Can an auction house be implented

An auction house type feature would merely be a gift from the heavens to the RMTers, price-fixers and bots out there. And would obviously make those problems much worse, due it being easier to make real money from the game.

Making it more similar to how it is on console might be an option. A massive pain to actually find what you want, but seems to be easier to actually trade. I've only done it once, but didn't have to do the usual ask-wait-hideout-check for fakes-complete gameplay loop.

i want online only automated trade.

No other games with an auction house experience any of the issues any of you describe any more then PoE does. Price fixing isn't stopped by trading being inconvenient. Bots aren't stopped by trading being inconvenient. The fact of the matter is that trading is a central part of gameplay if you arent SSF, period. Trading IS the meta, it always has been and it always will be and making trading stupid and inconvenient isn't going to convince players to trade less, all it does it make for a more aggravating and less fun experience and encourages people to spend half the league camping out in their hideout to make sales instead of actually playing the game. Nobody goes, "hmm, I wanna buy this item instead of grinding for it to drop the hard way but I wont because trading is inconvenient", instead its just, "boy, I wish I could buy this thing that I see here is clearly up for sale but this person wont respond because theyre too busy actually playing the game to respond to my whisper", or "alright, I want this horrible abrasive trading experience to be over asap, so leme just hit whisper on 20 ppl at once and ignore 9 of the 10 who didn't ignore me first" Furthermore, Harvest being a bad idea doesn't say anything about an auction house system or the fact that it isn't just a good idea, but a necessary feature that every other game on the planet has for a reason. Trading being inconvenient also doesn't equate to a cost, it equates to buying cheap items being infuriating because you have to get ignored by 30 people first before someone will sell you that super specific 1-10c unique you need for your cool new build to work. Trading being inconvenient doesn't stop one single bad thing that you guys seem to think will suddenly be a massive problem if there is a real in game way to purchase items.

Also, the console version ALREADY HAS ONE! It had one on release, and was trading completely broken resulting in the console version being terrible? No, no it wasn't. All there being an in game means of buying items without needing to trade manually did for the console version was make trading suck less and allow you to actually play the game, because as it is now you have to choose between doing trading or actually playing the game, you cant currently do both and that's absurd. Its the same as the controller support issue, it was always "why doesn't the PC version have controller support" "well because we would need to develop a whole new interface to make it work" except they wouldn't and they didn't need to do that because THEY ALREADY DID FOR THE CONSOLE VERSION because the console version had controller support on release. Fast forward to now and controller support, surprise surprise, is in the PC version, uses the same style of interface the console version had, and predictably so it didn't break anything, didn't ruin anything, didn't make the game worse off in any way at all because it already existed and worked just fine on the console version. It would be the same if they added an auction house to the PC version, nothing would change apart from the game being more enjoyable to play because the thing that is undeniably critically necessary for anyone who isnt SSF would no longer be a giant hassle, and we KNOW this would be the case because, again, the console version proved it to be the case by already having this feature.

Edit: They could even make it a new type of tab possibly with limited capacity to keep "friction" in trades, I would pay money for an auction house tab that works the way trading works on console. I post the price I want, someone who wants to buy it submits the currency they wanna offer, I get a notification, then when I finish the boss I'm fighting or the map I'm in (with a full party and therefore cannot leave) I can check the offer and either accept it and get my currency or reject it and keep the listing up. Until I accept/decline the offer or the other player rescinds the offer, their currency is in the offer window instead of their stash or inventory. If I reject the offer their currency can be collected from the offer window and if I accept it the item they purchased can be collected (also whenever is convenient for them). And if they really want to add an ACTUAL cost to trading, apply a real cost to using this system, like maybe an upfront cost of 1c to list items or a similar cost to purchase an item using this system, maybe both, that way they can even maintain the current bad an inconvenient system they have now for players to use for "free" at the cost of their time and/or portal count rather then a direct cost in orbs. There is no excuse for being forced to tab out of the game and go to a website just to see what items players have listed for sale nor is there any reason to think that adding one would somehow destroy the economy, nor is there any reason to believe that trading being a complete pain is somehow magically the only thing holding back an insurmountable tide of bots and price fixers with blood dripping fangs waiting to destroy PoE's economy.

