Would there be a downside to putting an auction house in at this point?

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mark1030 wrote:

The downside would be you'd lose half the player base. Most people who want an actual AH want the instant gratification of getting the item they want when they want it with little effort. After they get everything they want this way, many will likely move on to other games. So not only would you lose the first half of the players instantly, you'd lose a lot of the other players shortly after.

Most people who want an AH want the removal of the huge and utter annoyance that communicating with flippers and douchebags entails in the current implementation of "trading" the game has...

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k1rage wrote:

is it the players or GGG thats lazy

I mean think about it Poe.trade is basically doing GGGs job for them

I was under the impression they wanted players to do the trading among themselves and PoE trade is proof we're figuring it out

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mark1030 wrote:

The downside would be you'd lose half the player base. Most people who want an actual AH want the instant gratification of getting the item they want when they want it with little effort. After they get everything they want this way, many will likely move on to other games. So not only would you lose the first half of the players instantly, you'd lose a lot of the other players shortly after.

There is also a generous part of the player base who just don't want an AH at all, and that player base might quit the game if an AH would be added in.

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mark1030 wrote:

If that were really true, you wouldn't see the AH topic come up every week. Every argument for an AH proves that people are not getting their instant gratification in the current system. They want even easier instant gratification. They want to not even have to try for it.

Sorry, but this is utter bullshit

Scenario 1: Player X finds a nice ring. He has set up a shop, goes to the forums and edits his post including the ring with a 4c buyout, makes sure he is listed as online on poe.trade and bumps the thread. Half an hour later, Player Y who is looking for rings finds this one, decides the price is ok and gives a X a PN with "Hi, I'd like to buy your ring for 4c". They trade

Scenario 2: Player X finds a nice ring, goes to the AH and puts it in for a 4c buyout. Half an hour later Player Y buys the ring.


WTF does this have to do with instant gratification or laziness? How on earth can you claim that scenario 1 is the better system? There is NO real difference, it's just strictly worse in every aspect...

An AH would kill prices for items and make sure you MUST trade to get an upgrade.

Why would it be different to POE.trade?

1. On the buyer's side, the difference is really only a little inconvenience. I've bought some stuff on POE.trade and it works pretty well. An AH would not help a lot there, just a bit.

2. Selling items would be much much much easier than now. And that is what would cause the inflation. If it takes less effort to sell stuff, everybody would try it. The influx of items to the market would make items almost worthless, you would not be able to sell anything anymore which is not godly. And that stuff would cost serious currency, much more than you can hope to find.

So an AH would have to come at a cost, but I don't think one can figure out a system to calculate that cost fairly.

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Treffnix wrote:

The influx of items to the market would make items almost worthless

I see what you mean, perhaps a limit should be put in then. Say you can only list x items per account in the AH at once. Stops people from flooding it with every rare drop they come across.

And using other accounts to do it wouldn't really be a way around it either as that'd be just about as much effort as listing it through the current way of doing it on poe.trade, so no loss there.

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kygaros wrote:

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mark1030 wrote:

If that were really true, you wouldn't see the AH topic come up every week. Every argument for an AH proves that people are not getting their instant gratification in the current system. They want even easier instant gratification. They want to not even have to try for it.

Sorry, but this is utter bullshit

Scenario 1: Player X finds a nice ring. He has set up a shop, goes to the forums and edits his post including the ring with a 4c buyout, makes sure he is listed as online on poe.trade and bumps the thread. Half an hour later, Player Y who is looking for rings finds this one, decides the price is ok and gives a X a PN with "Hi, I'd like to buy your ring for 4c". They trade

Scenario 2: Player X finds a nice ring, goes to the AH and puts it in for a 4c buyout. Half an hour later Player Y buys the ring.


WTF does this have to do with instant gratification or laziness? How on earth can you claim that scenario 1 is the better system? There is NO real difference, it's just strictly worse in every aspect...

Why not include the post I was refuting? The difference is that he said it's already instant gratification but it's not...you have to work for it.

And I would still say scenario 1 is better. I played D3 for thousands of I still think an AH with full automation and buyouts was bad for the long term success of that game. People bought everything they needed with no effort whatsover other than finding the lowest price item with the best stats. Then a click of the button and it was done. Doing what D3 did and removing trading all together would be better for the game than adding an automated AH.

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zankioh wrote:

So I'm wondering, and please don't just post something like "no", give me some actual arguments, why not just put an actual simple auction house into the game at this point?

Because it isn't something one "just" does? Like any other part of the game, quite apart from how it impacts the gameplay and player behaviour, it will have a development cost and a maintenance cost - not only in money up front but in technical debt.

I'm not making an argument that these things are insurmountable, but the idea of "just" developing and slotting in a simple auction house as if it isn't something that has serious financial implications beyond how it affects player behaviour strikes me as curiously weird.

Or to put it in other terms, while I've often seen players saying that they want an auction house or that the game "should" have one, I haven't seen players make a business case for an auction house being a sound development decision both short- and long-term.

Now, you might well argue that nobody but GGG knows enough to make that case in full, and that it would be better to focus on what the playerbase, or at least parts of the playerbase, wants, but until now GGG has categorically stated that they do not want an auction house, so any arguments that do not address the business case for it or attempt to explain why it would be good for the game or how it would entice new players, retain old players, or earn more money from microtransactions seems a bit of a non-starter, reducing arguments to whether one likes auction houses or not.

(Personally I'm agnostic on the auction house issue.)

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zankioh wrote:

So I'm wondering, and please don't just post something like "no", give me some actual arguments, why not just put an actual simple auction house into the game at this point?

GGG said it more than once THERE WILL BE NO AUCTION HOUSE! And since it is their game how could anyone else give you "some actual arguments"? There is only one reason: GGG has decided that there will be no auction house. End of story!