Curse

Zexion · Jun 13, 2007, 12:26 PM // 12:26

I would like to suggest, if you indeed follow through with the "insta-block from tradespam in local chat policy", that you do something else to make trading ingame viable.
As the game is now, this is a HUGE nerf to ingame trading. I predict it being even MORE impossible to sell your items outside of 3rd party auction sites now.
So to make up for this nerf, may I suggest a few changes to make ingame trading viable with this change:

1. Add a proper ingame selling and buying system, for example an auction house.
I know this is never going to happen, but that would be the optimal change.

2. Add more traders.
Simple suggestion, and yet will help a lot. Add traders who buy and sell things such as passage scrolls and skill tomes, perhaps even weapon upgrades (this would have to be for max only to make the trading list small enough). It will help when selling these kinds of things, reducing the items sold via tradespam to only a select few items, mainly minipets and weapons.

3. Make the text limit in the party panel smaller.
As it is now, people have to severely cut down on their WTS description, turning it into even more gibberish.
"WTS Ze Scyt o Enchant, 15 in stan"
That's about how much we can fit into the text box as it stands now. That is just not acceptable if you want people to trade via the party panel.

4. Make certain districts "trade-spam safe".
As it is now, a few districts could be classified as "trade districts". The biggest ones are District 1 of Kamadan, LA and Kaineng. If you introduce the new harsh policy, and make it only apply outside of these districts, I am sure a lot of traders would be relieved.

Of course, implementing more than 1 suggestion is indeed an option, and perhaps preferably. I would say a combination of #2 and #3 would give a substantial buff to trading.

_Zexion

Jaythen Tyradel · Jun 13, 2007, 01:18 PM // 13:18

Suggestion 1:
That poor dead horse...how many more people with bats can it take before it explodes.

Suggestion 2:
Ideal, but I think we might face more farmers complaining that they can't sell stuff for what they think it is worth. Not saying farmers won't sell to the NPC's, but player controlled prices and profit is affected by this and I am sure there are those who will not like it.

Suggestion 3:
I haven't had an issue with description using the party search in regards to limitation. Then again, I don't use it much for anything. I can agree to add more typing space.

Suggestion 4: Since suggestion 1 is out and 2 will have to overcome some hurdles, 4 is the best idea. Set District 1, though I think you might have to say all towns and outposts for this, as the designated trade area. District 2 through *(how many high depending on how busy the town is) is for local chat and grouping only.

Though, I still wonder HOW they will go about enforcing trade chat? Ingame mods? More chat log viewing on their end? Are they going to rely on players to report spammers more often?
Guess we will have to see.

Morrallis · Jun 14, 2007, 09:51 AM // 09:51

Lol they set up a chat specially for trading, they did not mention anything about nerfing it for spam, as it is ezily turned off. Try using it rather then spamming the local chat and annoying everyone and making it impossible for anyone to do anything in a town short of turning off pretty well all channels.

The only thing they have said is that they are doing that to the local chat and I for one feel it's a good thing, wouldn't mind being able to find a group in LA sometime don't know about the rest of you.

Patrick Smit · Jun 14, 2007, 11:19 AM // 11:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zexion

I would like to suggest, if you indeed follow through with the "insta-block from tradespam in local chat policy", that you do something else to make trading ingame viable.
As the game is now, this is a HUGE nerf to ingame trading. I predict it being even MORE impossible to sell your items outside of 3rd party auction sites now.

I dont spam, i post a message each 30 seconds or so, and i post in search, i can sell my stuff, and no i will not be unhappy with this update. I am actually very happy with it, as spammers interfere with my advertisements due the fact that the casue the scroll speed to increase by a factor 2 to 2.5. Removing them temporarily, or in the end permanently from the game would be a huge benefit to normal non-spamming traders.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zexion

So to make up for this nerf, may I suggest a few changes to make ingame trading viable with this change:

1. Add a proper ingame selling and buying system, for example an auction house.
I know this is never going to happen, but that would be the optimal change.

