Too many sellers, not enough buyers

Teebling wrote: 2 years ago

sonnytai331 wrote: 2 years ago

I sense that you're defensive because you've put a lot of blood and sweat into building this site.

Yes, you're right. I'm probably being overly defensive, sorry.

I get so many complaints every single day from people that sometimes it can seem like everyone is against the site and what was created here. When I see the 4th/5th topic about 'my trades won't sell' I get angry because in general people associate that with the platform and not the game.

If this wasn't your intention then I apologise for not picking up on that sooner - regardless though, I have to make it quite clear to people here on the public forum that they must separate what the site is able to do for them, and what the economy can offer for them - two different things that I see confused all too often.

I can't just stand by idly and allow people to come to conclusions like that.

Since I strongly feel that that sort of negativity reaching you needs to be counterbalanced, let me just go ahead and say two things here:

Firstly and related to this thread, despite some items not selling quickly (which isn't the site's fault ), I have to say that after ... errrm ... 20ish? years (god I'm getting old) of D2 history, this is actually the most enjoyable and even more so the most useful trading environment I for one have seen. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that short of functioning in-game auction houses, this is actually the top trading environment I've seen for any game I've played.

Second and maybe even more importantly, you have somehow managed to create an environment that not only works very well and have continued to improve upon it (significantly) but you have somehow actually managed to create an environment that drew in a community that seems to be genuinely, surprisingly "good". Looking at most gaming communities and even looking very specifically at the constant ripoff-games in D2's history (trade window swaps, corpse popping, dupe scams, ...), the mere fact that you actually see threads along the lines of "we screwed up, can someone help us with our last uber here?!" not only get responded to within minutes but actually get resolved and getting them the help they need, rather than some jackass jumping in and stealing their torch in the end, honestly took me by very positive surprise.

So in short: When it comes down to it...kudos to you and this community in general.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Firstly and related to this thread, despite some items not selling quickly (which isn't the site's fault ), I have to say that after ... errrm ... 20ish? years (god I'm getting old) of D2 history, this is actually the most enjoyable and even more so the most useful trading environment I for one have seen. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that short of functioning in-game auction houses, this is actually the top trading environment I've seen for any game I've played.

Definitely on board with the sentiment here. I think the only other experience that tops it, imo, has been the fluidity and speed of poe's poe.trade. But that is mostly on GGG being so welcoming to such a possibility. Blizz is always so closed off, protective of their IP(to a fault, many faults even..) and oddly mod-unfriendly(despite SC's and WoW's overwhelming successes in that department).

Specifically thinking about how you can literally just right-click items in premium tabs ingame and set a price and to have that automatically be listed on their site, and the seem-less transition between seeing an item you want, clicking the user name(copies to clipboard) and pasting that in game with an automated msg of item/price/tab it's in/etc. A lot of that falls on GGG being so cooperative. And to poe.trade's credit too, their search and filter options are quite good. I think we're headed in that direction here, but for some reason every time I try to create a search with certain filters active(Jewel comes to mind) it bugs out on me xD We'll get there...

Basically as we are getting deeper into this season 0 all kinds of items get more common + D2R brought a huge playerbase compared to let's say last 10-15 years. I think people consider str8 deleting all their mules and most chars upon ladder season also.

End of the day this site is great - better than anything available to the Diablo franchise across its entire history.

As far as sellers go - either sell for cheap or accept you have to wait in an attempt to get a better price, that's the way markets work...

Same problem, here. I just bought some crazy items for a bargain, and have yet to sell even one. Too many people farming, at this point...

Maybe when ladder opens, the trade market will become interesting, once again!

Coming from pre-respec times, I feel that respec makes high end gear even more valuable than it was before, and by relation, mid gear even less valuable.

Lots of useful information and trades here. Unfortunately, this website looks like it is from the 1990s with the annoying ads on top of the trade area. It is very non-intuitive and could use a significant UI overhaul. Or, better yet, make it an app and do trading on your phone.

sgnabors wrote: 2 years ago

Lots of useful information and trades here. Unfortunately, this website looks like it is from the 1990s with the annoying ads on top of the trade area. It is very non-intuitive and could use a significant UI overhaul. Or, better yet, make it an app and do trading on your phone.

