Curse

Operations · May 02, 2007, 01:25 AM // 01:25

I can see no reason why this idea would not work.

Or fro crying out loud they could make a trade island. Or something.

gameshoes3003 · May 02, 2007, 03:12 AM // 03:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yawgmoth

@ Strange Guy:
I have completely no idea what conquer online 2.0 is.
And you have completely no idea what my post is about.
Of course Auction House would be better but we are talking about *realistic* possibilities. If you read my post you should know why AH won't ever be included in GW1.
Got a better *realistic* suggestion than mine? I can't wait to hear it.

@ gameshoes3003:
Every good enhanced trading system in a mmo, including auction houses ARE Passive Selling. This is just the way to go.
Why can't I use guru auctions? They're horribly slow and laggy, selling anything there takes a shtload of time. And we're talking about an ingame system which is fast and accessible to anyone, not under 5% of players population.

I have to tell you that I was pretty much for this. I even made a thread. Note that I didn't use the Search thingy. But still, it got shot.

bilateralrope · May 02, 2007, 06:17 AM // 06:17

Some questions:

What feedback does your system give help the casual sellers receive a fair price ? (for an auction house the feedback is the buyers bidding the price up)

Any system without such feedback mechanisms will really hurt the casual trader who will either set the price too low (and have it scooped up and resold by someone else) or too high (and it simply won't sell). I don't really mind a system with the later happening, but if you require players do lots of research before they even sell the item to prevent the former then you have a broken system.

What feedback is in place to help the buyer easily determine if the price they are being asked for by one seller is reasonable compared to the prices other sellers are asking ? (for an auction house this would be the min bid field displayed with the search results)

There will be too many stores for anyone to manually check each one within any reasonable timeframe. This means that unless feedback mechanisms exist then the further up the checking list a person sets up the stall (usually by being there first) then the higher a price they will be able to ask for and receive simply because people see their shop first and can't be bothered to continue searching if they have already spent ages just to find a store selling the item they are after.

So without feedback you are giving the guys who can keep their store setup 24/7 (say, the gold farmers or other people with multiple accounts) an advantage over the people who cannot. And the people who get worse spots can't be guaranteed a quicker sale even if they set their selling price below that of everyone else, despite the fact that their stores are just as quick to get to.

Patrick Smit · May 02, 2007, 07:26 AM // 07:26

/signed, i sign anything that brings improvement upon the current system (which is no system at all). I bet you did quite some thinking on it, and at the moment I will not improve on you in two minutes. gg.

Winterclaw · May 02, 2007, 08:30 AM // 08:30

I like it, but it sounds more likely to happen if it's a GW2 suggestion than a GW1 suggestion. IMO Anet is going to do everything possible to try and get people to move over to GW2, and not improving the trade system now would go along with that philosophy.

Tadzio · May 02, 2007, 09:04 AM // 09:04

/signed
Imo new trade system should be anet's priority in pve

bilateralrope · May 02, 2007, 09:06 AM // 09:06

First of all I'd suggest that if stores implemented then the stalls are limited to the international districts, so that everyone across all regions are able to buy from all stalls, and to help keep prices balanced across regions, and to keep the local districts free for people LFGing. I'd also suggest limiting the stalls to one core trading town to make looking through the stalls easier. Also as the town is only for trading, ANET could probably remove some unnecessary (for that town) bandwidth usage.

But that won't eliminate the problems caused by the sheer number of stalls to look through to find what you want.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yawgmoth

## A Party Search Extension ##

We all know that using the current 31-character space for advertising items for sale is horrible. But how about using those 31 letters there to advertise you, your mini shop, and making people want to see what you sell? No search engine needed, just type your best
"WTS Perf Golds, Minipets, L0ok!"
"S> Shards,Ectos,Greens <<<"
"@@@ Mods MEGASTORE @@@"
"Every item 2k each CHEAP"

Meaning lots of stores to look through, since judging by my experience with Maple Story most of the store titles won't say much about the stores contents.

Quote:

<snip>

-- Optional, harder to do, requires engine improvements - You can leave town and play the game while your stuff sells, as long as you stay on this character. Everyone would love that but it may be asking for too much.

-- Even more - sell your stuff while offline - your message-link stays for a certain amount of time after you log out.

