Trade Manifesto

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

my post was all responding to people who had made posts to me, and was all points all the way down. you just dont want to digest them because they dont agree with your take on things and you cant debate them.

His point was, you said a lot of words, but there wasn't a lot of meaning. You make bold, baseless statements with zero evidence to back it up. Not even a simple comparison to a similar game in the genre.

"you think that with easier trade everyone would trade? Trust me many players will never trade, ever, you can take that statement to the bank."
I took it to the bank, but the bank was AFK. RIP

I'm going to go out on a limb, and say you probably haven't played many online games, especially ARPGs. If more than 90% of your playerbase has no economical interaction between each other, that's bad. That's so atypical, it's not even close to comparable to any other game that allows trade. It means that either trade is extremely restrictive, or it offers no benefit to the average player.

Trade isn't difficult, it's tedious. That's the problem. It takes zero brain power to execute a trade, but it takes exceptional amounts of *time*, and as time is a resource, and many of us have very limited time, that takes away from our chances to play. It literally removes us from the game. That is the fundamental problem.

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SlaserX wrote:

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SudianX wrote:

Star wars galaxies was amazing. I liked being able to search for items, travel to people's houses and then shop. It was time consuming (Fast travel to the planet, just a loading screen, but then ride a speeder all the way to the house, always varied on real estate location). But then I would be checking out their decorations and browsing other vendors to make impulse purchases.

And of course, the seller did not need to be online, let alone present. Did it spoil the economy? Not at all. It was not "easy" as in quick (neither gaining currency to spend nor the actual shopping), but it was fun. Time-consuming is never a bad thing if it is fun!

Spoiler

My personal opinion: using POE's in-game chat is not fun. Using gambling orbs is not fun.

Gambling for items by slaying monsters... hey there is the fun!

Even hoarding currency for spending on a trade would be fun... if... it were from slaying monsters. Having trade that is "too easy" being a thing to be afraid of... baffles my mind. When done gearing up my character I would not stop playing. I would... you guessed it... go slay monsters. I take a break from playing every other AARPG from time to time because I get bored. But never this one. This one it is always frustration. Rarely I think to myself of it as a break so much as a rage-quit. Not exactly a good take-away...

True, but let's be real, you can't compare the best online game ever made with PoE. SWG had an ingame AH system too, but it took a % of the sales to make up for the convenience. When you were a high-end produer (Master Weaponsmith/Chef here), that takes a huge chunk out of profits, so of course you want to set up your own merchants.

It's really really basic, give people options, but incentivize one over the other.

(I seriously love SWG, there's a reason I still hang around the emu scene. I am the worst at walking into a mall and not buying things, whether I need them or not hah)

SWG design was light-years ahead of it's time, sadly, Sony butchered the game by launching it when it was still in an Alpha state.

SWG galactic trade had a maximum value of 10,000 credits, high-end items cost hundreds of thousands or millions of credits, it was a brilliant system that allowed traders to sell low value items (gear wore out with use), it was relatively easy to make low value items and could make solid stuff with common materials. It was a good high volume system to move useful gear to newer players but to get high quality gear you had to find a crafter who made great gear. It was an elegant system, it was easy to make low-end stuff but to make high end stuff required a significant amount of experimentation and exploration for high quality resources. You knew the good crafters by name. You knew where they lived, you often had to get them to make custom orders and the economy was always relatively balanced because it had a scarcity system where the higher end resources were exceptionally hard to find.

You can't compare something of that scope with a simplistic ARPG loot system.

Something that the devs need to look at, to make finding gear in PoE more interesting, more rewarding to find a lot of the gear you need yourself. There will always be demand for trading, however, nothing beats finding great items yourself.

I think the speed we kill and the number of items that are generated make it just too cumbersome to wade through all that junk. There would likely be numerous multi-exalt pieces that rot on the floor that are never identified because there is too much junk, too low a probability. It is not worth identifying everything for the few items you miss.

