Introducing the Trade-House Idea (Offline Trading)

^ why

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zeto wrote:

Not having an auction house would make it nearly impossible for the community to have a smoothly functioning economy.

Not true. Game trading has worked (and continues to work) just fine without designated trade houses. Of course a trade house would be helpful but it's far from necessary. More to the point, I haven't seen a decent method put forward that handles the complexities of PoE's non-gold economy.

I think combining a sort of Forum/message board with a simlpe trade system could work.

U could have ur flexible trades like in a Trading forum on this side but ingame, and u could then add some sort of simple trade window that could be used without the need of meeting up/being online at the same time.
Ofcourse with the required security options.

not sure how hard it would be to program such things though.

Im personally fine with having a trading board on this side, or having it ingame so everyone can reach it easyli.
Meeting up with someone shouldnt be all to hard usually :)

You guys clearly have never played a game with thousands of players using only a single forum to trade all things. It's absurd.

not a single forum.
Trade forum with many subforums for weapons armor etc etc.
all the little groups u would need.

same thing.

If you give the forum itself a ton of search and offer functionality then it behaves exactly like an AH anyway... so what's the difference?

it does lose its fexibility.

especially if u start mixing diferent currency items, deciding what set is worth more is impossible. Each player will put it diffrent.
let alone trading rare item for rare item.

Write out how the auction house will work with the trading and currency system of PoE. Then people will listen to you. Maby draw an interface too.

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Rustychops wrote:

Write out how the auction house will work with the trading and currency system of PoE. Then people will listen to you. Maby draw an interface too.

This. I don't see how an AH could really work when you are trading items for items. Say, for example, that I want to trade my item X for item Y.

I want item Y because it has a big bonus to an attribute I like, I've seen item Y on other players so I know it exists.

Now, you don't have item Y but you have item Z that is ALMOST as good as Y. So now we face 2 options.

Either:

1. The AH is set up for only specific items.
2. The AH is set up for any item at all.

If (1) you won't be able to offer me Z and I will never know that I missed item I'd use.

If (2) I'll have to scroll through, possibly, tons of items shifting through all the trash people are offering me, and that doesn't seem very nice.

Maybe specific high end items would work, but then why need an AH? You can just use the forums.

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Wittgenstein wrote:

If (1) you won't be able to offer me Z and I will never know that I missed item I'd use.

If (2) I'll have to scroll through, possibly, tons of items shifting through all the trash people are offering me, and that doesn't seem very nice.

Maybe specific high end items would work, but then why need an AH? You can just use the forums.

Right. Again, a trade/auction house is not necessary to trade items. Until you can come up with an idea that overcomes these sorts of limitations then this is a moot point. It doesn't matter how good the trade/auction house is, if it can't handle the complexities of PoE's non-gold economy simply and effectively then no one will use it.