Curse

genofreek · Aug 08, 2007, 02:27 AM // 02:27

/signed too. I love Guild Wars, but the trading system is complete crap. This would help so much.

Mohnzh · Aug 08, 2007, 03:49 PM // 15:49

/signed

I've been wanting to suggest something like this for a while, but it does still sounds too Maple Storyish. I'm not experienced in this, so I want to ask a question. You suggested having a single extra NPC to open up the trading window. Right now, for example, if you go to the rune seller there are a handful of tabs at the top representing the different classes. Click on the class, and you see the available runes. Instead of having everything in a party search type window, how about having it all done by item type (weapon, dye, material, etc.) and automatically organized by cost (cheapest highest)? Or for weapons and offhands organized first by color then by price? This eliminates any search function, people get the best deal available without having to browse all the stores, etc. It would resemble the merchant interface. The lists might get long, so there might need to be further breakdowns (such as weapon types or character classes). I'd like to know the feasability of something like this and why it would be more intensive than what you are suggesting. Everything else stay the same: automatic buy, money transfered to storage, etc. To make matters even simpler, just like you have to buy storage accounts, require purchase of vendor accounts that will keep your item on sell and hold your money until you come and pick it up. This way it could all be done offline as well.

Still, anything is better than what we have. I only know of one place I can sell consistently, and that is gems and trade contracts in Kodash Bazaar. I can't seem to sell anything else.

Regarding how this might adversely affect new players who do not know the costs, speaking as an inexperienced trader who frequently sells too low and buys too high, I think that's how it ought to be. Learn from experience, the most experienced do the best. If you can find someone to take you under their wing and help out, great. But people should at least know to check the merchant price before buying anything. That always saved me a lot of grief in Maple Story and in GW.

Yawgmoth · Aug 09, 2007, 06:57 AM // 06:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mohnzh

I've been wanting to suggest something like this for a while, but it does still sounds too Maple Storyish. I'm not experienced in this, so I want to ask a question. You suggested having a single extra NPC to open up the trading window. Right now, for example, if you go to the rune seller there are a handful of tabs at the top representing the different classes. Click on the class, and you see the available runes. Instead of having everything in a party search type window, how about having it all done by item type (weapon, dye, material, etc.) and automatically organized by cost (cheapest highest)? Or for weapons and offhands organized first by color then by price? This eliminates any search function, people get the best deal available without having to browse all the stores, etc. It would resemble the merchant interface. The lists might get long, so there might need to be further breakdowns (such as weapon types or character classes). I'd like to know the feasability of something like this and why it would be more intensive than what you are suggesting. Everything else stay the same: automatic buy, money transfered to storage, etc. To make matters even simpler, just like you have to buy storage accounts, require purchase of vendor accounts that will keep your item on sell and hold your money until you come and pick it up. This way it could all be done offline as well.

There are multiple well known and officially confirmed technical difficulties that make things like putting all the items up for sale by all players into one place and dividing them into cathegories impossible. Such an improvement would require reworking the way item data is stored on their servers (items aren't treated separately, no database like structures exist for items that would enable making queries and sorting item displays) and creating a whole new server and database structure, similar to what an Auction House would do, just without the bidding. And this is what we know we won't get in GW1.

To put it simplier, the way that certain npc traders like Rune Trader can show their stuff is determined by the fact those items are very standardized, and they're treated as a bulk - for example all Minor Vigor Runes are treated as one record in the mini database, no specific data to be remembered about every single copy of them. Goods sold by players are far different. Every single item would have to be put separately into a huge bag (database table) with complete item info (all stats and details like dyes used on it, seller account and buyout price). There's no data structure in GW even remotely similar to this thing.

This is why that what my suggested system does, uses the technology the game has right now, just adding a new degree of automation to it. For getting large number of sellers in one place we already got the PartySearch engine, but the improvement is that the short 31-characters description is just the beginning, the main thing being the [View Items] button. A player can already show up to 7 items in a trade window, the improved system allows others to view (just view, the actual transaction is a separate operation from technical point of view) what he shows + it shows the b/o prices. The actual transaction is also automated and performed just like a trade between 2 players, no npcs or separate transaction processing servers required.

Wahoo · Dec 16, 2007, 10:46 PM // 22:46

Great idea. It's unfortunate that this making something like this is not a bigger priority for Arena.net, as it's clear that a vast majority of the playerbase would like to see it implemented. Especially when the most of the chat spam in Lion's Arch, Kamadan, Kaineng Center, & Droknar's Forge are related to Trade advertisements. From my experience, this has made spending more than 20 seconds in those places pretty aggravating. Any sense of community in the game is lost in these places.

