Spiral Knights - Unmerging Trade Instances

Unmerging Trade Instances

19 replies [Last post]

Mon, 04/25/2011 - 09:03

Raul

This latest update, and I could smack whoever did it, ruined the trade chat and MADE IT WORSE.

I didn't even think this was possible, yet it happened.

I vote we unmerge the trading instances.

It is far difficult to sell as it was before and now ugh it's so much worse.

Now everyone is competing across all channels for sales, it's spammy to heck, too hard and fast to read, and even the customers miss the replies.

I had to actually block people because it was going so fast.

Please for the love of god unmerge the trade instances into individual zones.

I liked moving from one Zone to the other in search of sales and customers.

I vote we return it to the way it was.

Mon, 04/25/2011 - 09:50

Pauling

When did this happen? I don't

When did this happen? I don't see release notes...

A united trade chat is a nice idea in theory, as it provides an incentive to use it vs zone chat. (Hopping between instances is sort of an ugly hack) But there's probably not much to discourage spamming in the current system, which was a big weakness even in a single haven instance. So, just to toss out some suggestions that think past the short term "this is annoying" factor:

What about imposing a small cost to use trade chat? For example, 50 crowns per message? That would perhaps discourage the people who broadcast every 2-3 min, as well as people trying to flog common materials like blue shards.

As for finding customers? From looking at http://clockworkmarket.com/ , I can't help but think that there's a vast oversupply of sellers. So if we're looking to tackle the problem directly, other suggestions would include:

- Separate trade channels into buy and sell for more granular control
- Increasing vendor buy prices for materials (thus cooling down the superheated seller's market). Not much- unless crown sinks are added- but >1 crown/shard.
- Add more ways to get mist tanks, for the new-ish players who haven't built a reserve. Keep tanks rare, but I think that beating the jelly king or lord van for the first time merits something special.
- A "cooldown timer" that disables trade broadcasts for, say, the next 10 minutes if you broadcast more than twice in 5 min.

Mon, 04/25/2011 - 10:04

Softspoken

Legacy Username

Alternate solution

I like the idea of merged trade chat, I get to see / offer to way more people at once. Now can I keep it in a separate window from /1, shout, tells and /g? Because even if I get a response to something I said in /trade, it tends to get lost in the noise before I can react. A separate window that was constantly streaming /trade would solve that for me.

Mon, 04/25/2011 - 10:12

Raul

It happened after the server

It happened after the server reboot today for "updates"

NO I want it back the way it was completely.

I don't want separate trade channels for buyers and sellers. I also don't want to pay for messages nope. Every 5 min? Really uh no how about every 20s because they way this thing goes and how many people sell, things get pushed way out of the way too often. However, spamming the chat every 1-5s with your message is just too much and I WILL block you for that.

As a merchant I pay attention to both WTS and WTB and if I'm posting selling and looking for buyers at the same time in separate channels will be a too much a pain.

I am sick of everyone complaining about having to hop instances to find people trade with. It made things smoother, quieter, and more relaxing.

It's slow to begin with and now it's even slower.

Nope, I favor the old method where each trade channel was in that instance and that instance only. It is not that troubling to hop trade channels/instances to get new customers. In fact it's quite refreshing to see new things being shouted in the channels by new players and to get new customers. Before you could only see /2 in the Haven instance it was in and if I wanted new blood I went to 1-7 or w/e. Now it's all just one big mess.

It was more organized, quiet, peaceful, and less spammy the way it used to be.

Trade channels are supposed to be their own instance, that's how it works. If you want to sell to the customers in 3 you go to 3 and so forth. They are not combined into one big mess. Utterly Ridiculous.

I am in favor of no change other then the way it used to be and that's that. *puts foot down*

Mon, 04/25/2011 - 10:37

culture

Legacy Username

Trade channel woes

It is poor design to have to switch instances to hock your wares or find buyers. Going from Haven 1-7 is a workaround to a lack of a global trade channel. Now we have a global trade channel, yay!

I for one welcome the change... no more hack workaround needed.

But wait... this has just revealed how spammy and difficult it is to trade on a global scale. The inadequacies of the chat box further complicate the troubles (really, just copy the chat box functionality from YPP already, that is 100x better.) Clearly the global trade channel isn't the perfect solution, next up to try is some sort of rudimentary auction house where items for sale is done by listing your wares rather than shouting over the noise.

Kudos to the devs for making progress and helping out merchants.

I like Pauling's cooldown timer. Someone was spamming, I explained in a tell that they should only list their items every few minutes not every few seconds. They said "kk" and did so for about 10 minutes. Then went back to flooding the channel again... sigh.

