Aaaaaaaand you used a quote without context, which was “you can’t legit price fix in a large game”. What’s that called? Oh, right, gasslighting.
What do you call messeging a seller with an offer? All of the transactions in PoE are through bids. There is no button that lets you buy anything in that game. There is no buyout in the game. You directly bid for an item via personal message…
Miffy, I’m really not sure what point you’re trying to arrive at but EHG has already called it an economy. Yes, I see that you’ve stated that it’s an economy “without…”, however, I would encourage you to very carefully read the proposed plan for the Bazaar and the economy because some of the very things you mention “may” in fact show up. Case in point, trading and item searching have been discussed as part of the plan.
“As a buyer, you will be able to search through all of the items within the Bazaar using an extensive filtering system to narrow down your options and help you find the exact item you want.”
“Fear not, friends will be able to freely gift items between each other as long as they have been friends for a reasonable amount of time and both own the full game. The definition of “reasonable amount of time” will be a function of the level of items you are attempting to trade and the length of time you have been on each other’s friend list. In addition to this, gold will not be giftable to other players.”
So let’s not mince words here into a debate of ‘open’ trade vs ‘restrictive’ trade. The bottom line is, the plan is to have some form of it in the game. If the differing factor really is between those two then perhaps a change of title is needed to reflect that?
Even if you can search the selection of player shops presented to you in the Bazaar, it is just a tiny selection out of the entire supply on the market as a whole. You cannot refresh this selection, you cannot search or access the entire market or reach a shop not visible to you. Having a search function for it is fine, it’s neither here nor there, just saves some time. But you cannot access the overall market and be virtually guaranteed to find what you are looking for by just searching.
It’s total RNG. Now, if the Bazaar ends up being like 100 player shops at once? Then maybe it would reach such a degree. But that, by all accounts based on what EHG have posted, doesn’t seem like the intent to me.
Not really. Because optimally, I wouldn’t have it at all, I still stand by that. EHG’s proposal seems to be sufficiently limited to avoid the pitfalls I personally see, though. So i’m in favour of it. Have some trade, but do not let it impact the core gameplay to any meaningful degree.
This is on top of already discussed limitations such as what you can trade in this Bazaar, which they’ve frequently mentioned as well.
edit:
It’s also worth noting you’re referencing a rather old post, and there are newer ones from just this past July talking about current plans, which have changed somewhat according to them.
To clarify, this is the current status quo:
- What will the trade system be like?
Our current plans regarding the trade system are still a work in progress and will require scale testing, but are centralized around having an area for players to congregate called The Bazaar. In the Bazaar you can visit other player’s shops and purchase items for in-game gold. The player shops that appear are random so the act of finding gear that you are interested in feels like browsing an active bazaar instead of finding players on third party websites to trade with directly. We want the main item hunt to remain outside of trade so making this an enjoyable experience but not the clear best way to obtain better items is our goal. Players in a party will also be able to gift items to each other, as long as the item dropped after both players joined the party.
Are you changing loot drop rates or crafting because of multiplayer?
Perhaps. But if so, not drastically. We want the drop rates to be mainly balanced around self-found and feel we are doing a decent job of this right now. Because of the way the trade system is planned to work we don’t believe this will throw off the balance of the item hunt drastically.
Flipping items is a bane to online gaming and should never be allowed.
I’m glad EHG isn’t implementing Trading in LE. We don’t need bots, RMTs and flippers.
Sorry, I should have said price fixer, though I don’t think that’s considered any better than flipping…
IMO, an AH with bidding would be like D3’s system on launch. Item gets put up for a duration (possibly unlimited) potentially with a minimum price/starting bid & other players use the AH to send in their bids which may or may not get outbid by other players until the highest one wins, or there’s a buy out price. But a buy out price, which is what the vast majority of stuff on PoE goes for, is not a bid. The only time I’ve ever had a conversation with a seller in PoE was when they “accidentally” put an item up for too low a price, how much malice/greed one wishes to ascribe to that is an entirely different question.
If PoE’s system were an AH, you wouldn’t need to spend minutes/hours messaging people to see if they want to sell the items they put up for sale, the AH would do it all for them which is likely why GGG don’t want to do it that way.
I don’t consider it bidding, you can if you want but we’ll disagree on that.
That was posted over 3 years ago & the devs have said that things have changed since then. We don’t know whether they’ll still allow direct trading between friends outside of the bazaar, but their current plans for it sound very different to what was discussed in that thread.
