When are we getting better trading tools?

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Unquietheart написал:

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x1z1 написал:

Blizzard was talking about convenient trading. It just happened to be in a form of an AH. They were saying that convenient trading is bad because finding your own upgrades is more enjoyable. So they removed trading, and made it easier to find stuff for yourself. It's actually easier to gear now than it was with an AH.

Blizzard said "Trading was too convenient and safe because of the Auction House."
Blizzard said "We removed the Auction House because it undermined the core principle of an ARPG."

Yet somehow, you manage to compartmentalize that enough to insist that it wasn't the AH that was the problem. You're welcome to hold whatever opinion you like of course, but Blizzard has close to 5000 employees, and more money than 100 GGG's. They're big enough that they're actually a publicly traded company (as opposed to GGG which is privately held (as far as I know)).

Blizzard, with all their personnel, all their money, and all their resources were incapable of reaching a solution that would make an AH viable in an ARPG environment. All those people who are paid, professional game designers (and all their support personnel) couldn't make it work.

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x1z1 написал:

It doesn't matter if it's the only example. Bad example is a bad example. D3 just wasn't built well enough to support an AH. And i listed multiple reasons why, in one of my previous posts. PoE isn't facing any of those issues, and because of that, the situation is entirely different.

It's not a bad example, it's an excellent example. It's the only public use of a dedicated AH in an ARPG environment that I personally know of. There's a huge amount of documentation on it, and a huge number of industry professionals and journalists have weighed in on the subject.

Think what you like, but there are a lot of people with more specific knowledge, and more experience who disagree with you.

But they actually removed ALL trade, too. It's hard to 100% blame the AH when they completely removed trading, period. So its arguable that it worked or not; they decided they wanted a completely different game model. Now, if they kept trade and got rid of AH, that would be far more convincing as to how much it failed.

Its hard to take someone's word on undermining a core principle when they put an RMAH in their own game to begin with. Where were their principles at that point? Taking a vacation?

(But I know why they removed all trade. Blizzard is greedy as shit and was not going to allow anyone to monetize their game if they couldn't; the main reason they put the RMAH in the game in the first place.)

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x1z1 написал:

@Unquietheart,

You are too hung-up on the words Blizzard used. Look at what actually happened. They didn't just remove the AH from the game. They removed all trade. This means that they found that every trading system undermined core gameplay. So they completely replaced it with a SF system.

And it's actually easier to gear yourself now. So, the convenience, and the ease of gearing that resulted from it, wasn't the issue. The ability to trade was the issue. It was about the process of gearing. They found that it was simply more enjoyable to find your own upgrades, instead of trading for them.

D3 is a good example of an ARPG game trying AH, and it gave us a lot of information on how to make it work better. But it's a terrible example of a properly integrated AH. It was build on bad foundation. If they had removed RMAH; added seasons, item sinks, currency sinks; and fixed itemization. And let it all run for a while. Then we would have had a good example. The information that we got from D3's experiments just isn't good enough to say with any certainty that an AH would not work well in PoE.

Your conveniently forgetting that the RMAH wasn't actually put in from the start. Gear progression in D3 was only done by the AH. Finding something of value yourself was pretty much impossible. Your also forgetting that once a system is in place, it's really hard to lower the convenience once it's given. They couldn't risk that ever. So they did what they had to do. Nothing to do with that they didn't find a proper replacement. It was already to late.

And please, stop making assumptions on how bad everything was. You are really not convincing anyone that you know better then a billion dollar company. The AH was a masterpiece in how it was incorporated. ARPG and AH's simply don't work well together.

PoE is a hybrid between finding loot and trading. Any kind of AH will destroy anything PoE has ever stood for. Not to mention taking away any desire to go out and find good stuff.

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Destructodave написал:

But they actually removed ALL trade, too. It's hard to 100% blame the AH when they completely removed trading, period. So its arguable that it worked or not; they decided they wanted a completely different game model. Now, if they kept trade and got rid of AH, that would be far more convincing as to how much it failed.

Its hard to take someone's word on undermining a core principle when they put an RMAH in their own game to begin with. Where were their principles at that point? Taking a vacation?

