List your AH fears
" I think this is a very important point. If prices were to plummet so low that nobody finds it worthwhile to put anything up for sale anymore, then the natural result is that prices would start to rise again as supply dwindles. As prices rise, more people will be willing to sell. The price fluctuations would find a natural equilibrium that reflects actual values. The only real change would be that the total market will be larger because the barrier to entry would be lower and more players would participate. The 'sky is falling' predictions that the trade system would somehow collapse due to ever-decreasing prices just don't ring true to me. - here's my sig
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PoE has an interesting, yet terrible, economic system. It has base values for the currency so players can't establish market value beyond certain minimums, ie nobody can offer rates worse than vendor rates and expect to get any/many customers. This locks in a fair chunk of the currency to certain base values and causes the ones typically that can't be acquired by vendors to balloon out of control, every 3 months or so I go back to standard and laugh my arse off at the conversion rates of exalted orbs and how many exalts you need for the higher end rares.
This 'egalitarian' economic system really hasn't done anything to achieve economic stability, MMO/ARPG economies have the same core problem, the inflow significantly outpace the outflow and there is no real difference between having usable droppable currencies like gold, silver, copper, etc and just having orbs sold by vendors at set prices. You just have the added hassle of trying to flip orbs you have in surplus for the ones you have a lack of. The pinnacle of the PoE economy is the first few weeks of a new league, that is when it's at its glorious best, when the currency is scarce, you can find great value, even the mostly junk uniques have value because people are using the crappy uniques because the game isn't flooded with better quality rares and uniques. If PoE had pretty much Dark Shrine type length leagues and no default leagues then the economic system would be brilliant, you would need to increase the drop rate of the scarcer orbs/uniques, but the economy works in a short league with scarce currency and short-time frame. The problem are the default leagues, and like all good sewage systems, the crap has to flow somewhere... My major gripe with trading, especially with the wide variety of items that jewels introduced, is trying to find something for sale and someone online who is selling it. Trying to find someone who has what you want and is on at the same time as you are. This system is obnoxious to the fact that different time zones exist and relying on being on at the same time as someone else is problematic. I don't think an AH where you could list items for buyouts with a ceiling on 10 chaos would hurt the game, it would just move the huge volume of junk off the trade channels and people could acquire these low value items without the need to deal with other people. "Sorry dude, can you leave your map so I can buy this piece of crap for 2 alts..." Who wants to be flipping burgers in an ARPG? :P When I played SWG, it relied on player crafted items for almost everything and it had a AH system with a currency cap plus you could access vendor npcs at the homes of players. That was probably the greatest crafting experience in a game I have ever experienced and the variety was so wide and specialised that your reputation as a crafted and acquiring quality resources and experimentation was the path to success and the quality raw materials were scarce. That game was well ahead of it's time for it's depth and sophistication, sadly, the technology didn't exist to execute it well and Sony rushed it's release and turned it into a mockery before killing it off. The value of a lot of high end items is subjective, it is where you can expect to have most of the haggling experience, for minor currency conversion and low end item selling it becomes cumbersome dealing with the existing mechanics. The thing I like best about /trade 1 is that I can get shit done with quickly then be gone as quickly as humanly possible. "I want this for that, now." it gets done right away and i can turn chat off. It works... but is cumbersome. I'd be happier dealing with a vendor, as handy as poe.xyz is, it fundamentally highlights the flaws of the game with the lack of tools to connect buyers and sellers in-game without having to utilise external tools. I shouldn't have to need to surf the web to trade, it is as simple as that. | |
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Why trading has to be difficult
Look at the old Diablo 3 AH. It was much easier to buy and sell items than in PoE. What happen over time? Very good items became more expensive and other items became cheaper. Player collect currency (gold) to buy items in AH instead of trying to loot better items. And the worst: You got much more gold by trading in AH (-> item flipping) as by killing monsters = playing the game. I think this was the strongest reason why Blizzard canceled the D3 AH. Maybe the drop chances in PoE are even worse than in old D3 because of the high random factor. But the drop chance doesn't matter: Every player finds many items which are weaker than the items he/she uses. This ratio is getting even "worse" at higher levels and when wearing better items. That's a "rule" in every hack&slay I know. One "high" (and busy) player can easily euip many "lower" players. And if there's an easy way to trade items this will be happen. Good items don't disappear from the game (execept hardcore deaths), so the item pool is increasing over time and prices go down. (In WoW equipped items become "sould bound" and couldn't be sold to other players. One methode to reduce tradeable items.) My conclusion: If there is no way to take a lot of items out of the game trading must be time consuming and difficult or it would damage the game like it happened in D3. Today nearly all items are sold to a npc vendor because trading isn't easy. |
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" Wow to limit AH to 10 chaos would actualy be really great and solve a lot of things without creating any of the shit that GGG is worried about. Really great idea |
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I'm also opposed to the fact that we have to leave the game in order to be able to properly buy or sell something.
