Whyyyy is there no auction house?

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goetzjam wrote:

Forcing player interaction might be the only way to achieve it though. If it was as simple as just doing it X way or Y way, without automation downsides then it probably would have already been done and I haven't even seen a suggestion that adds anything to trading that we don't already have (that doesn't include automation)

I'm sure we could get a good brainstorm going, if we knew what the devs want from the trading system.

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goetzjam wrote:

Not having a global market isn't necessary a bad thing, why should players that don't play when you do have access to stuff you have, why should you earn money on stuff when you aren't even around to complete a transaction, stores don't make money when they are closed or if they do they have to actually deliver the goods\services later.

An ingame integrated system would encourage more participation, as long as it doesn't add the automation I'd have no problem with it, but at what point do you think GGG is going to add a system the forums\3rd party apps help facilitate just to be more "convenient" for new players.

A bigger market is always better for trading, just like a bigger playerbase is always better for online play. If you're going to have trading, it's always best to let as many people trade with each other as possible. And because of that, trade being convenient should be a goal unto itself, because the less effort it takes to trade, the more people will do it.

Of course, it's possible that GGG already have their own plan for better in-game trading, but instead they're focusing their resources on other areas of the game that aren't as easy for the community to do for themselves (e.g. content creation or balancing). Ultimately it's their call, but I'd just like to point out how the in-game party screen has been almost completely taken over by classifieds: there is clearly a demand from players for highly visible in-game trading.

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goetzjam wrote:

The importance of player interaction is multileveled, even if its as simple as just going to their hideout you can see those MTX's, the character mtx's, ect. But its an online game as well, if everyone played solo then it would have been better off as an offline only game.

The question is, what do you get from forcing players to interact for a trade that you wouldn't get otherwise? I don't think I've ever been to a hideout so far that had anything other than trainers and crafting stations in it, and besides, players regularly go to each other's hideouts when doing maps anyway. I see much more of characters' customizations when I'm grouping with them, or hanging out in towns. Trading does nothing for player interaction that other features of the game don't already do in abundance.

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goetzjam wrote:

To do so with ease? Buying is stupid easy. Selling is more difficult if you either 1 dont have a forum template or two don't use one of the apps that basically do everything once you set it up for each league. I can (don't yet on this computer) have a shortcut that launches the shop program, logout macro, price check macro (or any other macros needed) then launch poe. Simply put the trade system is as easy as you make it, not as easy as GGG makes it, thats why IMO its pretty good. An AH is NOT a trade system, its a trade system replacement and one that has FAILED in games of this genre before, blame it on the RMAH, poor itemization or whatever you want, having easier access to items whenever for stupid cheap prices (which encourages undercutting) is NOT good.

I'll admit, I'm not hugely knowledgeable about trade/AH systems in other games. The only game I played that had a system like this was Dungeons & Dragons Online, which had a pretty simple, in-game-currency-only AH. And I can tell you, undercutting was definitely not a problem: top-tier crafting materials went for prices that took many in-game hours to scrape together. What I cannot tell you, is how many hours I spent just casually browsing the AH between quests, or how many items I put on there just to see if they'd sell. But if I had to use 3rd party tools every time I looted an item that I thought was maybe kinda valuable to someone, that number would have been a lot, LOT lower.

Every day in PoE, you can see people linking items in chat, asking if anyone wants to buy before they vendor them. That is an audience of a few dozen people at best, for about a minute until the message drops off the screen. Imagine if all those items could properly enter the economy by being exposed to potentially anyone, for hours or days straight. It would be a massive boost to the market.

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I'm sure we could get a good brainstorm going, if we knew what the devs want from the trading system.

Even without knowing what the devs want people can try to tackle the fact that a system that provides automation comes with too many negatives, as far as an ingame system if it doesn't work any differently then finding items using a search function, like poe.trade does and has a shop management interface similar to acquisition, then what value is a system adding for all that work. To me it doesn't appear to be that much as its already stuff you have access to do.

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A bigger market is always better for trading, just like a bigger playerbase is always better for online play. If you're going to have trading, it's always best to let as many people trade with each other as possible. And because of that, trade being convenient should be a goal unto itself, because the less effort it takes to trade, the more people will do it.

A bigger market IMO is not. Think of it this way, you can go to a town that has a population of 10k people, you will see a walmart, a few local shops and maybe 1 other large store. Go to a town of 100k and you will see sears, kmart, a mall with tons more stores. Those smaller places can't really compete if they don't have the stuff to sell as they want to get a better value for their stuff, because they do less volume they need more markup to compete.

Basically an increased accessibity to trading will lead to inflation and a system that wouldn't have limitations on the amount of trades will lead to people that have the stash space taking and making the most out of it, because why not list all the items if you don't have to put forth the effort to leave a map to complete the transaction, which will lead to more and more stuff getting cheaper and cheaper.

