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y what would be good or not for the game.
I have between 2x-3x your playtime and I like trade the way it is. Actually that's not true, I wish they'd ban players who use 3rd party TOS-breaking apps so that all players were on a level playing field within their system.
The reason you don't hear from the people who agree with the current system is because GGG has made it pretty damn clear they aren't intent on changes to it, so there's no need for me to waste my time making posts or telling people
'wow isn't this thing great exactly how it is? just wanted to let everyone know that I don't want changes to this thing GGG said they wouldn't change!!'
I'm happy when players like Nidal speak up for the quiet enjoyers so that the 'frictionless trade now' crowd can't lie softly in their echo chamber.
May I ask what exactly you like about it? And i really mean like as in "it's great this way" not like as in "i can't think of a better alternative" or "it is what it is and it's not going to change so just accept it."
I can somewhat understand why people don't want an AH/friction less trade even if i disagree but leaving alternatives aside, i can't think of a single reason why anyone could like the current system. It's unfun, inconvienient and forcefully distracts from what's supposed to be the essence of the game, i.e killing monsters in order to progress.
You can absolutely ask! I go way back to the days of trading via 'forum shop' in PoE and there was something magical about the idea of going to someone's thread and seeing their shop. You'd browse some and leave disappointed, and you'd see others that were way out of your price range (mirror-tier stuff), and sometimes you'd find just the shop you were looking for. I think we like games that mirror real life, in fact I know we do - that's why there is a market for these grindy (think idle/cookie cliker) games. Those games should be just as wearying as our day-to-day grind, but they aren't, because constant progress lets us 'win' at the games unlike IRL where there is no guarantee of winning or constant forward progress.
This level of friction made it so that being a trader really was a game within a game. We joke (okay we're half serious) about that now - haha that guy isn't even playing the game, he just sits in his h/o and flips currency all day, making 3% value on each transaction, building up the bank over time. In modern PoE it's no wonder that has a bad reputation as not being fun. It's not fun.
Yet I think forum-shopkeeper time was fun. Why? 2 reasons
1. Because that level of friction creates artificial scarcity. Any kind of scarcity creates value in the face of demand. Trade value is a form of value-add that is perpendicular to the main form of value in this game - the 'lucky drop'. Perpendicular value is great for games because being able to do something off-meta to find success makes for a more rich and varied game experience.
2. Shopkeeping was an occasional thing to do which meant you did it when you felt like it - it wasn't some 'always on' thing that pulled you out of maps.
To expand on point 1. Scarcity. Today you find a well rolled item on the ground and at best dump it in a 2c or a 5c tab if its early enough in the league. When everyone can do it that easily, everyone does it, resulting in rock-bottom prices. In a high friction system, 75% of sellers can't be bothered to sell it, so the seller can charge more.
Kind of like how crafting items is a big value add. In a high friction system, doing the leg work of bringing items to market is a value add and lets you charge prices appropriately. Another scenario...
You find a rare wand with 6 desirable mods called the Throat Goat Imbued Wand. There are 9 other identical wands up for sale. In the current system there's not a lot of wiggle room on how you price the wand. You must price the item lower than the other 9, or you can price it in the middle or higher and hope that demand for the Throat Goat is sufficiently high as to result in the lower priced ones getting bought, leading the next prospective buyer to key in on yours.
Either way, you, the seller, are pretty much out of agency. There's no gameplay here.
In the forum shopkeeper system, your wand is worth more, even if there are 9 identical wands. How is this possible? Because it forced sellers to actually get off their ass and do some work. There was room for salesmanship. Add some graphics and color to your shop post. Work on the layout. Format out different areas of the shop. Run specials and discounts. Keep it updated. That may sound terrible but for the entrepreneur it was great because it rewarded your work as much as your luck. If you were willing to 'grind' at the trade game you would get better results than the same player with the same items in their shop. To me, this is gameplay.
I'm not saying the old forum system should come back, but in my experience, the higher the friction, the more it rewards the work, knowledge, and intelligence of the seller instead of just the pure RNG of finding an item. I would much prefer a system with flavor, texture, and gameplay to one of cold, robotic automation.
To expand much more briefly on point 2 I actually think players might like a higher friction system more than they think in the sense that...how often do you see complaints about 'having to leave your map to trade' and 'no one ever response to my trade PMs'? A high friction system is one that results in fewer, but more valuable trades per day. You'll both be pulled out of maps less, and also have fewer players ignore your PMs because that may be the only sale they make that day - they're not going to let that opportunity go away.
