General Discussion - Tired of Auction House Deniers Advocaters - Forum

So clearly you're just of the opinion that it doesn't matter what sort of grievous, irreparable damage Grinding Gear does to their game with frictionless trade, because you're convince that all these other games with COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SYSTEMS have implemented COMPLETELY DIFFERENT AUCTION HOUSES with COMPLETELY DIFFERENT RULES, and thus have proven that putting a free, unlimited, totally frictionless offline automated auction house in Path of Exile will somehow A.) stop bots, despite bots thriving on automation and predictability which you are proposing to drastically increase within the system. B.) eliminate pricefixing, despite price fixers now not actually needing to hoodwink anyone to secure sole supply of a given commodity within the game. C.) increase profits for Everybody(TM) despite a massive explosion of supply without any commensurate increase in demand, thus enormously devaluing virtually every item in the game. Right. Because "I don't liiiiiike it!" is the only argument anyone needs against the current trade system, but errybuddy else needs to produce a fucking thesis to get y'all to so much as blink. So you know what? Fine. Let's do it. Run the next league as Perandus Mk. II, with a frictionless auction house exclusive to that league. Let's all watch as everyone who's so convinced that it'd be a rousing success and Everything Would Be Awesome Forever(C) jumps into that league and, within two weeks, discovers that the market for Perandus II is an absolutely untenable mess wherein nobody can sell anything because every single player is trying to sell hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of garbage-ass items and nobody can make any money amidst the sea of nincomprods trying to turn the rest of the playerbase into their vendor-trash dispensary. Let's watch that league crash and burn, and then take its auction house with it into the annals of historic failure when the three months are up. She/Her	Posted by 1453R#7804 on Apr 23, 2019, 3:30:10 PM Quote this Post
" 1453R wrote: A.) stop bots, despite bots thriving on automation and predictability which you are proposing to drastically increase within the system. It won't stop bots, but bots really don't hurt as much as you're making them out to. That's the point, you can't stop bots, there's not stopping bots, but bad trade rewards bots so much more than smooth trade does. Bots don't care about the clunkiness they're just bots, the currency bots are chugging along just fine now and so are the RMT sellers. Smooth trade really just evens the playing field, by allowing real players to trade AND play the game. " 1453R wrote: B.) eliminate pricefixing, despite price fixers now not actually needing to hoodwink anyone to secure sole supply of a given commodity within the game. It will eliminate half of it by forcing people to sell things that they're tring to fix low. It will also make it more difficult for people to buy up everything to fix high because more people will be selling. " 1453R wrote: C.) increase profits for Everybody(TM) despite a massive explosion of supply without any commensurate increase in demand, thus enormously devaluing virtually every item in the game. This one is just insane and nobody is talking about it, because this assumes that their smooth trade will have no search functionality. This assumes that all the search options currently available on their own trade website wouldn't be available, which is super weird. Also no one has said that this would increase profits, the people who want smooth trade don't care about profits, the just want to spend less time trading, and more time playing the game. On the other side hey if the search functionality is awful and this scenario is true it would fight botting just like you want. The problem with forced clunky trading is simple. When you're trading you're not playing the game you're waiting, and that's bad. The problem is compounded by the fact that you often times need to trade for maps to progress or do your daily missions to do the content that you want to do. This means that you need to not be playing the game in order to be playing the part of the game you want. Last edited by j33bus#3399 on Apr 23, 2019, 3:42:13 PM	Posted by j33bus#3399 on Apr 23, 2019, 3:38:38 PM Quote this Post
It's not about trying to sell "garbage ass items". It's about trying to sell anything of value. Someone out there will sell it for less... and if it's easy to trade with them, your buyer will. And "demand" isn't constant. It goes down every time someone makes a trade. And if trades become easy, demand will drop all the quicker. It would ruin the trade game and GGG is aware of it. They've even tried to explain it, but the people with their fingers in their ears going "La La La..." aren't listening to reason. An AH in this game would be equivalent to a save editor in all practical measures of it. Last edited by Shagsbeard#3964 on Apr 23, 2019, 3:46:39 PM	Posted by Shagsbeard#3964 on Apr 23, 2019, 3:42:58 PM Quote this Post
