GDC Talk - "Cursed Problems in Game Design"

Here is an example of how you SHOULD be thinking about this. I will provide only partial slice of the overall situation.

Trade is bad... That is a generic useless point that holds no value. Why is it bad what a the situations which makes people to hate trade?

1) No answers for whispers
2) Price fixing
3) Having to alt tab
4) Having to spent time on going to HO and manual trade
etc...

Now lets take one item and see WHY this happens and what possible changes can be made to make this particular point less problematic.

1) NO answers for whispers.

Some of the key reasons why this happens?

1) Lag in trade API (especially for people using poe.trade and looking for cheap commonly traded items like exalts) They end up whispering for items that sold 10-20 min ago and frustrated seller does not bother answering.

Will AH fix this? No, they key issue is laggy API if api is not laggy in current system this does not happen in current system either.

Way to alleviate?
a) Improve API performance
b) Add additional check when person copies the message to check if the item is in fact still in the tab. (this could have some negative performance issues which need to be tested and evaluated with actual data)

2) People not being able to answer due to being in boss fight, delve, Blight etc.

With AH fix this? Yes it will.

Other alternatives to alleviate?
a) Most of the time if you a get a message 1 min you have no issues waiting and this does not cause frustration (there are obviously excpetions). So knowing person is in a hard to answer are will help understanding of that. getting a simple message back the person you whispered is in delve and might not be able to answer right away, might actually "solve" the issue for a large percentage of trade. This is just a possibility and would need to be tested to see if it makes a difference or not.

3) People being AFK.

Will AH fix this? Yes

Other ways to alleviate?
a) Better and faster afk detection would reduce the severity of this issue by a lot.

4) People miss pricing and getting spammed.

Will Ah fix this? Not really.. there is only 1 item and 20 whispers only 1 person will get it at most. To go further i would argue that this person should be the seller and getting spammed is a great layer of protection for new players as they miss price items a lot more, while people who benefit from this "sniping" are knowledgeable players and bots (due to they speed). IMHO in this case AH would make it worse.

4) People who no longer care about some 1 alch item they posted day 1 on day 20 but too lazy to remove it.

Will AH fix it? Mostly yes, especially since AH listings would most likely be timed and this listing just wouldn't be there anymore.

Other ways to alleviate?
Remove item which some thresh hold of time + unanswered whispers, This is not simple to implement (in fact might be extremely hard, depending on internal implementation of items and trades) This also has possibility of abuse. But combination of time and answered whispers is fairly sturdy metric, combine this with clear indication that some of your items have been de-listed and it just might work.

5)Price fixing

Will Ah fix this? Yes

Other ways to alleviate?
Somewhat similar to 4).



As you can see problem can be broken down into lots of small sub problems and not all of them are fixed by AH, and some are mostly easily fixable without one. While based on this AH seems great because 3 out of 5 points it fixes the issue, 1 even and 1 worse. You have to weight this against tons of issue AH brings with it self. Like different price fixing where one type of item is bought out which nearly impossible right now. But we not going into discussion of that.

Point is this is a extremely complicated topic which can and was broken down into smaller part and deemed not fitting. And if you disagree you need to provide detailed analysis of majority of these points and come up with way to alleviate inherent probelms that come with AH.

@Deathfairy

This is all assuming the AH works the way some would like it to, such as buyouts are instant. However, we have proof this isn't the case. Go look up the AH they put into the Asian version. When you want to buy an item, it sends a message to the seller who gets a popup, who then has to accept / deny, or can ignore it.

This means that price fixing will exist, and waiting for the seller to answer, the 'afk problem', will still also exist.

Now of course I'm citing footage from awhile ago, but it sets a precedent for how an AH would be implemented from GGG.

What makes this a "cursed problem" is that your solution of adding an auction house would ruin the game. Solving a short list of annoying problems at the expense of the entire game is exactly what this thread is talking about.

You assume that adding an auction house would only change the game at one level. It would change it at all levels and the game that resulted wouldn't last a month.

I think a lot of people in this thread are missing the point. GGG knows trading is bad, and they want trading to be bad. It is one of the sacrifices they made to solve their cursed problem. Between making trading a certain level of painful and structuring their game around 13 week leagues they keep the game interesting.

If trading were to be good and efficient the league would look like standard from a trading standpoint after a week.

Edit: Crap Shags beat me to it.

"

Shagsbeard wrote:

It would change it at all levels and the game that resulted wouldn't last a month.

There is a 0% chance you know that.

At best it's a guess from you, and in truth from GGG.

The concern over gear progression and ease of acquisition is outdated. We have come a long way from trade chat and forum stores.

I personally think pride & stubbornness is getting in the way of progress. Making yourself scared of the unknown is no way to go through life.

"

Bleu42 wrote:

@Deathfairy

This is all assuming the AH works the way some would like it to, such as buyouts are instant. However, we have proof this isn't the case. Go look up the AH they put into the Asian version. When you want to buy an item, it sends a message to the seller who gets a popup, who then has to accept / deny, or can ignore it.

This means that price fixing will exist, and waiting for the seller to answer, the 'afk problem', will still also exist.

Now of course I'm citing footage from awhile ago, but it sets a precedent for how an AH would be implemented from GGG.

Fair enough, didnt know that. But people who ask for ah are asking for different one as far as i understand.

do you guys know how many exploit AH would bring it. After all we will have more problems with cheaters with AH.

Trade is not so important in this game if you know how to....

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

"

Shagsbeard wrote:

It would change it at all levels and the game that resulted wouldn't last a month.

There is a 0% chance you know that.

At best it's a guess from you, and in truth from GGG.

The concern over gear progression and ease of acquisition is outdated. We have come a long way from trade chat and forum stores.

I personally think pride & stubbornness is getting in the way of progress. Making yourself scared of the unknown is no way to go through life.

I'm sorry, but the "you never know until you try" argument didn't work for the gay guy either.

There are tons of examples out there of what effect easy efficient trading has on a game. The most direct comparison being D3, though I know that's a pretty dead horse around here so people just dismiss it out of pride & stubbornness at this point.

Not "scared of the unknown".... I know that none of us would enjoy a game where you could get what ever you wanted at a vendor.

well, an auction house could work

as a item sink.

you
- pay 2c per item/hour you want item in the system
- place your item in the system
- there is no way you can cancel the trade
- people have the time you paid for to bid on the item
- time is up, highest bidder gets the item in form of a map where the boss drops the item in question if he doesn't die
- no bidder for your item => item gets destroyed

- an item that you placed in the auction house cannot be picked up by you or or traded to your account anymore



:)