This is a death spiral. Here's how to stop it.

"

Jadrann wrote:

Bots are already everywhere. At least learn about basic economics like supply and demand. If the demand remains the same, the bots will make the market fair by ajusting the supply to the optimum cost of the supply. That's not a problem, that's a solution. They are right now the reason why you don't have to whisper 50 people to get 50 scarabs and other currency.

You are assuming that all bot authors will behave rationally, like this is Wall Street here. Not only does the game has silly bugs like my example above, what will happen if some big and rich group of people starts running AH bots just for the fun of it, whatever they would consider "fun" at the moment?

I know I am a troll here but does someone here honestly f*cking think Wall Street is about 'rationality'? Given everything that has been going on for years? 'Basic economics'? Yeah, I did study it for awhile. Want me to give a scientific speech of 'market rationality'?

Or bots? About 'rationality'? Want to try define it for me?

And they accuse me of trolling, lol. Accully eficient marketization.

"

The skills and their builds differ in performance so vast, that achieving balance between them is impossible without culling many specific gem links themselves.

This is completely fixable. That's the thing. What concerns me is that they may not have enough people to try to fix all the things that need fixing, and they've expressed an interest in staying small. But if they're not doing well, they may not be able to get those resources when they finally ask for them.

Really, though, if the gem itself isn't the issue, then the enabling items are, and you can design around that. If that affects other skills adversely, you can provide minor buffs to the skills to close the gap. If you ever get to the point where the gem itself becomes the problem, rework the skill to be whatever you need it to be to fill the void.

Like, we knew that aurastackers were a serious problem for how they trivialized game content, and the major problems would be either a) that cluster jewels provided VASTLY too strong a buff that wasn't available elsewhere, or b) that far too many things counted as auras that weren't explicitly stated as auras.

Of those, I would have disabled the undocumented "aura" functionality of most items, so that aura effect could still be useful for other characters whose main purpose wasn't to have 20 of them. GGG went the other way, making those jewels useless for anyone that isn't stacking auras.

They could do a lot better, and they've shown that kind of ingenuity in the past, but I think the game got too big for them to maintain.

"

what will happen if some big and rich group of people starts running AH bots just for the fun of it

This has already been happening for many years, and it's part of the reason that the trade value of exalts has varied so widely during so many leagues in the last few years.

The problem with the "Auction House bots" argument is that they already existed on POE.ninja and POE.trade, and I know this because I know players who exploited them to snipe items before they got public listings and were searchable.

But more than that, there's this thought that bots will be intrusive.

Y'know what's intrusive?

Being spammed for an item when I'm in a boss fight.

Having to leave a map to process a transaction.

Having to spend 10-20 minutes trying to buy crafting supplies.

Having to literally leave the game environment to shop.

Having to spend 2 or more hours doing nothing waiting for someone to buy my crafting bench.

Bots are guilty of a lot of stuff, but they've never robbed me of hours of my time in one go.

The system we have, right now, is already intrusive as fuck. And it's still gameable - again, because market manipulation still happens all the time, even after a huge sweep of bans.

GGG didn't want trade sites, either, but once third parties started making trade efficient, they had to respond. I don't know anyone that would actually say trade sites made the game worse. Simplifying trade and making it less intrusive and costly is just the next logical step.

Ngl, I read the title of the post and was a lil worried… But I fucking wholeheartedly agree with everything you said throughout the entire thread… Thank you, I was in shambles, worried over having to write my own post and deal with a fuckton of anxiety.

The one thing I’ll add, is that it’s very easy and uninteresting/unfun to just slap on a new arbitrary rpg stat, like immunity, or reflect, etc etc to monsters/maps. If GGG focused on making good movesets, ambushes, mob intelligence and strategy etc, they’d prob take longer but have more fun with it. Plus it’d be pretty fun to get clowned on by a hypothetical Kitava who could walk around and actually had a good moveset XD

:D

"

vmt80 wrote:

I know I am a troll here but does someone here honestly f*cking think Wall Street is about 'rationality'?
...

...Or bots? About 'rationality'? Want to try define it for me?.

Sure, always happy to meet a fellow troll:)

By rationality I meant using bots to perform trades within the existing stream of the market (and price ranges), and content of those trades do not exceeding the amount of goods required for actual gameplay application, one way or another (it isn't "rational" to spend currency on things one would never use in actual game).

"

Patness wrote:

The system we have, right now, is already intrusive as fuck. And it's still gameable - again, because market manipulation still happens all the time, even after a huge sweep of bans.

GGG didn't want trade sites, either, but once third parties started making trade efficient, they had to respond. I don't know anyone that would actually say trade sites made the game worse. Simplifying trade and making it less intrusive and costly is just the next logical step.

And not someone buying all Tabulas in the league just to watch newcomers trying in vain to buy them and rofling. How would you suggest the potential AH system to deal with such abuse?

I also voted hard for AH instead of trade site in the past, but after getting a good look of how busted the economy is, not anymore. At least the clunky trade site slows down the price manipulations by design, for example it is a good thing that legacy items posted years ago for low prices are unobtainable due to their owner not being online. AH would spin out of control in several days.

And I don't believe in GGG ability to contain it. Yesterday, they restarted servers 30 min after my bug post here, after which all recombinators were gone from standard. 10 days into the league, and that was the first time they heard about such busted abuse being possible?

"

Patness wrote:

"

The skills and their builds differ in performance so vast, that achieving balance between them is impossible without culling many specific gem links themselves.

This is completely fixable. That's the thing. What concerns me is that they may not have enough people to try to fix all the things that need fixing, and they've expressed an interest in staying small.

I never said it isn't fixable at all, I said they won't fix it, whatever their reasoning is on this matter. Instead they are stubbornly shoving AN mobs down on us, like everyone should clap and cheer at the possibility of exploring more oneshot content with the only reward being the 10% exp penalty.

Try leveling from 99 to 100 in current patch, lol. I cannot (and don't want to switch to the few broken OP builds to do it, please do not suggest it. I want to play builds I chose, which PoE would never allow)

"

Patness wrote:

Establish a proper auction house. I know, I know, Chris says having one is bad for the game, because then people finish their builds and move on.

Free trade will make things (much) worse for player retention...

Instant gratification NEVER caused any player to continue playing a game long-term!

Blizzard removed their D3 auction house for a reason.

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Patness wrote:

I wrote a much longer post. This is the condensed version of it (no, I'm not kidding, I've been writing for hours).

Good post, dude. I'd have been interested to have seen the full version.

What they need for new players is a good hook, explanations and introductory pacing

Not mud flats

I'm not sure it can be done honestly and it would require a herculean effort if it could, what they need to do is ensure PoE2 doesn't have any of the same problems considering their focus and push on it.

Proper up to date QoL tools and tutorials to ensure new players can get up to speed and join the regulars, they might even want to run season servers like BDO for new players. If they are short of ideas go steal everything Dota ever implemented for new players over the years they faced the same problems and many of their tools are excellent for new players.

They don't mute chat by default but eh, can't have everything ;p