2. Add more traders.
Simple suggestion, and yet will help a lot. Add traders who buy and sell things such as passage scrolls and skill tomes, perhaps even weapon upgrades (this would have to be for max only to make the trading list small enough). It will help when selling these kinds of things, reducing the items sold via tradespam to only a select few items, mainly minipets and weapons.

3. Make the text limit in the party panel smaller.
As it is now, people have to severely cut down on their WTS description, turning it into even more gibberish.
"WTS Ze Scyt o Enchant, 15 in stan"
That's about how much we can fit into the text box as it stands now. That is just not acceptable if you want people to trade via the party panel.

4. Make certain districts "trade-spam safe".
As it is now, a few districts could be classified as "trade districts". The biggest ones are District 1 of Kamadan, LA and Kaineng. If you introduce the new harsh policy, and make it only apply outside of these districts, I am sure a lot of traders would be relieved.

Of course, implementing more than 1 suggestion is indeed an option, and perhaps preferably. I would say a combination of #2 and #3 would give a substantial buff to trading.

_Zexion

I think option 2 is great, i would use it a lot, and even if it causes a drop in prices, we will also benefit from the availability, which is not brilliant right now. I hope they will invest some time in making a mod and stripped gold weapon traders. Absurd prices will be from the past.

MithranArkanere · Jun 14, 2007, 11:35 AM // 11:35

1. A must. Already suggested.
2. Another must. Let farmers whine. Only scammers hate traders. Already suggested too.
3. A temporal fix... won't really fix anything. Already suggested too.
4. The best choice to make this would make to have 'Trade districts (1...n)' and disable trade channel and trade button in others. Trade spammers are so lazy that they will never go to spam to normal districts if they have to keep going back to the trade districts to make the trade. This would require, of course a new general option to choose the default District you want to go.

For me, the best option would be a mix of all of them, like this:

- Players could set afk shops.
- Only certain areas (or distrcts) in outposts will let players set shops, an error message will show if they try to set a shop outside those areas, to prevent shops gathering near NPCs and such (For example, in Kaineng City, all the back alleys, the Xunlai alley, the upper balcony, etc... would be the areas).
- A shop could not be set overlapping another shop. So shops would be set a bit spread and not crowded.
- A player with a shop would have a green icon over his head.
- The description the player set for the shop will popup when the mouse it moved over the character, its name, or the green icon. The same text will appear in party search windows.
- 'Permission' to set a shop could be granted by Xunlai, a periodical symbolic cuota (like 50..500gold per week or so) could be had to paid to keep the permission to set shops (Turning the Xunlai into Yakuza, XDDDD).

And of course, traders for every single salvageable item and stackable(excluding trophies and keys) item dropped by monsters:
- Scrolls, tomes, materials, dyes, runes, all the weapon and offhand upgrades and inscriptions, etc...

frickett · Jun 14, 2007, 12:39 PM // 12:39

/signed for number one a million times. Everything about guild wars is great except trade. You either choose to cheat yourself out of money by selling everything for 18 gold to the merchant, or you cheat yourself out of playing time by standing around hawking your warez.

freekedoutfish · Jun 14, 2007, 01:06 PM // 13:06

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the existing trading features. We have a dedicate trade channel, we have a party search feature to post items on to sell. It has all the funcationality that it requires!!

The system sucks because people abuse it!! Dont blame the software or the system if the users are going to miss-use it!

We dont need more things added or taken away. We need Anet to actually inforce their new "stricter policies" and actually ban spammers like they say they will.

If they keep their word, then people will think twice about using local for trade in fear or being banned.

MithranArkanere · Jun 14, 2007, 01:38 PM // 13:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by freekedoutfish

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the existing trading features. We have a dedicate trade channel, we have a party search feature to post items on to sell. It has all the funcationality that it requires!!

The system sucks because people abuse it!! Dont blame the software or the system if the users are going to miss-use it!

