Trade Manifesto

Trading is the most boring part of this game. I often do not buy anything to avoid wasting time :(

Ok, again my 2 cents.

So, i trade. I trade a lot. Started trading back in 2012 selling skill gems when you couldnt buy them at vendor. Traded when there was no trade window when people would go to Coast and drop their items at the sides of the screen and run towards each other to pick them up. It was fun. Over couple years expanded stash to 150+ premium and quad tabs. This allows to simultaneously post 5000-8000 items for sale, depending on the size of the items. I have dozens of trade interactions daily.

There are many good way to make currency in PoE. Crafting the best ofc, but old fashioned currency/item fliping is very profitable. Some people enjoy pure rng of doing maps and getting that big drop. I enjoy a good trade more.

Having said that - PoE trading, mediocre to start with - has not in 2019 became a steaming pile of shit. The shitty design of the trade where if you get TWO INVITES at the same time you can NOT pick one and save one for later. And when you get 3-4 invites - only one person can be dealt with, other 3 are left behind.

So a buyer. I need to buy a skill gem. PM one person - no answer. Second - no answer, 3rd...10th - person number 1 answers, person number 2 answers - all 10 answer at the same time. I choose one, others are left bothered and losing gaming time.

A seller - selling skill gem. Get a pm - respond, invite - they dont accept since they found another one from their list. Another pm - drop everything, respond, invite - they cancel invite, no trade. Another PM about buying item - again they dont come. So next time as a seller I just dont respond. And the buyer has to spam, more sellers dont respond because more buyers spam... and TRADE DONT WORK

Being an integral part of the game, and not working at all - sucks.

Implement auto-trading for certain items, like clean MAPS, skill GEMS, may be SACS and other things that dont got rollable mods, or just "white item only" auto-trade.

I am dreading to trade for maps "WTT Tier 7 map" in trade 820 in upcoming Synthesis. NOT LOOKING FORWARD TO IT at all.

tldr - trade sucks fix the trade

You guys are really smart about most game mechanics, but I think you are 100% wrong on this one.

I dont think easy trade would make the gap larger. Trade is so needlessly annoying that the gap is created by people willing to take the effort against those people who dont want to waste their life copy pasting trade requests and would rather play the game.

I honestly think a decent auctionhouse would make me participate more. Half the reason I burn out each leauge is because I hate selling stuff even more than buying.

The reason people who trade have a huge advantage is because the rest of us hate the way it works currently. So we dont do it.

i'm going to chime in here. there are some things that i imagine are obvious to GGG that need to be redressed to frame my comments:

1) bots are active, the programmers are intelligent, and there will be no easy fix soon. bots scan trade sites, and most bots are found currency flipping.

2) players need to be able to flip currency to have a valid market, which makes it harder to discriminate through game programming the difference between a real person flipping currency and a bot

3) the current trading mechanic is akin to going to the wall street trading floor and yelling at a screen for an item at your price hoping someone hears your offer and gives you said goods.... often wasting more of your time and multiple seller's time while you spam, they react to one and ignore others, also sometimes involving an invite only to find the item was already sold. more wasted time.

4) this adds a material feel to trading. it is material in feeling frustrating. not material as in feeling rewarding. bots are adjusting/inflating/controlling market prices for their own benefit, which often means less currency available for the average person (if the currency was proportionately priced based on supply/demand, then it would not be weighted to line the pockets of the bots)

5) as i've watched the price of chaos to exalts climb through the course of the last few leagues, i've been able to tell when a bot ban happened simply by looking at the value of chaos to exalts on an hourly basis. that's sad, and impactful to the regular player (read that as a player not running a trade-bot)


my comments....

i COMPLETELY understand the trade manifesto. i COMPLETELY agree that a poorly implemented auction house has a vast potential for destruction to the gearing meta-game and the satisfaction of the players. (i'm not going to name the game that shall not be named, which would provide the best example of this worst case scenario. their mistake was allowing real money to be made with the auction house)


counter points to the manifesto:

