its quite funny the people that want an automated system the most will be ones most hurt by such system and they cannot see why that is the case. Which is why my suggestion, while isn't as dramatic as others does remove some of the difficulty of selling while not removing the human interaction required at various stages.

@Biznits

I think most people want trading to be easier not harder, even with your purposed solution it doesn't solve the issue only moves it to another place.

What about people leaving and joining guilds just to get items? What interaction will be put in place to stop that?

What about people that don't want to join guilds, they are now forced to do so in order to share items they don't want and get items they want?

What about super guilds where people would force you into donating points or items to join to be a part of a larger community?

I think your solution provides more problems then it solves, but that being said it does have a unqiue aspect to it where people are "forced" into playing more as a community.

The reason people want trading to be easier, though, is so that they can a) satisfy their efficiency mindset, making as much use of as many things they find as possible (some people pick up all kinds of stuff just because they hate it going to waste) or b) to generate wealth off of their acquired loot. If someone is looking for c) to gain access to specific gear, they're probably happy with the current system because as has been pointed out, from the buyers perspective the current situation isn't difficult. A may not win here, but B would, I think. People may not see it this way as they play, but I believe what they're really after with an easier system (more advancement, better resources) would increase in a guild-trade system rather than decrease.

There can easily be across-the-board time restraints on joining a guild and getting trading privileges, or rather, a time limit on leaving a guild and then regaining privileges. That way the first entry is effortless, for leagues and such. Otherwise, joining a guild would work like it does now. Joining a guild just to make fair trades within it wouldn't hurt the guild, and joining to receive hand-me-downs or leveling gear just to leave it probably won't hurt people too much because it concerns items no one is trading anyway.

People who want to play self-found don't have to join a guild and are unaffected. Those who grind to the top to be at the top and perfect characters already require guild cooperation, so they aren't affected. Two things would change: 1) Guilds would have to interact through leaders some in order to trade out the rarest T1 items (not enough Shav's in the most elite guilds etc.) 2) Those unaffiliated, who already don't have any meaningful player interaction, but want to trade, would have to find a home. This set includes two subsets, the casual but not entirely self-found, and the RMT/market-manipulators. It would require more involvement from the first, and temper the high-quantity spam of the second.

Some guilds may have high requirements, likely associated with higher returns they provide, but this would be regulated by each guild individually and there would certainly be plenty that function free or at a cost negligible to even casual players.

I do agree that this solution produces more issues that would need to be worked out, but if it solves the fundamental problems of PoE trading, it would be a worthwhile one. It could sometimes feel like people are forced into a choice between "self-found" or "cooperate" categories, but the self-founders wouldn't care, and the cooperators likely wouldn't care as long as they're still receiving benefits. Again, not that I fully think PoE should do this, but the theory so far has administrative issues rather than fundamental issues. Anyone have other thoughts here?

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Ten_of_Swords wrote:

IMO trading NEEDS to be somewhat difficult to function well - once it becomes too easy three big things happen:

1) players will upgrade gear more often, and thus random monster/boss drops will always seem underwhelming. (I have clearly witnessed many times that players who trade often, also complain about bad/poor loot drops more than anyone else)

2) rich players can easily manipulate the markets - thusly rising prices on items they horde in order to get richer. (and other manipulating/inflation/rigging techniques become possible)

3) players find out the most effective way to gain power is through aggressive trading instead of actually playing the game. (buy low/sell high etc) ... this may already be true, but making trading even more automated will make it irresistible to more players.

I have always assumed this is why GGG has really been dragging their feet with improving the trade system. at the very least, you cannot deny there will be some risks to game balance.

Although I technically do not disagree with ToS here, I have a huge caution.

Let's say you're trying to make a good, but very difficult sidescroller game (a la Super Meat Boy or I Wanna Be the Guy). Would you attempt to do this by... making the game briefly ignore player inputs at random times? By enforcing mouse input instead of allowing players to use arrow keys? Of course not. Even though you're trying to make a very difficult game, you know the difficulty will be rage-inducing and not actually fun at all if you just sabotage things. Instead, you want the actual gameplay to be challenging - make the controls very fluid and responsive, but give the player an input window of just a few frames to make things difficult. (And I guess also throw in a lot of surprises which require level memorization.)

In the same way, arguing against trading UI and functional improvements for Path of Exile is totally misunderstanding the difficulty concept. At the heart of it all, an easy game is an easy game, even if the UI is backwards and frustrating, and players have to rely on third-party tools (imagine a hack which allowed keyboard inputs for the mouse example above).

The difficulty which trading needs in Path of Exile (and needed, in pre-RoS Diablo 3) is the type I explained in "the other balancing for trade" in my post on page 8. That is, make it so it's actually difficult to evaluate items, and make it so you can disagree with the community consensus without being insane. Making the trading UI deliberately hard to use doesn't actually make it one bit more challenging, because "grind" is not actually a challenge, it's just a pain in the ass.

