When are we getting better trading tools?

What if:
+ AH allowed trading of Uniques, and prices are set by GGG
+ AH allowed trading of bases, and prices are set by GGG
+ AH allows trading of currency (market driven)
+ AH disallows all other trades, and there is no way around this (including outside of the AH, that means no dropping on the floor either)

Your drops might actually have some value if the AH and trading tools were setup in this way, rather than the last majority of your drops being worth less than 1c. Remember this is one of the reasons we all play the game, for that drop that makes the build better, or has some market value.

This would increase the number of items people craft and the overall utilisation of the crafting system, currency should in theory become a little cheaper since people arent trading rares, but there is more incentive to pick them up and vendor the crap ones.

This is the type of AH I believe would be a step in the right direction, I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do know that I want my drops to feel valuable.

fix trading:

- All tools used for trading must be visible and accessible by every players including new ones.
- All tools must be verified and allowed by GGG.
- It shouldn't be possible to release tools if you don't intend to release them to public.
- Tool list should be directly ingame not on 500 different places like reddit, forum, some random forums that i won't name here and so on OR should at least be in an official thread handled by GGG.
- AFK players shouldn't have their items indexed. Ethic issue with that, afk = away from keyboard you are not playing, you are not trading. end of story.

It's not the best fix that come in mind, but at least all players will be on a fair base, it's far to be the case now and it has to stop. Even a player that start PoE knowing poe.trade exist has already a undiscutable advantage on players that never joined global 1 or this forum to eventualy discover there are THIRD PARTY TOOLS.

Just an alternative to AH since the old d3 players with an AH post traumatic syndrom said no.
Edit: Not pretenting it's the best fix, but there are at least little to no risk doing it. And it's a win win, more feedback on economy, fair for all players, more players will eventualy consider buying premium tabs, and no more advantages over others players since all tools will be the available to every players.

*sighs*

I'm not in favor of a AH, I'm not in favor of making trading easier. At all. It's already too easy in my opinion.

This is not an MMO. This is not a MOBA.

Path of Exile is an ARPG. ARPGs are loot hunts. They are structured progression curves, intended to offer (more or less) consistent challenge over the extent of the curve. Playing the game offers incremental rewards (in the form of levels, passives, and loot). These incremental rewards allow the individual player to progress further along the curve facing greater challenge and reaping greater reward, etc. etc.

The proponents of easier trading are primarily interested in just that "easier".

Easy =! good.

"Easy" (or more to the point, relative difficulty) is an element that must be designed around and must be carefully managed by the developers. If the game is too hard (for whatever reason) players cannot progress and do not have fun; and the game does not prosper. If the game is to easy (for whatever reason) then players progress too easily, move through content too quickly and become bored; and the game does not prosper.

Trading (if allowed at all) is not the point of the game. Trading is a parasitic experience built onto the loot hunt concept. Without the loot hunt, you do not have a viable environment for the trading to take place in.

How loot gets to a given player (in any given ARPG) is frequently referred to as sourcing. Ideally, the source of a given piece of loot is playing the game. But sometimes the RNG is unkind, so allowing some trading is a fallback often implemented by devs. Additionally, some people like trading, and that's fine as long as they realize that's an adjunct activity within the game as a whole.


The more trading is facilitated within the game, the easier trading becomes. There's really no escaping that. Make trading easier, people will do it more.

If trading becomes easier, then sourcing begins to shift from loot hunting to trade venue (AH) combing. Supply balloons, prices drop. The dwell time of individual players within the progression curve also drops because they can now obtain rewards that allow them to progress more quickly.

Additionally, GGG makes less money. Time playing does have a direct correlation to the amount a given player will spend on the game. You can cry fowl all you like, but GGG is a for-profit company. They want you to have fun, yes, but they do want to make money at the end of the day. I'm happy with the entertainment quality I get from them (generally) I'm personally willing to toss them some money now and again.

If sourcing via trading becomes too easy and begins to impact the dwell time in the progression curve, GGG has to pull on the big thread that's still available to them: Drop rates. Put in an AH: See nerfed drop rates. That's not speculation, that's history. That's what Blizzard did with D3, and it STILL failed.

Nerfing drop rates screws over the SSF players (like me), because now we can't get access to the gear we need to progress. Yes, we're a minority, but so are high end traders. Most people using an AH are going to buy more than they sell.

Yes, I'm going to talk about D3. Blizzard built an AH into D3. D3 is an ARPG, it uses the same basic game play principles as PoE. Blizzard admitted defeat and disabled the AH. Note: they didn't just disable the RMT AH, they disable the gold based AH too. Additionally, most items are now account bound. Basically, Blizzard disabled trading completely because it was hurting the game. That's not speculation folks, it's history.

