Can we do something about trading in PoE

Trading in PoE is pretty bad. Now I wouldn't mind an auction house but lets face it GGG said this won't ever happen. Apparently the a trading system that is awkward, full of scammers, price fixers and people that never respond is an intended fun mechanic of the game! -.-

Nevertheless, I feel there has to be a compromise somewhere that helps improve things. I have noticed in the past couple of leagues that there has been a rise in scammers in particular. No idea why there just seems to be much more of them around. Now I do always check items before I press accept so I haven't been scammed yet but it's still frustrating to try and buy something and then end up wasting your time when its someone closing the window and then putting some scuffed item in instead. As always it is also really frustrating to endlessly message people only to have 12 of them in a row not respond.

I like the idea of there being some sort of instant buyout function for peoples premium stash tabs. Ones where you can see things listed on the trade website, maybe click some button that allows you to visit that persons hideout and then view that stash tab to buy the item they want. Like a self service checkout for peoples shops.

Not perfect, but at least its some sort of way where items can be traded without people needed to port out their maps, wait for response, get scammed etc. I'm not sure what the solution is but for now its such a pain to try and use the trade system as it is.

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Inexer wrote:

I like the idea of there being some sort of instant buyout function for peoples premium stash tabs.

This is what is not going to happen. The reason is simple, because the PoE economy can not accommodate easy trade.

GGG doesn't specifically dislike an 'Auction House'. It is easy trade that the game can't support, thus why the current system require personal interaction in trades, to keep the number of trades limited.

Please read this:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2025870

I wrote this 2 days ago: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2739311

Honestly, for me trading has always been easy. I always manage to get what I want. I am not sure what AH will give me in this regard other than less wasted time whispering and going to my hideout.

That's the thing. People already get to end game in less than a day. How is having an action house gonna change that? Not by much. An action house will not effect top end players or even median players that much. Most people can get a fully geared character with decent amount of play in 3 days...An action house isn't going to break the game.

Keeping trade in its poor current state like its the 90's by making people use 3rd party macro's and websites is pure garbage. The game has evolved way past what Chris Wilson has intended, so him using his constant excuse about an action house is complete crap. Its them not wanting to dedicate resources from there constantly buggy leagues and Mobile game and POE 2 which will save us all.

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Cyzax wrote:

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Inexer wrote:

I like the idea of there being some sort of instant buyout function for peoples premium stash tabs.

This is what is not going to happen. The reason is simple, because the PoE economy can not accommodate easy trade.

GGG doesn't specifically dislike an 'Auction House'. It is easy trade that the game can't support, thus why the current system require personal interaction in trades, to keep the number of trades limited.

Please read this:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2025870

Again these are only suggestions, I am not saying I know what the right answer is, i'm not a game designer. I'm just saying does anyone really think that the current way trading works is absolutely fine and has no room for improvement?

I'm not saying i find it impossible to get the items i want in a league ect, but there has to be some way to make it more manageable surely while also dealing with the rising numbers of price fixers and scammers.

As I say just thinking about it, I don't know what exactly is or is not possible within the game and its production.

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Cyzax wrote:

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Inexer wrote:

I like the idea of there being some sort of instant buyout function for peoples premium stash tabs.

This is what is not going to happen. The reason is simple, because the PoE economy can not accommodate easy trade.

GGG doesn't specifically dislike an 'Auction House'. It is easy trade that the game can't support, thus why the current system require personal interaction in trades, to keep the number of trades limited.

Please read this:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2025870

Also when GGG talks about "easy trade" they seem to not understand why the current system is so annoying. Its not about time taken in trading, not really. Even now if someone wants to get all their item pieces in a day they can extremely easily. Its not the time taken its the process and how annoying and clunky it is. How it promotes price fixing and scamming and the constant interruption to game play and people not responding for 20 whispers in a row.

Yes I can understand they don't want trade to be too efficient but who are they trying to kid here? This game is about trading lol, i'd love it if i was able to grind the game and search for some items I could pick up and for them be useful at all to my character but that isn't this game, almost everything is useless except the currency you trade with. Annoying people with a clunky trade system so that they waste just a little bit more of their time doing it whilst also not having fun with the process at all is not good design in my opinion.

Either call a spade a spade and make trade better which in my onion wouldn't have the catastrophic effects they think it would or make the game less focused on trade alone. Outside of SSF I like trading in games, it is fun to accumulate wealth and afford nice things. But it might also be nice to have items in the game you find that are genuinely useful so that you don't have to trade for every single piece of your gear.

There is a balance to be struck I feel and right now, I have fun with the game until I realise I've reached 72 on a new character and now dread having to spend half my day whispering people who don't respond constantly for every single gem, unique, jewel and gear piece I need to make my character function.

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Inexer wrote:

Outside of SSF I like trading in games, it is fun to accumulate wealth and afford nice things.

But... you would not be able to do that with easy trade...

It is quite simple why. With easy trade, the amount of items in the market would sky-rocket. That means you'd never actually find anything that would sell.

There'd be two classes of items:
1. High-supply (more being found than wanted) worth nothing
2. Low-supply (less being found than wanted) worth a fortune
As a league progresses, more and more items would go from class 2 to 1. You'll never find anything in class 2.
(in today's restricted trade system, at least more items are in class 2)

Add in that the current game balance is based on current restrictive trade mechanics (low volume). If that was changed, GGG would have to lower drops significantly to maintain the same difficulty level for trading players... which would make the game impossible for the majority of players, the non-trading and SSF players (yes, they are the majority).

So no, easy trade is simply not going to happen.

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Inexer wrote:

Either call a spade a spade and make trade better which in my onion wouldn't have the catastrophic effects they think it would or make the game less focused on trade alone. Outside of SSF I like trading in games, it is fun to accumulate wealth and afford nice things. But it might also be nice to have items in the game you find that are genuinely useful so that you don't have to trade for every single piece of your gear.

Yes exactly!

I think GGG are trying to walk a very fine edge here with availability of items.

Take the rare drop problem. I think we can agree that 99%+ of rare items that drops are well.. crap..
One way of addressing that could be to "improve" the quality or rather the mods on dropped items. Let say they always dropped with HP/ES + atleast one res + slot specific modifier and perhaps min mod level based on ilvl. That would be great!!
BUT I don't see that GGG are going to implement something like that as long as we have the current trade system and even less likely if they added an AH.


GGG are probably asking themself: should we improve trade with "reduced drops", improved quality of the drops with "reduced trade" or should we maintain status quo??

And at the moment it sure looks like they are going for the status qou aproach.

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Dharall wrote:

GGG are probably asking themself: should we improve trade with "reduced drops", improved quality of the drops with "reduced trade" or should we maintain status quo??

And at the moment it sure looks like they are going for the status quo approach.

The other options are pretty much a no-go since whatever solution is chosen has to work for both trading and non-trading players, and they wouldn't.

I think the issue is pretty much settled for GGG as well, not being something to waste time on. Any change would be financially risky, and would piss off at least as many as it pleased.