It doesn't seem hard to me for GGG to just allow us to to right click an item in the stash and click 'place in shop' which would give it a visual indicator (yellow border or so) and mention the price you set it when hovering over it. That would help already much with checking the price of an item when you want to sell it (instead of being obligated to go over to Procurement, search for the item and check its price, having to go back into the game and having to search for the item again). An in-game shop isn't too important because there aren't many UI improvements that can be made to make it easier to buy an item. Just an in-game tip or so that tells new players that they can go to poe.trade if they want to buy an item would be fine. It's the fact that selling items is so incredibly tedious and could be so much improved that I really don't want to bother with it any more. And that's a shame because it's a very important part of PoE. And missing the trading part is a shame and might make me quit in the long run. Now I have a character almost at level 90, it's kinda necessary to actually trade and I feel my progress is stagnating even more because of it. Oh and also: in-game wiki support. Make us press F1 on an item and redirect us to the wiki-page of the item. Incredibly easy to implement, would make it so much more comfortable (especially for new players). Great PoE utilities! Aura Calculator: https://poe.mikelat.com/ Vorici Chromatic Calculator: http://siveran.github.io/calc.html One-shot calculator: https://goo.gl/IJhYDx Last edited by didii#2669 on Dec 3, 2015, 6:06:30 AM
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" But how is that different to what happens now? After the first week or two of league most items become vendor trash while the better items inflate as people accumulate currency. It's due to supply & demand not how easy it is to trade them. Is it a bad thing that non top tier items get cheaper? Sure you make less but then you need less to kit out a new character. Does it actually make a difference that the item that you couldn't afford 1 week into the league for 1 exalt now costs 10 exalts a month into the league and you still can't afford it. The best top tier items will always be out of reach of the average player no matter how easy/hard trading is. |
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I like how often people express that "Playing the AH" would be the best way to make currency, therefore AH is bad.
It's already common knowledge that if you want to make currency your time is best spent trading. The very problem you fear the accessible-trade boogeyman will bring has been the reality of PoE since before I even started playing. |
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As a fun mental exercise, lets say I sprinkle some magic dust around, and all indexing sites/tools are disabled. Your only options for trading are trade chat, posting on the forum (and manually checking shop threads for items), and posting on the party board.
You now have essentially no way to search for an item, you may only stumble across it. Would that make trading better or worse? A comprehensive, easy on the eyes loot filter: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1245785 Need a chill group exiles to hang with? Join us: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1251403 Last edited by Antnee#4468 on Dec 3, 2015, 8:04:28 AM
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Everything will be cheaper and all these currency kings will cry so much on forums normal topics wont be on first page...
IGN: PojzonAbyss
[3.2] Immortal Indigon Poet's Pen Hirophant - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2129766 [3.1] Yamata No Orochi - Oni-Goroshi Jugg http://poeurl.com/bHB9 [2.4] The True Queen Of The Forest - Poison LA/BR Pathfinder http://poeurl.com/M6u [Retired] |
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" The PRO-AH'ers will actually quit the game as they do not have the AH topic to talk about on the forums anymore or realize it wasn't actually the lack of an AH that meant they couldn't sell their awesome "stuff" Recruiting for Archnemesis League/Siege of the Atlas!
Umbra Exiles: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3244875 The Official Path of Exile Guild Directory: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1192567 |
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