Fixing the Trading system is an easy and meaningful update

[Vallerian]

Making the trading system better is a very low hanging fruit in terms of improving Warframe, and it'd make a massive difference for almost everyone, so I'm very surprised that trading is still so garbage especially now that there are Riven mods which make an effective trading system way more important than before.

DE is trying too hard and making trading too complicated. The Trade chat channel chaotic AF, and I don't know anybody who uses Maroo's Bazaar

What normal people want from a trade system:

• No stupid dojo, no lame relay. The trading system should just be another console in the orbiter. (Like Ebay???)
• You should be able to just list an item for sale at a price you want, then all other players can see it by searching for it in their trade console. 
• You can set a 'auto buy', and let people bid offers on your item (Like Ebay??)
• Items can be sorted by category (just like our inventory) then filtered/ordered by name, price, seller, whatever
• If I'm looking to buy a Skana Riven mod, I should just be able to go to my orbiter console > Riven section > Search "Skana" > browse through the list of results sorted by offering price
• If I don't like the price, I should be able to just make a bid or leave the seller a note in his trading console even if the seller is offline. That way when the seller relogs, he can just go to his trade console and check messages regarding his items.

Pros:

• WAYYYYY easier to buy and sell items
• You can passively sell items even when you're offline instead of spamming Trade channel or standing around like a goof in the Bazaar
• People are less likely to get ripped off on items because they can see the fair market price of everything, along with how much people are offering for similar items
• People can immediately shop the items they want instead of spamming the trade channel on the off chance somebody else online right now is reads your message in the trade chat that's scrolling at 1000 lines/minute and happens to be selling that particular item
• DE can even make extra $$$$ off this feature by making players buy Shop Licenses in order to sell X number of items

Cons:

• DE would have to think of creative and meaningful ways to get people to use relays / dojos / maroo's bazaar instead of forcing players to use these places to trade.

 

Edit:

I'm aware a large portion of the player-base is opposed to an auction house because there's the potential it would destroy the value of normal items (regular mods, prime parts, etc) but maybe it's time to reconsider

• Most normal items (between 1p-50p) are incredibly hard to sell, flood the trade channel with items that almost nobody really wants to see, and most of the time the sellers end up selling the item way below what they think it's worth anyway just because it's so hard to find a buyer. An auction house would likely drop the value of all these items down to 1p, but realistically most players are probably going to make more plat selling all their trash for 1p each than they are currently making holding onto these items and spamming trade. 
• Big ticket items (especially Rivens) are making huge profits for experienced traders. I don't consider myself a 'pro' by any means, I barely skim the trade channel but was able to pick up several Riven mods worth well over 500p for less than half of that just this morning. The trade channel is unfair, most people have no idea how much their big ticket items are worth and there is no easy resource in-game or otherwise that can price check these items. The little guy just gets screwed 9/10 times
• Because DE decided to release Rivens, it's possible they'll be releasing more RNG-based late-game content in the future. This means there will be even more big-ticket items on the market, further increasing the need for a proper auction house

TL;DR We're currently artificially inflating the value of small items just because it's inconvenient to find them. What we should do is stop trying to protect the value of these nearly worthless trinkets, and focus on the future.

Edited April 1, 2017 by Vallerian

[artemisfortune]

No. No Auction House.

Also: I like how he says it's easy lol. Totally easily to completely rework your game's economy to include an auction house while also accounting for how easy it is for Plat4Cash resellers to abuse this system.

Edited April 1, 2017 by JSharpie

[Xekrin]

8 minutes ago, Vallerian said:

Cons:

I can assure you there are way more than a single con to your suggestion.  I'm sure others will happily fill you in on what they are.   Unless they are simply tired of this topic and ignore it completely.

Or you can scroll up, type auction in the search bar and read the hundreds of responses on the dozens of "auction house! fix everthang!" threads that are available on forums.

Good luck!

[Vallerian]

16 minutes ago, JSharpie said:

No. No Auction House.

Also: I like how he says it's easy lol. Totally easily to completely rework your game's economy to include an auction house while also accounting for how easy it is for Plat4Cash resellers to abuse this system.

