Trading deficiency

Greetings,

To be able to buy an item, I need to whisper to so many people (with no answer) before finally one answer...to tell me the item was just sold!!!!!

I think the trading in POE is a great part of the game. The search is easy, the sort is easy too but in its current state, it is really not fun to have to lose so much time. I have the impression that only 1-2% of what is to sell is "buyable".

Is there a way to trade out of game like the old Diablo 3 auction system? Or an app that makes it possible to trade? Or better, is there an app (or something in the design) that will make possible to trade automatically (like the old Diablo 3 aution system)?

Did the game programmers ever suggest they will improve the trading system to address its flaws?
Seriously, I think a "fix" of the flaws could be part of a whole launch like they do for leagues.(Sarcastic: Hey! It cannot be worse than the bestiary league. I am fairly new and not very good at the game, but all that waiting time to capture broke the hack & slash dynamic of the game and the Pokemon feeling...LOL)

Thank you

yes, it is hard to buy cheap things, especially late in the league. People are not gonna stop playing to sell you stuff for 1 jeweller or alchemy orb. The kind of solution can be to buy for at least 1 chaos orb. I actually never try to buy anything cheaper than that (except maybe very early in the league), because the extra time spent trying to do so is not worth saved money.

oh, and automatic auction house trading would instantly turn the game to be flippers paradise and I think devs dont want to do that.

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oh, and automatic auction house trading would instantly turn the game to be flippers paradise and I think devs dont want to do that.

Not really if it is implemented right. For example, you can have an upfront fee that could be 10% (game cost) of what you list for. Or you could put a maximum of items per account (or better IP, I know you can circumvent that, but it would be a minimum of players). Diablo 3 auction had 2 major flaws: Gold economy was flawed and with each patch the valuable items became useless, and the tie with Real Life currency (I.e.: US dollar) opened a whole Pandora box with the IRS. So much, that it was the reason why Blizzard closed the auction.

But I am not debating your point, it is a very good point in fact and I do agree with it. I am just saying that the trading system is a big part of the game and a very nice one, and it should be polished a lot more to make it more enjoyable.

well yes I certainly agree that some trading improvements would be nice.

for me (I do not flip, I only buy what I actually need) the biggest pain in the ass is trading for cheap medium-low tier maps I sometimes need to effectively build/destroy elder/shaper influence. People list them but often dont sell them.. this slows me down by a lot and sometimes I wisch I could just buy these low maps from vendors for 2c or something.

regulation of instant trading in terms of trading limits would hurt nolifers or people who provide currency exchange services, etc.. I cant see the solution there

this is a very complicated and delicate topic..

One very easy thing that would make trading for the average player better: Implement auto-trading for buyers as a buy-order.

For example, I want item I1, listed by player P1 at price listed on poe.trade. There is a button <buy>. I press the button and I pre-pay and then I go to work (I am one of those people doing that pesky activity that is called work). If/when P1 comes online and see that someone wants to buy the item he listed, he can accept the offer and push a simple button to accept the trade. Whatever the league he is in. No more league jumping and players will sell for lesser currency because there is n time loss on their part. The automation is limited but it would save so much time and aggravation.

I even see it implemented to the next level: I make offers on I1,I2,I3,I4,I5 (pre-pay the highest item). If one of those item is traded, the order becomes void on the other items and the difference in currency if there is one is refunded. NO wait time for answers that will not come and if I am lucky, when I come back from work, I can enjoy my new item and spend time to hack and slash (In my case, is doing like Bam Bam in The Flintstones with my Sunder...hehehehe).

No abuse, no flipping and it resolves one of the biggest hassle of trading.

And, it is quite easy to implement. I already have the interface in my mind, it is a simple <buy> button and checkbox on the webpage to link the conditional transaction. The currency is debited automatically by program. In the game, it is a button showing up exactly like when you have a party invite and the item goes to the player inventory or first stash space available and the currency goes to the player.

Thats from my PoV one of the most interesting suggestions Ive seen here in many years of this topic discussions. Its really hard to think about all of the possible consequences and evaluate how much "doable" it actually is. Few concerns from top of my head:

How would the interface handle the hoard of trade requests?

Imagine you list valuable item for very cheap, the moment you get hundreds of requests. How would the interface handle it? Would you be able to retreat? Actually retreating is pretty useful, it prevents sniping and preserves inexperienced players from losing tons of currency if they underprice the item by a ton.

lets say you can retreat. wouldnt it be abused by players trying to get most of their items? I mean, you price an item for 2ex, go to bed. The morning you find out you got 5 requests. You retreat and raise the price. then repeat.. and in the meantime, buyers currency is reserved.

I wrote the wrong term when I said <accept> button. It should be <ok> button. Or you can have a pop up screen with a list of all the trades done. The whole thing I said about the accept part is flawed. I was not thinking right. You brought a good point about the pulling out of a trade.

You cannot retreat. It is a seller bid and a buyer bid. Exactly like the stock market. Once the offer is done, it is over, you have to accept. If no offer is done, you can reprice or remove from bidding the same way we do now.

But now you go back to the initial issue of people trading on a monstrous scale and flipping items. The first solution I see to that is to have a % fee taken in currency like all the brokers do (and Diablo 3 auction did it too). But it adds a layer of complexity that would make the project harder to implement.

The second option may be limiting the number of items you list in the auto-trade system at 100 would be a solution. How many items an average player list usually? Right now, I have listed only gems level 20 and 20% quality gems. But I am not a player who can invest a lot of time in the game like streamers of game-addicts.

The third option that is excluding completely the revamp, is to purge the system. Everything for sale for more than 1 month is removed from the listing. Very easy to implement. But that means you have items in a stash tab that sells globally that are not listed anymore.

The whole point, really, is to remove the aggravation, for the average player, to have tons of items for sale that we cannot buy and the time loss. Also, it is a loss opportunity of sale on the other side because a player will not want to lose time for a low value currency profit at a certain point in the game for him. I am convinced, it will be the most bang for the buck satisfaction, player wise, if the programmers improve the system just to address the aforementioned issue.

but if you cannot retreat, then we are in path of sniping. Would this be good or bad? I think bad but opinions may differ.

problem with the "tax" or "rake" is that we dont have currencies with fixed marked value ratios. this would be easy with gold but with orbs?

maybe you could consider to sum up your vision in one article and post in in feedback and suggestion section. I think your ideas are interesting enough for it. Perhaps they contribute somehow to discussion on this topic in GGG studios. And I can guarantee you they think and discuss a lot on how to improve the trading so that it is more pleasant for players while not turning the game in some pointless trading simulator like D3 was back in time I was playing it (well the last time I played it was the day I installed PoE:)).

I pay close attention to the post date of items if i'm trying to buy on a dead mode like standard or end league. If it wasn't posted < 1 day ago I don't bother. Not the best solution but it works if you have an excess of currency and small amount of patience.