My opinion on auctionhouses

Original title that was too long: Been hearing a lot of bitching in game RE: "plz add auctionhouse GGG". Here's my take on the subject.


Some observations, combined with what to me are logical conclusions about the trade system:

-- The average player will find enough "decent" gear to cover several different characters, more than enough for their own characters. This is an important part of making the loot system feel rewarding. If you find nothing worthy of showing off (which falls into two categories: "Hey look what I found and can now use" and "Hey look what I found and can now sell" largely ), then it feels like the RNG is screwing you over (or is poorly designed).

-- The above results in a surplus of items. I'm purely talking about equipment here, the non-consumable stuff. Consumability solves the surplus problem for currency (to an extent). Anyway this surplus means that despite the high demand, there are actually more Alpha's Howls (just an example as a "currently in high demand FotM enabler" item) in circulation than their expensive price would make one think.

The above results in the availability of items being (roughly) just right. More accessibility would mean you have nothing to work for. Too little and drops are never exciting.

An auctionhouse IMO destroys that balance. It makes items available for purchase all the time, in a format easily searchable by price from within the game. The forums make them available for viewing without being searchable by price. Indexers make them searchable with listed buyouts. This convenience is NOT a good thing for the economy. People being willing to pay extra for the convenience of a quick purchase is what keeps prices up at reasonable levels. With indexers, you cannot sell for a higher price than the lowest listed buyout or you will NOT sell to anyone who knows how to check the indexers. If you want your item to stick out in the sea of the cheapest listed buyouts, you have to sell for slightly cheaper than the cheapest. Now you are the cheapest, and the next guy who has to sell cheaper than the cheapest must sell cheaper than you.

There is currently one exception to this. To sell your items, you have to be online. You cannot sell things while away from your keyboard. An auctionhouse would remove this requirement. This would cause prices to fall even further, even faster. You would open an auctionhouse, search an item, sort by price (if the game doesn't automatically do that for you) and buy your item. There's no skill required for that.

I know many people say that trading requires no skill either, but I cannot understand how you could possibly believe that. I can only guess that you are either so bad at trading that you see no way you could improve or that you are so good that you make amazing profits both quickly and effortlessly.

However, trading is definitely a skill. You must find someone who has what you want and convince him that he needs what you have more than he needs what he has. You must be persuasive, knowledgable and generally have good people skills. Trading, like most everything in Path of Exile, currently rewards people who are skilled at it and punishes those who are not. It provides an alternative "skill check" to those who are feeling that the RNG is not on their side. To add an auction house would be giving items to people who have not earned them in any way, shape or form.

i agree

Yeah... no. Trading is a skill, yes, but not so much in PoE. It's a matter of 3rd party programs and websites, as well as free time. This game HAS an ah for all intents and purposes, it's just a really shoddy one.

What if you needed an orb to put an item up for sale in an auction house?

Same rarity as something like an exalt?

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b15h09 wrote:

Yeah... no. Trading is a skill, yes, but not so much in PoE. It's a matter of 3rd party programs and websites, as well as free time. This game HAS an ah for all intents and purposes, it's just a really shoddy one.

I've posted this before, but I'm posting it again.

"

Does trading have to be boring? I don't think so.

Trading is most fun when you have chances to be a clever trader, moving in on opportunities. I'm not talking about finding a noob and ripping them off — not much clever about that — but perhaps realizing that a certain build is much better than people think, and thus that a certain item is worth more than people realize. This creates pockets of undervaluing, and thus opportunities for clever traders. The "people" we're trying to outthink here aren't ignorant noobs, but the majority of players.

However, if there are builds much better than people think, then there must be builds worse than people think; and if there are items worth more than people realize, there must be items worth less than they realize. With undervaluing naturally comes overvaluing, and thus it is possible to do the same thing as everyone else, be very flavor-of-the-month, and be stuck in a competition for scarce resources.

The way to ensure opportunities for clever trading is to have itemization and build balance with enough depth where a large number of strategies are viable, some of them surprisingly so. There needs to be room to innovate new builds which no one has thought of before, using items previously unconsidered.

Itemization is a huge deal here, because it's vitally important that different builds have different itemization priorities. This, and not the auction houses, is why Diablo 3 failed and will continue to fail. If you're playing a Demon Hunter in D3, you want to stack Dex, Vit, crit chance, crit damage, and resists; if you're playing a Demon Hunter based off a different skill combination, you want the same itemization; hell, if you're playing a Monk, you want the same itemization. This makes trading not about what item mods you're purusing, but instead about how big the numbers on those mods are. This destroys opportunity for clever trading, because determining which item is best is just a spreadsheet problem.

Path of Exile has this problem, but not as severely. Generally speaking, a good sword for one build is a good sword for other builds; good armour for one is good armour for all; and so on. Unlike Diablo 3, however, there is sufficient diversity to prevent this from always being the case; for example, there's a clear distinction between good physical weapons and good elemental ones, and a Mind over Matter character actually likes the +Mana prefix on chests, even if no one else does.

Still, I feel Path of Exile can improve by offering a more diverse array of item affixes with actual uses (thorns mod doesn't count), and more uniques which, instead of catering generally to a large number of builds, try to focus in on very specific builds or groups of builds which might not be considered viable otherwise.

This, in turn, would make trading a hell of a lot more interesting. More importantly, it would make just deciding what build to choose, and which items to wear, a lot more interesting as well.

The point is, the more I think about what makes for good trading in other games — Diablo 2, Magic the Gathering, even Settlers of Catan — the more I come to believe auction houses were not the core problem with Diablo 3's economy; instead, it was that the items were truly shit in the first place, and all the auction houses did was accelerate the process of economic degradation which would have been the inevitable result of said shit itemization.

I'm still against instant buyouts, because I feel it makes it too easy to sell the most mediocre of gear, and mediocre gear is something which should be actually found, not bought for the first couple pennies the player happens to acquire. Any item which isn't worth more than 5 seconds of a seller's or a buyer's time shouldn't be bought or sold.

But everything else? Pretty tolerant.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I'm still against instant buyouts, because I feel it makes it too easy to sell the most mediocre of gear, and mediocre gear is something which should be actually found, not bought for the first couple pennies the player happens to acquire. Any item which isn't worth more than 5 seconds of a seller's or a buyer's time shouldn't be bought or sold.

But everything else? Pretty tolerant.

I reckon we've almost turned you Scrotie. If it's instant buyouts you're against, then we're in the grey area and soon you'll be coming down on the side of vengeful SFL righteousness!

Mwahahahaha.

P.

Everything that people want to sell/buy is already for sale, I don't understand how an auction house will somehow "magically" make MORE items for sale.

I don't think an actual auction house has ever even been on the table as an option. Not sure why people always bring it up.

I think the threat the OP is describing goes even further. Easing trade by implementing asynchronous transactions even without a buyout will have detrimental effects that may force GGG to compensate through reduced drop rates which will just hurt the 95% even more than easier trade would help them. You can call it an AH or not the economy doesn't care. Making trade easier in anyway has to be carefully implemented and balanced, which ggg doesn't have a great track record for.