Trading sucks.

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robmafia wrote:

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Pizzarugi wrote:

I, myself, send 2 messages to each person I PM for trade, waiting to send a second only after the first message fades. And if they don't respond, I write them off as a price fixer and block their listings on the trade site.

...wow.

i'm glad you conclude that everyone taking a piss/in the mine/etc is a "price fixer."

hahaha. this thread's hilarious.

so many people blaming "trade" for their own actions.

It takes literally zero effort to say something like "delving" or use the /afk chat function before taking a piss. Thankfully, I've met people who actually let me know they're busy, and I make sure to do the same if messaged to trade.

Come on, dude...

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SisterBlister wrote:

Example scenario: GGG implements perfect instantaneous trade. But every trade costs both the buyer and the seller a single chaos orb. This would alleviate a large part of the problems associated with easy trade currently:
- Cheap items won't flood the market because nothing is cheaper than 2C.
- Expensive items won't be affected. But they aren't anyway, because almost all sellers respond very quickly to trade requests for their expensive stuff.

While I do agree that trade must have some minor inconvenience to avoid completely flooding the market, I don't like the idea of a fixed fee for trading, it completely removes from the market cheap items and the newbie players who need them

I really do believe that limited space should be enough to avoid "the flood", with limited space every player will only sell the X best items he has and scrap the rest

I'm quite sure there's enough space for everyone in the market without the risk of slowing down the servers

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brushmonkey wrote:

..., but ANY solution that would make trade less annoying would make trade more popular, and it's that increased popularity that is the issue...

You can't be serious. It's not the popularity that's an issue, it's the influx and resulting inflation of cheap-medium items that would be the issue. And that can be mitigated. Popularity itself is ALWAYS a plus.

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CyberWizardB5 wrote:

...I don't like the idea of a fixed fee for trading, it completely removes from the market cheap items and the newbie players who need them...

But isn't that exactly the thing which GGG is so worried about? If you can always (even in the levelling phase, where you really need only simple items) buy better items than you can find, then you will never value your drops.
If you need to trade to go for higher level content, that's OK, because by that time you're hooked anyway (and you will have found a few decent items at least). But if your experience of a "new" arpg is that loot drops are useless, you'll never give it a chance, will you? Loot lust is a major driving force behind these games.

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LaiTash wrote:

I don't buy them that often, and i have a lot to sell.

Personal stuff, that doesn't reflect the total state of trading though. Sometimes you've got to go with the sour-side of stuff to make things overall better.

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LaiTash wrote:

The current situation at least enables some social interaction, what you're proposing is only annoying. Buyers win, sellers loose, net result is the same ('cuz we're usually both) but the economy is worse, power creep is rising and social aspect is lost.

In the current situation all power lies with the seller, ALL of it. As a buyer you don't have control over actually buying the stuff, you don't have control over knowing the actual pricing (as fixed prices and actual values are sometimes unable to be distinguished).

My suggestion is to even out the power-distribution between buyer and seller properly, less people just offering random crap (reducing the amount of low-value items in trade) while buyers have the ability to receive items quicker (reducing the supply and increasing the demand of some items). This causes the market to get into more of an equilibrium then before... which overall is a good thing, volatile markets in a video-game make for unhappy people besides flippers and full-time traders.

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Cyzax wrote:

Spoiler

No, they don't. It is explained why this would be a bad idea in the trade manifesto, and GGG is absolutely right about it.

Unless a game economy is structured so all types of resources leave the game in about the same amount per player as they're generated, easy trading will be the death of that economy. An alternative that could work is account binding, but in the PoE economy it would have to be drastic (probably all rares and uniques).

EVE Online is a good example where the economy is structured so easy trading is viable, and even then there is a 'transaction cost' similar to PoE given that you still have to spend time transporting huge quantities to where you build.

