Chris and his D3 Interview

People don't get how much more efficient an actual AH would be compared to what we have now. Luckily, Chris does so we're not getting an AH. An AH would ruin PoE.

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Xavderion wrote:

People don't get how much more efficient an actual AH would be compared to what we have now. Luckily, Chris does so we're not getting an AH. An AH would ruin PoE.

PoE.Trade is an Auction House. I think some people get too caught up on the term "Auction House." It seems most people immediately look at D3. AH is just a broad term nowadays that applies to a trading platform. Like where I come from, everyone calls a Soda Drink, Coke. You always say you drank a Coke, you went to the store to get a Coke, etc. Even if you got a Mellow Yellow or Mt. Dew instead. Its just a broad term. I bet if WoW or D3 called their platform "Marketplace" thats what people would be asking for now. A Marketplace. Its a term most people probably grew up with since those games(especially WoW) span half if not most of people's lives.

That's why its so hard to have any sort of conversation around here without everyone immediately getting defensive and flaming each other. People seem immediately triggered by the term "AH." Meanwhile using the pseudo-AH PoE.Trade. It seems we all have our own ideas of what an AH is. A broad term is all it is.

By definition: A company that facilitates the buying and selling of assets, such as works of art and collectibles. Just a straight google definition of an Auction House. Sounds about like PoE.Trade doesn't it?

I really dont think the efficiency is going to change much if it was integrated. It would be more efficient for casuals and new gamers to figure out how to trade while at the same time being incredibly in-efficient for anyone using all the bells and whistles that comes with PoE.Trade. It would balance out.

So you probably wonder why bother integrating its working just fine as is. Well, maybe because integration can lead to some form of regulation. And some regulation is better than none.

Just finished listening to the interview (at https://www.diabloii.net/blog/comments/path-of-exile-interview-chris-wilson-podcast ).

Around 11:30 they got talking about community involvement. It did make me appreciate that the devs here do still occasionally answer questions, as opposed to Blizzard being walled off.

Around 14:55, talking about classes, Chris mentions people doing crazy builds in D2, "like a melee sorceress or a sorceress who only casts firebolt." That made me think of Sirian's Sissy and Ember. (I remember when Sirian did his run with Ember - it was, and still is, great reading. Sirian passed on D3 in favor of Grim Dawn, last I heard.)

This ties in with my wish that GGG would do more to celebrate players who show their skill by doing these self-limiting variants.

Around 22:20, they get into Solo Self Found. "Players who don't trade enjoy the game more. They play more time. They have more character upgrades. They write with nicer sentiment on the forums, when we do sentiment analysis."

At 25:38 he mentions that if a player finds a Mirror in SSF it's not useless - he can convert it out of SSF and be rich. As coincidence would have it: Yep, found a mirror in SSF, converted it to Harbinger and bought a Headhunter .

The SSF discussion transitions to trade and why it needs to be clunky. I still think his stance came about because early D3 balance made the auction house necessary for non-god-like players and that conditioned the player base into using it all the time. But maybe he's right, and a large percentage of the players would have so little self-control they'd lessen their enjoyment of the game with non-irritating trade in an integrated marketplace.

31:35 - an analogy to Magic: The Gathering. They like to make an under-powered thing (that gets dissed) and then later release another under-powered thing that combines with the first thing into something powerful.

37:20 talking about rares vs. uniques and balancing supporter uniques.

40:30 storytelling and lore

Just a couple things irked me:

The interviewer described the story-line portions of D3 and PoE as a "tutorial" before the end-game. (What do you think of that, Charan?)

He also said, early on, he was amazed that Fall of Oriath expansion was released for free. (And he knows this is a free to play game!) Toward the end of the interview he asks if GGG ever considers charging for an expansion.

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CelticHound wrote:

The SSF discussion transitions to trade and why it needs to be clunky. I still think his stance came about because early D3 balance made the auction house necessary for non-god-like players and that conditioned the player base into using it all the time. But maybe he's right, and a large percentage of the players would have so little self-control they'd lessen their enjoyment of the game with non-irritating trade in an integrated marketplace.

I assume he didn't mention the possibility of a limited auction house, it's either no AH or the unrestricted one D3 had. There are ways to do that tastefully too, but I guess he prefers that raw feeling of an unfinished mod.

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Destructodave wrote:

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Xavderion wrote:

People don't get how much more efficient an actual AH would be compared to what we have now. Luckily, Chris does so we're not getting an AH. An AH would ruin PoE.

