Trade Manifesto

Trade needs a serious rework along with adding target farming. The biggest drawback of farming content currently are the ones gated behind items you have to trade for.

Having to manually trade by messaging tens or hundreds of people to get shards/maps etc. of a specific type has got to go, it's 2021... literally nobody is benefiting from this.

If bots are making this barely manageable, make 'bots' available to everyone e.g. make an auction house / marketplace already.

Each day ,before i can play game/kill boss/clear map , i have to stay in hide out for 10min to whisper 20+ people to trade for map , then 10min for sextant , then 10min for scarab so i can start mapping . It so frustrated , borred , suck and time wasted . Pls do something about trade system and i hope that PoE2 not use this trade system too.

Chris,
I will adress each topic cuz I think its needed!!
First thing: english is not my native language so there will probably be random mistakes in my writing.


>>>Easy trade reduces the number of times a character improves their items.<<<
Well, thats because the actual crafting state of the game pushs people to do so! Its too demading, too complicated and not in a good way!
Tons of crafting options/recipes/mechanics is a good thing, but there should also be more eficient/organic/intuitive ways to use them cuz every 3 months you guys just adds stuff to the table that changes the whole perspective of crafting...
So most ppl will just choose to buy a "ready to wear" and enjoy the "enjoyable part of the game.
Crafting end game gear today is something for: streamers, no-lifers that like crafting and ppl that sell stuff for real money (yeah, and there is a lot out there)



>>>Easy trade means reducing drop rates<<<
Is it really needed? I dont think so! Drops are alread garbage, most ppl pick rares just for chaos recipes or bases, not for usage (only in acts)... Make magic and rare itens more dificult to drop but with better rolls, you know? So ppl will start paying attention to them and not filtering them out
Trying to "scare" us by saying drops will go down, with the cureent state where ppl already dont pick those itens, are meaningless


>>>Easy trade would make the disparity between different players too great<<<
Yeah, thats the complete opposite of what would actually happen. Easy trading will make so theres much more offers out there, so will make itens much more achievable for the mid tier players.
The disparity fo players on itens comes when you have a too complex crafting system that most ppl dont want to be involved with, with a high cost and a great time consuming experience, so you either pay a lot or have to waste hours into that
Am I wrong to think that crafting is a secondary thing and shouldnt demand all of that? It should be a bridge not a wall... And so is trading...


>>>Easy trade allows for greater abuse by automation<<<
Oh boy, here we go again... Complete oposite!
The current state of the trade system is allowing AND encouraging that automation abuse... Ppl use bots becuz it should already be that way!
If I place an item for a fixed price, like a NPC ppl could just go and buy it automaticaly, at least for orbs/maps/divs cards/etc...
There is a lot of bots out there today, and they risk using it because the difference is toog great, by lowering the gap you are actually making so the pros to using those bots go down, ppl will be less willing to use them...
Not to mention, those scamers/price fixers will go away completly
Much healthier trading system!


>>>Conclusion<<<
I do think a player that can play 80 hours a week should get more from the game than a player that has 20 hours, but both should be able to have end game crafting experience and decent trading system available
If you play more, you can farm more/lvl more/etc... ok! But both should be able to play the game fully! Why do I have to "choose" btw things? 20 hours/week still a huge investment for a game/hobby! Not everybody gets paid to play
Every 3 months we get to restart, those no-lifers play the game for 3-4 weeks, and them the 20hours/week players are left with a crap game experience for the rest of the league, one of the reasons being the drop in the trade efficiency... most ppl wont even trade things with prices lower than 10c, its not worth the time! Ppl that do are mostly bots... That and the fact you have to go for all the acts AGAIN for each new char makes build diversity bad

Look ppl will start a league with their favorite build, or some build they saw from a streamer/friend/etc
But the second/third/forth build they make will be for fun! And those are the ones we are talking about!! But who wants to go throut everything againg, waste currency, a lot of time for something that could end up being horrible?
If you are a streamer/no-lifer you will do it of course, you either get money/views by doing it or you have that time to spare... but in most cases.. ppl dont have that luxory.. I used to have tons of hours to play so I could make tons of diferent builds, but nowadays even with many hours/week I have to keep with 1 build per league If i want to enjoy the endgame fully... I wish I could play the end game with many different build each league.. but I would half of the time be doing those same 10 acts!! thats crazy!!!

