The goal is to have players actually play the game. You run into content balancing problems when upgrades are too easy to obtain.
I get the sentiment expressed in your second point. I wouldn’t go to the flea market hoping to purchase a Ferrari. I see the Bazaar as something that exists for players who want to interact with it and not a core function of the game. I think balancing the game around things you kill and find is a sound decision.
Agreed.
I understand the notion of “If players can sell/buy any item they find, then the trading system will by default become the best place to acquire the best items for your build.”
Is there any way we (the players) could salvage this proposed system?
Let’s say we decide to self-organize. We decide to make our own form of a Marketplace.
Step 1: Player seeking an item posts it… someplace. Chat would be annoying (1990 called, they want their Trade Chat channel back…) We can come back to this later.
Step 2: A seller sees it and has the item. They post that item into their shop and PM the buyer.
Step 3: Buyer enters/exits the Bazaar until the seller comes up in the RNG. Goes to their Shop, buys the item.
Now, this is still pretty horri-bad.
In the end, this would be a ridiculously cumbersome system to get items people want for their build, all designed as a “Work-around” to the lack of a proper trading system. And if players pull this off, then the “trading system” will still be the main place to get that specific item you need for your build, it will just take a long time.
End result: this really doesn’t actually meet EHG’s goal of “the trading system shouldn’t be a place to get the best loot for your build.”
The developers responded to a similar post on Reddit:
Leaving and re-entering the Bazaar will not reroll what’s on offer.
It sounds nearly identical to how Mike described it during several of his dev Q&A streams. Here are a couple such examples:
Personally, I look forward to seeing how it works and feels once it’s fully realized and implemented.
Nothing about convenient trade precludes players from “actually playing the game” - in fact, it can often make them play more by improving their ability to try new characters and builds, or get past brick walls that would otherwise take an unreasonable grind. They’ve been consistently trying to bury trade throughout POE’s lifetime, and yet despite how convenient it is anyway thanks to third party tools, they still “actually play the game” anyway. The only difference it makes is how annoyed you are when you’re done trading - not whether or not you do it.
No, you don’t. You run into content balancing problems when you throw fully unfettered trade into a game without any semblance of cohesion or thought behind it (like D3 did). The idea that convenient trade destroys game balance is a cockamamie idea that players got sold on by bad game devs, but it is not a foregone conclusion. Making trade suck in order to slow the usage and therefore the power curve is lazy design at best, and it has been in every game that does it - which EHG has genuinely shocked me by cranking it up to 11 - on a scale of 5.
The Bazaar was called “current plans” and “a work in progress” and that means it isn’t yet final. EHG has done a lot of things right and I want to give them the benefit of the doubt that they’ll realize the quality of this system does not line up with the quality of the rest of their game. But I will not support yet another game that wants to give me the middle finger because I sometimes want to trade with other players for upgrades or build enabling items in a way that is convenient.
I really feel like Mike should know from the numerous other games that want the same thing from their inconvenient trade systems that this is a dream that does not manifest into reality, no matter how hard you try to force it to.
The only possibility of player-driven solutions I can think of is a third party tool and website that players collaborate on to aggregate what they are listing into a single location, so that it was searchable and filterable. It wouldn’t solve most problems, but it would at least help you not constantly waste massive amounts of your time wandering around the Bazaar clicking on who knows how many dozen different shops, having to check each item individually to see if you care about it.
At some point it has to because otherwise you’re only trading with a fixed set of players forever.
Yes, I was thinking the same. 3rd party site with decent tools to manufacture your item (similar to the Build Planner, but with specific rolls), list your name and price. Players find 10-15 sellers for the item they want, go to the Bazaar and RNG-shop to see if any of those seller’s shops comes up.
Yes let’s make trade hard so people have to continue to gamble for their gear. I’ve leveled at least 18 characters to level 80+ (highest being level 91)
And I have only had an upgrade to an item I was wearing after level 25 drop in game 1 time. And maybe have had like 5 or 6 items (in total) drop that were craftable upgrades. So yes let’s make trading difficult so the Gambler Guy’s store doesn’t go broke and he becomes homeless.
