Trade Manifesto

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StarMasterMaster wrote:

Would it be possible for the api to track how many times a listed item at a set price has had requested trades for and display this number in the listing?

This could alert players that some one was not actually selling it and thus keep others from listing the items at that price.

I like this idea. Be sure to track the item even if price has changed, because some people keep changing price after you request to buy at listed price.

I suggest lowering them on search results. Just like on eBay, sellers with lower feedback get reduced search rankings.

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Xedralya wrote:

-Lockstep
-Ten Acts
-Integrated Trade

GGG with the hat trick of surprises.

How do people still complain that the developers aren't paying attention and working on the important stuff? Just be patient.

Where'd that song from your sig come from? :O

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SUPEROUMAN wrote:

GG GGG! Really great stuff

☑ Introduced Lockstep
☑ Removed difficulty system
☑ Redefined map progression system
☑ Added multi-threading
☑ Enabled dynamic resolution
☑ Lioneye's Watch Stairs
☑ Persistent Spectres
☑ Lightning Coil 3d Art
☑ Trade Improvements

Remaining memes :

PvP
Guild improvements coming Soon™™™™™
Racing
Elemental Hit

The list is becoming really short!

PvP did get dev attention during one of the earlier expansions and is still doable, just never really that popular. I doubt they'd want to look at that again soon after the disappointing reaction to its overhaul last time.

Racing is already part of the game and has been for a long time. Apart from minor tweaks, it's fine. They just haven't had them much recently as they've been distracted by loads of other things.

Elemental Hit at this point has its primary value as a meme for chat, along with Glacial Hammer. Wild Strike pretty much entirely replaces it anyway. Even if they made Ele Hit viable, I think it'd actually reduce its value since only a minority of people would choose to play it while the majority lose a classic PoE in-joke.

GUILDS!!! Yes! Goddamn that's been waiting for improvements since forever... >:(

Also, I'll add the now seemingly long-forgotten Paid/Custom (private) Leagues functionality that they've promised since before launch to that list. It'd be a great new revenue stream for them too if they got it right since it'd give them a really awesome new top-tier supporter pack reward that's sustainable over time as well i.e. lasts longer than a typical temp league (or maybe they'll only allow them as short/temp league rather than lasting ones?). I'm not sure if they still intend to offer this, but if not, it'd be great to at least hear some confirmation.

But yeah, the game's been really stepping it up in recent time. Keep up the good work, GGG! <3

I have lots of things to say about this, but not much of it is nice. :) So I'll limit myself to a few points:

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Chris wrote:

Easy trade would make the disparity between different players too great
Both of the above points are even worse when you consider that the level of engagement with trade varies substantially from player to player. Most players who play Path of Exile never trade. Out of the players who do trade, most only complete a few trades in a league. The subset of players who regularly trade strongly overlaps with our core reddit and forum communities. Chances are, if you're reading this, then you're one of the top 10% of players in terms of engagement with advanced systems. The difference in magnitude of trading (and hence item acquisition and progress) between non/low-traders and heavy traders is gigantic. While a regular player would be lucky to accumulate a small handful of Exalted Orbs in a league, a trader might reach hundreds in the same timeframe. This enables them to fully-gear Shaper-capable characters while the non-trader is still in mid-tier maps or lower.

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.

I disagree completely with this line of reasoning.

A big reason this disparity exists is because trading is so inconvenient. By your own reckoning, only the most dedicated few are able to take advantage of it effectively. So, make trading easier (and/or increase drop rates), more players would be able to reach end-game and there would be less disparity. (At least, less meaningful disparity. If I can make it to Shaper, I couldn't care less if some other player has 100 mirrors.)

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Chris wrote:

Easy trade allows for greater abuse by automation
Another topic is automation. While we work hard to stamp out bots and abusive behaviour, it would be hard to completely eliminate the damage caused by a few trade bots with access to a fast trade system. If they have the ability to search out and buy items without having to talk to another player, then there would be some very large-scale economic consequences that would not be good for regular players.

Again, I completely disagree. This would not be such a problem if trading were fully in-game, instead of farmed-out to 3rd-party web sites and applications. If trading were confined to in-game mechanisms, you would be much more in position to monitor/throttle such activity. The problem you have with bots is exacerbated tremendously by exposing so much of the system outside the game.

In short, bring trading in-game, make it easier, and put some limits on it, and you'll have much more of your player-base able to experience much more of your game. Yes, there would be a lot of salty tears from the vocal few, but overall enjoyment of your game will go way up.