Apart from these later options you are requiring the person to stay in town running the store instead of going out and playing guild wars. This means that either they have to forgo playing time, or AFKing when they aren't normally playing. But if you are encouraging AFKing you are increasing ANET's internet bill as ANET is almost certainly on a plan that costs per mb transfered due to the amount of bandwidth guild wars needs. You have the same problem with the first option, though not as badly.

So that leaves the last option. But if you are doing this, why have separate stalls ?
Instead just have one NPC who you give the items your selling along with the price to sell them for. Then have a search function for buyers to use to search through all items for sale there. This should also allow feedback for buyers to use to compare different players prices as they decide what stats are acceptable. But as the casual seller will have little to no idea about how stats effect prices, it won't do too well for giving them enough feedback to chose a good selling price (especially for the rarer skins).

Quote:

## Accessibility - Let's go Shopping! ##
<snip>

As long as the interface is easy to use, I don't really care if its changed or not. Thats up to ANET.

Quote:

## Technical stuff ##

Proposed solution does require minimal amounts of new data to be stored on server per account. In the 'light' version, with no new Xunlai selling Tab, NO additional data needs to be stored when not in selling mode. Only several of bytes of additional data (chosen bag, set prices) need to be processed while in the selling mode.

Except for the data used by the people AFKing to sell stuff. If you allow ofline selling, then you require more data to process and the only saving over an auction house is that ANET won't need to process bids, and this is assuming a single trade NPC instead of separate stores.

So I'm not so sure that an auction house would be cheaper for ANET to run long term.

Quote:

NO new database structures need to be created, no search engine.
The bandwidth usage should remain at the same very low levels as currently - new item data will be sent only after someone choosing an announcement and clicking [View Items] and it's just a few items, close to what would happen if a player entered a manual trade and showed 7 items.

Except for the players AFKing and eating up bandwidth used to keep their characters logged in at times they usually would be offline.

Quote:

If the repeated viewing of multiple 'shops' by many players proves to cause problematic bandwidth or server processing time overuse, there may be a need of setting up a time delay between two possible shop views.

Meaning it will take even longer to search through the shops to find the items your after.

Quote:

I do not know the limitations of the current Party Search engine of how many entries can it display, but i expect it to be a very high number, or else players would be able to crash it even now on live servers.

Except that players hardly ever use the party search, meaning the limits haven't been tested. The stores would probably require an overhall of it because they would produce more entires than ANET expects for LFGing.

Quote:

Another possible issue might be the need of the viewing player to be in the same district as seller, but then, clicking [View Items] should display a warning "Are you sure want to move to district X?" and if yes, move the buyer to sellers district (just as it happens today, but without the need to join sellers party)

This isn't too much of a problem unless the district is full. So I'd suggest the following to combat that:

- Aggressive AFK detection in near full districts. If a player is found to be AFKing for even a minute in a district thats >90% full, they are moved somewhere else.

- The number of stalls per district are limited to allow people who aren't running stall to browse.

Also on the topic of "trade improvements" that require AFKing you need to consider the costs imposed on the person using them. These are:

1 - Direct charges for the bandwidth. I don't know what kind of plan you have, but I do know that New Zealand broadband sucks when compared to other countries. Most plans give about 20gb a month in transfer (uploads + downloads) then drop the speed to 64k or start charging per mb. But at speeds of 2mbit and up, that limit can be reached quickly.

2 - The opportunity cost of not being able to use that bandwidth on something else. Like normal web browsing after having our speed cut to 64k.

3 - The extra electricity cost of leaving the computer on. Probably not much, but its there.

4 - The noise of the computers fans. My computer is in my bedroom and when I'm awake the sound from my speakers is louder than the fans. But when I'm trying to sleep the speakers are turned off and the fans are quite audible making trying to sleep annoying.

About a week ago I posted this rant about AFK stalls and why I don't like them.

/unsigned for anything that encourages AFKing, and to separate player stalls in general. But this idea can be modified to a single NPC that holds all items players are selling I will not object.