Getting in enough time to play and progress at a decent rate is already hard enough and now that the just rolling expedition npcs takes hours upon hours and then trying to find real traders instead of whispering a bunch of price whispers for 30minutes straight is uber hard. Please consider making trading easier and not on par with uber bosses.

-About easy progression/lower drop/better run AH than kill monsters:
Its a bit out of touch with the game in the current state. Those were good points back when red maps were a very valuable comodity, but today its a fundamental fact that great stuff dont drop: you craft it. At our current point, its more profitable AND better for progression to master the crafting system and barter for currency(read: craft material) than it is to farm monsters so it begs the question of how is it better than apraising an AH
-About automatization:
There is already plenty of it as it is
Lets be real: exalts are simply not supposed to be worth between one or two hundred chaos(or even a thousand of chaos!) if the only exalts in circulation are the ones droped by legit players and not by bots since we all know just how those, and the cards related to them, are such bastards to drop. Automatization exists and is deeply integrated to the economy as it is, and thing is: that is not a bad thing. Automatization play a great part into making such that the end-game is possible for a non-no-lifer. PoE have some very brutal gates and its only possible for most of us to get trough because there is a great suplly of gear harvested by bots to compete with each other and bring the prices down. An AH would maybe bring a flow of cheap end-guear, but at that point, it would beg the question of if the gear is so chep as to destroy the economy, playing with a bot is even worth it? It is also not on the interest of botters themselves to let things get out of hand, it may be worth one easy trading league just to test the waters i think

The manifesto reads: We intentionally keep trading a pain in the rear so we dont have to worry about the automatization(that is already plentyful) and moster slaying can be kept as the best way to progress(wich currently totally isnt)

Great state of things

Yes, another player who came to ask you to do something about the trading system. I haven't read the EIGHTY pages of the thread so sorry if that was said already, but reading the first post i realized that you think people are calling for an easy trading system, and it is already an "easy" one. Sending a pm or accepting a privat party is not complicated at all. On the other hand, sending 20 pm to receive a single response is boring, and that's what people complain about I think. Understood that sometimes I spend more time buying maps, for example, than playing on them. And I really don't find it fun at all.

You say that an easy trade creates a reduced drop rate, but it's the other way around. If players are trading it is because the chance of getting an item of interest is very low. You loot a tons of craps which you don't need so you sell them to get better. It is the lack of something that creates the market, not the opposite.Items that have a place or a way to be obtained, like the Tabula Rasa, are I think more farmed by players than bought because we know exactly where to get it.

After that you talk about the disparity between player who trades and those who don't. This is due to the same drop rate of "interesting items" but also to the craft which allows you to make items much more powerful than what you could ever drop and allowing you to complete high level content easily. As crafting requires some investment in the game (which is not a bad thing) it is no surprise that most players do not do it themselves and therefore have to purchase these items. Which becomes very lucrative for the players who sell them. It is therefore the power of crafting items and their price that creates the gap between players who trade,and those who not, not the market itself once again.

And finally you talk about bots which are already a problem. I may have been wrong on this point because I am not a professional programmer, but the centralization of transaction data in the same place would not make it easier for you in their analysis and therefore in the detection of those who abuse trading system? Many games have an in-game shop and have no more problem than that with trade bot, it is that there must be solutions to thwart them. Even if I am well aware that it is sometimes easier said than done.

Finally I would just like to say that I really hope that you can improve the trading system because it is clearly the worst part of the game for me right now to the point that sometimes it makes me want to give up this game that I nevertheless appreciate so much.

Keep up the good work.

Thank you for reading.