I normally just pickup whatever junk I find on the way for the first 40-50 levels, then buy items I know will get me through yellow mapping and will eventually buy something for end-game, i think my natural progression of gear or steady streams of upgrades comes to an abrupt halt. Especially when it comes to the chest where it isn't trivial to 6L, you aren't going to go from one chest piece to another for a marginal stat improvement.

This is ridiculous.

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The significant differences in character power and player progression caused by trade has already created a situation where Path of Exile is very hard for some players and quite easy for others. Some people never stand a chance of seeing some of the Atlas of Worlds content, while others can rather quickly defeat it and are looking for new challenges. We're tentatively okay with the degree to which this occurs currently, but it would be much worse if trading were made substantially easier.

You do realize that the reason why some players don't trade is that it's a pain in the ass to deal with, don't you?
They don't trade because with the limited they have they would rather do something that's actually fun. Like playing an ARPG, not deal with an (intentionally) shitty trade system.
If trading didn't suck there would still be a difference in power and player progression. But I very much think it would actually be smaller, not bigger.
If you're so concerned with the no-lifers you could limit the good trading system to one buy-transaction per day. That way the casuals would finally have a pleasant system while the 5% still have an artificial roadblock in their way.

Anyway, I've been around long enough to have seen this before. The loot allocation system was intentionally shitty. Eventually you gave in and the game has benefited greatly from that.
To me it's just a matter of time before you realize you're wrong and how many players you lose in the meantime.

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SlaserX wrote:

"you think that with easier trade everyone would trade? Trust me many players will never trade, ever, you can take that statement to the bank."
I took it to the bank, but the bank was AFK. RIP

theres ssf leagues, theres many people on this forum like annuhart who have been here since day 1 and have never traded, will never trade, point blank refuse to trade under any circumstances ever. Its not a debatable statement, its not even close to debatable, it is an obvious statement of fact that anyone looking at the situation with a half way logical, even slightly informed take on things will instantly see as a statement of undeniable fact. Theres people in this very thread saying trade shouldnt exist and that self found is the only way the game should be played. Im gonna humor you this one time by responding, but Im not gonna debate with people who cant accept a statement as obvious as the earth is round not flat and the moon is not made of cheese.

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SlaserX wrote:

I'm going to go out on a limb, and say you probably haven't played many online games, especially ARPGs.

Im 36 years old, Ive been playing games since the late 80s, I played quake 2 deathmatch online when quake 2 was the most cutting edge game on the pc. I bought diablo 1 within a few months of it being released.

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SlaserX wrote:

If more than 90% of your playerbase has no economical interaction between each other, that's bad.

when did it become more than 90% has no economical interaction? As I said in my other post, the one that has no points yet has a point that responds to something you have now typed since, its a f2p game. Have you seen graphs like these?




and these are for people who actually have a challenge. Most players dont trade? Yeah, not surprising seeing as the devs have stated before now that most players never get past brutus in act1. People will pick up a game like this, play it for 20 mins, 2 hours, 5 hours, 10 hours and then leave, download another f2p game and play that, then another. Lots of people are gonna be in that camp, those people are not going to trade, most people who are heavy duty traders are not going to trade within 5 hours of a new league. Regular trading is an endgame activity and in a free to play game most players are not going to get to endgame at all, of those that do there is a significant subset who will never trade under any circumstances because they are playing the game to find loot. They essentially want an offline solo experience and would be playing an offline solo mode if that was an option.

The majority of those players who dont trade right now will not trade with an automated instant buyout auctionhouse in the game because they eiher do not play the game long enough to engage in trade or they simply do not want to trade.

should they shut down poe.trade and bring their own indexer into the game? Yeah sure, of course they should do that imo. Will that mean that theres people right now who dont engage in trade who will engage? Of course. Is that a good thing? Yes, and I havent argued against any of those things in this thread or any other thread.