(But I know why they removed all trade. Blizzard is greedy as shit and was not going to allow anyone to monetize their game if they couldn't; the main reason they put the RMAH in the game in the first place.)

Well, okay, I see the point you're trying to make. I'm not sure I agree with some of your base assumptions though.

Yeah, I get the idea that Blizzard would want to proactively prevent the proliferation of third party auction and cash sales sites. But I think your assumption of the ubiquotiousness of those vehicles doesn't necessarily hold up.

The percentage of the player base that qualifies as high end traders is actually only a small subset of the total population. They want trading to be facilitated because it's their primary game. Then there's the average player, who wants an upgrade. The average player might or might not do much selling, I suspect that mostly, they just want to buy at such times as they feel like the game isn't giving the the tools they need. They want it easier, because it's a quality-of-life issue for them, and most of them don't see the larger picture, or how "easier" will play out over the entire player base. Those folks will sell, but only to fund their own purchases, not as a primary goal of their own.

A third party site wouldn't have been an altruistic thing. So, expecting a viable, safe player-to-player Auction House environment (like what Blizzard supported inside D3) is unlikley.

Blizzard actually has the legal staff to persue shutting down those kinds of sites, and the technical staff to lock accounts that they determine are using gear that violates their T.O.S. Which means that the sites that can evade the legal implications ... end up being based in other countries.

This gets into trust. A lot of the player base (that was perfectly happy to use Blizzard's AH tool) won't want to use sites they don't perceive as safe. I'm not suggesting that's a hard-and-fast number, more that it's a sliding scale, where you'd see less and less users of 3rd party sites as those sites became more suspect. Also, player fears of having their accounts locked would have also exerted downward pressure on adoption of the idea of using 3rd party sites.

Additionally, they closed BOTH AH's, the Gold and the RMT ones. The kind of reduction of trade that you're talking about could have been accomplished by making only the end game gear BoA. The Gold AH could have easily been left in place to serve the needs of the leveling players. Yet they still closed both.

Finally, they actually SAID it was the AH. I can buy that they might omit concerns regarding 3rd party sites selling their stuff, but not that they're actual public statements would be outright lies. I'll accept that they might not have told the entire truth, but not that what they said wasn't truthful (as far as it went).

So... no, I don't really agree.

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x1z1 написал:

@Unquietheart,

You are too hung-up on the words Blizzard used. Look at what actually happened.

I am. You're busy trying to compartmentalize what they said in order to make the AH concept viable.

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x1z1 написал:

They didn't just remove the AH from the game. They removed all trade. This means that they found that every trading system undermined core gameplay. So they completely replaced it with a SF system.

Sure, trading does undermine any ARPG system. But the point that I'm making (and the point Blizzard was making) is that an AH is a HUGE facilitator of "trade". The AH was a tool for servicing trade in a safe and highly efficient manner. There's no way around that. Making trade smooth, efficient and encouraging it's proliferation within the player base was what the AH (in D3) was for.

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x1z1 написал:

And it's actually easier to gear yourself now. So, the convenience, and the ease of gearing that resulted from it, wasn't the issue. The ability to trade was the issue. It was about the process of gearing. They found that it was simply more enjoyable to find your own upgrades, instead of trading for them.

Of course it's easier to gear up now. They buffed the drop rates. They were able to buff the drop rates because they removed the AH. Read Bashiok's statement on how (and why) drop rates were adjusted due to the AH. I quoted it above (page 20). The current drop rates are a direct consequence of the removal of the AH.

The ease with which people gear up is a game element that designers manage, specifically. Any ARPG style game takes "X" long to play because "X" is exactly what the designers want.

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x1z1 написал:

D3 is a good example of an ARPG game trying AH, and it gave us a lot of information on how to make it work better. But it's a terrible example of a properly integrated AH. It was build on bad foundation. If they had removed RMAH; added seasons, item sinks, currency sinks; and fixed itemization. And let it all run for a while. Then we would have had a good example. The information that we got from D3's experiments just isn't good enough to say with any certainty that an AH would not work well in PoE.

No, I disagree, any AH in an ARPG will undermine it. You can try to add in any secondary controls you like, but the bottom line is that if people are going to go to the AH for gear INSTEAD of playing the game for gear, then you've undermined THE core principle of an ARPG, and your player base will grow dissatisfied.