We dont need more things added or taken away. We need Anet to actually inforce their new "stricter policies" and actually ban spammers like they say they will.

If they keep their word, then people will think twice about using local for trade in fear or being banned.

Ah... bad programmer's side of view.

If the system can be used in a wrong fashion, the system is wrong.

Systems must be made in a way that prevents a monkey on the keyboard from making havoc.

And 'more strict measures against spammers' is a change too.
So you says that a change in the system is needed... and we came up with the same:
The system is wrong.

WinterSnowblind · Jun 14, 2007, 01:46 PM // 13:46

It's been said a thousand times, but the way the game works makes an auction house impossible. Unlike other MMO's, Guild Wars stores all the character data together in one big clump, rather than a database system. Technically, they could add something like an auction house, but it would require a LOT of work, and of course, it would destroy the existing econemy. The only way to sell an item would be to make it as cheap as possible. One player is selling a rune of superior vigor for 15k, so you lower yours to 12, then someone else will put one up for 10, etc, etc.

An auction house just isn't practical this late in GW's life.

freekedoutfish · Jun 14, 2007, 02:35 PM // 14:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by MithranArkanere

Ah... bad programmer's side of view.

If the system can be used in a wrong fashion, the system is wrong.

Systems must be made in a way that prevents a monkey on the keyboard from making havoc.

And 'more strict measures against spammers' is a change too.
So you says that a change in the system is needed... and we came up with the same:
The system is wrong.

There is no such thing as a "good programmer", because all programmes are liable to breaking, running an error or being abused in some way.

I write in house software for a company, which handles sales activity and records information about companies and clients and activities involving them.

It has alot of features to try and catch any mistakes that the user can make. Such as entering incorrect information, or missing information out. But fundimentally, the system can still be abused if a member of staff choose to do so.

They could quite easily go in, change vital company information and completely RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO up our ability to communicate with that client.

But being a big company, its extremely unlikely anyone would. You can programme a piece of software to catch the user if they make a general mistakes.

But you cant programme a piece of software to stop someone abusing it! Not unless you know every possible thing they could do and you put huge restrictions in place to stop it.

But then your putting restrictions on the users, making it more complicated to do simple tasks and generally frustrating them. There has to be a balance between giving the user freedom to do as they want, while putting restrictions in to catch mistakes.

A certain amount of responsibilty is put on the user, to use the system correctly. This is why "terms of use" are created!

Its a two sided coin and it takes two to tango. The programmes do what they can to stop abuse, but cant go as far to restrict your use of the system. While the users have to respect the system and not abuse it.

MithranArkanere · Jun 14, 2007, 03:32 PM // 15:32

Input over time can be limited.
Characters that input fields allow can be restricted.
Alternate methods can be added.

No program is perfect, since they are created and used by imperfect beigns, but just saying 'what's done is done, use it properly' is like... heh... ingenuous. Suggestions are for that, to let people give ideas and alternatives. Not to blame the users, most of them are dumb and it's not their fault, they have dried brains.

You should already know that.

bilateralrope · Jun 14, 2007, 11:25 PM // 23:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by MithranArkanere

For me, the best option would be a mix of all of them, like this:

- Players could set afk shops.
- Only certain areas (or distrcts) in outposts will let players set shops, an error message will show if they try to set a shop outside those areas, to prevent shops gathering near NPCs and such (For example, in Kaineng City, all the back alleys, the Xunlai alley, the upper balcony, etc... would be the areas).
- A shop could not be set overlapping another shop. So shops would be set a bit spread and not crowded.
- A player with a shop would have a green icon over his head.
- The description the player set for the shop will popup when the mouse it moved over the character, its name, or the green icon. The same text will appear in party search windows.

There are four problems will allowing people to setup their shops wherever they feel like:
- It becomes hard for players to decide on a systematic way to progress through the shops in the quickest time.
- Some jackasses will try to either overlap other peoples stores, or place their stall so as to take up as much room as possible by making the space around them slightly smaller than the space a stall needs.
- Some spots, being closer to the entry points, will be more valuable than others.
- If the market is spread over different towns, then there is the problem of 5 or so districts all with only 1 store in them. These would take more time to visit than if all 5 were in the same town due to loading times.