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Trade isn't difficult, it's tedious. That's the problem. It takes zero brain power to execute a trade, but it takes exceptional amounts of *time*, and as time is a resource, and many of us have very limited time, that takes away from our chances to play. It literally removes us from the game. That is the fundamental problem.

and yet in this thread, so many people complaining about looting, how looting is so substandard compared to trade that a small amount of time spent trading reaps way bigger rewards than an unthinkable amount of time playing. Do you think that is a problem? What impact on that situation do you think having far easier trade would have? Because I think the case is clearly there that looking at the resource of time, trades rewards for time spent are already too big compared to lootings rewards per unit of time spent. I think the case for that is fairly robust, that its already too far towards trade. If I want an item right now I can tab to a web browser, search for it, whisper the guy and have the item in under a minute, is that an exceptional amount of time?

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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SlaserX wrote:

"you think that with easier trade everyone would trade? Trust me many players will never trade, ever, you can take that statement to the bank."
I took it to the bank, but the bank was AFK. RIP

theres ssf leagues, theres many people on this forum like annuhart who have been here since day 1 and have never traded, will never trade, point blank refuse to trade under any circumstances ever. Its not a debatable statement, its not even close to debatable, it is an obvious statement of fact that anyone looking at the situation with a half way logical, even slightly informed take on things will instantly see as a statement of undeniable fact. Theres people in this very thread saying trade shouldnt exist and that self found is the only way the game should be played. Im gonna humor you this one time by responding, but Im not gonna debate with people who cant accept a statement as obvious as the earth is round not flat and the moon is not made of cheese.

Highly Ethical Vegan SSF BTW
90+% > 1 person (cmon, that's basic maths)
Conflating a very small minority with more than 90% of the game is either stupid or deceptive. I honestly can't tell which.
(I never said that with 'easy' trade that *EVERYONE* would trade btw, but the numbers would be much much better than 90%)

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SlaserX wrote:

I'm going to go out on a limb, and say you probably haven't played many online games, especially ARPGs.

Im 36 years old, Ive been playing games since the late 80s, I played quake 2 deathmatch online when quake 2 was the most cutting edge game on the pc. I bought diablo 1 within a few months of it being released.

Clap clap! Two games in 25 years? Not too shabby of a history! So literally your entire basis of comparison is Diablo, I figured. You know ARPGs are one of the fastest growing genres of games today? There are hundreds of titles to choose from, I highly suggest checking some other games out.

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SlaserX wrote:

If more than 90% of your playerbase has no economical interaction between each other, that's bad.

when did it become more than 90% has no economical interaction? As I said in my other post, the one that has no points yet has a point that responds to something you have now typed since, its a f2p game. Have you seen graphs like these?




and these are for people who actually have a challenge. Most players dont trade? Yeah, not surprising seeing as the devs have stated before now that most players never get past brutus in act1. People will pick up a game like this, play it for 20 mins, 2 hours, 5 hours, 10 hours and then leave, download another f2p game and play that, then another. Lots of people are gonna be in that camp, those people are not going to trade, most people who are heavy duty traders are not going to trade within 5 hours of a new league. Regular trading is an endgame activity and in a free to play game most players are not going to get to endgame at all, of those that do there is a significant subset who will never trade under any circumstances because they are playing the game to find loot. They essentially want an offline solo experience and would be playing an offline solo mode if that was an option.

Yes, this is fairly normal, especially in f2p games. GGG should be focusing on player retention though. That's kind of the point. Keep gamers around and you will make more money, but they really don't seem to care about that.

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The majority of those players who dont trade right now will not trade with an automated instant buyout auctionhouse in the game because they eiher do not play the game long enough to engage in trade or they simply do not want to trade.

Jumping conclusion bias.

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should they shut down poe.trade and bring their own indexer into the game? Yeah sure, of course they should do that imo. Will that mean that theres people right now who dont engage in trade who will engage? Of course. Is that a good thing? Yes, and I havent argued against any of those things in this thread or any other thread.

