In-Game Trade House/Post Idea (Player-Centric & Anti-Bot)

This is my idea for in-game Trade House/Post that I got after using current trade system as it is right now and after reading 7 years old Trade Manifesto. And of course after suffering through a couple scam attempts (one price at trade site and another, when you actually send whisper to the player) and more than enough item flipping cases. Do note, this is idea is not for an auction house, in trade house/post there should be no bidding, only fixed prices.

1. Fixed Price Lock
Once player puts item for sale, player should have about 15~30 minutes to modify sale parameters and/or cancel it altogether. After that item is locked for 24 hours from any changes and can be bought by anybody who has enough currency. Past 24-hour mark the listing can only be canceled.

2. Identifying Item Value
While player is placing item for sale, game should fetch costs of similar items, both from in-game trade post/house and from external trade website we're using today and present them in comfortable manner to the player. And if game sees that cost range of the item is very varied, for example from 1 exalt to 100 divines, it should advice player to link item in global chat and ask for the price.

3. Automation Prevention
There should be no exposed API that allows to purchase items remotely - all operations are strictly from within then game - any purchase request needs to be verified by the server that it is done strictly from within game client and any attempt of reverse engineering it should be permanent account ban.

4. Bot Countermeasures
This in-game Trade House/Post should be available from early on but only to playing player and not some empty alt. This is player-centric feature, not a trader convenience tool. Unlock conditions should randomized for each character. For example: 3~7 days since account creation, 6~48 hours since character creation and character needs to kill ~1000 mobs + ~10 mini-bosses + ~3 bosses, unlock ~15 chests, destroy ~25 pots, see ~3 belt drops & etc. Any random combination of these conditions for playing player will not matter, since it will come naturally. And of course, all conditions should be hidden from player completely and only known to the server, server in turn will only show show if unlock conditions are met or not. In my opinion, Trade House/Post and Currency Exchange should unlock at the same time for truly playing player.

5. Economy Protection
To prevent item flipping and price dumping, similar unlock limitations should apply any items (including processed spirit and skill gems - uncut gems and support gems should be treated just as one more type of currency, since support gems can't be altered). After item was purchased by the player from another player, it can't be sold in Trade House/Post, nor it will be listed on the trade website, unless it met its unlock limitations. For example: whilst item equipped (or in case of weapon - actually used), player might need to restore health from flasks ~15 times, kill ~250 mobs + 1 boss & etc. As in paragraph above, all unlock conditions are randomized and hidden from player, whilst server only shows if item can be traded in Trade House/Post and listed on the trade website. This should only apply to items purchased from other players. Found, crafted or purchased from NPC items can be traded from the get go. Exception should also include items that were purchased from player and got massively upgraded - how massively GGG should decide and fine tune on their end.

6. Currency Protection
Just like items, currency is also exposed to various price manipulations, but implementation of protection mechanisms is a little bit tricker in its case. My suggestion will be to monitor player currency operations in this way: if player just purchased currency, special cooldown is attached to this currency type for the player, but not enabled. If this currency is set to sell right after that at different price, all currency of this player on the account will be locked out for some time - and time lock will depend on how big transaction was. If somebody tries to be 'smart' and uses alts to sell the purchased currency, then that currency type should be locked for all accounts that participated in the scheme for the same amount of time.

Conclusion
I believe such approach will release all of us from requirements of using gold as transactions safety mechanism (yeah, I'm looking at Currency Exchange in case, if somebody lucky decided to sell mirror for exalts), whilst keeping trade comfortable strictly between players and making life an absolute nightmare for those who come for trade and/or economy manipulations in PoE2 instead of playing.

At the same time, if traders stick only to the trade website and player-to-player trade, and don't touch Currency Exchange and Trade House/Post - they aren't affected by any of the implemented algorithms and mechanisms, as they designed only to protect in-game Currency Exchange and Trade House/Post, and of course playing players that make use of them.

Those who want to play economy sim in PoE2 - sorry, wrong game nor ever was intended for such way of playing, since there is no means of retaliation, in case if you decided to ruin the economy. You have EVE Online for that with all the whistles and bells.

Original intent behind the Trade Manifesto is obvious as daylight - GGG wants players to focus on playing PoE itself instead of playing trade in PoE. GGG also wants to avoid unintended exploitation of the market and economy manipulation. And the whole idea of this post is to make trade comfortable for players that actually play PoE as intended, whilst making it absolute nightmare for everybody else.

