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

I've read through the thread, and I've seen some incredibly compelling arguments as to why xyz is a good thing.

Personally (and I think I'm in the majority here), I don't want to sit for hours, spamming a chat channel in game, when I could, you know, be playing it. I also don't want to have to scour unorganised forum posts searching for items I might want to buy, or to try and assertain how much an item I have no use for is actually worth.

The lack of an organised trade system simply means that scammers have an army of uneducated newbies to take advantage of. Someone who keeps an updated private list of values for unique items can simply watch out for key words, and make a killing by ripping off the little people.

Not only that, a few select players who have access to this closely guarded hypothetical price database can effectively control the entire games' economy, and gain a monopoly on certain items. Again, that isn't good.

By allowing anyone and everyone to post items, with what they think it should be worth, you're enabling everyone, no matter how intelligent, no matter how much playtime they can afford, and no matter their ability to haggle effectively to engage in trade with one another, fairly.

Not only that, what else are you suggesting is a better idea?

I think anyone who starts playing the game, within a couple of minutes immediately disables the spam-fest that is the trade channel. Not only that, sitting at your PC for 30 minutes spamming "WTB Bringer of Rain" isn't actually playing the damn game. It's dull, and a lot of people find it off-putting (I started playing with 3 others. They've all quit, complaining about the UI and that trading "is a nightmare, and simply not worth the hassle").

There's a very good reason that in the real world we have man-made currencies. Since the beginning of the civilized world they've existed, and likely always will. It still, just, well, works.


Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the whole trade aspect of the game, but I also see it as a hassle. It's fun and novel, but in all honesty, a little bit gimmicky. It's nice to have something different, but there's a reason that the real world doesn't work entirely through "I'll trade you four chickens for one sheep", because it's not as effective.

As a result, the alternative to using xyz for me (and many, many other players), is that the items will just sit in my stash, and maybe get used by an alt at a later date, although probably not. When I run out room, I'll simply vendor any items to make some more room. So it either just ends up gathering dust, or being vendored into what's basically waste...

That's what kills economies. Barriers to entry, and without xyz (and other similar sites), it's more than a barrier, it's the vacuum of space. Where older players know exactly how to navigate it, what the rules are out there, and have the tools to cross it safetly. Whereas anyone new is going to provide the fuel for their own greed engines to traverse the inhospitable environment.


Not cool.


TL;DR:
Either way, this sounds like you're a bit miffed that it's harder to rip people off, as it's easier for new players to get an idea of an items worth.

If you don't like using third party tools, then don't. Trying to sabotage someone else's idea and hard work, by attempting to rally a mass protest against it just makes you look petty, and above all, desperate. If the community decides they don't want it, they'll make up their own minds and voice it themselves, they don't need self proclaimed leaders begging for assistance.

Most of the stuff I see listed on xyz don't have buyouts anyway (I'd say about 85% of the listings [maybe xyz can comment on numbers?]). So there's that too. Oh, and as far as I can remember, there's no way to contact people, or send them items in-game if they're offline. So trading with people in different TZ's is more or less impossible as it stands at the moment, but that's a complaint for another time.

I never get why people are so bothered how other people play a game. The trade channel and forums are both still alive and well. There's room for both in the game, and as you can see, both are still used everyday by hundreds, if not thousands, of people.

I find this thread fascinating and enthralling. It touches on a lot more than just the idea of adding item level to the forums to be indexed, but on the nature of the economy in PoE and the state of the game.

I don't have much to add. I haven't been around that long, and I represent something that's not all that popular on these forums (a happy D3 player, albeit one relegated to hardcore for the better experience).

I'm probably just passing through PoE, as I tend to play games for a month or two then move on to other games. I want to stress how important I personally believe it is for some of these discussions to take place about this game in particular, but this extends far beyond simply PoE.