You can down play it all you like, but one of the biggest, most successful gaming companies in the world couldn't make it work right, pulled it, and ate a lot of crow over it.


Not in favor of an AH. Not in favor of easier trading. It's already too easy.

"

Unquietheart wrote:

This is not an MMO. This is not a MOBA.

Path of Exile is an ARPG. ARPGs are loot hunts. They are structured progression curves, intended to offer (more or less) consistent challenge over the extent of the curve. Playing the game offers incremental rewards (in the form of levels, passives, and loot). These incremental rewards allow the individual player to progress further along the curve facing greater challenge and reaping greater reward, etc. etc.

The proponents of easier trading are primarily interested in just that "easier".

Easy =! good.

I completely agree with you.

But the problem is that a lot of the player base don't care about the progression. They rush from 1-75 without any regards for (almost) all drops. Every time they feel somewhat undergeared, they hit the market - because trade is already so easy that you'll ALWAYS find upgrades available at the value of a "couple of minutes" farming. An AH would accelerate this effect, making farming for your own gear, for your own character even more useless in contrast to the AH. Yes, it's "pretty" useless already, but that's no reason to make it even more so.

And the psychological effect here is also worth mentioning, which was the biggest problem with D3 and its AH. "Why should I even take the time to farm for one single minute extra, when there's upgrades at the AH for "nothing"? And again, yes it is pretty much like this after a few weeks of a league, but an AH would accelerate the process.

There can't be a system that makes every player (and their play styles) happy. Some players will lose.

"

Miská wrote:

"

thevdende wrote:

yes I am, this would change nothing in supply/demand because everyone who owns premium tabs (and that own't change) can list items for sale, total volume will be the same; which is a big difference compared to when there was no api and people had to manually list items in forum threads (about 5% of players or less had a shop thread) and keep the thread updated; after the api changes prices dropped to 1/10th of what they were for most items. The latter is a much larger step than between what we have now and having that automated, its simply qol.

But, let me be clear again. I said GGG needs to at LEAST copy poe.trade as it is into the game, because now they are selling premium tabs because of the functionality a 3d party website adds to them. Who would buy premium tabs if you couldn't list items on them to trade?

There are still many people that don't want to bother with every item. Wich will go offline while running lab. That simply don't want to get pmed all the time and leave the map. In other words BARRIERS that wouldn't be there with an AH. Jeez how hard is it to actually think a moment and pretend for 1 sec you aren't so biased you can actually give an intelligent response.

P.s Premium tabs were in the game way before you could sell with them. They sold plenty of them back then. Why would it be any difference now? Not to mention manually listing in the forum? You never heard of procurement and aquisition? Have you even played this game for longer then 1 league?

There's no reason to get personal buddy. You don't actually address the point I made.. so I'll just leave it at that.

"

Phrazz wrote:

I completely agree with you.

But the problem is that a lot of the player base don't care about the progression. They rush from 1-75 without any regards for (almost) all drops. Every time they feel somewhat undergeared, they hit the market - because trade is already so easy that you'll ALWAYS find upgrades available at the value of a "couple of minutes" farming. An AH would accelerate this effect, making farming for your own gear, for your own character even more useless in contrast to the AH. Yes, it's "pretty" useless already, but that's no reason to make it even more so.

And the psychological effect here is also worth mentioning, which was the biggest problem with D3 and its AH. "Why should I even take the time to farm for one single minute extra, when there's upgrades at the AH for "nothing"? And again, yes it is pretty much like this after a few weeks of a league, but an AH would accelerate the process.

There can't be a system that makes every player (and their play styles) happy. Some players will lose.

Well, no, there can't.

The point I'm trying to make though is that there are actually valid, objective reasons not to further facilitate inter-player trade. Most of those objecting point to the meta-systemic impact on the game (and historical examples).

The reasons I've seen from those in favor have all been subjective. I'll allow that it's possible that there might be valid objective reasons for an AH or a trading system, but I personally have not heard any to date.


You can't make everyone happy. So, given that, what decision do the devs make?

"

Unquietheart wrote:

"

Phrazz wrote:

I completely agree with you.

But the problem is that a lot of the player base don't care about the progression. They rush from 1-75 without any regards for (almost) all drops. Every time they feel somewhat undergeared, they hit the market - because trade is already so easy that you'll ALWAYS find upgrades available at the value of a "couple of minutes" farming. An AH would accelerate this effect, making farming for your own gear, for your own character even more useless in contrast to the AH. Yes, it's "pretty" useless already, but that's no reason to make it even more so.

