Trade Manifesto
" What I said was the opposite of what he said, correct. What he said though was complete BS. The top traders that he is protecting can't get any more powerful. They are already maxed out. A real trading system would allow the masses to catch up, and he doesn't want that. Prior to this manifesto I enjoyed the game, but was annoyed with lack of a trading system. Now I am pissed off. Will I come back for the next league ... maybe. Will I spend any more money ... no. | |
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I wanted to write more in-depth... but I have other projects going on elsewhere... but this is such an important topic, I had to at least chime in on this thread while it's fresh and could garner some actual attention from devs.
Let's try to put this in perspective: PoE is FOCUSED on trade. A critical element of the game. A part of the pillar of the game that "items matter". 10% of players trade? Clearly, to 90% of players, the items don't hold enough value to coerce them into taking the effort to navigate the architecture you've created (or failed to create) around trade. I disagree on almost every conclusion you've reached about "Easy Trade"'s consequences because I've experienced several game's economies that include "Easy Trade", and they didn't result in your predictions. " Um, no. It's the opposite. Hard trade makes people wait until ready to enter maps, when they can jump directly to nearly perfect-for-their-build gear in one step, so they don't have to suffer through trade more than necessary. Easy trade makes incremental upgrades easier, as you're less likely to take too long finding the maximum upgrade at any given time. If you can afford it, and it makes your build better, you buy it... also knowing that it'll be easy to sell the same item later when you want to upgrade again. " This is very telling about what you expect of your game (This makes me think you can't have people having good items, or the game gets too easy - the challenge in PoE is getting those items, not killing monsters?) I'd wager (you like gambling) if this change went in without any change of drop rates, yes, current sale values of most items would decrease on the market. HOWEVER, I'd say that the value of items OVERALL in the game would increase from ZERO to "Something"... which is an infinite increase in value. Items are currently dropping that people are ignoring, because they have ZERO value to them in the current "hard trade" system. It's too high of an opportunity or fun-time cost to submit themselves to trade to bother even listing good items. This translates into many people just leaving good drops on the ground un-identified, because the chances of getting something of any value (worth the hassle of trading, and clearly almost never of personal value as a personal upgrade) is almost non-existent. I don't think the current values need to be protected by "Hard Trade" - they're false values based on false scarcity revolving around only being able to trade with people online, agreeing on a price, willing to drop everything they're doing, abandoning a map and the value of all the items they could pull out of that map through that wasted portal (depending on how full their inventory is at the time of the request), just to make trades... rather a new equilibrium will arise with the true value of items, an equilibrium where the other 90% of players actually put value on items they find (even if it's less than what the 10% see now) " I entirely disagree on this point. With everybody engaged in trade, more people will get items strong enough to engage in more of the late-game content. Hard trade benefits only those who are dedicated to trading all the time. They can gear up multiple characters per league to take on endgame content, where casual non-traders barely get one character to maps. This creates the disparity! " To this, I say... that depends. I mean, hard trade allows abuse too, just in different ways - ways that I consider far worse. Especially listing items for sale to manipulate prices, whereas, if sales were automatic, they'd actually have to sell those items at those prices, and take the loss. Right, now, they're free to abuse the system, and that's a one-time listing thing, requiring far less to abuse the system than creating a way to automate entire transactions. Of course, this all "depends" on how the system works, because, as someone else earlier in this thread suggested, a 1 minute cooldown on all trades could slow things down on the automation side (they'd have to create enough multiple accounts to make enough trades each minute to compete with the current system - which might be a good thing for you, because it would puff up your registered users numbers and at the same time increase the percentage of players actively engaged in trade.) ~~~~~ A pro you may not have considered: Auction Houses/Automated Trade systems generally serve as a large currency sink in games with economies, due to listing fees (which also regulate the minimum price anyone can put on an item and still make a profit.) Most games have "gold", which you don't have here, (another reason the Auction House is far less likely to cause the problems you foresee based on the other game), but here, you could make the fee based on the item quality - in a very granulated scale based on number of affixes/prefixes, their rolls and the item level - even the rarity of uniques could have their own tiers of fees. Having no listing fees only makes it easier to abuse the current trade system. (although, I'd say the current system has a one-time real-money fee for using premium trade stash tabs, even though you can technically trade without them) Right now, there are only 2 main currency sinks: Rolling Maps and Crafting (both total gambles and Master Benches) If you think people are getting too rich too fast through trade, adding these listing fees will help reduce that excess wealth. I'm sure you're missing a few other pro's that I won't go into detail about here. ~~~~~ Only 1 game fits your doomsday conclusions, and I agree with others, that the reason was that it involved real money, not the "Easy Trade" component at all (combined with the lackluster diversity of items, clear upgrade path and stats that everyone wanted, compared to PoE's wide variety of prefixes/affixes and their relative values to different builds.) To summarize: your list of cons don't hold up under scrutiny as valid reasons to avoid "easy trade." Hard trade works against your design goals and is like termites infesting one of your game-supporting pillars as people get fed up with trade and move on to less frustrating games. | |
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Thank you for offering a trade site!!!