Worrying about deflation of normal stuff being sold in Trade was a real concern back before Riven mods, maybe it still is but it shouldn't stop DE from moving forwards with this outdated trading system since they decided to go the Riven already. In the future if they decide to add more late-game content, the trade system will only become more crucial.

It'd be a shame if the easy availability of common items made most prime parts and mods worth only 1p, but Riven mods are big ticket items that experienced traders are abusing to make easy money off of less experienced players.

The profit margins off Rivens are huge, and unlike regular mods almost nobody knows how much they're worth. Putting in an auction house is the cleanest way to make the trade of these mods fair.

Edited April 1, 2017 by Vallerian

[artemisfortune]

4 minutes ago, Vallerian said:

Worrying about deflation of common mods was a real concern back before Riven mods, maybe it still is but it shouldn't stop DE from moving forwards with this outdated trading system.

It'd be a shame if the easy availability of common items made most prime parts and mods worth only 1p, but Riven mods are big ticket items that experienced traders are abusing to make easy money off of less experienced players.

The profit margins off Rivens are huge, and unlike regular mods almost nobody knows how much they're worth. Putting in an auction house is the cleanest way to make the trade of these mods fair.

Yeah, no. They're worth whatever the buyer is willing to pay. This is the one place that a free market works, and it should stay that way.

Again, no auction house. 

And my dude, the trading system isn't "outdated". You say that like it doesn't serve a purpose. The trading system in the game is used in real life everyday. It's been used for centuries.

[Voltage]

29 minutes ago, JSharpie said:

No. No Auction House.

Also: I like how he says it's easy lol. Totally easily to completely rework your game's economy to include an auction house while also accounting for how easy it is for Plat4Cash resellers to abuse this system.

This^

Also, the trading system doesn't need fixing, you just need to git gud sadly.

[Vallerian]

15 minutes ago, JSharpie said:

Yeah, no. They're worth whatever the buyer is willing to pay. This is the one place that a free market works, and it should stay that way.

Again, no auction house. 

And my dude, the trading system isn't "outdated". You say that like it doesn't serve a purpose. The trading system in the game is used in real life everyday. It's been used for centuries.

Maybe in third world countries, but most people I know sell their used stuff on Craigslist / Ebay / Facebook, not shouting at passerbys in the Bazaar.

In real life, online auction houses have massively devalued items by surging the marketplace with convenient availability, yet our economy is fine. 

Edited April 2, 2017 by Vallerian

[Guest]

https://warframe.market/

basically an auction house

Edited April 2, 2017 by Guest
basically an auction house

[Vallerian]

4 minutes ago, sekate said:

https://warframe.market/

basically an auction house

I know this option exists, and it's a fantastic resource, but it doesn't offer any method of trading Riven Mods or any other RNG-generated content DE might add in the future

In order for this website to have a convenient way to sell rivens, DE would have to make an API for these websites to fetch our Riven mod data off of, and at that point they might as well add an in-game auction house because it doesn't make sense to have this middleman

Edited April 2, 2017 by Vallerian

[Robm]

I think just having something like warframe market in the game would be great. I am not saying auction house, if you see somebody selling the item you want in game, just message them when they are online. Have a system in place where you can put up what you want so you want to trade items for items or a plat amount. 

Also, it would be great if you could just trade items from within your ship, without loading the dojo. (this alone would be great)

[NeithanDiniem]

Cons:

It is now easier to buy out limited supply items from the market and mark up prices to inflated levels.

It is now easier for illegal traders to use above method to generate plat to sell for real cash

It requires DE to further expand the server system to hold just this information instead of using said servers to host the actual game sessions.

It increases problems for the game and DE if said servers have an issue and items marked up for sale don't deliver properly and/or vanish entirely due to errors.

Prices for common items tank due to overabundance of supply, prices for rare items skyrocket due to demand increasing and supply decreasing.

38 minutes ago, Vallerian said:

In real life, online auction houses have massively devalued items by surging the marketplace with convenient availability, yet our economy is fine. 

