The Plague that is GGG's "Trade" system. & the Predatory dance feeding its lowkey P2W mechanism.

I've been here since 2012, seen the best and the worst of ideas been implemented and pulled.

Today I'll write here, about the worst of the worst (sinister, but profitable) ideas GGG ever had.

with over 4000 hours combined experience with this game, and tens of thousands of hours in other online games with ingame, "player-driven" markets, I have finally spent enough time analyzing PoE's "market system", and come to the realization that this is subtle predation at its maximum optimization to the point where it disgusts me.

They have not made a single change to improve how players trade within the game, how currency moves, the steps a player must take to sell any commodity ingame. They actually waited for 3rd parties to build a comprehensive system for trading, then just copy pasted it into their own site. (still making NO improvements in the game itself)


And I will write here why for some reason, the trade system just doesn't seem to be improved on. Almost as if they forgot it exists. But how they deliberately keep it this way to drown players in "pinch points", prodding and compelling them to make purchases of things people otherwise would have no need. Basically how GGG worsens situations, which inflate the NEED to buy ingame MTX (not cosmetics).

Let's begin :-


Trade system's been the same since the last 8+ years.
The idea's been (before premium tabs came around): You find an item, you wanna sell it, You put it up for sale by either Spamming $Trade channels with your items, or using a Third Party tool, such as "procurement", "acquisition" etc., then make a forum post, then link the post to the tool, and keep updating it as time goes by. Then you get a reply from a potential buyer, then you invite them, then they teleport to you (there were no hideouts early on), then you initiate a Trade with them, They put in the currency, You put in the item, then you count the currency, and both people accept the trade to finalize it.
And everybody is happy.

Except they're not. Here's why -

1-> Price Fixing. When the seller has total control over whether they give their listed item (despite having put it for sale). Or just hang it over the economy's head, in what is called "price fixing". Where a "seller" puts multiple items of a certain type, damage, value, and flood the market with those items, with NO INTENTION of ever selling the item. Instead, only using it to poison the economy, and forcing the prices to drop, then "Sniping" the newly listed items by other players, only to Poison the economy further. And once you have hundreds and thousands of people doing this, you really get a full blown economy poisoning orgy going.

2-> Tediousness. There are a ridiculous amount of hoops players have to jump through just to get a transaction done. Instead of the conventional, far superior method of ingame AH(auction houses) where you list an item for x Price. And the buyer can instantly pay for it, and the payment is delivered to you (sometimes with a minor "servie tax"), price fixing is non-existent, because the prospective price fixer has no choice, once the item is listed, it can be bought instantly.

3-> AFK MODE ON. PoE has an ingame timer of around 15 minutes, where if you are idle for 15 minutes, it will put you on AFK mode, meaning your name on trade sites will show as a Yellow AFK compared to the green ONLINE, which means players are already less likely to message you, predicting a non-responsive seller/price fixer (especially if you have more than 1 item in the same search criteria. And AFK is even worse for currency exchange than it is for item buying - You often have to First copy the info from the site, then message the seller ingame, Only for them to NOT RESPOND, or be straight up AFK (and even offline in some cases because of HOW SLOW THE TRADE SITES UPDATE).

4-> TIME ZONES. If you live in Texas, Good luck being awake when The Asian market is playing and looking for items to buy. If you are European, Good luck getting the Russians to respond to your item listings. If you live in South East Asia, all you'll meet are the nightwalkers from the states. Aussies, may god have mercy on your shops. Basically, There's no flipping way you are able to list your items 24/24 hours in a day. If you are a Person with a life and a job, Enjoy trying to sell your items in the few hours you get to play. The desperate option is to underprice your items by a longshot just to improve the odds of people who are awake that time buying the item, and often the "Flippers" can buy it off you and sell it for its real value in their time zone.

5(the big one)-> ARTIFICIALLY STUFFING/CRAMPING PLAYER STASHES. Obviously, to make people buy more stashes than they would of THEIR OWN 'FREE WILL'. The Slower and clunkier the whole trade process is, the More disparity there is between "Total Items in" VS "Total Items out" in any given timescale. Meaning due to having a worse trade systems than the Ancient Egyptians, you are Guaranteed to put in more Items into your stash, than the Incompetent trade system is capable of taking out for sale. This means GGG calculatingly keeps The Trade system so insultingly pathetic, that You are forced to buy More storage just so you don't lose out on the currency you worked hard to earn, or create an item worth keeping.




