Trade Manifesto

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LoloTwingo wrote:

Edit : about 2 affixess -> regal -> exalt crafting method, you know like me how many hundreds of alts it requires just for the first stage, it's self limitating because it's not so easy to accumulate them. Drops are usually the way you get the crafting bases, and i think it's more true than ever since we have annulment orb.

its not easy to accumulate 500-1k alts ? come on now, its really easy. just by progressing into red maps on first character and not spending those alts youll accumulate anywhere from 600 to 800 alts by my estimate.

yea it requires you to pick up rares and id them. but this is what youre supposed to do in an diabloid, no ?

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grepman wrote:

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LoloTwingo wrote:

diabloid arpgs are usually based on the concept of spending a good amount of time repeatingly killing monsters and identifying items dropping from them.

you somehow making it sound like it's a bad thing is kinda funny


first, you cant fully replace the core aspect of a diabloid arpg (killing mobs and getting items FROM THEM) with crafting. you completely devalue already devalued drop values.

second, crafting is by no means 'too hard'. sure, for a mirror-level item, it requires considerable investment. for good items to do all or any content, it absolutely is very feasible.

really, this weapon can make you do all content and it required me an exalt, a fully leveled master and few hundreds alts. something that you can very feasibly achieve in a temp league (and it WAS in temp league, I dont play perma leagues since like 2015)

The major difference between PoE is, ARPGs typically 1) Don't require identification, if they do it's typically only on 'unique'-tier items, and costs nothing. 2) Most games drop loot specific to classes, where PoE can drop gear for any class/build in the entire game. 3) Most ARPGs drop less loot, but *MUCH MUCH MORE* useful loot.

I'm playing Van Helsing right now (because why would I be playing PoE right now), and I replace an item every map or two, because it's continually better. If I'm in a trade-enabled league, I only replace items when 1) I get a rare good drop [never], 2) I hit a level milestone and have the money to wear it [what level is goldrim?], 3) Hit map/build enabling level, where I need max res, special uniques, etc. That might only be 8-10 items PER CHARACTER

It's really not a bad thing to be playing, killing things, finding loot... but when I play trade-enabled, I am stuck in an endless cycle of trade hell, just trying to get those ~8 items instead of playing.

If you survey the rest of the ARPG world, crafting is typically used as a system to ENHANCE loot drops. The amount of games that allow player crafting to the granularity that PoE does approaches zero. Not even for mirror-quality items, but even mid-tier items, it can cost exorbitant amounts of currency for zero good outcomes.

Example: Last night, I was trying to craft a physical wand in standard, where I have a few thousand alts. I so far have blown through over 900 alts, and I haven't even hit 100% phys damage once.
I'm not looking for a Foe Bite or anything like that, I just want something better than a Obliteration (which so far no crafts are even close to, and literally only costs 1 alt in standard right now)

Crafting is hard. You're sacrificing your every click, your every hour ground on the altar of RNG... and that's implying you understand the incredibly complex and nuanced systems involved with crafting, which can take years to fully experience and understand.

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grepman wrote:

yea it requires you to pick up rares and id them. but this is what youre supposed to do in an diabloid, no ?

I do, but it takes hours (don't have a bisco and very very few good old IIQ ring/amulet).
I agree everything is fine if you trade or play 10h a day. It's not if you play 2h a day and SSF.

Honestly, if it were so bad, i would already have quit. I still enjoy the game very much, i just wish to enter the real crafting world without leaving my job/kids or ruining my farming fun by yielding to trade.

Just give us an exalt recipe :) (or give me mirrors to sell them to NPC :D :D )

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The major difference between PoE is, ARPGs typically 1) Don't require identification, if they do it's typically only on 'unique'-tier items, and costs nothing. 2) Most games drop loot specific to classes, where PoE can drop gear for any class/build in the entire game. 3) Most ARPGs drop less loot, but *MUCH MUCH MORE* useful loot.

since you're going to make a statement about 'most ARPG's' I hope you dont mind that I will hold you to account for 'most' arpgs, not just the 3 and half that came out recently, ok ? this means any or all arpgs going back 20-30 years. otherwise, Id ask you to use 'contemporary 3.5 arpgs', mkay ?

so, lets go. your claims are easily debunked by using just diablo 1 and diablo 2 - arguably the most influential games of their genre ever

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ARPGs typically 1) Don't require identification, if they do it's typically only on 'unique'-tier items, and costs nothing.

deckard cain says 'wazzzzup?'

d1 and d2 you need to id the items past normal quality. scrolls of identify exist (although in d2 cain will do it for you for free very soon). where do you think PoE got the idea in the first place ?

in poe, wisdom scrolls cost pretty much nothing as well. I dont see the point here. wheres the difference ?

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2) Most games drop loot specific to classes, where PoE can drop gear for any class/build in the entire game.

this is a false statement. in d2 each classs has ONE class-specific item, and they are not dropped any more if youre playing that class. d1 does not have any class-specific items at all. there are tons of other arpgs that have no concept of class-specific items, much less alone 'smart drops', but since Im only using d1 and d2 I wont even mention them for now.