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ACGIFT wrote:

(I'm aware of price-fixing (edit: he means RMT, but doesn't want to incur any wrath) rackets being rampant at least since 2015) but to be honest, this whole manifesto comes across as perhaps GGG might benefit from seeking further playing experience with game economies.

a lot of the folk backing the "status quo" on trading will back whatever decision GGG makes.. the very same players did a 180° to praise the new status quo.

While NOMINALLY true, this is problematic on multiple levels, actually:

I excised Chris' quote and truncated yours. People with currency get discouraged from playing further when there is a cognitive association that time invested has not equaled commensurate rewards. They feel gypped, and leave early. They'd rather continue playing and feel fulfilled because it turns out that their earlier choices to play Build A or save up X amount of Currency B was wise. Chris' severe dearth of understanding (or maybe his and the consulting firm they hired which told them to price MTX out of the range of 99% of non-whales...) has come home to roost, he's doubled down on this manifesto, and there can be no way forward, any longer. People are playing Destiny 2, Grim Dawn, and BDO, games *much* worse than Poe because there is no arbitrary (malicious?) impediment to moving forward with your toon and playing him the way you want. Try making a wander now compared to when league started and compare that to the comparison between trying to start a necro wickerman build and at the beginning of the league and now.

Chris refuses to acknowledge the player base wants to keep playing, and would do so, except it's incrementally harder now than at the beginning of the league, and there are active road-blocks to continuing, those having been put in place by dumb-ass manifestos such as this. at time I truly wonder if Chris is a CIA plant, and Poe is a psychology experiment of some sort.

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No, for anyone who's actually played the endgame, it's safe to say that a monster is NOT going to drop something that improves your character. Rare loot hasn't been relevant since 2.0.0 came out, item filters became a thing, and Dominus farming CEASED to be a thing. Anyone can watch anyone play either in-party or in-stream, and notice that it's standard to just ignore rare items, even if they are, say, iLvl 84-86 on basetypes like Astral Plate, Harbinger Bows, etc. Grinding loot is not a motivator. There's a REASON we only talk of "exalts-per-hour/day." The expectation is that we might find one of a few possible drops that commoditized enough to TRADE it.

Item acquisition games either a) make it so people have automated, regular, predictable, orderly, non-fubar trading or b) they uninstall.

World of Warcraft had daily unique impressions in-game and to the attendant website in the millions, like 12 or so million. Had. Kotex and Pardo and Sams killed it off. Now it has 100k or so.

As expected, I strongly disagree with your third point, particularly this part:

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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.

I disagree because I believe people don't trade because it is hugely cumbersome, time consuming, frustrating, opaque (particulary regarding "value" which is particularly nebulous in this game) and it takes away from time fighting monsters. Also, how would making trading easier make the end game content LESS achievable for those who don't already do it? This position you have on trading has always utterly boggled my mind. Do you actually want more players to engage in trading? It seems you are making trade decisions not just for traders, but for the top traders only. I believe you when you say that your philosophy on trading is, "trading shouldn't be easy," but I don't know if you realize this entails that your philosophy will likely insure that current non-traders will always be non-traders.

Personally, I would like a longer, more detailed explanation of how making trading easier and more approachable, combined with your first point, that trading can trivialize the content, mesh in any way to suggest that the current have nots will be in a WORSE place with improved trading tools. Again, it seems that in regard to the trading system you are only concerned with the 1%, and that their experience will be even more trivial than it already is. It also indicates that you are currently satisfied with the wide disparity in success people achieve in this game (it doesn't just indicate that - you explicitly state that you are "tentatively okay" with that). And perhaps more, I want to know if you really do WANT more players to trade... but that you don't want it to be easy... somehow.

The real kicker here is that your belief that trading can trivialize the content, which I believe is largely true with the current balancing, is directly contradicted by your proposition that easier trading will widen the gap between people who struggle to sustain red maps (let alone make it to maps) versus the 1%.

I don't understand how more market participation and more market transparency would lead you to thinking that the gap between the traders and non-traders would widen. I can only assume that this conclusion is reached by thinking that non-traders would remain non-traders even if you made trading easier... which I would take to mean that you have not actually made trading a better experience, as I believe the main obstacle to trading is that it is an entirely separate "game" from the ARPG most people want to play. Also, if that is your belief, then why are you even considering the current non-traders in your ruminations on the trade system in general?

