Alternative to Auction house/personal shops

Lord Azhren

Lord Azhren

Academy Page

Join Date: Jan 2007

Cincinnati, OH

Wielders of the Black Flame

N/E

I've seen a lot of posts about pros and cons to the idea of having an auction house or a traders outpost/personal shops. And while I think that eventually one of those two ideas are necessary (once the cons are minimized), I have an idea that will at least help in the meantime.

I suggest a change to the trade channel, or rather, making it into 2 channels. A WTB channel and a WTS channel. That would help in a few ways. It would help traders by making it easier to weed through posts. It would help everyone by dividing the trade spam between 2 channels, thus relieving the strain on All chat. Of course it's not perfect and of course inconsiderate people would still spam All chat and the wrong trade channel. But at least it would help until we have a better system.

bilateralrope

bilateralrope

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Nov 2005

New Zealand

Xen Of Onslaught (Xen of the Pacific division)

Unless you can get people to use it, it won't actually be useful (like the party search window). So unless you can suggest some way to get people using it this idea is useless, and if you can wouldn't it be better to apply those methods to the current trade channel ?

Operative 14

Operative 14

Forge Runner

Join Date: Nov 2006

Arizona, USA

[OOP] Order of the Phoenix I

Actually I think that's a pretty good idea. I believe, if nothing else, the only reason people use the All chat channel is becuase they want their stuff to be noticable; White text in a field of Pinkish trade spam. I think if people had a WTB channel (Pinkish text) and a WTS channel (Bluish perhaps?) I think a relatively large majority of people would use it.

Definately can't use Purple though

bilateralrope

bilateralrope

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Nov 2005

New Zealand

Xen Of Onslaught (Xen of the Pacific division)

My thinking is that the reason that people spam in local is because everyone turns the trade chat off. So you have to either prevent people turning these trade channels off or people will turn them off and you have no change from what we have now.

aaje vhanli

aaje vhanli

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Dec 2006

People just need to stop spamming the Local channel and use the Trade channel and Search function appropriately. Problem solved.

Isileth

Isileth

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Apr 2006

R/W

Quote:
Originally Posted by bilateralrope
My thinking is that the reason that people spam in local is because everyone turns the trade chat off. So you have to either prevent people turning these trade channels off or people will turn them off and you have no change from what we have now.
Wow...people who dont want to buy or sell turn the trade channel off.
People who want to buy or sell turn the channel on.

By spamming in all they dont actually reach any new customers. Infact they might lose customers, I know that when I want to buy something I turn the all channel off and only buy from people using the trade channel.

TheLichMonky

TheLichMonky

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Apr 2007

Does it matter?

Im to good for guilds

They can copy the style that flyff does, it lets you set up a personal shop with you own items and the prices you choose to sell at, and they buy it from you like a npc .. it would also have a name of the shop ( for example *Lichs Shop For Monks*)

Realm of Fiery Doom

Realm of Fiery Doom

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: Mar 2007

Realm of Fiery Doom

Quote:
Originally Posted by TheLichMonky
They can copy the style that flyff does, it lets you set up a personal shop with you own items and the prices you choose to sell at, and they buy it from you like a npc .. it would also have a name of the shop ( for example *Lichs Shop For Monks*)
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ght=AF K+Shop

Wasn't that my idea?

MithranArkanere

MithranArkanere

Underworld Spelunker

Join Date: Nov 2006

wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigo

Heraldos de la Llama Oscura [HLO]

E/

Ha! People use the Local channel more than the trade one.

Why would they use two trade channels instead?

One radical final solution would be to make trade possible only in certain outposts, for example: The Market in Cantha.

People wanting to trade would go there...

Darksun

Darksun

Jungle Guide

Join Date: May 2005

USA

Karr's Castle

W/E

Quote:
Originally Posted by Realm of Fiery Doom
Oh please, that's been suggested by everyone and their mom for the past 2 1/2 years. It's not your Idea.