Mon, 04/25/2011 - 10:52

Raul

I am more in favor of Auction

I am more in favor of Auction House

Mon, 04/25/2011 - 12:30

Pawn

New trade makes me sad

I kinda liked hopping instances. Sometimes i'd just sit on the cliff overlooking the token seller, and enjoy the snipes spinning round my head, engaging in a leisurely trade. Sigh

Mon, 04/25/2011 - 13:36

ZealousD

Legacy Username

Hopping instances was always

Hopping instances was always a slight annoyance, but anybody who was paying attention to how active the trading community was in the game should have seen it coming. Even when trade instances were unmerged, Haven 1 could get bad enough with the spamming.

Obviously the permanent solution is an Auction House, or less ideally even player-run stores like Ragnarok Online. Or maybe even if the programmers want a really quick fix, some kind of in-game bulletin board system where people can post advertisements. But at least for a temporary solution, I'd suggest capping trade posting to some sort of time frame, say every minute or so, and see how that works.

Mon, 04/25/2011 - 14:00

Furrytractor

Legacy Username

Yeah, I can agree with a lot of things here.

Unmerging the tradechat would be a much needed idea to be passed. I've actually created a pros and cons list of the 2 systems.

Before the update, the tradechat was for each own individual Haven. Here's a list of Pros and Cons for this system.
Pros:
-It's easy to see offers that the community makes.
-It's convenient for the person making the deal (As you and your Offerer are on the same Haven)
Cons:
-You must "Channel-Hop"(My personal term of periodically switching from server to server) in order to see other potential offers.

Now, after the update, it's been changed to a universal tradechat system. Good, but only in theory. Here's THIS list of Pros and Cons.
Pros:
-All the deals can be seen from any Haven.
Cons:
-The chat is overwhelmed by all the tradechat that is flooded into the game.
-The person making the offers can potentially be overwhelmed by a ton of whisper chatting that it's near-impossible to manage properly.
-You can potentially need to "Channel-Hop" anyways, because your customer/dealer can be on a different Haven anyways.

Yeah, that's how I see it. Channel-Hopping IMO isn't really bad, especially since loading times is relatively short. I say change the system again, or just revert it to its old system before this update.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About the auction house idea, It's definately good in theory. Maybe they could try something like that out with the game and see how that goes. If it works, then it could be a new part of the game.

Mon, 04/25/2011 - 14:12

Kaley

I was really looking forward

I was really looking forward to this update but now that I see it in action I'm not so sure anymore. It seems it's harder even to buy things because my message gets lost. Before if I said "WTB such-and-such material pm me with price" in haven 1 I would get several offers. Now I just tried it and got one reply and even that took a while.

Also it's become impossible to stay in trade chat and at the same time follow a guild conversation or a conversation with a friend. One must leave trade chat to be able to do anything else.

One solution would be to have trade chat on the right bottom side of the screen and leave the left side for guild, friend and other chat. Right now there's a big space to the right of chat that's not used for anything in town. If trade chat would be put there, we wouldn't have to worry that we missed a message from a friend (or even a buyer or seller) just because we had trade chat on.

Mon, 04/25/2011 - 14:54

#10

Kureyn

Legacy Username

I can't stand this. I've had

I can't stand this. I've had to leave trade chat, and clockworkmarket is a complete wash; nobody's buying, nobody's updating when their transaction is complete, and the prices are DUMB even when they're not an obvious switching of the fields (one person in the last few hours posted WTB offers in DOZENS of material fields with the values switched). I can't read trade chat when it's on; I can't read anything ELSE when it's on either, and I am a monstrous speed-reader. When stuff scrolls too fast for me to read it, there is a major problem. Basically everyone that has complained is right. We need to go back to single-channel trade instances, and we could probably use an auction house too. It's actually easier and more viable to advertise in the Say 'channel' to the people in walking distance than it is to try to get anyone's attention on trade now.

Mon, 04/25/2011 - 15:26

#11

Otterface

Legacy Username

Thank you, Admins and Game

Thank you, Admins and Game Developers, for the change in trade that allowed every same-language haven to be interconnected. I can now -easily- carry on conversations with my guild, keep track of local chatter around me, and bargain with potential buyers/sellers in private messages. All while watching every message disappear within literal seconds under the spam of every single English Haven (10-22 of them depending on how crowded it is at the time) and all the trade ad spam.

^ dripping with sarcasm.

Yes, plenty of other games have separate chat windows, or tabs that filter certain channels of chatter. But there's a good reason why. Being unique for the sake of being unique with a poorly organised chat interface is only going to hinder your players rather than help them. There's still plenty of design and development to be worked upon I'm sure, but this is a pretty big issue that's affecting everyone in the here and now. I'm certain much of the player base would be grateful to have separate chat tabs that guild, local, PM's and trade can all be filtered through.

Mon, 04/25/2011 - 15:31

#12

Pauling

The market is the problem, not the solution

In most of the comments I've seen on the issue, there's an unspoken assumption that hordes of people are out there just begging for the chance to buy your (very common) materials. Hint: they're not. An auction house is useless without a reasonable volume of customers.

On the clockworkmarket site, sell offers outnumber buy offers by ~20 to 1. Traffic on the trade channel is probably similar, though repeat spam makes it hard to get a good estimate. The bazaar forum is also, once again, mostly filled with sellers.

