Thoughts on trading's place in ARPGs

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GeorgAnatoly wrote:

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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)

poe.trade would not need to access the client to accomplish this. They would need to require a sign on for the bidder and seller.

The bidder would submit bids and poe.trade would store them. Once the bidding is complete both the seller and bidder would be provided a confirmation code. They could then use the code to verify prior to trading in-game.

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wrathmar wrote:

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GeorgAnatoly wrote:

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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)

poe.trade would not need to access the client to accomplish this. They would need to require a sign on for the bidder and seller.

The bidder would submit bids and poe.trade would store them. Once the bidding is complete both the seller and bidder would be provided a confirmation code. They could then use the code to verify prior to trading in-game.

Not sure why people would bid on items instead of what they are doing now most of the time. Most people that probably want trade improvements want it to be easier not harder.

@ScrotieMcB:

thanks a bunch for your additional clarification - yes, I did misunderstand your original point. It's much clearer now thank you. I find it an interesting idea, and hopefully GGG can investigate what you are suggesting.

I'd like to focus on your point when the potential seller of an item confirms a bid, you imply that the exchange will be instant? Are you suggesting that the trade system would automatically send off the item to the buyer that the seller just confirmed, and that the buyer's currency would automagically appear in the seller's stash? If that is so, I like that a lot. That would solve a lot of problems in one go, I think. That would imply that currency needs to be reserved somehow when bidding on items, or how else would the system be able to auto-complete a trade? You can't assume that a bidder is honest and liquid enough to place a certain bid.

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Ceri wrote:

I'd like to focus on your point when the potential seller of an item confirms a bid, you imply that the exchange will be instant? Are you suggesting that the trade system would automatically send off the item to the buyer that the seller just confirmed, and that the buyer's currency would automagically appear in the seller's stash? If that is so, I like that a lot. That would solve a lot of problems in one go, I think.

Yep. Thanks. :)

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Ceri wrote:

That would imply that currency needs to be reserved somehow when bidding on items, or how else would the system be able to auto-complete a trade? You can't assume that a bidder is honest and liquid enough to place a certain bid.

I imagine there are design choices here (which I hadn't considered when I wrote the OP, I was assuming the same as you).

You could make it so a player can use the same items (usually currency) in bids on multiple different listings, and whichever listing completes first (when its seller confirms the bid) goes through, while the other one(s) has (have) its bid(s) retracted as soon as its components disappear. In this way, a bidder could place equal bids on two or more roughly identical items, and whichever seller comes online first (for example) gets the bid, while the other bid automatically cancels such that the buyer doesn't wind up with two of the same item.

Or you could go with what I was originally thinking, and an item could only be used for one bid at a time. This would be more tedious, but might be the correct choice if there is some kind of abuse case with the alternative. I can't think of such an abuse case, however.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

You could make it so a player can use the same items (usually currency) in bids on multiple different listings, and whichever listing completes first (when its seller confirms the bid) goes through, while the other one(s) has (have) its bid(s) retracted as soon as its components disappear. In this way, a bidder could place equal bids on two or more roughly identical items, and whichever seller comes online first (for example) gets the bid, while the other bid automatically cancels such that the buyer doesn't wind up with two of the same item.

Yes, some kind of "leveraged escrow" would likely be the most workable compromise. For example, the system could allow you to make linked, mutally exclusive bids on up to three items in a group. You'd then pay escrow equal to the largest bid. When one of the three bids is accepted by a seller, the other two bids would be automatically cancelled. The item would be transferred to you and the seller would receive the escrow. A buyer could bid on more than three items at once by dividing them into multiple groups of up to three bids each.

The biggest problem with this idea is the lack of a unified currency standard in POE. The buyer would have to make all three bids using the same orb type, otherwise there's no way to calculate the escrow amount. In practice, that would tend to reinforce the prevailing dominance of Chaos for commodities and Exalts for high-end items.

