Trade Manifesto

I like the feature but I would like to also see if we can use the up arrow key to re-pull old messages for the new trade feature. I had to find a person's item again on trade because they had to relog from a different league

I've taken my own personal stance toward Trade, which is when simply I won't put more money into GGG until they have a actual trade system in place, and I feel that is honestly about the only way to get their attention to the matter is to pinch their wallet, mind you me not doing anything doesn't matter, but if a few thousand people especially ones who typically buy a lot, perhaps they will start taking the matter seriously.
I only typically get 2-3hhrs a day on a work day to play, and maybe a half to full day on a day off if I don't have to do more stuff, spending 70% of my available playtime on a league that is quite literally referred to as TRADE LEAUGE trying to find that one person to respond to me for a upgrade to my build. It is just not acceptable, sure I'll still play the game and be frustrated with it, I haven't played honestly in about 4-5 leagues and am thinking of dabbling in this one, but trade was one of the major reasons I stopped. I could drone on about everything listed but its honestly a waste of time and has been proven as such as this has been a complaint from the playerbase FOR YEARS!


TL;DR stop buying packs and supporting the game, maybe they will listen.

Honestly it's time to critically re-examine the initial premise

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Items Matter. Trade is Important.

Do items matter? Is trade important? Does trade make items not matter as much?

"

Items are a player's reward for playing Path of Exile.

Items might be the reward, but gear is not the reward not really, because their design response to trade makes them not. We all know this, when leagues don't let you target rewards the rewards are bad, and when they do you never bother targeting gear because gear is not a meaningful reward.

"

For items to matter, it's important that they can be traded to other players.

Is it? What if I couldn't trade them, then using the items would make the matter. An item would be important because I can use it.

This is the fundamental problem with the GGG approach to trading, items are balanced around trading and that makes items less valuable rewards because items are fundamentally less usable because drops are designed with trading in mind.

I just glanced over the manifesto. I'm a relatively 'new' PoE player, but one of the biggest turnoffs for me is how important trading is paired with a lack of an in-game system for trading. At one point I stopped playing altogether because I did not want to engage in trading and was told it was a necessity to progress at a decent pace. I started up again when I learned about crafting, but that's its own thing.

If trading is an integral part of the game concept, so be it, but making it inconvenient to do has so far actually stopped me from engaging with it.

One of the premises listed is that making trade easier will increase the gap between top and bottom players. However, I wonder how many players like me there are who would start engaging in trade more readily due to increased ease of use, resulting in the opposite: the bottom players engage in trade and can now gear their characters.

Truthfully, how well-off a top player is compared to me is completely irrelevant to me -- it has no bearing on my play experience. I want a relatively smooth progression through the game so I can experience the different mechanics, bosses, and possibly builds (and maybe other things I have yet to encounter). From my perspective, the lack of an in-game trade interface is a large barrier to players who want to experience the game.

This is the reason everybody on my small gaming community discord is not playing the game, or not anymore.

Casual gamers want clic to register, clic to sell, clic to buy.

Normal people have a work, a family and play less than 10 hours per week.

Normal people want to register an item and go to bed/work/enjoy real life while it's being sold.

From the experience I have of the game and the feedback from non-hardcore players I had, I am convinced this game could have a regular base of hundreds of thousands people playing it, thus providing the financial needs to properly stem the plague that are bots.

But I am afraid that most of the 20k regular players base and devs are people emotionaly stuck in the 90s and the game, and PoE2, is doomed to be one of the most unergonic game to play for huge majority of people who, I'm 100% convinced, would play it otherwise, because this game provide UNIQ quasi-infinite building possibilities.

Not even telling it should change, it's just feels like a shame to me because I "want" to play it but I "can't", I can't spend half my free-time on a website or watching my screen waiting for people to answer my PMs just to try a few builds for a few weeks and then move on to other activities till the next season.

Just chiming in here to say that controller support on PC just feels very lacking without console style trading. It's just not enjoyable having to tab in and out of the game, browse some website, and then switch back and forth between keyboard/mouse/controller etc. To me this just removes the whole point of chilling with a controller in your couch or whatever.

And considering how the game is tuned these days, going back to SSF is not really an option for a dirty causal like myself. So this is the only way I'll play POE at this point, and preferable on PC considering how bad the older console versions run these days.

EDIT: Playing the PS4 version just solves my problems with the current game, and it has everything to do with the no BS trade. But like I said, I just wish we could have that on the PC considering how meh the PS4 version runs and the fact that you have to wait a week extra every time a new league launches.

Also, if you want more console-only players to consider the PC version thanks to the new controller support, you NEED the console style trade. I just don't think they're going to stick around otherwise. Same with people coming from D3 or D4 on consoles. They're definitely not dealing with some archaic trade system straight from 1999. Well, it's either that or start balancing the game around SSF, but that I'm pretty sure you guys won't do.