Instead of worrying about auction houses, the broader problem seems to be that people have a ravenous desire to obtain crowns by any means possible. (Very few of the comments in favor of an auction house say "golly, but I'm having trouble finding someone to sell me something!") The current wildly overheated trade market is an artifact of the item-centric nature of the game, but somehow I doubt that it's a market that the devs really expected. Mostly, materials are supposed to drop and be accessible in a reasonable timeframe, and they do.

Would you rather have:
- A new game boss, more story, and a chance to see the core... or,
- A way to compete with everyone on the server for sales, even when they're not logged on.

I'm already noticing a decline in sale prices on clockworkmarket as people are forced to compete out in public; a number of 3-4* materials have dropped below 400 crowns asking price. If there was an auction house.... well, I doubt that it would be the godlike reward for your skills that you're expecting.

Mon, 04/25/2011 - 15:38

#13

Amarao

Legacy Username

Was happily trading 2 days ago, now it has become virtually impossible to trade anything.

Mon, 04/25/2011 - 15:43

#14

spookas

Legacy Username

Hm, I'm finding it way easier

Hm, I'm finding it way easier to find buyers for my stuff than ever.

I would say the best thing to do would be to separate the /trade channel into /buy and /sell channels (as has been suggested), until a more centralized trading system develops.

Mon, 04/25/2011 - 22:27

#15

Sirrocco

Legacy Username

So... the problem I'm seeing

So... the problem I'm seeing is this.
- Material drop rates were designed so that a single player could reasonably expect to craft appropriately leveled gear (as long as he wasn't too picky about *which* gear) in a reasonable time of delving through the clockworks, without having to resort to trades. Mat demand, then, is limited to people who want specific mats so they can get their specific thing (and probably have surplus of some mats that they don't want) and people who have bought energy and want to fast-forward through chunks of the game.
- Given the way that mat drops work, and the fact that there are few if any builds that use more than a small fraction of the types of mats that are out there, in that time, the average player will also generate a whole bucketload of mats that he or she can't use. In the mean time, demand for mats (other than some of the particularly rare higher-level mats) is relatively low
- Essentially, then, mat supply hugely outstrips mat demand as far as trading goes - and the overhead effort cost in trading is the only thing that's kept prices up so far.

I'm certainly not suggesting that OOO make things so that people *can't* solo their way to their own mats. Making everyone turn tot he trade channel just seems cruel. Given that, in order to make mat sales into anything other than an exercise in frustration and desperation, with continually diminishing returns, there needs to be some sort of generic mat sink. The ability to sell mats for a small to moderate amount of crowns would do this (though we then run back into the previously noted need for crown sinks to keep the crown/energy economy from getting too degenerate). The ability to sell them for tokens at some rate would do it too (not the boss seals, but 4 swordstones might get you a forge spark or something - or 8, or 12) It would let you turn the mats you have into the mats you need - not at a particularly good rate, but you could do it. Of course, as things currently are, it would also let you trade for trinkets and then sell same for crowns - whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is left to the reader.

Tue, 04/26/2011 - 03:25

#16

Raul

OK so it seems people the

OK so it seems people the majority wish to continue with Global chat, so how about this.

/1 General Zone
/2 Buying
/3 Selling
But keep it all open and general, but make it so you can leave them.

Also, having tabs for PM and Guilds is a must. These would be easier to manage and won't get lost in the spam.

Does that work for you people?

I hope something is being done to cut the spam.

Tue, 04/26/2011 - 03:49

#17

Pupu

Legacy Username

Personally I don't mind it being as it is, whenever I want to check the market I just join 2, then leave after a while.
I have made quite a few sales this way.
What I would like is to limit it to a message per minute, some people spam quite a lot.

Tue, 04/26/2011 - 04:35

#18

Kaybol

Legacy Username

Actually charging crowns for

Actually charging crowns for broadcasting messages should work very well. This should limit the number of people who are trying to sell shards considerably, which will make the trade channel a lot more meaningful. I don't see however how to integrate this into the chat interface in a clear way.

Limiting the number of /123 chats per minute would also be great, considering that most "conversations" going on in there can perfectly be done in tells.

Tue, 04/26/2011 - 09:35

#19

Pawn

let's limit more

i'd like to see 1 line of text only limitation. 1 person does not need to make WTS that run 2-3+ lines long. This would also help to eliminate special characters. And at least it would take them longer to spam, thus slowing it down a little bit.

I don't need to know that someone:

"WTS-->??wants to sell, cheap cheap cheap, must sale all mats before bedtime, buy them now, buy them WOW. WTS@@@@@@@@@@@@@all mats must go@@@@@@@@~~~all????~~~~~YES ALL MATS~~~WTS ALL MATS 1-4*****kajfakjdadj;ajd"

well hell, with a pitch like that better say it 6 times a minute, if you can take up a whole chat window...
it's absurd

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Unmerging Trade Instances