" Shagsbeard wrote: It's not about trying to sell "garbage ass items". It's about trying to sell anything of value. Someone out there will sell it for less... and if it's easy to trade with them, your buyer will. And "demand" isn't constant. It goes down every time someone makes a trade. And if trades become easy, demand will drop all the quicker. It would ruin the trade game and GGG is aware of it. They've even tried to explain it, but the people with their fingers in their ears going "La La La..." aren't listening to reason. Surely you have to at least concede that GGG doesnt really know what would happen, and are basing this solely on opinion and conjecture. Auction Houses have worked in some games and failed in others. Ultimately it's their design decision, but that doesnt make them right in their overall conclusion. As I mentioned previously, their design around trade in the console and Asian markets indicate some flexibility and mobility in their stance. I'm sure they are taking feedback and reviewing data. I hope professional humility plays a larger roll than developmental ego, and some desire to be "right". No need to be stubborn in all situations, and admitting you might be wrong is both relatable, and ultimately could be good for business. "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln Last edited by DarthSki44#6905 on Apr 23, 2019, 3:50:31 PM	Posted by DarthSki44#6905 on Apr 23, 2019, 3:49:23 PM On Probation Quote this Post
" reprot9x wrote: Also, putting a price on the game would get rid of the free bots while making it profitable for GGG to ban bots instead of just ignoring them like nowadays. Way to instantly get rid of large proportion of your playbase, what a hopelessly clueless idea. Also, plenty of paid for games still have a fair bit of botting. "You want it to be one way, but it's the other way" Last edited by MarloStanfield#2928 on Apr 23, 2019, 3:56:23 PM	Posted by MarloStanfield#2928 on Apr 23, 2019, 3:53:24 PM Quote this Post
" Shagsbeard wrote: They've even tried to explain it, but the people with their fingers in their ears going "La La La..." aren't listening to reason. No, they write some bullshit that they expect everyone to gladly swallow and call it chocolate. Any slightly thinking person should be able to see that the manifesto nonsense isn't the actual real reason. They care a lot about mtx advertisement for example which isn't even mentioned in the manifesto. In fact, nothing about revenue is mentioned anywhere in any manifesto. Still I get the feeling that 99% of the design decisions are based on how much revenue it will bring, not on how much better the game would be. caugh stash tabs caugh fractured items caugh unstackable fossils. " MarloStanfield wrote: Also, plenty of paid for games still have a fair bit of botting. Lets legalize crime because some people commit crime anyway. Logic? Last edited by reprot9x#2554 on Apr 23, 2019, 4:04:45 PM	Posted by reprot9x#2554 on Apr 23, 2019, 3:54:16 PM Quote this Post
The Manifesto was created 2 years ago and since then let me show what happened regarding a very specific point Spoiler " Chris wrote: Trade in Path of Exile From the start, we knew that Path of Exile needed the ability to trade items and that we had to be careful not to make it too easy. We had seen what happened in other Action RPGs when characters could be upgraded trivially. We added trade chat and a secure player-to-player trade screen so that people could negotiate transactions and complete them without counterparty risk. With insufficient foresight into how it'd eventually affect trade, we also added the ability to link items on the official forums. Linking items is a way of showing other players that you actually own an item, because the system automatically checks that you still have the item in that form and marks it as verified. This system was intended so that players could show off their awesome finds to other players, in a similar way to the in-game item linking system. Because items matter so much in Path of Exile, it was important that we provided many ways to prove ownership of items. We even intended to allow people to Tweet their items from within the game, though never got around to implementing this feature. Before long, people used item linking to set up shops within the trade forums. This was expected, because the goal of item linking was to prove ownership of items (so that people could know that you still have the item before they make you an offer). These shops became complicated and people made tools that let users manage their shops and post to them efficiently. So far, so good. Then came the forum-scraping bots. Smart community members worked out that they could automatically crawl the forum and insert all of the items into a database, creating an instantly- and accurately-searchable index of all items for trade in Path of Exile. There was nothing we could do about this, because it's almost impossible to stop people gathering information from a public website. A trade ecosystem evolved where players would search for items on trade websites to quickly find what they need, but would have to manually contact the user in-game to perform the trade. While this was a lot quicker than before, we grew to accept it but were worried about one aspect in particular: To create trade forum threads easily, users would download third-party programs and enter their account details (or at least web session IDs). While these tools and their authors never took advantage of this in an illegal way, it was a potentially dangerous situation for our users and we really needed an official solution. We made it so that Premium Stash Tabs can expose their contents to trade sites on a public API. So that's where we are today. It's easy to list items for trade, easy to search for items, and is often quite frustrating to complete a trade. This remaining frustration is the only thing