So what I propose for the stalls (assuming they exist anywhere but the party search window) is that a specific town is made for them. This town will only exist in the international districts so that everyone is able to visit all the stalls.

Then in this town there will be specific points (probably underneath something displaying the stores name), and stalls will only be able to be setup exactly on those points. If you try to setup in another spot, your character will automatically walk to the nearest free point (which is marked as yours when you hit the setup stall button). If all points are full (the max stalls in a district will be less than max players), your character will be moved to a district with a free spot.

This also makes it easier for ANET to have stalls automatically moved around to balance server load.

The warp-in point for this town will be such that the initial camera angle can see the titles of all the stalls, and the stalls will be arranged in rows to make them easier to transverse.

The other think I've realized about stalls recently is that, since they don't require any input from the sellers after being setup, there doesn't seem to be any reason to require the players to stay online after the stall is setup. So players should be allowed (if not encouraged) to go offline after they setup their stall without it closing.

Quote:

- 'Permission' to set a shop could be granted by Xunlai, a periodical symbolic cuota (like 50..500gold per week or so) could be had to paid to keep the permission to set shops (Turning the Xunlai into Yakuza, XDDDD).

I'd prefer a tax on sales, so that we don't have trade spammers trying to bypass the fee and so as to not punish those who set prices too high.

Quote:

And of course, traders for every single salvageable item and stackable(excluding trophies and keys) item dropped by monsters:
- Scrolls, tomes, materials, dyes, runes, all the weapon and offhand upgrades and inscriptions, etc...

I'd go further and disallow anything that traders can handle from being put up at the stalls.

Quote:

Originally Posted by freekedoutfish

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the existing trading features. We have a dedicate trade channel, we have a party search feature to post items on to sell. It has all the funcationality that it requires!!

I don't see any system to provide feedback that allows the casual sellers to decide what prices to sell for, or for the casual buyers to know if they are being ripped off or not. Admittedly the AFK stalls don't have that feedback, but if a function was added to search through stalls then the feedback would be there.

Nor do I see any in-game system that would work for people who don't like to stand around copy-pasting the same WTS message out over and over till they find a buyer. Of the things that will actually improve trading, they all have one thing in common: Once the items are placed up for sale they require no further input from the seller.

freekedoutfish · Jun 15, 2007, 08:16 AM // 08:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by MithranArkanere

Input over time can be limited.
Characters that input fields allow can be restricted.
Alternate methods can be added.

No program is perfect, since they are created and used by imperfect beigns, but just saying 'what's done is done, use it properly' is like... heh... ingenuous. Suggestions are for that, to let people give ideas and alternatives. Not to blame the users, most of them are dumb and it's not their fault, they have dried brains.

You should already know that.

I do know that. Im constantly getting feedback from our telesales department about changing the software. Im always willing to make changes, as I get a weird kick out of doing it.

And yes, if they came back to me and said "this person has been miss-using the software, can you put some restrictions in to stop it", I would try my best.

But there is also a responsibilty on the users side to user it correctly! If someone abuses software in a company, it can be potentially damaging and that person would most likely get a warning or be fired.

The best way to remove abuse of the system in GWs, is for Anet to get more stern and ban people and stick to those bans! Do not remove them after a few hours!

pork soldier · Jun 15, 2007, 09:11 AM // 09:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by freekedoutfish

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the existing trading features. We have a dedicate trade channel, we have a party search feature to post items on to sell. It has all the funcationality that it requires!!

The system sucks because people abuse it!! Dont blame the software or the system if the users are going to miss-use it!

Try using the party search window to sell something, it's obvious that you haven't.