Edit 2: Heres another idea to make the paranoid GGG simps happy, limit asking price to somewhere in the ballpark of 50-100c so that the only items that will now magically be subject to price fixing and botting (even though all items already are) will be ones that nobody really cares about, but it will still solve like 90% of the logistical issues with the current system.

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Blortad wrote:

Price fixing isn't stopped by trading being inconvenient.

no it isn't.

"fake selling" is the result of trading having more freedom of choice to "sell or not sell" for the advertised price.
trade is "inconvenient" to prevent people from mass offering items and mass purchasing items.

bots ARE limited by manual trade cause they are more noticible.

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Blortad wrote:

making trading stupid and inconvenient isn't going to convince players to trade less

no it isn't cause it's still much too comfortable.
having to leave the map to sell should discourage players from putting too much junk in their sales tab but it isn't working.
it's much too easy to put an item for sale. that's why the market is flooded with unsold items which put downward pressure on item prices.

i agree with you that trade competes with finding the item yourself ingame.
ggg needs to tackle the problem by either restricting the supply side or the demand.

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Blortad wrote:

Trading being inconvenient also doesn't equate to a cost

yes, it does. it costs play time.

which is most precious, especially for those with a job and family.
to compensate this, ggg enabled them to offer items more easily by spending money but it's not really a advantage cause you sell only when being online.

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Blortad wrote:

Also, the console version ALREADY HAS ONE

console has easy item exchange but no comfortable search.
ps has easy search but uncomfortable exchange.

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Blortad wrote:

buying cheap items being infuriating because you have to get ignored by 30 people first

the challenge is to ignore the first 30 offers cause they're likely fake sellers.
it's a game and trading is it's own game and not a pure functional thing.

in short: it's a bazaar, not a shop.

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Blortad wrote:

here is no excuse for being forced to tab out of the game and go to a website just to see what items players have listed for sale

honestly, if i were you, i would be afraid of ggg moving trading ingame. cause more control over trading would result in a more restrictive trading experience.

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Blortad wrote:

limit asking price to somewhere in the ballpark of 50-100c

in my experience, that's how it already works.
you ask people to purchase a item, they respond with the real (much higher) price than being advertised.

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sorry for the long answer. i'm not a fan of those either.
but you don't seem to be trapped in the player's perspective which is imho the perspective one should take on this.

thing is: every solution to trade needs to include the fact, that a huge part of the playerbase already paid millions of dollar to have trading being easier.
every solution needs to explain how to deal with this.

Of course they could quite easily add an Auction House to the game.

The thing is that's something they have repeatedly said they will never do for countless reasons already said countless times.

They want the trade stress. They want trade to be cumbersome. They do NOT want trading to be easy so they can better control Drop Rates to be more fun for everyone.

And let's really think about this people only want an AH to make trade easier right? That's exactly why GGG doesn't want one. If they made trades instant then item acquisition would be so piss easy GGG would be forced to make drop rates of everything so bad it wouldn't even be fun to play anymore. Drops would feel even more terrible than they do now and everything would skyrocket in price to the point if you can't afford the items you want now you damn sure never will with an AH.

Also the other reason players want an AH is because of trade manipulation. Problem is that trade manipulation would not be solved with an AH if anything it would actually get even worse. And anyone who has ever played an MMO with an AH knows this well.

All it takes is those same Groups of people who manipulate the Trade Site now already to just do the same with an AH and nothing changes. New boss same as the old boss.

No other MMO has these imaginary issues, but every other MMO has an auction house.

