Will improvements to trade ever appear as mentioned repeated before?

i think auction house will be anet's only bait for ppl to buy GW:EN, so we'll have to wait.... come to think of it with so many ppl leaving GW for other games anet'll need to actually do some player-friendly changes to sell the expansion, mb we'll finally what we were begging for since the day 1

I just spent 2 and a half hours using the "trade feature" of the search window. THe price posted was 2k less than current active bids on guru auction. I even asked for best offer (OBO). 2 and a half hours of silence. 2 and a half hours WASTED. If you want to increase trade, FACILITATE TRADE! don't just tell us "here's some pretty new things now go trade(spam for several hours and accomplish nothing)." It doesn't work.

What, no more spam?
Don't blame aNet, blame all the players who don't use Party Search interface.

The Sellers have the Buyers used to spam... They don't look in Party Search because everything comes to them via spam. If the sellers collectively move to Party Search so will the Buyers because when the Buyers are all wondering where all the sellers went, word will get around that they are all utilizing the Party Search interface (and rather quick too).



Why would aNet waste time creating a new (better) Trade system when no one takes advantage of the one they have already provided us?

I see no reason for aNet to think the community would use a new system; I'd expect the community to just whine more about how it's not "perfect" or ideal. I'm glad there are minipets again this Birthday... it proves that whining isn't always rewarded -- which has been long warranted.

You can't take advantage of something that doesn't work. Here are some examples:

"WTS Gloom Shield, +30 HP, req 1"
"Wts Fiery Dragon Sword, +30 hp"
"WtS Shield of the Wing, req 10"

That's all that I could fit into the party search. Not too specific, oy? And it'll get you a lot of things you don't want. Keep in mind that I still want to list the rest of the stats and the selling price.

The only thing that would fit into the party search could be materials. Only difference with materials is that there's a trader who will always buy them from you.

Also keep in mind that the party search was intended just for that: searching for parties for missions, etc.

In order for the community to truly appreciate a trade system, said trade system would have to be totally kick ass. As it stands right now, the only differences between spamming and using the party search is that the latter doesn't need to be repeated every five seconds to find a buyer, and that you can only enter in 30 digits. No other features, no other reason to use it.

Short and simple, A-net MUST add some way of selling items when not in town.

Whether it be an AH or some other way, if they don't add an AH (which they've now said they won't) me and I'm sure a huge number of casual gamers that play for only 2 hours a week will never sell anything in trade. It simply isn't worth it.

How about a trade isle that you can get to the same way you do when you travel per boat? All it needs are all trader npc's, a large open area for players to do whatever they want. This could become succesfull, i mean Kamadan isnt really a high end players section, neither is lions or kaineng and because of that a trade isle can bring all of the traders together in one town, preferbally that town would also have many armor traders. that'll get the trade going.

Just my idea's but to be honest i think this just might work.

Tell me if this is Ironic?

Gaile asks people NOT to spam when she visits.
The chat channels suppress spam (repeated messaging).

And now....
A-Net claims to want a healthy economy based on trading between players and a reduced influx of "new gold." However, they REFUSE to provide a method for trading other than devoting several hours sitting in City X spamming WTS WTS WTS/WTB WTB WTB.

You ask us not to spam, and build in spam suppressors, but leave us no means of trade aside from spamming.

You want us to trade with each other instead of generating "new gold" from merchants, but you have now stated there will be no Auction House.

What the hell do you want us to do? Make up your minds soon and tell us.

Do us all a favor, and next time someone has a brilliant stroke of genius like "lets reduce drop rates to kill farming and influx of new gold," please consider the consequences and have some sort of a game plan for dealing with such things.
This half thought through nonsense that you've been coming up with lately just creates anger and frustration among your "loyal player base."

And yes, I am unhappy. I have a right to express said unhappiness. I have paid for a "service" as you call it, and the service has been steadily declining (sure you have made steps forward - but they more often then not come with 2 giant steps back). People have been asking for an AH since the game's release - earnestly but not screaming and ranting and raving. You have now created a situation where NOT having and AH is simply insane. You can not possibly be trying to tell me that you want all the once were casual farmers out there to add to the noise that is LA, KC, SJM and Kamadan?

And don't give me nonsense about bandwidth. You're all so fired up about building your own Guildwiki so that you can one day "be able to feature wiki documentation more prominently, on our web site and in our game." If you have bandwidth to integrate a wiki into the game, surely you can come up with a better trade system than WTS WTS WTS WTS WTS WTB WTB WTB WTB WTB WTB WTB. If you can't do that, then your dreams of an economic Shangri-La where everyone trades and is happy are just that, dreams. Wake up and smell the destruction you are unleashing and do something to bring order.

I hust think GW 1 was a test game and that GW2 is the real game and soon updates will get sobad that noone will be on GW1 so that they can shut that game down to give more space for City of Heros since thats what server GW1 is on. the city of heros thing came from a previous poster and GW1 being a tester came from a review that Billard wrote on here.

Gw 1 a test game, yeah right and i paid more than 250 Euro's on this game, i can hardly say it is a test game.

