Thoughts on trading's place in ARPGs

Sadly GGG has dragged their feet long enough that any option they put forward will need to directly compete with a 3rd party auction house. The 3rd party auction house is currently used for most trades, has many useful functions, and no in-game cost (tax) to use.

From what I can see GGG has 3 options

1.Admit that poe.trade is better that what they can build. The 3rd party app has many useful functions and players have used it for years. It is ingrained into the community.
Sadly this would continue to disrupt immersion and the 3rd party will continue to make money from banner ads.

2.Put forth a product that is superior to the competition. If GGG is going to compete with poe.trade they are going to have to build a superior product, or offer features that the 3rd party auction house cannot. Because if they don’t, then they are going to split the market between the official and the 3rd party.

For example an improved interface for sellers, the ability to make offline sales, better immersion.

3.Hobble the competition. GGG can adjust their code in a way that would prevent peo.trade from existing as a viable alternative.

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wrathmar wrote:

Sadly GGG has dragged their feet long enough that any option they put forward will need to directly compete with a 3rd party auction house. The 3rd party auction house is currently used for most trades, has many useful functions, and no in-game cost (tax) to use.

From what I can see GGG has 3 options

1.Admit that poe.trade is better that what they can build. The 3rd party app has many useful functions and players have used it for years. It is ingrained into the community.
Sadly this would continue to disrupt immersion and the 3rd party will continue to make money from banner ads.

2.Put forth a product that is superior to the competition. If GGG is going to compete with poe.trade they are going to have to build a superior product, or offer features that the 3rd party auction house cannot. Because if they don’t, then they are going to split the market between the official and the 3rd party.

For example an improved interface for sellers, the ability to make offline sales, better immersion.

3.Hobble the competition. GGG can adjust their code in a way that would prevent peo.trade from existing as a viable alternative.

They have pretty much admitted that #1 is true for the moment, the undertaking it would take to make trading much better from in game resources, is lockstep level commitment of resources. We all know lockstep>ingame trade system.

2. They could do this if they put forth the time and effort, but this is just a continuation of #1.

3. They could try to block indexers from working, but they literally have no reason to do so. The indexers simply list the information in a much more presentable fashion then the official forums, where all the "important" back-end things actually happen.

Using immersion as an excuse is just funny to me, you have to alt tab out of the game for almost any resources and you have to pretty much do it in any game, especially ones made by smaller companies.

Also poe.trade isn't an AH, you don't bid on items and you don't click to buy either. Its a market place that utilizes items listed on the forums, if poe.trade where to go down a replacement from other programmers can be put up in hours as the information on poe.trade is found here on the official forums.

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goetzjam wrote:

Also poe.trade isn't an AH, you don't bid on items

Except you do. Offer and bid are synonyms.

auc·tion \ˈȯk-shən\ n. a public sale in which goods are sold to the highest bidder.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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goetzjam wrote:

Also poe.trade isn't an AH, you don't bid on items

Except you do. Offer and bid are synonyms.

auc·tion \ˈȯk-shən\ n. a public sale in which goods are sold to the highest bidder.

Bid insinuates that you are going to compete with other players for an item, I don't think I've ever messaged a players and they say you know what someone else just messaged me about the same item are you willing to pay more.


SO no offer\bid isn't the same in this context.

That is like going to a flea market and saying the item is listed for $25 and you offer $10, you are placing a bid on it even though no one else is going to compete, especially if he just sells it to you right then and there.


If you want to boil down to technicalities and say a bid is just any offer on an item, especially in auctions as the definition implies, that doesn't mean that all bids are only in auctions, therefore what we have now is an AH, it simply means the term can be used both in an auction setting, which poe clearly isn't or outside of it, which poe clearly is.

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an offer of a price, especially at an auction.

The only instance that behaves like an auction in poe is very high level gear, typically mirror or mirror level or if people want to have a bid style\offer system by spamming something in trade chat, either way neither of those apply to 99.99% of trades in poe or 99.99% of trade searching on poe.trade.


Furthermore look at any single game that list themselves as having an AH, its almost nothing like what poe.trade provides us currently. AH in games indicates multiple things as I have tried to explain, probably even in this same thread. Can do so if deemed necessary...

1. I hardly believe this. PoETrade must parse an entire forum to retrieve info. Each upgrade with new items requires heavy work to be translated into the interface. GGG has direct acces to its own database. @goetzjam Could you please provide the link for GGG admission? I do not think that the problem for a different trade system is technical.

Back to OP discussion, there is one thing that is missing: wealth accumulation. I do not think that trade should allow it.

Basically, a good trade system should provide a quite fast and efficient way to transform a tier(n) item which i cannot use in a tier(n-1) item which i can use.

The current trade system is tuned in such a way that, in few steps and with a good amount of spam, i can trasform my tier(n) in a tier(n+1), with enormous advantages with respect to farming/playing. Or, equivalently, i can trasform my 1 exalt in 65 chaos and my 65 chaos in 1exalt+5chaos. This is the winning strategy in PoE, although it is extremely annoying.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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goetzjam wrote:

Also poe.trade isn't an AH, you don't bid on items

Except you do. Offer and bid are synonyms.

auc·tion \ˈȯk-shən\ n. a public sale in which goods are sold to the highest bidder.

Unless something has changed that I'm not aware of you can't bid on items on poe.trade, has something changed?

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HellGauss wrote:

1. I hardly believe this. PoETrade must parse an entire forum to retrieve info. Each upgrade with new items requires heavy work to be translated into the interface. GGG has direct acces to its own database. @goetzjam Could you please provide the link for GGG admission? I do not think that the problem for a different trade system is technical.

Back to OP discussion, there is one thing that is missing: wealth accumulation. I do not think that trade should allow it.

Basically, a good trade system should provide a quite fast and efficient way to transform a tier(n) item which i cannot use in a tier(n-1) item which i can use.

The current trade system is tuned in such a way that, in few steps and with a good amount of spam, i can trasform my tier(n) in a tier(n+1), with enormous advantages with respect to farming/playing. Or, equivalently, i can trasform my 1 exalt in 65 chaos and my 65 chaos in 1exalt+5chaos. This is the winning strategy in PoE, although it is extremely annoying.

1) Even if it isn't a technical one, it very well can be a very time consuming issue on implementing something that is actually an improvement and not just a copy and paste of the same resources we already have access to, which many players would view as a waste of time. I'm trying to find that comment, but I don't just keep a notebook of all statements so I'll update it when or if I find it, regardless it was made.


As far as "winning strategy" I don't exactly know what you are winning, GGG isn't supporting PvP so what can that wealth be used for competing in the ladder? Not really if you are spending that much time spamming to "win"

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GeorgAnatoly wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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goetzjam wrote:

Also poe.trade isn't an AH, you don't bid on items

Except you do. Offer and bid are synonyms.

auc·tion \ˈȯk-shən\ n. a public sale in which goods are sold to the highest bidder.

Unless something has changed that I'm not aware of you can't bid on items on poe.trade, has something changed?

Most sellers list a buyout, and most buyers click the 'buyout only' option.

poe.trade would not need to handle the actually bidding to serve as an auction house, it would just need to facility the linking of seller and bidder.

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wrathmar wrote:

Most sellers list a buyout, and most buyers click the 'buyout only' option.

poe.trade would not need to handle the actually bidding to serve as an auction house, it would just need to facility the linking of seller and bidder.

Right, I get that.

My question was more towards the website itself, as in the web site doesn't and will never be able to handle the bidding process on the site itself as that would require interacting with the client right?

(not saying that means poe.trade can't act as the game's AH, just not a literal one)