Yawgmoth · May 02, 2007, 01:01 PM // 13:01

@ bilateralrope:

Unfortunately, this kind of system can't give any real feedback about prices to sellers or buyers. It's just too simple. But that's not really bad because now, when trading is limited to spamming, getting the information about the price may take even longer.
The simpliest version of the system does lack certain functionality of the more complex solutions but it's still miles ahead of what we got now.
___

I suggested separate stalls and no central NPC that has a pool of all items set for sale and a search function simply because technical difficulties. That's the reason why we won't have an AuctionHouse in GW1 and your suggestion is very close to it.
I just try to be realistic, my system doens't require much innovation to the game engine, network code or server structure. The only really new thing is setting prices for a couple items.

Now About AFK selling
Do you really spend all your time at the computer actively playing GW? If not what's the reason not to leave the game minimized, in a set afk-selling mode, when doing anything else?

Also, if youre afraind about bandwidth usage, let me inform you that GW's network code is done so well to generate minimum costs, that one active client uses a maximum of 2kB/s, and that's only when there's alot of action going on, much less most of the time. You won't hit any transfer limits when playing GW.
Want proof? Just press SHIFT+F10 while in game, then use TAB to switch to data transfer graph, and have some experiments - You'll see that when you don't do anything you also send ZERO data. And getting into an AFK selling mode could also mean a major cut in the data sent to you (basically the only thing needed is the chat, other things like other players actions in town could be refreshed at a much lowered rate)

Other minor issues:
-afk players blocking districts? many ways to solve it: for example when you open an afk trade, you could be force-moved to a relatively high and empty district. If you are a seller and happen to be in a full district AND the game requires you to be in the same district as buyer, it could move you to him instead of him to you.

Quote:

Except for the data used by the people AFKing to sell stuff. If you allow ofline selling, then you require more data to process and the only saving over an auction house is that ANET won't need to process bids, and this is assuming a single trade NPC instead of separate stores.

Trust me, an auction house would require much more resources than my solution. For example a whole new massive central database of items, and a powerful search engine to go through it. And as a central thing for all GW it would be full of hundreds of thousands items, and several thousands players would be sending queries at one time. I'm absolutely sure that the current GW servers couldn't handle it.

thomasnl88 · May 02, 2007, 01:20 PM // 13:20

I like your idea, I think there is a possibility that A-net will use this. But...

Because some people think there will be a massive afk-booming. Why not create one simple room and just make the advanced tradesystem there.

It looks like an auctionhouse but I think changing the interface is harder than making one simple place and let them sell their stuff there. You should see it as the Temple of Balthazar. All people are joining to sell things.

It uses your system with the partysearch panel but it is only in districts 1-X and not everywhere in the world. This is making it easier to stop a Afk-booming and also it prevents an server overload.

I see this does not help the partysearch to become more popular in any way.

I'm curious to what will happen with this idea. Thumbs up!

/Signed

Strange Guy · May 02, 2007, 06:58 PM // 18:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yawgmoth

___

## A Party Search Extension ##

We all know that using the current 31-character space for advertising items for sale is horrible. But how about using those 31 letters there to advertise you, your mini shop, and making people want to see what you sell? No search engine needed, just type your best
"WTS Perf Golds, Minipets, L0ok!"
"S> Shards,Ectos,Greens <<<"
"@@@ Mods MEGASTORE @@@"
"Every item 2k each CHEAP"

So we are using an existing interface but adding 1 new button [View Items], which works only for posts in Trade section, and it opens a window displaying all items the seller is offering, with prices and [Buy selected item] and [Close] buttons.

Well, again this just change from buyer try to find seller instead of seller try to find buyer. This won't work. As a buyer, I will not just staring at random stuffs like WTS Gems, WTS perfect swords, blah blah blah! Price is what I am seeking for. And I believe most of the buyer will do the same! Searching over 100+ sell stuffs that have the same exact advertise in order to find a good deal? Not so good!

Why do you think guru have 2 sell forum instead of 1? 1 sell and the other high end! And why do you think bumping too early or post in wrong forum will get the seller/buyer a temp ban? It will be a waste of time if I just stare at what it calls WTS....xxxxx!!!

[QUOTE=Yawgmoth]

## Passive selling ##

Players will have an option of setting up a sale of a maximum certain amount of items (even 7 would be enough, but more is better

The sale will be BuyOut only to make it fast and simple, seller sets up the shop and the gold after sale goes straight to his storage (if not enough room for gold, the transaction simply cannot be completed and the item won't be displayed anymore)

Now there are several factors that should be considered and a couple variations on each, as there's not a simple one best sollution.