My reasoning behind their unwillingness to revamp the trade system lies in the major flaw of their business model: "pay up front, no monthly cost." Unfortunately, their only incentive to make this happen would be if it guaranteed that it would increase their sales for GW2.

I've got to give the OP alot of credit for spending the time and energy on trying to be helpful and create an open dialogue between the players and developers, but I wouldn't get your hopes of if you're expecting an official response.

Cebe · Dec 17, 2007, 02:47 PM // 14:47

NOTE TO POSTERS

Could all posters please take note of the Sardelac Sanitarium sticky which asks users to not simply post "/signed". Any attempt to by-pass the 12 character limit will lead to post deletion.

Repeat offenders will be noted.

Croco Clouds · Dec 17, 2007, 04:45 PM // 16:45

Why not? /signed for god's sake

Chico · Dec 19, 2007, 12:47 AM // 00:47

/signed Excellent idea.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mazey vorstagg

/signed

How will A-net say no to this idea?

Please say yes!

Hmmm... They could use one of their regular set of answers... "We're too busy with GW2", "Not to important", "Interface issues", "Technical issues", or just plain old silence (they use that quite often).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yawgmoth

There are multiple well known and officially confirmed technical difficulties that make things like putting all the items up for sale by all players into one place and dividing them into cathegories impossible.

Officially confirmed means wack. Remember the "official" reason for not having 7 heroes? Yes, your interface would look ugly and would look like a mess. And that "reason" was the official one until they snapped and told us the real one. So, don't give me official "technical" dificulties. Any half good programmer could (given some x amount of time depending on its expertise) add the interface and backend needed to implement this trade improvement. It's not a very complex design.

R.Shayne · Dec 19, 2007, 03:11 AM // 03:11

/not signed

Not saying that GW does not have a major problem with trade / spam. But your system does not seem to help the buyer.

Say I want to buy an Enameled Shield 9 Req tactics. How I would I find it with your system. Unless the saler sets up a shop for that one Enameled Shield I would have to open hundreds of shops just to find that one item.

Another problem I see if AFK shops is that it will affect the servers because hundreds of people that break one of ANET's major rule and will setup one account to sale, one account to farm, and one account to sale gw gold for real money (that will eventually get closed down & another opened in its place). The sale account would stayed logged on countinously and use up band width. Right now they are forced to sit in town and spam so it is not so profitable to re-sale items every item.

Trade Island is a good ideal if heavily policed.
Auction house is a good ideal if the player can set reserves.

I still like the ideal of item traders added such as we have now with dye, material, runes, rare materials, etc...

Sword & Sword Mod Trader
Axe & Axe Mod Trader
Hammer & Hammer Mod Trader
Shield & Shield Mod Trader

Of course this ideal will only help with spam if they implement one the other ideals such as a trade island availably to all players at all levels.

bilateralrope · Dec 19, 2007, 03:37 AM // 03:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by R.Shayne

Not saying that GW does not have a major problem with trade / spam. But your system does not seem to help the buyer.

Read this whole thread. I've given details of how a search system could be implemented if we give the stalls auto-generated names.

Quote:

Another problem I see if AFK shops is that it will affect the servers

As it stands there is no reason to force people to stay online and AFK to run the stalls. Sure there will be some people who are willing to negotiate their prices and sleeping players won't be negotiating even if they want to. So I can see why people should be allowed to be online while running their stall

But I can't see a single reason why people should be forced to stay online simply to run an AFK stall. Just have the stalls automatically close after a while to deal with players who setup their stall, then stopped playing guild wars.

Quote:

Trade Island is a good ideal if heavily policed.

Your only moving the trade spam from the port towns to somewhere else. Considering that the trade spam is pretty well confined to trade chat, I don't see this actually doing anything.

Quote:

Auction house is a good ideal if the player can set reserves.

ANET has said that because of the way Guild Wars is designed, an auction house would take too much work.

Quote:

I still like the ideal of item traders added such as we have now with dye, material, runes, rare materials, etc...

Agreed. But since the trader NPCs can operate alongside any other trade improvement, that is a topic for another thread.

fir · Dec 20, 2007, 11:08 AM // 11:08

/signed

gg I must addmit You got the best AH look-a-like idea I rly like it

Holly Herro · Dec 20, 2007, 12:19 PM // 12:19

/signed

I like the ideaaaaaaaaa

Woop Shotty · Dec 20, 2007, 07:49 PM // 19:49

Oh please oh please I'm all for easy selling!!

/signed

You can't see me · Dec 20, 2007, 09:10 PM // 21:10

There's no reason not to sign this.

/Signed.

