Ok, it is time to stop this poe.trade silliness.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Because it's so important, someone will definitely take care of it. Quickly.

That's an assumption, and a bad one at that. We've been extremely fortunate poe.trade is being ran essentially for free and that the maker hasn't utilized the tool to his own advantage. He could make it a paid access thing and there wouldn't be a thing anyone could do about it.

I liked it better when poe.xyz didn't exist. I will be fine without it.

Never had an issue with using Poe.trade. There have been worse methods Ive used before that. My things get sold and I can find what I need. Ive used worse systems actually implemented by game devs. Only problem I have with it is the ads on the site sometimes make it unresponsive and a resource hog.

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allbusiness wrote:

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

Because it's so important, someone will definitely take care of it. Quickly.

That's an assumption, and a bad one at that. We've been extremely fortunate poe.trade is being ran essentially for free and that the maker hasn't utilized the tool to his own advantage. He could make it a paid access thing and there wouldn't be a thing anyone could do about it.

He could try, most people also seem to forget that xyz or poe.trade has not been the only way to access the API, even to this date its not the only way to find items listed. Its just easy to remember and pretty easy to use.

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Perq wrote:

1. Market manipulation.

Agreed. It's by far the WORST con of current PoE trading. You know, there are a lot of online auctions for real-life items (from pencils to cars), then require user communications. But hell, any respectable auction wont accept "market manipulators" and will ban them swift and sure!

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Perq wrote:

2. poe.trade is 3rd part.

Agreed. If game is designed so trading is an IMPORTANT part of the game, then player should be able to perform trading search with game tools. And perhaps, with in-game search tool, a "report fake offer" button could be made, so market manipulator could be punished somehow, or even banned.
Btw, PoE.trade isnt the only platform to perform search for PoE items. There are few others, too.

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Perq wrote:

3. Player interactions... haha!

The problem is, in reality, player interaction is usually non-existant.

How it happens in 95-99% of cases?
Seller sets b/o price.
Buyer PMs seller using automated PM message.
Seller invites buyer to party.
Buyer enters seller's HO.
Seller offers trade.
Both place their items and click OK.
Both type something like "ty" or "GLHF" (or even nothing) to each other, and leave party.

So much player interaction...
If you replace one player with bot (or both), no one even notices the change....

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

If you replace one player with bot (or both), no one even notices the change....

I'll notice.

.

Okay, I've refined my silent auction house proposal.

1. The seller puts up for auction one or more items (including currency stacks) simultaneously and separately by choosing a duration for those items (in terms of days/hours/minutes, 0 is a valid entry, minimum 1 minute). That's the only choice required because the silent auction house uses a fixed currency - maybe Silver Coins, or something of similar or lesser value AND a sink outside the auction house - and has no minimum bid. The item is removed from the seller's stash.

2. Buyers can search for items, filtering by item stats and sorting by auction end time. They can bid on items in terms of the auction currency (minimum 1), but cannot see other players' bids nor the bids of completed auctions. Losing bids are not returned until the auction duration ends. Their bids are removed from their stash.

3. When the duration is up, the highest bid wins, delivered to buyer/seller in remove-only tab; multiple auctions can deliver to same tab. In case of a tie, the oldest bid wins. If no bids, the auction restarts with the initial duration.

4. In the event of a league ending, items from unsold auctions are returned to seller as part of league transfer. This is the only case where a seller gets back an item they put up for auction.

Using a single, low-value currency is simply too convenient here to ignore; allowing multiple currency too easily sets up functional buyouts of 1 of that currency, which is an issue for higher-value currency. It's important that botting isn't allowed to over-inflate the chosen currency; that's the biggest risk to this suggestion.

Skills are tested for both seller and buyer. Choosing the right duration can be very profitable, especially since end time will have a large factor in buyer attention; additionally, it's better to vendor an item which will never sell. Buyers will need to evaluate worth on their own terms without referring to cheat sheets.

The inability of the sale item to return prevents "second stash" exploit issues without ugly mechanics. Additionally, since the main purpose of the system is mass trade of low-value items, they shouldn't be missed too much.

Note also that there's many ways to UI such a system.

@smcb

No one really wants an AH though, they want a BO house and they want trading to be even quicker and even easier then it already is.

In the final minutes before a silent auction ends, you're getting results very quickly if you bid. So if that's why you like buyouts - immediate results - then my suggestion covers that.

If you like buyouts because you are incapable of pricing items yourself and don't want to think about it, then under my suggestion you're fucked. As you should be. Although, really, I just shifted the pricing responsibility - seller doesn't price anymore, competing buyers do.

My system is less tedious than current. That's a type of easier - the right type of easy. It's also more skill intensive. That's a type of more difficult - the right type of difficult.