Are you an american perhaps? I feel like accepting paying a different price at the register than what's listed at the shelf is something only a kwan would accept. And of course the real problem is that the PoE marketplace is thoroughly unsuited for the number of trades going on.
No. German, actually.
Imagine thinking people wanting to buy an item for as cheap as possible is a problem. Also I tried overpaying, it barely works any more reliably.
Here's what you don't seem to understand: An AH wouldn't fix those issues. See that Tabula that gets listed for 12c instead of 13 like every other one? A bot would scrape that information much faster than any human could do, buys it, relists it for 13 for that 1c gain. You still wouldn't be able to buy the item at that low a price, just like you aren't able to now. The difference is that sometimes, rarely, you can get lucky and actually get the cheap version. But it costs you your time. Do you value your time at 1c? I don't. So knowing full well that there's a real risk of me sitting around for 5 minutes whispering people for 12c and even 13c, I instead decide to just filter for >14, get one within 15seconds, and then I map those 5 minutes instead.
The same concept applies to bulk sales in PoE. Everywhere on the planet you pay less if you buy things on mass. Not in PoE, because the time it would take to whisper 50 different sellers for 1 Essence each is worth something. So the guy selling 50 at once can mark up the price and it is still a better deal. Unless you don't value your time that high, then you do it one by one. Or set up a buy order and let people come to you.
You tab out of the game. Already here we can tell something is off when the first step of a vital in game action is to tab outside the game.
When I die to some new enemy I've never seen before in ADOM or DCSS I tab out and check their mods and abilities to figure out a way to not die next time as well. Doesn't feel cumbersome to me. When I use a talent or build calculator in any game to better plan out my characters, that doesn't feel cumbersome either. Maybe this is just an opinion thing, idk, but to me those are as much part of the game as the game itself.
You fill in a spreadsheets worth of mods and value weights (for rare, unique you just type in the name most of the time).
Then you start pming people with the copy paste the trade site gives you. Wait 30 seconds to give them a chance to reply, which they frequently won't. Give up on buying the best item, and move down the list into worse items. Eventually find someone who replies (hopefully, otherwise, fill in another spreadsheet).
Accept party invite, go to their hideout, fish your currency out of the stash, wait for them to fish the item out of their stash, do the trade.
Say gl hf or whatever the standard goodbye is (usually your first and only time writing a message to the other person).
It's clear to me why we have different experiences with trading.
1) Unless we're talking about very specific jewels, the filling in of the information takes 15-20 seconds, at most. This process would still exist with an AH, by the way. You would still have to open the AH interface and apply all the appropriate filters, before you can actually browse all the available options.
2) Your defition of "best" isn't accurate. It's cheapest. The best items are sold at much higher cost, because they have better rolls. That's why a perfect Kaoms roots sells for 30c+, while a random one sells for 1c. Wanna know the odds of you and someone else simultaneously whispering the seller for that 30c item? Virtually zero. You get a response instantly if you actually wanted to buy the "best" item. But you don't. You want to buy the cheapest item. Wanna know the issue with an AH here? That cheapest item wouldnt even show, because it would be bought out instantly by botters that flip it for small gains every single time. Unless it's price-fixed, ofc, which would mean you pay much more than with the current system.
3) Having to load into peoples hideout, which oftentimes means going into another region and having major lag, is definitely annoying. Time loss here is about 5-10seconds. Big deal.
4) "Fish your currency out of the stash". Are you retarded? Do you actually zone into someone elses hideout and then look for the stash in that hideout and take out the currency before trading? Please let me know so I can put you on ignore so you never buy an item from me ever. You just whined about spending minutes waiting for replies, how about you take out the currency in that time. Also, you do know you can whisper multiple people, right? There's no law prohibiting you from whispering a second or a third seller immediately.
5) Use a macro? Or just don't say anything. It's not like you're gonna say "glhf" to the Auction House you all seem to want so much.
All things considered, you're wasting a lot of time doing your trades, if this is how you do them. That's on you. Doing this process efficiently means you spend about a minute doing that trade. You can roll your next maps in that time. Sort your stash. Price your items. Roll some jewels. Throw another 500 fuse at your chest you already failed to 6L in 2k fuses. You know, all the other things that are also "tiresome" to do, but are part of the game.
An AH wouldn't fix any of these issues. It wouldn't allow you to buy at the lowest price you see right now, because that price isn't real. That's the limited availability price that 30 other people wanna buy, and unless you're at the front of the queue, you're gonna be shit out of luck. Prices would also naturally be higher due to pricefixers and item flipping. It wouldn't save you a lot of time either, as you'd still have to fill out all the necessary filter information (with an UI that is almost guaranteed to be straightup worse than the trade-site one, causing additional time-waste). You would still have to collect your item from somewhere, as it can't just magically appear in your inventory. Server-side the transaction still needs to be completed, which in most other games takes a few seconds. All in all, what exactly does the AH do, other than fix peoples stupidity with the current system? Do I want more expensive items, rampant botting and item flipping, and watching every item be price-fixed into hell just because people are too retarded to trade efficiently? Fuck no. If that makes me elitist, then so be it.
