AFK Shop - The answer to WTB/WTS spam?

I nicked this idea from Global MU Online, a game that I used to play before being enlightened by Guild Wars.

I am annoyed whenever a see the lines of WTB and WTS spam, so I have got a proposal.

Make a window in-game where you can drag and drop the items you want to sell, and see how your personal store is getting along. Assign your name to your store, (preferably the name and statistics of your item(s) on sale). As soon as you dragged your item in, assign a price to it (in platinum and gold). Then, open your personal store, make your character stand somewhere nice, and then go off and (in real life!) watch TV, go to sleep, etc. When you come back, assuming that someone wanted to buy it, your item has vanished from your personal store window and you have some cash in your inventory.

The buyer will walk around in-game, see a sign above your head, open up your store, have a look at the item and stats, buy it if he/she wants to, and move on.

This is stop the endless WTB and WTS spam, and enable youto spend your time actually playing doing somethign more useful.

So, a run-through again:

1. I want to sell a Fire Wand, 11-22 damage, or 2P.
2. I drag the Fire Wand into my Personal Store window.
3. I assign a price of 2P to it.
4. I name my shop something along the lines of "WTS Fire Wand 11-22 req9 for 2P" etc.
5. I go away.
6. Potential buyer comes along.
7. He/She sees my Personal Store sign, and wants to buy it.
8. He/She opens my store, and has a look at the item and price.
9. He/She decides to buy it.
10. The Fire Wand appears in their inventory, and 2P in mine.
11. I return, to find that I have succesfully sold my Fire Wand for the price that I wanted.

Advantages:

* You can sell without being at the computer, allowing you to do more important things.

* You don't need to put up with mountains of WTB and WTS spam.

Disadvantages:

* The personal store window may be used as an extra storage space, so I recommend only one slot in it. Most people only want to sell off one lucky drop of quest item anyway, so this shouldn't matter too much. Also, possibly, the store could be shut automatically if the item is bought, to avoid annoying people with stores that look good until they are opened nd have no items in them

* If this is implicated into the game, there might be a lot of bugs and glitches at the start of its incorporation.

More ideas are coming to me as I write this. Some feedback PLEASE!

Wow, this is a good idea. Sort of like in Rose Online. A problem might be all the shops causing lag? Well. I like it.

/signed

I think that even if the shops cause lag, would all thespam cause even more lag? I'm not sure, but what I'm sure is, I HATE SPAM!!!

Yay! 1st positive feedback.

Good point. Maybe make it so you can't move while your shop is open.. That would stop it being used a storage..

I thought about that, but that might cause lots of confusion with people ho don't know what the personal shop does, put something in it, give up, and find that they can't move. I'm not too sure, but it is a definate possibility. Or perhaps only allowing something to be in the Personal Store while you use the /afk emote, which goes away when you move?

Anyway, thank you for actually bothering over this suggestion. Cheers!

thats such a good idea /signed

Okay you know how districts work right? when one is full a second is opened.
Now lets say district 1 is full with afk shops no new players will be able to enter so nothing gets sold.

If they make a max cap on the shops like with the minipets (20max) and dis 1 to 3 are full of shops and there are not enough players to open up a fourth district you can't open your shop in your favourite selling place(ppl have this).
And since it's an AFK shop who knows when they pack up so you can open yours. So should it be time based as well?

I really like your idea and would love to see it work properly, but they need to stick some rules to the shops to make it work.

anyway /signed

/Signed

Its really needed in game because next chapters will added many more items, so Chat channel will be always spammed.

I like your idea and things similiar to it have been proposed, but I dont think it will 100% solve the spamming problem.
Instead of hearing: "WTS: [insert item, stats, and price here] " you'll hear people spamming things like:
"Check out my store. All weapons. All prices. Come See" just so they can get people to check out their items. It will be sort of trading one spam for another. People will do anything to maximize their visibility (that is why people continue to spam their items in local chat, trade chat, AND list it in the trade section of the Search Panel).

- Aldoros of Faydark

Unfortunately the only way to stop the spamming is to offer a system that allows players to search the game world for what people are selling and how much.
There would need to be an entire search system for the market, showing prices, player locations, categorizing products. It's something I doubt a no monthly fee game will have because of the cost to maintain.

Improvised:

When you put an item into your shop, you cannot move without your shop being closed automatically.

Or,

As soon as you put the item in your shop you are transported to a "Market" District. People travel to the market district if they plan on only viewing shops. In the market district, all chat is disabled except for PM, Guild, an Alliance.

/Signed

Although, this reminded me of something from World of Warcraft (when I used to play it). You used to be able to select the weapon, and in the chat window it would show up and when you rolled over it, you could see the stats. However, I do agree with the annoying WTS and WTB, especially when they do it in local chat.

