Warframe needs to integrate Warframe Market as an in-game automatic trading system

[Void2258]

We all know how good warframe is for free-to-play. The trading system and the way it enables people to play and earn without more real-money purchases than they can afford is one of kind in the industry. However, the way it is implemented is extremely problematic given the way the game itself works.

Before anything else, I will assume everyone is using warframe market, as trade chat is garbage. With due respect to the makers and maintainers of WFM, this is a major problem all by itself; a game shouldn't require a community built and managed external tool to function because the built in tool is so bad as to be actively predatory. If WFM were to go away for any reason, the entire trade economy would collapse, and possibly take the entire game with it.

As  far as the in-game implementation of trading as it currently stands, there are 2 major issues:

Warframe is mission based, some of them endless, but none of which you can just leave at any time. While you should be setting yourself to offline when in missions, most people don't do this (technically against WFM rules, but reporting and enforcement seem rare), either out of laziness or forgetfulness (due to WFM being external, players would have to manually tab out and change status, either at the beginning and end of playing a set of missions, or constantly back and forth for each mission). Buyers expect a prompt response (often complaining if it takes even a minute, which is understandable since they are basically just sitting there watching chat instead of playing), while the seller is faced with:

• not selling much (if they just set to offline whenever in mission)
• being AFK in a dojo with WF on in the background for hours at a time (and needing alecaframe even if they don't want to use overwolf to get notifications), interfering with other activities
• deciding if they need to sacrifice their mission rewards for a large platinum payout
• messaging people back and risking death (especially in no-self-rez missions) and asking them to wait (which often buyers won't do)
• ignoring any offers "not worth failing my mission" and ghosting people (which is somewhat common due to asking people to wait almost always resulting in a negative response, and counting on people not bothering to report them for it)

The structure of the game simply doesn't lend itself to trading as implemented. You have to choose between playing the game and trading within the game, because they are mutually exclusive.

The other issue is that trading requires going to special hubs, not just your orbiter. On the part of either the buyer or the seller, this can be a major issue as it takes a minimum of two full loading screens to trade (into and out of hub); for some players this could mean a trade has a time cost of 3-5 min just for loading, and in any case is a lot of wasteful loading and work for the servers. Even players with fast loading can be troubled by this, since if one player loads slowly, the other has to wait (and again, all this is time not playing the actual game). This can lead to players with slow loading being discriminated against ("you took too long, I already sold it", or the seller just leaving), artificially constraining the market to only those with fast internet and causing some players to feel they just can't play the game because all the "most free to play game out there" aspects aren't true for them.

These two factors strongly call for warframe to integrate WFM functionality directly into the game, and to have it function automatically. The current system can still be in place for friendly trading or exchanges that are not easily automated (mod for mod, item for item, or more negotiable things like rivens), but the vast majority of activity is mostly trading for plat, at the exact price listed on WFM, so an automated system could potentially save literally hours a week per player. Additionally, an integrated system could put the items for sale on hold, preventing accidental selling for dukats or credits, dissolving for endo, etc. and avoiding wasted "oops I don't have that after all, I accidentally XXXXXX" aborted trades.

There is no reason a trade that is literally an unaltered listing right off a price list should require manual intervention and several minutes of both players' time. The seller posts an item for a price, the buyer clicks a button to accept that price, immediately pays, and instantly receives their item(s), and the plat is given to the seller in the background. Sellers don't have to manage any statuses or handling messages, buyers don't have to wait or get ghosted, no one has to go through extra loading screens or needs exterior programs and/or services, and everyone gets to spend more time playing the game and not sitting around doing nothing.

[hellodownthere]

What your asking for is essentially adding an auction house to the game, DE doesn't want that and have stated as such.

[Void2258]

22 minutes ago, hellodownthere said:

What your asking for is essentially adding an auction house to the game, DE doesn't want that and have stated as such.

It already exists and is nearly universally used, it's just outside the game. 