Also i do not believe they would just shutdown the game, if they ever do anyway. Guild Wars has made them big and GW2 is so far away from now that anything is our guess about the future of gw 1, for one thing it isnt a test game.

We all know GW needs some sort of trade mechanism if player-to-player trading in-game is ever going to be viable for the majority of players. That need has been obvious since before I started playing in July '05, and my long-term understanding and impression has been that the developers intended to do something to satisfy that need. In fact, I was expecting an auction house to be implemented with the release of Factions, as were many others, but obviously that didn't happen. It was my further impression that the Trade feature added on the party Search box was an afterthought or at best a stop-gap measure until a better system could be implemented. Until reading Gaile's statements quoted in this thread, I was still under the impression that Anet did, in fact, intend to improve in-game trade. Now I'm just not sure whether they intend something (but not an "auction house") or they intend nothing at all.

Gaile: Please let us know if the devs intend to implement any improvements to player-to-player in-game trade functionality. It would be much appreciated to know a definite answer, either way.

The sellers go where the players are. A Trade Capital would have to have indepentant reasons to go there.

That's why I would suggest that the Trade capital also have direct acess to most every major town in Guild wars. A True trade hub that would make it easy to get to anywhere in just one click. It would also help with forming parties since (at leat on American districts) it is hard as heck to find players for hard mode groups.

Nope after hard mode I wouldn't expect any major updates until GW2 because time spent making changes to GW1 takes away from game creation from GW2. I think some need to realize that before asking for major changes.

PCGP: We have to ask, will there be Auction Houses in Guild Wars 2?

James Phinney (laughs): Well, I thought you'd ask that. We don't know if there will actually be Auction Houses in Guild Wars 2, but the Trade system will be changed completely so it will be a lot more pleasant and easy to promote your items for sale.

GW 2 is now on my wish list.

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Talk:Gu...rs_2#Interview

I just hope they fix up our current system a little to give us a taste of what will be in GW 2.

Anyway, I just became more optimistic.

this is interesting i must read into it

Basically you set up a shop, set item prices go afk and people click on you to see items for sale then buy the item. I think I read that's how they were going to do it.

they havent stated how they are going to do it yet any where, its just rumors.

but the way you described is how they do it In Final Fantasy online

A lot of MMO's with Merchant class character types have had this kind of vending post type trading for ages. One example is Ragnarok Online, where you just basically set up shop, even with customisable stands etc. set your prices on the items you're planning on selling and then you can go afk and let the other players browse your shop without any interaction on your part (the shop works just like a NPC shop in that you can right click on the items for information on the stats etc. as the basic information on the store window is brief to make room for more items).

I saw that in Maple Story, and even if you ignore the bugs present and the quirks that would be unique to Maple Story (Maple Story is a 2d side scrolling MMO, and its business model is free to play, but paying cash for optional extras, including the ability to setup a stall) its a very horrible trading system.

- By requiring you to be AFK to trade, it means that you either can't play when most people are online, or you can't use the stall to trade with them. Well Maple Story does let you have an NPC run your stall, if you pay more cash, but I don't see that being an option for Guild Wars.

- When you go to place an item for sale, you have no feedback about what price to set. Set it too low and someone snatches it up to resell at a higher price. Set it too high and it won't sell. Oh and all you know is if the item sold or not.

- If you are looking for an item it takes ages of wandering between the stalls. And you have to check most of them because they are mainly with names like "asdf", "low prices", "stuff!!". Yes you could introduce a method to search the stalls, but if your doing that whats the point of having separate stalls instead of one NPC who runs a single trade stall for everyone to place items for sale at ?

- When you finally track down the item you want to buy, you have no idea if its a good price or far too high* because there is no easy way to compare it to the prices at other stalls. But if you decide to go searching more, you run the risk of someone else snapping up it if its a good deal.

- By forcing people to AFK you require them to keep their computer on and using their bandwidth. Now while most of you probably on flat rate connections, I'm living in New Zealand and our options for broadband plans simply suck. I don't think there are currently any plans with a monthly transfer limit of above 20gb, even on the >2mbit connections. Once we go over out limit we either pay per mb, or more commonly we have our speed cut to 64k for the rest of the month. Besides even if you don't have bandwidth limits to worry about the computer would be using more power if left on unless you have some other reason to leave it on.

- Because of the bandwidth needs of an MMO, the only option for its connection is one where they pay per amount of data transfered. People AFKing not only use up the limited server processing ability, but they also cost more due to the extra bandwidth they are using.

*Here is a screen shot that shows that a Pet command guide sold for 100k, despite it being able to be bought from an easily accessible NPC in unlimited amounts for only 1k. If there was feedback then you would get sellers undercutting each other here bringing the price down to below the NPCs price for when people decide they don't need it and want to sell it.

UCCCHHH I hated that in Maple Story! I never knew how to use it or what it was and they littered the free market. I really hope that's not what they do. I think an improved version of WoWs auction house would be great. If they told you the mercahnt price and value too, well I don't know how helpful that would be to the buyer but that can cut down on searching for good deals. They could also add info about the avergae selling price for the item.

W/e I just hope it isn't as god-awful as MS...

