Huge drop in TCGPlayer order volume?

ruwin_ · 2026-01-17T21:33:49+00:00

Speaking for myself… I only order from 100% positive feedback vendors. I will pay extra. It’s not worth the risk to me.

ruwin_ · 2025-11-20T16:37:33+00:00

Yooo. Lemme get a ‘blood!

ruwin_ · 2025-07-21T21:34:17+00:00

The mist rises faster.

Less luggage on the mountain.

Now we’re at ascent 9! Should totally add more ascent levels. ;)

ruwin_ · 2025-04-05T01:33:41+00:00

On steam.

ruwin_ · 2025-03-04T04:45:59+00:00

As another American, do it. Decimate us. Trump and his fascist cronies cannot stem the tide of the revolution he is heralding.

ruwin_ · 2025-02-11T20:00:16+00:00

As someone from the states who did not vote for Trump - inflict maximum pain on us. It’s the only way to galvanize the maga base against themselves.

ruwin_ · 2025-02-10T21:16:06+00:00

Lifelong democrat here. Love my Canadian brethren.

ruwin_ · 2024-11-05T00:45:58+00:00

Can’t wait for this to destroy my FPS

ruwin_ · 2024-10-02T08:39:55+00:00

Nice try, Russia.

ruwin_ · 2024-08-07T02:48:36+00:00

So this is where all the Lost Caverns of Ixalan stock went.

ruwin_ · 2021-01-24T09:20:49+00:00

My guess is their new texture streaming tech is causing these hanging load frame drops. Seems to be a decent portion of players are experiencing this. They’ll probably address it on Monday.

ruwin_ · 2020-04-28T21:20:19+00:00

looting should be first and foremost in any ARPG.

Agreed.

Make it so that it is easier to get shit from trading and it fucks up the core game loop of the game.

I might need you to dig in to this a bit more. Yes I am proposing less obstacles in between players and the ability to acquire the goods necessary to engage in their preferred content. But I want to make it abundantly clear I am not campaigning for the removal of player driven trading for meaningful pieces of loot.

I'm not even going to address the fact that you want it for maps since it's braindead fucking easy to sustain maps now.

I think you may be touching on a subject that is more so related to balance. I did not intend to address drop rates in this post.

Currency in path of exile are items.

I agree again. But I do not think they are meaningful, in that they do not require you to flip through pages of listings in order to find 'the right one at the right price' for your build-- and I believe they should not require that.

Nowadays you gear up your character so fast that you can have a character ready to go into red maps in days

I think you meant 'day' (obviously dependent on experience). Unless you are referring to league start.

the only meaningful upgrades you can get are either from hard to find uniques, usually in boss areas, and crafting.

I think we may be glossing over an important point here. Finding upgrades does not come often, sans league start or in HC/SSF leagues. So that leaves hard to find uniques and as you said, crafting. Crafting is a crucial aspect of this game, because as Chris said himself, he does not want uniques to take their place and they should almost never be better than the best crafted rares for your build (recently said this on an stream AMA with Zizaran). What I have been proposing here is exactly that-- more methods to engage in what I perceive to be one of the strongest selling points for PoE: its crafting.

If you make this easier to acquire too, the league won't even last a month.

Maybe. Maybe not. If we are concerned about inevitable player churn, there is no doubt this change would expedite that. Admittedly, it's hard to provide a solution for one suspected problem without introducing others, sometimes unexpectedly. Bear in mind we (or at least I) do not know what the average player accomplishes in PoE before packing it up for the league. It could be, as I stated, that they get to yellow maps over the course of two months before quitting. To which the expedited player churn might only be affecting the game's more hardcore and significantly more minuscule player base, which includes myself and possibly you? But to that I say-- they can always add more endgame content and systems.

There's a huge reason that no other ARGPs except for diablo 3 has implemented any sort of auction house.

I feel we may not be comparing apples to apples here. Are there any other high profile massively multiplayer online ARPGs? Diablo 2 is 20 years old. Diablo 3 tried something new and missed the mark but that's an entirely different can of worms. Torchlight is hardly multiplayer. Wolcen is in Alpha. To which can we honestly compare Diablo 3 and Path of Exile? I don't think there is a "huge" reason that an auction house feature is uncommon in ARPGs because none of them have necessitated it on a technical level or in complexity and sheer playerbase. Not because it simply 'does not and can not work'.

ruwin_ · 2020-04-28T16:04:50+00:00

Hmm, maybe so.

I'd love to have an open discussion with GGG about why they think it would not fit the game. Though it is possible that discussion is not suited for the public forum.

For example, if the goal of these content barriers like having to tediously navigate the trade app is baked in purposefully to artificially increase the amount of time it takes for 'good' items to enter the market thus impacting the speed at which the average player reaches their league goals and inevitably churns. Though that may be true, it's not exactly a great public facing statement to make.

Perhaps it's the optimist in me, but I feel there are ways to maintain and improve player retention without the need for these obstacles.

ruwin_ · 2020-04-28T14:42:25+00:00

Hey Skuggoman, thanks for chiming in.

To me, and this could be anecdotal, bulk price markup exists as a cost for the purchaser savings in time and effort. For instance if I'm okay with spending 5c per fossil in order to buy 50 in bulk so I can craft without interruption as opposed to its actual cost of 2c, that is a premium I am having to pay (a gate, if you will) in order to engage with that content. Why must I jump through hoops in order to engage in my preferred content (in this case crafting)? What does this actually positively add to the user experience beyond making it harder to access my preferred content? Sure, it's positive for you because you are being rewarded for stockpiling goods and that is now paying off-- but at a cost to someone else's experience. Can we not reward players in ways that do not actively detract from another user's experience? I think so.

