The majority of people don’t search offline listings as default is ‘online’.
You’re listed as ‘offline’ with DND, not ‘AFK’ as much as I know.
If you’ve ever nudged people which are ‘AFK’ you’ll not run into the situation where it mentions that someone is on ‘DND’ but it’ll usually go through. Hence ‘AFK’ and ‘DND’ are listed separately.
I’ve had lots of times where I tried to do a trade only to find that that person had DND enabled, so apparently it can be done.
I’ve also had lots of cases where the site/API said they were online but when you try to message it says they’re offline.
So there are obviously ways around that.
Not to mention that if you don’t use chat much, you don’t really care about the barrage of messages. Especially not when it will give you a huge profit.
If it actually was centralized, small scale and no issue, there wouldn’t be so many people complaining about it and there wouldn’t be a toxic trade environment, but there is.
You are not.
Yeah, the API needs up to 5 minutes to update and usually enforced it upon instance changes.
This is also why people message you the second you start doing content and why it’s frustrating.
The majority of people complaining do so because of the starting experience.
As a experienced player in Path of Exile this usually doesn’t happen.
The worst experiences are buying individual low-prices consumables like maps, scarabs and so on. A majority of that has already been removed with the prophecies and sextants, all formed into the scarab system which emphasizes on buying several at once.
If you go into bulk buy of 5-10 items it shift immediately and barely ever you’ll see issues with consumables anymore, not only because the price fixing happens at the low-end to scam never players without much knowledge in the system (and hence gullible by design) but also because it’s about optimizing the influx versus outflow of good. Bulk buy happens less but ill-informed players tend to sell singular items to get their ‘baby’s first set’ of gear together so to speak.
The second is low quality gear, the effort to leave a map often doesn’t uphold to doing a trade with low currency value. If you can get 5 chaos in the same time of doing a 5 jeweller trade… well… you won’t do the trade. If you struggle with a map you won’t leave it. If you’re doing a boss you’re going to ignore messages and so on and so forth. Which is why people urge for automated trading, but that doesn’t mean it’s not ‘working’… it’s just toxic, uncomfortable, frustrating. It doesn’t stop it from working entirely.
Not the case. There have been times where I was curious, so I tracked it for a long time (almost 2h in one case) and it kept showing as online in the listings and offline in the game.
Whether it was a glitch or someone using something to skirt the system, I don’t know. But it happens more frequently than you would think.
Fixed it for you.
After a couple years in PoE, I also learned to snipe items to resell them for profit. Trying to take advantage of the price fixers and snipe the items before they do.
It’s a profitable method. It’s also one of the main reasons why I burned out on PoE and left for good.
As long as you scroll past the first 50 listings, because none of them will answer you.
Agreed, there’s many ways to ‘play’ the economy. Which to be fair… is an aspect of a real economy.
For a game those need to be held as low as possible in general unless - like in Eve Online - it revolves around that actively. And PoE doesn’t fall into that category, hence a downside derived from the high-friction mechanic they chose instead of a automated one.
I’m a bulk buyer/seller , usually I get answer at the first or second listing. It depends on the item type, item rarity and also how much it’s worth.
If you go above 50c usually people answer, few exceptions.
You mean there aren’t people that spend the entire league only playing the market, buying and selling and sniping and price-fixing? Because there are plenty of those.
What I like about LE’s solution is that it eliminates all the player toxicity and delivers what I want from trade in a game: which is basically a glorified vendor shop that is run by players.
Yes, but if all you need is to buy 20 chromes, or 40, you’re screwed because the first 50-100 are price-fixers that don’t answer.
Once again showing that PoE’s trade is clearly made for the “sharks” and not the little guy, who has to endure all the toxicity just to be able to get simple things.
If you ‘can’ do something doesn’t decide if it’s ‘designed’ around something.
It’s a miniscule amount of player doing that in the first place, and by that logic Super Mario World is a speedrunning game because it has speedrunners 
Yes, agreed! That’s the upside from LE’s system.
As long as it functions.
Which is doesn’t.
Half-way through a cycle you inherently get massively inflated prices as the few which generally get those items are those investing loads of time. They went their way up and it’s a display of effort put into it.
Those not playing right from the start and pushing that hard get a worse… and worse… and worse market situation for the beginning being ever less likely to reach that point.
It’s bad for both sides. Because the market starts to collapse the second non-experienced people get access to it.
They cause ‘0’ gold influx.
That reduces value of prices to close to ‘0’ for the ones they get regularly (everything up to common LP 2)
And that causes a sudden distinct jump in prices between starter gear and the first actual improvement.