Again, look at the FUNCTIONAL ISSUES. I had the game open for 15 hours today. I played the game for less than 2 hours (non-continuous); the entire rest of that was sitting in the dojo waiting for people to message me (and I only have 30 trades/day and did not use all of them, so that's about ~2 trades/hour at maximum of the game running, and some of those were 5 plat or less). And I still got multiple messages and lost sales during the two hours in missions when I forgot to change my WFM online status (which is again highly manual and subject to both laziness and forgetfulness). This is a huge waste of electricity, processing power, and an inconvenience as I keep getting interrupted doing other things.

And again this is all predicated on WFM, which could arbitrarily go away at any time (not saying it will but it CAN), grinding everything to a halt (even ignoring toxicity, sitting there and trying to watch trade chat is such a non-functional solution, it should be deleted from the game entirely just to avoid the impression of it having a use; it would amplify the whole messaging issue to not even being able to alt-tab out and having to just literally sit there not playing and watching text go by). Even just implementing WFM directly into the game as is , messaging and all, would be an improvement as it removes an external failure mode and the status could at least be automated.

If you don't like what I said, then suggest an alternative to solve the issues. Don't just declare any change to be impossible. The current situation is a design problem that needs to be addressed.

Edited 13 hours ago by Void2258

[Numerounius]

No,

Friction is what holds the trading/plat system in place. It is not manual intervention for trading it is there because if not everyone would just burn through their trades thus lowering the prices to everything to rock bottom making the game coming off as pay to win. You can't just remove the barriers to trading without it having drastic impacts to the overall experience. You are very naive if you're expecting zero negative benefits because of it.

 

For the record,

I've had good experiences using trade chat. Looking for a tenet agendus riven for example. Put a keyword search if it pops up at a decent price I take it etc.

For the popular stuff hell no trade chat is awful, still great for seeing what is actually popular though, but for doing oddball trades and utilizing the search engines it is actually decent.

Even during the times I went on sprees posting rivens and stuff people are spamming WTB stuff I haven't gotten anything too threatening back. The only thing I'd change is removing the dumb copy/pasting at set interval spam stuff for the trade chat. We already have a timer in place and people still want to edge it.

As for WF.market, just wait to make the trade? It isn't supposed to be instantaneous? I don't encounter the AFKing against the WF.market rules stuff people message me all the time they're in mission and I'll be more than happy to wait the 5 or so minutes for the mission to finish for the trade. Are you really that desperate you can't wait five minutes or message the person who has it listed for 2p more? This is a game! Gasp! Who could've anticipated that people actually want to play the game they're in! Wow what a mystery!

Load times, people run dozens a missions each day what is 2 more for heading to the dojo? The whole sold before the trade/took too long is a non-issue if you are making fair trades and not trying to snipe everything at low prices.

Edited 13 hours ago by Numerounius

[AntifreezeUnder0]

Well if they ever cut plat trades, and let it be item for item trades, no 1 would care about trading alltogether. 

We have solid way to trade, and if one is even getting lazy to put effort to trade and get free premium currency (plat) by simply playing game and once in a while hybernate in dojo.

And if its hard to get trades, it means you either trying to sell not in demand stuff or stuff with price tag not appealing to others.

There is no need to have wfm in game, since ''black plat'' would get tossed arround more freely  which is greater risk.

 

[BiancaRoughfin]

I think DE firstly has to learn to better deal with Fraudulent platinum trades, to not punish players that fall victim to them and possibly revert trades made before they could think about improving player trades with an Auction house system.

[hellodownthere]

2 hours ago, Void2258 said:

It already exists and is nearly universally used, it's just outside the game. 

Outside and completely seperate from DE, Warframe Market is a third-party site which has no affiliation to DE in anyway.

 

2 hours ago, Void2258 said:

Again, look at the FUNCTIONAL ISSUES. I had the game open for 15 hours today. I played the game for less than 2 hours (non-continuous); the entire rest of that was sitting in the dojo waiting for people to message me (and I only have 30 trades/day and did not use all of them, so that's about ~2 trades/hour at maximum of the game running, and some of those were 5 plat or less). And I still got multiple messages and lost sales during the two hours in missions when I forgot to change my WFM online status (which is again highly manual and subject to both laziness and forgetfulness). This is a huge waste of electricity, processing power, and an inconvenience as I keep getting interrupted doing other things.