Ditto price fixing…
Here is the latest (skip down to the “Loot” section)
Quote from that section:
Yes, thank you for that. I see that they’re no longer suggesting that you have to be friends with someone for an extended period of time in order to give an item to them. You just both need to be in the party when the item dropped. They also make no more mention of searching so I wonder if they chose to drop it?
I don’t think anyone is asking that trade be the best way to find better items. People are just asking for alternatives and options when the grind or crafting has failed to yield the item hunt. How do you do that without it becoming the most convenient method? Well, you make your core gameplay loop enjoyable. You make the drops meaningful and plentiful; even turning them into a resource that feeds the hunt itself if they’re unusable. You offer smart and restrictive trading while discouraging the use of 3rd party tools, RMT, etc. If there will be items available in the Bazaar that can help smooth out a build then there’s no reason it won’t get utilized. Even if some folks find gambling to be more convenient, it’s still an option.
Trading can and has worked in other games just fine and I hope EHG’s inclusion of it works as they envision it. My hope is that once they do implement, they’re prepared to iterate and refine on it.
I’m sure they will, they’ve been doing that with the rest of the game, I don’t think there’s any reason that they wouldn’t for trade as well if there turned out to be issues when people got their hands on it.
You seem to really like what you imagine EHG’s bazaar is going to be like. I have a question. When implemented, would you go browsing said bazaar? Why?
Sure I would. I would engage in a more open Trade system as well, if implemented - I just don’t believe it would be the best path to choose for this game.
I’m just going by what EHG have stated, which pretty much precludes any kind of iteration of the Bazaar, to me, which would let it have an economic impact. I imagine it to be a scattering of random player stands, maybe 10? 12? You have to check them manually, like a vendor. They refresh maybe daily? Another interesting detail is whether your current selection of player “vendors” can update their supply while it’s active for you, as in, they throw something in there, and you would see it pop up live while browsing their selection.
You can’t have too many stands, bc then either player demand for more QoL would soar, or you’d have too much supply to maintain SSF balance. You can’t be able to refresh constantly, or force a new selection, same reason. And finally you have no way of knowing which player stands you’ll get to see when, and what they’ll have on offer.
In any case, EHG have very clearly taken the position that SSF balance is the focus, and they don’t want Trade to endanger that. So, based on that, this is what I imagine the Bazaar to be like. Details will vary, i’m sure, and it will develop organically based on feedback as we go, once implemented.
Let’s not care about SSF focus or open trade for the moment. I’m just curious about your enthusiasm for the bazaar system.
You said you would browse this bazaar. I’m asking why? What would be the goal for you to browse said bazaar? If there is no way to deterministically get something you want, why not just keep fighting and grinding in mono? What would browsing through bazaar do for you that fighting monsters for loot does not?
The same reason i’d browse a vendor or gamble? You use the tools available to you. If more open trade were available, I would use that too, as I do in PoE. But the game would be a very different one.
I’m enthusiastic for the Bazaar in that you can likely take it or leave it, and it won’t have an impact on the current rough itemization balance, the way I imagine it and EHG have described it. Whether or not I will engage with it regularly will depend on how it is implemented, I can’t really predict that yet. I’m just happy that it seems to be more of a side feature, and trade will not become a major factor in the itemization design going forward.
The Bazaar will suck if the shop/items are randomised, whats the point if you can’t find the items you are looking for?
That’s exactly the point, trade isn’t supposed to be that reliable and plannable in this context.
Well that’s a huge disappointment. Luckily I got my money’s worth.
Tbh nobody ever promised the type of trade PoE has. It’s something people built up as an expectation when the big wave of players came over from PoE.
If people paid a bit attention to the game itself, it’s clear why an open trade model wouldn’t work in this iteration without big changes.
Reminder to self I shall not comment on this thread again at least until the bazaar is actually implemented 
I was kind of done with the topic until something is actually implemented myself, but the updates in July and some posts here kind of got me back into it 
I like the bazaar idea and I like farming!
I do agree with OP. Blancing the game for open trade is what I hate the most in PoE because it kills loot purpose. I want to play SSF (could be shared between all my characters or with friends I am playing with).
Maybe both open trade and SSF-ish modes could exist, but the whole balance should be different for each mode with no possible migration between modes for characters.