In regards to your first point, the loot hunt: most loot in this game is worse than worthless - picking it up and identifying it is an active detriment to your character's experience and currency gain and is time lost that you could be killing monsters, clearing maps, and maximizing diviner's chests and "spinning the RNG wheel" for the big ticket items, as I've heard it described. Currency drops and div cards are the main sources of loot lust these days. None of the big traders you mention pick up even 1% of the loot that currently drops (number pulled out of my ass, but I am probably being hugely generous with the 1% estimate) and there is no "I'm looking for a better item for myself," to those players. Only, "I have to portal out of here eventually, so I might as well add the smallest, potentially most valuable items to my stack of orbs and cards... if I'm feeling like it." From what I've gathered, the general consensus among the reddit community you single out as the main traders even seems to be that the chaos recipe is a newb trap. I believe I remember top streamers saying that years ago, even before the uber-clearspeed-meta entered full force.

So, on the loot hunt, you seem to not be concerned with the 1% and are instead concerned for the majority of players who struggle to make it to maps. But combined with the knowledge that the top traders don't even bother with this type of loot hunt seems to suggest a fundamental disparity in the value that can be obtained by looking for better gear, engaging in the loot hunt, versus the trader mentality of picking up a tiny selection of items and currency, and trade for better gear. How are these ideas reconciled to you?

Again, the primary loot hunt for the top players is for currency and div card drops. Jewelry is usually picked up, six sockets, and three and four socket-sized items sometimes get a place if it's a top base, along with the uniques that are worth a decent amount of chaos... but that's about it. The loot hunt is not at all how you describe it for top players - excepting SSF, of course.

Finally, there is a lot you could do to make trading better by approaching aspects of the game other than the trade system itself. For example, you could get rid of wisdom scrolls and make loot drop identified. You could also make item rolls tend towards the middle of possible rolls, so that most gear is at least "meh" and not the current ilvl 84 Lion's Pelt with +14 life and a few other tier 1-3 rolls that can only be described as garbage - and the time spent picking it up and identifying it a probable detriment to your wealth generation. You could do that without changing the likelihood of a top tier item or GG item dropping and thereby clear up the hordes of resoundingly "meh" items that currently fill the trade system.

The first option would definitely change the game. I so seriously doubt you would even consider it that I don't know why I bothered mentioning it... Other than the fact I think it is a good idea and would drastically change the game for the better. The second option also seems like a great idea to me, but if I understand your philosophy correctly, you would probably think that having most items that drop be an item that currently could be sold as a 1c rare would somehow widen the gap between haves and have nots... despite the have nots under that system having way more options, with the possibility for an intermediate upgrade much more likely in casual play without trading. Both options together would make the loot hunt real again for all players.

It seems there are several fundamental positions that are at odds with each other in the current design philosophy. Notably, do you really want more people to trade? If not, why are you mentioning non-traders and those who struggle to make it to end game in your thoughts on the system? And, do you really think the loot hunt for the 1% is the same as for those who struggle to make it to, or sustain, maps? You clearly identify that the game is easier for those who trade, and harder for those who don't, but then you laud the loot hunt as an active part of the enjoyment of the game? And, of course, I haven't even mentioned where most of the best items come from, and yet another system that is best used by the wealthy traders who pick up almost no loot... crafting. Is there a crafting manifesto I should go look at or should I save myself a head ache? ;)

I hope I didn't come across as confrontational here. I am truly puzzled by some of the design decisions in this game and so my questions are more rhetorical and for collecting my own thoughts rather than anything else. I am not expecting a response, just venting and sharing my thoughts. Thanks for reading.

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hilb wrote:

Wow thanks for giving us exactly no trade improvements. Could have had someone extend the API for AFK/DND in a day rather than supposedly spend 1 year of resources to build another alternative to something we already had.

...If you're that scared of people leaving your game early in leagues after making a few trades, maybe it's time to look at the endgame and what you can do to improve player retention.

They did give us the added DND and AFK functionality, as you've noted. That's not "exactly no trade improvements". And they probably took a year as they likely spent a lot of time debating exactly what they were comfortable with supporting and what they didn't like. As the post makes clear, PoE treads a very careful middle road between full trade support and no trade at all. Also keep in mind that the devs working on this were likely also working on other things too. I doubt an indie studio, even if they've grown quite a bit recently, would hire devs only for making a trade site. Ex: The main site itself has also seen a few improvements in that year, besides additions to it such as SSF ladders.

As for them replicating the work of another -

1) New players and casuals would much rather use an official tool than a third-party one, and likely form the majority of the playerbase.

2) As they mention in the post, this avoids the risk of people having to give their account details to third parties.