An Auction House's job is to make trading easier. And you and I have already agreed that easier trading is bad for the game.

Edit: I changed my mind on talking about that stuff.

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Unquietheart написал:

An Auction House's job is to make trading easier. And you and I have already agreed that easier trading is bad for the game.

I'm not so sure about that. We have a trading system that is not ideal, but it makes trading rather easy. Were I not an SSF player, I could as easily go to the poe.trade and get my stuff as I could had we something better/ more integrated.

The way it is now, the question that remains imo only is why make trading a bit awkward with using a 3rd party site instead of having it nicely integrated into the game.

I concur, however, that any trading (with other players, vendors are fine and part of any xrpg I've seen so far) is undermining the core principle of an arpg.
But since we do have trading, there should be a good system that facilitates it.

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Miská написал:

Your conveniently forgetting that the RMAH wasn't actually put in from the start. Gear progression in D3 was only done by the AH. Finding something of value yourself was pretty much impossible. Your also forgetting that once a system is in place, it's really hard to lower the convenience once it's given. They couldn't risk that ever. So they did what they had to do. Nothing to do with that they didn't find a proper replacement. It was already to late.

And please, stop making assumptions on how bad everything was. You are really not convincing anyone that you know better then a billion dollar company. The AH was a masterpiece in how it was incorporated. ARPG and AH's simply don't work well together.

PoE is a hybrid between finding loot and trading. Any kind of AH will destroy anything PoE has ever stood for. Not to mention taking away any desire to go out and find good stuff.

I got the most fun in D3 out of gear I found myself. Specifically: a lower level requirement weapon that I used on all my alts. I only bought gear for two characters to play through inferno after hitting level 60. I never did sell anything, though. :(

Once the RMT AH was opened... I had stopped playing by then. The lack of a gold-sink and rampant bots made prices go crazy... And I never sold anything...

As for a billion dollar company making masterpieces... Do you think their ideas would work here? Specifically: Would POE be better with no trading at all? Self found for everybody!

As to desire to go out and find good stuff, my main desire comes from helping other people... possibly by providing them with that good stuff. If I could not sell items (or give them away) to other people... I would get as unmotivated as I currently do in POE. D2 was fun for me after I fully geared a character or two because I needed nothing else and would give everything new away.

D3 now gives me no reason to play whatsoever after gearing. And POE... oh man... so many problems. I cannot even gear one character without using things that are not POE (external trade blah blah blah)

If GGG is not willing to put proper trading in their game I personally would welcome a no-trade version. Rebalanced around the idea of acquiring my own gear, of course.

And "pow!", this debate suddenly turned into a "black or white" debate, where it's all or nothing. What is this? As long as we can't buy or sell what we want, when we want it, we're better off with turning the whole shit self found?

This game needs trading. But the efficiency of poe.trade was never "intended", it was a compromise at best. Who's to blame? GGG. This is what happens when they let traders take the wheel, instead of game developers. And now we're at a point where that efficiency isn't enough anymore?

I REALLY do not get it. And the sentence I absolutely do not get, is the "I just want to be able to instantly trade, so I can play the game"-sentence. Then play the game! And trade when you really have to. I can probably gear a guardian-ready character in under 30 minutes on poe.trade. Is that too much time to ask for - when you get to bypass all progression and RNG? The need (urge) for doing things fast and with minimum use of brain cells and effort is driving a lot of these wishes.

But fuck it. As I said in another thread. As long as these "Pro AH dudes" are right on the following:
- It will not be harder to sell items at the same prices as now
- Drop rates will NEVER be touched
- There will NOT be increased inflation
- They don't have to tune ANY bosses, items or skills

...then I don't really care. Do what ever. Bring on a RMAH for all I care.

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Phrazz написал:

...then I don't really care. Do what ever. Bring on a RMAH for all I care.

Now you are just being silly. I think you would care about a RMAH, as would most players. GGG made their bones by being "ethical" with their in-game purchases. A RMAH would stop POE from slowly dying by shooting it in the face.

I think this sort of frustration is sort of inevitable with GGG's design decisions based upon the idea that tediously slow RNG = hardcore. (Not your frustration. Our frustration; those of us wanting improvements we think would be fun)