This is a great thread for developers of any game that has trading and gear to read.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled thread. :)

Yes, having a Diablo-Style Click and Buy Auction House ruins lootfinding. It ruined lootfinding in Diablo 3, where eventually Players wouldn't even bother picking up Rares because they were worthless. And it would ruin lootfinding here. (Forget about Real Money, the Gold AH was bad enough on its own! Dont think there would be Players playing Auction House Tycoon if it wasn't for Real Money? You're wrong.) Instead of thinking "How would that item be useful?" one simply opens the Auction House and checks it's value. If it's worthless in the Auction House it's worthless, period.

However, this system seems to be in demand - there are a lot of Threads asking why there is no Auction House/better Trading System that prove this. Why? Because there are a lot of Players that don't like to trade and feel like they still have to anyway. But if you dont want to trade, you want a tool to make trading quick and painless at least, make trading a means to an end. And with enough Players demanding this, sites like xyz are inevitable and trading will become shopping.

I would much rather have Trading as a niche thing, only attractive to those that *want* to study trade chat/forums and the like. Easy shopping makes the game unchallenging and unrewarding, but a cutthroat barter-based economy is not what your average Gamer wants to be a part of. (Using the Crafting System?) to reduce the Luckfactor/getting rid of mods that no one will ever want to see on an item will go a long way in promoting a Selffound-Playstyle for those that dont want to trade, but still want to get somewhere with the build they planned out:

"

johnKeys wrote:

replace random frustration with the feeling, that if you can do X and Y you will get Z.
both X and Y can be insanely difficult - thereby making the game truly hardcore - but reduce the dumb randomness to an absolute minimum.
"smart" randomness, like in an ARPG, instead of "dumb" randomness like in MMO.

make players know in-game progress is in their hands, rather than in some virtual hands tossing virtual dice.

Edit: Then again, there already are lots of ppl playing the high level content days after release - there's no solution that will please everyone. Maybe it's just the mentality - have to play endgame - thats the problem.. and to add to that, if selffound is viable to "beat" the endgame - without playing 18 hours per day - trading will make it that much more easier. No easy solution here ;-)

with all due respect you need to get your head checked the sites
are needed your being way to hardcore about this
trading is possible because of them if you bump your post
now it will be on page ten in less then five min's

Im glad you care enough about the trading system to get it fixed, but I also believe you are attacking branches of the problem and not the root.

Ive played about 400 hours of PoE (Humble guess at my minimum playtime):

Found 1-2 divine orbs
Found 1 exalted orb in my POE lifetime

See the problem here? If I want to buy a 6-link EVER, I have to play (400=1. 400x10=) 4000 hours to buy a 6 link.

The game is currently forcing people to either:

1) Play self found only
2) RMT

1 exalted in 400 hours of playing.
Mirrors = Never found
Divine = A few

The problem is rather obvious, you have to divorce your wife, quit your job, invest all waking hours into POE - to even enter the the trade market. That or RMT.

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pathofwarcraft wrote:

with all due respect you need to get your head checked the sites
are needed your being way to hardcore about this
trading is possible because of them if you bump your post
now it will be on page ten in less then five min's

This, anyone who thinks forums are a good way to sell stuff is living in a dream world.

More to the point, anyone thinks that forums, that are over inflated with "fluff" images and excess lines of non-uniform text, in different colours and fonts, complete with all kinds of highlighting/mouseover colours is living in a nightmare of a dream world.

Even more to the point, anyone who thinks that forums, without enforced uniform buying and selling thread topic wording, might as well be dead, because a dream world obviously isn't for you.

"WTB GG spell dagger!"

Tells you absolutely nothing, and is a waste of time reading or looking in.

The ability to search by attributes and compare products is just time saving, and I don't know about you, but having a long drawn out process isn't enjoyable, especially when I'm using my free time to do it. It gets to the point where you might as well just be doing something else that doesn't feel like work.

