First Wave of Trade Improvements

Public Stash Tabs
For quite some time now, users have relied on third party tools to create posts of their stash tabs in the Path of Exile trade forums. There were always a few problems with this approach, though.

The first is that it wasn't that user-friendly. Downloading a third-party application that you need to give your login credentials to rightly sets off alarm bells for many people. A lot more users just didn't find out about these tools or were not willing to put in the effort to use them.

The second is that it was really inefficient. The trade forums were never designed to be scraped by indexers, nor updated that frequently. As more and more users have been using that system we have been running into more and more scaling issues.

In order to solve both of these problems we have introduced the concept of Public Stash Tabs. Any premium stash tab can now be set to public. Public tabs are available in a special API that is usable by third-party indexing websites to efficiently index all the items in near real time.


First, just set your stash tab to public.



Once a tab is public, when you right click on an item to add information about the item. This information will be put in the hover for the item, and in the API for third-party websites to index.



Using the drop-down box, you can set a price for the item. This uses the price description formats that are already supported by third-party websites so it will work from day one.



You can also set a price for the entire tab at once. Any prices set on individual items in the tab will override the per-tab price setting.


I would like to mention that the use of the public stash tab system is entirely optional. We are not preventing the use of any of the old tools, and they will continue to work so long as the third-party websites continue to index the trade forums.


Online APIs
A common issue with the third-party trading websites right now is the lack of reliable data about which players are online. To address this, we have created a new API that allows third-party websites to be able to get this information. The third party websites you use to find items will be updated to use this API soon!

This is the first of many trade improvements we plan to make. We would like to thank the community members that have put so much effort to making trade easier, and we hope to continue to support them with even more features as time goes on.

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jooozek wrote:

So what you are saying is that if I don't have any premium stash tabs, I can't sell stuff anymore?

All the old tools will continue to work.

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Vhlad wrote:

Does it work with premium remove only tabs?

Yes

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_Interrupt_ wrote:

A person with 2 premium stash tabs has an advantage over person with 1 premium stash tab.
A person with 3 premium stash tabs has an advantage over person with 2 premium stash tabs.
A person with 4 premium stash tabs has an advantage over person with 3 premium stash tabs.

How is this system not pay-to-win?

Installing/configuring 3rd party tools takes time, effort and knowledge.
Most people don't have the advanced knowledge of configuring xml files.
Are kids and less-educated people supposed to always be at a disadvantage?

You are still perfectly able to trade using the forums to list items as well.
This doesn't prevent you from trading in the way that people have been, it just opens up a new option as the first part of several planned trade changes.

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GeorgAnatoly wrote:

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Gary_GGG wrote:

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_Interrupt_ wrote:

A person with 2 premium stash tabs has an advantage over person with 1 premium stash tab.
A person with 3 premium stash tabs has an advantage over person with 2 premium stash tabs.
A person with 4 premium stash tabs has an advantage over person with 3 premium stash tabs.

How is this system not pay-to-win?

Installing/configuring 3rd party tools takes time, effort and knowledge.
Most people don't have the advanced knowledge of configuring xml files.
Are kids and less-educated people supposed to always be at a disadvantage?

You are still perfectly able to trade using the forums to list items as well.
This doesn't prevent you from trading in the way that people have been, it just opens up a new option as the first part of several planned trade changes.

Are you suggesting future improvements to trade are money gated as well, or are already because of this pay wall?

People will be able to trade regardless of whether or not they have made purchases. The trading system is being improved in several places however, and it will take time to introduce all the changes.