Trade Manifesto

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castanedalad wrote:

I would advise re-reading trade manifesto, to all who complains that much, the first post in that thread.
Coding easy trade is not hard, but it will kill the fun of finding items and will hurt the economy.
Trading is hard intentionally.

There is room to improve, for example they can replace third party search apps with ingame search.
But the rest, like party invites and that stuff is intentional. And probably should stay.

I disagree wholeheartedly with this statement. Trading is not hard. It's a bother. You have an option here: spam 10-20 people for an item you need, or go SSF. Expensive items are in a decent place regarding the trade, but an online game, imho, should not rely on 3rd party websites and apps to make the game experience enjoyable. There needs to be a balance. Farming your atlas in the beginning of a league takes a long time, especially if you don't min-max with elder/shaper influence etc. and in order to save time (Which some of us don't have an infinite amount of) you go on a trading site that leaves you completely frustrated.

So you're stuck with 2 really bad options of progress: Either grind for a very long time (and eventually get bored in most cases), or spend a lot of time whispering afk people or people who don't respond because the trade API isn't working and the items have been sold hours ago.

It's not fun either to farm for an item for weeks and by the time you get it, you're bored of your character and want to make a new one. And it's almost more frustrating to spam a bunch of AFK people for the specific item you need, even though it takes a fraction of the time to grind it. No matter how you put it, it's simply not fun to work towards 1 item for weeks, especially if you could have it in 15 minutes if you spam enough people.

Either remove trade league or own up to it and create a working system that does not rely on third party sites and apps. Don't create half a game.

I'm really pleased to see people making reasoned posts regarding the state of trade and not simply deferring to the "trade manifesto" as some kind of bible to be worshipped and not questioned.

Hopefully as more new players share their thoughts and experiences regarding how bad the trade system is, something might actually change for the better regarding trade.

For me, I'm just hoping for a new POE clone with a decent trading system. Playing POE has become like playing a computer game that constantly starts crashing halfway through. I start a league, play till I can't put up with the trade any more and then stop. I don't think I'll be back next league and even if I am, I definitely won't be spending any more money on it.

Trading isn't hard, it's more annoying then hard. So you lost me with the whole trading isn't meant to be easy thing. Nothing in a game should be so annoying you just abstain from it even tho you can do it.

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Chris wrote:

Easy trade would make the disparity between different players too great
Both of the above points are even worse when you consider that the level of engagement with trade varies substantially from player to player. Most players who play Path of Exile never trade. Out of the players who do trade, most only complete a few trades in a league. The subset of players who regularly trade strongly overlaps with our core reddit and forum communities. Chances are, if you're reading this, then you're one of the top 10% of players in terms of engagement with advanced systems. The difference in magnitude of trading (and hence item acquisition and progress) between non/low-traders and heavy traders is gigantic. While a regular player would be lucky to accumulate a small handful of Exalted Orbs in a league, a trader might reach hundreds in the same timeframe. This enables them to fully-gear Shaper-capable characters while the non-trader is still in mid-tier maps or lower.

this is just wrong. Only a few people trade because it's an anti fun, annoying chore atm, and they want to have fun while playing the game instead of whispering to afk traders. If trading stops being a chore, more people will start trading. Only those who play SSF won't.

I haven't played the whole game since the open Beta so I am pretty new to the game.
For a game that is trade based I found it surprising that they rely on third party websites to do this for them. Not sure if they just do now know on how to implement a good tradepost or they are not interested in doing so because it will make them no money at all doesn't really matter to me.

You lost me, i want to play a game not play a trade :)

IF GGG start do something with bots - it will be HUGE improvement to game!

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NemoJr wrote:

Because people couldn't find decent items by simply playing the game, they flocked to the AH, and because everyone and their mother geared their character from the AH, the devs became obsessed with the idea of "preserving the health of the economy" which prevented them from improving drop rates of desirable items. I'm sure you can see the problem here.

