I think this is the linchpin that undoes this whole notion. The game’s economy doesn’t need to exist within the game. RMT often happens on 3rd party sites.
Gold farmers in WoW didn’t buy new accounts. They just hacked existing ones.
VPNs are cheap.
Given the above, I don’t think I need to explain the problems here.
At the end of the day, all this does is undermine legit trade for regular players and RMTers will do what RMTers do.
I don’t think I will write further about the issue but I want to say I admire you optimism about humanity and I do mean that sincerely.
Maybe I’m cynical but I can’t envision many people listing items for other people for free let alone at least one item per active player. It would be nice but I just don’t see it, nonetheless been good going back and forth on this topic.
Sorry, as I already explained, no one - not a legit player, nor a bot/farmer - can trade items between them.
You CANNOT make RMT if you can’t trade items. Period. It isn’t possible. It’s DOA.
Without Trade, there is no economy. Without economy, there is no RMT.
Yet, players can take an item they don’t want, post it up for free on a list, while other players can be searching said list for that item and will see it when its posted.
When every player is doing this, no items will have any real-money value. You simply browse the list for something you might want and take it. And then post things you don’t want but think are decent.
EHG can even purge items which sit in the list for more than (X time - week, month, whatever works) to keep it fresh.
I work for a Fortune 100 company which handles actual financial transactions - a real-life target for hackers. If we can code in a way that keeps our sites safe, EHG can do the same things. Most hacking is about access (account access, system access). You can’t “hack” an implemented “Free Item List” feature of the game. You can only exploit it. And exploits are both limited, and correctable by coding fixes.
And I do think that if such a “Item Bazzaar” existed people would use it. Ever see that “Take a penny, Leave a penny” tray in front of cash registers in stores?
Oh, I get what you’re going for now. I thought you meant this in a one to one scenario. You mean a public listing. Gotcha.
It’s basically an in-game version of Goodwill, without some corporation charging for the items, lol.
Yeah, that probably doesn’t have too many obvious problems with it at first glance, but I think it would be unpopular simply because so many players would prefer to be able to trade–especially with their friends. It’s not exciting and people would probably shit on it out of resentment for not having trade and being stuck with that.
Functionally, it seems sound. I just don’t think it would be liked by most of the players.
Edit:
Actually, I do see one issue with it.
It undermines the progression to some degree. If the argument against trade in general is the idea of just “buying power,” this is basically saying you don’t even have to play to get that same power. It then creates an issue of, “How often can each person take something?” “Won’t they just afk or log out for that timer and do something else while they wait?”
It does open up a few other issues, actually.
I think a good marketing message from EHG could help to influence adoption of it.
That said, being the devil’s advocate of my own ideas, you could message your friend “Hey, Im going to post up a Bhuldar’s, get ready” and your friend can “pre-search” the List (nothing would be there at first,) and then you reply “NOW!” and they refresh, see it, and grab it.
Since that is possible, then it would also be possible for RMTs to snag good items, “sell” them for RMT, and then do the same little trick with the player. HOWEVER, there is always a risk of someone else snagging the item, or the RMT being a scam, Plus it requires in-game coordination. There would be ways to catch it happening. Even then, with most people posting items for free anyway, it would be a LOT harder for the RMT bots to corner a rare item.
I mean, no system is perfect, but I think there are steps you can take to protect your app. By adding other kinds of limits to the function, I think EHG can get it right.
As far as “money for nothing” (i.e. “free” progression with no effort), maybe in order to take an item, you have to List one, and whenever you List one, it records the Item Level of the item, and you can only “Take” one of an Item Level you yourself have listed. i.e. as your character levels and post items up, your character earns the right to take higher level items.
Like I said, there are always ways. 
Well, that & the fact that the devs have said there’s going to be trade of some kind…
I include the Devs in my statement…
It’s possible to make this into something workable, but I think at the end of the day most people would simply just prefer to trade. A system like this might also be seen as a bait & switch from some early supporters who expected proper trade since that was what was pitched.
I mean this in the nicest way possible but… so what?
Devs: “Yep, we totally were going to do Vanilla ARPG Trade, but like… then we thought for 10 seconds… and… decided this was better.”
What are people going to do, quit over a different trade option than they thought EHG was going to make?
I’m more thinking about the potential for drama and blowback something like that could cause for the game/devs in general, not so much for me personally.
Oops, sorry, that was the theoretical “you”, not literally ‘you’…
Yeah, I wasn’t sure, so I just wanted to be clear.
My 2 cents is that trade should exist, but the game should not be balanced around trade at all (literally ignore it when balancing drop rates). let everyone who wants to trade to trade to their heart content, and if they get bored with it, they can stop, trade less or leave.
Everybody wins as long trade is just a choice of how to approach the game. We will still have ssf mode for those who want a fair competitive scenario, so it should be fine.
Since when is it hard to get gear in POE without trading? I’ve literally never traded nor used there trading website and I’ve never had an issue with finding gear either, PoE is easymode. I think trading is fine in games, no issue here with me. And I wouldn’t even use it.
The only fallacy here is you assuming your perspective is the only possible one. For one, there already are ARPGs without an economy. And we have a famous failed one in D3.
For someone as pedantic as yourself Llama, I am disappointed that you actually agree with his premise. 1) its not true all ARPGs have “Trade” and “Economy”; 2) his assumption that that is our assumption is patently false. There is some delusion of grandeur going on here.
Well, if you want to get pedantic…
He didn’t say “all ARPGs.” He said “other,” as in “some.”
I agree his premise is poor, but it’s more to do with this part…
Many players are talking about trade because the devs made it part of their pitch to kick start the game. The devs didn’t have to do that either, so I think accusing them of some Appeal to Tradition is inaccurate. The devs clearly want a prominent, wholistic MP experience, so it’s only natural this would include things like trade and PvP (something else the devs have talked about). Are we to believe that the devs only talk about including PvP because other ARPGs did? That would be ridiculous, because hardly any of them do it and none all that well.
You need to reread my post and highlight the correct sentence. Please read what I said is “the only fallacy”. The sentence you highlight is my add on to say what else is incorrect.
If you’re agreeing that his use of “other” is correct, your addition wouldn’t correct anything.
Either way, I’m just poking a bit of fun for calling Llama out about that. It’s really not a big deal. 
but it’s more to do with this part…
The only reason…
And on point about what you want to quibble with on the “other” or “all”, if he means “some other” ARPGs have an economy so LE also have to have it becomes even more of a complete nonsense statement.
Some ARPGs have trade/economy, and some others don’t - so please tell me why does the logic follow that “anyone” is thinking of the former?