And the psychological effect here is also worth mentioning, which was the biggest problem with D3 and its AH. "Why should I even take the time to farm for one single minute extra, when there's upgrades at the AH for "nothing"? And again, yes it is pretty much like this after a few weeks of a league, but an AH would accelerate the process.

There can't be a system that makes every player (and their play styles) happy. Some players will lose.

Well, no, there can't.

The point I'm trying to make though is that there are actually valid, objective reasons not to further facilitate inter-player trade. Most of those objecting point to the meta-systemic impact on the game (and historical examples).

The reasons I've seen from those in favor have all been subjective. I'll allow that it's possible that there might be valid objective reasons for an AH or a trading system, but I personally have not heard any to date.


You can't make everyone happy. So, given that, what decision do the devs make?

The devs do more of the same nothing, and the game goes's back to post Oriath. Dead.....

Play new league for 2-4 weeks, Bank items start-up trade bot convert items to currency till the end of the league, RMT all items after they are moved to standard. Standby till next good farming league starts up.

So dev's not doing anything is what keeps this game from retaining its growth as history shows. Now ask yourself how many players are lost due to the trade system, 3rd party tools, log out macros, flask macros. The best part is most of the streamers run them and talk about them on stream and yet nothing is done. Just lol GGG

Let's do a full 180 then:

No ah, no trading in any way shape or form.
Everyone is forced into SSF.
Monster drop quantities are reduced 99%.
Looting is made realistic: you need to find items in appropriate places, with a extremely low chance for example orbs in barrels, used crappy white or blue items in chests and strong boxes, which spawn only a few times in certain places.
Rares only drop from unique type monsters, only act/map bosses can drop unique items with a 1% chance.
Looting in parties is done like wow raids, loot table: you roll need or skip a item.

I mean this is what you all want, no?

Sarcasm aside, I'd actually enjoy this to some extend, because finding a rare/unique item would be so appreciated. You know the feeling, when a league starts and you got literally nothing, and everything you find feels like christmas, and when you find a rare, alch, unique item it's like winning the lottery, growing your dps/life pool by 50%, which at that point is a insane buff.

I wouldn't mind a totally realistic minimalistic new league like that to be honest.
Just downshift everything.

"

Heli0nix wrote:

fix trading:

- All tools used for trading must be visible and accessible by every players including new ones.
- All tools must be verified and allowed by GGG.

define 'tool' (*1)

"

Heli0nix wrote:

- It shouldn't be possible to release tools if you don't intend to release them to public.

define 'public' (*2)

"

Heli0nix wrote:

- AFK players shouldn't have their items indexed.

define 'afk' (no you already have; so my point is: give me a state 'staying around waiting for trade requests'. There's no way to differ between being 'real' away (which even can mean you'll notice requests) and 'passive mode' where you dont be acting/moving ingame but still available)

"

Heli0nix wrote:

Even a player that start PoE knowing poe.trade exist has already a undiscutable advantage on players that never joined global 1 or this forum to eventualy discover there are THIRD PARTY TOOLS.

I think anyone has to use the website to register, so its your own decision to ignore all 'assists' from the forum and to expect to find anything within the game on your own... And beside this ('missing link'): technically there's no difference between a third party tool like xyz's and a build-in 'trade tool' with the same functionality. And the reason for the actual state of trading IS that they dont WANT more functionality (otherwise external tools would offer them also, asap).

(*1) the basic function of these indexers is 100% identical to what any player does while accessing his stash/chars from the website. The access is public...

(*2) what if I use the API for a tool to organize my own stuff instead of a trade-use? Hint: PoB uses the same API as poe.trade to gain public char and item infos...
and: HOW public has it 'to be'? Official GGG announce for every 5 lines of html that does an API request??really?

IMHO: the 'only' thing it really needs are clear defined rules and circumstances that cant be bypassed (like throttling).

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Elemenz wrote:

I mean this is what you all want, no?

I don’t think you’ll find many people in here advocating that trade should disappear. Trading is a vital part of PoE. It is - and it should be. But that doesn’t mean trade should be the “omega” of everything.

Some people already view it as the “omega” of everything, which is why an AH would simply be a QoL improvement for them. But there’s no way of adding an instant AH without it becoming the center of everything; progression, difficulty, drop rates etc. Maybe not right away, it’s not like GGG would go havoc right away. But all future updates, items, rarity, drop rates, bosses and so on WILL be balanced with an instant AH in mind. And that IS a scary thought - in my head.

A SSF league with increased drop rates will never happen. Sadly, maybe, but. It is what it is.