If the strength of a character relative to the difficulty of content with or without convenient trade is equal (i.e., balanced) then why do you want it?
because I don’t want to spam the gambler just to get gear for my character (which has been the case for every character I have ever leveled).
you literally get worse drops in this game then you do in path of exile (and that game has pretty bad drop rates).
To counter the abysmal drops you need a solid trade system (which PoE never really implemented) Or you need to fix the issue which is nothing but trash drops.
I can only speak for myself, but as for me, I really like this approach.
It enhances my core gameplay, as I have one more location to find something interesting.
It doesn’t always has to be for my current character, but maybe I find a good roll for my other characters or a new idea.
This way, self-found will also stay at the top of the “drop-foodchain”.
Also, I can sell off my stuff for other players.
I would like it, if the shops re-roll after I finish a monolith boss for example.
This way, I have something to look forward too, after finishing a monolith, as a small break or so.
Also, this approach makes third-party sites extremely hard to function, if at all.
A lot of how good the drops are comes down to knowing what is actually “good” and what can serve as a usable crafting base.
IMO drops in LE are really good and plenty, just because how easy it is to craft an item.
I would recommend trying think about how your loot filter is setup and trying to adjust it.
With how LE works I get dozens of items that can be potential upgrades within a single game session, but due to the nature of how the crafting works not every item will actually become that upgrade.
Just as an example, I see a lot of people hiding Magic (Blue Items) in LE, which is not a good method of filtering, since a T5-10 magic item with 2 desired affixes is better than most rares, even better than a rare with 3-4 desired affixes if their total tier count is not significantly higher.
There are plenty of other useful tricks and methods to filter out Items and reducing the number of items that are not interesting, while keeping alot of the items that are not direct upgrades, but serve as very promising crafting bases.
LE in the current state does not need trading in any way IMO.
For me personally the trading system will be more interesting due to the fact, that I can sell items, that have no value to me, but are still worth keeping and selling.
This will make loot drops feel more exciting, but I would never want to buy all my upgrades, because this kills the fun of playing the game and collecting upgrades yourself for me.
So how do you propose threading the needle of having an easy trade system that doesn’t allow the player to bypass 99% of the game (the finding loot bit)? It’s easy to say, well system X sucks because it won’t allow me to easily search for specific item and then easily acquire it. That kind of trade system is akin to having an item generator/editor. Want affixes A, B, C & D on base Z with a 99% implicit roll? Sure thing, Player Big_Boi_1999 has that up for trade on the AH for a price that’s within your budget! One trivial search and you’ve got the BiS item for that slot! Eleven trivial searches later & you’ve now finished the game! Now don’t forget to get the free DLC “This Game Sucks It’s All Based Around Trade”!
Edit: It’s not a trivial problem to solve & which ever way you try will piss people off.
Curious to see how this will turn out. Things I could see happening with this approach:
So, one suggestion would be to exclude different class items pop up in your bazaar.
So start down the PoE path all over again? We all know what a roaring success their version of “trading” is?
Zaodon, please don’t take this the wrong way but once again you start a thread off by jumping all over something with a purely negative reaction & no constructive suggestions/feedback. Considering the other debates we’ve had in the forums; you don’t seem to like a lot of what is in LE, and want it to be more like PoE so sometimes I do wonder why you’re not playing that instead? Maybe I am wrong, but maybe you could assist with that misconception in the way that you create threads? Instead of starting out saying “New Feature - Don’t like this, don’t like that, it all sucks”. How about saying “New Feature - Don’t like this, here is what I would suggest instead”. It’s ok to be critical, but how about some constructive criticism instead of always negative criticism with no constructive element? I see that you later ventured out of your shell a little with some suggestions - Kudos for that but try starting threads out in that vein and you will get less peoples’ backs up. See the way that I replied to you in this paragraph. I didn’t say “I don’t like your posting style”, I said “I don’t like your posting style, here’s a suggestion”. I applaud your participation, but chill out a little 
Anyway, my feedback on the initial announcement.
