Thoughts on Trading

Introduction:
It may be said that having a marketplace which is too efficient shifts the focus of the game to being about playing the economy rather than playing the game. Accordingly, it may be considered beneficial that POE makes it difficult to find traders because inefficiency in finding trades contributes to inefficiency in the marketplace as a whole, therefore the game is protected from being a trade sim.

However, once a trading partner is found, the situation changes. There is no transaction tax of any sort, meaning there is zero inefficiency on the exchange itself. The potential benefit from treating POE as a trade sim is thus very high for players willing to put up with the difficulties of finding trades.

The above can be summarized thusly:
-POE connecting traders is rather inefficient
-POE making exchanges is perfectly efficient (no tax of any sort)
-Motivating players to play instead of to market manipulate is related to the efficiency of marketplace as a whole (lower efficiency increases desirability of playing, higher efficiency increases desirability of trading)

I will take it as a given that the game should motivate players to play more than trade. So in the context of POE, an inefficient marketplace is actually superior to an efficient marketplace. However, I ask the question: Is finding traders really the best source of inefficiency in the marketplace?

Pros/Cons of Inefficiency coming from connecting traders:
The advantage of sourcing inefficiency in connecting traders is that it broadens the market for which items may be desirable. While this may be true of any marketplace inefficiency, it is more acute in inefficiencies concerning trade connections. The disadvantage is the way in which the inefficiency makes your item desirable- everyone wastes a lot of time browsing. Furthermore, the motivation for playing trade sim is not diminished. The benefits of market manipulation (cornering, flipping, bombing, etc.) remain unbounded. Instead it is merely counterbalanced by a negative motivation in that the act itself is tedious and boring.

Pros/Cons of Inefficiency coming from exchanges:
Making exchanges inefficient shifts the filtering from the buyer toward the seller. This saves time because there are many potential buyers for an item, but only one seller, so the more work which can be shifted from the buyer onto the seller saves time overall. Exchange inefficiency also allows the developers to set a more curated relationship between self-found gear and trade gear. Items sourced from self-found are immune to taxation, but items which are sourced from the economy suffer taxation. This is important because the quality of items found by playing the game are proportional to the amount of time that individual has played the game but the quality of items available from trade are proportional to the sum total of all players who participate in the trading economy. Trade has an inherently larger pool of items at intrinsically lower price, which is precisely what exchange inefficiency is targets.

The disadvantage is that this is all more obvious to the player. It is easier to objectively calculate. Game designers have a bias of presenting things as though they were benefits regardless of whether that is the purpose because players as a whole dislike losing things. While inefficiency is inefficiency no matter where it comes from, exchange efficiency is more easily identifiable than other kinds. Game designers have a different relationship with the phrase "Ignorance is Bliss." Games need to meet people's expectations to an extent, and games which fail in this regard could be said to have the quality that "Ignorance is Suffering." Since we all start out ignorant, and the game designers' goal is to sell us something we want to buy, game designers have a vested interest in preserving the blissfulness of ignorance. I think this could be resolved with 2 steps:
1) The game has a reputation as being "for the hardcore crowd" which naturally shifts players expectations. "Ignorance is Suffering" is a more palatable proposition when players go into the game expecting this quality to some degree.
2) Educate the players when expectation and reality diverge (as in the case of shifting inefficiency from something hidden to something visible). The best way is to have a clear, concise explanation of the intent, justification, and expected result. Understanding does not come from nothing. If players do not understand something, it is the developer's duty to guide players in some way to attain that understanding (or just give up and match whatever player expectations were in the first place, although this is a less desirable outcome).



Conclusion:
I hope that readers have the following questions after consuming all of the above:
1) How efficient should the trading market be?
2) What would be the best way to meet that efficiency target?
3) How does POE differ from that?

To answer Question 1, the trading market should be less efficient than it is now; farming is severely under-powered compared to trading. I feel the other questions are answered in my response below.

