Curse

Enix · Jun 25, 2007, 04:26 PM // 16:26

/signed... sort of

Seems too complicated. They just need to add a trading town to the battle isles map where you can spam to your heart's content.

bilateralrope · Jun 25, 2007, 11:38 PM // 23:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yawgmoth

The idea is, to sacrifice a couple of those characters to have some information about what kinds of items the store sells.
This would be done automatically upon starting the store.

And the other characters in the store title would still be the player generated name. Why don't we just completely remove the ability for the players to set their own store name and use all the characters for representing whats in the store ?

When browsing stores, the buyers will probably only care about what items are being sold and at what price. Now while a custom title can work, having it auto generated with a search filter system would be better.

Though to reduce server load and prevent people trying to use junk items to be flagged as having decent stuff, I propose that the following items are disallowed from being in stalls:

1 - Anything a trader NPC can handle (dyes, runes, materials, etc).
2 - With the exception of certain specialty weapons (the -50hp cesta is the only one I can think of) weapons with their base stat (+energy for foci, +armor for shields, damage for weapons) below max will be disallowed.
3 - All white weapons.
4 - All weapons that aren't either inscribable or have their inherent mod at maximum should be blocked with the exception of some rare skins with near max mods (eg crystalline swords).
5 - Any items sold by merchants, unless they are stocked at the discount merchants in factions.

I suggest blocking 1 because the trader handles them very well so putting them in stalls would be a waste of server resources. 2,3 and 4 are blocked because I don't see anyone buying them. 5 is because people would just go to the merchant instead, but I'm allowing stuff from the discount merchant so that people who own a town can resell stuff from it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MithranArkanere

So this will basically be AFK shops?

Do this at once!

Basically yes. Though I'm hoping ANET doesn't force us to stay logged in to run the store because I can't see any reason why thats needed, yet I can easily see how it would cause problems for both the players and ANET.

MasterWarriorMonk · Jun 25, 2007, 11:59 PM // 23:59

/signed
I haven't read all replies i reallly like the idea just theres a few flaws to it

with that whole Buy Item thing, people could just go click on that , than just not buy the item, thus making you redo it and could get really annoying

bilateralrope · Jun 26, 2007, 01:17 AM // 01:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by MasterWarriorMonk

/signed
I haven't read all replies i reallly like the idea just theres a few flaws to it

with that whole Buy Item thing, people could just go click on that , than just not buy the item, thus making you redo it and could get really annoying

Huh ?

When a player clicks the buy item button the trade happens instantly with no further interaction from the seller. So how could someone click the button then not go through with the trade ?

scrinner · Jun 26, 2007, 03:54 AM // 03:54

/signed but im skipping to the last page and going to add two parts to this.

1) How do you suggest they work with Ectos since an Ecto is considered currency.

2) Look at lyra Songs Central Idea. That would go well with this idea putting all the merchants into one city.

bilateralrope · Jun 26, 2007, 04:20 AM // 04:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by scrinner

1) How do you suggest they work with Ectos since an Ecto is considered currency.

I'm assuming that it will just transfer gold + ecto (from the material storage) to the seller. Only allow setting ecto as part of the price if the 100k of gold is also there. Though this still will have problems if the seller doesn't have room for the gold and/or the ecto. Maybe require that the seller has enough free space in his storage for him to receive all the gold and ecto from any items he has on sale.

Though it might just be easier to remove the gold limit and deal with the crash in the price of ecto because we just killed a major portion of its demand. Note that because of how easy ecto makes it for people to trade at prices above 100k, I don't see removing the limit having any effect on prices for anything else, except maybe some people using as an excuse to try and inflate prices in the short term (if the search works well enough they won't be able to).

Quote:

2) Look at lyra Songs Central Idea. That would go well with this idea putting all the merchants into one city.

Because the search on this forum doesn't work, can you give me a link please.

Yawgmoth · Jun 26, 2007, 05:42 AM // 05:42

@ scrinner
1) see my post #60 on page 3 of this thread.
2) i know i did read that idea before but i don't remember it exactly so a link could help.

@ bilateralrope

Remember that the original idea was to make the system as simple as possible, and all the searching improvements based on coding some information into the data that gets broadcasted by PartySearch may be more complicated than the rest of the system to design and implement. It may be just going too far while it's not necessarily needed. The simpliest possible idea was to not change anything in the PartySearch at all except for adding that [View Items] button. And it would be ages ahead of what we got now.

However some kind of searching would be a nice improvement and your idea of completely abandoning store names set by users to use all the space for automated coding information about the sold items for searching purposes could be fine if designed right. But it's really not an easy task, and after some serious thought I know that I wouldn't be able to plan a design for it.

