I believe this is one of those things that's easy to suggest but strangely hard to implement.
The best solution I can think of would be an option to auto-accept the mail containing items or useless information. So you'd get the mail, but they'd be marked as read upon receipt with the items they contain placed in your inventory. You could still leaf through them if you wanted, but you wouldn't have to.
I used to bid on all the inexpensive things for fun. Then I had to spend a long time slogging through and accepting each one (I did find the correct positioning so that I didn't have to move my mouse to accept outbid mail, but it was still a pain).
@Meghan-Trainor
It shouldn't be that hard to implement, though sorting by type as Tablechair suggests would probably be more trouble than its worth.
If a player is offline, instead of just immediately sending the AH mail, put it in a queue, and when the player logs on, send them the condensed AH mail.
If adding the next AH mail to the queue would exceed the maximum text per mail or exceed the maximum items per mail, then send the current condensed AH mail to the player and put this next AH mail into the queue.
Yeah... not hard to do.
Also, for people who get AH message spammed during their play session, they could let you toggle this condensed AH mail system while online.
@Qwez
That's a lot of database work. You can't just tell Java to whip up an arraylist of mail for you because then it's holding onto several thousand unnecessary Arraylists forever, and resetting the server would have interesting effects on them. If you put it on the other end, i.e. the thing that gets the mail, well, it gets them as mail and those are just text + items. You could have it parse them but that would be rather inefficient. I'm not saying that it's impossible just that it's a massive waste of time when there are simpler more elegant solutions.
An auto accept feature seems far easier to implement- you'd just call the accept button's function on all mails received by default. Better yet would be a button that's just accept+read all, that marks all as read AND accepts any items.
Why do you think it's going to be a lot of work? How is it going to be a lot of work? The majority of the work I see is trying to correctly integrate it into the system, but that doesn't requires an overhaul of the database; it's just some additional functionality. So, that's not "a lot of database work". If you say any attempt to integrate new functionality into an existing database is "a lot of database work", then well... I can't refute that.
Who is saying that the data structure of mail will be held forever if the player never logs on? I just did not specify implementation such as to cover all parts of the implementation. This issue in particular is no issue at all. Mail is cleared after 30 days, so something similar can be done for condensing AH mail, such as daily clearing of the lists and when the server is shut down, data will be backed up.
You don't like my solution, and I don't like your solution.
Sure an auto accept feature would be easy and would be effective, but I think it's a stupid solution. I want to read the mail, but not have to click so much. Sure I could just look back through the mail after auto-accepting, but it isn't the same as going through and accepting mail by mail.
Convenience is good, but I would prefer that any conveniences do not encroach the realm of cheap, auto-playing MMOs.
Sure this would be elegant and simple, but I as a player would not appreciate it. I appreciate playing the game, and I would say going through mail is a part of playing the game.
Lol this is why I stopped commenting on suggestions this fight is ridiculous by "hard" I don't mean actually difficult I mean that we don't have people working on the game for the longest time it was one guy that worked part time and barely at all on SK people playing on mac computers can't even buy energy via Steam why because the dev(s) haven't moved a single DLL file over nothing gets done ok no new features to be worked out both of us are wrong because this feature isn't even necessary you can say yea sure add it but who is going to add it you me if I had to add it it would just be an auto-accept mail, why because just add some new levels so that people can't say the devs aren't doing anything this is like nothing its a minor complaint
I've been coding for a few years now. I know nothing about Java, but I can do C, C++, Bash, and FFL.
This is (probably) easy, actually. You just stick a for loop in the client that says "With all the mails from the AH with subject, create an array. After the loop is done, format the mail and make it look like everything is one attachment." Then, when the player hits "Accept" or "Accept and Delete," it would just run a second for loop, executing the given operations on all the mails. It's all done under the interface so the player can't tell.
Granted, you would have to save each list if you don't want it condensing new messages with old ones. (If I get 5 letters when I log in, log out without deleting them, and then get 5 more letters when I log in again, I probably don't want the 5 new letters getting bunched with the 5 old ones. This could be saved easily just by logging when each cluster is created.)
This leverages the current system. No offense, but I don't understand why Meghan thinks that this is hard to do, since the system already tracks all the mails, and simply having the client do some busy-work for the player doesn't constitute a new load on the server. It is also advantageous because a player who might not want their mail condensed can easily change it, as it's a client side option.
Auto-accepting isn't the best solution because I might want to track all the sales/purchases I make with something like TradeTrax. That being said, it would work.
Note: I don't know nothing about SK's code. I could be spouting nonsense.
I've gotten 1 fps before in ready room from all the market mail. I don't know why the system doesn't group them, but it seems like a good idea.
They probably could even implement this in the client and not server-side. Just make the client batch up all the accept requests that the server can see.
Especially directed towards those that already sell large amounts of items, and even towards small scale merchants (i.e. me and pretty much anyone else to ever use the Auction) this would be a welcome time-saver. However, I would assume that this particular mechanic would only take place offline; a singular, constant message online would be extremely confusing.
It's a quick and innovative fix for a very limited action, making it the perfect step for something of its simplicity.