Trading is terribad

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osperand66 wrote:

I think that you should have the option to "buy now" by clicking a button on the trade site which sends it to your inventory if you meet the sellers listing price.

There are a lot of (good) reasons why GGG specifically do not want that. You can read more here:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2025870
The trade manifesto is a few years old, but it is still current.

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Cyzax wrote:

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osperand66 wrote:

I think that you should have the option to "buy now" by clicking a button on the trade site which sends it to your inventory if you meet the sellers listing price.

There are a lot of (good) reasons why GGG specifically do not want that. You can read more here:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2025870
The trade manifesto is a few years old, but it is still current.

Sorry, but the only reason I get from this manifesto is: "we want it to be as bad as possible because otherwise we would have to consider other options to make the game better".

There is not a single - ZERO - "good" reasons for making trading the nuisance it is now.

Let me give you ONE example. A few minutes ago I tried to buy 20 gemcrafters prisms for 1 chaos orb - the price it was announced for on the trade page.

Result: big "no". Every seller I contacted wanted to sell 1:1 (which is too expensive for me currently) instead of the announced price.

And somehow people think that false advertising, etc... is acceptable? Are you really serious?

If I want to be exposed to market behaviour like this I would go to Eve Online (I guess in a dictionary if there is a definition of "toxic", EO would be the prime example).

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navigator4223 wrote:

Let me give you ONE example. A few minutes ago I tried to buy 20 gemcrafters prisms for 1 chaos orb - the price it was announced for on the trade page.

Result: big "no". Every seller I contacted wanted to sell 1:1 (which is too expensive for me currently) instead of the announced price.

That is an obvious troll/bad attempt at price setting though.

A bigger issue is, you went to the actual sellers but they didn't want to bother because you are buying only a stack and not 10 stacks. So its not worth their time to actually trade and no trade happens.

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navigator4223 wrote:

Sorry, but the only reason I get from this manifesto is: "we want it to be as bad as possible because otherwise we would have to consider other options to make the game better".

You've not actually read it then and UNDERSTOOD what they're saying... Their reasoning is sound considering how the game is.

Your argument is essentially that YOU want easy trading, and therefore all reasons against it are bad. That's not a a good argument.

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Cyzax wrote:

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navigator4223 wrote:

Sorry, but the only reason I get from this manifesto is: "we want it to be as bad as possible because otherwise we would have to consider other options to make the game better".

You've not actually read it then and UNDERSTOOD what they're saying... Their reasoning is sound considering how the game is.

Your argument is essentially that YOU want easy trading, and therefore all reasons against it are bad. That's not a a good argument.

No.

Best practice in UX is, if a feature is needed, then it must be as accessible and as easy to use as possible.

If a feature doesn't serve the application or is actually harmful, then it must not be implemented.

Here we have a contradiction when it comes to game design:

1. GGG saying (I agree here) that items matter
2. GGG also saying that they want trade (I also agree)

But:

3. GGG contradict 2. (and 1. to some degree) by saying that trading should be a painful, horrible process that costs you a lot of time.

Gatekeeping is never a good idea. But thats what the current trading system is doing.

It's not just trade really, though its arguably the worst offender. Making things intentionally annoying and tedious as some sort of fun tax is a basic principle from GGG that can be found everywhere in this game.

The manifesto is a joke that no one with a minimum ability of critical thinking will take seriously at this point. It states they want items to matter, but then they implemented horrible loot that's utterly useless 99,99% of the time to compensate for the equally horrible trading function resulting in a game where items outside of currency don't matter at all. Nobody get's exited by drops these days or at least it's so ridiculously rare that it's hardly worth the mention and the few times it does happen, 99 times out of a 100 it's a currency drop.

Everything GGG wanted to prevent from happening in the manifesto is already a reality, including bots and rmt while the one thing they wanted to achieve has died since long ago. The manifesto is only a testament to their stubbornness to admit their failure and correct it at this point.

"Fun tax".

I like that. Describes it very well.

And yes, there are other similar things like that going on as well.

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Frostride wrote:

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navigator4223 wrote:

Let me give you ONE example. A few minutes ago I tried to buy 20 gemcrafters prisms for 1 chaos orb - the price it was announced for on the trade page.

Result: big "no". Every seller I contacted wanted to sell 1:1 (which is too expensive for me currently) instead of the announced price.

That is an obvious troll/bad attempt at price setting though.

A bigger issue is, you went to the actual sellers but they didn't want to bother because you are buying only a stack and not 10 stacks. So its not worth their time to actually trade and no trade happens.

That is exactly the problem. If we had an Auction House system then this wouldn't be an issue. You shouldn't be forced to buy 20 stacks of something you only need 1 stack of just because GGG refuses to admit that they were wrong and have failed at everything that that absurd and insulting manifesto claims this nonsense system is supposed to do. It seems good on paper but in practice it DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!

