just add gold and be done

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Sickness wrote:

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WhiteBoy88 wrote:

Evidence shows otherwise. People trade all the time with the current system. Once we get a proper interface, people will trade even more.

Please present your evidence then.

I would rather say that there is quite little trading going on.

We must be playing on different leagues or something. I see trades happening all the time on Default, and I've always been able to make a deal when I need something.

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FanBoy88 wrote:

We must be playing on different leagues or something. I see trades happening all the time on Default, and I've always been able to make a deal when I need something.

I have admittedly not played veyr much since the last patch.

Im still waiting for your evidence btw.

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Sickness wrote:

Im still waiting for your evidence btw.

I'm not going out of my way to prove something that can be easily seen in the game.

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WhiteBoy88 wrote:

I'm not going out of my way to prove something that can be easily seen in the game.

So you don't have any evidence?

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Sickness wrote:

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WhiteBoy88 wrote:

I'm not going out of my way to prove something that can be easily seen in the game.

So you don't have any evidence?

What do you want, screenshots of trade talk in the chat? A video of me trading with someone? Get real; I'm not going to provide evidence of a common occurrence.

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zriL wrote:

You're right but you're talking about reality. Here we are trying to determine what's better for a game. People are complaining because they are no fixed relative value between things and that gold would solve this issue.

No! That's a strawman argument. People are complaining because the current system pleases no one. It doesn't accomplish the devs' goals and it's a heck of a lot more convoluted and inefficient than a decent gold system.

If it were one or the other it would be fine but as is it's neither.

"

Some people want "equal" trades, that are always stable. And I'm saying those are boring.

I just got done explaining how rational informed trades are never equal and you turn back and completely ignore it.

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Of course, you can make varying prices with gold depending on offer and demand. Many games made it work, but I think GGG don't want that. Maybe they want to be closer to a true barter system, where, by definition, no money should be involved at all. This encourages player to player trading, if vendors where as profitable as player to player trading, almost noboby would trade with anyone in the end.

What are you trying to say?! Barter systems discourage trade by increasing transaction costs. Uniform currency encourages trade by lowering them. Where did vendors being as profitable as player-to-player trading come from?!

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FaceLicker wrote:

So here's what I think. As much as we'd like to call it a Bartering System and as much as we want a bartering system, the fact is that this game uses a monetary based system. We don't have a true barter system. If we did, then we could trade an Axe to the vendor and get back a Sword. Instead it's based on orbs aka currency aka a middle man. Just as Nate_Prawdzik said, it doesnt matter by which name you call the currency, it's still currency.

That's absolutely false. In a barter system, people trade because they believe what they're getting is worth more to them than what they're giving up, just as it is for any transaction in any economy. It's perfectly reasonable to expect that people would refuse to go back on a trade in a barter system. They like what they now have more. That's why they traded for it.

"

Now, it stands to reason that a universal currency would streamline the whole system and make things much simpler to understand. More efficient. After all, that's what a uniform currency does. However, we still run into some core issues. Mainly, value ratios. GGG, does not want standardized value ratios. It defeats the whole purpose of player determined values and a bartering economy. However, it's clear that we don't have a bartering economy so all we have to worry about are player determined values. This can be acheived through a system as seen in Guild Wars pertaining to Dyes, Materials and Runes. For instance, IIRC Black Dye was one of the most expensive in GW. Reason being, more people bought Black Dye than they sold it. As more people bought and sold the dye, the vendor prices went higher and lower repectively. Now eventually, inflation got out of hand, but that's a different issue. Point is, values remained player determined. If we can create something like this in PoE, considering that we DO have a monetary based economy, then gold might not be a bad idea.

Right. Monetary based economy. Mind defining that? Because it certainly looks to me like a barter system.

"

However, that's boring and many of us want a true bartering economy. We don't want gold and we don't want to have to deal with the issues that a uniform currency brings. We want a different system and we want it to work. We need to stop coming at GGG with 'This idea sucks, you need to scrap it and start over with something tried and true' and start offering valuable suggestions on how to make their ideas work.

Issues that a uniform currency brings? Like what?

"

This in no way makes things more complicated, nor does it make it hard for a player to know their own wealth. In an economy with player determined values and random vendors, any item you have adds to your wealth. If you have a stack of 20 Orbs of Scouring you are potentially just as wealthy, if not moreso, as a person with a stack of 20 Alchemy's. Granted, some items will generally be more valuable than others, that's only natural. In real life, in terms of practicality, a gun will always be worth more than a knife. It's natural.

Doesn't make it hard for a player to know their own wealth? But not letting players know their own wealth is an explicit goal of the currency system. Why would you intentionally ignore that?

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Sickness wrote:

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Skivverus wrote:

The thing is, this is an intentional consequence - when it's harder (i.e.: takes longer or is less likely) to get the "ideal" value for your trade good, you're more likely to accept a higher variance in your final price.

In other words, having a uniform currency reduces price variance, and one of the goals here is to have a high price variance. Ergo, no uniform currency.

How can that possibly be considered a good thing?

The devs want trade to be difficult and expensive. High transaction costs do the same thing that soulbinding did in WoW - make playing the game far more important than accruing wealth. Without such high transaction costs, supply would meet demand and the most powerful items would be rightly expensive and out of the price range of the majority of players. The game then becomes focused around money grinding, which players find frustrating because grinding itself is frequently very inefficient compared to other options, especially in an inflated economy, and the best way to make money is to sell or trade stuff on the market. However, with high transaction costs, the devs can increase drop rates. With less wealth coming from trades, more wealth now comes from grinding, which makes grinding not feel as bad comparatively.

This means they can increase drop rates and design the game around it being primarily an item slot machine. With incredibly high transaction costs and a barter-based economy, trade becomes just as much of a crapshoot as finding items, which makes trade another slot machine to tack onto the game. Essentially it's lottery rationing which ensures that no one can become extremely wealthy through trade and satisfying market demands, and provides the illusion that everyone is on the verge of winning the jackpot since no one can succeed systematically.

Just look at the dev diary.

http://www.pathofexile.com/news/2011-02-08/dev-diary-currency

They DON'T want players to know how much money they have because they'll realize they're grinding and get bored.

They DON'T want players to know how much items are worth because they'll feel like they got ripped off (even though they'll get ripped off a lot more in a barter economy)

They DO want players to get most of their items randomly so they can't predict how much money they're making.

They DO want players to have to settle for trades with very unstable prices as it fits in with their slot-machine model of item acquisition. Getting a breakthrough is just around the corner, whether from a drop or from a gullible mark who doesn't know how much his stuff is worth.

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Do I agree with what I just posted? I'm not terribly excited about it, but it's tolerable in my opinion. However, I don't think it will actually end up working as I've described. I think the devs have been focusing way too much on barter and way too little on the important aspects - shutting down resellers and middle-men to keep the economy suppressed and prices unstable as they want. In practice I don't think they'll achieve their goals and I certainly don't think they'll end up with something tolerable from the perspective of a an ordinary gold-based economy.

I expect resellers to be prevalent enough to stabilize prices and establish exchange rates - possibly even establish a primary pseudo-currency to make trade more efficient. This will be enough to throw all the devs' goals out the window, but without any high-efficiency auction house/marketplace, the economy will just turn into something halfway in-between the devs' intended system and the standard gold-based system with the worst of both worlds. Players will know exactly how grindy the game is, will have to take much longer to find people to trade with.

no need gold ,currency its perfect

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Bulkathos wrote:

no need gold ,currency its perfect

Well I'm glad you've thought it through so thoroughly.