A solution to trade scams - a list of goods / contract

Many scams where the seller puts some item which was not what you wanted to buy are common, often the wrong item having less than 5% of the initial item's value, as well the buyers trying to swindle by putting wrong currency or stacks with 1 orb, or numerous other scams.

There is a solution that could avoid all this, without changing the current system, but as an addition to it instead.

A list of goods.

When you find a trade listing on the trade site, there would be a button to request the list of goods.

The list of goods would be a physical item, which can be inspected, and on a hover it would show an item that the seller posted from the trade site.

Additionally, the seller can request a list of goods as well from the same listing - in that case he gets the list citing how much currency the item was listed for.

Now, how would this all help?

When making a trade, you can choose to use the list of goods. This will place it in a dedicated slot in the trade window. Seller can do the same with their list. Both parties can inspect those lists if they wish, but its not necessary.

Now the main part - the list acts as a guarantee.

If the buyer uses their list of goods, the seller won't be able to accept a trade unless the item they put into the trade window is exactly the same item that in the buyer's list of goods.

Same with the seller - if seller's list of goods is used, the buyer won't be able to accept a trade, unless the currency listed there is present. You would be able to put more currency, should you choose so, but everything from the list must be present.

This system might not be needed for low value trades, but for anything worth more than a divine I'd use it every single time.

Compared to current trading, it essentially only adds two more clicks - one to get the list of goods, and another to put it into the trade window. The impact is quite minimal.

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Alternatively, instead of doing two separate lists, make a single contract item instead. Either party could request one, and they would be identical, citing both the seller's item and the buyer's item(s).

If either party uses a contract in a trade window, neither of them would be able to hit Accept without fulfilling their part of the contract.

This also still allows for both parties to check for fraud - if both use the contracts, and the contracts themselves don't match - then the trade won't be able to be completed at all.

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You want them to do all that instead of just... you know... hovering over the item(s) to make sure you're getting what you intended to buy?

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yummysushipjs#7638 a écrit :

You want them to do all that instead of just... you know... hovering over the item(s) to make sure you're getting what you intended to buy?

Yes, because it provides a 100% game-verified guarantee.
You inspecting the items doesn't, as people make mistakes.
Otherwise, the game wouldn't have been full of scammers.
Because scams succeed often enough to be very profitable.

If you buy something like Morior, you'll probably encounter more scammers than legit sellers.

What's worse, its often new players getting scammed, many of whom would choose to drop the game that allows this to happen.

This would act as bloated workaround of a problem, without solving core of the problem: the fact that both players need to abandon their gameplay, meet for the trade, and manipulate the listed items a second time. For the seller it often means he must struggle to remember what he was selling too.

Automated AH would solve both swap-scamming and messaging into the void (on buyer's side). As for "we need manual friction against bots" - current system does not stop bots anyway, I've interacted with afk trading bots hundreds of times in poe1. This problem should be solved by making top-end fragments and all crafted items account-bound to reduce RMT potential game-wide.

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Echothesis#7320 a écrit :

This would act as bloated workaround of a problem, without solving core of the problem: the fact that both players need to abandon their gameplay, meet for the trade, and manipulate the listed items a second time. For the seller it often means he must struggle to remember what he was selling too.

Automated AH would solve both swap-scamming and messaging into the void (on buyer's side). As for "we need manual friction against bots" - current system does not stop bots anyway, I've interacted with afk trading bots hundreds of times in poe1. This problem should be solved by making top-end fragments and all crafted items account-bound to reduce RMT potential game-wide.

This is another topic entirely.

The solution I proposed can be implemented on top of existing system, without changing it much.

A market system (as I presume this is what you meant, because so far no one mentioning auction house actually wanted an auction house) would require a ton of work in comparison.

That's way too complicated to develop for the "solution" it provides.

Atm, the game does not know what item you are planning to trade.
I elaborate for a better understanding.

If you whisper someone for the item "Scam Slayer Sword", you send the seller a whisper that's generated via the information from the trade side. The most important thing there is the exact position and in which stash, so the game highlights the item for the seller.
The thing is, the game just highlights the exact position in the stash and actually doesn't care about the item that is on that place.

So if the seller sorted his stash before and switched the position of his "Scam Slayer Sword" with "Divine Thief Gloves" the message could still highlight the old position of the sword, while the gloves are placed there now.

That's important to understand because if you now trade with the seller to exchange the item with currency, the game has no "track" that the item "Scam Slayer Sword" is put into the trade window or not.
The game (server) knows that "Scam Slayer Sword" was taken out of the stash and would know if it's traded to you, but the game cannot check that the right item will be put in the trade window to trade with the right buyer.