That way I can clearly show I like your game play, but reject your vision of trading by continuing to play the game and go out of my way to avoid your trade site. | |
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Well i think i understood what you wrote and i completely disagree with almost everything you wrote.
For real. This is the first time ever. I have never been more dissapointed with your choices than with this manifest and that you spent the limited resources you have to basically make a worse copy of poe.trade. 1. "Items Matter. Trade is Important". Yes, that is why trade should be under control or not be at all. Right now you have zero control over it. Its basically outside your game, its extremely prone to abuse and you can't do anything about it. 2. "Consequences of Easy Trade" It is right now happening. You can make a build that completes every aspect of your game without ever picking an item other than orbs and div cards from the ground. - "Easy trade reduces the number of times a character improves their items." If i have easier access to something it means i will be more willing to do something not less. If i buy more items by trade i am changing more not less, the hassle to get an item prevents many exchanges that are not so mandatory to progression. Most items you id is during the leveling process, when mapping you don't pick items other than good unis maybe some important, valued bases, but again only at certain tiers. I think you are wrong on that.. it would be the opposite. I know i would check a market more frequently and would make more changes than i am doing now if it was easily accessible and wouldn't ruin the flow of the game like going to browser does. And more currency used for trading.. well you need to play more to account for that? Accessibility rather creates demand than hinders it. Right now i even skip bosses if they are not meaningful, cause they drop useless garbage and i did do my check on that. I think killing 2.5k+ bosses this league and ending with 1 meaningful unique from all of them (that is worth 0.3% of my amassed wealth this league) is rather dissapointing experience and proves my point. I wear one dropped rare on my main. I got it while gearing for mapping. Could use an upgrade but don't need it that much to search for someting cheap on poe.trade.(i am greedy lmao) - "Easy trade means reducing drop rates" Erhh.. what? Why? My impression from what you wrote is that most of your playerbase is stopping at low tier maps. This means they have no chance to acquire BiS items that require high ilvl base to roll those highly desired mods, you can't get triple 46+ res belt in t4 map or a phys 42% ele belt with t1 life. They can drop semi decent shyt which already has vendor value at poe.trade and what is more to notice they will add to the buying pool for those good items.. so actually you would probably have to increase drop rates in high tier maps to account for the influx of demand? And with any ingame system you have the ability to control or limit the number of trades right? - "Easy trade would make the disparity between different players too great" Well i don't mean to be rude but no one cares about any ladders in Poe, i don't even know if such exists at all.. If those t4 hitting the wall will make it to t10s it should be wonderful for you? More satisfied customers actually discovering content of your game? I mean who cares if the top 1% will have 200 mirrors.. its not like it changes anything to the experience of the casual 90% you said is the part you address your game to? That is basically point one, but point two would be.. maybe it would be the other way around? Maybe some of the rich are rich cause they abuse the trading system and don't play your game that much? Point 3 is that i think you are contradicting yourself. You say there is a disparity between rich and poor, agreed, but it comes from the fact that first group trades and the 2nd does not. How making it easy for the 2nd group to trade will make the disparity bigger..? From any logic it would be the exact opposite. Other than "whatever we do the 2nd group won't be willing to trade". If 90% of your playerbase, those who haven't seen shaper will see it and big time traders will get bored and go play candy crush i am all for it. Don't care, you shouldn't as well - your game is for casuals remember? Even if those 90% will make one more tier up on the atlas its like an expansion pack you are giving to 90% of your players. - "Easy trade allows for greater abuse by automation" Well i think bad design allows for any abuse. And a shyt load of abuse is happening right now. Creating a controlable environment with limits set by you should decrease the abuse rate not increase? I mean you have no control over trades now.. information is on some 3rd party side, some shaddy deals going off by dropping items on the ground so you don't even register the trade.. how can you control it now? With basically any ingame system that overrides every trade and every aspect of gathering information you have the control right? It would be a step to fight the abuse or am i missing something? I mean, Chris, i don't think you would win with "we will allow anyone to sell anything in a place we have no control over and we will stop checking passports. That is how we gonna stop gangsters selling drugs in USA. Vote Chris for US President 2042" 3. "Trade in Path of Exile" Well a leader has to have balls. You either do or do not. Middle ground is usually where bad stuff is happening and we can see it now, the trading system in PoE is bad ( do an inquiry, i bet 70% will say "what trading system?", 29% will say "its the worst thing i have seen in any game ever" and 1% will say "i love you Chris" Are you happy with such outcome?). Pick what you want your game to be and roll with it and the consequences. Stop making excuses for this abomination. Shut down trade or make a real ingame system. 