And this is what DE wants, they want you looking at trade chat for prospective buyers and potential sellers not post X item for Y amount of plat and have it automatically get sold.

 

2 hours ago, Void2258 said:

And again this is all predicated on WFM

If Warframe Market ever goes down then another will take its place.

2 hours ago, Void2258 said:

If you don't like what I said, then suggest an alternative to solve the issues. Don't just declare any change to be impossible. The current situation is a design problem that needs to be addressed.

It's not a matter of me not liking what you're saying, this topic has been asked for years the first time I saw it was like 2015 and DE have responded in saying that they're not interested in Warframe having an auction like system in their game, there can be a third-party site for it (Warframe Market) but they're not going to be adding it into Warframe.

The damage an auction house would do the the plat economy is enough of a reason for DE to not implement it.

[Void2258]

7 hours ago, hellodownthere said:

The damage an auction house would do the the plat economy is enough of a reason for DE to not implement it.

Warframe market exists. WFM is near universally used. The plat economy is fine. The argument fails when presented with extant reality. Implementing the system into the game will streamline the process but not fundamentally change it (especially if it were to be implemented as it without the payment automation, just with status automation and inventory escrow). And there is not really solid evidence adding the payment automation would have much effect anyway. Most cases where "auction houses" were a problem based huge amounts of the game design around them, which is not the case in WF; rather the system is being added to streamline exciting practices that evolved semi-organically, and wouldn't represent much of a change to economic function, just convenience and integration.

7 hours ago, hellodownthere said:

If Warframe Market ever goes down then another will take its place.

This is an assumption. It may not be right (just becuase one group was willing to do it dosen't mean another is waiting to take their place), it depends on their being people willing and capable of doing it and it may not matter if it takes too long to re-implement. I will say again: the very existence of warframe's functioning free-to-play economy is currently predicated on a volunteer external project, and the game could rapidly collapse on even the implication that it might stop working for any length of time. People encourage others to play because of how warframe's plat economy contrasts to other FTP titles, and if this goes away even temporarily it would shake confidence and could lead to long term issues. None of this should be on the backs of volunteers.

7 hours ago, hellodownthere said:

And this is what DE wants, they want you looking at trade chat for prospective buyers and potential sellers not post X item for Y amount of plat and have it automatically get sold.

No one uses trade chat if they can possibly help it. It's literally non-gameplay advise given to any new player. It's one of the first tips in every new player guide. It's one of the first things any new twitch streamer mentions being told with regards to the game economy. Turning it off is in every recommended settings guide. At this point the only function of trade chat is to exploit unaware new players. It should really be removed entirely as an anti-toxicity measure.

 

7 hours ago, hellodownthere said:

This topic has been asked for years the first time I saw it was like 2015 and DE have responded in saying that they're not interested in Warframe having an auction like system in their game, there can be a third-party site for it (Warframe Market) but they're not going to be adding it into Warframe.

The original statement is over 9 years old, made several dev team changes ago, in an environment where warframe was a much smaller game, the volume of trading much lower, the player base much smaller, there was much less similar competition for people to compare convenience features to, and in which there weren't years of built up toxicity making the in game trade chat non-viable. When this statement was made, WFM was an alternative, not a requirement, for the in-game economy to function.

One thing I would agree is a possibility is that DE might not be interested in doing anything due to having to use resources to do so. This would fall under "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", which is short sighted because if this does break it could take everything else with it.

Edited 4 hours ago by Void2258

[MrDugan]

11 hours ago, hellodownthere said:

What your asking for is essentially adding an auction house to the game, DE doesn't want that and have stated as such.

That doesn't mean they're right about it.