You cant compare a digital market which has a few hundred tradable items with a much easier supply vs target market population with the actual world's economy which has hundreds of thousands of items with quite limited supply vs target market population. Its like trying to say our sun is equivalent to VY Canis Majoris because they are both stars.

DE has already stated, quite a few times now, they are working on a solution. Its not been a priority for the game at this time though since Clans are in just as large of a problem area as trade.

Edited April 2, 2017 by NeithanDiniem

[Jabarto]

Kinda surprised at the pushback against OP's idea. There are 20 year old MMO's that handle trading better than Warframe does.

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

The trading in WF is a mess. Needs a change!

[Jakorak]

2 hours ago, NeithanDiniem said:

DE has already stated, quite a few times now, they are working on a solution.

really? I thought every single time the topic has come up, they've either been hesitant to answer it or insistant that a auction house would never make it into warframe because they don't like the problems it causes for other games. Which is fine by me :p

[Heckzu]

5 minutes ago, Jabarto said:

Kinda surprised at the pushback against OP's idea. There are 20 year old MMO's that handle trading better than Warframe does.

20 year old MMOs don't support the trading of paid currency, nor do they have the same sized player base as Warframe, making the repercussions of an automated trading system a lot less noticeable or severe.

[Vallerian]

8 minutes ago, Heckzu said:

20 year old MMOs don't support the trading of paid currency, nor do they have the same sized player base as Warframe, making the repercussions of an automated trading system a lot less noticeable or severe.

Maplestory would disagree

(Before the developers messed it all up anyway)

[Heckzu]

39 minutes ago, Vallerian said:

Maplestory would disagree

(Before the developers messed it all up anyway)

Maplestory's "auction house" had a 10% or so tax on Nexon Cash and Nexon eventually shut it down because it wasn't benefiting them IIRC.

[[DE]Momaw]

Here's the problem.

Most things you want to trade for in Warframe are "one per customer".  Once you have a fully ranked copy of Primed Flow, every additional copy of that mod that you buy and rank is pure profit.  Once you have a Banshee Prime, every single additional part that you get is pure profit.   The rate at which players create "wealth" in the form of items is vastly higher than the rate at which trading occurs.  Trading is throttled in a big way because  a.) trading is a mild nuisance and b.) players who are at the "create wealth" stage of their warframe career don't want anything but platinum, and there are far more F2P players than there is platinum-buying whale players.

Rivens are the only form of randomly-generated loot that we have in the game, and even the price on THOSE is on steep downward trend because once you have a riven for the weapon you want you can just keep rerolling it to get the results you want. Imperfect rivens are worth an increasingly small amount due to saturation of demand and there is little actual trading going on in "perfect" rivens because they're just too damned expensive for most people to care.  There's impressive mods with impressive price tags in trade, but you have to realize these are unsold, because if it was sold then the player wouldn't still be advertising.

Games that have long-lasting stable economies of tradeable goods have one of two key traits (and often both):

1) Rare items are created at about the same rate that demand for them increases. This is the case in games where is enormous variety of builds, classes, levels, and prerequisites, such that a rare thing you might want to buy from another player is actually genuinely rare. In order for this to be true there has to be a large portion of wealth created that is inapplicable to a large portion of players. If you're a Dwarf Wizard using a Summon Rock Golem build and your entire character is specialized around that, a item that is uniquely suited for your class and build is exceedingly rare and thus retains value. Warframe doesn't apply because all weapons and gear items and companions can be used by all warframes. Same goes for all the important mods for speed and agility and power usage. The only thing that's actually specific to builds or play styles is augment mods, and THOSE are quite literally throttled as a function of how much syndicate rep people can make in a day....and hey, look at that, trade price for augment mods has been stable for over a year.

2) Items are used up rather than stockpiled.  Crafting materials get made into items, potions and scrolls get spent, weapons break, armor gets damaged in battle. Once you implement some kind of drain on the economy instead of every possible thing the player can do being a net increase in wealth, you create a sustainable system.  Warframe doesn't have this at all.  Warframes, weapons, companions, and mods never wear out. The only thing we use up is gear items and materials, and you can't trade those (which is just as well because capacity to make more gear and more materials is several orders of magnitude faster than the rate they are used up).