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Trade isn't difficult, it's tedious. That's the problem. It takes zero brain power to execute a trade, but it takes exceptional amounts of *time*, and as time is a resource, and many of us have very limited time, that takes away from our chances to play. It literally removes us from the game. That is the fundamental problem.

and yet in this thread, so many people complaining about looting, how looting is so substandard compared to trade that a small amount of time spent trading reaps way bigger rewards than an unthinkable amount of time playing. Do you think that is a problem? What impact on that situation do you think having far easier trade would have? Because I think the case is clearly there that looking at the resource of time, trades rewards for time spent are already too big compared to lootings rewards per unit of time spent. I think the case for that is fairly robust, that its already too far towards trade. If I want an item right now I can tab to a web browser, search for it, whisper the guy and have the item in under a minute, is that an exceptional amount of time?

I agree with that, it is much easier to buy an item from someone than it is to loot one, because the loot table is so wide, and quite frankly dumb (in a literal sense). The odds of you looting anything worthwhile is slim to none because the game will throw everything at you, regardless of if it could ever be used by you... that's why trade is so powerful in the game. Typical other ARPGs, you will loot great items that upgrade you constantly.
Under a minute is doubtful. Especially late in a league (past the first few weeks), there is literally no incentive for anyone to sell cheap items (~1 alch), because the time they spend selling it will render the less profit than the time spent killing. As leagues, and characters progress, that bar gets farther away until you're in the several C range. Don't have exactly the right item you need? Good luck! RNG is super great for that sort of thing! Just starting a league? Too bad.

If you want to understand why some people object to trade as it is now, do an experiment. Go but 100 of the same unique map. It doesn't even matter which one. Just buy 100. Odds are, you will spend more time buying maps than you will spend running them. This is something that would take a handful of minutes at best in any other game (with trade like we aren't in the year 2000 anymore).

As a player who has been here since the Beta and felt all the pain related to the trading in this game, I have to say that I`m disappointed.

Let's make it clear, it is your game, your system, you've built it from a scrap and now you are literally saying that you don't know how to make an improvement to the trading system. Is easy gearing an issue? You can't create a logic that will prevent bots from instant buying? I`m sorry, what?
Are you really happy that game economy is controlled by flippers?
As you said: "Most players who play Path of Exile never trade." really show how effective trading system is.
I`m one of these 10% players who are trading, some seasons I was more active, some less. But still I did, and it was painful always and most disappointing for me personally is the fact that you are keeping the trading design as is. Adding few non-essential changes to API that is used mostly by indexers anyway.

Thanks for new poe.trade, i hope it will be as good or better in future.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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Saevan wrote:

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.

completely disagree. No one outside of standard league is maxed out, and even there its less than 0.001% of players. Easier trade wont make the masses catch up, it will enable super easy flipping, it will enable insanely efficient bot sniping and the market will be even more pushed towards the tiny minority who really play the markets. Normal people will not catch up, the masses can easily trade right now by using poe.trade, its easy anyone can do it. Most people who dont trade will not trade under any circumstances, easier trade will not allow them to catch up because they will simply never ever trade. It will however make the very top fraction of a % super rich by allowing them to flip and bot 50x more items per day, and everyone who trades will have a power boost, leaving the crowd who will never trade no matter what left even further behind.

I think youre seeing what u want to see, not whats really there.

Whats the difference in killing Shaper in 8 seconds on a 20-50ex budget or in 3 seconds on a 1k ex budget? I don't understand the point in the "maxing" out a character that is useless when it hits 100 either way.

Also the top tier rolls of items will continue to rise so the items people pay 500ex+ for now will be useless when higher tiers are released anyway. There's a reason why you can get ilvl100 items and it's more than likely to pave the way to higher tiers of rolls and the possibility of them releasing an ever higher endgame in the future where you will pass another barrier of -res and perhaps even armor/block/eva reductions.