TBH I rather have a D3 like drop what you need, with minor trading then a fully fledged AH. No one has EVER made an argument on how an AH is necessary for PoE, at least not successfully, I mean how can they when poe is a successful game without one?

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Of course, it's possible that GGG already have their own plan for better in-game trading, but instead they're focusing their resources on other areas of the game that aren't as easy for the community to do for themselves (e.g. content creation or balancing). Ultimately it's their call, but I'd just like to point out how the in-game party screen has been almost completely taken over by classifieds: there is clearly a demand from players for highly visible in-game trading.

The party board, especially in standard is full because its an easy way to list your item for people that may not use poe.trade (yet).

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The question is, what do you get from forcing players to interact for a trade that you wouldn't get otherwise? I don't think I've ever been to a hideout so far that had anything other than trainers and crafting stations in it, and besides, players regularly go to each other's hideouts when doing maps anyway. I see much more of characters' customizations when I'm grouping with them, or hanging out in towns. Trading does nothing for player interaction that other features of the game don't already do in abundance.

Just because the interaction from players happens under other circumstances doesn't mean that the trade part doesn't help. I don't play with nearly as much different people as I trade with the chances of you seeing something someone else has from trading is MUCH higher due to the volume of trades people typically do.

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I'll admit, I'm not hugely knowledgeable about trade/AH systems in other games. The only game I played that had a system like this was Dungeons & Dragons Online, which had a pretty simple, in-game-currency-only AH. And I can tell you, undercutting was definitely not a problem: top-tier crafting materials went for prices that took many in-game hours to scrape together.

Problem is items in this is RNG not a grind based where you can just gather rare things from doing a certain thing, aside from like atziri.

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What I cannot tell you, is how many hours I spent just casually browsing the AH between quests, or how many items I put on there just to see if they'd sell. But if I had to use 3rd party tools every time I looted an item that I thought was maybe kinda valuable to someone, that number would have been a lot, LOT lower.

Those 3rd party tools can list complete stash tabs as prices instead.

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Every day in PoE, you can see people linking items in chat, asking if anyone wants to buy before they vendor them. That is an audience of a few dozen people at best, for about a minute until the message drops off the screen. Imagine if all those items could properly enter the economy by being exposed to potentially anyone, for hours or days straight. It would be a massive boost to the market.

Which can be solved by an ingame system that doesn't have automation.

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goetzjam wrote:

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Every day in PoE, you can see people linking items in chat, asking if anyone wants to buy before they vendor them. That is an audience of a few dozen people at best, for about a minute until the message drops off the screen. Imagine if all those items could properly enter the economy by being exposed to potentially anyone, for hours or days straight. It would be a massive boost to the market.

Which can be solved by an ingame system that doesn't have automation.

Yes and that system is called Report. Every day I see dozens of people pulling up that shit on global and it is blatantly breaking the rules just to make trading their crap easier. Now how good a system can this perfect game have if people are breaking the rules all the time to circumvent the system? Please explain to me why trading on global is the most profitable way? Why is it not punished more severely when it is obviously against the rules?

Oh wait it was you goez, nevermind.

Bots, RMT websites that control/profit from said bots, private players with too much time on their hands and a pention for underhandedness, easier market manipulation, easier trading means deflation and thus a shittier economy, D3 stigma.

"3rd party programs" are community made tools, they keep the community engaged and active and help contribute/fill in the gaps to a F2P Indy game, they are easy to use, but not quite as mindless as an AH, thankfully.

The auction house in Diablo 3 sucked because in a game that lives and dies on gear it meant Blizzard tuned it extremely high and alienated the majority of people who never got anything and couldn't afford millions of gold for a minor upgrade.

The auction house on Wow on the other hand works extremely well for the most part.

It can be done, it would force a major re-tune of the crap 'currency' idea this game uses and also drop rates. Making gear BOP would also be an option, which could even be used to improve crafting. Make regular drops tradable but anything modified is bound to the account. Then they could put the crafting chances to something reasonable instead of 1/500-1/5000 chances of success.

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Yidam_ wrote:

Bots, RMT websites that control/profit from said bots, private players with too much time on their hands and a pention for underhandedness, easier market manipulation, easier trading means deflation and thus a shittier economy, D3 stigma.

"3rd party programs" are community made tools, they keep the community engaged and active and help contribute/fill in the gaps to a F2P Indy game, they are easy to use, but not quite as mindless as an AH, thankfully.

All of those already exist as problems in this game. Their shitty avoidance of an auction house did not prevent it.

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themrpid10 wrote:

The auction house in Diablo 3 sucked because in a game that lives and dies on gear it meant Blizzard tuned it extremely high and alienated the majority of people who never got anything and couldn't afford millions of gold for a minor upgrade.