Long post.

If you play POE on PC, this is probably the kind of post that you wouldn't like, as your primary method for buying and selling is different. I do believe that you should be given the same features as console, when their beneficial though, and this would be one of those things.

On console, we have a trade market. Items in premium stash tabs are visible there. Buyers and sellers stay anonymous, unless you send a message with your offer to buy more/other items if they have it and your gamer tag.

However, this method allows for price fixing and there are settings built in that limit how many offers you can send in total, and the rate at which you can send offers.

Since listed items don't have a buy it now price, the offer on an item you want with the false price fixed price will be either ignored or rejected. If you're trying to convert currency, there's usually 2-3 accounts setting the values and in control of the stacks of currency. Which means you can't make multiple offers to the same account quickly. And those accounts are either bots or sweat shop style accounts that don't respond to messages attached to your offer to buy in bulk.

The price an item lists for needs to be the price it's sold for, and it needs to be done relatively automatically. Instead of automated messages stating you have received an offer, there should be an automated message that your item was sold. A recap of what you have recently sold and for how much would be good as well. There should still be a counter offer option too.

GGG talks about fighting bots and price fixing, but deploys systems/policy that make it easier for them and harder for real players. If you think bots can't be possible on console, then you don't understand how Microsoft cloud gaming allows me to stream Xbox games to PC, or how software can be overlayed, how pixel recognition works and how complicated if-this-then-that macros can get. Not to mention running a bunch of virtual instances of windows with Microsoft accounts all cloud streaming, all following in a party one player. It's a thing and it's how a select few can take complete control of the currency and high end item market each league, it's why there's websites offering real money for items on consoles. GGG and their vision for "player interaction" is what's enabling this to continue.

I'm not asking for an auction house, I just want to be able to buy what's listed at the price it's listed for, and not need that player to be online and approve the sale.

And here's my tin foil hat theory for why they continue to allow this, as well as bits and price fixers on PC:

Those bots and the real money for items stores are also the whales. It's the only way.

GGG isn't going to hinder the primary financial input each season, and that's the only legit reason why they continue to allow it. As far as I can tell.

It's that, or, the devs are the ones actually running the real money for items stores as a side hustle. /s

Considering how database driven the back end of this game is, and how much oversight/control the server has, there's no excuse to how trackable those behaviors from certain accounts are, or even their real world locations. Through filters and automated queries, plus the way AI/machine learning is advancing, detecting, monitoring and hindering those types of accounts could be very easy, require minimal resources to maintain and improve the aspects of the game that are built by how we as real humans play the game. Literally, there is no excuse.

The argument about how GGG wants player interaction doesn't even work for trade markets on console anyways. Once an item Is purchased, there's no way to even send a thank you,. You have no idea who you just interacted with.

The biggest con is if you under priced an item, or put in the wrong price accidentally. You'd learn pretty quick to do your diligence though.

Anyways, this would be a huge QOL for console players, there's not a good reason to not do this. GGG has said they're against a thing and then employ policy that enables that thing to be done easily and efficiently.

Please give me reasons why I'm wrong. If you don't play on console and haven't used the trade market, then you probably don't know how it works.

Cheers!

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On the trade market, we're experimenting with the opposite end of the trade spectrum, where it's very easy to complete trades but more difficult to find the exact item you're looking for. You can search broadly by a specific item class or type, but have to look through a lot of search results to find the one you want to make an offer on. This system intentionally makes the search process harder and the trade process easier, for quite a different trade experience. We're not planning to bring it to the international PC version of Path of Exile.

Funny, because for 2! TWO seasons now console has both: The trade website AND the market board. So I can look up the gear on the website, memorize the item name and some stats, find it on market really fast and buy from there so I can bypass the godawful (and mostly not working on console) p2p trade.
Any you know what? Even with this new ease of finding specific gear and the markets ease of purchasing said items... NOTHING HAS CHANGED! No Items got devalued, no people running around in full mirror tier, they just send more time PLAYING THE GAME now.
Yes, both trade site and the market are far from perfect but in tandem they make a almost acceptable trading experience. In short. ease of trade DID NOT KILL THE GAME! Even if you tried hard with long lasting bugs on console.

You are not listening to players. Years and years of complaining...

Trading sucks!

FFXI (Final Fantasy 11) had a real AUCTION HOUSE decades ago.

Grow up! And provide a real trading/auction solution for players.
Especially those that pay.

We saw what happened with auction houses in ARPG's with D3. Keep trading as it is and don't ruin the game with an easy-to-bot system that will screw over average players, as it always does when auction houses are used. Trading is perfect as is IMO for PC