List your AH fears

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Fluffy_Puppies wrote:

God damn would I love it. It would add a whole new world of gameplay for players like myself who already play forex like a game in real life xD

No thank you. Spare me that bullshit in PoE.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

To continue the poker analogy: implementing an easier-to-use trading system is a lot like adding online poker to the traditional venues of casino and homegame poker. Its effect on the "flipper metagame" wouldn't be to give the wealth to everyone -- no matter where you go most poker players are net losers and this wouldn't change. But online poker nevertheless revolutionized the professional poker community, raising the skill bar for how good one had to be and giving people who didn't previously have access the chance they needed to become epic.

The poker analogy only works if you assume that poker is one of two ways in the entire world to make a living, the other being dairy farmer or something analogous to farming PoE items normally and selling them as you find them.

Automated, easily accessible trading would quickly devolve into "peasant farmer" versus "flipping tycoon". As already noted, item value would plummet from the saturated market. People that casually sell a few items a day now will quickly find that they have to sell more and more items to make the same currency that they used to and it'll get to a point where killing monsters feels like an enormous waste of time. Those people either end up trying to be flipping tycoons, carry on being peasants, or just quit. This is precisely what happened in D3. People either ended up staring at the AH screen all day, played the game with little-to-no economic participation, or quit in frustration.

Automated trading promotes flipping far more than it discourages it. It also trivializes the #1 driving force in the game (item acquisition) much in the same way that taking combos out of fighting games would trivialize a huge portion of that genre. And although current trading already can trivialize PoE, it requires some effort and time. You get what you put in.

All these anti trade comments are extremely comical.

I've never seen so much isolationist BS in one thread ever. It sounds like half of you were held at gunpoint by someone over the internet and forced to empty your stash to a thief to accomplish the "trade". 90% trades I do are simply people paying the b/o. Hi WTB x for 2c, your hideout. Thanks! Done. Easy.

And for the people that say trade "isn't worth your time" it takes like an hour to setup a shop and 2 seconds to click "online". Is it really that hard? Blinded by it or not, You are at an extreme disadvantage by not trading and listing your items. I just find it so pathetic that the majority of people would rather complain about it then take the 1 hour it takes to to learn the systems. I mean you set it up, play the game as usual and get automatic pms from buyers...sounds like a no brainer to me. If i'm online for even 3-4 hours in one session i'm probably selling atleast 20-30c worth of stuff on a bad day. Passively. No effort. When I log on I usually have one request from a person that friends me for a trade.

Simply put, an Auction House will never happen. GGG has said that they do not want to take the social aspect out of trading to leave the door open for bartering. They are not adverse to an offline trading system, but an AH will never exist like it does in MMOs where it is totally automated without interaction with the player.

Also inefficient markets are INTERESTING, AH makes everything boring and calculated. Who wants no spreads on items and everything priced uniformly? ZzZzz.

TLDR: The longer you wait to learn how to trade, the worse off you are. The system isn't going to change for you, you need to adapt to the system and learn how to work it, just like everything else. No food stamps in Wraeclast people.

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JahIthBer89 wrote:

As already noted, item value would plummet from the saturated market.

It's important to specify the "common items" part. Basically, items below the median of "what people have equipped on their characters" would decrease in value (a lot), while items above the median would increase in value (a lot, but limited by PoE's currency design because you can use currency to create gear directly, if necessary). Of course, this median changes as players get better and better gear, and a more efficient trading system allows players on average to get better gear faster.

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JahIthBer89 wrote:

People that casually sell a few items a day now will quickly find that they have to sell more and more items to make the same currency that they used to and it'll get to a point where killing monsters feels like an enormous waste of time.

You'll have some people who feel this way, but not everyone. The type of items people commonly farm will sell for less, but be easier to sell. This means that if you're the type of player who currently has a somewhat even time division between farming and trading, it'll feel like it takes more items sold to make the same amount of currency. On the other hand, if you're the type of player who farms a lot but currently doesn't trade at all because it's a pain in your ass, you might trade where you didn't before.

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JahIthBer89 wrote:

This is precisely what happened in D3. People either ended up staring at the AH screen all day, played the game with little-to-no economic participation, or quit in frustration.