/unsigned

LAG.
Chat, I'm told is a different server.


1. Extend your typing room in Search, to that which you can type in chat.

2. Give excessive messaging more easily. Mute for ten minutes anyone that gets excessive messaging more than once within a minute.(mute their trade/public capabilities anyways)

3. Seperate Whisper from the rest of the chat so it does not disappear with in a busy server.(Enables AFK sales when combined with #1)


Much simpler and less lag inducing than any other major changes.

I really like hits! Awesome, /signed ;-)

/signed x5

This was done in MapleStory and I think it's a great idea. For a fee (in-game of course), you can rent your own plot of land where you can set up a shop somewhere and sell things (the fee would be one-time, or perhaps like a rent you pay weekly/monthly?). Just adds to the depth of the game, instead of running around saying "WTS <something>, <something>, <something>, and <something> PM me with price".

I think there should be more slots though. Since it would cost money to open up shop, it'd be the same as paying for extra storage and I see no problem in it. You could open up a specialty shop like "Bob's Dye Emporium".

That would be MUCH more simple to program than an auction house (I think), plus I might use it >_>

Nice idea!

/signed

Keep the ideas coming!!!

Perhaps a district for only shops?

Isn't that pretty useless, because if they are going to spam anyway, why wouldn't they just say "Selling a Fire Wand req9 11-22 damage" rather than say "check out my shop", because I would definetly go for a person who is actually selling what I want, rather than just randomly going to anybodies shhop?

/signed

I love the idea of having a shop to sell your stuff so you don't have to sit in town and spam WTS or WTB.

I really hope that we get some sort of shop to sell our items in the future.

I agree with the market district, but when you say that the shop is closed, do you mean that the items can still be kept inside it? Because if so, it would still be extra storage space because as long as I have my Fire Wand with me and it's not in my inventory, I don't mind if the shop is not open because I have no intention of selling it anyway.

Unfortunately, I think you may be right that the spamming will never stop, but hopefully the shop will at least let us do something on Guild Wars whilst we are doing something else.

I think there will be alot of problems, such as districts being full which could mean that no customers could come in to buy the stuff as the district is full of stalls.

Including, i think it could cause way more lag as too many people are online. Example, there will be 5000 people who are logged on their characters but they are AFK. The user could leave their computer on all day...

Plus, it will be hard for people to find what they are looking for as there will be ALOT of stalls open..

One more thing, will the stall be solid or walk-throughable? Meaning, will we be able to walk through the stalll or is the stall a solid object which we have to go around to get past? If its solid then people could start blocking area's...If its walk-throughable then what if people start a Stall on top of each other?

It is a great idea, but i would pretty much prefer the SPAM (i usually turn of Local and Trade chats if im not buying anything). If theres a way around everything that ive listed then hell its got my vote

Interesting idea, ad I see the problem now. The timing device sounds good. Ah well, we can't have everything. More suggestions from everybody?

I think that a sensible name for the stall and a bit of luck should see to the first problem, and for the second, there won't actually be a stall, maybe just a [SHOP] tag at the end of the player's name and the name of the personal store just floating on top of their heads.

I like the general idea.
And it sounds less complicated compared to auction.
One item (or max 250 stack, like crafting material) in store sounds fair.

However, the 'personal' store, where someone has to click does not appeal to me. You could use the party-search window feature for that.
I'd say, create an outpost based shop, showing all items in the personal shop.
This one could have a setup like the PvP skills rewards, grouped by profession and sorted on attribute.
Within that, probably sort possibilities on price and name.
When those items are pulled from the server by profession, the server loads may not be too high.
This shop only shows the items for sale, not the seller.

Outposts have a limited number of players, so this could perhaps be done without causing too much problems with resources.
Your item appears in the shop the moment you enter and disappears the moment you leave or it's sold.
Like the trade window, the transaction has to be completed on both sides before the actual transaction is made.

I don't like the 'market' district idea, since I would like to do some stuff in the outpost and not just being afk.
I enter the large outposts mainly because I need to be there for other reasons.

Implementing the idea in regular outposts has an other benefit for the player.
In the current 'trading outposts', the competition will force prices to be arount the same level, it's a buyers market. Why would you buy an item for 100 when you can buy the same for 50.
If you want to sell fast, price a little below the lowest price.
If you have some time, shoot for a higher price.