If you have any suggestions, disagree with something, or the opposite - believe that limitations aren't strict enough - discussion is open and I'm here for it.

I don't think making trading anti-bot is a solvable problem.

You're thinking in APIs but the farmers do anything in game. The whole game can be automated. And they run dozens of bots in parallel per computer. They can have accounts as old as necessary, they will farm mobs/bosses and whatever you want them to "vet" an account.

You also seem to imply that flipping is somehow bad, which I totally disagree with. Buy low, sell high is the creed of a professional trader and should not be interfered with. Just know that it exists and don't get flipped yourself.

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Ankh_13#4218 wrote:

I don't think making trading anti-bot is a solvable problem.

Completely? No. At least not at this point. But it makes it solvable to major extent. I won't be delving into machine learning detection, since only Valve tests it right now, but this is something to look in the future. But eventually step-by-step it can be reduced to nearly zero.

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Ankh_13#4218 wrote:

You're thinking in APIs but the farmers do anything in game. The whole game can be automated. And they run dozens of bots in parallel per computer. They can have accounts as old as necessary, they will farm mobs/bosses and whatever you want them to "vet" an account.

The part with 'vetting' account is that only server knows what is needed to 'vet' it and nothing is exposed to player. Depending on GGG, some even more interesting mechanics can be implemented, such as hidden ban - i.e. bot trader creates yet another account, GGG algorithm sees that it is 100% bot trader and just makes 'vet' conditions impossible to complete - but trader will never discover it, since trader doesn't see conditions, but will waste a lot of time figuring it out.

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Ankh_13#4218 wrote:

You also seem to imply that flipping is somehow bad, which I totally disagree with. Buy low, sell high is the creed of a professional trader and should not be interfered with. Just know that it exists and don't get flipped yourself.

PoE isn't economy game, but an ARPG. If in your opinion game should have free market, it should be properly free and sandboxed. Which means players also should have other means of intervention in the market - for example: if somebody just flips items all day, other players should be able to raid that trader for flipped items and loot them.

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WarStalkeR#7616 wrote:

PoE isn't economy game, but an ARPG.

That's not true. The devs have said repeatedly that economy is an important part of the game.

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WarStalkeR#7616 wrote:

The part with 'vetting' account is that only server knows what is needed to 'vet' it and nothing is exposed to player.

You cannot have hidden rules allowing some to play and others not. Are you going to ban or shadowban a noob from selling his act 1 genuine mirror drop?

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WarStalkeR#7616 wrote:

PoE isn't economy game, but an ARPG.

Get back to the basics of Chris talking about what makes a good game. One of the fundamental pillars they decided upon was "secure online economy".

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WarStalkeR#7616 wrote:

If in your opinion game should have free market, it should be properly free and sandboxed. Which means players also should have other means of intervention in the market - for example: if somebody just flips items all day, other players should be able to raid that trader for flipped items and loot them.

You have all the means necessary to protect yourself, like knowledge that flippers exist and poe.ninja (which will, no doubt, exist for PoE 2) to price check.

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CooCooCaCha#5529 wrote:

That's not true. The devs have said repeatedly that economy is an important part of the game.

Important part to supplement the game itself. But not to replace the original game and make new game within the game. They stated it clearly in Trade Manifesto.

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Ankh_13#4218 wrote:

You cannot have hidden rules allowing some to play and others not. Are you going to ban or shadowban a noob from selling his act 1 genuine mirror drop?

I clearly described mechanism in the opening post. Noob selling found mirror won't be affected at all. If anything, noob will benefit very much. Also, noob won't have access to Currency Exchange this early on and will trade via official website. Currency protection is only valid for Currency Exchange. All player-to-player currency trades aren't affected.

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Ankh_13#4218 wrote:

Get back to the basics of Chris talking about what makes a good game. One of the fundamental pillars they decided upon was "secure online economy".

Yes, secure within confines of PoE as an ARPG. And this is idea strictly relies on it - make it more secure, both from scammers and from manipulators. And at the same time make it more comfortable for players - who truly play the game, as GGG intended.

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Ankh_13#4218 wrote:

You have all the means necessary to protect yourself, like knowledge that flippers exist and poe.ninja (which will, no doubt, exist for PoE 2) to price check.