The buyer has to check (hover over) if the item placed in the trade window is the same as the item listed on the trade site, and then has to accept it (confirm). And you can always compare with the item in chat if it's the right one.

Now developing a system like you described wouldn't make much sense.
The time developing that system could be spent on a "market place" instead, where players can "list" and "buy out" items without the "player to player" trade interaction.
Then scamming and price fixing wouldn't be possible anymore.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that you came up with an idea, but we don't need to make things more complicated than needed. A simple "market place" (AH) would fix all issues.

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JakkerONAIR#4902 a écrit :

Now developing a system like you described wouldn't make much sense.
The time developing that system could be spent on a "market place" instead, where players can "list" and "buy out" items without the "player to player" trade interaction.
Then scamming and price fixing wouldn't be possible anymore.

Again, this is a completely different topic of discussion. Making an entirely new trade system is orders of magnitude more work than the outlined solution above.

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JakkerONAIR#4902 a écrit :

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that you came up with an idea, but we don't need to make things more complicated than needed. A simple "market place" (AH) would fix all issues.

Except its not simple in the slightest to make.

Also, market place is not auction house. Completely different systems.

Market place assumes instant trading, auction house - placing bids on items, no instant trading.
If a buyout option is introduced in AH that makes the "auction house" portion redundant as most people will use instant buyout.

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JakkerONAIR#4902 a écrit :

Atm, the game does not know what item you are planning to trade.

Trade site still has the info about which item is listed and for which price. Which is enough info to generate a contract/list of items.
Stash position of the item doesn't matter in the slightest, comparison would be between the item placed int he trade window against the info in the contract/list of items.

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Shajirr#2980 a écrit :

Trade site still has the info about which item is listed and for which price. Which is enough info to generate a contract/list of items.
Stash position of the item doesn't matter in the slightest, comparison would be between the item placed int he trade window against the info in the contract/list of items.

How would your "contract/list" look in-game?

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Shajirr#2980 a écrit :

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Echothesis#7320 a écrit :

This would act as bloated workaround of a problem, without solving core of the problem: the fact that both players need to abandon their gameplay, meet for the trade, and manipulate the listed items a second time. For the seller it often means he must struggle to remember what he was selling too.

Automated AH would solve both swap-scamming and messaging into the void (on buyer's side). As for "we need manual friction against bots" - current system does not stop bots anyway, I've interacted with afk trading bots hundreds of times in poe1. This problem should be solved by making top-end fragments and all crafted items account-bound to reduce RMT potential game-wide.

This is another topic entirely.

The solution I proposed can be implemented on top of existing system, without changing it much.

A market system (as I presume this is what you meant, because so far no one mentioning auction house actually wanted an auction house) would require a ton of work in comparison.

Apologies for offtopic, but to clarify, I meant exactly an AH, not "currency exchange but for items" marketplace. Because marketplace is prone to another abuse: bots would snipe all good items 5 seconds after they are listed, and real players left with nothing. Besides, seller should be able to react after listing an item, in case he underpriced it.

While AH has a drawback of rich nolifers always outbidding normal players, remember another aspect: making pinnacle fragments and crafted items account-bound, so trading is reduced to middle game activity, not being a direct path to top power in the game like it is now. If a player has already reached peak wealth, he shouldn't be encouraged to trade at all.

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Echothesis#7320 a écrit :

Apologies for offtopic, but to clarify, I meant exactly an AH, not "currency exchange but for items" marketplace. Because marketplace is prone to another abuse: bots would snipe all good items 5 seconds after they are listed, and real players left with nothing. Besides, seller should be able to react after listing an item, in case he underpriced it.

This would be a first, every single other person who mentioned an auction house so far meant the marketplace instead.

And they all dismissed the concern that making bots for that would be incredibly easy to the point of anyone capable of doing it, and they would snipe everything.

So I agree with you on this.

The question is still whether the devs want to do something like this this at all.

While my solution targets a specific issue and doesn't ultimately change how the existing system functions.

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How would your "contract/list" look in-game?

A single slot inventory item.

On hover is shows a window with a similar layout as a trade site, but for 1 item if its a list, or two items, for both the seller and the buyer sides, if its a contract. Plus the item quantity if its a currency, and a name of the one who placed the listing on the trade site.

Although now thinking about it, calling it a list is pointless if all it lists is one item.

No way to modify it, and selling it would not give anything, would be the same as destroying it.