Infinite Bazaar: Immersive, Personal, Automated Trading

Seller post item on merchant master with an expected auction closing time. People searching poe.trade indexing these can then "/playerid shop" to visit the sellers hideout. Here, shoppers can browse merchant master and see the item they wanted, amongst other items, and place a bid. Their currency is placed in escrow until the person selling accepts any bid (either in game, through pathofexile.com, or hopefully in the future, from a smartphone app). The item or currency from (un)successful bid is returned to bidders and the seller receives currency.

I believe this takes care of everyones concerns and needs from trading. No automated auction house (GGG's main concern), ability for people to browse shops in game and participate in select rapid markets (path of economic players), and asynchronous trade (for casuals).

This is like Maplestory. I like it. I would see an item in someones shop and save up mesos just to buy it. please bring this. And guild quests. Guild achievments, and guild log, until then my guild just sits empty with no reason to have a guild, wasted guild stash tabs, sad.

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Leeet wrote:

[Edited by support]

You can make a shop and sell very easy with 0 stash tabs. You being LAZY has jack shit to do with p2w.

I don't get why you are being so hostile? Just because he mentioned a pay-to-win mechanic in a in-game trading system?

In any case, stash tabs are already pseudo-pay-to-win transactions. Having more stash tabs allows you to:

* Do more regal/chaos recipes at the same time
* Do chance recipes that would otherwise be completely illogical to even attempt (who is going to read every identified rare for the same names?)
* List more rares in trade that can be used for crafting but would otherwise be hard to sell
* Carry more currency without the need to convert any of it (for instance, no need to change jews to fusings or alts to jews to save space).

To elaborate on my terse post earlier:

GGG has already considered and partially developed player stores where sellers can set prices which allow asynchronous buys for the asking price. They shelved the project when they realized it wasn't something they wanted in the game. It seems that since shelving that idea GGG has no further plans for trading improvements. (I am too lazy to find GGG quotes for all of this, but I could if I wasn't.)

I believe asynchronous trading would be good for the game on the condition that item transfer is triggered when a seller accepts a bid, and never when a buyer pays a buyout price or when a timer expires. This isn't saying sellers shouldn't be able to set buyout prices - they should be able to type one in a description box, but bidders are free to ignore it, and trade won't occur until either seller manually accepts a bid*. It also isn't saying that expiration timers shouldn't exist - such timers should delete listings so neglected shops don't gum up searches, but the timer expiring shouldn't result in a "snipe"-able trade situation.

Furthermore, the current bid(s) of each listing, and the winning bids of previous listings, should be hidden (silent auction), so bidders make realistic offers instead of simply going one higher.

This, combined with holding active bids in escrow (bids can be retracted at any time), ensures an environment where the buyer, not just the seller, can use their trade savvy (or lack thereof) to their (dis)advantage, rather than just searching for the lowest number and clicking a button.

Could all the above principles be baked into an idea like the OP's, where shops are a space similar to (or perhaps straight-up are) Hideouts? Sure. But it needs that, because a D3-style buyout system shouldn't and won't ever happen in this game.

* On GGG's end of things they'll want to monitor for bots which auto-accept certain types of bids, ex: those at or above a buyout price. From the non-cheating player's perspective they shouldn't need to worry about it, assuming GGG is on point with security.

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whrsmycoffee wrote:

I love the idea and this is not the first time we've discussed this. I am however in favour of using the hideout instance for trading and not creating a separate one. A separate instance would not be decorated as much and might feel empty, having just one instance will make sure it feels like actually visiting someone's "home".

Totally agree. Please give us a reason to visit each others' hideouts besides popping in to do dailies. As it is now, they're just for show.

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CrypticksVoid wrote:

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Leeet wrote:

[Edited by support]

You can make a shop and sell very easy with 0 stash tabs. You being LAZY has jack shit to do with p2w.

I don't get why you are being so hostile? Just because he mentioned a pay-to-win mechanic in a in-game trading system?

In any case, stash tabs are already pseudo-pay-to-win transactions. Having more stash tabs allows you to:

* Do more regal/chaos recipes at the same time
* Do chance recipes that would otherwise be completely illogical to even attempt (who is going to read every identified rare for the same names?)
* List more rares in trade that can be used for crafting but would otherwise be hard to sell
* Carry more currency without the need to convert any of it (for instance, no need to change jews to fusings or alts to jews to save space).

Already gave an answer to this being "pseudo-pay-to-win."



If you think what I suggest is bad, that just makes you sound entitled thinking GGG should give everything for free.

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Orcasauce wrote:

"Always available" aka "offline" trade will lead to a mass influx of "put everything in the shop" antics, leading to massive deflation of item rarity and value. Finding loot will become pointless because you can just play "POE Auction House" and buy it, then you're done and can log off and never play again. It's precisely what killed D3 for a lot of people, and a key differentiating element between D3 and POE at launch. It will only lead to the mass devaluation of anything but the very top tier items. This, in effect, will gut the "POE Middle Class" of players, the people who live between one and twenty exalt orbs.

I for one would abhor this game with any form of "offline" trading. While I think poe.trade is a poor crutch, I don't think brining in the worst elements from D3 will fix anything.

