I need an automated trading mechanic to enjoy this game again

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Cyzax wrote:

Now, multiply your supply by 1000x in case of an AH, and imagine how prices will go.
Then you're in exactly the position GGG want to avoid (as stated in their trade manifesto)...

That's why you should read a bit better.
You know, reading makes people understand stuff, for instance that I said 'Limit the amount of trades possible'
This means... let#s say instead of premium stash-tabs we get get the functionality split, no more premium tabs but all are customizable... on the other hand (just an example-number) we get 5 (equipment only) slots for each of them owned. Consumables shouldn't be limited at the end-goal always is equipment anyway, hence there is no reason for limitation for those.

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Cyzax wrote:

Item drops will be meaningless for trading players, and GGG will have to adjust difficulty of the game to compensate for trading players having better gear... and kill the game for the majority of the players, the non-trading ones.

Wha? No, the game already has a VAST difference between trading and non-trading players.
You're falling into another fallacy here once again. Increasing convenience for trade causes people to use trading as it's... well... convenient. Hence the amount of non-trading players shrinks to a very very small number. Also once again, limitations would immediately and without effort for GGG take care of it, you just tend to ignore this seemingly.

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Xavathos wrote:

On top of all that, there is the point of crafting to make.

That's absolutely true! So let's go into it:

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Xavathos wrote:

If you want to upgrade your gear right now, you can either look for it on the trade tool and hope you can find a seller that responds and sells it at a decent price, or you can attempt to craft it yourself.

which we need to take into perspective as to when in the game this happens.
-Are you just looking for MS-boots to get quicker through Act 1-10?
-A set of equipment to top off your resistances after entering the mapping stage?
-Actual upgrades during mapping to reach uber-elder?
-Post uber-elder upgrades?

Those are the only viable times to upgrade a character, given the 'common Joe' usually abstains from trading since the experience is too convoluted, frustrating, time-intensive we're left over mostly with long-term players, veterans with several leagues under their belt or people who want to generally progress quick and have taken the effort to get into it.

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Xavathos wrote:

When item supply skyrockets as a result of the "wall", the "trade cost" crumbling to nothing, you'd never again choose to try to craft your own gear, because it would almost always be cheaper to simply find a tailor-made item on the AH and instantly buy it there.

Which only counts for 'common' drops. Hence normal bases with normal 'drop' mods.
This doesn't take into account any form of Essence modifier, Fossil modifier, multi-craft, very rarely dropped mod for annul+multi-mod or temple-mods.
Hence those are all 'outside' the equation in this case as demand/supply is entirely on another scale there.

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Xavathos wrote:

When item supply skyrockets as a result of the "wall", the "trade cost" crumbling to nothing, you'd never again choose to try to craft your own gear, because it would almost always be cheaper to simply find a tailor-made item on the AH and instantly buy it there.

Absolutely true! That's why we have the current situation of 'non-specific' drops are utter garbage and nobody picks them up, they just aren't worth the time-investment.
The majority of gear is crafted at the moment, hence the only limitation is supply of consumables versus chance for the right outcome.
Given that off-meta-stuff is worth absolutely nothing while meta-stuff has a skewed supply/demand once again we can easily see where this is going, meta-crafts are inherently worth something as the majority needs them.

Afterwards we move on to multi-mod anyway, crafts which aren't usually found for this power-level and having an inherent limitation on value for the crafts. Those are the baseline hence and since the amount of drops which are better is so minimal we can openly say the crafting cost is a hard-limit for indefinite time.

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Xavathos wrote:

Not only is that a bad thing on its own, but it essentially makes exalt/chaos/alchemy into gold/silver/copper, as they are no longer constantly consumed in order to craft, leading to further devaluation of even the currency itself.

That's a massive strawman. A very masisve one. With cost of opportunity sinking the exchange-rate for chaos to exalt changes, hence exalts rise in price to crate those top-tier items while chaos sinks further, probably a 1/250 exchange-rate.
Complete de-valuation of the currency-system in PoE is impossible as the cost of opportunity is handled by top-tier equipment, not mid-tier.

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Xavathos wrote:

And when the currency itself gets devalued, you'll reduce the cost to make even mirror tier items. Everything gets perpetually cheaper.

Another massive strawman. Mirror- and god-tier items are limited by the supply on the market, once again, god-tier needs commonly at least 2000+ ex, that's the work of dozens of people during the time of a whole league, hence supply/demand is permanently sustained unless the drop-rate of currency gets too high. To change that ratio it would need to be roughly 5-10 times as high at least.

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Xavathos wrote:

Now, this happens all the time, it's happening right now in fact. It's a natural phenomenon when supply increases and demand drops. But it's balanced, kept in check, by the fact that trading is tedious and (presumably) as a result of that not the go-to method of upgrading gear for the majority of players. Currency is used for crafting, because crafting is still worth doing that way. An AH would dissolve this balance.

Your strawmans build upon each other... so this one is also inherently wrong.

Crafting is always worthwhile, the amount of craft-only options is a superior method compared to drops right now, hence those retain their value indefinitely.
Namely:

Alterations - Multi-modding as annulments are too rare in comparison.
Scouring - The top-limitation are chancing 'space-gear'.
Chaos - Zana mods becoming more viable, permanent running of those depletes the market overall, not sustainable with drop-rate.
Exalts - Multi-modding, general crafts and increasing value of top-tier items as well as fossil-crafted items.
Annulments - Obviously multi-modding and gambling for increasing value of top-mods.

And above all that we still got meta-crafting layered which needs exalts, scours as well as alchemy/Alts for the blocks commonly, rarely chaos.

This alone is more then enough to retain the value... it's a ridiculous notion to think the currency itself would become worthless.