Here is WHY GGG is doing this (They have obviously not confirmed it, but doing that would make them look like $$ predators) but it can easily be concluded because they are the only ones who truly profit from keeping things this way lol.

Simple;
It's all about that MOONEEEEY!

They introduced "Premium tabs", as a more Lucrative alternative to implementing an ingame Auction House/Marketplace, which are not "non-game-affecting cosmetics", but assets which give you a competitive edge to those without the same tabs (or same number of tabs). Everything from how fast you can list your items, to how easily you can modify the pricing, information, etc. Buying a stash tab that costs the same as an entire DLC of several games, on top of that you need to "UPGRADE" it to "Premium" just so you can list your items ingame, without having to rely on External tools(which you still end up relying on to find more details on the item, price check, etc).

Hideouts MTX are a thing - When a large part of Player2player transactions include you having to visit the seller's hideout(99% of the time), you can rest assured there's a good enough people who don't buy vanity MTX just because it pleases themselves (like real life), they often buy it to wow other people who are forced to visit their hideouts. and a "Mano a Mano" exchange also compels the same people to buy more player Cosmetics to wow the people who are forced to physically show up in their proximity simply because they have an item worth purchasing.

THE SOLE REASON why GGG never once bothered to Make an Ingame Auction House, was not because "it's too hard to develop it" or "it will take so much time out of their schedule and they have ImPoRtAnT things to do (like release new MTX every week, often twice in a week, or more), It's SIMPLY BECAUSE OF $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. They have realized their archaic system has so many holes that people have to bend over backwards just to figure out ways in which they can somehow try to make it less worse than it is. And a lot of solutions GGG provides, oopsie, but at a $$$ cost.





I'm sorry to break it to you
Ultimately, PATH OF EXILE is PAY 2 WIN. Where currency = advantage. And Not spending IRL money on Storage facility = You Losing out on CURRENCY. I.E - P2W. It would stop being PAY2WIN, SOON AS THEY IMPLEMENTED A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD. BUT that is not as profitable as forcing people to buy stash if they don't want to lose out. So let's see If they Manage to make an ingame equalizer marketplace, or Die out before that happens. Cheerios!!!!


I'll be adding more Points as I remember, some surely slipped away for now.



sidenote -PLEASE AVOID REPLYING OUT OF A DEFENSIVE IMPULSE. Please AVOID RESPONDING OUT OF SYCOPHANTIC HABITS, TOO!
IF you have a valid Defense, I would like to see your take on it. Just avoid Base, impulsive "poo-flinging".


THANKS FOR READING!!!

Move to China and play PoE there so you get the AH you want. Problem solved. :=)

"

HanSoloDK wrote:

Move to China and play PoE there so you get the AH you want. Problem solved. :=)

That only solves the problem at an individual level. Also, you did not read it entirely. The "problem" is predatory financial gain practices. and the Chinese only have an AH because of how eff'd their Internet access is.

They didn't do it out of some altruistic desire. They did it simply because what they do in the rest of the world, just doesn't work under "Chinese Internet supervision".

So telling me to move to China is a good joke, but it ain't no solution lol.

Business attempts to make money, profound.

They didn't make a life-saving vaccine and charge sick people for it.

They made a video game for people to enjoy recreationally and monetized it. This shouldn't make you upset or drive you to write up some big rant on how you're the victim of predatory tactics. This shouldn't even be a conversation. It is totally expected and acceptable for them to make some money.

Imagine bitchin' about a free game lmao

Wait, what?! You're telling me they want to make money off those 60 bucks supporter packs they're selling me?! Fuck them, I thought I was just paying cost of material.

I really don't think that's the main concern though. Big money is obviously behind reskinning a (already ridiculously overpriced 26$) Cat and selling it for 27,5$ a piece. Also lootboxes.
Yes, they intend to clutter us, and that is fine to a degree. I still thing improvements to trade could be made without hampering their income...

Yet another lost soul thinking AH is the way to go, yet no succesful ARPG Hack'n Slash game has ever implemented an AH without serious controversy. Well, fuck history, right? Right. You know better. You know better than Blizzard. GGG. Schaefer #1 and #2, Brevik, Runic, Crate (I could go on).