Lord Azhren

Lord Azhren

Academy Page

Join Date: Jan 2007

Cincinnati, OH

Wielders of the Black Flame

N/E

Quote:
Originally Posted by TheLichMonky
They can copy the style that flyff does, it lets you set up a personal shop with you own items and the prices you choose to sell at, and they buy it from you like a npc .. it would also have a name of the shop ( for example *Lichs Shop For Monks*)
You must have missed the part of my post where I said that I agreed that either an auction house or personal shops were necessary, and that my idea for separate trade channels was just an idea to help out in the meantime.

bilateralrope

bilateralrope

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Nov 2005

New Zealand

Xen Of Onslaught (Xen of the Pacific division)

Quote:
Originally Posted by TheLichMonky
They can copy the style that flyff does, it lets you set up a personal shop with you own items and the prices you choose to sell at, and they buy it from you like a npc .. it would also have a name of the shop ( for example *Lichs Shop For Monks*)
The reason an auction house is better than shops for the sellers is because the auction house doesn't require the sellers to have any knowledge of how much an item will sell for, beyond knowing if its worth auctioning, before going to the auction house. They just need to stick the item up for auction with a low min bid, then lets the buyers bid it up to its market value*. But with a personal store you have 3 possibilities with setting the price of an item your selling:
- You set the price too high (including trying to sell items that aren't worth selling). In this case it simply won't sell.
- You set the price too low, then someone with a better idea of the value buys it and sticks it on sale at a higher price.
- You set the price to the market value.

Now the first case can also happen in an auction house with the same effects, but is easily avoidable if you set the starting price to be low. But the second case won't happen in an auction house and the third case will require some research for the seller to get it to happen in a store where they set the price. So for the casual sellers (such as someone who just got a very lucky drop) the auction house is more convenient.

So what advantage would personal shops have over an auction house for the buyers or sellers ?

* Market value being the value where are approximately the same number of people willing and able to sell the item as those willing and able to buy the item.

OrangeHunter

Academy Page

Join Date: Apr 2005

What about just making trading districts in the big cities and disabling the trade function in the normal districts?

MithranArkanere

MithranArkanere

Underworld Spelunker

Join Date: Nov 2006

wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigo

Heraldos de la Llama Oscura [HLO]

E/

The big cities are the ones you enter after traveling and where events take place.
Forcing everyone to gather there to trade will slow down the loads.

Market should be move to big outposts that are usually empty.

Lydz

Lydz

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jun 2006

Cape Town, South Africa

The Crazy Dragons [TCD]

E/Mo

It's all very well and good turning off the trade function in all districts except "Trade Districts," but do you really think that will put people off? I can just see it now:

" === WTS X, Y,Z!!!!!!!! *PM* me 2 trade in trade diztrict!!!!!! === " (Note the annoying spelling errors and weird equals sign thingies ^^)


I also don't think that the WTS and WTB thing will work, because if everyone uses WTB and everyone uses WTS, people wont get noticed and start spamming local chat as usual.

I still vote auction house. If we need a temporary solution to the problem, ANet should put GMs in all the major areas and simply ban and/or give warning s to spammers and those not using the correct channels. Eventually people will get the drift that they're being stupid trying to get noticed...

Patrick Smit

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Nov 2006

NiTe

Trading is a mess, too much hassle and time intensive, a global auction system is the only thing that will bring consumers and salesmen closer together, except for scammers.

EternalTempest

EternalTempest

Furnace Stoker

Join Date: Jun 2005

United States

Dark Side Ofthe Moon [DSM]

E/

Anything involving a person to go to a specific place, or using a special chat channel will "spill" over to the non-chat zone / channels. Tweaking the filters... anet would be chasing there own tail.

They need an trade house or auction house where you can put the item in this "area" set a price, and walk away.

This will stabilize prices, making value common knowledge (not in the realm of traders only), and remove *most* not all of the trade spam.

The could go as far as make a zone that all can access that has the trade / house and that would be a nice merchant area.

I will love to see a Final Fantasy XI style Auction house implemented. (They had there's way before Wow)
Seller - Put item on Auction House, set a price

Buyer - Goes, picks an item, and puts a bid.
If buyer is higher then the *lowest* set price, they win

Example Rune X has 15 people selling, the lowest set price is 150, the highest 700
Bidder bids 200, the person that sold at 150 gets 200.

This stabilizes prices as if you set item to high... item comes back to you but person who sets low gets money and moves on.

After a while, a "community" agreed price is settled so if you got someone who sell low, it will go back *up* to the community price, sell to high, force you down.

It also gives you access to see bid history and such. Trick I did was sell at 1 gold... and people would bid at "community" price.. and my item would always be out first . 80% of the time I would earn the "community price" .. the smart ones would 5 gold... I get 5 gold.