It throws any sense of progression in the game out of whack. Access is wrong Rank wise, distribution of currency is wrong since the first people get a heavy income and the following ones none.
It causes extreme inflation since gold never leaves the economy.
Compare it to PoE. There’s a reason despite it being a shitty feeling system that… it works. Currency has a natural sink mechanic, actually only consumables are currency and hence tie item price directly to their value.
The market regulates itself as it limits listings, causing advanced player to change supply advanced items or bulk consumables while earlier player provide earlier gear. Unless you got too many tabs - like me - you can’t simply provide the market a vast variety of items at once.
LE in comparison doesn’t regulate itself. You can throw your crappy rare inside at any time, actually… you will since ‘what else can I use my favor for anyway?’ there is no use for it that’s limited. This floods the market and shifts prices ever further solely towards high-end gear. The longer it goes on the less items will even be valued with ‘1’ gold. ‘0’ gold is the equilibrium state in a foreseeable future. Especially in Legacy where it’s ridiculous how much the disparity between supply and demand has gotten.
Yes, as mentioned.
Invest 1 more hour into play-time and buy a higher amount right away rather then sitting 1 hour wasting the time.
That’s an experience aspect. By the time you need that stuff it’ll be bulk-buy for you… not good, nonetheless at least functional.
Yes, absolutely. And it follows GGGs design philosophy of making trade as unliked as possible (actually true) since they didn’t want to have it initially.
Only with competition bringing out something good (Which LE is supposed to be and has every single tool available for) will they be forced to change it and ensure that players get a better experience. They got no alternative after all, both players in picking a good game of the genre going the hard’n’gritty direction as well as developers having to keep up with the times.
It’s quite dysfunctional though. I just want to buy 20 chromes to fix the colors on a piece of gear and you’re saying that the solution is to simply spend more time farming and buy 1k instead. And then I sit the whole league with 900 unused chromes because I didn’t need them.
That is not a solution and it only fixes it for the 1%.
This is really great feedback. I certainly will say I don’t agree with it all but there are a lot of fantastic, constructive points here that give some great thoughts for EHG to assimilate. Nicely done.
It doesn’t destroy the function of the trading mechanic itself.
To declare the direction of the notion better.
I’m not saying it’s a good situation but your personal experience and that of thousands of other people don’t topple the mechanic itself, that one functions still and will function despite of it because it’s set up to function with that situation in mind.
Actually… it hinges even on that situation, it’s one of the shittiest design choices made ever to reduce influx and fluidity of the market itself, which has been said out openly at developer conferences and interviews a few times.
We don’t need to enjoy a mechanic to make it functional. And all the argumentation doesn’t change that.
PoE system… functional and not fun.
LE system… not functional but fun (as long as it lasts because when it breaks it’s suddenly not for obvious reasons)
That’s the issue, simple as that.
I won’t dispute that. But they made trade to be as toxic and abrasive as possible because they didn’t want it in the first place. And yet they didn’t give you any tools to be able to not use it. Because if you’re not trading you’re screwed. Apparently this has changed in the last couple of years, but it was the rule for almost 10 years.
EHG, on the other hand, made a system which you could enjoy and still gave non-traders a fun alternative.
Both MG and CoF have flaws that need to be addressed, but I have had more fun playing LE with either of them than I ever did in years of PoE.
And I maintain that their base idea is solid. It just lacks some important tweaks, like gold taxing.
Yep, which is also why LE’s MG system will go down in flames in the current state 
A functional market hinges solely in the reward derived from it. If you want something you need to go there, buy it and then you’re happy, goal achieved.
Now, we give a second system which does the same but without clear-cut outcome. Obviously it might be better early on but worse later on since rarity rises and hence obtaining it personally will be harder and harder and harder.
A market doesn’t have this issue. As long as people obtain things and don’t need it even the most rare items will find their way hence into it, by design. After all it gives you the funds to obtain what you need.
And this is the issue we have currently in LE.
The amount of supply is miniscule and the resources needed to obtain them extreme since only the most dedicated people can even afford it. The second we go one single step below it’s worthless. Hence you got no way to acquire the funds and hence no reasonable way to obtain it.
So the only way is to have a lucky drop you don’t need yourself and put it up, you can’t gradually obtain things, it’s not realistic in the current setup, the turnover rate because of price-dumping doesn’t hold up.
