Price-fixers are terrible, but allowing a system where price-fixers can flourish is even worse
Edit: new idea that I think might actually solve all of these trade issues. How about GGG implementing sales metrics for all items. Like sure, price fixers will continue to list BS extremely low offers and never respond to a potential buyer, but what if we could see what the average price that actually transacted for that particular item? If we had visibility to that, it would make it 100 times easier to:
A. Know what your item is actually worth so noobs won't fall victim to these people buying their items at a fraction of the cost just so they can capture the market.
B. Much more easily identify a potential price fixer seller listing their items at a fraction of the average cost.
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I'm not exactly sure what GGG could do to prevent price-fixing, but the way it is now for high value items really puts a major damper pm everyone in the end game, especially for poor folks who just hit T15 maps and desperately need to buy upgraded gear.
I have a couple put together fast ideas that could be implemented to potentially help.
If a seller ignores 15 or more whispers (while theyre online) for an item within an hour's time frame, their items are automatically de-listed from the trade site and they would need to re-list it. I'm not entirely sure how this would be able to get tracked or implemented, but just a thought. For anyone saying "but what about if I'm mapping and don't want to respond to a whisper", if you're ignoring 15 different whispers for a single item within an hour's time frame, what the hell are you doing even listing the item to begin with other than wasting everyone's time? Surely though, this feature would have to track whether or not you are AFK or not, and I'm not sure if that would even measurably be possible. It would also open the door for price-fixers to just leave their rigs running all day while AFK, so I suppose this actually wouldn't work, after all, but I'm just spitballing here.
Give us a damn auction house! Seriously, this is NOT providing us with "meaningful player interactions". This has been said so many times on this sub now, I know, but seriously...why must we have to deal with these price fixers who are pretty much ONLY hurting your newest-to-POE players who are poor and struggling. Of course, you can strike some good deals every now and then, but for key build defining items like Ingenuity for example, unless you find and defeat the boss necessary, you're SOL.
Idk, just mostly a rant I guess, but I'm tired of the price-fixers.