Also, policies are best enforced by other means than software. You can think of software restrictions as an arms race, except that the attacking side (non programmers, end users) has infinite people and infinite time to determine the rules of your software, usually they break your protection fairly fast and then you're back to square 1. See AACS cracking within days of new releases, cracks for copy protected video games, key generators, etc..

Quote:

Originally Posted by bilateralrope

I don't see any system to provide feedback that allows the casual sellers to decide what prices to sell for, or for the casual buyers to know if they are being ripped off or not. Admittedly the AFK stalls don't have that feedback, but if a function was added to search through stalls then the feedback would be there.

Nor do I see any in-game system that would work for people who don't like to stand around copy-pasting the same WTS message out over and over till they find a buyer. Of the things that will actually improve trading, they all have one thing in common: Once the items are placed up for sale they require no further input from the seller.

Feedback (ebay style) is a system to be extremely wary of, it's a game that you can win in two simple steps:
1. never leave feedback until the other person has
2. respond with exactly the same feedback type

The system is broken, you can rip people off to your heart's content. If they leave any feedback other than positive you simply claim that they did something wrong and leave them negative feedback. I'm not saying you should do this, this is how the current ebay style feedback system is abused by dishonest sellers and there is nothing there to stop them. The threat of negative feedback deters almost everyone from leaving accurate ratings when they've had a bad experience.

Sun Fired Blank · Jun 15, 2007, 09:44 AM // 09:44

As a thought; what if you were to enable a flood prevention option for trade and local chat? For example, a thirty second option for the trade chat and a five second option for the local chat makes the volume of nonsense far more manageable.

Simultaneously, expand the party search options for trade as you limit one's ability to spam a chat. If a person opts to create a trade party, a console could open up that creates a text string for his or her item. Let's say, for example, that I have a Gold Sundering (20/20) Azure Shortbow of Fortitude (+30), Requirement: 9, Inscriptable, "Strength and Honor!" (+15%) that I wish to sell. The console might force you to drill down like this:

-> [Trade Type: Sell]
-> [Item Type: Bow]
-> [Bow Type: Azure Shortbow]
-> [Rarity: Gold]
-> [Requirement: 9]
-> [Inscriptable: Yes]
-> [Inscription / Strength and Honor]
-> [Value: 15]
-> [Weapon Upgrade 1: Sundering]
-> [Value: 20 / 20]
-> [Weapon Upgrade 2: Fortitude]
-> [Value: 30]
-> [Price: 20,000]
-> [Comment: Very rare skin.] (limit text field to a bare handful of characters)

You hit "okay" and the console asks you to confirm it. Once you've done that, your final output ends up being, in a dull gold text:

WTS (20,000): Sundering [20/20] Azure Shortbow [Q9] of Fortitude [30]

If you let someone list a number of items for their party - five might be a decent limit - you could save a lot of grief.

The only other consideration is that if I listed my item from a town or a port, my item would also be listed in every town and port for that continent, so if I was to advertise that shortbow from Ascalon City, it would also show up in Lion's Arch, Henge of Denravi, Droknar's Forge, etc... by default, it would also show up in Great Temple of Balthazar. The other point is that, under those same constraints, my item would also be listed for every town and port for every continent my character is able to access. So if I had a Tyrian-born character who completed Sunspears in Kryta, the item would also show up in the Sunspear Sanctuary, Kamadan, etc. If I had completed Mhenlo's Request, the item would show up in Shing Jea Monastery, Cavalon, etc.

freekedoutfish · Jun 15, 2007, 10:32 AM // 10:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by pork soldier

Try using the party search window to sell something, it's obvious that you haven't.

I didnt say the existing system was ideal or perfect, I said it doesnt it job when used. Yes there is limited space to enter text for the party search feature, and yes its not pefect, but is that any excuse to then spam the local chat?

No it isnt!

Anet are bound to increase the text input eventually, but you still use what exists for the time being. Just cut back on your text entries. But dont spam local chat as an alternative.

You cant excuse bad behaviour just because the accepted behaviour isnt ideal!