So, what does that mean? It means that the baseline function of the market of going there to derive a clear-cut goal from it to play towards isn’t upheld. You go in, see there are ‘0’ listings for what you need… and that’s it. You ‘finished’ the market. You can’t progress. Market lost all value in that exact second.
You can either wait or switch factions.
So there needs to be a baseline design rule because of that: End-game results are never allowed to be easier to obtain through any other alternative method then the market, only an auxiliary one to the market.
Which yes, does lead into this:
Yes and no. Yes, it’s a system you can enjoy as a non-trader.
No, it’s not an ‘alternative’ when looking at it objectively, it’s the only option available to you.
Not only does it allow trade through your group, hence trade with hoops attached… it also is the only place to reliably gather high-tier items since they aren’t available on the market.
A rare T7 affix with a T6 affix on top? Doesn’t exist on the whole market in Legacy, so you can’t make a legendary related to that.
Rare LP 3 uniques? Very few have listings.
LP 2 empowered boss uniques? Only very very few listings and only with vast investment available.
LP 3 empowered boss uniques? They don’t exist.
You currently have a easier chance to get a 4 LP item personally through CoF then seeing one outside of the most useless ones available on the market.
So MG is no viable option, it’s mandatory to be the best option available or it looses the reason for existence… so it’s not an alternative at all outside of personal flavor, and flavor doesn’t keep a market alive.
The fundamental core aspect of the idea is great!
Never said anything against that.
2 mechanics existing at the same time, trade and SSF-style, both non-interchangeable and in the same area. Great!
Beyond that? When we even start to create the framework it exists on? There it fails with MG. CoF is more or less fine. Minor tweaks, fixes, adjustments.
MG? Minor is laughable. It’s to the level that the fundamental aspects don’t function. It can’t function without a total overhaul from the bottom up since nigh every aspect of it is a negative effect on the longevity of the market.
Listing functionality is a net-negative.
Search is not properly implemented.
No resource sinks available at all.
Self-destructive through creating a ‘binary state’ in the market of no-value to massive-value with no area in-between.
In-designed market flooding.
No limitation on acquisition, not even adhering to game progression itself properly.
Just like they looked at the 1.0 data and realized it wasn’t enough like it was and tweaked it for 1.1, they will continue to tweak it. It’s not a static mechanism.
Actually, it has the same issue. A trade system like LE’s or PoE’s relies on having very large numbers of people farming to offset the rarity. But as the rarity increases less and less of those items will appear on the market unless the number of players farming also increases.
Which leads to an increase in cost for the rarer items over time.
Much like with CoF, these numbers will have to be tweaked over time as well. Or MG players provided with other options to offset that.
It’s better than the nothing that PoE gave.
You’re looking at the market post-exploit. Those items were available in 1.0 before the exploit and they were presumably also available in 1.1 before it crashed.
Obviously so.
MG which had the worse issues still didn’t get the changes though, so we can only speak about ‘now’.
If the changes are substantial enough besides UI fixes and outright broken stuff (like missing affixes) then obviously the whole topic is immediately a goner… until then not.
Yes, farming or crafting.
There’s incentive for both.
The farming aspect is for the rare uniques and the really… reaaaaaally rare great drops. You can nonetheless reliably drop mediocre items which have value, solely depending on the content you’re running.
For example no matter who you are as soon as you reach maps you can farm for scarabs, a consumable, hence with a fixed value related to the possible value coming from those consumables as a secondary notion.
LE does have no consumables, so that’s a goner, PoE’s market functions without a single piece of gear outside of uniques as well after all. So that farming aspect in itself is one which causes a permanency to the system.
Got no item available for you? Get the resources you need to create it. Not an option in LE as the base is the issue to get.
So unlike in PoE’s system the only value we have for the market is gear. If it’s not available we have no value for the market, it has no function.
The second is that gear in PoE always has a minimum value, base with item level. In LE your item looses value with every action you take for getting it crafted. Your points decrease until it reaches ‘0’ and hence is ‘done’. Either it’s good or it’s trash, binary system there. This reduces influx of bases, bases have no value, they’re simply another affix in design for us, one which can’t be changed so solely a limiter in choice.
So, LE’s system relies on the big number game, hence it ‘breaks’ when there’s no substantial numbers available.
PoE’s doesn’t, consumables are so prevalent and needed in such large amounts that you’ll even have them available if only 100 people interact with the system. Not enough to sustain you… but at least trickling in, a steady progress for you hence. We can see this actually with the mirror-market which is functional, sometimes even bought out and nonetheless working despite demand outpacing supply often as it’s swiftly refilled.