RLBadKarma · Dec 20, 2007, 09:12 PM // 21:12

/signed

This is sorely needed. Could be tested and perfected here then dressed and spiffied up for GW2. Give us a "real" economy to play with.

prism2525 · Dec 20, 2007, 10:44 PM // 22:44

man i wish they'd skip on a couple of weekend events to work on this. Even a whole month would be fine but we NEED something better. The party search was a good start, but it's completely random. FFS it doesn't even sort the WTSs from the WTBs. At least with that i could buy/sell easier.

/signed a gazillion times

Flinte · Jun 25, 2008, 03:40 PM // 15:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lagg

Allow me to reiterate.

Your idea is brilliant. It's excellent.

No, irony is ridiculous on the internets.

There are, however, two major problems.

1. Logistically: Server capacity

I'm a regular active player, playing since May 2005 with all three campaigns on one account. I never quite saw the need to either buy a second account (or even additional player slots for that matter, but that's besides the question).

If this trading system is implemented tomorrow, I will go to the store, grab the cheapest copy of Guild Wars Prophecies I can find and turn this into a permanent afk trading account on my notebook, while I normally play the game (on my actual account) on my PC; visiting my afk trading toon from time to time with an active toon to replenish his stock of items for sale.

An afk'er takes bandwidth, if only to keep his connection alive. There's a limited number of people that can connect to a single server. Even if all of them are afk'ers taking a very small amount of actual bandwidth, the server would still only allow a given number of people, since all of them could potentially turn non-afk any second.

Hypothetically (just making up numbers here), a single server can handle 1000 active connections, or could also handle 10,000 non-active ones. Well, that server's only going to allow 1000 connections either way, since nothing forbids an afk'er to become non-afk and become an active connection.

Okay, so maybe not a bad thing, ArenaNet will sell more accounts, since everyone and his dog will have a real account and an afk trading account.

It's, however, a lot more lucrative for them if they can sell copies of other campaigns, additional character slots etcetera on the same account. Even people with several accounts can only play one account at once (unless you're a truly leet dude able to play two games at a time on a dual screen setup).

At the end of the day, ArenaNet will have to increase server capacity just to cater to all the dummy afk trading accounts. Seems expensive to me and might once again happen at the cost of network latency.

A solution to that would be to have an automatic time limit on AFK players... I know it sounds like a dragg but seriously alot of Monthly Fee Based MMOS already have this to save them cost of hosting so I think everyone could deal with it. (Age of Conan kicks a person off the server for being inactive for over an hour i think)

If you told me that the trade off for Guild Wars getting seller shops set up would be they would implement an auto kick for inactive players after an hour I would gladly accept!

@ Anet I completely understand your reasons for not implementing a traditional auction house in GW1 (doesnt mean that I like it) but I think this idea is a great compromise and I think that the comments on this thread have worked out most of the issues... so PLEASE GIVE US THIS! If not ( you are unable or see another issue that has not been discussed) please tell us why not so we can brainstorm on ways to fix it.

/signed with both my accounts!

Kanyatta · Jun 25, 2008, 03:48 PM // 15:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flinte

A solution to that would be to have an automatic time limit on AFK players... I know it sounds like a dragg but seriously alot of Monthly Fee Based MMOS already have this to save them cost of hosting so I think everyone could deal with it. (Age of Conan kicks a person off the server for being inactive for over an hour i think)

If you told me that the trade off for Guild Wars getting seller shops set up would be they would implement an auto kick for inactive players after an hour I would gladly accept!

I suggested the "kick person from full district if AFK over 15 minutes" thing almost a year ago and it was about 90% /notsign. I personally still feel it is a good idea, but...

Although, what would be the point of having a seller shop if you got kicked after an hour for inactivity? I would hate to have to sit at my computer and run around just to keep my seller shop active. Also, all the 9-rings (un)Lucky title farmers wouldn't be able to do it. Same with drunkards.

OP's idea still good after 13 months, so still a /sign from me

AfroThunder396 · Jun 25, 2008, 04:41 PM // 16:41

/signed, I think this is an excellent idea. Not only would it be easier to buy/sell items, it will remove a lot of the unwanted trade channel spamming.

Lykan · Jun 25, 2008, 04:54 PM // 16:54

1. nice necromancy

2. heard the GW devs are a little busy right now

(p.s it starts with G and ends with 2

Flinte · Jun 25, 2008, 05:32 PM // 17:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lykan

1. nice necromancy

2. heard the GW devs are a little busy right now

(p.s it starts with G and ends with 2

1.) It is never necromancy if the need is still around and a appropriate solution has not been reached. No, WTS under party search is not an appropriate solution.

2.) Just because they are currently working on GW2 doesnt mean we should be content to let them ignore GW1. I would say that this is a serious flaw in GW1 and it is never too late to fix this as we still have years to wait for GW2.. every mmo should have a solid trade/barter system, even the makers of the crappiest free Korean mmos understand this.