'Trading Orb': The One Currency to Fix Trade

Trading is currently way, way too powerful, frictionless, and defeats the achievement of players progressing by themselves, which is the heart and soul of any RPG—action or not.

Thus, let me introduce the holy grail of Orbs, the fix-it-all band-aid this game needs, the Trading Orb! An item that from now on players would require to apply on their items or stacks to be able to trade them.

Ingenious, huh?

This extremely infrequent currency orb could be made to drop only during yellow/red maps (thus forcing the campaign and early mapping to be strictly SSF), and it'd make players behave much more strategically when it comes to trading and pricing items.

It'd make bartering be a thing again, and collaterally it would force players into actually using more of their crafting currency on their own items since they wouldn't be able to do bulk trades.
Players'd also have to start running their own content again instead of easily dumping things like Heists, Logbooks and Maps into the market, since the Trading Orb would be limited to few, key strategic trades which would be wasted on these kinds of items.
We'd have to, you know, actually *play* the damn game again for once.

It should be rarer than an Exalt/Divine, and not affected by IIQ/R.

I've never suggested it but I have had basically the same idea for a long time now. And GGG is already planning on doing something similar to this with gold in PoE2. I'd love to see this at least tested out with in a temp league/event.

Sadly, I think PoE1 is kind of stuck with the trade that exists now. Too many people would cry rivers if they made trading even harder, but they absolutely should... The VERY low currency values of the vast majority of items in the game completely trivializes the acquisition of items making character progression a joke in trade leagues.

Yeah, no.

Crafting sucks and is just glorified gambling.

Drops are worse than dog water and some items are literally almost impossible to obtain without trading. Nevermind Mageblood, good luck getting Ashes of the Stars from a boss that can only be fought in an uber invitation you need 5 of, which can only be dropped rarely in a T17 map, which only has a %6.4 chance of dropping at max. RNG layered on RNG layered on RNG.

Just play on SSF and stop trying to force that masochistic mode on everyone else.

If you dislike trading, just play SSF.
Why do you want to enforce your playstyle onto other players? There is specifically a mode to be unable to trade.

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AkumaNoTsubasa wrote:

If you dislike trading, just play SSF.
Why do you want to enforce your playstyle onto other players? There is specifically a mode to be unable to trade.

I like trading.
What I don't like is excessive trading, skipping progress by trading, bulk trading, price-fixing, scamming and a ton of other harmful behavior that happens when trade is unlimited and becomes highly abusable.

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Pizzarugi wrote:

Yeah, no.

Crafting sucks and is just glorified gambling.

Drops are worse than dog water and some items are literally almost impossible to obtain without trading. Nevermind Mageblood, good luck getting Ashes of the Stars from a boss that can only be fought in an uber invitation you need 5 of, which can only be dropped rarely in a T17 map, which only has a %6.4 chance of dropping at max. RNG layered on RNG layered on RNG.

Just play on SSF and stop trying to force that masochistic mode on everyone else.

What? Drops are insane. You can't play this game without a loot filter.
I think most of your complaints echo other players' who've been playing this game way too long (and in the wrong way), watching way too many streamers (who also play way too much, and in the worst possible way, too), and thus've become increasingly cynic on many aspects of the game.
I find it's only people who've lost the grip as to why Path of Exile is such an incredibly fun experience to be the ones bitching and moaning about these very specific things like crafting, "gambling", chances of getting uniques, RNG-"gating", etc.
And I do actually believe severely limiting trade would a) filter out players who are way too fixed on trading into more lame, less hardcore ARPGs such as Diablo IV and Last Epoch, and b) train players into caring more about drops and progressing by their own merits instead of constantly trading their way into content.

"Trading orb" ? "Extremely unfrequent" ? While the game, by design, is based on its own economy, tons of fragments, maps, currency and crafting....

Wow lol. This is far from being a good solution:

A good solution is to introduce Market Stalls in Hideouts, with a visual copy of the stall owner, including various features (mtx, effects, even mini-puzzle to stop bots etc).

With Market Stalls trade will be possible even if the seller is afk, in map, or offline...

Market stalls suck. They're incredibly lame.

We're also entering auction house territory. And we all know how that turned out.

As I said, trading is way too powerful in PoE currently, so basically anything that eases up trade at this point is a flat-out a mistake. Even "QoL" stuff. I'm even against PoE2's purported instant buy-out.

No thanks, this idea sounds awful.

But you could certainly go the custom league route and invite people to join in on your trading orb idea. You could easily use a Sacred Orb as your league's trading orb. Perhaps convincing a YouTuber or streamer to promote this idea may help you test it out.

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1eyedking wrote:

Trading is currently way, way too powerful, frictionless

"Frictionless"... you must be living in a paralel realm...

Hope all your interactions with other players are calm and cool, so you get no toxic hurrying, price-fixing and stuff.

"more bartering", "make bartering good again",

Fortunately the one who introduced bartering in Expedition league is not taking care of POE 1 anymore.

Cuz I personally hate it, and it only makes you lose time and extra clicks, you cand do it with Expedition rogues if you like it so much.