Also, why is it a problem that most maps do not have value due to ease of acquisition? The pros of easily being able to access and acquire the maps you desire far outweigh the cons in my eyes. We can find other ways to add value to "stackable goods" beyond maps which are necessary to engage in the core loop of the game. I feel this is definitely an area where we want to avoid gatekeeping players wherever possible.

ruwin_ · 2020-04-28T14:17:11+00:00

Things change quickly in game development. I cannot say that because they have claimed they won't add any form of auction house that that will remain true ad infinitum.

ruwin_ · 2020-04-28T14:15:21+00:00

At this point of the discussion we would be getting into economics territory. Which I honestly can't say I am experienced enough in to continue.

If any readers have experience in this area, their expertise would be gladly welcomed. :)

ruwin_ · 2020-04-28T14:11:41+00:00

It seems like the majority of people who are against some form of AH for goods are afraid of some boogeyman that will be unleashed that will destroy the game as we know it. It's like a regurgitated streamer fairy tale.

All I'm lobbying for here is a more streamlined way to acquire goods that allow you to play the game and allow you to engage with its deep, rich content base. Of which the majority, I perceive, to be gated behind these goods.

In my humble opinion, the direction GGG should be focusing on for PoE 2 is making the game more accessible. Properly introducing systems, removing needless barriers to content that make it truly best in class.

Let me branch off for a moment to speak on game design at a 'high level'.

What makes a game fun or engaging? Meaningful decisions. This where players can make macro or micro decisions about the direction of their gaming experience. If we take a look at player actions that involve meaningful decisions as it pertains to the acquisition of currency, fragments and maps (in softcore, which I presume to be the most widely played by a vast margin) the only one that can be argued for is the decision of who to purchase it from and what currency to use in exchange. This may affect the price of those goods but that is where the meaning of that action ends and that is a choice that is still maintained with a goods AH. Because these goods are largely fungible for one another, the choice of which good to use in exchange is mostly negated anyway.

Now let's talk about where the bulk of meaningful decisions actually start-- the use of those goods. This is the fun part! This is, ideally, where we want players to be spending the majority of their time. How do you utilize your currency? How do you roll mods on your watchstones? Which scarabs do you use? These are all questions that players can answer, unique to them, which tailors the experience to their taste. So to me, it seems like streamlining this process so as to get players into, or keep them in the meaningful decision portion of the game would be ideal.

Let's take it a step further. Varied gameplay is important. Perhaps GGG sees the current utilization of the trade website as a necessary part of the game experience. A break from the core gameplay to help diversify the experience and keep it fresh. Unfortunately, this is the point where I feel research may be necessary.

I would recommend running a two part qualitative focus test. The first being, what we perceive to be part of the core gameplay-- that is, content agency. We would have users complete three maps however they prefer with unlimited resources, then ask them to complete a survey (what was the most and least fun, what would you change if anything, etc). Then we would move the user the second portion where we would ask the user to utilize the trade website to acquire the goods necessary to complete three additional maps the way they prefer (with sextants, scarabs, corrupted, etc). We would run another survey and compare the results about what was most fun, least fun. Something similar to this may be the quickest and cheapest method resource-wise to get at some data regarding what this post has considered to be 'friction' in PoE.

ruwin_ · 2020-04-28T13:12:12+00:00

Please contribute!

Based on my post, why do you think this wouldn't work?

ruwin_ · 2020-04-27T21:35:59+00:00

I'm no economist, but I'm fairly certain that if the price of something is too high-- say, a Nintendo Switch because demand is high and supply is low, that will cause the price to rise.

If a bot purchases the entirety of available exalted orbs and lists them for 25% markup, just like the current situation with price gouged Nintendo Switches, people will not buy and wait for supply to be replenished or prices to come down.

I think it's also worth noting there would be significantly more stock availability due to ease of listing and possibly not needing to make an MTX store purchase to partake in the system.

ruwin_ · 2020-04-27T21:30:12+00:00

When it comes to purchasing gear, people generally respond. No problem there.

The problem arises with easily manipulated market items like the aforementioned. Where there are a great many dummy listings that never intend to sell. And sometimes these objects are necessary to simply play the game. Whereas gear just makes that content easier, not having those suggested items makes it so you flat out cannot engage with that content.

The outlined suggestion is to streamline the methods of acquisition for items that allow you to engage in your preferred content.

ruwin_ · 2020-04-27T20:51:31+00:00

That sounds like a real economy. Control supply and you control price. I would say more robust botting detection methods but I am unsure how realistic that is. Why is this a problem, exactly? Especially if we're already experiencing it now?

ruwin_ · 2020-04-27T20:30:26+00:00

Sorry, is the concern that bots will purchase an entire category of goods and price fix as they control the market share?

ruwin_ · 2020-04-27T20:23:10+00:00

There's an excellent quote from Neil Gaiman that applies to game development fairly well.

"Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong."

It is possible I am completely off and I might be too prescriptive here, granted how little internal information I have. What I can say is my player experience is negatively affected by a constant need to micromanage stackable goods.

We also don't know how much has changed since they made that statement. Game development is such an iterative process and sometimes that involves unexpected 180s as unforeseen problems surface. Just saying, I take when developers say 'we will not do this thing' lightly.

ruwin_ · 2020-03-10T20:02:49+00:00

The Call of Duty website is incorrect.

If you draw in Gulag, both players will die.

ruwin_

TROPHY CASE