1. I like the UI/UX

2. If you support the people which are doing it for the community, you will not see ads (as I did contribute and thank them for their work)

GamerRoss wrote: 2 years ago

sgnabors wrote: 2 years ago

Lots of useful information and trades here. Unfortunately, this website looks like it is from the 1990s with the annoying ads on top of the trade area. It is very non-intuitive and could use a significant UI overhaul. Or, better yet, make it an app and do trading on your phone.

1. I like the UI/UX

2. If you support the people which are doing it for the community, you will not see ads (as I did contribute and thank them for their work)

Good for you. It is still a terribly outdated UI and ugly website compared to modern ones.

I will check on donations to remove the ads. Thanks.

sgnabors wrote: 2 years ago

... It is still a terribly outdated UI and ugly website compared to modern ones.

Err... what are you talking about? Ugly and outdated compared to what? d***jsp?!
Am I missing something?

sgnabors wrote: 2 years ago

Good for you. It is still a terribly outdated UI and ugly website compared to modern ones.

The game is 20 years old and almost every site with a big database for it looks like it was made... 20 years ago. However, everyone has an opinion.

GamerRoss wrote: 2 years ago

2. If you support the people which are doing it for the community, you will not see ads (as I did contribute and thank them for their work)

It's not even a team of people, a single guy designed and wrote this website. It's not a corporate website owned by a company, it's independently owned & operated by Teebling. Ads & donations essentially allow him to develop this site as a dedicated full-time job. One of those rare passion projects which actually worked out in the end, it's a beautiful thing.

And I like the UI a lot, it's the main reason I stick around. I don't even play D2 anymore at this point, I just like using the website lmao.

I for one really like the UI.
The overall theme reminds me of the classic

Arreat Summit pages. I've only been using the site for a month or so, but can already appreciate so many refined details that make the experience enjoyable for me. =)

sgnabors wrote: 2 years ago

Lots of useful information and trades here. Unfortunately, this website looks like it is from the 1990s with the annoying ads on top of the trade area. It is very non-intuitive and could use a significant UI overhaul. Or, better yet, make it an app and do trading on your phone.

Nothing is really keeping you from doing trades on your phone as is. Website is very responsive to smaller screens too.

Simply a numbers game, the old P2W site has like 5k-10k online users at any given time while this one is hovering just around the 500+ mark. While Google doesn't register this site on trends it is obvious that it may be the third alternative trade site out there.

I'll be honest here. As much as I love this site and community, personally I'll probably branch out to traderie to sell stuff that doesn't move at all here. I still focus on the best items here first, and then leftovers I'll post them elsewhere. This site is still my first choice.

The problem is that 99% of items have no value at all. And this is not a problem created by this site. This problem began when v1.10 and the ridiculous runewords were introduced. This simple thing made the vast majority of the drops be useless and worthless. It also ruined the balance and the fun of the whole game but this is another topic. Why do you think d2 player base plummeted back in 2003? Because most people abandoned the game because it became a disaster. Now all you hear is

Ber

Ber

Ber

Ber

Ber

Ber

Ber

Ber.

Vampire Gaze wrote: 2 years ago

The problem is that 99% of items have no value at all. And this is not a problem created by this site. This problem began when v1.10 and the ridiculous runewords were introduced. This simple thing made the vast majority of the drops be useless and worthless. It also ruined the balance and the fun of the whole game but this is another topic. Why do you think d2 player base plummeted back in 2003? Because most people abandoned the game because it became a disaster. Now all you hear is

Ber

Ber

Ber

Ber

Ber

Ber

Ber

Ber.

Actually, you are only half-correct. It's more like

Ber

Ber

Ber

Ber

Ber

Jah

Jah

Jah

Jah

Ber

Ber

Ber

Ber. ;P

Revisiting this month-old necro'd thread to respond to some of the new comments:

Haro wrote: 2 years ago

Simply a numbers game...

