Make Trade Great Again

We ALL hate trading for at least one thing in POE. Be it gear to upgrade, small currency for crafting, or one of the hundreds of little items that we need to buy in bulk but can only trade for 1 by 1 (fragments, delve stuff, etc). There is a problem with trade, people have been saying it for years, but there hasn't been a clear solution (that I have ever seen)

Firstly, THANK YOU for making pathofexile.com/trade. Poe.trade was aged and no longer tenable. We needed that improvemnt then, but we need more now.

At this point, for 90% of sales, forcing us to leave our maps to trade for a 5c item is so uninteresting to many people that they wont do it, limiting access to transition gear for players joining the league late, or for players that progress slower. This makes the game unnecessarily harder for exactly the group that you should be making it easier for.

At this point in the league I question leaving my maps for any trade under 100c, and I am the type of person to list at least a tab of gear that is useful and cheap but not really worth my time to trade.

------------------------------------------------------------

Introducing the HIDEOUT VENDOR. This little guy should come default with every Hideout for decoration, but only have a function when a player toggles their premium tabs to be viewable in his/her menu. The tab is visible as a whole thing in the vendor, and a person who can visit your hideout can browse and buy any items listed there if they have the requisite currency (which gets transferred to a vendor "C.O.D" remove-only tab.

This means you (ggg) don't need to develop any new big systems. You dont need to change much about how our tabs already work or are placed. You just need to create something like affinity that lets a player click-to-buy things directly from a vendor if they are in the hideout already.

Why is this not the same as a marketplace? Firstly because this is not a vendor shared by everyone. And a buyer still needs to browse the trade site, then message to get the trade, they still need to be accepted into the party, and they still need to visit the hideout. This takes the burden OFF the seller to leave their farming which gives more flexibility for what price of items we bother to list, while not really losing the "gate" of messaging/partying/traveling to trade. The player must still be online to sell anything, and must still be able to send party invites.

Power creep? Only for the weakest builds. Players can still gatekeep their gear behind prices, or by not listing it on the vendor. We can still have negotiable pricing. The vendor is just a way to list things that we really dont care about having much control over (the lowest/most common of our products).

Monopoly? No more than we already have. Gatekeeping is still optional, players can still force direct trades, can still give discounts or indirect trades.

Is this abusable by snipers? Yes and no. As a seller, we have a responsibility to price appropriately. If I accept someone into my party to sell an item, I should be reading their message (and trade window) anyways to make sure the currency is the right amount. On the flip side, if the pricing is controlled by a vendor, it reduces the ability for scammers to place the wrong item in the window, on the buying and selling side.

It avoids the issue of snipers running a bot to auto-buy things below a certain price milliseconds after listing on a marketplace. They can still try, by doing it the same way we all do, but the seller still has the option to reject their request...and to be honest there will be zero change on this point from the way it works right now.

Is this P2W? Eh...yes and no also? It means people with more stash tabs can list more items. But they can already do that, and lots of wealthy players already run bots to sell their items, which is clearly against ToS, but you (GGG) haven't found a way to curtail this so I am not going to consider it a point against my idea.

Transparency! With this system, we will be able to see complete tabs that people are listing, and will be able to know if someone is hoarding an item and inflating values, or if they are a source of more items that we are interested in, we can also but multiples of things without having to message about each one (maps maps maps). Safer trading and more complete trading.

Why is this a benefit to you (GGG)? Well, you know we love to spend money on useless decorations. Give us skin options for the vendor. Different models (Nightmarket vendor, foodtruck, shopkeeper, hawker, traveling merchant, vending machine, snake oil salesman, Cadiro$$$, etc) can all be sold as microtransactions. Heck you could sell voice packs for the vendor, maybe some voiced by popular streamers, that we could buy to further personalize the experience for our customers.

There are lots of ways to monetize this beyond the initial tie-in of letting us toggle our premium tabs. And if there are glaring problems with the idea, I am too shortsighted to see them right now, but I am pretty confident there aren't.

I suggested pretty much the exact same thing in another thread before.

Like an extra stash box u can show your tabs u want to sell and set price for people to come get, you invite them to party like normal when they whisper, but they can just get it themselves with the currency in their inventory

then also make it work offline somehow lol

First off: It's refreshing to see an actual level-headed, constructive take on improving trade. All these "I want an AH and I want it NOW, and I will NEVER be happy about any improvements, additions, solutions or compromises, unless it's a full-blown AH" threads are getting old. Sadly, because your thread is level-headed and constructive, it will probably not see much traction in here.

I've always liked the idea of a hideout vendor. While it isn't perfect by any means, it's a solid idea. What I like the most about it, is that it's a very nice improvement for the seller, while the buyer still has to do some "effort" (as kids call it these days). These games SURVIVES because of people 'wanting' stuff. Getting your hands on what you 'want' should never be done by just a click of a button. Looking the item up, visiting a hideout and 'speaking' to an NPC should be the least you can do.

"

Fraktal_ wrote:

then also make it work offline somehow lol

This I disagree with, wholeheartedly. On every level.

"

This I disagree with, wholeheartedly. On every level

But maybe u come back online after a day and all 500 of your extra maps sold and u didn't have to do anything :D

"

Fraktal_ wrote:

...and u didn't have to do anything :D

That's exactly why I don't want offline trading in PoE. Maybe I'm old and/or old-fashioned, but I actually think you should be required to play a game to progress in it.

But maps are a very good example. They sell so good, but it's just not worth it to interact with every single player that just wants to buy 1 specific yellow map to get that atlas point.

2 facts:
1. This trade system is awful and a total time waster for small trades in the 1-10 Chaos range. Yet this trades have to be done and GGG is fully aware how awful it is.
2. Console player happen to have a tool which would be at least OK for those 1-10c trades but is absolutely horrible insufferable trash when looking for specific higher tier gear.

Soooooo:
Add Console Trade Market to PC but limit it to small 1-10c trades. Now those small trades can be done in between maps without much time loss but players still have to suffer trough the visionary trading experience for any higher tier trade. It is a win win fr GGG and people can now enjoy others not accepting trades on 2 trade systems!

once upon a time they were going to use the masters as hideout vendors BUT it ended up to much like an auction house and as such was discarded, as would this for the same reasons.

AH is a pipe dream. They won't do it, that's for sure.

A good start would be increasing stack sizes on basic currency, especially chaos orbs because that is obnoxious at the moment. It was already bad when ex:c ratio was about 100-150 to 1, but this league when div:c ratio is 250:1 it's just unbearable.

So much clicking to trade stuff that is supposed to be traded in big bulks.

I mean, chaos is your ingame gold. Having it stack to just 10 is indefensible. A stack of it should be at least 100, ideally 5000 - matching currency tab stack size.

actually, the only trade system that works can be seen in ruthless mode.

people actually respond to trades in seconds, there are no scamming attempts and i never felt like it would kill my gaming time when i had to leave areas for a trade cause it happens so sparsely.

it tells alot about the current trade system and what it has been designed for originally.

which leaves the question of "what's wrong", current trade or current drop rates of items and currency.