Auction house with new non-tradable currency

I find it very frustrating to buy/sell items in-game. Thus I came with idea that could work if guys at GGG will get it under their wings. It is simple.

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NPC with auction + crystal trading.

Auction
- use gold to buy/sell items (orbs, scrolls, gems, ...)

Trading
- selling items to vendor for static amount of crystals as we have it now based on stats

Cystals
- you won't be able to use this anywhere else but Auction


Please discuss.

Never

There will never be an AH. Ever. I'll save you the time of waiting and hoping, cause it just won't happen. Devs don't want it, they are coming up with a different way to do trades, but it will never be an AH.

Obviously I forgot one thing which is some money sink. For instance 20% from sell price goes to auction house or to actually post something in auction will take some fixed amount.

I don't see reason why there should not be some kind of auction house or other means to trade. I know we have forums and trade channel but that is not enough for the amount of players.

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Svegurok wrote:

Obviously I forgot one thing which is some money sink. For instance 20% from sell price goes to auction house or to actually post something in auction will take some fixed amount.

I don't see reason why there should not be some kind of auction house or other means to trade. I know we have forums and trade channel but that is not enough for the amount of players.

Read the devs FAQ stickied in this forum. I fully agree with GGG on there standpoint for this.

auction houses cause massive inflation. For example lets say someone find a unique that is not already on the AH, this person happens to be a greedy person who decides to post it for some really high price, no when other people start looking for this unique cause they want to sell or buy they see this guys one up there at some ridiculous price and are like "oh cool that's how much it costs so ill put mine only slightly cheaper, maybe undercut him by like 5% and so on. Now basically people start thinking okay this IS the price for this unique and it goes on etc. you get the picture

They have stated that they plan to improve trading via improvements to the web site and publicly viewable stash tabs.

As for an AH, that horse died a long time ago...

"A traditional-style auction house runs completely counter to this goal, so we will never include that in POE."
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/213177/filter-account-type/staff

"As Chris has already clarified in another thread: there will NEVER be an auction house for Path of Exile."
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/38088/page/5#p520463

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auction houses cause massive inflation.

This is not the problem with auction houses. The problem with auction houses is that they dramatically increase accessibility, and therefore undermine game longevity, because players rise to the top tiered content too quickly.

The opposite is true; auction houses cause massive deflation. Things that were at one time hard to find, become easy to find, because the item inventory is ever growing. This is all well-hashed out over in that "other game," where virtually every ordinary item is now buyable for nothing, with the sole inflation to speak of centered around people fighting over attempting to get items so rare it barely increases a character's abilities another 3% at best.

Regardless, since currency more or less spends itself in POE, you won't have inflation. But what you will have is item accessibility, and I can tell you right now, and very clearly, this is why the devs don't want an AH in their game.

They may take some micro-steps towards acccessibility, however. They are considering a variety of options to make it so that trading is not such a PITA. Any micro step they take will also be a micro step in the wrong direction from an item accessibility perspective, but small nudges won't kill the game if they are careful.

Since you have now given me the opportunity, I'll take this moment to state that I'd like to play in a league in which trading is impossible, but that IIQ/IIR is raised by Q%/R%, for some high values of Q and R. That settles the item accessibility problem for once and for all.

I shall give your solution, GGG wants to do mobile trading, or at least trading on their website, stash to stash or personal store. Enjoy. (didnt want to search for Chris' post about this)

I wouldn't mind playing without an auction house, but I agree that there should be serious changes to the trading system. Trading is especially important because there are so many randomized variables (e.g. stats, sockets/links, quality, etc.) Like a previous poster said, this comes down to gear accessibility and game longevity.

Usually in AH situations, item prices deflate as people find more loot and when newer items are introduced. However, if more players are farming (and/or buying) currency, then the prices increase. AH has benefits and drawbacks, which I'm sure have already been discussed.

In-game markets are usually pretty easy to understand with basic supply/demand economics, but in PoE you have such a large variety of currencies, all which can be used for crafting. So, depending how much players tend to craft, this also has an impact on the economy as currency is consumed. Therefore, convertibility between the currency items become an issue delineated by vendor set prices. However, NPC vendors' item availability is also randomized to a certain extent, so newer players don't know the exchange rates.

The main problem with trading, right now, is that it is highly unfair because of this nontransparent market. The lack of market knowledge by most players, myself included, makes trading much more difficult without a good reason. From a game longevity standpoint, I'm not going to enjoy farming/crafting (i.e. playing) when another player can get stuff cheaply through trade. I actually want to buy stuff with real money just to play through the game.

Furthermore, regarding the accessibility decreasing longevity point, I'm pretty sure GGG has already addressed this with excessive RNG. I think the devs might be listening to players who each have several end-game characters, and so they decided to randomize everything, which pretty much solves "everyone has the same gear" problem. On the other hand, it makes items hard to price and trade.

I do agree that auction house could really destroy the market as it is now. It does not have to be auction house but we need some way of buying/selling stuff easier. For instance I'm kind of person that loses interest in game if I just have to farm for that needed item without which I can't progress without dieing like a day-fly.