Thoughts on trading's place in ARPGs

Let's just get the TL;DR out of the way first.

• Trade should be asynchronous, instead of requiring both parties to the trade to be online simultaneously.
• Trade should be bidding based, not buyout based.

I. Why Allow Trade, instead of self-found only?

From an ARPG game design perspective, trading is an alternative progression system with a self-regulating catch-up mechanic. All of those terms are important, so let's go over them.

First off, it's an alternative to normal gameplay. Like chocobo racing, Triple Triad or Blitzball from Final Fantasies VII, VIII, and X respectively, it's a minigame inserted into a RPG which provides a change of pace and a distraction from the usual gameplay. Whether or not this change-up is welcome or not is debatable, and dependent upon the design of the minigame. Indeed, minigames are themselves games and game design concepts apply to them just as they apply to full games.

Second, it's a progression system, using one of the same rewards as the default progression system of farming - that is, items. As such, players are going to weigh in their minds whether they progress better farming, or progress better trading; this means it's important for developers to consider the balance between the two in order to make the choice between the two progression systems nonobvious.

Third, it's a catch-up mechanic. I know a lot of the trade-haters tend to focus on the flipper kings who represent a fraction of 1% of the trading population, but the main thing trading does is this: if you take a break from the game for a few days or a week, or you start a new league a little late, other people are still farming potential upgrades for you, upgrades which will have lower and lower prices the further behind you are. This, in turn, gives players a chance to catch up, providing they're savvy traders. And that's the experience for many, not just a few aberrations.

Finally, it's self-regulating. A lot of catch-up mechanics require a lot of work for developers to maintain, and set lines which can seem arbitrary and unfair. Trading doesn't have this issue, because it relies on free-market forces to determine how cheap or expensive an upgrade will be for a player. Unlike some poorly designed catch-up mechanics, it doesn't work so well that players who miss time can easily overtake the top dogs; you would need a large amount of skill to overtake another player if you only put in a fraction of his playtime, but trading does make it at least possible.

Trading is a huge boon to the segment of your community which is hardcore in mindset, but casual in terms of time commitment. And for a free-to-play ARPG, it would be madness not to embrace trading; it caters precisely to the demographic which is paying your bills.

The third and fourth points are, essentially, the reasons why trading is desirable to put into an ARPG. Although there is some logic to the decision to make an ARPG self-found only, one of the disadvantages of that choice is that competitions are much more likely to be decided by raw time input, such that whoever no-lifes it hardest comes in first. While trading doesn't eliminate this entirely (nor would it be desirable to do so; putting in time should count for something), it does add an extra dimension, and can help savvy new players gear up more efficiently so they can party play with established players who introduce them to the game. And it does this without introducing excessive demands on developers to upkeep the system to keep it fair, because the developers can count on market forces to keep the economy behaving in a predictable manner.

The first two points are where the problems arise. Trading is a minigame with game design issues of its own, and it is a progression system with balance considerations when contrasted with the default progression system of traditional ARPG looting.

Let's tackle balance first.

II. Why there shouldn't be an Easy Button for PoE trading

Let me start by reiterating: trading should be a catch-up mechanic. If you're the ten-thousandth character to enter Act 3 Merciless and you start shopping for upgrades, there shouldn't be any real balance between your options for a few Chaos, and self-farmed upgrades. Trading should win there, hands-down. That's its job. If you're all into the self-found ethos, that's fine, but the reason to add trading in the game is to give those late bloomers a chance for an extreme gear progression boost (which, in turn, should result in an extreme XP and farming progression boost).

That said, it's very important that this imbalance does not extend to the entirety of the population. At some point along the power curve of an ARPG's population, it's important that there is a balance shift, and attempting to shop for upgrades becomes tedious enough that trading is not an overwhelming advantage, assuming it's an advantage at all. (It probably still would be, but the margins could be narrowed to make the decision near-insignificant.)

This is why trading in PoE should not be too easy. There are several on these forums (and other forums) who hate trading and believe the solution is to create a trading system devoid of skill-based decisions and with virtually no time investment required to achieve instant gratification. And to those I say, there might be an ARPG where such a trade system would be fitting... specifically, in one where farming is devoid of skill-based decisions and virtually no time investment is required to achieve instant gratification. One can count on market saturation of gear to give that ten-thousandth player the economic positioning required to give him that progression boost, but at its core the difficulty of an ARPG's trading system should at least make some attempt to match the difficulty of its farming system.

Path of Exile is intended to be a hard game, and on at least a few levels it manages to deliver on this intent. In the same way, trading in Path of Exile should be intended to be difficult, and on at least few levels actually manage to be difficult in practice.

But how should trading in Path of Exile be difficult?

III. Challenge versus tedium

Trading is a minigame, and just as with a full game, difficulty can take the form of time investment required to overcome it, or the form of knowledge investment required to overcome it, or some mixture of the two. Essentially, skill-based difficulty versus time-based difficulty.