I still think the best idea for making a Trade System/Auction House is just to creat a modified Party Search window entitled "Auction House" that allows you to list items by various criteria, hit "Post" and while you're in town, anyone can search the trade listings, sort of an instanced BBS.

The tabs, tickboxes and drop down menus already exist, the interface could be setup to be very similar to an online auction site...

A perfectly stated low-req Crystalline Sword, when sold to the regular merchant, would need a price of about 300gp or less.

That's the problem with a crappy merchant cost, along with many many others.

Now that's a pretty good idea.

Whatever trade system they implement, it needs to facilitate the ability for you to put your item on display, and then go out questing or on a mission etc. Then people can PM you about buying the item, similar to the way Guru's auction system works.

Guru's Auction system is where I do all my trading. No point standing around town.

Vox populi, vox Dei!

You may think the Party Search Trade feature is superior but the vast majority of people trading in-game obviously do not agree. The proof is in the numbers of people choosing to spam in chat instead of using a very limited text field in the Party Search box.

The whole idea behind being a successful trader is to make it as efficient as possible. It is not efficient to have 5-10 people whisper you with questions about the item you are trading. It is much better that they get all the information upfront in your "advertisement". Creating more abbreviations and shortcuts for already minced descriptions does a disservice to people who aren't "professional" traders.

The trade feature in Party Search is poorly done and badly executed. I'm not saying it couldn't be improved upon but I am saying that it isn't a mystery why most people find it less efficient than spamming.

A while ago a ANET invited a group of people to their offices. In reporting back to the community about how the trip went Billiard (leader of Xen of Onslaught) made this post:
Personally I believe Billiard when he says that this discussion took place. If for some reason you don't believe him then thats your choice. But if you want to convince other people you will need to provide proof.

i can honestly understand why they would be hesitant to add an auction house (in the WoW sense) at this point. i'm a coder and i can see that would be a lot of coding, and the stress on the servers would be unreal. any sort of item search function is just asking for server trouble.

however! there are plenty of simpler solutions. simply adding an NPC (much like the xunlai storage agent) where you can purchase a trade vault would be super. put the items you want to sell in that vault, tack a price tag on em, add a short title to your vault, and add a trade tab to the party search window that displays a list of vaults. click the vault and see the items being sold just like browsing someone else's storage bin, and add options to buy or bid on the items. sign out and let the vault do all the dirty work for you. your vault would be your own personal merchant. money gets saved in the vault and you can withdraw it later.

if anet can give us an extra 3 storage bins, then something like that shouldn't be a problem for the server either. its not global and its not perfect, but it would be a great improvement. being able to sell things while not online is the key to a good trade system, imo, as i would like to spend my time online actually playing.

Damn spiffy idea, rohara! I like it. It's simple and very effective. Hell, even if the vault was like 10 slots, and when you put an item into it, it prompts you with a simple query: "How much do you want to sell this item for?" and you input an amount. Then keep checking back to see what items have sold, get your money, and put in more items.

i fail to c the analogy...

Bots.

If there's an auction house or some system like that, doesn't it open the door for part time or even full time bot farmers to really make a killing? Anet just did all this stuff to cut back on botting so I'd hate to see it made a lot more attractive to the cheaters.

With that being said, I love the idea of an improved trade system, but it has to be done with this sort of consideration in mind... unfortunately.

Also, have any of you stopped to think what an auction house (or whatever) would do to prices? ROCK BOTTOM. Right now if you want to sell your req 9 gold axe in kamadan, you might ask 15k; a potential buyer only sees your spam because maybe nobody else is spamming for axes at that point in time. So you have a decent position to get your 15k.

Now imagine if you want to sell that same axe for 15k when the buyer can go to the auction house and see 100 of the same item. Several people are going to be selling their junk for below market value. Therefore you have to do the same.

Now combine that with the fact that gold drops are now plentiful in HM and easily farmed, thus raising supply greatly each day. The result? 1K gold req 9 weapons, across the board (except for a small number of rare exceptions). Gold req 10+ will have virtually no value.

Good idea. It's nice to get the opinion from someone that has some insight into coding as well.

You do realise that whatever you want to buy would probably be cheaper too? So you sell something for 10K that's normally 15K, and buy something for 10K that's normally 15K and there's no difference

I'm saying it will be much more dramatic than that. 1k for nice req 9 golds. Yeah I would be able to buy things for 1k also, but that's just lame when everything is worth next to nothing.

I see more and more threads appear on this subject recently. Good! Maybe it will be enough for Anet to realise that it's now the one biggest pve issue.

@ Rohara : great suggestion
exactly like my solution - detailed article:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10151471

Most of the botters probably have one of their accounts dedicated to trade spamming to sell stuff already.

So instead of an auction house which gives everyone a price thats about the same for identical items, you prefer a system which allows 1 person to get a decent amount and the rest of the people with that item get nothing ?

Or is it you prefer a system where, because of a lack of information about whats happening, people are able to inflate prices ?

yes... psychologically it's a bit lame when everything you own is worth next to nothing... however, if you can afford to buy everything you need with the money you've got, isn't that enough?