Regarding inefficiency at connecting traders: This is the age of social networking. Players these days are far too savvy to not find way to connect each other, which explains the emergence of third-party shop indexers. Unfortunately, attempting to effect trading vs farming balance using this method is made utterly moot by the existence of such third-party tools.

There is, I guess, the question of whether to attack those third-party tools. However, unlike RMT and botting which are clear violations of the terms of use, such tools never directly interface with Path of Exile; they're really just specialized search engines. I don't think they're going away anytime soon.

The one thing that GGG could do, but most emphatically shouldn't (assuming no other major trading-system changes), is allow automated transactions (buyouts). This would complete the circle by not even requiring that the seller be present at their computer to connect them to buyers. I am not exactly sure how to feel about forum-based transactions, since those would allow sellers to use alternate forms of presence (at work, perhaps on their cell phone) where full, in-client presence would have been required previously; even those have the problem of not requiring bidder presence at the moment of sale.

Regarding taxation: Remember that the Diablo 3 auction house taxed all transactions, including buyouts, at 15%. How much effect did that have?

The truth is that, once the buyer and seller are connected, the profit required by the seller is very low, due to the "only use the best" nature of gear use. As long as the seller beats the price offered by the in-game vendor, there's profit involved; the only question is whether that price covers the frustration of the "connecting traders" phase. Therefore, only the most draconian taxes would have any real effect... and would almost definitely send players fleeing from the game.

Prognosis: Pretty bad. Conventional methods at control look pretty much doomed to failure, and it appears that market manipulation's dominance over farming (aka actually playing the game).

I am not ready to surrender yet, but I know that the proper solution is of a "think outside the box" nature. The previous reliance on the "connecting traders" phase to prevent the game from turning into a market simulator simply isn't viable in today's highly interconnected, min/max gaming culture.

I'm not exactly endorsing this idea, but I keep thinking of CliveHowlitzer saying that non-tradeable currency would be intriguing. Crazy? Indeed. But let's imagine that GGG embraced the "connecting traders" spirit and implementing some interesting forum applications. Imagine you could offer some gear, and then log in later and see several bids (thanks to bidders being able to easily search for your item) -- all in the form of gear, some bids just one piece of gear, other bids consisting of them multiple pieces -- and could choose from any or none of them, and conduct a trade right in your browser, without the bidder needing to be online. Now you have a game that embraces the nature of today's internet, but makes trading actually pretty difficult. Just block on the obvious drop-trade work-around, and that's not actually that bad of an idea. Perhaps the problem we can fix isn't connecting traders, or taxation, but instead eliminating currency -- making it so there isn't a commodity which is of general use to all audiences, thus enforcing a true barter economy where specific interest drives trades rather than general profit.

Still not sure it's a winner though. Perhaps someone else will think of something.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

To answer Question 1, the trading market should be less efficient than it is now; farming is severely under-powered compared to trading. I feel the other questions are answered in my response below.

Regarding inefficiency at connecting traders: This is the age of social networking. Players these days are far too savvy to not find way to connect each other, which explains the emergence of third-party shop indexers. Unfortunately, attempting to effect trading vs farming balance using this method is made utterly moot by the existence of such third-party tools.

There is, I guess, the question of whether to attack those third-party tools. However, unlike RMT and botting which are clear violations of the terms of use, such tools never directly interface with Path of Exile; they're really just specialized search engines. I don't think they're going away anytime soon.

The one thing that GGG could do, but most emphatically shouldn't, is allow automated transactions (buyouts). This would complete the circle by not even requiring that the seller be present at their computer to connect them to buyers. I am not exactly sure how to feel about forum-based transactions, since those would allow sellers to use alternate forms of presence (at work, perhaps on their cell phone) where full, in-client presence would have been required previously; even those have the problem of not requiring bidder presence at the moment of sale.

Regarding taxation: Remember that the Diablo 3 auction house taxed all transactions, including buyouts, at 15%. How much effect did that have?

