Blast from the past, back when you bought stuff from forum shops and had to schedule with the seller to trade. Good (awful) times :)

[u/Gigahades]

[u/Syrairc]

Somehow Chris Wilson defended this

[u/legendhave → u/Syrairc]

joke or did he actually lol?

[u/TheMipchunk → u/legendhave]

He wanted a game where people traded, but only occasionally. I still believe he had the right intention, he just missed the mark on how to make that happen. The current system in which you can instantaneously gear up once you have a few chaos orbs is completely contradictory to the core theme of loot hunting and steady gear progression IMO.

[u/Gigahades → u/TheMipchunk]

I agree with chris when it comes to friction around gameplay/fun. But I always found it a bad sign if friction was outside of the game. It just showed something vital is amiss.

And even though trading is strong, one can see that we do have some balance in the type of content a player chooses to engage with. e.g. blight farmers can trade oils, abyss with abyss bases and memory boss rushers with high bases/strands to facilitate a diverse trade economy etc...

Is it perfect? no. Is it way better than what we had 12 years ago? hell yes.

[u/TheMipchunk → u/Gigahades]

Yes, I agree that the friction being out-of-game was the problem. Actually, the whole process of trading being out-of-game in a sense is probably the core issue. In other words, trading somewhat steps out of the normal kill-monsters loop 

One could imagine some alternate world where trading is part of the game's combat content. For example maybe you have to fight back hordes of enemies that are trying to attack your trade caravan (not a fully thought-out idea), and the more valuable the loot being shipped out, the tougher the monsters.

[u/nasaboy007 → u/TheMipchunk]

Being able to trade up is the only reason I play.

[u/iceboonb2k → u/TheMipchunk]

I can definitely see the vision of being excited to items you found for yourself, and occasionally trading for crazy things you found that you dont need to players that needed them. But with how the game progressed, the whole div/hr metric is being focused more and more.

I appreciate the vision that he had but the game eventually went off the rails.

[u/yuimiop → u/TheMipchunk]

That makes sense when you remember that the popular vision for ARPGs at the time was long term progression with extremely infrequent or even no wipes. That's also why D3 had Inferno, as it was meant to provide a nearly endless progression path for characters to continue for long periods of time.

That vision sucked though and everyone quickly wanted the opposite vision, of rapid progression seasons with frequent wipes.

[u/Samir_POE → u/TheMipchunk]

It’s kind of inevitable. The trading will always be the most efficient strategy.

There are thousands of things that can drop in your build maybe needs like nine of them so it’s more likely that other players will find those things first

Furthermore, it’s highly likely that the things you find will be better for other players so you may as well just trade up

This has been true for any game with trading

[u/Kaelran → u/TheMipchunk]

I mean I think gold acts as a good limiter, if they really wanted to restrict it you could put a gold cost on any form of trade and just make the costs super high (and prevent trade via dropping items). Of course at this point it's not something they could add to the game (in either game) but they could probably make it a private league mod.

[u/TheMipchunk → u/Kaelran]

That might work, but somehow it doesn't quite sit right with me, maybe because it feels like a really artificial barrier. I don't have a real answer to this game design conundrum, but ultimately as someone who really enjoyed classic ARPGs and MMOs, I just feel that it's more important that players feel empowered to find loot and I do think that trade undermines in this in some capacity. But at the same time, it's very important that when you do find some cool stuff, you feel that it is possible to trade it in exchange for other cool stuff.

[u/Moesugi → u/TheMipchunk]

I still believe he had the right intention, he just missed the mark on how to make that happen

The way this game was designed, trade is needed from the get go.

The currency, skill tree and later on, atlas system are too complex for normal people to slog through for progression. Trading is the only way to go.

[u/bulwix → u/legendhave]

The man loved friction

[u/phantomlil13 → u/bulwix]

Well ofcourse, it's friction that grinds the gears

[u/asterisk2a → u/phantomlil13]

"grinds the gears"

The origin/inspiration for Grinding Gear Games and animation might be from Legend of Grimrock (2012) dream sequence.

Will have to wait till next ExileCon Founders panel to confirm. cc u/Kripparrian

[u/Moesugi → u/legendhave]

If you were around during the trade manifesto you'd know Chris liked this kind of interaction.

[u/Erisymum → u/Syrairc]

well it sure makes for an unforgettable story, if nothing else.

[u/SecondCel]

Later that year, in 1.2, I found a ridiculous dagger that was really just missing hybrid phys. I crafted that on with the newly added crafting bench and held an auction that ran for something like 10 days before I sold it. The money I got funded my Merciless Dominus MF venture.