The only 'problem' would be that you can't put any high-end items in store, since the max trading value is 100K.

great idea. but i think it would be better to have more than one slot in the trade window. Or maybe you could assign items from your own inventory an just mark them as trade items.
/signed

/signed

I would buy chapter 4 only for this....
reminds me rose online aswell, but the ability to afk sell did not stop the spam in towns (WTS JAM +5 111!!!!!!)

there exist some websites doing this, heres a french one www.gwshop.net

This kept me up all night thinking of a way to make this work.
Add another search button, name one "Search Items" and the other "Search Party"
when you click "Search Item" you get this (not as crappy though :P)

I've seen it in several MMORPGs, and it doesn't quite work. Hundreds of people afk'ing in a small area, some even afk for hours after they sold their items. It's incredibly hard to find what you're looking for.

I'd rather just see an Auction house, or like Odinius said, a new screen in towns. It'd work much better.

/notsigned - even though it's better then the current situation

/notsigned

I hate it. Firstly, it causes TERRIBLE lag in towns. It promotes AFKing within towns, sometimes for hours, which costs ANet a lot of money, and it takes ridiculous amounts of time to find someone who actually wants your specific items, and again longer to find someone who agrees with the prices (people love to haggle).

They had this feature in Silkroad Online. It was unbelievable. You couldn't move in towns because of the lag, only people who got the best spots could make the sales, and there were so many stalls it ruined the scenery. Casual players who couldn't stay connected for hours could never make sales as people never took notice of trade messages.

And in guild wars, i would be worse. Everyone would go to Lion's Arch district 1, set up their stalls, and go afk. Essentially, you could end up with 150 stalls and no buyers. How would that affect people looking for groups? Or new players looking for some answers?

So, I'll say it again, /notsigned. It might work excellently as an auction house of sorts, but not stalls, not again.

Edit: The Trade Channel Idea by Odinius looks great, as long as the player is not required to remain online.

all of that is great.. dont get me wrong i like it tooo but lets think more practical tho..
now lets just say there are 10k people in 1 district in LA most of them are trying t sell things and etc.so some people get bored and tired of spamming so they log off.. and other log in.. so the # of people will always fluctuate between 10k.. but now that you have the feature to go afk and put up a "store" those people who logged for bieng tired of waiting for items will stay logged on and a very few amount will log off.. while the influx of logging on will still stay.. so the # of ppl in dist. will rise tremendously.

the best suggestion is a npc auctioneer/merc who you can give a item to>set the price>go off to do w/e> come back and collect your $>and have the merc take say 2-5%of sales

/not signed
There is this system in Flyff(Fly for Fun) and it's horrible as soon as you're in town, horrible lags, texts everywhere, really you don't want to stay in town with that.

Cool, I like your idea! Having the maximum number if items to sell at 5 is good too so you can't go AFK and have a ton of items just sitting there but the only problem I see is that window is going to be REALLY packed, you'll be scrolling down forever. Also, would the max of 5 items be per weapon tab or just 5 items total?

Lag is another problem for Anet to fix. When making suggestions, I don't think we should really consider that. Lag is a problem now, and it simply has to stop. This shouldn't increase lag, because there shouldn't be any lag in the first place.

That will be alot of scrolling indeed, but can't think of a way how not to scroll atm. And when I'm in Kamadan to buy something I always need to scroll through the text anyway because it goes too darn fast :P

Ah the tabs, forgot about that...
I meant for 5 per player cause 5 per tab would make an awfull lot of items so it should look a little like this per tab:
[][][]
[]
[][]
[][][][]
[][][]
[]
[]
[][]

If Guild Wars Adopted selling search and merchant modes similar to Everquest 2 there'd be no selling spam. In the years I've played Everquest 2 I think maybe....just maybe someone was spamming an item to sell a half a dozen times. And they usually got people asking them to stop spamming. lol
It might create a lot of bandwidth usage though. Because of all the information needed for each search on the market. I don't know how much bandwidth sending object code+price+seller's name and location would take.

Yeah, you're right because in dist 1 of LA, Kamadan or any main town the text just flies by really fast. Another option to the window would be to search for an item by typing in key words like "Storm Bow or Long Sword"

Search option: Love it!

First things first; thank you everybody, Odinius especially, who have spent tremendous amounts of time and effort in trying to get this to work.

Now...that window looks like the way to go, because my Personal Store has been pooh-poohed due to lag, and afkers clogging up districts.

/signed

i used to play another game with a similar system. RYL - Risk Your Life. it worked out really nice, and would let people do stuff when they weren't at the keyboard.... such as pay attention to family, make dinner, go to work, sleep, etc....

while i do like the idea, i think more slots to the shop would have to be added then just 1... do 1 ToPK run and you come back with a couple rares, and a green or 2... so at max about 20 slots.

also, the amount of plat your character can hold would have to be raised as well... which i think is stupid it's capped in the first place.. this is incase you have multiple items that sell for 100k.

and for all your whiners about "it will cause more lag"... go take networking 101 then you can talk..