Why does the chess.com analysis always want you to trade pieces?

Anytime I miss an opportunity to trade in the early game and don't take it, the analysis tells me I missed the best move and "missed an opportunity to trade equal material". All the chess teachers I've watched warn to not trade pieces for no reason, and I don't see a reason to do so in the cases the analysis points out. Am I missing something here? Keep in mind, this is still early game, right after the opening.

Pay attention to your chess teachers until you have enough experience to know how to interpret engine analysis.  At that point, look directly at the various lines the engine recommends and bypass the watered-down version chess.com gives you.

You will not improve just by trying to follow automated suggestions.

I don't see the engine doing this tbh. And there are trades and trades. Trading a knight for a bishop should often be done. And sometimes these trades don't have anything to do with the trade itself but more that the resulting position is better. The textual feedback is too one-dimensional to take to heart, but the variations could still be worth looking at.

I don't get this either. I often can't seem to find why a suggested position is better. I have examples where the engine-suggested line is worse than the played line on analysis. 

I often see 'You missed an opportunity to trade pieces', 'Good you traded of equal material' or a best move because 'This trades off equal material'. 

If this is indeed true (it might be), then this is a huge scandal. Chess.com using a scammy feature to give deliberate bad advice to paying customers is just awful.

I don't see the analysis do this either, most of the time that this happens is because you missed a way to trade in an advantageous way, or you are not following basic theory.

When the computer suggests you trade equal material, it is almost always because you are already up material. 

The best strategy for chess is to get up on material, then trade down to a winning endgame.  

Without examples there's not much to talk about here.

That dark squared bishop doesn't look like it's doing much with its attack on the knight. The knight isn't in danger of being overloaded, there's not much of a pin going on. That tension doesn't seem to be doing too much. That dark squared bishop isn't looking more valuable than the knight, so sure, why not. It's not much better than the other moves, I know at my level I wouldn't care about the distinction it seems to give the exchange to other options, but do you see anything wrong with it's evaluation of that position?

Move 11, since that's where the bishop exchange option came up. I'm actually not sure why you did the variation on white's on blocking with the bishop vs castling, since I would assume the point is with whether to trade pieces like black's dark squared bishop for white's knight given the context of the OP's question. I overlooked that you had done that since it was the move right after the one that seemed to be in question.

The computer analysis always tells me that I am making mistakes, but that's from a computer's perspective. 

Took a while to figure out:

When doing puzzles on some other site, always trade the Queen for a queen, even if you only pick up an additional pawn.

Taking a knight for free,  results in a  minus whatever, because you needed to take the pawn and trade the Queens.

Puzzle score went up after that. :0

It's just the computer deciding the line it has calculated beyond the trade is advantageous... And it assumes the opponent is a perfect machine too, in calculating those lines. But what the c0mPutEr doesn't know is that a lot of humans just quit if you take their queen, or rarely really consider backward knight moves if there seems any option, or they get paranoid about an open file, completely overlook pins, are not playing for a draw, etc. So sometimes it doesn't know its audio receptors from its waste disposal chute.

ink my gi & i will bow & call YOU master.

As far as I understand it, chess computers are much more materialistic than a human player. I don't get a lot out of the computer analysis of my games tbh, and I doubt I will until I start getting logical, sensible positions in my games and start getting opponents that play likewise. At low elo, unless it's to point out hanging pieces and tactical blunders, as a tool I don't think it's all that useful to us. If anything, I find it more confusing than anything else.

Quite often, I know I can threaten a one move checkmate that any computer will say is an inaccuracy or a mistake, but I know my opponents are unlikely to punish me for it and just as likely to miss it. I scored a few quick wins this way (and suffered equally quick defeats for making the same mistake).

Obviously this isn't a "good" way for anyone to play chess. It just means I'm better at predicting what my opponent might do in a game than a computer.

I don't think chess engines are more materialistic. Newer generation engines definitely are not. You can safely assume the engine provides the best move. (assuming enough depth).

One thing that is important to realize is that the engine evaluation is based on the assumption that the opponent plays the best available moves. It can be beneficial to play another move than the top engine choice, because it’s the best move against a human player.  

A better perspective might be that the engine is not suggesting the best move, it's suggesting the least bad move. The move that has the fewest ways it can be punished.

You think you are able to 'predict' that your opponent might not punish you. Just be aware that every time you play a move that the engine disapproves of, you create an opportunity for you opponent to punish you. If you want to improve your performance, you should play fewer moves that can be punsihed

Well obviously, that's why i said it's not a good way to play chess. But I'm playing against terrible chess players like myself and I know what they'll do better than any computer. If I was playing against a computer I'd agree with you but I'm not. I'm playing against people who have a bigger than average chance of making a game ending mistake.

I've given up hope of ever being good at chess. But I can still enjoy playing and winning every now and again.

Nothing changes the fact that the computer analysis is utterly useless to someone like me. I'm not going to be playing anyone that will make the best engine move unless it's a very obvious one.

flagellate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6934-r6kgJo

The engine always encourages me to trade queens as early as possible. This is due to its well-researched analysis of my style of play which has concluded that I'll inevitably blunder my queen during the middle game so it's optimal for me to just pass her off early and at least get some material for it.... Genius.