Suggestion: Improve Buyout System in 0.3.0 with Grace Window and Guaranteed Pickup

Right now in 0.3.0, buying an item means racing to the seller’s hideout and hoping you load in fast enough to click first. This creates swarms of players, favors bots or people with faster machines, and makes the experience frustrating for both buyers and sellers.

A smoother alternative would be:
- When someone clicks Buyout, it starts a short grace period (e.g. a few seconds) where other interested players can also buyout.
- When the timer ends, one buyer is chosen at random from everyone who joined during that window.
- That buyer is then guaranteed the purchase and teleports to the seller’s hideout to pick up the item from Ange. Everyone else simply sees that the item was sold, with no pointless hideout swarm.


Why this helps:
- Levels the playing field between bots, fast connections, and regular players.
- Prevents hideout chaos by only teleporting the actual buyer.
- Ensures items sell at the listed price without turning it into a speed contest.
- Keeps the system simple, transparent, and fair for everyone.


This change would preserve the intent of merchant-based trading while removing the race conditions and technical advantages that currently dominate.

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Warnlord#4746 написал:

A smoother alternative would be:
- When someone clicks Buyout, it starts a short grace period (e.g. a few seconds) where other interested players can also buyout.

Would be horrible because then someone will just have a few bots insta/perm lock the item until their buying account can click it.
Your random pick is defeated by bot swarm

Also, with one tiny exception, there are no random numbers when it comes to computers. It will be gamed and exploited.

+1

I'm not sold on the Grace Period timer but I do agree that there needs to be something. I don't have an alternative suggestion though.

I understand the worry that bots would “swarm” every buyout window to tilt the odds. The main idea of this system is to make that approach far less rewarding than it is now. Right now, a single fast bot has a guaranteed win in many cases. With a grace window and random selection, even a bot that joins instantly only has the same chance as everyone else in the pool.

If someone tried to flood the pool with multiple accounts, that would already be a form of abuse under GGG’s rules — and just like with current trade bots, detection and rate-limiting would still apply. The system itself doesn’t reward the single fastest clicker anymore, which removes the main reason for bots to exist in this space.

As for “random numbers being gamed”: every online game already uses server-side randomness for drops, crafts, and rolls. Players can’t influence those outcomes in practice. The same principle can apply here.

So while no system is ever 100% bot-proof, this one:
- Removes the guaranteed advantage bots currently enjoy,
- Shifts outcomes back to fairness, where human players have a real chance,
- And cuts out the hideout chaos by only letting the chosen buyer complete the purchase.

Understand the concerns, but it's really no different in terms of bot advantage vs. today where the bots will whisper first and usually it goes to the first whisper.

I think realistically the only way to 100% combat bots swooping up under priced items is bidding, which has it's own problems.

Theoretically you could make it so "buying" an item is actually submitting a bid. A 5 minute timer starts, and people are able to bid. At the end of the 5 mins highest bid gets the item.

This introduces it's own problems. Do you really have to sit in a hideout for 5 mins to get the item? Should you be able to manage bids remotely after going to the hideout to start the process?

Overall I think the new system is 10X better than the old. Sure bots have advantages on swooping up the lowest priced items, but that almost always will be the case.

If anything this new system gives a foundation for them to start making tweaks on.

Comparable systems in use today

- Sneaker drops (Nike SNKRS, Adidas Confirmed): Players enter during a short grace period, and a random draw decides who gets to buy the item. Prevents bots from instantly snapping up everything.

- Concert/Event tickets (Ticketmaster Verified Fan): Buyers register during a window, then a lottery decides who gets purchase access. Used to reduce scalper dominance.

- MMO loot rolls (FFXIV, WoW): When multiple players want the same loot, they all roll within a timer, and the system randomly awards it. Everyone gets a fair shot, not just the fastest clicker.

Takeaway:
This isn’t new — other industries and games already use grace-window lotteries to make high-demand items more fair. Adapting the same principle to PoE2’s trade system would reduce botting, stop hideout swarms, and give regular players a genuine chance to participate.