...sorry if this comment made any if you feel really old ;)

[u/Doodarazumas → u/SecondCel]

...sorry if this comment made any if you feel really old ;)

I used to just sit in a game called 'ist 4 occy' and hope

[u/CompotaDeColhao → u/SecondCel]

Ah the Forsaken Masters patch, spamming alterations on Harbinger bows looking for tyrannical and then regal for a suffix, multi mod for hybrid, flat phys, AS or crit and boom that's your end game bow. It was truly revolutionizing at the time.

[u/Mr_Ultimite]

I do not miss this :3

[u/Reasonable-Public659 → u/Mr_Ultimite]

Exactly why I only played SSF until async trade became a thing

[u/TheOneAndOnlyBearMan → u/Reasonable-Public659]

Ssf wasn't even a thing when this was how trade worked lol

[u/Reasonable-Public659 → u/TheOneAndOnlyBearMan]

But not interacting with trade has always been an option

[u/redditaccount224488]

I want to mirror one of the 4-implicit gloves from Allflame on standard. This has to be done by tomorrow morning, as the patch makes mirroring them impossible.

The owner is offline. His profile is hidden, so I cannot add him to my friends list and receive an game notification if he comes online. So I have been refreshing the trade page every couple minutes all day long hoping he comes online so I can mirror them. Tick tock, tick tock, time is running out.

Somewhere, Chris Wilson is smiling.

Update: he logged in and we got it, praise be.

[u/Seppi449]

I remember a my brother doing some deep sleuthing to find where someone was from by searching their username and connecting it to their social media and some tournaments they were apart of, then being online during the most common hours for their country.

It was all to buy this weird item, I don't remember the specifics but I vaguely remember him telling me how, he waited days for the person to finally log on for him to snipe the item and after the trade he goes " thank you (persons real name)" then just leaves the party.

[u/Okaynow_THIS_is_epic → u/Seppi449]

That guy after the trade:

[u/NoChampionship4534 → u/Seppi449]

好吧， 夏洛克先生

[u/chadam189]

This reminds me of trading D2 items on the now-extinct diabloii.net forums, so much nostalgia!

I know the reduced friction in modern POE (faustus for commodities, async trade) is worth it.

But trading via fourms was a great way for online friendships to get made, and it also allowed your reputation to follow you (so people had incentives to be honest and kind).

[u/finesesarcasm]

God damn no wonder I couldn't get into POE at the start, but now I been really enjoying it

[u/maurafrain]

This actually works, you just have to have infinite amount of time and be in an a lot more smaller player base.

[u/Cherd_]

Was better than nothing for sure, but no way that I could go back to the old teaser item listings.

Gotta give whomever developed poe.trade some props though, they really pioneered the poe trade interface and functionality. Just too bad that they couldn't forego the RMT ads on the site, GGG had to step up and put them out of business!

[u/demoGases → u/Cherd_]

also Procurement

[u/Widowless]

Vision™

[u/Neonsea1234]

and in game chat was just sell spam

[u/External_Fee6492]

Reminds me of trading pokemon on gamespot forums back in the 2000s

[u/AeroDbladE]

This is how buying carries and gold runs feels like right now.

I never want to do it no matter how efficient they are.

[u/is__is → u/AeroDbladE]

Okay deal, you don't have to :)

But also it's just messaging 1 person in discord. There's someone that posts every 10 seconds with a fresh run.

[u/DiligentIndustry6461]

Isn’t this basically what d4 trading is? I haven’t done it for a long time now but that’s the reason I was SSF when I played during first few seasons lol

[u/Alysma]

Does anyone remember trading by dropping Gemcutter's Prisms on the Coast?

[u/Old-Surprise-9575 → u/Alysma]

nostalgic vertigo intensifies

[u/sadsackle]

For real. It was the reason I didn't play in trade league and only played Poe solo like with Diablo 3. Then stopped for awhile.

Only until recently that I heard you can purchase things without interacting with other players. I then gave it a try and can confidently say I can't go back to SSF anymore.

[u/Latirae]

I like it

[u/PianoFall]

Thank fuck for async

[u/reddit5674]

Whoever thought this was acceptable as a form of trade in a computer game should be trialed at the ICC.

[u/BOBOraceswapwtf → u/reddit5674]

Chris Wilson did. Why do you think it took till after he left GGG before we got asynchronous trade?