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

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K0m3k wrote:

I would like you to hear from you why a better trading system will ruin the game. Cause all I’m hearing is auction house = bad period no explanation.

Then you haven't read my posts in this thread. I've explained everything. Sure, I can do it again for your convenience/laziness.

1. "Better trading system"
I'm not opposed to a better trading system. I actually do want a better trading system. But I do NOT want an automated AH. Especially not something that works offline. YOU are the one doing the trades, and this is how it should be in my eyes. Very few people are claiming that an AH will "ruin the game". But it WILL ruin the game for some players - indirectly.

2. "Limitation"
In Path of Exile, you have A LOT of different players within the same ecosystem. Non-traders playing with their friends, uber-traders viewing PoE as economy simulator and everything in between. The problem with the D3 AH wasn't only the RM part. EVERYTHING was balanced around the AH and how accessible it was. Needless to say, the AH was a VERY (too?) important part of the balance equation.

In Path of Exile, as in all loot-based games with trade, drop rates are balanced around trading. It's a scale. The easier/more accessible/in-your-face trade gets, the more ('negative') effect it will have on the rates/balance decisions. Maybe not right away, but 'certainly' in the future, when all implementations/decisions are made with an AH in mind.

This will not hurt the uber-traders. They are already OK with getting all their gear from trades. But not everyone is OK with that, and the game has to make room for all players. There's no (known) way around it; the easier/more accessible trade gets, the more required it gets, and the more devalued your play time gets when it comes to looting. And "trade is already required" is a BS statement. Trade is NOT required in PoE ATM. It's required to do certain things, but those certain things are not required to do.

If we look at ALL ARPG ('Hack'n Slash') games throughout the HISTORY, trade is ALWAYS a hot topic, and VERY few games in the genre have huge, automated systems. That is not because the developers are unable to implement a feature like that, it's because they are unwilling. Why? Partly because of the reasons I've already mentioned. Trade need limitations to give value to playing. And it needs limitation to preserve the economy.

It's VERY naive to think that an AH with automated trade will only affect trade. It will affect everything, especially in the long run.

As I've also said before: As long as they require you to be online to trade, and that YOU yourself make the trades, I really don't care what they do about the trading system. Why they haven't implemented the trade search engine into the game is a question for the ages. And "when" they do that, they can remove the public API and remove live searches. These three steps should be done now.

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Phrazz wrote:

If we look at ALL ARPG ('Hack'n Slash') games throughout the HISTORY, trade is ALWAYS a hot topic, and VERY few games in the genre have huge, automated systems. That is not because the developers are unable to implement a feature like that, it's because they are unwilling. Why? Partly because of the reasons I've already mentioned.

Uhm... Eve Online?

Space sim, but it's still just hack and slash... and trade...
It's trade system is so complex that top tier colleges have entire *courses* studying how it operates to understand how the real world financial systems operate (they can, and have, actually done experiments within the Eve economy to watch what happens and predict how similar situations will affect real world global economies) and how trade systems work in online games.

Still ppl think auction house is bad for the game because a manifesto written twenty years ago? Damn the humanity...

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BlaqWolf wrote:

Uhm... Eve Online?

Did you just...? Ok.

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ivkoto77777 wrote:

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Phrazz wrote:

D3 launched with an AH. It WAS the center of everything. Playing the game was so devalued, that AH was more or less required for 90% of the players. Players DEMANDED change, because of the AH's position was too strong, Blizzard caved - overreacted - and removed everything. What they shoul've done, is implementing some kind of limitations.

Sounds like you are talking about PoE. The last time i used an item that dropped for me and didn't buy from another player was somewhere around 2013. This game is entirely based around trading and not killing monsters in order to get loot.
PoE is in almost the same position, but with shitty and frustrading trading. Nothing better about it than the AH version of D3. If they go ahead and skip directly to the RoS version of d3 I'd be glad, but I've never heard GGG going that route.

Yes the game expects you to do some trading

You are unlikely to find an item that you can use but you are very likely to eventually find something someone else can use, sell it and but the thing you need

With an AH and trade being easy and quick more things gets listed and when the market inflates with items value drop. the current system keeps it off the market by seller having to be online, difficulty evaluating the item, getting bothered while mapping, having to do the trade.


Now the only way without adding limits to trade or items and maintain value with an AH is to do what D3 did, reduce droprates, and that means it needs to be rare enough that 50 000-100 000 players do not find one often enough to push the price down. you are unlikely to find anything that rare yourself and now you dont make any currency selling what you do find to buy that thing you do want

Edit: find it often enough that supply outweights demand. but also keep in mind that this isnt water and bread we are talking. these items stay in game and can be resold, and demand can saturate

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Nidal wrote:

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ivkoto77777 wrote:

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Phrazz wrote:

D3 launched with an AH. It WAS the center of everything. Playing the game was so devalued, that AH was more or less required for 90% of the players. Players DEMANDED change, because of the AH's position was too strong, Blizzard caved - overreacted - and removed everything. What they shoul've done, is implementing some kind of limitations.

Sounds like you are talking about PoE. The last time i used an item that dropped for me and didn't buy from another player was somewhere around 2013. This game is entirely based around trading and not killing monsters in order to get loot.
PoE is in almost the same position, but with shitty and frustrading trading. Nothing better about it than the AH version of D3. If they go ahead and skip directly to the RoS version of d3 I'd be glad, but I've never heard GGG going that route.

