MercuryTrade, POE-Trades-Companion and the future of trading

I posted about this recently, here:

MercuryTrade, POE-Trades-Companion and the future of trading

But in order to make sure that GGG is aware of the state of this situation, I wanted to replicate it here...

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TL;DR we already have one abandoned third-party trade assistant that, if history is a guide, will eventually become a source of malware. GGG needs to update trade handling before that happens so we're not relying on installing third-party programs.

Intro

We've talked quite a lot about trading in this sub... probably so much that most of you have tuned it out, but we've entered a dangerous period in PoE's history, and I think it's important for everyone to think about this topic some more, especially GGG's development and marketing people. Why marketing? We'll get to that...

Background

So, for those of you who have been suffering in the dark ages, let me tell you why you get those instant responses and thank-you's from so many players these days when trading. There are tools out there like MercuryTrade and POE-Trades-Companion that allow players to click a button and invite, kick, trade, respond, etc. This solves many fundamental limitations of the game. For example, when someone sends me a trade request while I'm in Standard for an item I'm selling in the temp or race league, I can send a request that they wait a minute with one button, then log out, log in to the correct league and invite them, without having to remember or write down their name!

These programs are third-party add-ons that use official features in the game that allow them to read chat messages and send input (but only chat input, so they can't play the game for you).

The problems

We've always known that having third party programs interact with the game was problematic. It trains the playerbase to trust installing random programs that might contain malicious features such as keylogging or monitoring non-game activity. However, we have now entered the next phase of the problem. MercuryTrade has become stagnant, has many bugs, and is probably abandoned. But players still use it, and it still has a "check for updates" button. This means that, at some point, GGG could have to deal with the original author turning it over to someone less reputable who sees being installed on 10s of thousands of player's machines as a payday. They just have to offer a new update that includes whatever they want!

This is only going to get worse over time, and there's nothing stopping a new entrant into the space from offering a from-day-one abusive tool. And no, having it on github where you can look at the source doesn't help, because we don't know that the released install program doesn't contain more than is in the source code.

The solution

The solution is an always has been that GGG support trading more fully in the game. They can no longer say that semi-automated trading (that is, push-button attended trading with the user present) will damage the experience. That bridge has been crossed, and we're living on the other side today. The only way we could go back is to break the API with no replacement, and that would lead to a pretty severe outcry from users that could damage the game. GGG needs to support the basic features offered by these programs at a bare minimum, and probably go a bit further.

We all get the "player interaction" idea, and it was a good one, but it's dead and has been for a very long time. We press a button on poe.trade or the official trade site, we get an invite, go to the hideout, twiddle our thumbs until the trade window is open and then mouse over the item to make sure it's the one that was offered (maybe it is, maybe it isn't and maybe you catch it or don't) and then teleport to your own refuge, safely away from the risk of any genuine interaction.

At BEST, you get to see someone else's hideout.

GGG needs to think about this interaction, support and improve what's already positive and rip out everything that could damage the game long-term. This isn't a suggestion, this is a warning.

Of course, all of this has the side benefit of improving the experience for any consoles that PoE might run on now or in the future, though I seem to remember that trading is already a bit different on XBox than it is on PC.

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Minor edit: fixed typo in intro blurb.

Sounds like bullshit to be honest. If you install crap on your PC, its your problem. If you want someone to take care of that, hire a sys admin.

I trade just with the game and I strive to give people fast replies, always say thank you and so on. You dont need a 3rd party program to turn 2 clicks and 10 key presses into 1 click.

But if GGG would go out of their way to nanny players, I guess there is no harm to automate the process more. My personal opinion is that 20-30 seconds for a trade is OK and that the game gives you all the tools you need to have a good time trading.

If the player base is shitty though, any system will suck for one reason or another.

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Frostride escreveu:

But if GGG would go out of their way to nanny players

No one is suggesting anything of the sort.

If you're savvy enough to use a computer and install a video game, at some point a player's security can't be totally left up to GGG. Sure, they could probably add ctrl + scrollwheel to cycle through tabs like how you can with the trade macro, but there isn't much else to do for trade apart from one more thing. I'll get to that later.

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There are tools out there like MercuryTrade and POE-Trades-Companion that allow players to click a button and invite, kick, trade, respond, etc.

On the other hand, that makes you (if you use that) or any user look like a bot. Talk about damaging the experience of players, where players trade with the beep boops 1-click thank-you followed by an immediate kick, then it would make a lot of sense to simply ban that kind of macro in their ToS. In fact they should do that. And so you and I would agree to fold some of that into the main game but that's not the type of player interaction they're hoping for (and not the one I would hope for).

The one last big trade improvement I could see is like how you can hit your M key to pull up the MTX store. Since pathofexile.com/trade is a thing, that could be your T key. After that, I'd call it a day if I were GGG.