1. Where the items on sale should physically be?

-- In your inventory (you choose a bag) a window pops up where you set up the prices and click OK to set up trade announcement and start. This is probably easiest to implement, but limits player to sit (probably AFK) and not change districts, or you'll have to set up again.

-- A new tab in Xunlai storage, used for selling, where you set up prices and click GO, then set up your trade announcement. Ofcourse seems much more comfortable to sell this way. But there come some variations and issues:

2. Where can you be when selling, if the items are in a special selling Xunlai tab?

-- You have to stay in a district, to make your PartySeach post remain - easiest to do because it works this way now. And good enough.

-- Optional, harder to do, requires engine improvements - You can leave town and play the game while your stuff sells, as long as you stay on this character. Everyone would love that but it may be asking for too much.

-- Even more - sell your stuff while offline - your message-link stays for a certain amount of time after you log out.

(the latter 2 options require some sort of disconnection between the character and the Party Search message board engine, they may be not possible at all) /[QUOTE]

Oh right, go afk for the free game like this. Smart! Well if you agree to pay $40 per month like WoW then yah! Not for a free server like this. You have NO idea how hard it is to maintain such a FREE server like GW! If this happen, I would imagine GW server will be down every 5-6 days for like 4-5 hours! That happened to conquer online 2.0. It has about 50 of the server for you to play and still, the server have to shutdown every WEEK!

Last word: Please DO NOT tell me I have no idea what is your idea about when YOU HAVE NO IDEA what do I mean!

Again it's a NO NO! A terrible idea! Look at what game you are playing. This is GW not WoW. You play for free, period! Don't make a comparation with a monthly pay fee game like WoW! It's not the same!

Dfx Gladiator · May 02, 2007, 08:05 PM // 20:05

/signed

Portuguese thinking ftw

deadman_uk · May 02, 2007, 09:08 PM // 21:08

/signed anything that will stop the trade spam is a must!

Nanood · May 03, 2007, 09:26 AM // 09:26

/signed

WTS Spam is fine in the trade channel but all the W.T.S \/\/TS text based uses off getting around the auto push to trade is annoying.. I'm sure if people had a more attractive way to display their warez they would. And its always nice to see people putting a lot of thought into something before reeling off a bunch of impossible suggestions.

/signed

savage vapor 33 · May 03, 2007, 09:54 AM // 09:54

/signed

Why not. Another thread promoting trader centers, auction house....SIGN ME UP!!!

bilateralrope · May 03, 2007, 11:12 AM // 11:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yawgmoth

@ bilateralrope:

Unfortunately, this kind of system can't give any real feedback about prices to sellers or buyers. It's just too simple. But that's not really bad because now, when trading is limited to spamming, getting the information about the price may take even longer.

With trade spam if someone tries to sell an item with a highly inflated price people will shout at him and let others know giving at least some feedback for the buyers. But I don't see someone staying beside a stall for hours just to say that to whoever comes along, especially since its almost certainly harassment. I certainly didn't see that in Maple Story, yet Maple Story is the only place where I've seen an item sell for 100 times the amount it can be bought from NPC's in unlimited amounts at. If there were feedback mechanisms in place I'd expect sellers to undercut each other until the price is between the NPC sell and buy prices.

And having separate stalls also has the problem that the people able to get their stall to the top of the list have a better chance of selling, even over people who are offering a lower price. At least with the current system people can get into the same district and offer a lower price. So while it would be an improvement, I'm not sure its enough.

Even if you implement a queuing system so the longer someone is there, the higher up they get (which is what the party queue has currently), your still giving the advantage to the people who are able to keep their stores up longer (those people with spare accounts, like gold farmers, can keep one there 24/7 barring the time limit disconnects) as those people are the ones who will reach the top of the queue.

Quote:

I suggested separate stalls and no central NPC that has a pool of all items set for sale and a search function simply because technical difficulties. That's the reason why we won't have an AuctionHouse in GW1 and your suggestion is very close to it.
I just try to be realistic, my system doens't require much innovation to the game engine, network code or server structure. The only really new thing is setting prices for a couple items.