Besides that, comparing anything to standard/hardcore is a really poor argument.

Back to the trade topic: I'll be happy when the trading for currency is instant so that people can't control the currency market simply by putting stupid prices and fake being online and be able to keep their currency. With a change so that you have to "lock in" the currency you want to trade and perhaps have a grace period before it becomes available to buy but then the trade should be instant.

As some people mentioned, a vendor you give your currency and set a price for trade and when the grace period is passed people can buy it in the same vendor.
This way no one can fake a currency 'auction' to try and change the market.

Some feedback from an economics perspective...

You don't manage the amount of currency in the economy by creating the world's crappiest banking system. You do it by turning off the printing presses and managing interest rates. Your point on easy trade makes sense in the terms of balancing the economy of the game and trying to manage inflation. But consider all of the factors...

There are four factors at play in your manifesto:

1) Currency Value - new items and content increase the total currency in play and have the potential to devalue or increase the value existing currency by increasing or decreasing the useful end game items.

2) Currency Volume - the speed at which the printing press moves...these are the drops rates, durations of leagues, races, etc.

3) Liquidity/Velocity - This is the trade market - the ability to transact with other players to create value from assets.

4)Interest rates - these are effectively set to below zero outside of any permanent league as the value of holding currency continually declines over time.

The manifesto declares that the best way to manage the economy is by focusing on #3, reducing the overall velocity of the economy by addressing player liquidity or a players ability to turn an asset into something of value.


In the PC version you reduce liquidity by forcing a real time market. Assymetric information is minimized due sites such as POE trade, and item searchability enables the market (players) to quickly value assets and priace them fairly. While disabling offline trading does reduce the speed of the market, rational pricing and a clear catalog of market items keeps things moving. Player communication is also much more simple which enables the player base to more easily overcome the lack of offline trading.

The PC trading market is akin to an Amazon market that is only open for a set time every day.


In the Xbox version you reduce liquidity by adjusting every other factor in the economy that impacts liquidity and velocity. Assymertrical information and an inability to identify and value goods for trade slow the economy to a crawl. (you can literally spend more time on the trade board some days looking for an item than you do playing the game because you need a specific improvement to get over the next content hurdle and frankly as your ability to improve requires more specific improvements than likelihood of RNG solving those issues decreases and it reduces playtime) The value of effective communications via totally anonymous trades and lack of a trade chat only compound this issue.

If the PC version is Amazon with set open and close hours then the Xbox market a 24 garage sale run by a city of pack rats.


This difference in approach has very real effects on the Xbox version:

1) Builds are Unique heavy - not because they are better builds; its because they have unique graphics that help identify the items. Finding a useful rare takes 20X longer than finding a perfect unique

2) There is no market for Jewels - If you want to trade for jewlels be prepared to spend 4 hours at the garget sale to find something useful...then hope the person is willing to sell it or has set a price. The markets for jewelry is nearly as bad.

3) Gaming sessions are often interrupted...instead of scheduling trades on the players' schedule; players are constantly responding to trade messages and hopping in and out of maps. Which by the way...those trades might not be there after you zone out of the map, use a waypoint to the market and go through 2 minutes of loading screens.



The point of this is the levers you pull to address the ease of trade dont all have the same impact. I WANT to spend less time at the trade board and more time playing the game and progressing my characters and trying new builds. The right balance of trade encourages that without creating massive inflation. The Xbox implementation however isn't there right now.

Wow, thanks for that. I really liked to read that actually :)

Trading and Global chat are where i get to communicate with people and i really like if they talk a bit more than "Hi, i would like to buy..." and "Ty" ^^

If poeple talk to me in a nice way, not like a robot or copy paste, iam also willing to accept offers they made because its not about profit, its about having fun together.
Some poeple have so much fun making profit for their builds that they are willing to remove this experience.

I dont wanna miss it! :)


GL HF Lacky out ;)