The AH dream is dead.

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Phrazz wrote:

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Xavderion wrote:

I'ma bump this because OG Diablo guy David Brevik (who is now a GGG advisor) agrees with Chris that an AH would be a disaster unless GGG introduces soulbinding to items. Starts at 1hr9min up to 1hr14min.

https://www.twitch.tv/thejunglequeen/v/107344042

Well, he is right - on almost everything. The easier and more accessible you make trading, the more necessary and important it gets. That's a no-brainer. And there's a HUGE part of the community that actually want a certain feel of progression in this game. Self-made progression. And to think that an AH won't affect these players in one way or another, is naive at best.

But for a lot of players, this seems to be about instant gratification. "I want this item, I can afford this item, I should be able go get it when I want it". I'm tempted to ask "why the fuck should you be able to get this item whenever you want it", but I won't. I will just receive a rant about "the economy", and how important it allegedly is to GGG. Well, a good ingame economy(which was GGG "slogan" on grindinggeargames.com back in the days) isn't the same as "buy what you want when you want it".

As he said, there isn't much "game" left, much progression, if all your items are being bought.

Trading needs to be "cumbersome", in need of effort and "unreliable" (AFK players, offline players), or there NEEDS to be some sort of regulation of how often you can trade, how much you can trade and/or how many bought items you can wear. Or else, we can just remove item drops for 50% of the player base, and just have currency drop.

I dont understand how much more necessary and important trading could get.I mean im only lvl81 in breach,had a 88 and 87 in the previous league.None of these characters weared a single piece of self found gear.

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Phrazz wrote:

But you just advocated the same thing, only reversed. You advocated to make THE ACTUAL gameplay worse, by balancing the game and drop rates around easy trading. THAT would be frustrating.

And to "tone down" trading sounds nice and all that, but how do you "tone down" trading, without introducing the need of effort or regulations?

It's VERY interesting to to read how people only wants to "have fun be beating end game content with good gear", while they piss on D3 for letting you do that easily. It would be even easier in PoE if trading was fully automatic, and all you needed to do, was press "buy". So why is it that the drop rates of good gear in D3 makes it fun for two weeks, while an instant gratification-house in PoE would make it fun longer?

Well, you may think I am advocating for something, but I am not. Also I do not think it would be frustrating to nerf drop rates but make trade easier. You could grind (currency) for your gear and then trade, seeing the progress as you play. With drop rates as they are now you do not get for example your build enabling unique anyway but you do have to go through terrible trade experience if your build requires it.

You can lock some parts of the items from trading to "tone it down", those items would only be obtainable via quest/grind/drop like perandus or such. Especially those build defining items could fall to this cathegory easily.

The only difference between fully automated and p2p trading is that automation makes problems that GGG would have to deal with while p2p allows them to delegate all the problems onto players. Other than that, no gameplay impact that wouldn't have solution inside game.
If unavailability of items is what is supposed to keep people playing PoE, then there is much bigger problem than trading in PoE ;)

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Phrazz wrote:

But for a lot of players, this seems to be about instant gratification. "I want this item, I can afford this item, I should be able go get it when I want it". I'm tempted to ask "why the fuck should you be able to get this item whenever you want it", but I won't. I will just receive a rant about "the economy", and how important it allegedly is to GGG. Well, a good ingame economy(which was GGG "slogan" on grindinggeargames.com back in the days) isn't the same as "buy what you want when you want it".

Finally, some sense in this thread. And this is what it is all about.

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Phrazz wrote:

You advocated to make THE ACTUAL gameplay worse, by balancing the game and drop rates around easy trading. THAT would be frustrating.

Call me cynical but it feels this way to me right now. I think it is frustratingly balanced around trading.

GGG has said countless times they dont want to see a full-fledged AH (and thank GOD, tbh)
its obvious that in a full-fledged AH you will have super efficient bots.

but the 'inconvenience' is rapidly decreasing and Im actually kinda worried about this.
its already extremely convenient

Im not sure if its people simply being unable to do an objective comparative analysis, having selective memory or whatever, but the difference between trade now, and say, trade in the open beta is so drastic its not even a comparison really - thats ordering from your phone off an infomercial in early 90s vs buying shit off amazon online.

if people dont remember- in open beta we had to scrape forums for items ourselves, and then often pm people and leave hours we'd be on.

now the tools are so advanced from convenience standpoint there is no reason not to sell all your shit even if its trash. remember d3 devs talking about the AH after ? they said one of integral problems of AH was that there was no reason NOT to sell all your shit. same with PoE, actually worse nowadays- you can just chuck ALL your trash in the 1c tab and k.i.m.

I wouldnt be surprised if there already trade bots. they wont ever be nowhere as efficient as theyd be in a real auto-buyout AH, but at this point trade is TOO convenient.

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grepman wrote:

but at this point trade is TOO convenient.

That is a luddite argument.

I get why an AH is both popular and unpopular. For many problems it makes sense to have one and for many others it doesn't.

In my opinion poe.trade already is an AH. The principles of how it should work are already there for us to use. You want an item with certain stats, you put those stats into the search page and click the search button. Less than a second later and you have a list of results. That is the basic building blocks of an AH.

The problems start once you introduce people into the mix.

For me personally if GGG could just figure out a way to stop people from selling stuff at stupid prices they have no intention of selling them at then trade would be a significantly improved.

