"

Re: Trade foo above.



Okay, I'm going to take this one point at a time.



"The gap between traders and non-traders widens." So you're saying that difficulty in the game is proportionate to how much someone has traded. This may well be true, but punishing people who do trade because some people CHOOSE not to is not the way to go about it. Possibly the reason that people don't trade is because of the difficulty involved. Trade chat is a freaking mess given the limited number of lines that you can see at a time and the fact that people will macro, combined with multiple channels -- on top of that, most of what's on there is end-game level gear. Finding something to level with is nearly impossible through that route. Combine this with the fact that due to there not being any in-game trading method other than Trade Chat, people have to go to poe.trade to search for leveling gear (if they don't have friends or a guild to supply them with that gear). This is not a good solution because 1) new players don't necessarily know about poe.trade 2) a number of people don't respond to trade requests for various reasons (idle, AFK, zoning and showing as offline, in maps, in Lab).



"Prices are very low or very high" No, not really. Prices for SOME things are very high and prices for SOME things are very low. It varies though. If I'm looking to level through normal and Cruel and even into Merciless, I can find things fairly easily on poe.trade. The introduction of Premium Tabs has helped with this, although 3rd party apps before these tabs caused the same thing to happen. The only thing Premium Tabs does is make it easier to set up those sales. Giving us an in-game way to trade that doesn't rely on the current methods would make it easier to trade, but shouldn't really impact pricing, as prices rise and fall based on a number of factors -- with the primary one being what's currently broken as discussed by streamers, Reddit and so on. Also? Many people no longer do sales less than 1 chaos after the first week or two of the season. By the time the season is 2/3 done, this changes to people not doing 3c or less sometimes.



"Progression is trivialised". Again, no, not really. This is an ARPG, and ARPGs are all about min-maxing, and have been ever since Diablo (if not earlier). People are ALWAYS going to look for the best gear to make content as trivial as possible -- this is likely why Atziri, Shaper and other fights are largely mechanics-based, so people can't just gear their way through them. As far as 'first characters quadrupling clear speed' -- how many first characters have you run into that can buy multiple exalts worth of gear in the first place to trivialize clear speed? Not many, I'd wager. This is why there are builds on the forums that specifically state 'budget' 'newbie' and why streamers put out videos for EVERY league that say 'league starting'. Because you generally don't -have- the money at that point to buy the best gear. The people who are going to be looking for the best ways to trivialize content are going to be the people that are on their 3rd, 5th, 10th, 100th or 1000th character in PoE. That's why a number of people will make a character at the start of the league specifically to farm currency so that they can build a 2nd character later on and be able to buy all the rare and unique things they need for their chosen build.



So, since I've been arguing each point, let me also offer a solution.



Have an in-game UI similar to what poe.trade has, where you can search for items in your league only based on various criteria. Once you find what you're looking for, you can click on something to the side to send a trade request to the owner. The owner can then click 'accept' and a trade window pops up that allows access to their stash (maybe only Premium tabs? Maybe only 1-2 tabs?) so that they can trade on the go. It makes trade easier without completely trivializing it. It takes the process of searching poe.trade and internalizes it (making it easier for newer players to get a handle on it), makes it easier for sellers (they don't have to leave maps/lab to sell, hopefully cutting down on non-responses) and doesn't really change the current process by much at all.





Okay, I'm going to take this one point at a time."The gap between traders and non-traders widens." So you're saying that difficulty in the game is proportionate to how much someone has traded. This may well be true, but punishing people who do trade because some people CHOOSE not to is not the way to go about it. Possibly the reason that people don't trade is because of the difficulty involved. Trade chat is a freaking mess given the limited number of lines that you can see at a time and the fact that people will macro, combined with multiple channels -- on top of that, most of what's on there is end-game level gear. Finding something to level with is nearly impossible through that route. Combine this with the fact that due to there not being any in-game trading method other than Trade Chat, people have to go to poe.trade to search for leveling gear (if they don't have friends or a guild to supply them with that gear). This is not a good solution because 1) new players don't necessarily know about poe.trade 2) a number of people don't respond to trade requests for various reasons (idle, AFK, zoning and showing as offline, in maps, in Lab)."Prices are very low or very high" No, not really. Prices for SOME things are very high and prices for SOME things are very low. It varies though. If I'm looking to level through normal and Cruel and even into Merciless, I can find things fairly easily on poe.trade. The introduction of Premium Tabs has helped with this, although 3rd party apps before these tabs caused the same thing to happen. The only thing Premium Tabs does is make it easier to set up those sales. Giving us an in-game way to trade that doesn't rely on the current methods would make it easier to trade, but shouldn't really impact pricing, as prices rise and fall based on a number of factors -- with the primary one being what's currently broken as discussed by streamers, Reddit and so on. Also? Many people no longer do sales less than 1 chaos after the first week or two of the season. By the time the season is 2/3 done, this changes to people not doing 3c or less sometimes."Progression is trivialised". Again, no, not really. This is an ARPG, and ARPGs are all about min-maxing, and have been ever since Diablo (if not earlier). People are ALWAYS going to look for the best gear to make content as trivial as possible -- this is likely why Atziri, Shaper and other fights are largely mechanics-based, so people can't just gear their way through them. As far as 'first characters quadrupling clear speed' -- how many first characters have you run into that can buy multiple exalts worth of gear in the first place to trivialize clear speed? Not many, I'd wager. This is why there are builds on the forums that specifically state 'budget' 'newbie' and why streamers put out videos for EVERY league that say 'league starting'. Because you generally don't -have- the money at that point to buy the best gear. The people who are going to be looking for the best ways to trivialize content are going to be the people that are on their 3rd, 5th, 10th, 100th or 1000th character in PoE. That's why a number of people will make a character at the start of the league specifically to farm currency so that they can build a 2nd character later on and be able to buy all the rare and unique things they need for their chosen build.So, since I've been arguing each point, let me also offer a solution.Have an in-game UI similar to what poe.trade has, where you can search for items in your league only based on various criteria. Once you find what you're looking for, you can click on something to the side to send a trade request to the owner. The owner can then click 'accept' and a trade window pops up that allows access to their stash (maybe only Premium tabs? Maybe only 1-2 tabs?) so that they can trade on the go. It makes trade easier without completely trivializing it. It takes the process of searching poe.trade and internalizes it (making it easier for newer players to get a handle on it), makes it easier for sellers (they don't have to leave maps/lab to sell, hopefully cutting down on non-responses) and doesn't really change the current process by much at all.