The state of the trade chat, and how can we fix it.

Am I the only one who thinks the trade chat is a mess? As it stands, people just spam it constantly with entire shops, making it basically impossible to have open since the spam is unbearable. In my opinion, the trade chat should be for simple and immediate things, like asking for 1 specific item that is readily available, like a specific currency. For big lists of items for sale you have the forums.

This leads to:
1. People who are potential buyers or sellers don't hang out in the chat because it is amazingly obnoxious while you play.
2. People might neglect the forums because they see all those things posted there, and might think that that is the way to go, and not even give it second thought.

For instance, today I wanted to get my hands on a normal or magic Vaal Spirit Shield. One would think that this would be a pretty easy thing to get, I just didn't have access to a lvl 60 area, so I couldn't get it myself. I wrote something like WTB white/magic Vaal Spirit Shield, and this was instantly buried under (over) about 3 lists of 10+ rares for sale. I wasn't even expecting to get an offer INSTANTLY, but somebody could see it and go like "oh, this guy wants this shield, so I'll keep an eye out."

Am I missing something here? I understand that I might be blinded by personal frustration, but I really think things could be better.

What are your opinions?

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Also, here's my personal guide to the trade chat:

SELLING

Do you want to sell many items?
1. Go to the forums
2. Make a shop or a selling thread.
3. Wait for the shekels

Do you want to sell an item? Ask yourself: "Is this an urgent trade? Do I need the orbs now to pay the mafia, or will they spare my legs for a couple more days?" If your answer is "no, this is not urgent," make a shop or a thread in the selling area of the forums. This way people who have their legs closely threatened can actually use the trade chat.

Is the single item you are trying to sell taking a while to sell? Stop spamming it. Just make a thread. If you want to sell things like uniques you're really better off just making a thread, because not everyone buys uniques every day. Generaly I would say just give a quick shout out in the trade chat and then put it up on the forums if nobody seems to be interested.

BUYING

Do you want to buy a readily available item like an orb of regret? That's what the trade chat is for, just don't spam it every 4 seconds and you're gold.

Do you want to buy something a bit more complex? Search the forums. If you cannot find what you need create a buying thread.

Above all else, DO NOT SPAM!

You will never fix trade chat unless people start getting muted/banned for spamming and using macros and GGG just don't have the resources to police it effectively.

Hope that someday they make trade chat obsolete.

The problem isn't the trade chat, it's the people.

This is a game about bartering, a trade chat is good for that. It is just very much misused.

The only thing trade wise I would like to see added to this game is a "Cash on delivery" system (and while you're at it, a mail system). Basically you could trade with people offline and when they logged on they would get their item and give you the agreed items in return. That would make forum trading SOOO MUCH EASIER. It's a real nightmare to match schedules...

Here's how it could work:
Player A sent a mail with the items to trade. Player B sees the email and adds HIS items to trade to the mail. The mail is sent back to Player A for confirmation or cancellation. If Player A confirms the trade, both players get what was agreed. If for some reason any player changes the one side of the trade the mail is sent back to the other person for confirmation.

This would be sooo cool. This game's pretty good, but with this it would probably be my favorite game hands down.

Just a simple idea:
Separate WTB and WTS channels would be a simple solution with minimal efforts.
Maybe a chat filter to drive people crazy :)

I hate the chat also.

I really don't like that idea because again, it takes away from the idea of bartering. This is the only game I've seen where we can actually trade items for other items, and I don't want to hurt that. If you don't want to spam you have the forums. Maybe they could add a noticeboard to up sales up in game, that would be cool. But I'd never advocate for automatic trading, that goes against the principle.

They said they wanted to focus on removing desynch and general 2.0 awakening stuff and pushed fixing trade to beyond that timeline. It's probably the next 'big thing' they'll do...although that doesn't mean it will come soon.

If I were going to address this with a minimal amount of work (band-aid) I would spin off your complaint and go for a supermarket style '10 items or less' division of the trade chat.

Make 2 trade chats - one unmoderated (basically the one we have now) for people to spam the same items every 12 seconds. And a new one for what you describe. Say 3 items or less are the max you can link, and you can only post in it once every 90 seconds. That seems like it would be a pretty calm chat.

Edit: The current trade chat does have its upsides, especially for players like me who go hard at the beginning of leagues, and likes the 1 week type races too. In these scenarios I like being able to browse 50 rares in 20 seconds when a race just starts and I can find something really good for me to progress with.

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YourDestiny666 wrote:

Just a simple idea:
Separate WTB and WTS channels would be a simple solution with minimal efforts.
Maybe a chat filter to drive people crazy :)

I hate the chat also.

You are damn right, i want WTS/WTB channel, please GGG listen to the people!!!

Or just limit the number of items you can link to something more reasonable like 2 or 3.

Most of my purchases are with POE Trade.
It will still be this way till the trade chat dont look like a chinese spam feast.