standing in the way of trades being basically instant. While we understand that this sounds like a positive thing, we are very concerned regarding what will happen if that does eventuate. We have to prioritise the long-term health of Path of Exile. In a nutshell they say they accepted how it was a third party thing and the "Frustration of completing a trade" was a good thing for unspecified reasons. Now, few months ago, its fully integrated on the website and works with great ease, I dare say its even better than the Third party website since its a bit easier to search IMO. If THAT is not a good example of hypocrisy, I don't know what is. 2 years is a long time for a GAS type of game and they need to either fully go behind "Harder trade" and fight agaisn't any third party trade or accept that third party trading as going on a better path and improve trading. Last edited by Funinyourgame#3148 on Apr 23, 2019, 4:08:43 PM	Posted by Funinyourgame#3148 on Apr 23, 2019, 4:05:04 PM Quote this Post
Everything will devalue and be worthless? Wrong Chaos drops don't increase so the currency is relatively constant. Things that sell now for 5c will sell for 2c sure, and something better will sell for 5c. People will still need gear, there will still be competition for good gear. If medium to high value items become easier to get and prices drop (say, Xophs blood or Pandemonious, consistently a few Ex. Or crafted weapons for many exalts), fewer people will farm them or bother making them, driving prices back up. There will be MILD power creep, less so than a loot pinata league like incursion or the introduction of offhand sceptres that gave you 100+% of physical damage as extra elemental. A lot less. Remember we had people running around with 600 dps mainhand weapons with offhands that gave them 120% extra physical as elemental? But the availability of a few more crit percent or resists on your gear will break the gam? Not even the people selling that garbage believe it. Its amazing how many people started off saying "I dont really care" but then post 20 times (did I mention gaslighting? How many times has Shagsbeard posted this thread after saying 'Not worth responding to'. He REALLY, REALLY cares, and apparently it is very much worth it. That should tell you something.) I think the OP is right, every time it comes down to people fearing that items will be worth less and they will have increased competition for monopolizing trade. Last edited by trixxar#2360 on Apr 23, 2019, 4:08:17 PM	Posted by trixxar#2360 on Apr 23, 2019, 4:07:19 PM Quote this Post
As has been discussed over and over again, everyone that is against auction houses complain about rare items flooding of the market yada yada. So i will say again, all we need is a market place for consumables( fossils, essences, maps, scarabs, frags, maps). Poe.trade already works well enough for one time base/gear purchases even if you have to whisper 10 people.	Posted by Mortyx#1049 on Apr 23, 2019, 4:22:11 PM Quote this Post
" CaptainWARLORD wrote: It would help if people finally started understanding that they want a marketplace and not an auction house. That is coming from someone who abused D3's real money auction house. Yes, I made cash with that thing. And it caused me to change the way I played the game. Valuable drops were no longer considered valuable drops -- they were considered cash. I used guildmates and friends to push and manipulate prices -- something I hated afterwards. How did it work? Simple, really. The way an auction house works is by bidding. And the highest bidder wins the item. How do you manipulate it? Also very simple: you build up a base of cash flow or gold as it was, then you seek out valuable items and get your friends to bid. You keep shoving them gold and they keep bidding. They will keep pushing the price until you get the desired minimum amount. Then each gets a cut and the cycle continues. Marketplace works the other way around. Here it's not the seller dominating the market, at least not directly, but supply and demand are dictated by buyers. An item won't sell if it's overpriced compared to the current supply. What we have right now in form of the official trade site and poe.trade is this, yet in a simplified form without direct automation (excluding bots with this statement). An automated marketplace, however, induces similar symptoms as an auction house, where the supplier can corner the market. This is why, should we ever get an automated marketplace-like system, there should be a limit to how many items you can have up for trade at once -- excluding currency and maps or any other similar items. So, in a nutshell, people first need to understand what they want, and then we can start talking about what this means for the game. This 100%. While the current situation may seem untenable, introducing automation will invite code-savvy folks to run wild on PoE's economy. And it's a snowball effect: - a player with buying power (legit or otherwise) can very quickly buy up and control/inflate the prices of items - the player then accumulates more currency from manipulating item prices, increasing his or her buying power - the player, with increased buying power, can then buy up and control increasing amounts of items Think about any of the RMT places that basically have unlimited amounts of items and currency to sell - they'd have a lot of incentive to do the above and they'd have the currency to do it easily.	Posted by Aixius#5661 on Apr 23, 2019, 4:22:20 PM Quote this Post