Trade Manifesto

-Chris

Sorry but I got to be brutally honest here although I'll keep it cordial.
I came here looking for a reason why a game as well designed as POE didn't have a means to sell things offline/instant.
In this massive manifesto, I didn't see a valid reason why you wouldn't. Claims of "abuse" and "consequences" is about it.
So I'm going to break down each of your "fears" as I will call them, for you. Before I do, know that I've spend 15 years as a network engineer for a T1 carrier in the US.
I've had to automate more things than any 1 man should.
Additionally, I'd like to point out I'm not for AH's in standard. That economy is hot trash now save for a few legacy items. So we'll stick to new leagues only here.

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Easy trade reduces the number of times a character improves their items.
People who are heavily engaged in trade perform fewer item upgrades to achieve their final build.
They get there in fewer steps, because they can easily buy items that are close to what they need.
Simply put, their character progression is more about trading than it is about getting items from monsters.
We believe that it is more fun to slowly and iteratively upgrade a character over time and to have a longer journey to gear a character up.
Knowing that a monster could drop something that improves your character is a great motivator for playing one more level!"
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I understand where you're coming from and maybe you have some statistical data to support it(which I would love to see) but I think you're wrong.
There are several logical fallicies in this statement to begin with.
1. People who are engaged in "heavy trade" have figured out quite a bit about this game to begin with(which is a monumental feat in itself) so they know what items they want(Path of Building) and will not waste orbs on dumpster fire gear to get them through early content.
2. They don't get there in "fewer steps", we either get lucky on drops, farm orbs to TRADE, or vendor recipe items to once again TRADE for the items we want.
3. Your character progression is tied to your items, but you seem to think its "better" to find or make them which is finacially stupid until your ultra weathly and can afford to drop 40 EX building the belt or rings you want.
4. From your last statement, you're projecting your opinion, not fact, in what makes people play 1 more level. Watch Youtube every now and then from some of your top tier players. Theyre not running 50 maps to get "the item they want". They're farming currency to either buy it or craft their own on some ilvl 80+ gear.


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Easy trade means reducing drop rates
Compare two hypothetical games. In the first game, trade is very difficult.
The majority of items that can't be used by your character are not traded to other people.
In the second game, trade is very easy. Many of the items that you can't use are traded to other people for items that you can.
In the second game, because of trade, you have a much higher acquisition rate of useful items.
While that sounds great if you want instant gratification, in reality it means that the second game either receives reduced drop rates relative to the first, or ends up being a whole lot easier and less challenging to achieve goals in.
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Did you channel you're "Sith Lord" mentality for this? Put it in the middle man.. stop going to extremes to make a point. 95% of the items in this game are TRASH for every build.
If you want to reduce some drop rates for particular uniques, *COUGH* "Lycosidae" *COUGH*, and AH isn't going to stop you.
Regardless, trade is pretty much really easy now, POE.Trade makes it so. The only step missing is automation which is the most frusterating aspect of this game.
I either miss an item or sale because people are busy with life or I am.


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Easy trade would make the disparity between different players too great
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Karl Marx would be proud comrade. Are you serious? This is the most convoluted explaination of forced equalizaton of class differences I've ever read.
"The significant differences in character power and player progression caused by trade has already created a situation where Path of Exile is very hard for some players and quite easy for others"..
Holy crap man.. you mean different people expierence the game differently because of the items they get and the build they pursue matter? ...mind blown...
If trading were automated the degree of this wouldn't exacerbated. It could potentially have the opposite affect of what you fear. Easier access to items for people to complete/add to their build, which enhances their expierence, which
keeps them playing. Players are different and will be different regardless of how equal you try to make the playing field. You will always have the Tom Brady's and the Jay Cutler's of the world. We don't make Tom play with 1 arm so Jay can compete.
You're trying to cater to noobs who aren't even going to be engaged in the end game content for at least a league or 2.

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Easy trade allows for greater abuse by automation
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Again, fear mongering without substance. You elongated the basic statement of "we want to carebear to people who don't know the value of the items they're selling".
If a person ignorant of an item's value sells it in person or via an AH is irrelevent. They're not going to change the price if they don't know it.
I really can't find anything of value in the explanation here. I assume you're posing a hypothetical scenario where bots buy all the items and price them alot higher than they should be because they've cornered the market.
Which is doubtful considering the massiveness of this game and the difference in playable builds, there are no "Must have" items. Consumption drives demand which drives price.



So I'm not going to bash your explanation witout offering some solutions.

1. Implement the dang Auction House. You're literly a chin whisker away from it. Just automated it ffs.
2. Impose a auction house commision based on the sale price to limit listed items and control inflation. Make it 10 or 25% for all I care. I'd rather have 75% of 10C or 2EX than NONE...
3. If you need to reduce the amount of drops, do it but do it equally. I don't need 958 crap items to drop with 1 good one. Most of the gear in this game is junk. People are always hunting certain items or attributes.
You shouldn't need an item filter that implicitly removes piles of hot trash from your screen so you can play the dang game. You want to talk about making the digestible for noobs, but drop millions of items by lvl 20.
Took me 5 months and Youtube just to figure out wtf to pick up...
4. Track the sales and purchases of any account over X volume per hour/day/week whatever. If your already trending player trade statistics, this should be easy to do.
If you think someone is manipulating the market, flag their behind and prevent them from selling on the AH. Or even confiscate the items if found to be the case.