The truth is that, once the buyer and seller are connected, the profit required by the seller is very low, due to the "only use the best" nature of gear use. As long as the seller beats the price offered by the in-game vendor, there's profit involved; the only question is whether that price covers the frustration of the "connecting traders" phase. Therefore, only the most draconian taxes would have any real effect... and would almost definitely send players fleeing from the game.

Prognosis: Pretty bad. Conventional methods at control look pretty much doomed to failure, and it appears that market manipulation's dominance over farming (aka actually playing the game).

I am not ready to surrender yet, but I know that the proper solution is of a "think outside the box" nature. The previous reliance on the "connecting traders" phase to prevent the game from turning into a market simulator simply isn't viable in today's highly interconnected, min/max gaming culture.

I'm not exactly endorsing this idea, but I keep thinking of CliveHowlitzer saying that non-tradeable currency would be intriguing. Crazy? Indeed. But let's imagine that GGG embraced the "connecting traders" spirit and implementing some interesting forum applications. Imagine you could offer some gear, and then log in later and see several bids -- all in the form of gear, some bids just one piece of gear, other bids consisting of them multiple pieces -- and could choose from any or none of them, and conduct a trade right in your browser, without the bidder needing to be online. Now you have a game that embraces the nature of today's internet, but makes trading actually pretty difficult. Just block on the obvious drop-trade work-around, and that's not actually that bad of an idea. Perhaps the problem we can fix isn't connecting traders, or taxation, but instead eliminating currency -- making it so there isn't a commodity which is of general use to all audiences, thus enforcing a true barter economy where specific interest drives trades rather than general profit.

Still not sure it's a winner though. Perhaps someone else will think of something.

You can never 'eliminate' currency as such, rather what isused as currency shifts. Classic example is SoJs or Pskulls in D2, which were used as currency, becau se while an item may seem valuable, if its not something YOU want then you have the issue of the second you accept that trade you are attempting to then trade it again for something else.

Without a 'currency', a true trade will only take place when you want something someone else has, and they want the item you have. This is not a common situation, 90% of the time people I trade with would have nothnig I want, or I would have nothing of value to them. So removing a form of currency would 'kill' the game until some limited item (such as a certain type of unique) becomes new currency. Then everything is quoted in terms of the number of astra's, etc

"

Real_Wolf wrote:

Spoiler

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

To answer Question 1, the trading market should be less efficient than it is now; farming is severely under-powered compared to trading. I feel the other questions are answered in my response below.

Regarding inefficiency at connecting traders: This is the age of social networking. Players these days are far too savvy to not find way to connect each other, which explains the emergence of third-party shop indexers. Unfortunately, attempting to effect trading vs farming balance using this method is made utterly moot by the existence of such third-party tools.

There is, I guess, the question of whether to attack those third-party tools. However, unlike RMT and botting which are clear violations of the terms of use, such tools never directly interface with Path of Exile; they're really just specialized search engines. I don't think they're going away anytime soon.

The one thing that GGG could do, but most emphatically shouldn't, is allow automated transactions (buyouts). This would complete the circle by not even requiring that the seller be present at their computer to connect them to buyers. I am not exactly sure how to feel about forum-based transactions, since those would allow sellers to use alternate forms of presence (at work, perhaps on their cell phone) where full, in-client presence would have been required previously; even those have the problem of not requiring bidder presence at the moment of sale.

Regarding taxation: Remember that the Diablo 3 auction house taxed all transactions, including buyouts, at 15%. How much effect did that have?

The truth is that, once the buyer and seller are connected, the profit required by the seller is very low, due to the "only use the best" nature of gear use. As long as the seller beats the price offered by the in-game vendor, there's profit involved; the only question is whether that price covers the frustration of the "connecting traders" phase. Therefore, only the most draconian taxes would have any real effect... and would almost definitely send players fleeing from the game.

Prognosis: Pretty bad. Conventional methods at control look pretty much doomed to failure, and it appears that market manipulation's dominance over farming (aka actually playing the game).

I am not ready to surrender yet, but I know that the proper solution is of a "think outside the box" nature. The previous reliance on the "connecting traders" phase to prevent the game from turning into a market simulator simply isn't viable in today's highly interconnected, min/max gaming culture.

