Trade Manifesto

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Chris wrote:

Trade is Important

So why do you need to google how to trade in the game if it's so important to you guys?

It's not like it's anywhere near intuitive or something...

Go to a website to find an item, send a message to the player, click on invite, google how I can actually visit the player's hideout, click on invite, trade, try to get back to your own realm again...

But hey, it's important, so you've probably thought really hard about it!

And again... I'd love to sell my unwanted stuff to get some currency. But that's just not feasible for the few hours I play each week!

Would it be difficult to implement the trade market into a league for 3 months? Let us try out the mechanics for ourselves and feel the experience the other servers are feeling. We could have a vote on it if we would want it to stay or not stay and you can run the numbers and see if people are enjoying the trade market over what the current process is now? Or would puting this in for a league be too much effort?

This is a very thoroughly and well written manifesto, which I appreciate, but the core premise is flawed. Game design should never lean towards a mentality of "We will avoid fixing a significant shortcoming of our game because it allows us to more easily manage XYZ". This sort of design philosophy is a strong indicator of fatigue on the part of the designer. Only two options were presented because Chris is driving a narrative that avoids asking the question "Why should we ever be content with a trade system from 2 decades ago?"

Would implementing an auction house have an impact on the reward loop of the game? Absolutely, but that's a game designer's job - to meet those challenges head on with creative solutions, rather than avoiding the conversation entirely. This is something that GGG has done very well elsewhere in the game universally, which is why they've quickly become one of my favorite development studios. That also however makes this manifesto that much more baffling. The community will likely universally state that they would rather spend their time playing the game (as is indicated in this very same manifesto when Chris states that a vast majority do not trade regularly). If the vast majority of players do not trade regularly then the item reward balance is already incorrect, because it is built around a system that discourages trade due to the headache involved relative to other modern games.

I continue to play POE because it's still one of the best developed games out there, in spite of this awkward system that forces me to interrupt enjoying the game's content 2-3 times a map to trade. Still, I hope that we can see Chris revisit his narrative a bit here and ask what the motivations are for totally avoiding the most graceful solution available.

Dear GGG

I would love to see some rebalancing of the game, so it would be more rewarding for casual players. I have a few ideas:

1) I would love to see some entropy-counter which would boost rewards for casual players. For example, every day entropy counter resets and reward from first 5000 monsters is higher or first 10 bosses have additional chance to drop valuable currency/maps/gear/fragments etc.

This comes form a frustration that 3 months of gaming in this league (120h+ of play time) I only saw 2 exalts drop and only 25 splinters of Chayula. Selling all the good gear which I have found would give me less than 20ex in currency. These numbers are pretty sad when you see mortal sets and Chayula stones costing 2ex.

Would it not be beneficial for players to come daily rather than playing madly at the beginning of the league to get rich, burning out and stopping playing 2 weeks before league ends?

2) In similar fashion, spending currency could be more lucky on your first 10 tries or something like this. This would likely generate a currency-sink effect as people would try to craft more often.

3) System progressively increasing rewards as you get closer to the end of the league. For example the closer to the end of the league you get the better the odds of good drops. This might help keep some players playing and it would not feel like ghost-town in last 3 weeks of the league.

ps. I am an adult with a family and a job. 20 hours a week is already a lot and I do not feel game is rewarding enough in terms of drops and casual play. I think users should not have to grind for certain items with no end or chain running uber lab just to get out of poverty :)

I wish product teams helped full-time working players a bit :)

Cheers

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saragart wrote:

I would love to see some rebalancing of the game, so it would be more rewarding for casual players.

Not going to happen. The trade manifesto very clearly states that the game is designed for the top 10% of players that spend 8+ hours a day playing (and streaming) the game.

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Chris wrote:

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. Some people never stand a chance of seeing some of the Atlas of Worlds content, while others can rather quickly defeat it and are looking for new challenges. We're tentatively okay with the degree to which this occurs currently, but it would be much worse if trading were made substantially easier.

This whole section is just based on the heavy traders. because THEY 'can rather quickly defeat it and are looking for new challenges'. And they're happy with that situation.
They don't want easier trade because the top 10% will get more wealth to buy even better gear... Any mention about casual gamers? Apart from the section that 'Some people never stand a chance of seeing some of the Atlas of Worlds content'?

No. Casual gamers don't matter. Even though they also pump money into the game...

So with new Beast mods and new endgame content is there a chance for chaos sink improvements? I mean add some more ways for chaos sinks in game!

And add trade client for those who only stay in HO and trade, thats will help with memory and GPU/CPU stuff for people who trade.
So trade client not load all of stuff and all MTX and limit only staying in HO (cant change zones or from HO to another HO, like PVP char)

It's nice for everything to be localized. Rather than fighting inevitable evolution. I know this is an older thread but, I'm glad I can use an option for trading through the official site then a third-party.

A good ingame trade system will help slow down the clear speed meta, if players who actually want to loot can sell their wares to a larger audience.

Also how does easier access increase automation? If anything the current state of fast clear meta already does this, and the mentality which is 100% correct to go full speed and forward and keep rolling the slots till you get items that will always sell and be found online... Makes no sense.

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RootCookie wrote:

A good ingame trade system will help slow down the clear speed meta, if players who actually want to loot can sell their wares to a larger audience.

Also how does easier access increase automation? If anything the current state of fast clear meta already does this, and the mentality which is 100% correct to go full speed and forward and keep rolling the slots till you get items that will always sell and be found online... Makes no sense.

If you could buy items without player to player interaction, then bots could instantly buy and repost items to control the market prices. Its already happening now, but its much, much slower.

What i think would be good to stop speed clear meta is to increase item value at npc vendors. Especially for unique items, cause most of them are just left on the ground now. If they could check the mod tiers and Unique mod rolls before calculating value that could be very nice.

I know this is an old post, but I may have a suggestion which is somewhere in the middle ground. It would be easy to add an NPC in the hideout (or even another option in the stash) which would contain the premium public stash tabs from the owner of the hideout. If the owner put a price on the item in there, anyone visiting (let's say after looking on poe.trade or GGG trade website) could buy the item as if it was from a vendor. See here, I even keep the incentive to buy premium tab!

That way you don't remove the need to go on another website, still slowing down the bots, but at least you remove the problem from the people in instance/DND/AFK/not responding (hell, maybe even allowing trade with people not even online, if rules for entering hideout change a little) or even the price fixer, as anyone can just come in and buy the item if the price is too low.

I'm not sure how easy it would be to implement, but for me it would work with the same system we are having now, but greatly reduce the frustration we see on this thread (and in game). At the same point, it would add a reason to make your hideout prettier :D

Anyway, sorry for my bad English, it is not my first language, but I do hope this post was understandable!