A middle ground solution for trading (aka "put your money where your mouth is")

So, I get it... "trading must be a PITA because otherwise we can't properly balance the game".

Also known as "no fun-ation without taxation" (sorry, couldn't come up with a better rhyme to "taxation" than this).

But I think a middle ground solution would help a lot. I wrote "put your money where your mouth is" because of the idea "we want players to upgrade their gear more often", which my proposal provides.

At the same time this would improve the economy because there would be more competitive pressure, which is, as all reasonable people know, always a good thing.

So, here it is:

Make at least the stuff that is currently available in bulk trade automatically and, especially, offline tradeable. Like "ok, I offer my 5 divines for 219 chaos each" and who grabs it first gets it.

Ingame. No more alt-tab or, as I do it, trading via Android tablet.

The fun tax and annoying, nerve wrecking trading of items would remain (I understand that there can be no PoE without a hefty taxation on fun), but at least the pain would be eased a bit.

Positive side effects:

1. I already mentioned it: more competitive pressure, so no more fantasy pricing on not so rare items

2. People would be encouraged to upgrade gear more often because the necessary currency is not such a hassle to get (stated goal in the "manifest")

3. More people participating at least in bulk trading because you don't need to tab in and tab out anymore... PoE for many of us has become something like Douglas, but more like "PoE - tab in and tab out" (probably only people from DACH countries may get this one, I don't know what Douglas company does in other parts of the world)

4. Automated, offline bulk trading would make the ghost of Milton Friedman very happy and maybe he drops a divine or three for us filthy exiles to pick up?

You pointed to the exact reason WHY GGG constantly says trade needs to be a PITA...

Your positives are literally all misguided/turned on their edge: having the BULK items be automated is the worst possible solution, it has to start on the OTHER side (single items). Bulk item bot abuse and price fixing would go THROUGH THE ROOF if all of that could be done automatically. Hell, the bots could price fix amongst themselves with a well crafted bot mine. Hundreds of buyers + hundreds of sellers, constantly raising the price bit by bit after each trade, changing the average price and therefore constantly changing what non-bot players see as the value. It would cause a tidal wave of inflation.

No, bulk items should not EVER be automated. That would be an absolutely crazy idea.

BUT if single items were automated....these are much much harder for bots to pricefix. They still can, but it would take far more time and effort than imemediately trading thousands and thousands of chaos orbs in a minute.

And then for rare items, bots would almost entirely disappear from the price-fixing market. Simply because rare items are relatively "unique" in their mods. Bots could target bases, but a rare base could be 1c or 500 divines depending on the mods. only the actual player searching for specific mods would be able to get the things they want. And that is precisely when you NEED an automated, offline, buy and sell process. Where it would do the LEAST damage but provide the most QoL.

I'll say it again because I think its that important: they absolutely should not EVER automate bulk trades. That is the quickest way to destroy the entire game market far more than anything we see now (and possibly even in standard....)

PS: Should they ever even try that suggestion, they would need some pretty hefty guardrails in place (maximums, time limit, time between trades, etc etc) that would make it MORE frustrating than our current system.

a cake for everyone who seriously believes that bot's give a damn about trade automation... it's not like they have it automated already afterall...

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Baharoth15 wrote:

a cake for everyone who seriously believes that bot's give a damn about trade automation... it's not like they have it automated already afterall...

True. I bet those damn price fixers and bots are well on their way to even use AI tools to automate everything.

There are AI models that can learn to play games, etc... reacting to whispers on the screen and putting items into a trade tab and setting a price note should be easy in comparison for models like this.

From what I have learned in my 44 years on this planet it is that free, unlimited and easily done trading is the best method to solve problems.

Everything else always led to black market situations in the past. My country, after WW2, was infested with black market trading because legal trade was inhibited by a dysfunctional currency and overbearing legislation. After we got our own currency and reduction of trade limitations, suddenly stores were full with popular articles like food, especially high quality one, like vegetables, fruit, dairy products and meat.

Price fixing would sort itself out most probably, because it would not be achievable anymore. Every serious economist will agree with me here.

I see the current trading situation more like "inverse price fixing" - the concepts of incremental pricing and supply vs. demand are effectively (and efficiently) undermined by the arbitrary limits put on trading viability via the "fun tax" of having to jump out of maps, the need to whisper around for hours just to buy a handful of articles, etc...