PoE.Trade is an Auction House.

If you're going to define how "most people" define the term "Auction House", I'm going to do it too. "Most people" define it as a marketplace where you can instantly buy items even from offline players. And THAT is where the efficiency comes into play.

And I don't think you'll find that many players (or forum dwellers) in here, that are opposed to an in-game marketplace that limits flipping and price fixing (besides flippers and price fixers). It's the "instant" and "efficient" part many players are opposed to.

As it is now, I spend much time to buy what I want, and it takes from my playtime. I'm not saying that im for or against auction house.

But it would give me more time to do what I actually like, and that is to play the game as I like, my way, without spending extra time waiting for someone to respond to my whispers or converting currency for 10 mins to trade once.

Trade as it is now, is only a time sink with same final results as an auction house. Flippers/traders exist now, and would still exist with auction.

I still don't know what to think, but I don't want to waste time trading, but as it is now, I have to, to be able to play as I like. If I wouldn't trade, I wouldn't be able to play builds that I like and how I envision them.

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Phrazz wrote:

It's the "instant" and "efficient" part many players are opposed to.

Oh, yeah. Because, for instance, spending at least 30-40 minutes a day (up to an hour if you're unlucky) trying to convert your daily haul of small currencies to chaos and getting nothing but AFKers, DNDers and/or players who simply ignore you is an integral part of PoE experience. And if you reduce that time to 1-2 minutes, it's gonna totally ruin the game, crash the economy etc. etc. Heard this argument a million times, still don't get how you guys arrive at that conclusion.

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DGTLDaemon wrote:

Oh, yeah. Because, for instance, spending at least 30-40 minutes a day (up to an hour if you're unlucky) trying to convert your daily haul of small currencies to chaos and getting nothing but AFKers, DNDers and/or players who simply ignore you is an integral part of PoE experience. And if you reduce that time to 1-2 minutes, it's gonna totally ruin the game, crash the economy etc. etc. Heard this argument a million times, still don't get how you guys arrive at that conclusion.

First off; If you're spending 30-40 minutes pr day converting currency, you're not playing the same game as I am.

Second; I'm not referring to "AFKers, DNDers and/or players who simply ignore you", I'm talking about the minimum amount of effort required to bypass the RNG, like leaving your map to trade, visit another player's hideout, message the player you are trade with etc.

As I said, I don't think you'll find ANYONE that doesn't want a better trade system to get rid of the many weaknesses poe.trade has. But not being able to trade instantly isn't a weakness, it's a strength for the game and the economy - in my eyes.

But if you're going to put words in my mouth, even though I'm clearly not one the "you guys" you are referring to, it's not possible to have a debate/discussion on the matter.

My 2 cents on this issue:

I don't think POE wants to do away with trade at all. If POE became forced-SSF overnight, it would lose more than 50% of its player base in a short amount of time. The GGG mantra is: you can trade, but you have to figure it out yourself. The only reason public stash tabs became a thing was due to massive player demand for it. As some of you in here have come to realize though, when it comes to an "Auction House", most POE players are against it.

There are many different reasons people are against the AH. For some, it's simply because it existed in D3 and POE players in general are very anti-D3 because they felt let down by it, which is why they are playing POE in the first place. Chris stated in the interview its because it trivializes the game and because they want to make trading cumbersome. Some people in this thread have interpreted it in their own way, and for those who think POE.trade = AH, let me explain how it is not.

For me, the biggest problem with the AH was how easily it facilitated trade. For example, you set a price, and if someone is willing to pay it, the trade goes through. POE.trade does NOT help you do this. You can trade even if you are offline (both as a buyer/seller) in the AH. Again, POE.trade does NOT help you do this. Essentially, all POE.trade is doing is helping a buyer find the seller who has an item he/she wants. Whether the actual trade takes place, will come down to you both being online, agreeing on a set price and then of course, being in the same instance to make that trade. This last sentence is something I (and presumably also the GGG developers) do not want to change. Of note, GGG has said they want to introduce trading without being in the same instance, I'm personally against this.

If all you guys want is POE.trade in-game, then I'm all for it and GGG probably hasn't done it yet because of the resources it costs. If POE.trade shuts down tomorrow, GGG would probably implement this very quickly within a few patches because as some of you here have said, QoL would become miserable in this game. If you want cross-instance trading, "fixed" price trading, and worst of all, offline trading (i.e. you list an item in stash, and if a buyer agrees to that price the exchange instantly goes through) -- then you will need to convince players like me (and the developers) a lot more!