Bottom line is the AH and manipulative prevention measures could be implemented and automated rather easily with the proper application of man hours and coding.
Not only would it add value to the core player base of the game but bring something to look forward to for gamers away from the screen rather than malice for the developers for causing you to miss currency you could be getting to alter your end game gear sets.

5 months in Feedback: Tough issue. It has been the bane of pretty much every online game I think.

I find the trade in this game exactly as described here, which is dissappointing tbh. Some of the points made I agree with, something like an auction house would be a bad idea, too easily abused etc. In reality though everything you are trying to avoid is happening anyway.

There is and alway will be a disparity between hardcore and casual players, you can't avoid it no matter what you try. You can pretty much buy exactly the item you need straight away because of this disparity, the hardcore players go through much faster and can start hoarding the better/top items, by the time the casual players reach the levels to use the items they're readily available.

Out of the large player base that doesn't sell any items, I wonder how many such as myself don't trade simply because it's just a hassle to both buy and sell. I've been trying for a week or so to buy certain maps, but there's no reply in trade chat in game, no replys from poetrade players, it's just not worth the time it takes. For a game where trade is important I think having to leave the game to find something just seems wrong. It needs something in game.

With leagues lasting only months wasting a week or more looking for and then managing to get a specific item interferes with progress more than easily available items would.

I hope some happy medium can be found between the way it is now and and in game Poe-mart.


Crazy Idea:
Your hideout is your shop, websites work as they do now for listing items. You need to be online for your shop to be open. Hire/buy exiles to act as shopkeepers in your hideout. Someone finds an item on poe trade, whispers you to buy the item as usual, only this time it will have the exiles name its on etc. You have an option to allow access to your shop or deny to the whispers. This gives that player temporary access to your hideout to look at whatever else you are selling on other vendors you have or just pick up their item.
Not really automated, as interaction is still needed with the player, it just means you wouldn't have to drop everything party up, go to your hideout find the item etc while at the same time, it still has enough inconvenience to stop it becoming instant.
The ideas taken from another game I used to play where this system worked really well. It gave players a reason to spruce up their hideouts too which is fun for some.

This is just my opinion ofc.

Lol what has Chris been smoking? He must be on some rough stuff, because his post makes absolutely no sense.

Chris ''We cannot add AH because it would be prone to abuse by bots'' - no shit Sherlock , what do you think is happening right now? There are instances where people use bots to reply back to you, trade you and also thank you. I will not even bother to report them, because those bots are here and will stay as a result of YOUR actions, therefore you are accountable for this mess the people are in.

Here is my idea.. feedback very welcome.

Trading - Make it fuzzy, keep it in game.

NPC 'stores' are under utilized and player trading makes them largely of secondary importance, many players as pointed out do not like having to trade with other players and the whole experience of using the internet (Poe.trade) to find items could not ruin the world immersion more.. I can make the fighting monsters in my imagination work, the crazy magic effects less so but ok.. the sometimes silly micro transaction are unfortunate but that my character effectively almost buys his weapons on Amazon..

So my idea is to 'make it fuzzy', add an in-game option for inventory items to be marked for sale, once done they go into a big economy and then almost randomly those items appear in the in-game NPC shops of other players.. yes gone are the pages of garbage and instead you see actual good items from other players, well still some garbage but rare identified garbage :)

You might need to increase the number of tabs for these shops, make each person specialist traders so finding things is easier but it would be solvable and most important thing:

- Players can easily sell goods to make money (assuming they price it well)
- Buys can find what they want, but not as easily, GGG can design filters to drive how easy this is
- No need for your character to use websites when upgrading!!! It would feel natural in the game and make NPC worth talking to! I mean to new players they might not even realize those items are from other players. That would be the cool bit.

Thoughts?

The fact that you have to leave the game to do in game stuff is horrendous game design. Put in an in game AH or Get rid of trade all together and improve the crafting system. But thank you for explaining why this amazing game has such a painful train wreck trading system. I mean seriously who like to be interrupted while playing and enjoying the game an stop everything to go sell something. I know I don't. It's a game after all an you developers make it into a job.

Trade is broken and manifesto comes off like excuses.

GGG with new mods and elder/shaper gear can we get MORE chaos sink please? Game need much more chaos sink and better ecosystem to utilize chaos

Any chance of an official GGG reply? Enough people here have shown that the trade manifesto is contradicting itself and that the reasoning is just wrong...

For the love of ............ Can you place an auction system? It is too annoying to leave your enjoyment (make maps) just to sell some sh! #% Or to be looking in a page for some item that 2394872394 people have and that most are afk.

My idea of trading wouldn't involve an "eBay" auction house but a trading post that had prices set by the owner (bit like "buy it now" on eBay).
This will either sell or not sell, which is no different from the current way of trading but skips the need to always be around to make the trade.
The Trading post would be the middle man so to speak.
Runescape had this years ago when I played it and was a great way of getting your items sold, it's called the "Grand Exchange".

My $0.02