I wouldn't say that's precisely what happened in D3. D3 had gold as a currency, the type of hyperinflation which occurred in D3 literally couldn't happen here. PoE's currency design sets a hard cap on item value, a cap which would have been reached in D3-style conditions. Also, botted currency was a far more rampant and pervasive problem in D3 than it is in PoE. The mass botting of currency had a lot more to do with D3's economic meltdown than any other factor.

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JahIthBer89 wrote:

Those people either end up trying to be flipping tycoons, carry on being peasants, or just quit. [snip] Automated trading promotes flipping far more than it discourages it.

Depends how you mean it. If the IRS made it much easier to do personal income tax in the US, would this be a good thing or a bad thing for tax preparation services such as H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt? Overall, bad; people would be far more inclined to do their taxes themselves, rather than paying someone to do them for them. But I imagine the total number of tax returns received by the IRS would increase, because people who wouldn't do their taxes AND wouldn't pay someone else to do them would be more inclined to do so. In the same way, you could say automated trading encourages flipping, but discourages dedicated flippers. When everyone is their own flipper, no one is anyone else's flipper. Oh, and on that note: there are a lot more flipping tycoons in the current iteration of PoE there were in D3, proportional to the overall player populations, and the PoE flippers are a much stronger force. It's a good time to be H&R Block in PoE right now.

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JahIthBer89 wrote:

It also trivializes the #1 driving force in the game (item acquisition) much in the same way that taking combos out of fighting games would trivialize a huge portion of that genre.

I simply do not follow. Please explain better.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

It's important to specify the "common items" part. Basically, items below the median of "what people have equipped on their characters" would decrease in value (a lot), while items above the median would increase in value (a lot, but limited by PoE's currency design because you can use currency to create gear directly, if necessary). Of course, this median changes as players get better and better gear, and a more efficient trading system allows players on average to get better gear faster.

It isn't really a matter of how common or rare the items are. More people with price checks at their fingertips and the ability to sell an item with almost no input = more items of any type on the market = less value per item. As that "gear median" escalates, fewer and fewer items that a player finds become rewarding to find. I.e.: our time killing stuff feels less valuable.

Aside: the loss of intuitive pricing would also be a big shame, as I feel like the pricing advantage of having played many builds and knowing the nuances of various affix synergies is a well-earned one.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I wouldn't say that's precisely what happened in D3. D3 had gold as a currency, the type of hyperinflation which occurred in D3 literally couldn't happen here. PoE's currency design sets a hard cap on item value, a cap which would have been reached in D3-style conditions. Also, botted currency was a far more rampant and pervasive problem in D3 than it is in PoE. The mass botting of currency had a lot more to do with D3's economic meltdown than any other factor.

I wasn't really speaking to the gold hyperinflation so much as the time spent killing vs time spent on the AH. But the inflation we'd see in PoE would be the opposite of D3's currency inflation. Gear would constantly be inflating rather than the currency. While this would make finding currency more rewarding-feeling, it would also make finding good items far less frequent, because of my first point.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Depends how you mean it. If the IRS made it much easier to do personal income tax in the US, would this be a good thing or a bad thing for tax preparation services such as H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt? Overall, bad; people would be far more inclined to do their taxes themselves, rather than paying someone to do them for them. But I imagine the total number of tax returns received by the IRS would increase, because people who wouldn't do their taxes AND wouldn't pay someone else to do them would be more inclined to do so. In the same way, you could say automated trading encourages flipping, but discourages dedicated flippers. When everyone is their own flipper, no one is anyone else's flipper. Oh, and on that note: there are a lot more flipping tycoons in the current iteration of PoE there were in D3, proportional to the overall player populations, and the PoE flippers are a much stronger force. It's a good time to be H&R Block in PoE right now.

You have an odd habit of using real-world analogies as though they're in a vacuous parallel universe with wraeclast. Taxes are a fairly minor, but necessary element of most people's lives. People take care of their taxes once a year and continue on with their lives. It isn't a persistent thought in your mind at all times the way that item value/usefulness is while you're playing PoE.

A better (though still a major stretch) example would be the agriculture industry since everyone needs to eat. Technological advances and globalization have made mass food production and shipment easier and cheaper on the consumer's end. The result though, is that making a living farming is just about impossible unless you're in a farming family or just have a shit load of money to buy property. It'll be a bad time to run a farm stand in Auction house PoE.