Yes the game expects you to do some trading

You are unlikely to find an item that you can use but you are very likely to eventually find something someone else can use, sell it and but the thing you need

With an AH and trade being easy and quick more things gets listed and when the market inflates with items value drop. the current system keeps it off the market by seller having to be online, difficulty evaluating the item, getting bothered while mapping, having to do the trade.


Now the only way without adding limits to trade or items and maintain value with an AH is to do what D3 did, reduce droprates, and that means it needs to be rare enough that 50 000-100 000 players do not find one often enough to push the price down. you are unlikely to find anything that rare yourself and now you dont make any currency selling what you do find to buy that thing you do want

Edit: find it often enough that supply outweights demand. but also keep in mind that this isnt water and bread we are talking. these items stay in game and can be resold, and demand can saturate

For the hundredth time, only items that are already worthless will lose value, good items will keep their value (because there is demand for them because they are good), an AH might even increase the demand of these items since people will consider more frequently to change their gear for small increments since it will be a less shit experience to do so.

An AH will not make people change their filters and grab more rare items(increase supply) from the ground, because as i said shit items will have no value so you just vendor them, and since 99,9% of the items you drop are shit, there is no point on bothering picking them from the ground, this doesn't change with an AH. And even if it happens, it's a win for GGG that has been trying to make people pick shit from the ground for years.

We already have all the flaws of an AH (sniping, price fixing, large scale market manipulations, etc) and some that are actually corrected by an AH (listing without intent of selling, inflating the number of items in the economy, sleight of hand scams, etc). We just don't have any of the Pros of an AH outside of searching parameters.

For example i never played a game with an AH that allowed me to create a live search to snipe items lol.

Edit: And also a community that sees Bots as saviors, that should raise a red flag somewhere xD

Those items already are worthless, whats going to be effected are the kind of items that currently range from a few chaos to a few exalt. those are items the average player will find in a league but either cant be bothered the hassle to sell or simply dont know the value of and leave in the stash (again, loot filter pinged the item but youll check the value later-never-) crafting bases and so on

the lowest end it already at rock bottom and the high end is already either used or traded and if it was one of a kind before its one of a kind with an AH too.

and while we both speculate, again there is a practical example that went exactly like this. cannot disregard that out of convenience

aaaaand the fact that in all these years nobody has pulled it off and maintaned an economy while it sounds so good to have quick easy trade
they all get around it by trade and item limitations

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Nidal wrote:

Those items already are worthless, whats going to be effected are the kind of items that currently range from a few chaos to a few exalt. those are items the average player will find in a league but either cant be bothered the hassle to sell or simply dont know the value of and leave in the stash (again, loot filter pinged the item but youll check the value later-never-) crafting bases and so on

the lowest end it already at rock bottom and the high end is already either used or traded and if it was one of a kind before its one of a kind with an AH too.

and while we both speculate, again there is a practical example that went exactly like this. cannot disregard that out of convenience

So you agree at least that an AH would bring more balance towards high end and low end player since as you said yourself some players have really good items that "cant be bothered the hassle to sell" or "dont know the value of and leave in the stash", supposing that players would be able to sell those items for 100c now, and an AH cut it`s price for 90% (for some reason) they would sell it for 10c, which is 10c more than what they get now (0 chaos) because they "don`t bother to interact with the current trade system".

One thing that is really important in these discussions is that we can`t really consider people that don`t trade (because they don`t want to), we must always assume that if trade exists it`s being used. GGG consider that when creating their new contents that you can`t really access without trading (chayula breachs, 5 ways, Uber atziri, Shaper, Elder and Uber elder now, etc), all those items drop rates were designed with people trading for them (they don`t consider at any time, when generating drop rates, how shit it`s to trade for them, they just consider that you will definitely trade for them).

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Mortyx wrote:

One thing that is really important in these discussions is that we can`t really consider people that don`t trade (because they don`t want to), we must always assume that if trade exists it`s being used. GGG consider that when creating their new contents that you can`t really access without trading (chayula breachs, 5 ways, Uber atziri, Shaper, Elder and Uber elder now, etc), all those items drop rates were designed with people trading for them (they don`t consider at any time, when generating drop rates, how shit it`s to trade for them, they just consider that you will definitely trade for them).

Wrong!

We must assume (or know, because GGG have said so several times) that there must be room for everyone within the same ecosystem. Players only trading, players not trading and everything in between. Hell, they've even said that they don't want the "gap" between trading players and non-trading players to be "too big".

And you can "easily" experience all those fights without trading. You can't FARM them over and over again, but I have never traded for a breach stone or a legion fragment in my life, and I've ran several of them each league since they got implemented. This "trading is required" thing is getting out of hand. It's like people are incapable of playing the damn game, and taking advantage of the tools/opportunities we have outside of trade without trading 24/7.

A trading system does so much more than just "letting you sell and buy items". It's directly linked to every progression/difficulty element in the game, and WILL affect it. PLAYING the game HAS to feel rewarding (within reasons) WITHOUT having to trade a lot. As of now, the game DOES feel rewarding (within reason) without trading MUCH. That balance need to be kept.

keep on going guys...

i wonder what would happen if ggg improved pc trading and the solution would be worse than what we have now?

why would they want to make it worse?

1) well, they stated that the effectiveness of the current trading system is much too high

2) they said, that if they ever change the trading system, it's either "comfortable search" OR "comfortable item exchange"


combined with the experience of 8 years of nerfs and "careful approaches" of ggg tackling things (not neccessarily a negative thing), the players who don't want the current system improved are not needlessly wrong.

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i loled at the suggestion of "limiting stuff" like items you can place at trade platforms.
why? because it implies we need to have to register by credit card to effectively limit access.
well, not the worst idea i would say.