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RogueMage wrote:

Spoiler

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

You could make it so a player can use the same items (usually currency) in bids on multiple different listings, and whichever listing completes first (when its seller confirms the bid) goes through, while the other one(s) has (have) its bid(s) retracted as soon as its components disappear. In this way, a bidder could place equal bids on two or more roughly identical items, and whichever seller comes online first (for example) gets the bid, while the other bid automatically cancels such that the buyer doesn't wind up with two of the same item.

Yes, some kind of "leveraged escrow" would likely be the most workable compromise.

For example, the system could allow you to make linked, mutally exclusive bids on up to three items in a group. You'd then pay escrow equal to the largest bid. When one of the three bids is accepted by a seller, the other two bids would be automatically cancelled. The item would be transferred to you and the seller would receive the escrow. A buyer could bid on more than three items at once by dividing them into multiple groups of up to three bids each.

The biggest problem with this idea is the lack of a unified currency standard in POE. The buyer would have to make all three bids using the same orb type, otherwise there's no way to calculate the escrow amount. In practice, that would tend to reinforce the prevailing dominance of Chaos for commodities and Exalts for high-end items.

Not really. You just make it so a single Wisdom Scroll is common to all three bids, even though one bid is mostly Fuses and one is mostly Alchs. When one bid wins, the Wisdom Scroll will no longer be available, so the other bid would automatically retract.

The biggest issue would be that both listed items and bids would have to remain in the stash during the process, because otherwise people would use it as faux stash space.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

You just make it so a single Wisdom Scroll is common to all three bids, even though one bid is mostly Fuses and one is mostly Alchs. When one bid wins, the Wisdom Scroll will no longer be available, so the other bid would automatically retract.

Multiple orb types in a single bid? Can't really see a practical automated system handling that much complexity, I'd expect each bid would be restricted to a single orb type.

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RogueMage wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

You just make it so a single Wisdom Scroll is common to all three bids, even though one bid is mostly Fuses and one is mostly Alchs. When one bid wins, the Wisdom Scroll will no longer be available, so the other bid would automatically retract.

Multiple orb types in a single bid? Can't really see a practical system handling that much complexity, I'd expect each bid would be restricted to a single orb type.

The way I envision it, for each bid you select any number of squares in your stash, those items get a green hue (similar to the red hue of being unable to equip an item), and if you try to move the item from its spot in the stash, it gives you an "are you sure?" box to click yes to, and if you do it breaks the bid. So you could even offer gear if you wanted. Basically, bids would be stored in the trade system as stash coordinates, much in the same way linking items on the forum works.

The catch is: every bid would be visible on the seller's end. There might be an option to sort out strictly inferior bids (for example, 5 chaos vs 6 chaos, but not 1 alch vs 6 chaos) but if a seller has a lot of bidder interest there would be a lot of choices.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The way I envision it, for each bid you select any number of squares in your stash, those items get a green hue, and if you move the item from its spot in the stash, it gives you an "are you sure?" box to click yes to, and if you do it breaks the bid. So you could even offer gear if you wanted.

That sounds like fun, but it's more of an individualized bartering interface than a high-volume commodity trading system. I think at this point in the evolution of POE.trade, most players want GGG to automate the back-end side of the trade to make generic Chaos/Exalt-type trades asynchronous and more efficient. The current system, though it's not asynchronous, handles diverse types of bartering quite well.

I missed this before.

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grant_m wrote:

The biggest issue would be the financial/resource investment needed from GGG. Not just to build an acceptable (by their standards AND the noisy player base) AH system, but to MAINTAIN it.

They'd likely need to double their current staff just to house a trading complaint department, because once they officially operate as a trading liaison, they'll be ALL IN.

Um, not really. Don't get me wrong, developing asynchronous trade would take time, and time is money, but doubling staff after deployment just to continuously handle whiny bitches? lolno. I don't know how many people xyz has had to employ to keep poe.trade going, but I imagine the operating costs of an asynchronous system would be roughly comprable to the current operating costs of poe.trade - as in, probably enough to create one full-time position, but I doubt significantly more than that.