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Xavathos wrote:

First of all, what you describe here means you understand why there cannot be an AH in PoE. You literally state the reason in your post, crafting and devaluation of loot in general.

You're mistaking the current state with the future state here in a ridiculous manner once again.

Also once more, implementation in-game has superior options to take care of bots compared to the trade-API. GGG needs to invest resources there though. Bot-wise it would otherwise stay the same as bots already are so vastly superior that no other game I even know comes even close to efficiency there.

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Xavathos wrote:

Second of all, if you only got maps you didn't already complete in your Atlas, you'd very quickly run out of maps to get. It would basically limit your map pool in a league to the amount of different maps in total. That's just game breaking. Maps ARE the end-game in PoE!

That's where my idea for a 'blank slate' for each tier comes into mind again.
Dropped a T6 map? Choose yourself which one it is!
Takes care of the whole RNG-notion to a large degree and allows GGG to make each map unique for drops/damage-types/challenge-type.
Problem with RNG for progression solved while also increasing the variety in content massively.

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Xavathos wrote:

On top of that, there are already ways to farm specific maps you're missing in the Atlas, if you take the time to figure out how the Atlas actually works. What you're saying is plain wrong and not how it works, so to propose a change from such a conclusion would be ill advised.

The majority of those needs adjacent maps though, which once again are limited on drops for those. That is the reason why we got Horizon orbs as common drops now after all, to alleviate the issue.
Patchwork-solution though, eases the issue, doesn't take care of it.

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Cyzax wrote:

Spoiler

This couldn't be further from the truth...

The majority of players don't trade, and the amount of crafting materials an average player finds is not sufficient to craft anything of consequence, even if you were inclined to do so.

I'm probably fairly close to an average player (with the exception that I trade and participate on the forum), and I'm still using these this league:

Self-found, and with the only crafting being using the crafting bench if possible.

Crafting, and trading, is for the top 10% of players (or whatever the small number is). The REST of the game have to be balanced for the majority, and that precludes easy trade as it would either make the game trivial for the trading players, or impossible for the (majority) non-trading players!

Once again a fallacy here.

First of all... those items are utter garbage and I can easily craft several better ones with the currency I find during a league while playing casually. You're just a bad example for a player who is experienced.
But! We're talking about the 'average Joe' here after all, so let's go from that perspective, right?

To increase the participation in crafting and trading both of those systems hence need to be more intuitive, in-game helpers and a proper documentation... also in-game instead of outside.
That's a staple thing any good game has to provide, PoE doesn't yet, which comes from their roots and being a very old game. The implementation of those is overdue though and should even come above new league-specific content as it creates a level playing-field for people. Personal in-game skill is what usually decides a players standing, not information acquisition outside of a game... for obvious reasons, here it's sadly the case though.

The game btw is balanced for crafting along the way, every dimwit can kill uber-elder in a month after acquiring the knowledge, given they aren't a complete newbie in the genre or even for gaming in total. 2 Months with playing fairly casually.
The reason people don't reach that state is either frustration before that and quitting the game therefore (for a myriad of reasons) or a lack of knowledge the game should've provided firsthand. It's already ridiculous enough that a new player shouldn't explore the game on its own but instead rely on a guide to be able to learn the game conveniently.

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Xavathos wrote:

First of all, what you describe here means you understand why there cannot be an AH in PoE. You literally state the reason in your post, crafting and devaluation of loot in general.

I've already said, i dont see that as a problem. Common "junk" items will cost nothing - how that can be a problem?
Furthermore, with AH, some loot - certain essences, fossils, etc - might grow up in price, cause now one CAN actually buy enough of themwithout spending much time.

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Xavathos wrote:

Second of all, if you only got maps you didn't already complete in your Atlas, you'd very quickly run out of maps to get. It would basically limit your map pool in a league to the amount of different maps in total. That's just game breaking. Maps ARE the end-game in PoE!

Yes, maps are end-game. But imagine, if you have to run Act1 5 times before you can get to act 2? Would anyone like that? I think, no. But that's exactly what happens with Atlas!
Endgame should be gated behind difficulty, not repetive grind of easy content. Yes, if you're too weak for Act2, you can farm Act1 a bit before transitioning to Act2 (for example). You can farm T5 maps before transitioning to T6 maps, etc. But when you're FORCED to farm T5 maps over and over again to occasionally get some missing ones, that's NOT right!
I dont even speak about high-tier maps (T12-16), that are gated behind boring grinds of lower level maps and cant sustain themselves. And those arent even difficult for strong build!Actually, strong build steamrolls them. But instead of reducing player's power, they gate maps behind grind so players wont complete game in a blink of eye. That's detrimental for game!

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Cyzax wrote:

Crafting, and trading, is for the top 10% of players (or whatever the small number is). The REST of the game have to be balanced for the majority, and that precludes easy trade as it would either make the game trivial for the trading players, or impossible for the (majority) non-trading players!

It's obvious, that you cant make a game for both. So what? Developers claim themselves, that PoE is balanced with trading in mind. Players, who dont trade, just inentionally handicap themselves. Just like players, who dont use Ascendancy, or dont level up skill gems, or dont use crafting, etc. Will you claim, that game should be balanced for players, who dont use Ascendancy classes?
It's fine, of you want a SSF game, like Grim Dawn or many other ARPGs. But then, you shouldnt defend current trading system. No, you should say "we dont need any trading in PoE, make it SSF game please and raise drops accordingly". And if you ALREADY play SSF, even knowing that game is balanced with trading in mind, then you shouldnt care, what trading system there is. Cause it wont affect you at all!
So i dont understand your point, sorry. You want SSF game, yet you defend current trading system and say "we dont need AH". IF you want SSF, say exactly THAT!