The value of items isnt impacted by trading being inconvenient, its impacted by the number of that item obtained relative to the demand for that item and no amount of arbitrary time wasting nonsense is going to change that. Making trading easier would have zero impact on supply and demand and to suggest it would shows a complete lack of understanding of how supply and demand works. The droprates wouldn't need to be reduced because being able to obtain an item that has already dropped and is being sold does not equate to an increase in supply, it equates to a transfer of supply and allowing that transfer to occur more easily doesn't suddenly mean more of that item drops.

Players also would not be putting any more or less junk up with an auction house then they do now, especially if there was an actual REAL limitation on it like every other MMO uses. Apply a trade tax and limit the number of items you are allowed to list at once like literally every other MMO in existence does to solve this exact issue, its that simple. Tradings cost does NOT need to be in play time when it can be in actual currency. You spend time playing the game to obtain the currency used for the auction house tax, the only difference is that the time spent obtaining a bit of extra C to pay a trade tax is spent actually playing the game while the time spent on this absurd system we have now is spent being restricted from playing the game.

As far as freedom to choose whether or not to accept a trade at your listed price, other MMOs have a system for that too, its just integrated into their auction house so its actually part of the game and not a web page you have to tab over to.

I also don't know where you get that the console version somehow doesn't have comfortable search when there is literally an option on the trade page to search on console, the console version has exactly the same comfortable search the PC version has, except they ALSO have easy exchange. This proves that there is no reason this wont work because as we can see with the console version, it does, in fact, already work just fine.

As far as trade manipulation goes, that is a problem with every MMO, PoE included. The trade system being the inconvenient and infuriating mess that it is now has done NOTHING to stop it, so to say that that would suddenly BECOME a problem if they added an auction house is like saying the ocean will become wet if you dump a bottle of water out on the beach, the ocean is already wet, your bottle of water does nothing at all to change that. So yeah, new boss same as old boss is exactly my point here, except that now new boss would actually be in the game and wouldn't be a gigantic anti-fun pain in the ass at all where old boss only existed on a web page and literally existed specifically to be as un-fun as possible.

Edit: I'm fairly sure the reason they added an auction house to the console version is because Sony forced them to. Sony has always been vocal about the fact that they do not want their users to have to visit a third party website to be able to play a game or access any of its features. If a game or feature cannot be accessed via the PlayStation alone, Sony has famously said no. The closest they have ever allowed is to have a QR code that displays on screen for features in Genshin Impact and Minecraft. So my guess is the people who handle licensing for Sony took one look at the purchasable premium tabs that are advertised as allowing you to sell items, realized that in order to buy items you had to either learn PoEs API or go to a third party website and went, "Um... no, fix this or no PoE on console, period." So they had no choice because surprise surprise, one of the biggest giants in the industry actually knows what they're talking about once in a while.

This has already been talked to death. Read the following:

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

Some words of my own:
There are some people in this thread who think because something is listed in a public tab, they are automatically entitled to it.

This game doesn't want to offer an online shop where you simply browse the web and put items in your basket.

Also how bad at trading must you be, if you cant master the current system?

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Reinhart wrote:

This has already been talked to death. Read the following:

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

Some words of my own:
There are some people in this thread who think because something is listed in a public tab, they are automatically entitled to it.

This game doesn't want to offer an online shop where you simply browse the web and put items in your basket.

Also how bad at trading must you be, if you cant master the current system?

That manifesto is ancient and in build on top of a premisse that is plain retard: controling a mechanic by making it obnoxious
It is a legit way to gate things on work and on real life but newsflash: PoE is A VIDEOGAME. GGG has made many elegant solutions over time to many problems, why they insist in making the friggin videogame insufferable for the sake of balance is eye-rolling idiotic(but again, hardly the first time they seem to forget players log to have fun and not to work on a paycheck-less job)

As for your words: If you dont want to actually sell the item you put on the store, why the f* you put there in the first place? Usually if you see something on sale, its kinda reasonable to assume that, yes, you are entitled to it if you are willing to pay the listed price and nobody beat you to it