Thanks, upvoting his post now, awesome initiative, iLVL on forum link should be an obvious addition making trading less annoying. Not sure why Scrotie thinks trading should be annoying, but whatever.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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.

This is frankly impossible in any game with an economy. Yes, in early closed beta where the community was small and your gear could be wiped at any time we had something like that. And it was great. But we can never go back.

Also, I think you're overstating the degree to which this happens in PoE. Only uniques are particularly community priced.

My opinions are conflicted on this topic.

The most important thing to me about the trading system is that it does not circumvent interaction between players, first and foremost. Xyz does not do that.

Then there is the question of how healthy it is for the game to have its culture more developed, which means it becomes common knowledge what items are worth and what going rates are for common items. There are two sides to that, one side is that it will happen gradually and that it makes the game better because players interact and trade more easily with a common understanding of what things are worth, the other is that it might be beneficial to slow down the process in order to slow the aging of the game, to give more time for the game to be "explored", so to speak.

PoE strikes the balance that top-end uniques are very strong, but generally an very good rare beats them, therefore not everything will be known to the masses about the pricing of the items. I have rather come to like the way things are in PoE, the known uniques are desired by masses for their predictability, and in that way it is possible to plan builds, but your item progression does not stop when you acquired those uniques and most of them can be replaced at some point unless they have something which is crucial to your build, which i like too. In other words, there is the possibility to gear up on uniques, but overall you are not finished with your gear when you are decked out in mostly uniques, whereas In D2 LoD that was mostly what you wanted, those well known uniques/runewords and then your character was pretty much done in terms of what would be realistic to acquire.

Now there are also some lessons to be learned from D3 and its AH. I do not believe that the AH itself was as bad as people would like to think it to be, nor that it ruined the game on its own. The main problems were that everyone were using the same items and the same properties on items, so everyone were searching for the same thing, which meant if you wanted any chance at getting some of the good stuff you had to sit there checking AH very frequently, and that you often had to sit up late night for auctions that you might not even end up winning, because the entire community were looking for the same items. That last late-night problem is also one that is mostly caused by the AH circumventing social interaction between players.

When it comes to showing itemlevel on items in trade threads, i must admit i have wanted that for a very long time in PoE. I simply think it should be there, it is information i need when checking out items. I also want holding down "Alt" to show ilvl on my own item in-game, so i do not have to spam /itemlevel all the time for no good reason.

In one way i am feeling like i want to resist the "AH" movement, by making it harder to find trades, but in another way i think that it is foolish to begin concealing information that is needed to find items, just to make it less of an "AH" feeling, especially when indexing sites do not circumvent interaction between parties. So, by principle i am not against making it less AH-like, but i would see it done another way or not at all.

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ToxicRatt wrote:

Since Chris forces a trading sim instead of crafting, http://poe.xyz.is/ and http://poexplorer.com/?league= are absolutely essential. Chris is determined to kill solo play and crafting still sucks (fusings are better now but still need improvement) 3rd party sites are needed for the game.

When/If Chris makes an indexer/marketplace for PoE the 3rd party sites will die. Until then long live XYZ and Explorer.

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kez1304 wrote:

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pathofwarcraft wrote:

The ability to search by attributes and compare products is just time saving, and I don't know about you, but having a long drawn out process isn't enjoyable, especially when I'm using my free time to do it. It gets to the point where you might as well just be doing something else that doesn't feel like work.

I wouldn't exactly go as far as to say GGG is killing solo play yet, but they certainly are nowhere near encouraging it either.

Until making a map-able self-found toon is possible without taking years to do it (and good luck if they nerf your build), then indexers are absolutely essential. Making trading a PITA is just artificially introducing stupid difficulty barriers. It's like logging you out on each area change just so the game becomes more time consuming.

Consuming the player's time should come from making the player think, not from introducing pointless barriers.

Indexers are FAR from making POE like D3. You still (often) have to jump through 20 hoops of fire just to make the damned trade.