Another common argument I see forumers making is that trading should be inconvenient, that this is what balances it against farming. While I agree that this can provide the desired balance versus farming, such thinking is the victim of a false dichotomy. Is it true that "inconvenience" is the proper opposite of "ridiculously easy" from a game design perspective? It's not the first word which pops into my mind. More like "challenging" or "difficult," but certainly not "inconvenient."

Tedium is not the appropriate difficulty for a game. Even if that game is a "market simulator." Perhaps especially so. The core of Path of Exile (to be clear, the farming part) is based on the idea that clever theorycrafting trumps raw time investment; there is no reason why the trading portion of the game should be any different. Every opportunity to reward the clever player should be seized; opportunities to reward the player who passively accepts unfun gameplay simply because it's the most rewarding path to him, should be avoided.

IV. Practical examples

The single most bullshit thing about PoE's trading system than the requirement that both players be online simultaneously. As I said from the beginning, trading should be there to reward the hardcore-mindset, casual-time-commitment player. I can scarcely think of anything which runs more counter to that than requiring a player to simply be online more, so that they can actually connect with the person they wish to trade with. This means I am unequivocally in favor of a new, fundamentally altered trade system.

Automated buyouts undermine a potential buyer's ability to have an impact upon sale price; they cannot feasibly suggest a lower price on items which a seller prices too high, or feasibly suggest a higher price on items which a seller prices too low, which can be effective when an overly low price attracts a lot of nearly simultaneous interest, creating bid wars. In essence, buyouts take the pricing skill out of buying almost completely. Buyouts should never be implemented; if this means that sites like poe.trade continue to exist even under a new trading system, then so be it.

That said, waiting for a seller to come online just to accept a bid they almost certainly will accept... that is just another form of tedium. It might be too much to hope, but it would be truly amazing if receiving a bid on an item would send an email to the seller, who could then reply with ACCEPT (or REJECT) in the body of the reply message to complete the sale, even while offline. This would allow pretty much anyone with a smartphone to save a bidder's time, even during a short break while at work.

Seeing another bidder's bid amount can make one's own bid an extremely simple decision. Therefore, the trading interface should never allow competing bids to be known to a bidder. This also means that incremental bidding systems (for example, set a bid max of 10 chaos, your current bid immediately goes to 6 chaos, someone else bids 7 chaos, your bid increased to 8 chaos, item sells for 8 chaos) are not a wise idea, since it would reveal information on current bids.

A set end time for auctions creates sniping situations where the players who happen to be online at the end time of the auction are in by far the best positions to win an item. Listings should have no set end time. This means both bidders and sellers should be able to retract their bids/items voluntarily at any time.

Combining the ideas above: in short, what Path of Exile trading should be is a type of auction house, but in the old-fashioned meaning of the word... not a buyout house.



Your ideas are, of course, very welcome.

I have a few comments, mainly about trading not being an alternative to normal play but rather an additional option / layer in it.
it's the old means-to-an-end vs. the goal itself argument I apply to RNG as well: people think it needs to be the goal to strive for, while I think it's another weapon in the ARPG arsenal.

BUT I will not elaborate more on it, because that's picking on very minor issues in an excellent post and a very fun read, really.
so, nicely done Scrotie and I'm glad to see the "good old" version of you in Feedback again.

however I'm against bidding being the baseline for trade. especially if it is "blind bidding" which would turn the mini-game into a scammers paradise where one guy wins and everybody else lose their pants.
buyout should still exist, as a visible upper limit - but the first offer should never be the buyout.
and multiple ways of trade should exist too.
GGG initially wanted barter-based item-for-item trade in my opinion, and intentionally placed orbs instead of "gold" - but then watched as specific orbs effectively became "gold".
WTB Feedback offer 10 Chaos.
that's bad.
if you have the helm I want and I have the shield you want, we should trade rather than each put a price tag in gold and see who else bites.


and +1 to offline trade.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Trading is a huge boon to the segment of your community which is hardcore in mindset, but casual in terms of time commitment. And for a free-to-play ARPG, it would be madness not to embrace trading; it caters precisely to the demographic which is paying your bills.

Nailed It.
Lots of good points ScrotieMcB!

@John
Buyouts are always going to exist - they are too deeply ingrained into the way the majority of players have come to play & trade. Players will find ways to communicate their desired price-range.
Automated Buyouts however, are another beast entirely. They have no place in Path of Exile, and hopefully never will.

@John EDIT:
Orbs have always been called "Currency Items".
You can't fight human nature, it is more efficient to trade into intrinsic value than to trade into subjective value.

Biggest issue I see with a literal auction style market is it's not going to ease trade enough to compete with third party trade.

You have to take into account the level of functionality already available.

Also asynchronous trade without some kind of manageable, verifiable quick buyout doesn't make sense for average gear or gear a little above average. It would be easier to simply find the seller who is currently online.


The best solution is going to have to be a really creative one. Something that allows for an in game trade space intermediary that would allow for asynchronous quick buyouts that is regulated and doesn't attempt to directly compete with poe.trade.

(super tired so I'll try my best to make a rational succinct example)




tl;dr

I like the effort of thought put in scrotie but honestly I don't think your post puts us any closer to a real solution.