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If you survey the rest of the ARPG world, crafting is typically used as a system to ENHANCE loot drops. The amount of games that allow player crafting to the granularity that PoE does approaches zero. Not even for mirror-quality items, but even mid-tier items, it can cost exorbitant amounts of currency for zero good outcomes.

master crafting does exactly that - enhance items

poes endgame crafting IS different from other arpgs in its granularity- you're correct, but the tradeoff for granularity is its cost, which is very steep. I dont see much of a problem there. a lot of high end crafting is 'gambling'.

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Crafting is hard. You're sacrificing your every click, your every hour ground on the altar of RNG... and that's implying you understand the incredibly complex and nuanced systems involved with crafting, which can take years to fully experience and understand.

crafting isnt really 'hard' - you just need resources. if you hypothetically have infinite resources, is it 'hard' ? no

nuanced and complex system involved with crafting that can take years to understand ? lol. years ? really ? this is laughable, sorry.

the mechanics in this game are complex and nuanced. thats why many of us are playing the game in the first place(and still playing the game)

crafting is neither complex or nuanced. its just endgame crafting is gated by accumulation of currency/mats and hedged by RNG. basically GGG says it should require a lot of gameplay or accumulation of resources for a chance to make mirror-tier items in the game. Im ok with it.

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3) Most ARPGs drop less loot, but *MUCH MUCH MORE* useful loot.

depends on what you consider 'useful' loot. if you mean - loot that is relevant to your current character or loot that generally can be considered an upgrade for any characters of that level - yes, that is true.

but, I dont view it generally as a big problem - loot explosions can definitely be reduced, but in general only ratios matter.

if you drop 100 items per each map and one of them is *useful*, you have 1/100 chance

if you drop 10000 items per each map and 100 of them are *useful* its the same ratio

now, poe has admittedly lower ratio than most games because of how wide rare affixe tiers can roll and the amount of affixes, but if you play SSF (hence no trade), you will always get some upgrades (rares, uniques, jewels, recipes, etc) through progression up until the very endgame.

its like how people most unique items are 'vendor trash' and useless, whereas most of them serve very good purpose and many of them are very powerful, under right build.

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grepman wrote:

Muh Diablo!

Seriously, if you can only use two 15+ year old ARPGs as an explanation for your viewpoint, you are missing literally hundreds of other games that exist in the genre. More than 3.5 released 'recently' (unless you use the PoE definition of 4 seconds)

I'll only say this once, because it's important, and everyone here needs to hear it and remember it.

PATH OF EXILE IS NOT DIABLO

Got that? You can't justify bad decisions here because of literally one game.

Value is irrelevant to Wisdoms, it's a time vs cost issue. If you run out, you're screwed. If you're in lab or zana, you're screwed. SSF? Tough.

Recently in SSF, I filled two stash tabs from one char full of Uniques (mostly to save for the equally worthless 5:1 prophecy) just in case... but in that entire time, I only found 2 that were useful: Tabula and Meginord's Girdle (which I would gladly replace if I had something better, but I do enjoy the life since it's soo hard to find decent SSF life gear). Those aren't good odds.

Other ARPGs may have open-class drops, but they typically have great use to several builds... and if they aren't, they are EASILY tradable.

The point about crafting is, you can spend the entire bank and not get one item that is better than something you can buy for literally next to nothing. I could buy THOUSANDS of Obliteration wands before I craft one phys wand that does more damage. Find me one game where that is the case and is acceptable.

I am just shocked that anyone here thinks it's okay to keep terrible trade for the sake of intentionally having bad trade. Any justification disappears with any basic research. For goodness sakes, Ragnarok Online has had a player vendor system for SIXTEEN YEARS, and it works great. They even have a public shop indexer (ragi.al) that allows you to find exactly which shop you want to go to, you can see price trends of whatever you are looking for. Click on a player, know exactly where they are, what they are selling, how long they have been there, if they are still online(!!!), and historical data... and we're trading like it's the year 2000 still.

Please, provide realistic justification for why a low-budget korean game from SIXTEEN YEARS AGO can have a more advanced trade system than one of the supposed cutting edge, genre breaking games?

If PoE keeps this mentality, they will be left in the dust by their competition.

(Everyone, do yourself a favor and go read the wikipedia page for 'Opportunity Cost')

chris what is about the rmt guys ?

why the Websites explode ?
just type in Google currency poe and you get a hughe list of site for rmt.

the econnomy of greedys force Players to rmt.

if you want to Keep it free to Play and deserve mtx or suporrter packs buyers so Keep rmt away from poe !

ist sad seeing day by day on gifting low Tier uniques for Support newbies in act 1 that some guys with low Level ppl saying wroing Chat thanks for the exalted.

so something is wrong chris.

tell me what it is.

Also asked here but did you reproduce xyz /shop functionality in your xyz clone? I searched for it in your UI and I don't see it anywhere.

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Redreaper21 wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

yeah they are.