This is where I think a lot of people look at the site differently to the way I look at the site.

A lot of people think that I set out to 'compete' with other sites like d2jsp and Traderie. They mistakenly think that it was my aim to monopolise or dominate 3rd party trading stuff online. Many people think that I treat this site as a commercial venture, or a 'numbers game', in which I am actively competing for the users etc with the other trading sites.

So let me just put the record straight - to me diablo2.io is not about the numbers. I don't compare its traffic numbers to other sites, and I don't stop people from posting links or talking about other sites - because I do not consider myself to be 'competing' with them. This place is first and foremost my Passion project - I've been building nostalgic Blizzlike forum communities for years and it's what I love to do. I didn't come at this whole project with the intention of trying to build 'the best' trading site. I just wanted to build something unique.

A bit more on wanting to build something unique: I have made a point of not personally developing or encourage 'duplicate' things here on diablo2.io. That's why you don't see a drop calculator here (Silopsen), or a skill point planner/build planner/armory tool (Maxroll), or any high-quality curated 'guide' style content being pushed (Maxroll/IcyVeins/Purediablo/YouTube/Twitch). These things have been perfected already by the D2 community, so from the very start I set myself limits as to what I would try and build, so that the tools I offered here on this site would fill in gaps where something was needed, and not duplicate features already fit for purpose elsewhere.

When the first leaks came out about a possible 'D2 HD' remake in early 2020, I set out to make (yet another) D2 site, but was determined that this time I'd make something useful that isn't already done to Death. Saw that no-one had made an interactive relational game database yet, so I built it and with the help of the community here populated it. It was a unique feature that no-one had made for D2 yet. I also wanted a fully-featured forum as well, so eventually what the site came out as was a database/forum hybrid that actually was unique and gave people something new and useful. Trading was not talked about much during these early days.

Just before the game launch, there weren't actually any good non-RMT alternatives to d2jsp and people were crying out for an alternative on reddit and other circles. The site here had already been active for 3 months before trading was even whispered about. I knew then as I do now that d2jsp is an incredible website with a 20 year legacy as testament to its success, and that it doesn't force you to RMT - you can use it just like you can here with in-game exchanges. But equally, I knew that a lot of D2 players were also wanting to use something new and without the connotations of jsp's somewhat tarnished reputation.

Some people made a few half-ass attempts at web apps, some made bits of the toolset, but not all of it etc. So I saw a chance to make something unique again that would be helpful to people, and rather than building bits and pieces I went and I built the whole thing. The actual game's design itself had a very clear message about making things more 'accessible', and in that Spirit I saw my opportunity to build something unique that people would want to use, that could integrate with the forum and database functionality already standing on their own here.

During this time, Traderie already existed and was already a hugely popular non-RMT trading platform for all of the most popular games. Squishguin started building it at around the same time I did with d2io, but no-one knew that it would have a D2R section until around launch-time, which is when I put the first trading features here as well. This coincided with the same time that I put the first trading features here on the site; my version of what I thought people would want to see. So I couldn't have foreseen the overlap in the kinds of features offered by the two sites.

Nonetheless, I still think that the site here retains unique features that still haven't been replicated elsewhere. Take the price checker/history tool for example - still the only transparent, data-driven way players have to assess the 'value' of their items without anyone's advice. It all integrates with the DB and the forums and the general site, so I'm really happy with what I made, and I think it stands apart from other platforms in many regards. The trade stuff I put up was based on what people told me they wanted to see - and the feedback/bug reports forums show that I have always done my very best to put those ideas and changes into force.

The point I'm trying to drive home here lads is that I built this site to offer something unique to D2 players - an integrated database, community, and (later on) a trading platform, which at the time was designed just for the people already active here, not the no.1 google spot. As time has gone on, people like to draw comparisons between this place and sites like Traderie/JSP, as if they are trying to out-do each other, as if from the very start that they were racing to build features for traders. It's just simply not that at all - we are just indie developers who decided to make coincidentally similar things, release them at around the same time, unbeknownst to each other.

