The Trade system is outdated.

After putting countless hours into the trade system in Path of Exile, I have to say it is still one of the most frustrating parts of what is otherwise an amazing game. I understand GGG's design philosophy and respect that, but in its current form, it's just a source of friction that isn't necessary to make people enjoy the game.

Certainly would have been a very welcomed system to have a auto buy option for the 10's of thousands of transactions.

There are times where hours are hours spent trying to connect/communicate with sellers who aren't interested in responding due to it interfering with their game (as they should!) ...it just makes for bad time all around.

In short, I really love Path of Exile and respect the commitment by GGG to deliver a deep ARPG. On the other hand, I feel the trade system is just outdated and often gets in the way of enjoying the game's incredible content. I hope this feedback serves as a constructive starting point for future improvements.

My 2 cents.

Any AH style system would just increase bots/RMT and any arbitrary account restrictions would be easily passed just like in other games that use them.

those already increase over time...there are countless websites offering stuff

we have the currency exchange, did that make it worse or does the overwhelming majority actually like that?

Take a high prized item and put it for sale for 1 ex...you think those trillions of whispers are all humans?

"

baconbyte#0146 wrote:

Any AH style system would just increase bots/RMT and any arbitrary account restrictions would be easily passed just like in other games that use them.

Using gold offsets that. Currently bots just flip items non-stop or do price fixing campaigns. With the game being popular and F2P at release, we'll only see more bots and more RMT.

Bots would need to farm enough gold to trade said items. If they scale gold costs to buy and/or sell items based on item level, a low level bot even if farming often, would not be able to afford to flip stuff.

It's not like gold would be hard to come by. They'd level 1 char to 90 and have more than enough gold. It for sure would stop things like just have an account with a lvl 1 for selling which some ppl do so they don't need to stop whatever gameplay to go make a trade

ya i mean, i really hate the trading. the necessity to meet up and interact is ridiculous because nobody answers
you have to whisper like 50 freakin people, and thus not getting any item you desire but constantly having to compromise on stats you want etc just to find someone that will trade with you

yuck

It's utterly ridiculous that we still have to use this outdated third party d2jsp bullshit.

And it will never change, GGG will die on this hill and their reasons for it are asinine.

Personally i think a full blown auction house is the worse case scenario and one of the absolute worse ideas for trading actual gear.

The trading website has its flaws and i think the real issue is its "stability".

I 100% do not want people to be able to snipe my gear at night while i sleep, because of some change, or because some new build tech became public, or because some streamer build became popular.

I also dont want to lose out on currency because im not sure of the value of a rare item with weird rolls or special corruptions and i list it at a bad price and someone automatically buys it.

I want to be able to list something and then i get spammed with people who want to buy my item, letting me know i have it priced wrong or i should do more research on its value for the current market landscape of the day.


Also AH will increase botting for items in a very negative way.

I like that they added the currency exchange, since currency generally has a more static value or inherently easy mechanics to price check the current market and will sell fast when i list or exchange. Unlike complex gear.


With all of that being said, i would like to get rid of the trade website, and move its ENTIRE infrastructure into an IN-GAME window, with the exact same functionality, but preventing people from opening 10000000 browser windows and setting up 10000000 auto searches, as well as trade macros completely overwhelming the API.

Possible solution would be to auto delist an item if you are online and don't reply to x messages

I don't know what the correct answer is to the issues of trade atm but the current system is FRUSTRATING and extremely bad for buyer and seller

You Spend Hours trying to whisper people that are BUSY playing the game running maps Ubers or whatever and you think there going to stop ( probably die in the process ) ya probably not leaving you ignored as a buyer its insane you whisper maybe 40 people before you just toss your hands up and go farm again and that's not if the website crashes or keeps logging you out all the time

as a seller its no better you toss items in a ex bin and run off to farm more stuff only to get blasted by 30 whispers for the item you dropped in there 2 min ago you know its probably miss priced so you just ignore them all and keep farming and probably keep getting whispered into oblivion