Why the focus on trading?

As per title, i don't get it.
I mean, part of the excitement of those games is to get new loot, the way it's made this excitement is lost. What you accumulate is currency.

What does trading bring to the table? I mean it's not an mmorpg where it may foster the "sense of community" or generate a player driven economy. Plus the way it's implemented right now is cumbersome (to be gentle).

Really... who cares about trading?!?

The game is balanced around trading, at least it seems to be. I have hundred of hours and never found anything remotely 'holy crap!' at all. A few dozen unique and not one is worth equipping.

I think you are supposed to farm currency to buy gear, pretty lame. Especially since trading in this game is about as easy as a tax audit.

Well there is a player driven economy. As to why, it is simply a design decision of GGG. PoE is balanced around trade, but it is very well possible to play SSF (Solo Self Found). Many players, like myself, prefer and do so.

If you prefer finding and crafting your own items you have the option to do so.

I play a mix of SSF and trade. I sell good stuff that i eventually find to get currency and gamble (i mean, craft) my own items. Never buy stuff on market, sell your stuff to get currency, make your own items. Thats my prefered way to play.

I love trade because it's an entire separate avenue to play the game. I can do various profit trades, flipping, arbitrage, speculative investments, buy crafting bases, sell half crafted items, really juice my characters gear.

I like playing the grindy kill monsters and bosses and farm league mechanics part of the game too, but the trade and economy are my true love. Farming an item myself or buying it on trade from currency I generated is the same dopamine for me.

I like finding things other people consider valuable- even if they're worthless to me and i never sell them, the idea that i 'could' sell them fills me with dopamine and smugness.

drive traffic to the trade site and its been well known employees of companies earn from rmts but i aint saying GGG doing that

You want a challenge, play SSF.

You want a kid's game, just trade for power.

There's your choices in POE.

The game is clearly balanced around trading. They wouldn't have removed all crafting systems from the game while having 99.99999% of drops be completely worthless if trading being the primary method of aquiring items wasn't their intention.

As to why they wanted to go this route instead of the nice dopamine hit that you get from actually gearing up through item drops or crafting an awesome upgrade, who knows.

Trade = instant boredom and loss of interest in ground loot. I think they keep it this way out of sheer stubbornness, or maybe to purposefully dis-engage players until next league where the players think "it will be better this time" (it won't).