Market place entirely captured by currency sellers!!!

[Man]

It's pretty obvious at this point that the online market/trading place has been completely captured and taken over by currency sellers, and it's not surprising really. They buy all the best gear, keep prices so high that the only way any standard player can afford them is to buy the currency from them. It's completely ruining the game, and even if fixed, there will be a delay before prices come down.

So, how do we fix this without completely lobotomising the market place and still keeping it viable for standard player to use. I'm not saying anything I suggest will work, these are just ideas, so please feel free to add your own, who knows, maybe the Devs will take note.

1. Introduce a tiered verification system for trades, where high-value trades (both in terms of gear and currency) require players to complete certain in-game milestones. This is kind of already a thing as you need the higher levels to get and use the higher gear/currency but, it could be enforced harder.

2. Set a reasonable maximum price for gear or items based on their tier, rarity, or usefulness, effectively limiting inflation. While this would solve one problem it would probably stifle the market too much and remove healthy competition. Also, very difficult to determine what is classed as "high value" in this game given the variety of skills and builds. You could also implement a % based variance pricing cap, but you still kind of have the same issue even doing this.

3. Introduce a small but progressive tax on trades that scales with the item's value or frequency of trades by an account. This could work, I've seen this in other games, or, it could just forces prices even higher as currency seller try to cover the loss.

4. Item tagging and reselling time limit, you could tag every item in the game with a date/time stamp, and put a time limit on when you can re-sell an item after buying it. Let's say from buying an item you cannot advertise it on the market or transfer it for 1 week to another account. Or a more dynamic sliding time window based on number of items bought and sold that gets longer the more trades you do. This would essentially clog up the currency sellers accounts preventing their high trading volumes and hording of all the best gear. At some point there will be more gear going into the market than they can hoard and control the pricing on, forcing prices down and making the practice no longer viable. This of course will only work if there is a real monetary free required to trade, which there currently is, but, it would have to stay this way.

My personal favourite is number 4. What do you think? I'm interested to hear people's take on this.

[Fluffy Bunny of Despair]

Man の投稿を引用：

Fluffy Bunny of Despair の投稿を引用：

What? xD
Do you understand how many people you would need to constantly monitor that many players?
Or do you honestly think something like that could be automated?
And what do you mean by reasonable?

An experienced player can make 150 - 200 divines in the time a newer player makes maybe 10.

So should they just ban everyone that is overperforming? And everyone that got lucky drops?

Really thought out that idea.

Actually, it would be relatively easy to automate with modern day ML and anomaly detection, banks have been doing it for years. It could even take into account a players level, rarely settings, play time etc. It wouldn't be perfect obviously, some people would trigger false positives by straying outside the standard deviation settings but, it would be a massive improvement on what currently exists, which is nothing.

Banks only need to check currency.
In PoE you need to check Items as well. They can vary massively in value. Just alone keeping up with prices constantly would be impossible.

Since Balancing changes the Meta, meta changes the prices each league.
And i don't think false positives are acceptable.

Specially since i never had issues with the market.

[Man]

Fluffy Bunny of Despair の投稿を引用：

Man の投稿を引用：

Actually, it would be relatively easy to automate with modern day ML and anomaly detection, banks have been doing it for years. It could even take into account a players level, rarely settings, play time etc. It wouldn't be perfect obviously, some people would trigger false positives by straying outside the standard deviation settings but, it would be a massive improvement on what currently exists, which is nothing.

Banks only need to check currency.
In PoE you need to check Items as well. They can vary massively in value. Just alone keeping up with prices constantly would be impossible.

Since Balancing changes the Meta, meta changes the prices each league.
And i don't think false positives are acceptable.

Specially since i never had issues with the market.

Banks apply this to the entire economy of the planet where people purchase millions of different commodities for millions of reasons. The parameters of a game economy are far more constrained and much smaller and simplistic in comparison. Not only that, the system itself learns what is and isn't an anomaly and improves over time. At first it would need more monitoring and supervision but, it would quickly adapt to the games economy and become self sufficient.

That's literally what ML algorithms are intended for.

[tolshortte]

how is an auction house not the simplest solution? items and prices become very transparent very fast. the insistent objection to it by GGG has never made sense to me. especially when their solution is to involve peer to peer trading via messaging that went out of style with Everquest lol.

[Bambule]

PsychaChi の投稿を引用：

Just lock trade between regions... Let the chinese and russians fight over the top end markets and leave the rest of us alone.

this. regional markets

[Man]

tolshortte の投稿を引用：

how is an auction house not the simplest solution? items and prices become very transparent very fast. the insistent objection to it by GGG has never made sense to me. especially when their solution is to involve peer to peer trading via messaging that went out of style with Everquest lol.