I'm not exactly endorsing this idea, but I keep thinking of CliveHowlitzer saying that non-tradeable currency would be intriguing. Crazy? Indeed. But let's imagine that GGG embraced the "connecting traders" spirit and implementing some interesting forum applications. Imagine you could offer some gear, and then log in later and see several bids -- all in the form of gear, some bids just one piece of gear, other bids consisting of them multiple pieces -- and could choose from any or none of them, and conduct a trade right in your browser, without the bidder needing to be online. Now you have a game that embraces the nature of today's internet, but makes trading actually pretty difficult. Just block on the obvious drop-trade work-around, and that's not actually that bad of an idea. Perhaps the problem we can fix isn't connecting traders, or taxation, but instead eliminating currency -- making it so there isn't a commodity which is of general use to all audiences, thus enforcing a true barter economy where specific interest drives trades rather than general profit.

Still not sure it's a winner though. Perhaps someone else will think of something.

You can never 'eliminate' currency as such, rather what isused as currency shifts. Classic example is SoJs or Pskulls in D2, which were used as currency, because while an item may seem valuable, if its not something YOU want then you have the issue of the second you accept that trade you are attempting to then trade it again for something else.

Without a 'currency', a true trade will only take place when you want something someone else has, and they want the item you have. This is not a common situation, 90% of the time people I trade with would have nothnig I want, or I would have nothing of value to them. So removing a form of currency would 'kill' the game until some limited item (such as a certain type of unique) becomes new currency. Then everything is quoted in terms of the number of astra's, etc

I understand that, but there is such a thing -- perhaps my terminology for it is horrible -- as "currencyness," the utility of an item as a currency. Is it divisible? How universally is it desired, and how many don't desire it? It's true that, no matter what you do, so long as trading is around, something in the tradeable item pool will have the most currencyness of the bunch, and thus become the standard for trading. However, this doesn't mean that reduced maximum currencyness has no effect: although a victor shall emerge as the standard, it will have a more tenuous hold on the title, promoting more true trades.

If you look at the Dev Diary on currency, GGG clearly looks up to Diablo 2's SoJs and high runes as an exemplars "pseudo-currency." They saw in them:

"

Chris wrote:

Homogeneity

Each unit of the currency has to be equivalent to other units. They should stack together, and there should never be a reason for a player to discriminate between two different units of that currency.

Utility

The individual currency items have specific uses in addition to their trade value. If the recipient of the currency item is able to use it to improve their character, then it’s even better for them to trade for. The economic value represented by its scarcity is just an added bonus so that they are able to on-trade it if they decide not to consume it themselves.

Scarcity

The currency should not be trivial to find. Some popular in-game barter items represent days or weeks of playing, and provide meaningful trade material for very high-end items. Other barter items are more common (cropping up every half hour or more) and allow for granularity with lower value trades.

Handleability

It should be convenient to transport or transact with a large portion of your net worth as currency.

But I think they missed the most obvious part: they were "pseudo-currency," currency with low currencyness. Instead, they designed PoE's currency, which have the characteristics of homogeneity, utility, scarcity, and handleability... but high currencyness.

The intent was to avoid the following pitfalls:

"

Chris wrote:

Gold Sinks

Games that use gold incur high inflation unless they have sufficient gold sinks in the form of mandatory expenses such as item repairs, paying to revive characters or continuously buying potions. These sinks are generally an unnecessary obligation and can be frustrating if a player is low on gold.

Gold Farmers

Online RPGs often get infested by gold farmers who play the game to accumulate large quantities of gold that are then sold to other players. If gold is the main currency, it’s very simple to perform gold-accumulating tasks to supply the secondary market.

Wealth Determinism

Earning a steady quantity of gold from monsters killed helps to re-enforce the treadmill feeling that many online RPGs suffer. People’s net worth in gold is directly proportional to the amount of time they have invested playing. This highly linear wealth gain can cause a sense of disillusionment when trying to save up a large amount of gold for a purchase – it’s apparent to the player how long it’s going to take to grind for it.