Of course harmful elements (like price fixers and bots) can thrieve in such an artificially handicapped economy.

A good read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_to_Choose

its about mitigation: not fueling the bot fire

Why would the devs make the single biggest change that helps the bots the MOST?

Arguably, every decision made in these games needs to come with a mind towards those bots that might abuse it. You are correct, by definition, bots have already "automated" what shouldn't be automated in the first place.

But your argument is to just ignore them? That doesn't work. What bots do now and what they COULD do with an automated bulk trade system that no longer needs an active participant is astronomically different.

So yes...the botters care because it makes their lives so much easier and their profit exponentially higher. But more than that, the PLAYERS should care about making botting easier.

bank robbers enter a bank: they have obstacles such as 1) people, 2) vault codes, 3) physical area that takes time to traverse.

Both of you want to open the vaults, remove the passwords, and get rid of all the barriers, and you think that will FIX the problems? You must be joking.


There is no such thing as a "free" economy: all economies in the world operate under certain codes, rules, and systems designed to keep bad actors at bay. PoE has NONE OF THESE THINGS. What theoretically works in real life simply does NOT work in a game setting, where there exist no functional policing, rules, or currency limits.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

its about mitigation: not fueling the bot fire

Why would the devs make the single biggest change that helps the bots the MOST?

Arguably, every decision made in these games needs to come with a mind towards those bots that might abuse it. You are correct, by definition, bots have already "automated" what shouldn't be automated in the first place.

But your argument is to just ignore them? That doesn't work. What bots do now and what they COULD do with an automated bulk trade system that no longer needs an active participant is astronomically different.

So yes...the botters care because it makes their lives so much easier and their profit exponentially higher. But more than that, the PLAYERS should care about making botting easier.

I have a counterthesis here:

The bots only succeed because the economy is seriously distressed and artificially handicapped by trade that is cumbersome.

In a free market situation bots and price fixers find much less of a pivot to do their deeds.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

bank robbers enter a bank: they have obstacles such as 1) people, 2) vault codes, 3) physical area that takes time to traverse.

Both of you want to open the vaults, remove the passwords, and get rid of all the barriers, and you think that will FIX the problems? You must be joking.

A bot or price fixer is not a bank robber. It is not their intention to retrieve valuables / currency without any transaction but to manipulate the market, which is possible for them because the volume of transactions is much lower than it could be in a situation where trade is not artificially inhibited.

A better (but not perfect) comparison would be "illegal drug dealer", they also thrieve because drugs can't be traded in a legal fashion. Or somebody who intentionally manipulates the stock market by scattering rumours (making an offer without the intention to actually sell at that price is very similar to a rumour).

Of course they may try to extremely undercut prices still, but the actual transactions would still be around the correct incremental price ("Grenzpreis" in German, I haven't found a better translation for this word, sorry, but it means "the price where most profit can be acquired").

Have some trust in the invisible hand of the market. :-)

^totally disagree. I would argue the bots DON'T succeed in the current system. But they WILL succeed if given carte blanche.

Right now, because trade is hampered in certain ways, price fixing is incredibly difficult to do on currencies and our rates of inflation are similar across most leagues because price fixing is NOT occurring and the market is moving along with supply and demand.

When the barriers fall away, supply becomes monopolized by those that can make the most transactions the fastest (bots). And then those bots determine the entire market.

A bot farm is ABSOLUTELY a bank robber. Their sole intent is to maximize their own profits. In order to do that, they attempt to control the market. Sure, they may not be outright "stealing" the currency, but their end goal is the same
as someone destroying all the competition and selling a banana for $100 apiece.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

^totally disagree. I would argue the bots DON'T succeed in the current system. But they WILL succeed if given carte blanche.

Right now, because trade is hampered in certain ways, price fixing is incredibly difficult to do on currencies and our rates of inflation are similar across most leagues because price fixing is NOT occurring and the market is moving along with supply and demand.

When the barriers fall away, supply becomes monopolized by those that can make the most transactions the fastest (bots). And then those bots determine the entire market.

There are no RELEVANT transactions. If two companies decide in the real world that they simply send the same articles back and forth between each other, for an arbitrarily low (deflation) or high (inflation) price, still no deflation or inflation would happen in the real economy.

What we would end up with is just another feature request "please give us a filter for known price fixers and bots". And that should be doable.

Thats, btw, the same idea as behind anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws. Good laws, as most people would probably agree.