You're right about one thing; the reason GGG haven't implemented an AH, isn't because it would take to long or that they aren't capable. The reason they haven't done it, is because an AH is a bad idea.

Now, is the current system perfect? FAR from. But still better than an AH.

And you know what you wrote about time zones? Well, that's the whole idea behind an online-only trading system; to limit the market, so everyone doesn't have access to everything all the time. And that's a GOOD thing.

Edit: I do understand that people find premium stash tabs P2W. I don't agree, but I respect the view. But to go as far as calling GGG's business model "predatory", when we all know the real bad examples out there, is just strange to me.

Why is AH a bad idea?

Just stating the OP has invalid points, becuz its free to play makes no sense lol....

We are all here because we enjoy the game (sure some will claim they dont, but its nonsense, no1 posts on forums of games they dont enjoy to a degree).

I hate the fact people can list items they dont intend to sale....

Example: I quitted meta league, but I did log onto my standard character and get msgs ppl want to buy meta league stuff.....an AH would have returned those items long time ago. But I for 1 at least msg those people back.....and I know I'm like the 5% of ppl who does that....

I spend more time msging people who dont respond than msging people who do msg back.....

I think there should be some improvements that will make the whole trading an less HATEFUL manor to socialize...which is it is for sometimes....

1. Make it so people cant list items without price. This just SHOULDNT be a thing
2. Make it so if an item thats prized doesnt get sold it is removed for X period (probebly 72 hours or so, including offline time here).

This will not help the underprizing snipers.
But it will help with the garbage people who put stuff into the market without ever wanting to sell it.....
I know theres some flaws, but just putting an item without wanting to search the real worth...is just like having a store without prize tags, like what?!?

They added premium tabs.

They added functional trade "API" what ever that means.

They added onsite trade listings.

You're wrong that they haven't changed trade in 5 years.

An AH is a bad idea because it makes items too available for people. They would no longer need to save items in stash tabs. They could sell it instead and later buy a similar or even better one of the AH. No more use for stash tabs.

Also, what players don't realize, is that the entire market would be flooded with items. You'd get "good enough" items for next to nothing. Only the best items would be priced... and you'd be priced out of them. You wouldn't be the rich person you think you would be. We can't all sell items and all become rich. It doesn't work. Someone has to be the base, and that base is you.

Always expect Shagsbeard to defend current trading system to the max. But I do understand why GGG isn't going to make any major changes. GGG has to be very careful to keep their financial gravy train running at top speed:



If GGG does anything to PoE trading that alters our gear chase, and thus our time spent grind playing PoE, then they could inadvertently crash their free-to-play business financial model and create a very serious disaster. Balancing the desires of players to get great builds that can destroy all content by acquiring great gear easier has to be carefully controlled so as to not allow a flood of more players easily racing into the upper 90s, getting bored, and quitting playing. GGG has to balance this very carefully to get us to play more hours. Doesn't work for many and I'm sure GGG has lost a shit ton of players over the years because of trade-chat mechanics but enough players do grind at least 1 build to 90+ each and every league and buy mtx along the way to keep them in the black and still be expanding (are they up to 140 employees now?).

So creating an arpg game that encourages saving lots of gear for our next build or just for hoarding in Standard (like my 23 Oni-Goroshi swords all self-farmed + 1 in Metamorph League) is just what GGG was hoping for to sell lots of stash tabs (that's why there is a Super Stash sale almost every 3 weeks). I'm sure the founders spent many hours debating/arguing over the best way to generate revenue before agreeing on making PoE free-to-play with stash tabs, supporter packs, pets, hideout decorations, other cosmetics, and mystery boxes (gambling) as purchases. And probably Chris had a few restless nights worrying over their decision to make PoE F2P as in "will there be enough players wanting/needing more stash space, wanting to bling out their exile to show off in town, and wanting to decorate their hideout" (hey GGG, aren't we due for another hideout decorating contest again?). The answer is a definite "YES" since Tencent was willing to buy 80% of GGG stock worth 100+ million NZD so the "how to make money with a free to play game" is a huge success for GGG, and we thank them for their efforts to give us such a huge arpg build sandbox to play in by buying mtx. And my Kiwi pet thanks GGG too (I make sure it gets plenty of Kiwi Chow).