3) As they also mention in the post, their new site also allows people from other languages to trade more easily. poe.trade isn't really good with its language support. This new site will support all the languages the game itself supports. That's a huge improvement for some people.

4) It shuts up those who keep harping on about them being dependent on an external tool for their game to work at all, even leaving aside the fact that if most players don't trade or trade very little then they were never very dependent on it to begin with.

Endgame? Err...what was AoW about again? And not just that. They focus on endgame pretty much every other major expansion.

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>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.

This really has more to do with PoE's low gear ceiling compared to other games, combined with the content getting easier and the addition of master crafting. It's pretty easy to get 80%+ of the total possible life for a slot, and resists have a softcap. That's most of the relevant scaling for most slots. I'm not saying that PoE should have huge jumps in difficulty with concomitant jumps in gear power (launch D3 got flak for this) but it isn't fair to blame trade for this phenomenon. In fact, the hassle of trading has a chilling effect here--many days I'll recognize that I could use a power bump in a certain slot but just not want to deal with the PMing because it isn't that important for the content I'm running. A game with easy trade, hard content, and impactful gear would see more frequent slot turnover.

Unless you mean that finding your own gear directly from monster drops is what GGG wants, which is simply contradictory with the original goal of having totally free trade. As the size of the playerbase grows and the breadth of possible builds grows, the odds of finding relevant gear better than what someone else could offer get worse.

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>We're tentatively okay with the degree to which (trade engagment disparity) occurs currently, but it would be much worse if trading were made substantially easier.

Why? How are you so sure that the lack of engagement with trade isn't because the trade systems are bad and there is zero in-game enticement to them? Having an in-game browser for items on an NPC with clear pricing would surely raise the low end more than the high end.

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Chris wrote:

Easy trade would make the disparity between different players too great
Both of the above points are even worse when you consider that the level of engagement with trade varies substantially from player to player. Most players who play Path of Exile never trade. Out of the players who do trade, most only complete a few trades in a league. The subset of players who regularly trade strongly overlaps with our core reddit and forum communities. Chances are, if you're reading this, then you're one of the top 10% of players in terms of engagement with advanced systems. The difference in magnitude of trading (and hence item acquisition and progress) between non/low-traders and heavy traders is gigantic. While a regular player would be lucky to accumulate a small handful of Exalted Orbs in a league, a trader might reach hundreds in the same timeframe. This enables them to fully-gear Shaper-capable characters while the non-trader is still in mid-tier maps or lower.

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.

Actually, I feel the cause and effect statement here is reversed. Making trade difficult benefits only those who expend the effort to do so, and disproportionately so.

My issue is that currently, "easy trade" is locked behind a paywall (Premium Tab). Before Premium tabs, I had to spend time and effort to learn how to use Procurement (pain in the arse to have to update every league, among other things you had to learn to make it work, i.e., getting sessionID from browser). To a casual or new Exile, this isn't effort you're willing to spend.

Out of all the RL friends I've played the game with, only one remains playing with me consistently. He happens to be one of two friends that spent money on MTX and premium tabs with me. None of my friends that refused to buy premium tabs (biggest draw of PoE is F2P) are still playing, simply because they couldn't make enough currency to progress through the game. Why? Because they couldn't sell items without spending inordinate amount of time/effort posting to the trade forum or learning how to use Procurement. They want to play the game, not play with a trade simulator.

For players that paid for Premium tabs, they simply drop in the item and price it. For players that don't pay for Premium tabs... you're playing SSF.

Making trade so difficult (or locked behind a paywall) is creating this competitive disadvantage for new players, which hurts retention rate. The reason only 10% of players trade is because it's so hard. Not the other way around.

My success in leagues is directly tied to the ease of trading. Before Procurement (2.0 or so), I managed maybe up to T4 maps, because I was playing SSF. I used Procurement in 2.1 and reached 93 for the first time... by farming Dried Lake until league end. I barely managed to afford a 300 pdps high crit 6L bow. In 2.4, I bought Premium tabs and managed to make about 60 EX worth of gear throughout the league. Each league after, I could hit maybe 100 EX worth of gear value over my characters... simply because I could trade.

In comparison, my friend who didn't have premium tabs made it to 90 farming T7 maps on a tabula rasa. By league end, he might have had just a couple EX he found. Couldn't get enough money to upgrade gear.

The game basically punishes you to poverty if you're new/casual to the game if you can't sell items. It's essentially forcing any new players to play SSF, which you've acknowledged is quite challenging. I don't see how that's beneficial to attracting new players and retaining them.

Thank you GGG