While asking for a less complex system is good, until ANET actually comes out and says thats why they are avoiding a feature I don't see how anyone not part of ANET is able to say if a feature is too complex or not.

Quote:

Now About AFK selling
Do you really spend all your time at the computer actively playing GW? If not what's the reason not to leave the game minimized, in a set afk-selling mode, when doing anything else?

For me its just the hassle of setting Guild Wars up most of the time. But for people with less powerful computers, or people wanting to use more resource hungry programs (probably games), having Guild Wars running can be the difference between being able to do what they want to do and not having the CPU power to do so.

Then there is the issue of the queue which I'll be stuck at the end of if I only have my stall up when I have nothing better to do.

Quote:

Also, if youre afraind about bandwidth usage, let me inform you that GW's network code is done so well to generate minimum costs, that one active client uses a maximum of 2kB/s, and that's only when there's alot of action going on, much less most of the time. You won't hit any transfer limits when playing GW.

The point isn't that guild wars will eat up the limit. The point is that Guild Wars could provide the nudge needed to push people over the limit, especially if they usually are close to it by the end of the month.

Quote:

Want proof? Just press SHIFT+F10 while in game, then use TAB to switch to data transfer graph, and have some experiments - You'll see that when you don't do anything you also send ZERO data. And getting into an AFK selling mode could also mean a major cut in the data sent to you (basically the only thing needed is the chat, other things like other players actions in town could be refreshed at a much lowered rate)

So when your siting in a town with people loading in and moving around it, the monitor reports 0 traffic usage despite you somehow being told about it ?
So either ANET has some precognitive tech working with Guild Wars or the traffic usage monitor isn't giving accurate readings.

Still the major complaint about the increased bandwidth usage is the extra costs it would cause upon ANET. Especially with people downloading the list of stalls. But if you split it into pages you disadvantage the people at the bottom even more as people have to click a few times to find their store. The people at the bottom are the casual traders.

Quote:

Other minor issues:
-afk players blocking districts? many ways to solve it: for example when you open an afk trade, you could be force-moved to a relatively high and empty district. If you are a seller and happen to be in a full district AND the game requires you to be in the same district as buyer, it could move you to him instead of him to you.

Blocking districts is easily dealt with by various means. But these means add complexity to the implementation.

Quote:

Trust me,

Why ?

Quote:

an auction house would require much more resources than my solution. For example a whole new massive central database of items, and a powerful search engine to go through it. And as a central thing for all GW it would be full of hundreds of thousands items, and several thousands players would be sending queries at one time. I'm absolutely sure that the current GW servers couldn't handle it.

1 - I'm not convinced that the party search system is currently able to handle anywhere near the number of entries it would need to, as it would be above what it would need to handle currently even if everyone used it. So thats an overhaul here.

2 - The ongoing cost of running the solutions. The auction house would require a lot more processing than the stalls, but the stalls would require a lot more bandwidth usage than the auction house. So which would cost more long term ?

3 - The database the Auction house would need doesn't seem like it would be that different to the one the stalls would require. But instead of hundreds of thousands of items, your talking about hundreds of thousands of stalls.

Yoom Omer · May 03, 2007, 11:38 AM // 11:38

/Signed.

Not gonna happen but anyway... nice to try...

Toilet Monster · May 03, 2007, 11:42 AM // 11:42

/signed...

still wanting an auction house more thn this, but it cant get WORSE than what we have now.. trade in GW is HORRIBLE!! WE DEMAND CHANGES!!

rohara · May 03, 2007, 12:59 PM // 12:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Strange Guy

Oh right, go afk for the free game like this. Smart! Well if you agree to pay $40 per month like WoW then yah! Not for a free server like this. You have NO idea how hard it is to maintain such a FREE server like GW! If this happen, I would imagine GW server will be down every 5-6 days for like 4-5 hours! That happened to conquer online 2.0. It has about 50 of the server for you to play and still, the server have to shutdown every WEEK!

You have no idea how easy or hard it is to maintain GW's servers either - unless, correct me if I'm wrong, you're one of their server admins? I'm going to guess you're not since you're spouting a load of speculative bull.