The problem is designing an efficient way to use all the space and selecting the most important data to be encrypted there. As the only way of actually finding something there would be through these searches, it may become a barrier for the more casual players/buyers. Also it may be hard to find the most important qualities of items to be used there which would apply to any kind of item someone might want to sell, so that the new search engine could find any item existing in game. Even the new searching interface would have to be pretty massive to include all the options and filters.

Apart from that, I see no reason of disallowing any items from being sold there (maybe with an exception of customized items to prevent scamming). If people want to sell crap, let them do it. There would still be 1 shop and a limited number of items to be sold per player, so no difference what is being sold. I'm sure nobody at Anet would want to work on a detailed list of allowed and disallowed items when there's no need for that.

We also have to remember that the whole thing should be easy to use by anyone, even the most casual players. That and the difficulty to design are the reasons I think a simple text string based filtering + possible several filtering checkboxes, like those presented in my post #62

Dark-NighT · Jun 26, 2007, 12:27 PM // 12:27

Yawgmoth have you thought about Emailing this directly to Anet? because i recommend you do, this is one of the best ideas EVER about selling and buying stuff and its just brilliant, sure youve got an Gaile Grey browsing up here but an email goes directly to anet and im sure they read it.

As such you would have to copy your first post, explain everything and provide them with a link to this thread, why? well Anet likes listening to their community so having that much good responces from here will certainly add up to considering this. I for sure hope they do consider this and implent it.

Cheers, oh and

/SIGNED.

MithranArkanere · Jun 26, 2007, 04:50 PM // 16:50

Have you noticed that they have moved all thexunlai chests and agents. leaving a lot of empty unused space?

That empty space could be use for this.

Liberations · Jun 26, 2007, 07:45 PM // 19:45

/signed, but it doesn't seem any less compliacted than an Auction House.

If it is less complicated, I'd like to add the addition of Party Search being a watermark bound to your normal town scree. If anyone has observed a PvP match, they will probably say they know of the party list watermark in the corner of the screen. That's what we need for party Search.

The reason being: Party Search isn't used because for it to be effective it has to take up a good portion of the screen, and it has to be opened anyway. Why would people open a window that does pretty much the same thing as the chat function, but takes up more room and is only limited to [31 characters]? They wouldn't, accept in major towns where people use it to find sanity amongst the spam.

My suggestion: Allow Party Search to have the ability to be a watermark in the corner of the screen like the heads up display in observer mode, and allow it to be toggled between the normal view and the smaller, watermark view. ALSO IMPORTANT- Increase the character lmit from 31 to say... 50 and allow item links like the skill and equipment template ones.

A change to make the interface less bulky, more streamline, and fancier looking would do well with this. They did last for factions. Now lets get another UI graphics change for EotN.

Zappa · Jun 26, 2007, 07:58 PM // 19:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dfx Gladiator

/signed

Portuguese thinking ftw

'Nuff said.

/Signed

Not even a single, valid argument for this upgrade to be impossible. People just like to, proudly, disagree, even though this would benefit them too. Sigh...

Guild Wars free to play? Sorry, but I payed my copy(s). Haven't you payed yours?

Bilateral your rant is nothing more than a rant. It's your own view or taste. You don't like AFK'ers, fine. I myself hate instanced zones, but I have fun in GW nonetheless. The game will never please everyone, so why should your rant be taken serious?

And comparing GW to Maple Story? Get real... ^^

scrinner · Jun 26, 2007, 09:58 PM // 21:58

Okay Guru is REALLY slow right now so ill just describe how to get to the topic. Go to the List of ideas King symeon made (Its pinned). There you will find his/her thread on the Central island you will find it was well recieved (Its in the title as well lolz)

bilateralrope · Jun 27, 2007, 03:36 AM // 03:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yawgmoth

Remember that the original idea was to make the system as simple as possible, and all the searching improvements based on coding some information into the data that gets broadcasted by PartySearch may be more complicated than the rest of the system to design and implement. It may be just going too far while it's not necessarily needed. The simpliest possible idea was to not change anything in the PartySearch at all except for adding that [View Items] button. And it would be ages ahead of what we got now.

I've never believed your claim about this being as simple to implement as you claim. And while it will be better than what we have now, we can still propose tweaks to make it better. So lets give ANET various options under the same basic idea to work with, and let them decide which is better to implement.

I'm also operating under the assumption that, because of the number of stores, the stall window will be separate from the party search window to save bandwidth for ANET.