That would be my major gripe with trade at the moment. You find what you want, whisper the seller about it and...nothing. Rinse and repeat the next 10 people in the list and still nothing. As a player playing a game this is, dull, boring, un-engaging and just downright frustrating. This is especially true when the item you want only costs a chaos or two.

Further gripes I have with trade are the separation between game and trade. Let's face it poe.trade is the games only practical means of trading yet it requires us to come out of the game to do it. That to me is just bonkers. A game should not rely on a key part of it requiring a 3rd party website. A 3rd party website should add a bonus to the game not a main feature.

Players being afk and unable to make a sale is annoying as is waiting for them to finish the lab or something but after reading the arguments about why an AH would be bad I can see things like this are needed to create an artificial barrier between seller and buyer so not to make it a quick and instant sell every time. This I can get behind and reluctantly agree should stay but only up to a point.

There is however a big difference between someone being afk because they are actually playing the game but had to step away for a few minutes and someone who's just trying to manipulate market prices for their own gain or will be afk for another 2 hours and really shouldn't be considered as trading when this is the case. We need to get rid of the latter while keeping the former. Till then as far as I'm concerned trading is broken.

If we have to stick with poe.trade then what we need on it is more information. Location of player, actively playing or afk, time since entrance to a zone with mobs in it, time since they went afk, based on current killing rate estimated time till completion. Things like that being displayed on the search results would be helpful.

So would if players could write a message to potential buyers that appear with every item they are selling for each tab or for all tabs. If they were afk they could post times of when they would be back so the potential buyers would know not to bother till then rather than just randomly whispering every 5 minutes or not bothering at all.

If you really wanted to go advance you could implement a real would messaging system. GGG could write a phone app that links to the game and when a buyer wants to buy something they can get the players attention via their phone by sending them a message through the game/app.

Another thing that could be done is to have 3 online states displayed on poe.trade. Instead of just Online and Offline we would also have AFK. The way afk would work is if a char was afk for more than 5 minutes without going a above a significant threshold of activity then they are removed from active/online trade status and placed into AFK trade status. Correlating that on poe.trade there would be an option to search only for active trades which in my head would hopefully help provide pertinent information to potential buyers when trying to buy stuff from people who might actually respond to them when whispered.

I'm sure people will find fault with these ideas, I didn't spend too much time thinking about them they just seemed like feasible possibilities that came to me once I started typing this post. All I would say though is that whatever the solutions are they need to happen at some point and are not something that can be left and left in perpetuity where all GGG does is tell us what they're NOT going to do.

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Brazosrr wrote:

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grepman wrote:

but at this point trade is TOO convenient.

That is a luddite argument.

no, its not an 'argument' at all, really.
I know how bots work, I know what can be automated and what cannot be. Ive done programming most of my life, most of it for living. I also have done gaming most of my life, and I know what the fuck is convenient and whats not convenient. I've seen online auction houses.


I also think this is game about grinding, not about instant gratification like you want to make it to be. you want "Smarter mechanics that reduce the need for near-perfect gear, or increasing the availability of gear using in-game mechanics". I dont think either is necessary, AT ALL. the most straightforward and simple solution is to play more and grind more to get gear you need/want. thats the carrot in similar games. it's that simple.

like phrazz said, the more you introduce instant gratification, the faster people will lose interest in the game. poe is not a game meant to be played for 20ish hours and then be put back in the box and checked off as 'completed'.

so yes, I think trading is too convenient right now, and its not a 'luddite' argument at all. I have my own ideals of gaming, you have yours. lets keep them fucking separate and not make your ideals the way all gaming should be.

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Chaoticmess wrote:

I get why an AH is both popular and unpopular. For many problems it makes sense to have one and for many others it doesn't.

In my opinion poe.trade already is an AH. The principles of how it should work are already there for us to use. You want an item with certain stats, you put those stats into the search page and click the search button. Less than a second later and you have a list of results. That is the basic building blocks of an AH.

no, thats not basic building of ah, at all

what you've described is simply a search functionality for in-game items.

literally the biggest and most important thing in an auction house - buying the item and having an auction, has nothing to do with that functionality.

merely finding an item does not mean buying the item.

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grepman wrote:

"

Chaoticmess wrote:

I get why an AH is both popular and unpopular. For many problems it makes sense to have one and for many others it doesn't.

In my opinion poe.trade already is an AH. The principles of how it should work are already there for us to use. You want an item with certain stats, you put those stats into the search page and click the search button. Less than a second later and you have a list of results. That is the basic building blocks of an AH.

no, thats not basic building of ah, at all

what you've described is simply a search functionality for in-game items.

literally the biggest and most important thing in an auction house - buying the item and having an auction, has nothing to do with that functionality.

merely finding an item does not mean buying the item.

Indeed. Poe Trade got nothing to do with auctioning. It just lists all the items that people stored in their premium tabs and scrapes items from the official forums. An item on that list, doesnt necessarily mean that it is actually for sale. A price listed, doesn't necessary mean that the seller will actually sell for that price. People are just deluding themselves.

The very reason why people state poe trade is almost an AH, is to "strengthen" their argument to implement a REAL online AH.

Wiki:

An auction is a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder.

@Chaoticmess: An AFK status I can see happen.