No they aren't. It's why this poe.trade copycat was created in the first place

its the same thing, it doesnt change the enjoyment its just more stable to have their own one that is under their control.

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Redreaper21 wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

price fixers are mainly in currency vs currency trade where imo they should put a proper auction house, in item trades for gear theres little price fixing and its easy to spot and not get caught spending any significant time messaging those people.

Wrong. There is plenty of price manipulating in items too, and it's one of the reasons it makes searching things on poe.trade so tedious. Bots will undercut items even in very tiny amounts to bait people into posting theirs for cheaper. Even a 1c orb profit per trade is worth it when you have a bot running trades for you all day. It's also a way to take advantage of newer players who don't know how to value their stuff.

its minimal comapred to currency trades. You can easily spot if the first few items are lowball prices put up to downplay the market, noobs get caught yes, anyone with experience can see it. Its not a significant time problem for regular traders. Ive traded way more in this game than you have, I know whats up with the current trade situation and what its like to buy and sell items all day, im not in the dark here on an area you understand.

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Redreaper21 wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

But you can find upgrades if ur only finding gear, if u trade for gear thats better than u can expect to find in a reasonable time frame then of course almost all the gear you find will be garbage in comparison. Thats an inescapable reality of taking part in trade.

I don't even understand what you're trying to say here. "Garbage in comparison"? People trade in the first place because otherwise they will have to spend dozens of hours grinding hoping to find just the tiniest gear improvement for a particular slot, because most items are straight up garbage with affix combos that are not a single build uses.

If the items theyre finding are garbage then garbage can be an upgrade. They have to have found something good in order to need to find something good to be an upgrade. My point is very simple and the logic of it speaks for itself so maybe just read it again and try to understand it.

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Redreaper21 wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

Go play a game like D3 where the drop a ton of bis gear on you very rapidly and tell me how many hours u can play that game and have fun. Why are you here? Why are you not there?

Because this game is free and the other isn't?

youre telling me you would rather play diablo 3 but cant afford a copy? I would suggest going out and spending an hour or 2 grinding irl and treating yourself to Diablo if its the game you really want to play.

See you back here in a month when youve run it dry and understand why longevity matters in a loot game.

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Redreaper21 wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

A extremely high variance loot system with a time and effort sink trade system is what gives this game the capacity to be played for as many hours as its given me and still having room to play as many again in the future, so yeah, if players dont realise the truth in this then its on them and their lack of perspective.

Lolno, what the "varied" loot system does is artificially extend the grind

the entire game is artificial, everything in it was designed to give players a play experience that lasts a given amount of time, in this case as much as humanly possible. The game is based around grinding, thats what endgame focused args are about, grinding, did the name of the company not give that away? The whole point is to grind, the objective of the devs is to give us as much grind time as possible so that however long we want to play for the game has got the legs to match our appetite. I feel like what Im saying should be pretty obvious, not sure how Im in a conversation where this sort of thing needs explained.

I didnt say varied btw, i said high variance, as in the difference between a shit item, an average item and a perfect item is extremely large. The longevity of a loot hunt is proportional to the size of this variance, so is the potential value of items and the feeling of satisfaction in finding a really good item. PoE is all about maximizing these aspects, if that doesnt sound like a game for you then you came to the wrong place. I think it does though, I think you like this game but you just dont really appreciate why, the mechanics under the hood that are making it the best arpg out there, which was the initial point I made that you challenged. People love this game, thats why it has such success, why the player base keeps growing, why people who have played insane amounts of hours are still here excited to play more. Sometimes the devs get a bit out of touch, not every decision is a great decision, but I think its hard to fault the logic of their stance in this manifesto. Ive read it and Ive read every reply and I think all the people arguing against it have yet to come up with an argument against it that really makes sense.

Nice to know, but nothing new. Trading site looks good. Sections for items are too big but you have done that in purpose to make it more-eye-candy and less functional.

Great work on API, well done, but yours trade site is deja-vu.

I like the game very, very much, but trade sucks and it sucks big time.
Do not hide behind 'automation will destroy everything'.

Just imagine that you had to use in game trade system for support credits or even better, switch micro-transactions to cash-only and pay-in-person and then you can say that automation is evil!

I still like the game and dislike any reason for making trade system bad.

Automation is bad, stop making anything for computers it is automation after all!

I do acknowledge that making things automated will speed up trade and trade-bots/apps will become issue (in time), prices will most likely go down (or even up for some things).
So far you have affected prices of items by reducing or increasing drop rates or changing item stats. But never you have increased (at least not noticeably) prices of items when sell to a vendor and like that protecting lowest price - like for tabula - it will always worth divine :)

There is a great mechanics in game for currency (it is also a crafting resource). With masters you have made more usefulness for almost every currency.

But limiting players to waste time in trade is outrages.
How many times have you contacted a player (who offer best price) to find out that he(or she) is only trying to manipulate price?
Not to mention that you can not do anything about it (dont even talk about Cadiro scams - which are not scams because you have invited other side ...)

sad, sad, very, very, sad.

bottom line, game is excellent, maybe even best of best, but trade system ... does not deserve that name!