[quote[However some kind of searching would be a nice improvement and your idea of completely abandoning store names set by users to use all the space for automated coding information about the sold items for searching purposes could be fine if designed right. But it's really not an easy task, and after some serious thought I know that I wouldn't be able to plan a design for it.[/quote]

Here is a rather inefficient way to do it:

- 1 byte for the item type (sword, staff, shield, etc), including the items attribute for things with multiple attributes (wands, shields, etc). The remaining number will be used to indicate non-weapon items (in which case the following bytes will be used for other data).
- 1 byte for the skin. If we assume an 8-bit byte, we can have up to 256 skins to chose from. So make one skin number mean a green and there will be lots of room to add new items later.
- 1 byte for the weapon req. If the skin number says a green weapon, this will say which green.
- 1 byte to specify the inherent mod type. An inscription slot (empty or full) will count as an inherent mod.

So thats 4 8-bit bytes for each item. With 31 bytes we get 7 items and 3 extra bytes. But because GW supports non-english characters, I think we are dealing with more than 8 bits for each character in the party search window. So with 16 or 32 bit bytes, or a more efficient algorithm, we can either have more items or include other data (price is the only other one I can think of).

Quote:

The problem is designing an efficient way to use all the space and selecting the most important data to be encrypted there. As the only way of actually finding something there would be through these searches, it may become a barrier for the more casual players/buyers. Also it may be hard to find the most important qualities of items to be used there which would apply to any kind of item someone might want to sell, so that the new search engine could find any item existing in game. Even the new searching interface would have to be pretty massive to include all the options and filters.

For sellers placing an item in the stall, they will go through the following steps:
1 - Decide items price
2 - Place item in stall
3 - Decide stall name
4 - Wait for sale

Step 3 is removed by auto-generated names.

For buyers its just a matter of selecting checkboxes at each step, then browsing the stalls to find the item he wants to buy. I don't see these steps being misunderstood easily. But if we remove a step, it means the list of stalls will display more stalls with no items the buyer wants.

Though once the search is completed, it might be possible to have your GW client automatically open up each stall to get the info on the item, then display them into a list (sorted by price) while hiding all the other items being sold. This would ruin the stall feel, but will probably make the trading easier for players.

Quote:

Apart from that, I see no reason of disallowing any items from being sold there (maybe with an exception of customized items to prevent scamming). If people want to sell crap, let them do it. There would still be 1 shop and a limited number of items to be sold per player, so no difference what is being sold. I'm sure nobody at Anet would want to work on a detailed list of allowed and disallowed items when there's no need for that.

Disallowing items does the following:
- Reduces the amount of crap a player would have to skip to find the items they want to buy. Even with the exclusions I proposed a lot of crap will still get in.
- Makes it easier to design a filtering system.
- Reduces the server load of the stalls, meaning less lag. Even if they don't cause enough load to cause lag, more crap means more stalls, meaning higher bandwidth costs for ANET.
- Lets people know that their non-max white FDS is worthless, so they don't get their hopes up.
- For items that the traders can handle, the more that go via the trader the better its price reflects market value. The trader probably will use a lot less server resources to do so.

Quote:

We also have to remember that the whole thing should be easy to use by anyone, even the most casual players. That and the difficulty to design are the reasons I think a simple text string based filtering + possible several filtering checkboxes, like those presented in my post #62

A fully auto-generated name means the entire filtering can be done with checkboxes, which should be easier to use than a text string search.

My intent is for the stall name generation and the entire filtering system to be handled clientside, meaning that at worst it takes a while to do on slower machines. If ANET decides that running the search serverside is a better idea than transferring the entire store list to the clients then I expect that they will optimize the database for the search. This will make it hard to view all the items any particular player is selling (I'll elaborate on this if asked), so the search will only return the items we specify in the search.

Lagg · Jun 28, 2007, 12:14 AM // 00:14

Excellent idea!

Sheer brilliance!

Love the simplicity and potential effectiveness at making trading so much easier.

So, so much easier.

So, so, so much easier.

/notsigned

Too easy.

The Guild Wars servers are fast and reliable for playing the game.

Let's keep it that way.

This will only encourage more afk'ers and bots to idle trying to sell loads of (worthless) items, soaking up bandwidth, slowing down servers.

At least trade spammers get bored after a while and spambots can get banned.

So great idea, seriously, but not worth the price to pay for it.

bilateralrope · Jun 28, 2007, 01:58 AM // 01:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lagg

Too easy.

The Guild Wars servers are fast and reliable for playing the game.

Let's keep it that way.

This will only encourage more afk'ers and bots to idle trying to sell loads of (worthless) items, soaking up bandwidth, slowing down servers.

Yes this was an objection of mine. However when I actually thought about it, I realized that I can't think of a single good reason why the player needs to remain online at the stall while its running. So my solution here is to let all players run their stalls while they are offline or doing something else in-game.

bilateralrope · Jun 28, 2007, 02:04 AM // 02:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lagg

Too easy.

The Guild Wars servers are fast and reliable for playing the game.

Let's keep it that way.

This will only encourage more afk'ers and bots to idle trying to sell loads of (worthless) items, soaking up bandwidth, slowing down servers.