#1 - GW has more than one server (! zomg !)
#2 - Load balancing is ftw
#3 - No data is sent to the server whilst AFK - only received.
#4 - Because GW has no monthly fee, the developers were smart and made the game extremely efficient to make up for the lack of consistent income.
#5 - Perspective - GWG puts a harder strain on their server than GW ever will on a single one of their servers.
#6 - Comparing GW's server/network setup to any other game's is pure folly, as they are all different.

At any rate...please don't speculate what Anet can or can't do based on technical information that you do not posess or understand, and especially don't judge ideas based on it. I hate seeing stuff like this litter the Sanitarium! If you like an idea - sign for it. If not - don't sign for it. Don't try to guess if the servers can handle it or not unless you're qualified to make that assessment (and not many people are).

Speaking from experience (as a programmer/database administrator/server administrator), I'd say that adding a Trade NPC much like the OP suggested would harm the server only slightly more than the Festival Hat NPC. And the Festival Hat NPC is bloody harmless, obviously.

The only nifty feature most often mentioned in AH ideas that I can see as not an option is an item search. Querying a database is one thing - full-text searching a database is a whole other ballgame and is probably what causes a lot of the trouble here at GWG.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bilateralrope

What feedback does your system give help the casual sellers receive a fair price ? (for an auction house the feedback is the buyers bidding the price up)

Any system without such feedback mechanisms will really hurt the casual trader who will either set the price too low (and have it scooped up and resold by someone else) or too high (and it simply won't sell). I don't really mind a system with the later happening, but if you require players do lots of research before they even sell the item to prevent the former then you have a broken system.

I think you're expecting too much. Its not the AH/NPC/Whatever's job to inform you of "street" prices or dictate what is "fair". If Anet dictated the street price of loot (other than things that can already be bought at an NPC, of course), well...people would not be happy, and not to mention...prices fluctuate often and greatly, so keeping track of it would be an uphill battle. Not worth the trouble, seeing as street prices of items are what they've always been - whatever the buyer is willing to pay to acquire the item based on its usefulness, appearance, quality, and rarity.

Selling/buying already requires some research - so nothing would change, and imo, nothing needs to change in that respect. Street prices are and should be dictated by the players - not Anet, and certainly not an NPC. Besides, looking at other auctions from the Trade NPC would/should give you a good enough idea of an item's worth. And the potential buyers are still free to haggle with you on the price if it isn't reasonable.

Anyways...back on topic

I'd sign for this if some tweaks were made

Ideally, I'd like to see a trade system that does not require any interaction on the seller's part. Buyers know what they want and usually know how much they're willing to pay for it, so all that needs done for them is making it easy to find what they want - which would be the job of a designer.

I like to spend my time online playing, not selling the crap i acquired whilst playing. I'd like to be able to leave my loot with an NPC, name my prices, and be on my merry way to go play.

Dronte · May 03, 2007, 01:30 PM // 13:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Strange Guy

Boo, this is just another version of selliing system in Conquer Online 2.0!

1st, you need to make a copy right for Conquer online 2.0 since this is just another copy of it

2nd, No I have played conquer and I see this is an extremely dump idea for serveral probs:

- Make more and more and MORE people go afk. the system soon enough (maybe 3 months?) will be shut down with full of afker! (Well if you say who care then...uhmm why guildwars have to make a message you have played 3 hours, please take a break?)

- This is just another form of guru selling! Buyer try to find a seller instead of seller try to find a buyer!

- Not efficient since price is set while afk, noone gonna sell the item below the price that most people sell at! 1/10000 buyers accross may buy!

Auction idea is much better! It will not make people stay for days and nights! It will sorts out the kind of items! Make prices much more stable and more important, it provide a wonderful area for BOTH seller and buyer.

/notsign!

Whats that conquer online 2.0?

frickett · May 03, 2007, 03:57 PM // 15:57

/signed

I am in favor of any improvement to trade. I think this is the one area that continually needs improvement. I feel that Guild Wars is a wonderful game. I have bought no other game since I purchased Guild wars....Yet I feel that after 2 years we should have a better trade system than standing around and yelling, "hey, anybody want this?" I would rather be playing than AFKing, but this will work if nothing else.
Trade improvements FTW!