This game is already an online shop, you can simply browse the trade site and you will get what you are looking for, assuming a legit seller is offering it. We just have to suffer an inconvenient middle step, but dont change the fact browsing the trade site not only is effective to power up the character, you can even make profit if you are willing to play the game that way

*Master* the system? WTF you mean by that??? You do something other than just wisper to a bunch of people, travel to their h/o, put the item on sale and click yes?(judging from the post, i kinda suspect you do, but if you do, you know youre full of it)

I am well aware that this has been talked to death and until they fix it it will continue to be talked to death by me and no shortage of others because this is the single most requested qol fix that has ever been made, it will never stop coming up in forums and in in game chat until we have it because it is a basic feature that every MMO has, but GGG thinks making arbitrary aspects of their game suck rotten farts out of a dirty sock somehow balances the aspects of the game that are overpowered. If an item or a piece of content is overtuned, it needs to be tuned down, not left as it is and made stupid and obnoxious to do. That doesn't balance anything, its just a bad excuse for them to continue to be lazy and offload the work they should be doing themselves onto the shoulders of their players. Countless other issues are like this. Tooltips are CONSTANTLY wrong and missing vital information, no info is given on basically anything in game, effects arbitrarily do and don't work as they are worded, the list goes on and on and on. It is considered an absolute necessity to use things like PoB because if you don't you will fail because the game constantly lies to you and hides vital information from you.

There ARE solutions to all of these issues that don't involve annoying the f* out of your players, solutions that work MUCH better then arbitrarily hidden information and deliberately low qol design choices. Every other game on the planet gets the memo, what makes PoE different besides its devs constant flagrant disregard for their players time and and all forms for well established standard convention? PoE would be WAY better and WAY more popular if GGG would just stfu with the absolutely idiotic "friction" argument and make design choices that are actually good. They cant survive on being the only ARPG/MMO that is even the tiniest bit good forever, someone will come along and take their audience from them eventually. If the reason trading is inconvenient is because "our time has value" then why is that a reason its ok to leave trading in a state that forces all of us to waste huge swathes of our oh so valuable time?

I'm so sick and tired of all the gaslighting from GGG and I'm equally sick of the fact that any time anyone dares have anything critical to say about GGGs design choices, legitimate or otherwise, they get flamed for it by the portion of the community that is chomping at the bit to suck up to GGG-senpai until the person with the criticism either gives up and shuts up. Well I will never shut up about this issue or any other issue with this game because other then their insistence that bad game design somehow makes good game design this game is amazing and unique, and news flash, your senpai wont notice you, he doesn't care about you, once your wallet is empty, as far as hes concerned, you can get f*ed.

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feike wrote:

That manifesto is ancient and in build on top of a premisse that is plain retard: controling a mechanic by making it obnoxious

GGG has repeatedly in their Q&A's said it is still current.

Nothing has changed over the years since the manifesto was written that enables PoE to have an easy auction house. The game structure simply doesn't support it.

The two major issues are:

1. There is WAY too much loot dropped for it to work. If easy trade was put in, every bot would start identifying all rares, and they'd be on the AH. As a result we'd have the same situation as in D3 before they canned their AH, that nobody would ever find anything 'good' and they could buy much better stuff cheaply on the AH. This is a deadly sin in a loot-based MMO, as Blizzard realised.

2. There are trading and non-trading players in the game playing in the same game balance. Difficult trading makes that just about possible without too hard balance problems. Implement easy trading, and GGG would have to raise game difficulty (as everyone could buy super items for nothing), which in return would make it impossible for non-trading players to play. Non-trading players are the majority!

Yes... Other games have implemented easy trading. That means exactly nothing. The point is that PoE loot-wise is more similar to D3 before their (easy) AH was nixed than any other game, and face exactly the same problems.
The possible options are either a difficult trading system, or no trading system. An easy trading system will not work.