Maybe they don't have the self confidance to create one that won't be hacked.

[Hazsneax]

Nah, this is unnecessary.
The only problem with the trade site is the fixers, and that is easily resolved -- all they have to do is force sales at listed price point, even when the profile is offline.
This would be a huge QoL improvement for players, because we could sell things while offline, and simultaneously it would cull the marketplace of ALL fixers.
(AND it would essentially be functioning as an auction house of sorts)

It would also remove the necessity/option to differentiate from offline/online, because it would become irrelevant. If the item is posted, it can be bought.

This solution would also avoid bloat, or any kind of trade limiting capacity we have all seen fail in plenty of other games -- Runescape coming to mind first.

Legitimate players shouldn't be punished for manipulative player actions, this satisfies that element as well. Nobody wants to wait 3 weeks to be able to trade & it's already necessary to unlock cruel for currency exchange, which is limiting enough.

[Dwane Dibbley]

Its funny, cuz it works just like in real world. And you are mad over videogame while you eat it without problem irl.

All you "fixes" are bad. It would have no effect or make things worse. Limiting supply or making things straigh more expensive wont make things cheaper/accessible.

[Wutever]

Dwane Dibbley の投稿を引用：

Its funny, cuz it works just like in real world. And you are mad over videogame while you eat it without problem irl.

All you "fixes" are bad. It would have no effect or make things worse. Limiting supply or making things straigh more expensive wont make things cheaper/accessible.

The whole point of video games is escapism. You're making a bad analogy.

[RawMeatDiet]

ⓀⒾⓦⒾ‰ の投稿を引用：

yawns in ssf
youre all part of your own problem

Ok but this game is popular not because of SSF and most players like the multiplayer aspect and being able to trade gear. So what you suggest will not appeal to most players, they rather play a different game.

[ffrotty]

we're a month+ into the game. There is no realistic way the market has been "captured by currency sellers" at a volume that is significant to every other player also farming currency and trading.

You can make a 1div build that farms currency trivially. Youtube is crammed full of "look at my cheap broken build that can 1 shot all bosses in the game."

My characters gear was bought at around 1-2 div each slot, now it's worth 20+ div each slot, because it enables farming/bossing and as more and more currency seeps into the league,

the effective value of any given drop increases. do you think bots are the reason that div steadily inflated and exalts became low level? or can you comprehend that any mediocre, nonresist capped build can farm t10 and generate a lot of currency trivially

[ffrotty]

RawMeatDiet の投稿を引用：

ⓀⒾⓦⒾ‰ の投稿を引用：

yawns in ssf
youre all part of your own problem

Ok but this game is popular not because of SSF and most players like the multiplayer aspect and being able to trade gear. So what you suggest will not appeal to most players, they rather play a different game.

the SSF reference is because you can not trade at all and be easily viable to farm your own stuff. if you want to trade, then be prepared for price valuation on rarer items to inflate over the course of a season as currency becomes easier to get and better rolled items hit the market.

The irony here is this also DEFLATES good gear. One of my characters had about 1 div of items in each slot and the same items are now worth 1/2 that, meaning with the same amount of farming if i had just kept the currency i'd be far more powerful now

[RawMeatDiet]

ffrotty の投稿を引用：

RawMeatDiet の投稿を引用：

Ok but this game is popular not because of SSF and most players like the multiplayer aspect and being able to trade gear. So what you suggest will not appeal to most players, they rather play a different game.

the SSF reference is because you can not trade at all and be easily viable to farm your own stuff. if you want to trade, then be prepared for price valuation on rarer items to inflate over the course of a season as currency becomes easier to get.

Yes, and we asking devs to do something about inflation so the economy would be more stable.

[Dr. Rockso]

I think none of this matters since we all know the game is still being tweaked and will be getting reset multiple times during EA which is the only way to reset the economy.

Until then nothing is going to magically fix the economy as we are far passed that point. Now if the economy gets borked again after the next reset...then we can talk about what should be done.

[RawMeatDiet]

Dr. Rockso の投稿を引用：

I think none of this matters since we all know the game is still being tweaked and will be getting reset multiple times during EA which is the only way to reset the economy.

Until then nothing is going to magically fix the economy as we are far passed that point. Now if the economy gets borked again after the next reset...then we can talk about what should be done.

Nah, if they don't implement the changes now then the economy is guaranteed to be ruined the next league, 100%. If you do nothing about a major issue, it won't ever be fixed. So it's important to talk about this right now and not in next league where it will be too late.

[Becky!]

Items are constantly going up 1 divine a day. You have to continuously grind to keep up or don't. Seeing that is a turn off as the game feels like a chore after a while.