4. "The Trade Market" When you hear words "game" and "frustration" in one sentence it should go like this "This game relieved me of all of my frustration i got at work". If it is a different sentence Chris ... This whole Xbox experiment.. I just can't imagine no filters in poe.trade it would be ...i mean.. you know live experiments on the well-being of humans is prohibited by law right? Probably even in Australia. 5. "The Role of Solo Self-Found Mode" I will be honest ssf should be void. Period. The idea i can misclick that migrate button (dont know if there is any confirmation, i hope there is) is almost same as dying on my ssf hc char 6. What i hoped for. Tbh when i saw the main page in game i was excited. I hoped to see any of those 2: - " We decided trading is shyt , we don't want it. You can no longer trade in Poe at all. Period" - " We are introducing AH, fully controlable , abuse free, monitored ingame system, all items ingame are no longer linkable to any shytty websites including ours, the only searches and trading done can be done ingame using the trading system, there is no hand to hand trade, dropping item makes it bound. We set up limits to trades..., currency graphs will show all the completed trades during the league so you can be sure no one is flipping , .. you can have as many items on the ah as your highest char on that league has levels/2, taking an item out sets the slot into 24hours no use period, when you put the item on ah it will be locked for an hour in which you cant take it off, taking it off later will be possible with 1 scour per 20c value of the item or for free after 12hours, items posted can be bought immidiately, there is limited number of inquires per hour you can search for an item, you can have only 3 live searches at any point of time .. currency, divination, essences and normal rarity, no quality maps trades are live, limitless and in bulk when using currency stash tab, divination stash tab, new atlas map tab and essence stash tab ..we reintroduce the orb of horizons which is used to basically scour any map including quality (works on those shytty unid blue ones mates), vendoring maps now grants horizon shards - amount = tier of map so you can now super easy and fast trade your maps using our new atlas stash.. now in limited offer,... there is an ingame help panel to show you how to search for desired items and aggregate information using our fast database that doesn't lag the shyt of the forum.. " well i still have hopes you will change your mind | |
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But, but I just want to access all aspects of the game from within the game ...
Am I asking for too much? :( Last edited by Tnargav on Nov 4, 2017, 5:56:39 PM
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Before reading Trade Manifesto, I couldn't understand, why there isn't an easier trade system, but now I get your point.
Removing DND players from search imho will help a lot, but AFK not so much, as many ppl wrote before. I have an idea that could probably help in overall communication in game (not only in trading) - didn't see it in comments here. How about creating a "private message" system in game? Now there isn't a possibility to contact a player who is offline, except PM to his account. But in this case, he won't get any notification in game about this PM. I don't know how others do, but personally I don't visit my account site every day. Even every week. In-game private messages would make it possible to contact offline players. |
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I wonder do you ever intend to give a premium stash tab to Everyone in the game?
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" +100000000000 |
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I get what Chris is saying, but here's why I don't trade in POE:
Trading doesn't exist. Period. Going to an external website/application to trade isn't part of the game emergence, so it doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned. I'm with all those that are against an Auction House. In POE that simply won't work because by the time the auction is over, you've already out-leveled the gear you wanted. I'm all for an in-game Market, though. Back in January I sent a detailed email to GGG outlining how a market could work ingame, complete with a quest to unlock the market and examples of how other MMO's have successfully implemented a market (not an AH). Some good examples of how it was done right is the Galactic Market in StarWars The Old Republic and the Exchange in Star Trek Online. In a nutshell: You have something you want to sell. You talk to a Vendor in town and 'give' your item to them to sell on your behalf and how much of what currency you want for it. Another play goes to the same Vendor to buy. They browse the items from other players on sale. They find an item they want and pay the Vendor the player's asking price. The Vendor then passed the item onto the buyer. The seller gets an in-game message from the Vendor that their item has been sold. They speak to the Vendor to get their payment. Instant transfer for both players. After reading this manifesto, I feel like any player suggestions about in-game trading (NOT an AH) falls on deaf ears because GGG either isn't interested in adding it to the game, or they lack the knowledge to implement it. | |
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just make instant HV with limited #of trade per day and we are done.
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