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shadowscion wrote:

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SayyadinaAtreides wrote:

I very much like the idea, but as I recall GGG staff have stated previously that one of the things they prefer (and want to preserve) about trading is the interaction between people. That's already undermined by the existence of buyout prices on poe.trade

The logic about this is horrible. The typical interaction (waiting around hoping to get lucky) between players during trades is hardly important toward the goal of enhancing the game experience. The current trading system sucks, period.

It's less about the interaction, I feel, and more the nature of preventing scarcity from being devoured by infinite availability. At some point there would be so many items perpetually available that finding a new item would lose it's appeal. Imagine finally finding a 6L item, or a Shavs, and finding out it's worth a divine or as many alch shards as Charsi will spare. The game is about grinding gear, and anything to damage the appeal of that is going to be avoided like the plague by GGG. While I'm not trying to assert trading as it exists is the bee's knees, I am trying to say any option that allows people to sell items at any time, offline, while they sleep, even after they've quit the game, is a terrible terrible idea.

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goetzjam wrote:

No automated trades.

Amen.

''Finding loot will become pointless because you can just play "POE Auction House" and buy it, then you're done and can log off and never play again.'' lol, you can already do that

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gbjfrtswym wrote:

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CrypticksVoid wrote:

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Leeet wrote:

[Edited by support]

You can make a shop and sell very easy with 0 stash tabs. You being LAZY has jack shit to do with p2w.

I don't get why you are being so hostile? Just because he mentioned a pay-to-win mechanic in a in-game trading system?

In any case, stash tabs are already pseudo-pay-to-win transactions. Having more stash tabs allows you to:

* Do more regal/chaos recipes at the same time
* Do chance recipes that would otherwise be completely illogical to even attempt (who is going to read every identified rare for the same names?)
* List more rares in trade that can be used for crafting but would otherwise be hard to sell
* Carry more currency without the need to convert any of it (for instance, no need to change jews to fusings or alts to jews to save space).

Already gave an answer to this being "pseudo-pay-to-win."

Spoiler

You can create as many accounts as you want. Each account has 25 character slots and 4 stash tabs. I don't see the problem. I have six accounts personally. Buying extra stashtabs is just for convenience of not having to load up another instance of the game and trade with yourself. (And if you say some people can't run two instances of the game there are plenty of methods for making the game use less resources that aren't ideal for content but are fine for trading. Including making the game windowed and taking up less than a quarter of your screen space or turning off preloading or dropping the graphics as low as possible in the ini file. You're just trading with yourself after all.)

If you think what I suggest is bad, that just makes you sound entitled thinking GGG should give everything for free.

I think your view is skewed. It's really difficult to do chance recipes over several accounts. Existing software for doing chance recipes currently only works with one account stash, not several.

Furthermore, your method of several accounts is, as you hint, not an option for some people with poor performance laptops--regardless of how much less resources you can cause the game to consume.

Finally, you're running under the assumption that I think pseudo-pay-to-win is bad--the premise you in fact have. I think paying to get some advantages in-game is fine, how else would GGG make a free game? I am not entitled to anything, other than stating the fact that all of these microtransactions aren't fully "ethical" in the sense that none of them are pay-to-win, since some of them indeed are.

I skipped most of the thread, but brilliant idea! This would probably be the best option assuming the developers actually do want to make trading easier. I wouldn't be too concerned about p2w - in fact, if done right, it would make stash tabs even less p2w. By "done right," I mean instead of reading stash tab names, which would be error-prone anyways, just select stash tabs from a drop-down menu at the NPC. I'm no programmer, but I would assume that would be easier to code, more reliable, and less p2w than ever before.

Why is it less p2w than current system, you ask? Currently, if you want to make an alt account for trading (i.e. if you can't shell out cash for stash tabs), you have to log out and back in every single time you want to make a trade. With the newly suggested system, one would only need to do that when you want to collect the currency.

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CrypticksVoid wrote:

I think your view is skewed. It's really difficult to do chance recipes over several accounts. Existing software for doing chance recipes currently only works with one account stash, not several.

Furthermore, your method of several accounts is, as you hint, not an option for some people with poor performance laptops--regardless of how much less resources you can cause the game to consume.

Finally, you're running under the assumption that I think pseudo-pay-to-win is bad--the premise you in fact have. I think paying to get some advantages in-game is fine, how else would GGG make a free game? I am not entitled to anything, other than stating the fact that all of these microtransactions aren't fully "ethical" in the sense that none of them are pay-to-win, since some of them indeed are.

Difficulty or not, it doesn't matter as it is still possible. People are paying for convenience.

Those that have laptops that cannot run two instances after doing all of the tricks that are listed on reddit, probably aren't able to play the game normally, so that's not really a huge market being affected by that.

I believe any form of pay-to-win is bad, "psuedo" or not. GGG is making money off the game because people are willing to spend money on something they enjoy. Also a lot of the amazing art assets are micro transactions. There are plenty of reasons for people to give GGG money for the amazing game they are designing and for the servers they are constantly hosting.

I think the biggest issue is you consider this an advantage instead of a convenience and time saver. I do not see extra stash tabs as an advantage. Stash tabs are just extremely convenient and useful.