Cooldown for undercutting/changing the buying price

This post is not for everyone,
just for GGG staff and the players who are actively swapping orbs in Path of Exile and is investing time in trading as well as gathering gear, resources or crafting.

Due to some players using trading bots they are abusing the trade system by
instantly undercutting the buying price some player will post for some orb, let's take Wild Lifeforce as an example.


The market should be free and unregulated as it is but trade bots abuse this. They lower the trade price instantly, and if you lower it too they will do it again and again, until the price will be even less than the sell price. Then they will suddenly raise it to a "normal" value. If you go to that normal price yourself, they will start it again.
And I see no other option for a normal player to keep up with it, other than that adding a cooldown, to prevent trade bots abusing this tactic.

Infinite trading wars make gaming experience in POE less enjoyable and if you are trading you are forced into this undercutting loophole with these bots until you just quit POE forever.

Is there a technical possibility to add a cooldown on the price changing action, so that abuse will not be possible anymore? I think many normal players or just regular trade site users will like it... if there are downsides to it please comment.

there probably are no real downsides.

ggg simply allows all this to happen

that said, what you mentioned, which is market manipulation, that's actually something that has no real way to curb.

it will happen even with or without automated/offline trade or even auction house. even if players are forced to use a "trading currency" in order to trade, flippers will farm for that currency. it simply delays that from happening.

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exsea wrote:

there probably are no real downsides.

ggg simply allows all this to happen

that said, what you mentioned, which is market manipulation, that's actually something that has no real way to curb.

it will happen even with or without automated/offline trade or even auction house. even if players are forced to use a "trading currency" in order to trade, flippers will farm for that currency. it simply delays that from happening.

yeah this is really sad...

I see more and more players writing here posts on this topic and I think we deserve some answer, whatever will it be..

People keep complaining about things out of gggs control and they will make poe2 ssf.

There is a way for you to solve this problem, play hc trade. There aren't really bots or enough people to manipulate markets like this. Every problem with trade that i see in this forum doesn't exist in hctrade. People are pretty chill there, and scammers get put on blast in trade chat and everybody pretty much knows each other. So scammers get to play ssf for the most part.

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Lonnie455Rich wrote:

People keep complaining about things out of gggs control and they will make poe2 ssf.

There is a way for you to solve this problem, play hc trade. There aren't really bots or enough people to manipulate markets like this. Every problem with trade that i see in this forum doesn't exist in hctrade. People are pretty chill there, and scammers get put on blast in trade chat and everybody pretty much knows each other. So scammers get to play ssf for the most part.

Yeah I will play hc trade, thanks for the advice, exactly for this reason. I wouldn't mind GGG to make Poe 2 SSF exactly because of this problem

Its proof that the problem is community driven, not game driven.

An interesting topic, and not an issue we really see on console that I am aware of.
We do get the same phenomenon but it’s player driven not automated.
Also on console, we have a trade board as well as the PC style web search and whisper system (we only got this about a year-ish ago). On our trade board you cannot make an offer (even for a completely different item) to the same player within (estimation) 60 seconds.
I wonder if such a ‘time out’ on price changing across all platforms would have a positive outcome. There is an obvious downside (for example you misprice an item as 10c instead of 10d and have to wait 60 seconds to correct this) and a potentially annoying one, but you can ofc refuse a whisper on item if you want to change or correct a price.

Interested to see where this conv heads.

Are you sure bots are the ones undercutting you? Because I do the same thing when I need quick divines to buy an upgrade. Undercut everyone until I get the damn fragments/oils/exotic currency/scarabs/etc sold.

Adding another cooldown, on top of the existing delay between pricing the item and having the price updated on trading site, would do more harm then good. Players would simply not be able to change prices as efficiently as the bots. While a player would give up after hitting the cooldown once or twice, the bot would change the price on cooldown every time, as needed. It would actually be an advantage for bots.