1) going to leveling gear to end-game gear doesn't require small steps that bring satisfaction as the character gets stronger. using currency found or earned by trading or currency flipping mid level items often can get a person their end-game items. other means involve chaos recipe farming, or guildies buying end-game gear for alternate characters.
-- the incremental gear upgrades slowly done over time is a nostalgic process, and one used by less experienced players. veteran players take larger leaps, and refusing to be progressive with trade implementation feels like an insult to what veteran players may see as the next logical step (albeit with careful consideration and baby steps, but please take progressive steps)

2) bots (even with the bot bans, because they come back) hoard masses of currency and make the "gear upgrade" process for the players who buy currency on "pay to win" sites trivial. this happens. it completely sidesteps GGG attempts at this material and rewarding upgrade process for players. i wish currency botting didn't happen, because currency botting makes my game play less meaningful if they can automate it, but it still happens. so i feel there needs to be a way for regular players to have an EASIER time getting the items they need so they can go back to playing.... NOT WASTING TIME trading, instead of making money by finding items in maps.
--- less time in maps means less items dropping, which means less currency gain (this logic comes directly from your intentions for the trading/income meta-game in your trading manifesto). so spending more time trading in a broken trading system means it's taking the player away from your ideal trading and currency gain mechanic and putting them in a limbo situation while they spam people trying to find someone to respond to their message.
--- i've definitely spent 2 hours on several nights, just trying to find someone to buy an item from. not because the item was rare, but because it was so common that no one wanted to stop playing to sell it to me. or in another case trying to get a response for a currency trade to go from chaos or exalt to fusing, because the top listings on the trade site were all bots trying to rig the trade ratio and therefor were not responding to trades (they expect people will list other offers at the same ratio or lower so that they can scoop up cheap listings and re-sell them)

3) a bot can scan a trade website, search for certain criteria, or even look for the undervalue items and re-list them for incremental gains.
---- because a bot can do these things repetitiously, track the gains and losses perfectly, and spend 100% of it's time doing these things without leveling a character or doing maps, it has the perfect advantage over a regular player who is actually playing the game. it can also be online tirelessly, watching for the daily swings in prices, and trade low sell high. a real person will never be that efficient with the minutiae.

4) how would an in-game auction house, with the exact same infrastructure as pathofexile.com/trade be any different than the current web based iteration that requires a message to be sent??
----- the only difference i see, is that instead of wondering whether the person is going to sell the item, whether it's still available, etc.... is that you will get the item as listed. period. how is that bad??



it seems that the primary hangup here, is that GGG wants the player to go to another player's hideout to make the trade....

...because automation is already occurring in the most flagrant and abused way possible through the accumulation of wealth by bots in all the forms of currency that exists.

i don't have time to read 50 pages of forum replies on this topic, but perusing a few posts led me to a simple suggestion for a solution:


1) LIMIT THE PRICE YOU CAN LIST AN ITEM FOR ON THE "IN-GAME AUCTION HOUSE" to something like less than 10 chaos, or whatever you choose.

2) don't allow currency flipping in the auction house.

3) allow maps, frags, essences, fossils, and other items which do not have random rolled mods attributed to gear and passive tree placement to be sold. (within the maximum price listing stated above).


now the easy trades remain easy and don't take players away from their rewarding incremental gear upgrades, and the better and more valuable gear remains traded hand to hand in hideouts with that higher level of satisfaction and reward that we all want to happen.

i promise players understand this reward feeling that makes finding items great; just give us a chance to not constantly be frustrated by small trades that incrementally add up

This is still a dogshit post.

Trade bots and normal bots still not banned... no defence vs bots so trading will become worse and worse

This manifesto is a meme LUL

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BOMBER1337 wrote:

This manifesto is a meme LUL

More like a bad april's fool joke. :/

I wonder if they are even reading it.