PoE is a good example of a game economy that doesn't lend itself to easy trading. The amount of items generated daily is HUGE, they do not wear out, and the good ones are not deleted (vendored or destroyed)!
If there was easy trading, a lot of it would end up in the AH, which means that no player would EVER find any piece of equipment where they couldn't buy a much better one for a pittance.
The effect would not only be that players who likes finding stuff would quit, but that to maintain the difficulty of the game, GGG would have to raise the difficulty. Now, given that the majority of players don't trade or otherwise interact with other players, these players would be shafted... and they provide a sizeable chunk of GGGs income.

So no, easy trade can not be implemented in PoE. If you think that GGG would throw away that much money... you're smoking something funny... :-p

As usual, there are option to alleviate your mentioned issues even with an automated system. But you're right with the base-assumption.

Limitations of some sort are mandatory... those shouldn't be at the cost of convenience though, viable options to make it convenient + limited are available. Hence timed-listing, fees, re-listing cooldown (let's say 3 days or 1 week, viable enough even for leagues) and so on.

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SisterBlister wrote:

Spoiler

It's not that black+white. Example scenario: GGG implements perfect instantaneous trade. But every trade costs both the buyer and the seller a single chaos orb. This would alleviate a large part of the problems associated with easy trade currently:
- Cheap items won't flood the market because nothing is cheaper than 2C.
- Expensive items won't be affected. But they aren't anyway, because almost all sellers respond very quickly to trade requests for their expensive stuff.

In general, the different price ranges need to be considered seperately, which the trade manifesto fails to do.
- Expensive items are so rare that their price would not be affected by a "perfect" trade system. They anyway get traded easily right now.
- Super cheap levelling items would suffer terribly if they could be traded effortlessly. Yes, people would not even try to find their own stuff during levelling if they know that much better items are available cheaply and without opportunity cost. This problem really needs to be addressed by any trade system. But that is trivially easy with a small transaction fee.
- Intermediate items are, well, intermediate between these two extremes and require more thought. Many option like limited no of trades per day, limited space, limited frequency (cannot sell an item you bought less than X days ago or whatever), etc... can be considered and could definitely ensure the negative effects of "perfect" trade don't outweigh the positives.

Consumable like maps/essences/etc... should anyway get a better trade interface. All points in the trade manifesto apply to item trades only.

Most people don't want easier trade, they want less annoying trade. The current system really does suck.

Exactly, +1

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Pizzarugi wrote:

I, myself, send 2 messages to each person I PM for trade, waiting to send a second only after the first message fades. And if they don't respond, I write them off as a price fixer and block their listings on the trade site.

Yes... that's very sensible (not).
Especially since it takes into consideration if someone is fighting shaper, uber-elder, is in a delve, does a blighted-map, does a blight-encounter, is in a group, is flooded by other requests and simply can't handle yours as well...

You can easily see that this is a sub-par situation. Obviously it needs to be adressed.

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Pizzarugi wrote:

On the plus side, I'll eventually be left only with trade bots, and that'll be the closest thing this game's got to an AH.

Sadly true... and that's why people complain about the current situation so much.
The majority of people rather buys from the known bots (which never get reported and thus banned) since it's the most convenient solution.
Heck... I hate bots and even I have to trade with them at times.

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Pizzarugi wrote:

It takes literally zero effort to say something like "delving" or use the /afk chat function before taking a piss. Thankfully, I've met people who actually let me know they're busy, and I make sure to do the same if messaged to trade.

Actually... it does.

Sometimes people forget to write /afk, too bad, now they won't ever trade with you anymore!
Or they are in a deep-delve and actually have to pay attention with their build.

So many viable situations why they wouldn't answer right away... or even after 1-2 minutes at times.

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CyberWizardB5 wrote:

While I do agree that trade must have some minor inconvenience to avoid completely flooding the market, I don't like the idea of a fixed fee for trading, it completely removes from the market cheap items and the newbie players who need them

Fee by item-level.
0-68 = 0c
69-79 = 2c
80-100= 10c

Problem solved.

Those numbers are fairly easy to get for any player at the respective level-ranges.