Hi, a long time player who just reach the true end game for the first time here.

I know for a long time that the trade system are out-date, but man, when I reach the true end game, this problem escalated really fast.

Like I said, this is the first time I come this far.
Normally, I'll start a new character or stop playing the game when I need to spend more than 1-2 Ex to upgrade my gear piece.

But this league is so great. It make me reach this high for the first time.
I spend more than 150 ex across three characters and 8 build I've play, this is more than my life time combine.

And here's the problem.

Now my next piece of upgrade require more than 20-30ex each.

Currently, 1 Ex cost 170-180c.
That's mean a full stash of chaos orb can trade for 3 Ex at most.

I need to click 54 times to stuff my stash with chaos orb, then do another 54 (with selectively click) to put them on the trade stash.

This is just to get 3 Ex

If I need 20 Ex, I need to do this 7 Time.
And if I need more than that, well...

At first, I'm very exited because I never be this rich, but when those adrenaline passed by, this is become more and more tedious, to the point that just thinking about it make me don't want to keep playing anymore.

I don't know why GGG try to stall player time with these out-date system.

That nonsense manifesto on the first page also out of date.
It's a mobile game developer mindset who scare of people be done with their game, it's not something GGG should worry about.

This is my best league ever. But the trade system slowly kill it for me.
I hope you'll improve it in the future.

There is no doubt that the Trade System in its current state is a disaster. I'm still baffled to why Chris thinks differently, when so many people are complaining and simply DO NOT PLAY THE GAME (ENOUGH) BECAUSE OF IT. Including myself.

Very good points earlier by yeknoms, nvmthanh11011992, rafaelgxs, Geben, feike, _Sis_ and YoyoTanya and I really like the system that ariyako designed, I would have something similar in mind for a half-way fix before a real AH.

The game has already hit a very unpleasant state with so much deterministic crafting for those who can afford countless exalted orbs (hello multiple crafting bench, please remove yourself from the game).

GGG thinks that everyone should play this game as a full time job to succeed and to follow the only few meta builds that actually work, because they balance and design this game to only be playable by the grinders, effectively making 'own builds' not function at all.

Also, cluster jewels are another huge choking point for casuals and beginners since they're expensive and require wasting time looking up builds and what mods are best for them, often based on gimmick-mechanics, while also making you waste a lot of currency in respec-ing those points when you need to upgrade or just experimenting with different cluster jewels.
I think a small but important QoL improvement about cluster jewels would be to make them not cost respec points when you take them out, at least. But ideally, remove most overpowered modifiers that break builds as this reflect negatively on 'budget' and non-clustered builds, having to tone down certain skills and items just to accommodate for the unreasonable power spike those cluster give to the ones that can afford them.

Also, I find the new Atlas less interesting with so many gimmicks, like Awakener levels and so many objectives to fill, the endgame feels like an unachievable grind for the casual player and discourages even trying to reach it. I liked way more the old style Atlas and I think the better upgrade would've been to create higher tier maps, exponentially more difficult with each tier, up to tier 20 let's say, that would challenge most builds in this game and could probably only be run by well set up parties with proper supports and tanks, etc. This would also encourage partying in this game which is still not appealing to most players.

But for the most part, I blame Trade for being the hardest brick wall in this game against player retention and enjoyment.

did anybody think what an auction house means to trading, all the farmbots and ingame traders would directly buy all cheap stuff and then completely control the market, now you still got a chance to get a cheap item, if they are not quick enough to rebuy all items, which some of them do all day. lol an auction house would completely ruin the whole trade system. we have seen it in world of warcraft. i was doing the same to get money there in earlier times.
omg ggg please never do an auction house, its the end of trading and would change the game dramatically with a key feature that has made this game so awesome. believe me!

my idea is to make trading for level 70 characters just available and so block off multi accounters and trade bots, which are most annoying thing for trade in this game!

after hear streamers with chris i just hope and wish GGG re-think some their changes they planned to do... rly why kill economy? if economy will be killed who will play?