This type of trolling and price fixing would not be a thing if we had a system where listing an item for a price results in it selling at that price instead of the result being you getting to troll and bamboozle people who don't know any better into selling an item at 1/20th of its value because they think your fake price that you post for the purpose of ignoring all prospective buyers is actually a real price.

I wonder how many people who argue so vehemently against an Auction House are actually price fixers who don't want to lose access to their clever little con? "Oh no! This is picking up some steam! If they add an auction house then I wont be able to rip people off and troll anymore! I had better think of something to shut them up QUICK! Where's that bullshit manifesto Chris came up with forever ago? Surely that will do the trick!" If any of you sad little con artists are here reading this, go home! We don't want you here. Nobody wants you here! We want a system that disables your nefarious scam once and for all and it couldn't be more obvious that, for the most part, you are the only ones who want thing's to stay the way they are.

Better trade is an absolute necessity! Give us an Auction House stash tab already, ffs!

How about this? GGG, if you remove your head from your rectum and give us an Auction House tab, I WILL buy it. Not only that, I will buy more tabs. I will finally bother to buy a quad tab, an essence tab, and a delve tab. I will probably even go the extra mile and buy some cosmetics and maybe the absurdly overpriced vault pass that costs 3x as much as every other games battle pass. IF YOU GIVE US BETTER TRADE I WILL SPEND A BUNCH OF MONEY ON THIS GAME AND I AM FAR FROM ALONE IN SAYING THAT! Make it happen!

Look we know why trade is bad. We have the manifesto, we have numerous responses and interviews with the devs stating as much.

BUT

To say that a 2013 manifesto is "current" is ridiculous...the game has evolved a lot since 2013. The manifesto should evolve as well and the fact that it HASN'T is a huge problem.

Back in 2013 there were:
1) less than a 10th of the players
2) less than a 10th of the currency items
3) less than a 100th of the current mods found on items
4) Probably around less than a 10th of the amount of unique items
5) Far less game overall (3 acts, done 3 times)

What worked for THAT version of the game can't possibly work for the current version and its really dumb to think it can. Even the definition of "slow" has changed drastically over the years. So if the intent was for trade to slow down progress, it is having a different "slow" effect nowadays than what was okay 10 years ago. The "painful" aspect of trade in 2013 has multiplied over the years by the increasing # of players (and therefore trade load), increasing # of items (and therefore trade load), and increasing numbers of currencies (and therefore trade load).

It is essentially a "new" game we are playing, while trying to defend rules for a different game. You can't play poker following monopoly rules...

But this is GGG's tried and true style, and the reason there are sooooo many unnecessary issues in the game that never and will never get fixed. Look at minions: still can't see their dps, still can't see AG equip, etc. They don't even ATTEMPT to fix things. They just pump out new crap, and then nerf that same new crap the following league while releasing more new crap. The only direction they change things is negatively. They simply don't believe in "improving" the game: it's all just "new content".

I said 2013 because the ORIGINAL trade manifesto way back in the day looked almost exactly the same as the linked post from 2017.

Just look critically at CW's reasons why "easy" trade is bad and "difficult" trade is good: not one single thing he says is true of today's game. In fact, many of the situations he describes as problems of an "easy" trade system are happening now or have already happened regardless of the trade system. Drops have no meaning. Drop rates have been slashed. The distance between the haves and have-nots has never been further apart. Bots and price fixers have almost total control over the market. Easy trade does not and has not EVER meant less upgrades: terrible drops means less upgrades. When I start making currency, I interact with trade to change my equipment once every 5-10 levels. When I DON'T interact with trade, I wear the same gear from Act 1 all the way to Act 10 because I craft good starting gear and then never find a single upgrade for the majority of the game.

Every point against making an easier trade system is true of their current terrible system. And for the record: why does it have to be easy vs. hard? There is a spectrum of easy to hard that can be played with. Make small improvements and see what happens: 1) let us trade without having to be in the same space. 2) Let us access our stash from wherever we are. 3) Automatically place the item asked for into the trade window. 4) other steps. Finally 5) allow trades to happen while offline. Test each tiny little step for an entire league. What does it do to the pricing index? How does it affect overall playtime/enjoyment/trade amounts?

They have literally tried NOTHING since the creation of the game. Even Diablo 3 had the thought to REMOVE the rmt auction house, and then the overall auction house. They took 2 whole steps! PoE has taken none. How can you have a manifesto on what works and what doesn't for YOUR game when you have tried no other alternatives in 10 years of game development?

If "items matter and trade is important", as the first line of the manifesto suggests...why is it that both of these systems get the LEAST attention from the developers? There have literally been ZERO changes to the trade system since they added the trade system post-beta (back in the beta, we were still dropping items in the coast to trade them if I remember correctly....). Why, after complaints from nearly the entire lifetime of the game, are item drops STILL in such a terrible spot?

A game about loot and you can't actually loot or sell your loot...