I wish, just for once, a developer would simply buck this philosophy, stop obsessively worrying about items being too easy to acquire, and let the players have fun in their own way, with no strings attached, instead of feeling like they have to stay on top of emerging trends and currency exchange rates and all that BS. There's a website dedicated to PoE currency exchange rates FFS. I thought this was an ARPG where we kill monsters and get loot. This is madness. I just want to play this game you made. LET ME PLAY YOUR GAME.

Items that are easy to acquire, are worthless. I have the feeling a lot of players want an environment similar as to what happened to diablo 2. Massive cheating and duping caused items there to be worthless and everyone and their grandma was having their "little fun" playing all the best builds straight away. GGG doesn't want that to happen. They care about items.

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Reinhart wrote:

Spoiler

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NemoJr wrote:

Because people couldn't find decent items by simply playing the game, they flocked to the AH, and because everyone and their mother geared their character from the AH, the devs became obsessed with the idea of "preserving the health of the economy" which prevented them from improving drop rates of desirable items. I'm sure you can see the problem here.

I wish, just for once, a developer would simply buck this philosophy, stop obsessively worrying about items being too easy to acquire, and let the players have fun in their own way, with no strings attached, instead of feeling like they have to stay on top of emerging trends and currency exchange rates and all that BS. There's a website dedicated to PoE currency exchange rates FFS. I thought this was an ARPG where we kill monsters and get loot. This is madness. I just want to play this game you made. LET ME PLAY YOUR GAME.

Items that are easy to acquire, are worthless. I have the feeling a lot of players want an environment similar as to what happened to diablo 2. Massive cheating and duping caused items there to be worthless and everyone and their grandma was having their "little fun" playing all the best builds straight away. GGG doesn't want that to happen. They care about items.

My hat is off to you for fishing that out of the depths of the thread, from ~13 pages and ~8 months ago; I can respect that.

That said, I would like to remind everyone it's a short part of a long critique, which includes the response to your comment about how "they care about items".

To rephrase: Trading already invalidates the idea that items are 'special'; if it can be acquired in 5 minutes, with currency that can be farmed in 15 minutes, then it's just an item worth 20 minutes with a very unintuitive and 'unfun' method of acquisition (i.e. the current trade system).

And to add: Constantly introducing new "unique" items --half of which are worthless, and the other half will be worthless by the time of the next league-- isn't my idea of "caring about items"; YMMV.

(Do mind that I didn't say "useless", but rather "worthless"; as in monetary and sentimental value.)

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In my experience, games that allow players to tweak the difficulty to their taste (whether by cheats, mods, in-game decisions, or a good old fashioned difficulty slider) tend to be remembered more fondly by a greater number of players, for obvious reasons: The more people playing at their 'ideal' difficulty, the more people having fun.

You're saying "everyone and their grandma having fun" as if it's a bad thing.

The recent addition of "Private Leagues" to PoE, with their own set of extra challenges, is a good example of 'custom difficulty' (despite being a paid option).


Also in my experience, most contemporary ARPG developers err on the side of 'giving too little' rather than 'giving too much', as if that's the 'safer bet'. They're doing both their game and its players a great disservice, in my opinion.

Give the players too much, and some will find ways to "gimp" themselves and then brag about it. Give them too little, and some will start cheating. Or leaving.

I am pretty new to the game, it is my first league, but I have pretty extensive gaming experience, and in most games trade is a big though not biggest part for me.

My feeling as a new player is that current trade system benefits only top players and is too harsh for newbies like me. Seller has to return to hideout - meaning noone want to sell cheap stuff needed for casual/new players. Trying to buy something which costs 1 alc takes 10 times more time than buying something for 10 chaos, not to mention a few exalts. As result, I leveled all toons mostly in self find mode, but bought all gear for mapping.

I read developers manifest carefully, and I think my experience is exactly opposite to what was intended. Keeping current system for top items but having easier trade for cheap items would involve in trade more people, benefit mostly casual players and decrease gap between top 10% and all others.