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CyberWizardB5 wrote:

I really do believe that limited space should be enough to avoid "the flood", with limited space every player will only sell the X best items he has and scrap the rest

I'm quite sure there's enough space for everyone in the market without the risk of slowing down the servers

First of all, I alone am 'the flood' for eye jewels in Standard. I got 3 completely filled quad-tabs in Standard for good valuable eyes which I personally won't need. I need to sort them in properly yet but was just a lazy bum regarding it.

There needs to be a limitation besides the current space-limitation. A complete re-work of how many items people are allowed to list while also limiting the time they can be listed before re-listing and maybe a fee added to that.

As for the other part: The trade API has issues handling the current situation already. Sometimes it doesn't forward items you're pricing, sometimes it takes ages until it does, sometimes it doesn't de-list items... all such fun things which shouldn't even be existing.

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SisterBlister wrote:

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CyberWizardB5 wrote:

...I don't like the idea of a fixed fee for trading, it completely removes from the market cheap items and the newbie players who need them...

But isn't that exactly the thing which GGG is so worried about? If you can always (even in the levelling phase, where you really need only simple items) buy better items than you can find, then you will never value your drops.
If you need to trade to go for higher level content, that's OK, because by that time you're hooked anyway (and you will have found a few decent items at least). But if your experience of a "new" arpg is that loot drops are useless, you'll never give it a chance, will you? Loot lust is a major driving force behind these games.

But this boat has already sailed since essence league and has been sailing further away with each league. Every item that you drop is worse than a crafted one (endgame gear). The game has moved from a "drop gear" to a "craft gear" type of game for years now, and that is not necessarily a bad thing.
People playing with filters that hide pretty much 99,9% of everything that drops has been the norm for years.
Just for curiosity sake, i used to have a 1alch tab in the past, then i moved to a 1c and now i only have a 3c tab. The most interesting thing is that the less i lose my time trading cheap items the more money i end up with at the end of the league. So the more i filter out items, the more money i end up making (which is not the case in most games) and the more fun i can have actually playing the game.

Nowadays PoE doesn't even need to have trade as long some small changes happened, we only have it because they believe trade gives items value (and they need to sell all those cosmetics), and because T probably owns half of the RMT sites.
If there was any way with diminishing returns to safely swap between different fossils, essences and currency (2 dense fossils for a pristine one for example) there would be no necessity to trade outside of niche uniques and content gates (and those could be acquired via a rework of specific unique cards or other ways to target farm them).

The only way GGG ideology of trade would be tolerable was if they made the game essentially SSF(you can 100% of the time craft your own gear/find your key uniques within a reasonable playtime) combined with only equal type trading (as in you can only trade weapons for weapons, armor for armor, orbs for orbs, essences for essences, etc...).

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SisterBlister wrote:

"

CyberWizardB5 wrote:

...I don't like the idea of a fixed fee for trading, it completely removes from the market cheap items and the newbie players who need them...

But isn't that exactly the thing which GGG is so worried about? If you can always (even in the levelling phase, where you really need only simple items) buy better items than you can find, then you will never value your drops.
If you need to trade to go for higher level content, that's OK, because by that time you're hooked anyway (and you will have found a few decent items at least). But if your experience of a "new" arpg is that loot drops are useless, you'll never give it a chance, will you? Loot lust is a major driving force behind these games.

Well, I'm not a fan of GGG's ideology behind difficult trade
If you look at my post on the first page of this thread you'll see I found several misconceptions in GGG's ideology

Experienced players really need only very simple items to reach the point they start to search definitive items, but if your idea is implemented I would feel sorry for the newbie players trying to reach maps with only SSF equip

The number of modifiers on rare items and the variety of uniques makes find an good item for yourself close to impossible. And if you also can't sell them because they worth less than the tax to trade, many people will have a very hard time trying to get the currency to buy something useful

You can't make a 2$ tax for everything cause many items costs only few cents

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Kulze wrote:

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CyberWizardB5 wrote:

I really do believe that limited space should be enough to avoid "the flood", with limited space every player will only sell the X best items he has and scrap the rest

I'm quite sure there's enough space for everyone in the market without the risk of slowing down the servers

First of all, I alone am 'the flood' for eye jewels in Standard. I got 3 completely filled quad-tabs in Standard for good valuable eyes which I personally won't need. I need to sort them in properly yet but was just a lazy bum regarding it.

