Something inbetween trade league and solo self-found?

Hello, fellow exiles. I'm one of those players who never really managed to get into PoE 1, but I've been having a blast playing PoE 2 early access since day one. The most recent patch fixed practically everything that would lead to sudden deaths that felt unfair, River Hags are fine in my opinion despite their infamy, there are only two frustrating combat-related things that were left untouched that I can think of.

The first one is Priest of the Sun which can kill you from multiple screens away, is almost impossible to continously dodge rather than getting out of its range, and often just ignores terrain and shoots you through it when you try to hide behind things.

The second one is Proximal Tangibility. I'm assuming that the idea is "You have to be very close to this mob to be able to damage it". Sometimes it seems like they are killable at range like any other mob, not sure why that is, doesn't seem to be working as intended? The proximity requirement also seems a bit harsh, I have often sidestepped a melee attack, still very much in melee range of the mob, and somehow my crossbow can't hurt it because I'm a centimeter too far away or something? Proximity requirement aside, it desperately needs a visual indicator so that you actually know how close you have to be, if nothing else.

But enough about that, those things are minor in comparison to the thing that made me decide to create a feedback thread. I am of course talking about the market, trading with other players.

Frankly, the state of trade right now feels terrible. Trade chat is nothing but constant spam asking to buy valuable items like Sapphire Ring, Stellar Amulet, Divine Orbs, Greater Essences and so on for 5-25% of their actual value. In other words, scammers preying on newer players who don't know any better. It's disgusting, frustrating and just leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth, which is sad to see since the community otherwise seems pretty great.

The trade site is equally awful. Huge amounts of price fixing and general scummy practices, you're lucky if people even respond at all, and when they do, chances are they're either going to demand a completely different price than what was actually listed, or try to scam you with the "oops I closed trade window" then putting in much less currency than they did the first time and hoping you don't notice. I have heard about the famous trade manifesto and this "friction" that would supposedly be desirable, but honestly, this ain't it, the kind of friction we have right now is frustrating and does nothing but waste your time and make you lose faith in humanity, which is obviously not what the players nor the developers would want.

I have played a lot of this game and absolutely love it, but I'm not quite at the point where I'm farming pinnacle bosses yet. I'm sure that is mainly because I do not have the decade of experience and game knowledge that PoE 1 veterans have, and the fact that I have gotten five different characters to maps before settling for the one that I am playing right now doesn't exactly speed up my progress either, of course.

There is a third factor though that matters a lot, and that is the fact that I am practically playing solo self-found, but in trade league. I refuse to interact with other players for trading purposes, for the aforementioned reasons. I love the currency exchange though, and I've been using it a lot. I enjoy farming white bases for specific uniques that I am interested in trying out. I'm aware that it is a huge waste of time and Exalted Orbs to buy a bunch of Orb of Chance and just keep rolling the dice until I get what I want. I could just go to the trade site, waste half an hour trying to find someone who will actually respond and sell me the unique I'm interested in for 10 ex. But I'm not going to do that, because it sounds incredibly tedious and frustrating. I absolutely enjoy the core gameplay loop of killing mobs, getting loot and rolling the dice using various currencies. Interacting with the trade system sounds like the opposite of enjoyable. I am not playing this game because I want to experience attempting to do business with the literal scum of the earth, even if that is the most efficient way to play by far.

At this point you're probably thinking, why am I ranting and raving about the state of the market rather than just playing solo self-found? Well...chances are I probably will play solo self-found when early access is over, unless we get something along the lines of the auction house system that games like World of Warcraft use. Solo self-found comes with some unfortunate restrictions though. I want to be able to move items between different characters in case I find something awesome that just isn't suitable for the character I am currently playing. I think that the "Holy shit I found an awesome mace that my Infernalist has no use for, maybe I'll make a Titan to try making a build around it" experience is an amazing part of a game like this, and it would be sad to lose that.

I would also like to be able to play multiplayer at all, not with random strangers, but with friends and guildmates. I realize that it would be complicated to come up with a solution that makes that possible without it just becoming a loophole that enable actual trade and ruins the whole solo self-found experience. Maybe something along the lines of having to bind your character to a specific guild on character creation, with a cooldown of 3-7 days before you are actually allowed to trade with your guild? Probably not a great solution, but you get the gist of what I'm going for here.

Last but not least, like I said earlier, the currency exchange has actually been wonderful to interact with, unlike the rest of the market. A league where you are allowed to use the currency exchange but not play with or trade actual gear with other players would maybe not be the perfect dream, but it would be a lot more enjoyable than the current state of solo self-found, for me personally, anyway.

That's all the feedback I have for today. I hope that it wasn't too long-winded or came off as overly bitter about the current state of the game. I wouldn't spend every bit of free time I can get my hands on playing this game if I didn't think it was...well, incredible, to be honest. The very early patch with a huge amount of great changes that made the game a hundred times more enjoyable was very, very appreciated, and the media stuff with interviews and such has been amazing too. As someone who started playing World of Warcraft in 2005 and have spent many thousands of hours on that game, I can't even begin to explain how happy it makes me to finally play a game where I can absolutely see that this is a passion project for the developers, rather than something that once was a great game but over time has turned into nothing more than a soulless cash cow.

Regardless of what does or does not change when it comes to the market place, I'm looking forward to seeing this game evolve over the next few years. I have intentionally stayed away from summoner builds for now, eagerly awaiting the Spectres. I imagine that I will very much enjoy seeing the Scarecrow Beasts pounce away from me rather than onto me in the future.