Trade Parity

With a common gold currency, it’s easy for players to know and demand the current market value for an item. If the trade occurs at a value that differs from the current perceived market value, then one of the players feels that they got ripped off.

• Currency Sinks: Endgame maps.
• Currency Farmers: Patch 0.11.0e.
• Wealth Determinism: Third-party shop indexers.
• Trade Parity: A certain exchange ratio site.

The more I think about it, the more currencyness seems to be the problem.

Bumpity.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

Bumpity.

C'mon, I think my little blurb on the Dev Diary is actually pretty good. Nothing?

I remember clearly arguing for an AH before I realised that when I play an ARPG I want to play an ARPG not an MMO like PoE and D3 actually are.

If there is anything to learn from D3 it's that designing the game around trading is a mistake. Whether or not you have an auction house is not the issue. Whatever system of trading you come up with and balance the game around it will still be required to participate to get the intended experience from the game (in terms of progression etc). You can ofcourse come up with systems that have lower and lower trade efficiency, making the effect less relevant, but if the point of the trade system is to be "better" than the current forum trading the lower limit of trade efficiency is still pretty high. So it would be much more useful to talk about trade restrictions and hinderences.
If I am supposed to trade then I would much rather do it in an AH than any other system I have seen. But I don't want to trade. I want to kill monsters and find and craft loot to upgrade my gear and stash loot I find that is useful for another build that I maybe just have started to imagine without worrying about opportunity costs, interest and exchange rates etc.



I want to play an ARPG, not an MMO, so my thoughts on trading is that it should be irrelevant. Screw "the economy". Up the drop rates significantly, remove the forum linking, remove the god aweful global chats and start to heavily enforce a no-trading policy on the 'grouping board'.
When that is done the people who want to trade for the personal experience can do so, and the rest can just happily play the game with alot less sitting around and spamming forums or global chat, or if you opted out from trading before, you now can play the game with the "level of loot" that it was designed for.

"

Sickness wrote:

If there is anything to learn from D3 it's that designing the game around trading is a mistake. Whether or not you have an auction house is not the issue. Whatever system of trading you come up with and balance the game around it will still be required to participate to get the intended experience from the game (in terms of progression etc). You can ofcourse come up with systems that have lower and lower trade efficiency, making the effect less relevant, but if the point of the trade system is to be "better" than the current forum trading the lower limit of trade efficiency is still pretty high. So it would be much more useful to talk about trade restrictions and hinderences.

I was exploring reduced currencyness as an itemization plan, whereas you seem to see it as sort of a whole design philosophy thing. Can't say I disagree with you; kind of fits with my recent thoughts on the matter.

"

Sickness wrote:

Screw "the economy". Up the drop rates significantly, remove the forum linking, remove the god aweful global chats and start to heavily enforce a no-trading policy on the 'grouping board'.

Although I understand why you want to restrict those things, and I'm not arguing with that "why," I think you're trying to restrict the unrestrictable here. There are certain functions that, if the game does not provide them directly to the players, will be completed by the players through third-party sites. Remove forum linking? Third-party forum with lots of screenshots from imgur, very similar to jsp. Maybe even someone gets smart with a pixel analysis bot to scan those images such that they can be searched for desired item types and affixes (relying on the plaintext of forum posts wouldn't be wise), although perhaps not (high development cost). Fighting the grouping board and text chat would likely be an untenable war against spam.

And I think your average gamer is a lot more comfortable with third-party websites today than he was back in Diablo 2's heyday. After all, too many of us are comfortable with shop indexers and exchange rate sites. So it's unlikely the tools that did spring up wouldn't be used.

I think you need to shift tactics away from social media and listings, and more towards "hard restrictions" in-game.

I liked your post scrotie. Just didn't have anything to add in regards to it.

Currency has become too much like gold now, especially with how exalted orbs are now being taken as 'pure' and nothing else accepted