There needs to be a limitation besides the current space-limitation. A complete re-work of how many items people are allowed to list while also limiting the time they can be listed before re-listing and maybe a fee added to that.

As for the other part: The trade API has issues handling the current situation already. Sometimes it doesn't forward items you're pricing, sometimes it takes ages until it does, sometimes it doesn't de-list items... all such fun things which shouldn't even be existing.

The trade API has issues because it has several different systems working one above the other. We have the game itself running in the server a system to read the game to list items in the forum and POE Trade that reads the forum to list items

A simple domestic PC can actually handle a database with millions of items maybe billions there's no way you can flood a pc let alone a server

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CyberWizardB5 wrote:

A simple domestic PC can actually handle a database with millions of items maybe billions there's no way you can flood a pc let alone a server

Yes, which only shows the current situation is a sub-par one.

Integrating the API directly into the game with a PROPER (that's important, GGG usually does half-assed things left and right after all unless it comes to their 'meta rotations') trade-mechanic attached would solve this issue.

This means proper search-functions, proper messaging-options, proper inboxes to allow offline-messaging, all those shenanigans.

Then on top integrating a balanced trade-mechanic which takes care of opportunity-cost versus time-investment and has the respective limitations so flooding won't happen as well as market-starvation isn't happening either.

Then we could at least say 'They're at Step 1' for creating a mechanic which limits the interactions enough so the basic issues won't come up and it isn't frustrating to use (Unlike now). Afterwards they can still adjust and advance the system as necessary, though the first step has to be taken and they're drawing that out further... and further... and further.

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SisterBlister wrote:

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brushmonkey wrote:

..., but ANY solution that would make trade less annoying would make trade more popular, and it's that increased popularity that is the issue...

You can't be serious. It's not the popularity that's an issue, it's the influx and resulting inflation of cheap-medium items that would be the issue. And that can be mitigated. Popularity itself is ALWAYS a plus.

I am serious.

by definition 'more popular' means more people using trade. That's literally what it means.

Which means more people getting items from trade rather than drops, because its more convenient. Which is the situation GGG wants to avoid, because easier item access = easier game = people stop playing sooner = people spend less over time = less profit for GGG = less content for us.

popularity is NOT a plus if you specifically want relatively low popularity.

clearly you just want to be able to trade easily and don't care about the further reaching consequences, which is fine. It just means you are wrong in your statements.

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brushmonkey wrote:

Which means more people getting items from trade rather than drops, because its more convenient. Which is the situation GGG wants to avoid, because easier item access = easier game = people stop playing sooner = people spend less over time = less profit for GGG = less content for us.

That's why limitations are a necessity.

The current limitation is pure tedium, that hurts the game. Newer players starting late into the league have troubles buying maps as the market is flooded but since the price-point of each individual one is low people don't bother to exit their content... or even answer.

I can understand that, who would go for a 1 alch or 1c trade during a delve or during a map?
In-between, sure, in content, no.
Also de-listing and re-listing is a bother to do between every single map, hence buyers get ignored.

So, because of that reason alone we need a different mechanic for trading, one which isn't limited by tedium but instead by actual mechanics. This - obviously - causes a larger influx of players, but with the proper limitations regarding different stages of the game it can absolutely be handled.... it's just a huge undertaking to implement, performance obviously comes at NR. 1 before that. Though trade should be NR. 2 already.

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brushmonkey wrote:

popularity is NOT a plus if you specifically want relatively low popularity.

GGG wants low turnover, not low popularity. That's an important difference there.
If they want low popularity for one of their corner-stones of the game (even mentioned in their base-description) then they are incompetent by default, so I won't push them into this category.
On the other hand the types and amounts of trade have changed so significantly over the course of the years that the old system just can't properly handle it anymore, each league the issues grow bigger as most things de-valuate so quickly that it's not worth to exit a map, and for instance fossils for top-tier crafting are needed in such an amount that buying them becomes a hassle, the same with exchanging currency.