LE doesn’t refill viable things to buy reliably.
This is the most viable option, fully agreed.
The offset is a mechanic not yet implemented in LE… which is a way to make a 0 FP item into a item which has FP. Without that the core issue stays since the systems below the market don’t sustain the market. PoE always had in mind to allow ‘some’ form of trade and hence designed their items with inherent value, even before they had a screen to trade available, the times when you dropped items on the beach to trade between players a’la D2 starting times.
PoE provides it though. You’re just not happy with the ‘how’ it does it.
It’s the superior mechanical system, no argument about that possible even since it objectively does the job it should do.
It’s just the also objectively less enjoyable one, solely for the fact that it thrives on frustration by design, which is crap.
Also end 1.0 Legacy, start 1.1 Legacy.
Legacy is a long-term showcase of the market functionality.
1.0 those items were available because of the sheer numbers law with big influx of players.
1.1 had issues form the beginning already.
So if a market can sustain itself above 100k player but not below 50k players for at least the duration of a cycle… then the system is not very durable I would argue.
The incentive is to sell more of the items you don’t need through the MG so you have the funds to purchase the items you need. The item should only sell to merchants for the base price the item would normally sell at at best, which is basically nothing. So having it sell for 0 isn’t that big of a deal. Most of your income doesn’t come from selling items.
except it would only work that way if it DIDN’T give you reputation gain when your 0 gold item sells.
Selling the Item you don’t need to get the gold isn’t exactly working when said item is priced at 0 gold due to this. The item doesn’t sell for even 10k because nobody is actually selling in order to gain gold, they are selling to gain reputation.
Honestly, the biggest problem with the 0 gold sales are not so much due to the reputation gain, but more due to the lack of a good UI. Namely the ease (or lack of it) of price checking.
Even if you care most about the reputation gain than the gold gain, if you could quickly price check your item and see it was worth 10k or 5k or 50k, you’d sell it around that price instead.
The problem is that it’s so hard to price check anything other than uniques. And even those are a struggle.
Hopefully the upcoming changes to MG UI will change that.
Nono, they’re no selling to gain reputation, they’re listing to gain reputation. A small but important difference which is badly communicated.
You don’t need to sell, you just need to list it to ‘profit’ for your rank. You can have thousands of items sitting on the shelf and they mean nothing outside of a load on the bazaar servers which will slowly but gradually break down from far more items being listed then warranted, listed to never be bought.
And that as well.
But that doesn’t warrant the ‘0’ gold listings. They’re either because it’s ‘I have this item but no use for it, so just throw it in to progress and have someone pick it up’ or misled people thinking they need to do that so it sells… which brings them nothing.
Even with price-checking this won’t stop because the communication is badly done. Those misunderstanding won’t price-check as they just want to get the rep which they get anyway but not understanding that they do.
And some will simply not be bothered to price-check as they don’t understand it anyway.
So it eases the issue… it doesn’t solve it though.
Helps a little bit at least, I’ll give you that.
I like the discussion people have here but it seems to be focused on Trade. I understand why as trade is the faction that isn’t functional right now. I understand that entrenched ARPG players feel forced into trade due to the natural power it has. What would it take to set up CoF to be competitive with trade in your minds? I already think it is the much more enjoyable mode but keep finding people in my circle dead set on trade. I know they get much better gear for their build much faster but only complain about the friction. CoF might be slower but feels so much more enjoyable. I agree that it feels under-powered but don’t see anyone really complaining about it.
That’s a really good question actually!
And the simple answer is: They’re actually not allowed to be fully competitive to each other.
By design the people using the market options the best need to have a very clear upside compared to the people doing CoF.
Why? Because it means the people using the market ‘normally’ and hence in definitely not even remotely an optimal way need to be at the roughly same level as CoF is, which leads to a natural disparity.
Well, that’s because it’s personal flavor.
The enjoyment of finding an item yourself is usually higher then simply buying one. Albeit for some others the enjoyment of having a clear-cut and nearly deterministic goal of working towards something is another great motivator. So we have simply 2 camps which enjoy things differently.
If we only speak from a objective standpoint short-term MG is better, mid- to long-term CoF is vastly better and extreme long-term MG becomes better again, but the extreme long-term is 1-2 leagues minimum here.
Only if they start out early.
If you personally try to get decent gear in the current state of the market you’ll realize that it doesn’t hold true.
You can get your starter gear, namely 1 LP items and all uniques… but beyond that it takes a lot of effort to even buy crafting bases with the right affixes on them currently, if they’re available at all.