To address the Bazaar and some of the issues raised. The devs have already indicated that they don’t want this to become yet another of those games where you level up, then simply go and buy all your gear. Personally I’m in full agreement. I would much rather craft and find 99% of my gear and maybe have to buy that one super rare unique that I just can’t get to drop. As mentioned PoE is already out there for people who want to level then buy everything. Personally I found that approach extremely boring. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not a “suck up” or a fanboi. If I see something I disagree with in a game, I can be just as harsh (if not more so) than the next man. However, oddly enough, for the first time in years in a game, I have struggled to find things in LE I don’t like (that haven’t already been listed as being addressed in the future).
More on Bazaars. I played for a long time in a game that used this Bazaar/Marketplace approach. It was a lesser known Asian mmo/aprg called Shaiya. We’d go play as a guild, farm, raid, PVP etc then during dinner/TV time we’d set up our shops in the market and go afk. It worked wonderfully well. You got into a kind of habit of making browsing the shops a quick pre-exit ritual. Each “shop” was only the size of a backpack, and if you wanted to buy an item you clicked on it and the gold was transferred, just like dealing with a npc vendor.
Because each “shop” was only a backpack, browsing 20-30 shops took hardly any time at all if you were looking for something specific, including self crafted items. There were no “fake” listings because once listed it acted like a vendor, unless you “de-listed” them by closing your shop (closing your backpack). Also, there were no “bots” because you had to actually LOOK for what was displayed with your eyes.
So, this seemingly simple system solved several common modern conundrums: No Bots auto trading, no fake listings, no AH & market economy manipulation, no 3rd party nonsense. They eventually ruined the whole thing by bowing to peer pressure and introducing an AH alongside this system. It resulted in bots, inflation, and a complete falloff of socialising. My take from my long experience with that game was simple: Either have a player stall marketplace or an AH, but never both at the same time.
Weirdly enough, it did actually create some getting to know & player interaction. As servers were typically quite small, people got used to seeing the same faces sitting or running around the market and often you chatted about raids or PvP events. Granted, some of this was fuelled by the fact that this was a 2 faction game, lights vs darks, so there were “map control” events to chat about.
So, my opinion is that I am quite excited to see how the Bazaar turns out. Perhaps I am fortunate in having played a long time in a game that had one rather than an AH or PoE’s weird half baked solution. I would suggest in making a Bazaar that the player’s “store” is restricted to one backpack sized listing. This alleviates 2 potential issues: 1 no scrolling/sensory overload, and 2 It forces the player to only list “saleable items” rather than any old junk.
I actually see all of these things happening. The first point can be somewhat alleviated by restricting the “shops” of a player to one backpack size. The other points will sadly be driven by supply & demand.
Good suggestion. I can see the merits to this providing a natural filter. It would mean though, that you couldn’t always shop for alts before making them but I do also think that this would be a minor inconvenience as long as we’re not too restricted on character slots long term by the server.
First thing that comes to mind, when reading this. For those of you who have ever played maple story thats what it reminded me of. A free market when everyone congregates and visit people’s shops to see whats on for sale. I wonder if the bazaar will also be a place where people just camp all day and spam WTB…WTS…WTT… 
A question for @EHG_Stanzwar re the Bazaar.
If the Bazaar is going to function like a car boot sale (a physical space with “shops” that you manually browse looking for specific gear they have for sale) that can’t be “refreshed” by exiting/whatever, how would you deal with the edge-case where “your” Bazaar happens to spawn with “only” Primalist-based shops but you’re not-a-Primalist? Would your trading experience be forever borked until the selection of shops you’ve been given change what gear they have for sale? Would there be no way for the shops to be changed (like they are randomly selected once a day after you log off/on but only once in a 24-hour period)?
And would it be possible to have your item filter be applied to the goods in the shop?
What happens if the shops only have very few items for sale? Would there be a limit but maybe you could put up more than that limit for sale & the extra items are added when existing items are sold (kinda like reserves in ground combat in Stellaris)? What would happen if all of your shops only had 1 item for sale?