It's impossible to know exactly how many flippers there are relative to the player base in either game, so it's probably best we both drop that.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I simply do not follow. Please explain better.

One of the key elements of PoE becomes painfully dull when you distill it down to a button click. There are a few different things that make PoE interesting: build theorycrafting, killing stuff, trading without a trade-o-matic menu (AH), etc. Fighting games also have different elements that make them appeal to people: zoning, footsies, meter management, combos, etc. Combos shouldn't be turned into a single button-press just because some people struggle with them and don't want to learn. Combos are very rewarding when you get the hang of them. PoE trading is very rewarding if you're willing to figure out its nuances.

Kind of a weird analogy if you don't play fighting games, I guess.

The question was raised but hasn't been answered. What is an auction house? Does every auction house operate in exactly the same manner?

The answer to the first is 'something we, the discussants, need to define before any intelligent debate can ensue'. The answer to the second is clearly no.

Talking about an auction house is pointless. It's a nebulous beast and everyone has their own version. In some people's versions there's a bad memory attached that leads to a gut reaction.

Many people want improved trade but would be willing to concede to not having an instantaneous one-click item transfer system. Many who are arguing against any change, even just bringing poe.trade into the game, often use this one-click-get-anything-in-the-world concept to raise fears about botting and the movement of all currency into flipmaster-central. As Scrotie has said, there's a few natural opposing forces to that.

Many of those forces we already see in operation. In theory people already amass vast amounts of currency off the backs of people like me. However, a few months ago I said 'eh, fuck it, I've got enough, rest can be self-crafted' and have been actively starving the economy of every usable orb possible. Can't take from me what I won't give. Equilibrium is another. This also already operates; if the effort involved in obtaining currency is considered less valuable than the time you have to spend, you won't list something, AH or otherwise. Which acts to push prices back up (with excess supply pushing prices down).

It's invariably presumed that an AH allows for no social interaction. Why? Surely if GGG can code an auction system, they can make bidding area as well as a buyout area? Or maybe every item would be biddable? Heck, they could make Ebay Lite and you might actually be able to send questions ("is that over ilvl 82?") prior to bidding and everyone would be able to see the answer. Wouldn't that be revolutionary!

However, no one can really say whether a change to trading arrangements is good or bad if the change isn't defined. "AH won't happen".. Ok, sure, but what does that actually mean? Are there things GGG can do that don't sit in the sphere of approaches Chris hates?

Presumably yes, given GGG is working on trade (let's set aside cynicism about the death of the universe happening first).

I don't fear an AH in this game. I fear being stuck with no substantial upgrade to the trade system for another year or longer. The game is still good though and GGG does a great job on a ton of assets, but uh yeah, the trade system (or lack of one) in a game that is all about items is kind of sad.

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JahIthBer89 wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Spoiler

It's important to specify the "common items" part. Basically, items below the median of "what people have equipped on their characters" would decrease in value (a lot), while items above the median would increase in value (a lot, but limited by PoE's currency design because you can use currency to create gear directly, if necessary). Of course, this median changes as players get better and better gear, and a more efficient trading system allows players on average to get better gear faster.

It isn't really a matter of how common or rare the items are. More people with price checks at their fingertips and the ability to sell an item with almost no input = more items of any type on the market = less value per item.

Not true. Unless you are willing to bet that, if we polled players who have played over 1000 hours of PoE on whether they were aware of poe.trade or not, that we would get the same answer as polling players who have played under 100 hours. When you make a trading system much easier, you get a dramatic increase in the "bottom 80%" population, and actually relative no increase in the "top 1%" population.

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JahIthBer89 wrote:

Aside: the loss of intuitive pricing would also be a big shame, as I feel like the pricing advantage of having played many builds and knowing the nuances of various affix synergies is a well-earned one.

poe.trade already works towards eliminating this, at least for relatively common items (items scarce enough to have no good equivalent still require some skill to price). Still, it's something I deliberately thought about when writing my "what I'd like to see is" section in my first post in this thread.