The auction house on Wow on the other hand works extremely well for the most part.

It can be done, it would force a major re-tune of the crap 'currency' idea this game uses and also drop rates. Making gear BOP would also be an option, which could even be used to improve crafting. Make regular drops tradable but anything modified is bound to the account. Then they could put the crafting chances to something reasonable instead of 1/500-1/5000 chances of success.

The D3 AH can't be summarized in just that one statement you made, but ultimately ARPG games typically live or die on the ability to access gear or find upgrades. Because finding upgrades from drops wasn't really possible the AH caused a lot of issues for people.

An AH in WoW works for multiple reasons to name a few, account bound items on equip, rare materials that can be found that doesn't rely much on RNG, but rather completing a set\series of task. Its also not an ARPG, gear matters, but it isn't one of the most important elements in that genre of game. Not to mention every x-pac increases the level cap and makes previous gear pretty much obsolete.

Poe's currency system is not crap, its pretty unique and offers a fresh perspective on gear improvements from alternative currency instead of gold, which ultimately always gets inflated in pretty much every game that has it.

All of Poe's drops and currencies are based off of people trading, I understand some people don't like it but the game would be fundamentally different if it wasn't like this.

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All of those already exist as problems in this game. Their shitty avoidance of an auction house did not prevent it.

If automation was a factor it would be that much easier (and that much more worth the effort) of controlling the market and access to items. Lets also not forget that GGG can track every transaction now adding automation will increase transactions significantly.

Market manipulation is possible now, but isn't as simple as push 1 button 5 times to buy all the items under the rate which you want to undercut.

Bots that farm stuff are much different then bots that buy items under certain thresholds, automation enables the later to work, while the first one is an entirely different issue.

So the avoidance of an AH does prevent many or make them that much more difficult now then if there was an AH.

I don't know if the devs listen to folks like goetz or if they actually give a crap on what is said on these boards, but that guy is one of the main reasons that this game sucks, even for an ARPG veteran like me: it is trade-centric and at the same time it lacks any sort of in-game trading facility. I have lost track of how many times I've whispered ppl who appear online at poe.trade only to find (after God knows how long) that they actually aren't.

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goetzjam wrote:

*truncated to save screen space*

Let me just make it clear that automation is the smaller issue here. I think it would be great to have, but I could live without it. The real problem is visibility. Currently there is no in-game feature that lets you advertise items to a large audience for an extended period of time, and consequently no way for players to have a good browse through everyone else's items for sale. Having one would be a very good thing for trading.

Regarding the concerns that a bigger market would cause inflation. It might, if the influx of new people to trading leads to more supply than demand. But I would wager that the market would receive more buyers than sellers, so prices wouldn't plummet. And even if they did, remember that GGG has complete control over the economy via drop rates. If they felt that some items are falling below their intended value, they could just decrease the drop rates on them and cut off supply at the source.

And yes, a bigger market is always better, that's why a global economy has evolved on this planet. More people selling means a better chance that someone will be stocking what you're looking for, leading to more people going to the market to buy. And as demand increases, it becomes increasingly difficult for a handful of hardcore farmers to completely satisfy it all. After all the Sears' and KMarts have run out of stock, people will move on to buy from whoever has goods left, even at a higher price. And really, don't underestimate good old fashioned human greed. There will always be people selling at above-average prices.

What I'd like to see is: You list an item for sale in your stash. It doesn't leave your stash, it just gets "red out" to indicate it's listed, and the seller can type whatever they desire in a text box to accompany the listing. The seller can cancel the listing (and return all bids) at any time by just moving the item from its place in the stash. Listings have no expiration, but once listed there is a tool potential buyers can use to search for your item with filters for item stats and the time the listing began, with a default of "3 days" to prevent players from finding old, abandoned listings (unless they specifically are looking for them). The one thing it wouldn't let you search by would be buyout price. The potential buyers can bid on the item, with bids which are held by the system but can be retracted and returned by the bidder at any time. Seller can accept bids manually, completing the transaction (creating a remove-only stash tab with the winning bid), or when they place the listing they can set up one or more conditions in an expression builder to automatically accept bids matching specific criteria. Each bidder's bids are hidden from bidders other than themselves, and buyers cannot see the conditions under which sellers automatically accept bids, or if they choose to have such conditions at all. Naturally, at no time would seller and bidders need to be online simultaneously for this system to work.

I imagine under this system poe.trade might still exist to parse ~b/o tags in the description boxes for listings, and allow players to search by buyout (assuming they're willing to use a third-party tool). However, this would never be fully reliable, as a seller could write "~b/o 8c" in the text box and set their actual condition for automatic bid acceptance to 6c. I don't think it's necessarily bad to have third-party trading sites for PoE, I just think the base trading tools which you can access in-game should be functional enough where it doesn't feel like third-party sites are absolutely mandatory.