Issue is not protecting myself (this one is not an issue at all), issue with somebody who buys gear purely for trade vs somebody who buys gear for actual playthrough. GGG clearly stated that they want players to play ARPG and not trade sim. And this idea is completely focused on this point. And flippers aren't playing ARPG, they're playing trade sim (or trying to) - opposite to GGG's intentions.

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WarStalkeR#7616 wrote:

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CooCooCaCha#5529 wrote:

That's not true. The devs have said repeatedly that economy is an important part of the game.

Important part to supplement the game itself. But not to replace the original game and make new game within the game. They stated it clearly in Trade Manifesto.

They said no such thing in the trade manifesto. The manifesto is primarily about the dangers of trade being too quick and easy. In fact they state multiple times how important trade is to the game.

I mean there's a section titled: "Items Matter. Trade is Important."

And they even say: "Players who don't engage in trade are at a significant progression disadvantage in Path of Exile."

This is a game where trade is important.

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CooCooCaCha#5529 wrote:

They said no such thing in the trade manifesto. The manifesto is primarily about the dangers of trade being too quick and easy. In fact they state multiple times how important trade is to the game.

They didn't said it word to word, however if you look at this quote:

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Trade Manifesto wrote:

Items are a player's reward for playing Path of Exile. They're the primary way of measuring progress in a league. A person with vastly more in-game wealth has often played longer than someone with a higher level character. They also matter because if a player had better items, then they'd be able to build more powerful characters, play harder content, and be viewed as richer and more successful within the game. The acquisition of items is why people play Action RPGs. Chances are, if you're reading this, you understand why it's important that items matter because your Path of Exile items mean a lot to you as well.

The intent and implication behind it is clear as the daylight. GGG want players to play ARPG first and foremost, whilst everything else is auxiliary and only exists to supplement main gameplay loop. Supplement it, but not replace - hence the emphasis.

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CooCooCaCha#5529 wrote:

I mean there's a section titled: "Items Matter. Trade is Important."

And they even say: "Players who don't engage in trade are at a significant progression disadvantage in Path of Exile."

This is a game where trade is important.

Trade is important supplementary part of the core gameplay loop, which is ARPG itself. Everything I wrote doesn't go against statements made in Trade Manifesto. And of course, since core gameplay loop is ARPG itself, in no way trade should replace it and become new gameplay loop instead. Of course, if you believe that somehow statement in Trade Manifesto imply that trade is more important than ARPG gameplay loop itself - I more than happy to discuss it.

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WarStalkeR#7616 wrote:

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Trade Manifesto wrote:

Items are a player's reward for playing Path of Exile. They're the primary way of measuring progress in a league. A person with vastly more in-game wealth has often played longer than someone with a higher level character. They also matter because if a player had better items, then they'd be able to build more powerful characters, play harder content, and be viewed as richer and more successful within the game. The acquisition of items is why people play Action RPGs. Chances are, if you're reading this, you understand why it's important that items matter because your Path of Exile items mean a lot to you as well.

The intent and implication behind it is clear as the daylight. GGG want players to play ARPG first and foremost, whilst everything else is auxiliary and only exists to supplement main gameplay loop. Supplement it, but not replace - hence the emphasis.

I think you're reading too much into that paragraph. Of course GGG want people to be able to get items by killing monsters, but I don't think they have a problem with people playing the economy to get items either.

Just a few sentences later they say:

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The ability to trade any item is a fundamental part of why people enjoy playing Path of Exile - if you're lucky, you can find amazing stuff that you can trade for all the items needed to create an entire new character build.

They're clearly ok with people progressing via the economy. The key is that you can only do so via luck or earning it by progressing another character and building wealth.

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CooCooCaCha#5529 wrote:

They're clearly ok with people progressing via the economy. The key is that you can only do so via luck or earning it by progressing another character and building wealth.

Yeah, they absolutely don't mind it. But they don't want players to play only economy, instead of ARPG. Imagine somebody only trades stuff all days long - flipping items, dumping prices & etc, instead of playing PoE 2. GGG don't want that. GGG want players to get better items (including via trade) in order to play harder/advanced maps.

And the whole idea behind this suggestion is to make trade for players that play ARPG comfortable and at the same time prevent traders (that only trade instead of playing ARPG) from exploiting it.