In-Game Auction House | My Thoughts About It

I believe that in-game auction house would be a huge achievement for almost all POE players, but I also strongly believe that we won’t see anything like that in the game anytime soon.

Right now, trading revolves around premium stash tabs, and if they implement an auction house trading mechanic, it would have to be built around those premium tabs. Otherwise, people won’t buy them anymore. And if they don’t base the system on that, it will make those tabs obsolete for the players who already purchased them.

A good example of this is currency trading, which has become much easier even for players who don’t own a single premium stash tab. Obviously, TODAY everyone in POE2 probably has at least one, since you get "cash" when buying the game. But in the future, there will be players who won’t want to purchase premium stash tabs.

If they add a more automated in-game item trading mechanic, they will clearly still need to maintain the external item trading system. Otherwise, only those who bought a premium stash tab in the past would have access to trading—making the game extremely frustrating for players who enjoy trading but don’t want to spend money to do it.

This would only work if GGG actually made SSF (Solo Self-Found) truly worthwhile. That way, if you don’t want to buy premium stash tabs for trading, you can just play SSF and enjoy yourself.

From my perspective, they’re in a pretty bad spot due to past decisions, and these are going to become increasingly frustrating issues to resolve now and in the future.