What turned out was two sites with a similar audience, but built slightly differently. Traderie has incredibly granular searching options, a much better 'general browsing' experience, and also a much larger audience of hardcore players due to the streaming publicity it gets. Sure, it got a big boost from already being a successful trading platform, sure, there was an successful marketing campaign influencers at the start, but the real reason that people use Traderie is because it is better suited to their needs. Simple as that. I am not so conceited to think any otherwise - and I never have been. It's a better trading platform with better features.

I am on good terms with Squishguin, the owner and developer of Traderie. We talk occasionally on discord voice about our sites, the game, web development stuff etc. I am a huge fan of what he created. So I just want to dismiss this 'idea' that I am somehow competing with him, or other websites, to try and 'gain' as many users as possible. It's not like that, it never was like that. I just built what people asked me to build at the time, to the best of my ability, in the way that I thought it best with my time and skills.

I don't care if people use JSP, and I've never had a problem with them or the site. Njaguar (the developer/main owner) is a bit of an enigmatic character and though I haven't had a chance to speak to him myself yet, I know that I would enjoy the opportunity to do so. I don't care that a lot of people use just Traderie. I don't care if they use a combination of jsp/traderie/d2io/purediablo/trading discords. I've had people say to me 'well if you don't build X feature like so-and-so, I'm leaving for Y platform'. This doesn't matter to me - because what I've created here is still unique, and useful to people - and I can see that the people who do use this site really enjoy using it, so I'm happy.

It makes me even happier to know that some people consider it their 'preference' - that's just gravy on top for me. My creative goal has been fulfilled - to create a site that offered things to D2 players that no-one else had done yet. People use the site here for various things, all of them in some respects different to the way it has been done before. That's good enough for me. It's been a Dream come true to operate a fan site like this for the game I have loved since I was a teenager.

I will always continue to promote other great tools and resources outside of this site and this community. We let people talk about the advantages of other trading platforms, we let people link to tools and resources on other sites (see the sticky in forum for example) - the aim of the site was help D2 players no matter what or where that help came from. Not to build an awful clickbait ad-generating revenue site 'at odds' with the alternatives, banning mentions of 'competitors' etc.

So please guys, remember that. We are all here because we love the game Diablo 2. I'm thrilled that my creation helps people enjoy D2 more, and I hope that the design and policy of the site continues to encourage people to use other tools as well as the ones available here. I know I can be incredibly defensive and stubborn sometimes when responding to criticism, but just know that I don't concern myself with where people are trading as much as people think I do... this is my creative jam, my desire to make unique projects as discussed, and it is what it is - there shouldn't be any expectations for me to develop features that are equivalent to what is available elsewhere.

Edit: also to the guy complaining about the GUI - it is intentionally made to look like it was 20 years old. This is a style direction I've always used to great success when making sites for classic era games like WoW Classic and D2R. For many it goes hand in hand with the nostalgia for the game itself, and helps people feel more immersed. That's what I hope anyway - if you think it sucks, then you think it sucks, fair enough and I don't feel the need to try and make you think any differently on it.

Teebling wrote: 2 years ago

This is where I think a lot of people look at the site differently to the way I look at the site.

I like the site and also the GUI - no need for all that shiny-3D'ish stuff, that makes you feel waiting minutes until you can actually use the site properly.
Since I found d2.

Io, it was on a discord where the post got deleted pretty soon due to "advertising policy" I barely used anything else.
Might be, that I'm yet too lazy to trade on multiple sites but I also don't feel well on a place where people value their stuff in real money.
Community is great, people and admin/s are kind - no need for anything else.
No idea why people complain - as I can see, community is still raising.

We've reached a point were most people are looking for nearly perfect gear, that does affect the market - that happens to all sites.
The only difference for trading I see is the competition between traders and maybe some faster deals. But that I Don't care about.