Scrotie wants YOU to help prevent PoE's economy from becoming more like D3's

Your action is needed in the fight against Path of Market Simulator. The creator of one of the most popular third-party shops indexers, xyz, is trying to expand his power.
Suggestion Thread: Itemlevel on forums
xys' Reddit thread

poe.xyz.is is one of the more destructive influences in the game in terms of making trading less about haggling and more about searchable buyouts. It transforms item valuation from a difficult puzzle into a cheat-sheet exercise. For trade-centric players, these eventually increases the feelings of grind, because as market valuation becomes increasingly "solved," the market value of monster-dropped items is increasingly demystified, taking the mystique out of loot-finding and creating numb, emotionless farming.

I have tolerated poe.xyz.is' existence for one simple reason: if GGG makes the information publicly available on its website, then someone will make a third-party site for it; if not xyz, then someone else, perhaps with more sinister (read: RMT) intentions. Third-party sites are an inevitability, so no use fighting them. However, what should not happen is further expanding their power by having GGG make even more information public, at the third-party site's request.

I urge those of you who care about keeping trade haggle-based and keeping the emphasis of the game on loot-finding, not loot-swapping, to downvote xys' suggestion thread. He is advertising on his site to get upvotes from his path-of-least-resistance supporters; I feel it's only fair I advertise in this forum to get upvotes from those who care about the future of the game.

TL;DR: Click on the suggestion link above and downvote it.

Clarification edit:

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CanHasPants wrote:

Scrotie's point is that a system which categorically organizes buyouts erodes the barter economy. I don't think he would mind an indexing site, solely for the purpose of looking up which rare items exist and who possesses them--this facilitates trading. Buyouts remove haggling (you know, like "hey I got this sweet ring but it doesn't have the mods I need, you have that sweet ring that doesn't have mods you need, let's talk business") and reinforces price tags. Price tags reinforce orbs as bank investments rather than crafting materials.

This exactly. I have zero problem with a Path of Exile trading search engine — frankly, it's something which GGG should provide — but every problem with something which allows you to search by buyout.

Actually, I would like to see buyouts — yes, even the non-instantaneous kind — removed completely. But one step at a time.

If xyz removed the ~b/o tag function from his site, I'd have absolutely no problem with the site. At all. But if xyz did that, it wouldn't solve anything long-term; some other site would implement the same feature. It's on GGG to control what information gets made public, because third-party sites will index anything publicly available; it is inevitable. I have nothing against xyz here; it was him or someone else who would perform the inevitable, and at least xyz isn't RMT-infested.

In other words: this is GGG's responsibility, not on third-party sites. It's up to GGG to control what information is public, and how and whether players can indicate buyouts (knowing that all publicly available buyouts will be made searchable). What we don't need is more information made public.

Yet another edit:

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johnKeys wrote:

he's talking from his personal experience, oblivious to the fact some people use buy-outs to get an idea of market price. a benchmark. a price-range for the real, productive haggling/bartering process, that can result in a good deal for both sides.
people like myself.

I am not oblivious to the fact that those who have no idea what they're doing go to a cheat sheet instead of figuring it out for themselves.

The problem is that everyone is marching to the same tune. When Joe Average trades in Path of Exile, he's going off of the same pricing scheme that no-lifers are. He's wondering if he came out ahead not on a per-character basis, but on a per-league basis. He looks at an Exalt and sees 24 Chaos; he doesn't see "Adds 1 affix to a rare item."

Everyone wants to be an economic controller, so everyone uses the same pricing schemes the economic controllers, the no-lifers, the uber-geared, use. It has to stop. And the way to do that is to make it so one doesn't simply see the pricing schemes the uber-geared use. Take away the cheat-sheet, and people might actually start evaluating items based on usefulness to their character, a concept which has been absent from this game for far too long (since Closed Beta).

Item valuation should be build-dependent, and based on your personal valuations of what the items actually do; it should be a fully independent activity. Item valuation should not be community-dependent, but that's exactly the toxic effect of searchable buyouts.

sorry í never liked the idea of 3rd party sites/programs etc... start with 1 and you will end up with second, just leave it please :)

leave the programming to the GGG team....

The only issue I had with D3's economy was the legit RMT aspect. That's the only aspect I disliked.

As for the "mystery": even if an efficient auction house was to be implemented, the answer to the fundamental question of any trading enthusiast is still difficult to solve: "How do I make the most profit per time unit I spend?"

With both ends of the spectrum in existence. (You and poe.xyz) I think trading/item find/farming appears to be in a middle ground. I see plenty of haggling in trade with WTT and I see plenty of WTB (poe ratio etc)

The most important part is not up or downvoting, it's about letting people enjoy the game how they want.

Things become stale when a group of people try to control others, either by sway or trickery.

I'm sorry Scrotie, but I must side with the "enemy" here.

that site has become my only option, when trying to buy something.

I cannot sort out the zombie apocalypse that is the in-game trade-chat.
I cannot follow the "refresh and you miss it" trade forum.
I cannot deal with some of scum bags regularly lurking in-game trade, and swooping like a vulture on any unsuspecting "WTB".

that site helped me find what I was looking for, and quickly get back to playing the game.
that site helped me find a few surviving members, of the endangered species that is the honest, polite PoE trader.

and while xyz's suggestion is indeed going to promote the site, and improve it's usefulness even further, it also has a by-product of eliminating a specific kind of scam: selling a version of a popular unique, that cannot be 4+ linked because it's item level is too low.

Aren't the trade-centric players the same ones that set the buyouts, due to having an obvious interest in maximizing profit in the shortest amount of time possible?

I think the term you're looking for is haggling-oriented players. And even then, I don't see the problem. Hagglers can humor themselves on the listings with no buyout, no?

wow...finding gear is impossible w/o sites like xyz and explorer.

I'm not really a fan of PoE's barter economy anyway, sorry Scrotie!

I think that by the time you find yourself searching through third party websites for gear, farming has already become a numb experience. There's no immersion involved when you're grinding out storyless maps, at least for me anyway.

The rampant use of indexer sites is a projection of the flaws of in-game trading. Selling item is really a boring chore since links go stale if you're actually playing the game while trying to sell.

I do understand the negative influence these websites have on the economy, but I also recognise the positive influence they bring in terms of gameplay.

Actually the best fix to the economy would be to make the whole game self found.