I think the PA vs SA point is a good one though.

Scrotie, I believe your previous post is on page 7, but it does make a lot of good points. I think QoL improvements wouldn't generate additional problems even if they could make current problems more visible. And I would agree in wanting more, shall we call it, "market difficulty" instead of "process difficulty." The terms aren't important, but I think the idea can well abide the discussion here.

One thing I think is valuable from your previous post is thinking about balancing the economy around "playthroughs" instead of self-found or trading. It took me to my third or fourth character to have the gear I really wanted for my first. At that point, however, I also had a lot of the gear I wanted for characters 2-4. To make a truly self-found game variant either can't be a long-term league, or it must put barriers between playthroughs. That is, if truly self-found = 1 playthrough, which I think it must logically mean (and a real playthrough, not just to level 70). This also brings out, however, why people dislike those who play the market more than the game itself. They eek out playthrough value without playing through. Making trading harder puts a barrier between playthroughs by putting a barrier between players while temp leagues put up barriers between game characters. It's plain to see how each league is designed around 1-2 new playthroughs. Standard has the unfortunate consequence of virtually no barriers except process difficulty. It's understandable why some people might want all barriers up, a truly self-found league, but I'm not sure how many of them would actually view such a league without stash sharing between characters. I'd love some reactions from self-found proponents on that point.

I would disagree on your point concerning the evil of flippers. For moral reasons, I think they leech the social good generated from genuine play without contributing back in equal part. And, as is often noted in business, the more advertising something needs the less essential is actually is. I love the idea of valuation variance as the basis of a strong economy, but without barriers it is susceptible to external influence, from market control to simple popularity. What I'm saying is that I don't think balance on its own can completely solve the problem even if it provides an excellent foundation.

For the sake of discussion, let's assume a popular position I don't agree with: flipping is bad.

If so, the way to minimize flippers is to minimize barriers, not to erect more. Flippers feed off of the inconveniences of trading, the unwillingness of the original farmer and end user to find each other. The more smooth trading UI becomes, the more people are willing to put in the reduced effort to connect with the right buyer, or the right seller.

Right now, what flippers do for the Path of Exile economy is bring added convenience to the system, in exchange for profits. With improved trading UI, they'd still do this, just less so; the nature of people ensures there will always be opportunities to increase convenience for a price (this is the core of why I think they are non-bad). No matter how convenient it is made, some players simply have no interest in finding the right price, they're too impatient, so flipping will always exist. But increasing the baseline level of free convenience is step one to minimizing the impact of flipping.

I disagree with Goetz that the addition of PA has resulted in less parties, at least without some data. My own assumption is that significant particle issues, widespread use of mjolner and cast on cancer and general idiocy you get in parties are probably stronger reasons.

I get your point Scrotie, but flipping is an issue here because it can't easily be identified so everyone is presumed to be a ripoff artist. When you go to your local 'trash and treasure' sale or look on craigslist for an item, you know you're more likely to get someone just trying to sell an item they'd bought, probably at a loss. When you go to a shop, you know the shopkeeper is holding some risk on inventory and is focused purely on net profit after risk and depreciation.

When someone wants 55 fuses for their exalt, I have no way of knowing whether they're intending to carry the risk of holding fuses while prices change or just wanting to rip me off to get fusings to vorici a 6-link.

(proper, in-game) Shops would help with that, at least.

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davidnn5 wrote:

I disagree with Goetz that the addition of PA has resulted in less parties, at least without some data. My own assumption is that significant particle issues, widespread use of mjolner and cast on cancer and general idiocy you get in parties are probably stronger reasons.

I get your point Scrotie, but flipping is an issue here because it can't easily be identified so everyone is presumed to be a ripoff artist. When you go to your local 'trash and treasure' sale or look on craigslist for an item, you know you're more likely to get someone just trying to sell an item they'd bought, probably at a loss. When you go to a shop, you know the shopkeeper is holding some risk on inventory and is focused purely on net profit after risk and depreciation.

When someone wants 55 fuses for their exalt, I have no way of knowing whether they're intending to carry the risk of holding fuses while prices change or just wanting to rip me off to get fusings to vorici a 6-link.

(proper, in-game) Shops would help with that, at least.

I wasn't specific on the PA part and the reduction in less parties, that comes from multiple reasons only one of which was the PA changes.

Parties decreasing has to do with EVERYTHING they've changed not just one piece. Perma allocation means that the "stress" of parties is removed but as such so is the "excitement" of "stealing" or sharing loot. Maybe its more the evolution of the game moreso then anything else, but the change defiantly had an inpact on parties in PoE.

Rolls eyes on using the term proper, its an objective term that is fully open to interpretation.

IMO nothing wrong with flippers, if people don't want to do research on rates or values of things they are the ones at fault in the scenario. The only time IMO it isn't OK is if someone specifically rips off a new player, but stuff like that happens in every game so no point in changing the whole game because of it.

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grant_m wrote:

Good as is.

Care to elaborate?