[MrDugan]

10 hours ago, Numerounius said:

Friction is what holds the trading/plat system in place. It is not manual intervention for trading it is there because if not everyone would just burn through their trades thus lowering the prices to everything to rock bottom

No.  That "friction" helps no one but the lunatics in trade chat waiting on someone that doesn't know better than to spend crazy plat on cheap items.  Prices might get lower for a short time, but supply is not infinite.  They would stabilize as stockpiles burned out.  Look at nightmare mods.  Things like Hammer Shot or Blaze were cheap back when you could get them from alerts.  They've more than doubled in price now that those stockpiles are gone because trading has continued while farming has slowed. 

The sort of auction house where you could buy directly from another player through a menu without leaving your orbiter also prevent an issue the current third party market has.  People will list items for sale at insanely low prices with no intention of selling them, just trying to drive price down so THEY can buy it cheaper.  If you had to actually front the item and people could buy it without having to go through you, that wouldn't happen, which would mean people wouldn't list at crazy low prices like that.  Not for long.

 

10 hours ago, Numerounius said:

making the game coming off as pay to win.

The people against this idea always say this, and there is nothing to back it up.  It's empty and baseless.  Farming wouldn't change.  Drop rates wouldn't change.  You can buy these things from another player right now.

 

10 hours ago, Numerounius said:

negative benefits

That's not how that word works at all.  

Everyone I have ever seen against this idea always comes across as someone that trades a lot.  That tells me that the majority of you don't want this because it would cut into your ability to fleece players that don't know better.

[Void2258]

22 minutes ago, MrDugan said:

That doesn't mean they're right about it.

I second this. Just the fact we can talk about a studio comment from 2015 and we are still having the same conversation 9 years later shows that there is a long standing unaddressed issues. NO ONE but the scammers in trade chat benefits from the current system. Nothing about this "stabilizes the market" or "helps with pricing" or any of the other factors constantly brought up.

It's an unnecessary hassle that causes confusion, is not natural and requires explaining to new players, leans on the good graces of external volunteers to function, and results in multiple pain points and methods for abuse. There are few if any downsides to working to rectify the situation and those can be addressed if and when they come up; they are not excuses for doing nothing (perfectionist fallacy: if you can't solve everything including all potential new issues at once, it's better to do nothing).

Edited 2 hours ago by Void2258

[MrDugan]

17 minutes ago, Void2258 said:

I second this. Just the fact we can talk about a studio comment from 2015 and we are still having the same conversation 9 years later shows that there is a long standing unaddressed issues. NO ONE but the scammers in trade chat benefits from the current system. Nothing about this "stabilizes the market" or "helps with pricing" or any of the other factors constantly brought up.

It's an unnecessary hassle that causes confusion, is not natural and requires explaining to new players, leans on the good graces of external volunteers to function, and results in multiple pain points and methods for abuse. There are few if any downsides to working to rectify the situation and those can be addressed if and when they come up; they are not excuses for doing nothing (perfectionist fallacy: if you can't solve everything including all potential new issues at once, it's better to do nothing).

Every player I know in game either hates trade chat, or the is the reason everyone hates trade chat.  One of the many joys of being in the legendary ranks is that people expect you to be a helper NPC with builds and mission assistance and especially price checks.  People always get surprised and confused when I tell them I don't do PCs on rivens.  Like, why?  

*gestures broadly at trade chat*

People will have a riven they are fully ready to turn into another riven or endo, and the second they find out you want it for more than transmuting, it's suddenly worth 150p to them.  I've seen people with CC/CD rivens for weapons that have no usable crit referring to them as god rolls, expecting people to pay thousands for them.  Trade chat is a nightmare.  Tried to buy an off meta riven from someone, and they told me 300p for mid rolls on a weapon no one likes.  Checked the market, same riven with almost the exact same stats, 20p.  But it's the market that's the problem, definitely not scalpers and scammers and delusional maniacs in TC.

[Tiltskillet]

We've already got the perfect built in alternative to trade chat in Maroo's Bazaar though.