There are basically three options (although there is some mix-and-match possible):
1. Make trading skill-based
2. Make trading tedious
3. Don't make trading hard at all
There is no way to achieve #1 without creating a situation where noobs will get into trades and lose their pants to skilled players. The more trading is skill-based, the more players stand to lose from lacking skill, and the more their opponents stand to gain. So either we create situations where many players lose big as a result of their own lack of knowledge, or we taint trade with tedium, or we taint farming by making trading OP. At least with the first you have people voluntarily pressing the confirm button, so it's clear who is to blame.

If you go the skill-based route, the people who benefit the most from trading are players benefiting from the catch-up mechanic, and players who have some serious tradeskill. Since it's pretty difficult to develop serious tradeskill without enjoying trading in the first place, we would have underdogs and dedicated, fun-having minigame players as the primary beneficiaries. I see no problem.

Also, I very much doubt GGG ever intended item-for-item trading, when they've called orbs currency from the get-go.

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Ashen_Shugar_IV wrote:

@John
Buyouts are always going to exist - they are too deeply ingrained into the way the majority of players have come to play & trade. Players will find ways to communicate their desired price-range.
Automated Buyouts however, are another beast entirely. They have no place in Path of Exile, and hopefully never will.

Pretty much this. I have some mixed feelings on allowing a "description" box for listings, some kind of free text thing where people could type whatever they want... on the one hand, I know that would lead to indexed buyouts because people would put their ~b/o tags in there for sites like poe.trade to parse, on the other hand completely removing a seller's ability to identify a price range could be maddening. I imagine it would have to be allowed, or there would be riots, so it's kind of a moot point if I like it or not.

Trading has its place in ARPGs, trade-centric game design doesn't / shouldn't.

As I see it most of what a "non-buyout AH" does is add tedium. Trading with only bids is slow and annoying.
It actually fits really well. Making trades take time is exactly what's needed to get better balance between 'playing the game' vs trading.

The item-linking on the forums would have to go though, as otherwise everyone would just keep using the current sites.

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Sickness wrote:

As I see it most of what a "non-buyout AH" does is add tedium. Trading with only bids is slow and annoying.

I feel you're dealing with extremes here; it's kind of like saying coffee doesn't really wake you up anymore after you've tried illegal stimulants. There's still a lot that can be done to reduce tedium without resorting to measures which not only reduce tedium but also reduce skill-based challenge.

As I've mentioned before, some level of smartphone integration would be much desired.

Sadly I don't think it has a place in poe for 99% of the items traded to be bid-only style, so the question becomes is it worth adding a system in which players can acquire these items, but will be 1% or less of all trade in game, the answer will probably always be no.

A true bid auction house style would fit poe, but after players have gotten used to the ability to relatively easily search and buy items immediately I don't think the majority of players will wait hours-days to get something they need for a build, even if its at a fraction of the price, in which why would the seller bother doing an AH style trade, when they could potentially get more if they put forth the effort (which isn't much now) to sell the item. About the only case would be if you could somehow sell an item without being online, so that players that don't have many hours a day to play can participate in a larger scale in PoE's economy.

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Trading has its place in ARPGs, trade-centric game design doesn't / shouldn't.

Unfort. unless GGG ups the drop rates of many things, yet again players will always want or need to trade to get unique items or things they need for their builds, unlike a game like D3, PoE is designed among the fact that you might not find XX item ever, so if you want to do something you do have to trade.

I think in a loot based ARPG, nothing is wrong with being able to trade or even designing the game around the idea that many builds should need to trade to get key pieces. I know many people play self found in PoE, despite the fact its not designed around that.

GGG has made "improvements" in allowing players to avoid trade if they want key pieces or things, by adding divination cards (which most still aren't farmable in the way GGG described when they first mentioned them) and by adding masters, which allows for powerful mods to be crafted and somewhat removes the need to trade in order to progress when leveling.

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goetzjam wrote:

"

Trading has its place in ARPGs, trade-centric game design doesn't / shouldn't.

Unfort. unless GGG ups the drop rates of many things, yet again players will always want or need to trade to get unique items or things they need for their builds, unlike a game like D3, PoE is designed among the fact that you might not find XX item ever, so if you want to do something you do have to trade.

I wasnt talking about that. Trading for highly specific items, like uniques, is understandable, since you cannot expect a game to be designed where everyone would loot eveything in a short-term. You either postpone specific builds until you loot the items (what I do), or work toward those items through trade. I'm fine with that.

With trade-centric game design, I mean stuff like:

* insane Zana mod prices (non-traders cant afford them)
* huge rng variance in map drops (dry streak will rekt your pool -> have to buy maps)
* chisels not sustaining themselves through drops (ofc when you dont have maps, you dont need chis :P)
* vaal orb shortage (I use them almost exclusively on maps, they are way too rare)

These things are designed only to artificially 'promote' trading. GGG improved many things (masters, gems available at vendors, div.cards...), but still some BS remains.

You can easily play self-found up to mid-high maps (if your build works only with rares). But if you want to continue playing at this point, you need much more orbs than you will find / create through recipes.