Why the currency system sucks

Did an experiment during the leagues, wts reduced mana. Rarely get offers more than 1 chaos. wtb reduced mana. Couldn't get it for under 2 chaos. It is a gem that is in high demand because it is a requirement for auras and not all classes get access to the gem as a quest reward. It is a good example for testing the market for the number of lowballers and flippers that infest the waters.

Due to the probability of getting higher end currency being very low the easiest way to acquire them is to buy them with lower currency. You can accumulate a lot of currency by flipping items, you can find a lot of items that sell well below market value, you can make a lot of currency not lowballing anyone but you make a lot more if you lowball everyone.

The trade channels are a sewer of people looking to rip off other people. On one hand there is nothing wrong with a haggle system but it is a large barrier for newer players who don't really know the value of items. It is also a massive barrier for players who prefer to kill shit than shuffle shit around the inventory.

For the vast majority of people, they do not have the patience to trade and trade for the kind of hours required to accumulate the currency. But, they are impacted by others who do. Supply and demand determines price and traders who have accumulated 10x+ the currency of non-traders are the ones that set the price for high end items, because they will always have a lot more currency to throw at high end items.

The system with low probability rates is loaded heavily against those who do not actively trade and flip. This impacts everyone, people who are able to fleece the currency from inexperienced players will have the currency to out-bid you, unless you do the same.

And yet on Standard it gets sold and bought for 1c all the time.

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culblade wrote:

Let's face it. The average hardcore player is unemployed and spends the whole day in front of the computer. The actual game would get boring and one would want to spice it up with trading.
For GGG to say this is the game they want to play is surprising. They have a job, right?

So do I.... Your point?

@OP Welcome to an online game where items are bought and sold. My suggestion, play for fun. Not for imaginary wealth.

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linkstatic wrote:

And yet on Standard it gets sold and bought for 1c all the time.

That was an example of a temporary league item and temporary league issue, prices start typically a lot higher because supply is much lower.

Permanent leagues have their own issues but are still impacted by flippers vs non-flippers and accessibility to high end currency and high end items.

Typically nobody cares about scrubcore because it is like a sewer system where everything from the other leagues eventually floats down into it, it goes through phases, especially at the end of temporarily leagues where it gets saturated with crap.

Despite all the ills and woes of AH based systems, the one major benefit is that if you do not have a strong grasp on what things are worth you can readily see what they are being sold for, it actually hurts the game for the majority if currency flows into the hands of a minority. It also allows people who do not have the stomach for haggling or the time to put into trading to participate.

I prefer to deal with people who do not say 'give me an offer' because that to me means 'please lowball me' or 'I hope you are clueless about this item's value'. I prefer someone to say I want X for this item and if it is around market value then sweet you can choose to buy or sell if you are happy with the outcome. But it is difficult when the vast majority of players do not even know what market value is.

There is no trading system you could possibly devise which would prevent the situation described in the OP, unless you consider no trading to be a trading system. Thus, even if one were to consider it a "fault" that the situation exists, it does not point to a problem with the currency system.

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culblade wrote:

Let's face it. The average hardcore player is unemployed and spends the whole day every day in front of the computer. The actual game would get boring and one would want to spice it up with trading.
For GGG to say this is the game they want to play is surprising. They have a job, right?

If there was a self found only league with moderately higher drop rates to compensate for a lack of trading then I would prefer to play that league. I sometimes log in during working hours and leave my character idling in the trade window and I will periodically check to see if there is something around.

I'd prefer not to have to do that. I don't really find it enjoyable but at times I need something I haven't been able to find or craft and there is a lot less trading going on during my time zone.

I can understand if a lot of people enjoy the trade aspect of the game, however, if the value of currency is determined more by it's rarity than it's desirability for crafting then you pretty much have a gold system happening. I don't think enough of the chaos or exalted are bled out of the economy for there to be a user equilibrium, it is more an artificial one based on the artificial rarity of supply. There would be no difference if you only dropped gold and you had to purchase crafting orbs from a vendor at exponentially higher gold values.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

There is no trading system you could possibly devise which would prevent the situation described in the OP, unless you consider no trading to be a trading system. Thus, even if one were to consider it a "fault" that the situation exists, it does not point to a problem with the currency system.

I think an ingame trade tracker that was available to every player ingame so they could find out what the average price/rate items were being trade for on a given day. It would be very hard to do for say rares with the number/range of stat rolls, but more doable with uniques which have set stats and smaller range of rolls, and much easier for currency.

Eliminate trades between same account holders/alts/guilds, etc or anything else that may accidentally or purposefully try to skew the tracker. I think it would go a LONG way towards giving the average player something sorely needed - a good idea what things sell for.

At the very least, it could reduce or outright eliminate PC on /global.

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Druga1757 wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

There is no trading system you could possibly devise which would prevent the situation described in the OP, unless you consider no trading to be a trading system. Thus, even if one were to consider it a "fault" that the situation exists, it does not point to a problem with the currency system.

I think an ingame trade tracker that was available to every player ingame so they could find out what the average price/rate items were being trade for on a given day.

I want you to think for a moment on how utterly, completely boring this would make trading.

And then, remember: games (to include minigames within games) are supposed to be fun.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Druga1757 wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

There is no trading system you could possibly devise which would prevent the situation described in the OP, unless you consider no trading to be a trading system. Thus, even if one were to consider it a "fault" that the situation exists, it does not point to a problem with the currency system.

I think an ingame trade tracker that was available to every player ingame so they could find out what the average price/rate items were being trade for on a given day.

I want you to think for a moment on how utterly, completely boring this would make trading.

And then, remember: games (to include minigames within games) are supposed to be fun.

For me, the boring part is trading, so anything that lets me do as little of it as possible so I can spend as much time as I can doing what I do find fun - killing mobs - is a plus.