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JahIthBer89 wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Spoiler

If the IRS made it much easier to do personal income tax in the US, would this be a good thing or a bad thing for tax preparation services such as H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt? Overall, bad; people would be far more inclined to do their taxes themselves, rather than paying someone to do them for them. But I imagine the total number of tax returns received by the IRS would increase, because people who wouldn't do their taxes AND wouldn't pay someone else to do them would be more inclined to do so. In the same way, you could say automated trading encourages flipping, but discourages dedicated flippers. When everyone is their own flipper, no one is anyone else's flipper. Oh, and on that note: there are a lot more flipping tycoons in the current iteration of PoE there were in D3, proportional to the overall player populations, and the PoE flippers are a much stronger force. It's a good time to be H&R Block in PoE right now.

You have an odd habit of using real-world analogies as though they're in a vacuous parallel universe with wraeclast. Taxes are a fairly minor, but necessary element of most people's lives. People take care of their taxes once a year and continue on with their lives. It isn't a persistent thought in your mind at all times the way that item value/usefulness is while you're playing PoE.

A better (though still a major stretch) example would be the agriculture industry since everyone needs to eat. Technological advances and globalization have made mass food production and shipment easier and cheaper on the consumer's end. The result though, is that making a living farming is just about impossible unless you're in a farming family or just have a shit load of money to buy property. It'll be a bad time to run a farm stand in Auction house PoE.

You replaced my analogy where I said specializing in a task we all need to do will become more difficult, with an analogy where you say specializing in a task we all need to do will become more difficult. I mean, do you think the agriculture industry has more political power than it did before, when it employed a large percentage of the population, or now, when it's been culled to a handful of corporations relying mostly on automation?

If there is a point where your analogy differs from mine, it is that you believe a small number of the very biggest flippers will remain battered but still standing if an automated trading system is implemented, while the vast majority of flippers will be culled. Sounds reasonable to me.

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JahIthBer89 wrote:

One of the key elements of PoE becomes painfully dull when you distill it down to a button click. There are a few different things that make PoE interesting: build theorycrafting, killing stuff, trading without a trade-o-matic menu (AH), etc. Fighting games also have different elements that make them appeal to people: zoning, footsies, meter management, combos, etc. Combos shouldn't be turned into a single button-press just because some people struggle with them and don't want to learn. Combos are very rewarding when you get the hang of them. PoE trading is very rewarding if you're willing to figure out its nuances.

Kind of a weird analogy if you don't play fighting games, I guess.

I don't really play fighting games, but I happen to watch plenty of Maximiliian Dood on YouTube, so I imagine I could call myself a "fighting game spectator." Much in the way normal people might watch football or something.

In any case, it makes me wonder how you feel about the Killer Instinct reboot. My understanding is that autodoubles are essentially simplified combos, not quite simplified to the "single button press" level but still pretty basic. Then you have this whole complicated system of character-specific autodouble traits, manuals, combo breakers, counter breakers, etc. It definitely seems to me that the game has made deliberate efforts to bring combo strings to the everyday player, making the core of comboing easier, but also adding a whole lot of extra nuance and depth for more seasoned fighting game players to enjoy.

In the same way, I don't think it's correct to look at systems for asynchronous trade or automatic trade as automatically without nuance. Can they be designed without it? Yeah. Imagine KI without the combo breakers, where you could pretty much just mash buttons and get a decent combo with no skill whatsoever. (No stop imagining it because that's painful.) But I don't think it's fair at all to assume automation and nuance are mutually exclusive.

I mean seriously, nuance is awesome. I'm very pro-nuance. Any ideas you have for increasing nuance in asynchronous or automated trade would be welcome.

I am not sure why people are worrying that prices of items would plummet.

An AH provides more transparency for all buyers and sellers by placing all of them into one spot and also increases the ease of making a transaction. This would lead to greater market efficiency. Prices would reach market equilibrium based on their supply and demand.

Some prices on some items may plummet. But the actual value of items are not changing. Basically prices would just be more reflective of the current reality and be more sensitive to future changes in the game meta.

Items will be cheaper, and lower currencies will be cheaper. This is already taking place on standard. A windripper is currently going for 2 ex, an AH will make every item besides mirror level gear cheaper for everyone. Yes you will make less ex from trading, but you will need less ex to buy gear to begin with.

I bought a 6 link shavs some months ago for 65 ex, now they are going for 25-26ex. Who cares if the value of ex has doubled? The price of tier 1 uniques has more than halved.

An AH would continue this trend.