Yes this was an objection of mine. However when I actually thought about it, I realized that I can't think of a single good reason why the player needs to remain online at the stall while its running. So my solution here is to let all players run their stalls while they are offline or doing something else in-game.

Absolute Eminence · Jun 28, 2007, 04:34 AM // 04:34

economics 101 = the more moey moving and changing hands in an economy bodes well for the market prices of everything. helps establish actual market prices, and happier people.

Yawgmoth · Jun 28, 2007, 05:28 AM // 05:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lagg

Too easy.
The Guild Wars servers are fast and reliable for playing the game.
Let's keep it that way.
This will only encourage more afk'ers and bots to idle trying to sell loads of (worthless) items, soaking up bandwidth, slowing down servers.

How can afk sellers use bandwidth? If done right, the system should work in a way that an afk seller doesn't receive ANY packets of data except for the whisper messages to him. He doesn't need to see what's going on in the district he's in, he doesn't need to read the trade spam because he's freakin' a f k !. And it should be obvious that an afk client doesn't send ANY data aswell (want proof? press shift+f10 in game and Tab to the bandwidth chart, then stop doing anything). The only time data would be sent would be if a transaction actually happened, so that the seller might get informed about it. So it's almost like selling while being completely offline, but better! (whispers and notices about sold items).

So there's no possible way my system would slow down servers, it's not the matter of how many people would use it and completely not the matter of how crappy the items they sell. And there's nothing wrong with allowing newbies to sell their crap, there will always be others who would want to buy them. And a simple solution for those who don't want to look at that crap :: automated coding of 1 bit of data in the PartySearch header meaning "This store contains low level / nonmax item(s)" and one checkbox allowing to filter them all and not show on the list.

bilateralrope · Jun 28, 2007, 06:00 AM // 06:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yawgmoth

How can afk sellers use bandwidth? If done right, the system should work in a way that an afk seller doesn't receive ANY packets of data except for the whisper messages to him. He doesn't need to see what's going on in the district he's in, he doesn't need to read the trade spam because he's freakin' a f k !. And it should be obvious that an afk client doesn't send ANY data aswell (want proof? press shift+f10 in game and Tab to the bandwidth chart, then stop doing anything). The only time data would be sent would be if a transaction actually happened, so that the seller might get informed about it. So it's almost like selling while being completely offline, but better! (whispers and notices about sold items).

For him to be able to receive whispers or the transaction message, the servers would need to know if he still has GW running. This means that regular "I'm still here" messages need to be sent every so often. Once you add them up over a 24/7 period and several hundred thousand people, it becomes a bandwidth use worth caring about no matter how few signals. And don't forget any chat happening in that district or people wandering around there.

However you haven't given a reason as to why the client has any need to stay online:
- Whispers: Hes AFK, he won't be there to read them. And if he reads them later, the person who sent it will probably be offline. Besides, what kind of useful things might actually be said over it.
- Transaction notification: Just wait till he next logs in to tell him.

And even if the bandwidth is negligible for ANET, the CPU usage of guild wars while its just waiting for something to happen prevents you doing other things on the computer.

So why should the seller have to remain online again ?

Quote:

So there's no possible way my system would slow down servers, it's not the matter of how many people would use it and completely not the matter of how crappy the items they sell.

Server storage space is limited. Each item in a store needs to be recorded somewhere.
CPU capability is limited. Data in stores will need some precessing.
Bandwidth is probably charged per amount transfered. More items = higher costs for ANET.

Sure the amounts used per item will be tiny. But they will add up once you consider the size of the GW population (all we know is that there have been over 3 million copies sold).

Quote:

And there's nothing wrong with allowing newbies to sell their crap, there will always be others who would want to buy them.

The only people I'm aware of who are willing to buy the crap are the people who don't know how cheap the decent items are. But with this idea either they will learn of the decent items prices, or this idea doesn't work well as a trading system. If the former then we are just wasting server resources, if the latter then removing them will improve the quality of this idea as a trading system.

Quote:

And a simple solution for those who don't want to look at that crap :: automated coding of 1 bit of data in the PartySearch header meaning "This store contains low level / nonmax item(s)" and one checkbox allowing to filter them all and not show on the list.

More data to process and move around (using up limited server resources) vs a simple client side check (which won't use up anything noticeable).

Just remember that only ANET knows how close the GW servers are to full capacity.

But as long as I can filter them out easily I don't care too much. There is always the option of implementing this without blocking the crap items, then disallow items later once it becomes a problem. I say we leave the decision on if any items should be disallowed at first up to ANET.

spellsword · Jun 28, 2007, 06:34 AM // 06:34

/signed

A better trade system is needed, one where I can sell while AFK would be ideal.