So yeah. Warframe has neither meaningful scarcity nor meaningful drains in the economy.   The only thing that's keeping the trade economy at all viable is the inconvenience involved.  We can't do offline trading AT ALL.  Even making a searchable index of stuff currently being offered is really scary, unless you harshly limit it (i.e. you can only advertise one thing at a time).  The easier you make trading, the lower the prices get, and that's not in DE's best interests because they make money when people buy platinum to use in trading.

Edited April 2, 2017 by Momaw

[ashrah]

auction house is trade in trade i can give u one example what i was expirenced with auction house in one mmo i had character who was been able to craft best posible augments in game  and they are been very expensive cz u was need rarest  materials for it.... but me in couple ppl made deal... 2 clan  group of ppl farming materials hardcore...they have 30% of each augment... we craft lets say 20 of this augments in 3-4 day...1 augment was cost about 50$ we put price 45$ and anyone other who try to sell it he cant cz that is massive grind for 1 player... and u basicly have trade in hands

[Volinus7]

Actually I think some part of pRNG is already procedurally seeded through the whole population statistics. Oversupply is inevitable regardless but there're many loot models that can keep it in check.

Edited April 2, 2017 by Volinus7

[taiiat]

8 hours ago, Vallerian said:

In real life, online auction houses have massively devalued items by surging the marketplace with convenient availability, yet our economy is fine. 

and yet, things in reality still retain value - based on the standard Retail Pricing, how relevant it is to have/use if applicable, that whatever thing it is had to actually be produced/created, and that it's real life.

make believe places that do not deal with real world things - don't have that luxury. most of the things being traded cannot be purchased for Plat, which means there is no ceiling on their possible value. and since almost everything is readily available (very few things have serious limitations on availability that are not consistent or in control by the Player) with infinite supply (have you ever noticed that this doesn't exist in the real world?), ergo everything is a 'worthless trinket'.

 

even our newest gated item... Rivens.... are already saturating and having their perceived value dropping. even with such 'awful' Trading means and lack of all the things you say are necessary to do Trading and without them things are highly inflated.

give it some more time, and random Rivens will be worth nil, and even excellent Rivens won't be worth more than a Warframe from the Market.

 

and an 'Auction House' or things like it, objectively speed up this process. (by a lot)

Edited April 2, 2017 by taiiat

[Lluid]

Thanks to those who took time to explain why a part of the community doesn't want auction houses.

But honestly no argument convinces me that an auction house would be worse than the current system, both in terms of player experience and DE's profit. I hate this chat system, similarly to the recruiting one. I believe it prevents a huge amount of possible exchanges. What do players do if they feel they can't buy although they have plat ? They get the item themselves by playing. Or they simply leave...

So instead, the most critical subject is adding the chat filters, based on key words or linked items. I believe nobody could be against this idea right ?

Note that it doesn't include rivens because the image was made before. Of course they'd have a filter. ^^

Edited April 2, 2017 by Lluid
Wrong image, it was about recruiting

[Demon.King]

We have an auction house in the "Warframe Market" website. It saves you from the monstrosity of trade chat, except for rivens, which ruined Trade and Warframe in general, but that's another topic.

Personally, I'd like to see a Runescape Grand Exchange style system. Seller, buyer, supply and demand are all hidden. The system then just shows the average buying price.

Edited April 2, 2017 by Demon.King

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

I would propose a WTT WTS WTB tabs. And with in those tabs, you would have sub tabs for mods, weapon parts, frame parts respectively. 

As for bazaar there needs to be rooms for selling or buying mods, frames or weapon parts respectively. Also WF market be added to the game. I buy it with plat, I get the part and the seller gets the plat through in game email. 

[[DE]Momaw]

7 hours ago, Lluid said:

What do players do if they feel they can't buy although they have plat ?

In my experience this isn't a problem for most people. If you want something and offer a reasonable amount of platinum for it, people will offer it to you. Usually when I talk to people that are frustrated they "can't" buy something they want, it's because they decided in advance how much they want to pay for it rather looking to see how much the market is charging for it.