[Xunlai Trade Center] - a simple, realistic Trade System for GW1 (detailed)

Ofcourse i know about this kind of communication, but I didn't even mention it as it's not worth it. There's no real data sent this way, just tiny bits of pings, if the amount of them even doubled it wouldn't affect the performance of the servers, and don't forget that a significant number of people playing actively now (for example jumping districts and spamming alot of WTS) would instead sell in the afk mode and generate even 100x less network traffic per player this way.
Don't treat the AFK as the player would have to be exactly away from his computer. In many cases (mine for sure) the player would have his game minimized doing something else at the computer, like browsing forums or other websites, doing some work... So he would be able to hear incoming whisp messages (like an offer for an item shown, either below b/o or above 100k, it's important to have this feature available) or sold item notification (sold something? put another item in the empty slot)

The reason why my solution requires the client staying online is because it's simpliest and easiest to implement, with no major changes needed. For example my original idea contained no changes to the PartySearch engine except for 1 new button. However making it work for offline players and making transaction work for offline players would probably require significant changes in the game code.
There's a possibility for a simple improvement, it would require creating a new state a client can be in - client offline but server side still online. It may even be not very complicated to add, as this is the state a disconnected and waiting for reconnect player is in. It would free the user's CPU from having such a massive application as GW on, but it wouldn't really be different server side (except for those minor pings). Remember that: "Gameplay servers can support 2500-3500 users each, with the main limitation being addressable memory.", and that a user with his client offline would still use server's memory resources.
This may be a viable option, close your client and all you lose is the whispers and notifications (I wouldn't believe in them creating any data structures on the servers to remember those and to send them when user comes back online). A certain user timeout would have to be in place, to prevent having everyone active 24/7.
Remember that items aren't stored separately, but they're either in a character BLOB or account BLOB. If you have 4 tabs in storage, it makes no difference if they are full or empty, the space is already reserved.
Bandwidth usage would be probably slightly higher if users were viewing a store with 2 items and a store with 7 items. The traffic would be only generated by active buyers (far less of them than sellers), and most of them would have the stores with nonmax crap filtered out. But if bandwidth becomes a problem, certain limitations could be set on how often can a new store be viewed by a client.
Just think about the wasted server resources on having huge tons of crap items drop, having them viewable for the whole party when on the ground, then picked up, processed, saved in characters BLOB, sold to merchant, etc...
I consider allowing bad items a nonissue, and a worse problem and annoyance being limitations (wtf i can't sell my 15-21 caster sword). Trust me, the vast majority of items sold in the stores would be gold, max, but still crappy. Currently even most req10 items are straight merchant food not worth the time to sell them to players, so disallow them too? I'd say that any limitations are bad, and there would be one most important limitation in place anyway - the max number of items possible to be sold.

1 - How do you know how much that traffic would effect the servers when its going on 24/7. By now ANET should when they will have more players on due to an event, so they will likely schedule the server maintenance (Gaile has confirmed multiple servers, but we don't notice it as we could be switched between them at any loading screen) so that they have more up when the event occurs. So we can't use that.
2 - Having people sitting offline reduces this traffic to zero.
In my experience with Maple Story, the vast majority of the traders were off doing something else while their stall was running (usually overnight). So what game has a noticeable portion of the stall owners still at/near the computer ?
Many people in Guild Wars don't seem to like bartering, so these messages are likely to remain unused. But this could still be done by having some sort of in-game email system.
What if a seller receives a lot of offers while AFK, then loses his internet connection ? With the email the message remains till he logs back in.
Any trade improvement will need to either handle traders over 100k directly (eg remove the gold cap), or be implemented after ANET has flodded the economy enough to bring all prices under 100k.
Lets say we are talking about 7 item slots here. How many items do you expect the average player to have up for sale at any time ?
Personally at the rate I find items worth selling, I'll be using 1 maybe 2 slots at a time. So how many slots do you except the average player to be using at a time ?
If they have spare slots, the notification won't help.
Besides if they are truly AFK, like I expect most players to be, they won't be able to quickly react to an item being sold anyway. I've got no objection to a notification if they are online, just to forcing people to be online for no apparent reason.
And:
- the code for the new window that button opens
- the code to distinguish stalls from regular party search messages
- making sure the party search can handle many more active entries that it is currently expected to
- the code for recording the set price, and automatically handling the trade when the other player clicks buy
- A search function to filter the hundreds of thousands of stalls that don't have anything the buyer currently wants
Making a new button is easy. Making the button actually do something is where the work comes in.
Your already directly going into their inventory when the buyer clicks buy. All we do is remove the check to see if the seller is still online.
And what purpose would this serve that a combination of offline stalls and an in-game email system wouldn't ?
Source ?
Yes, but an AFKer would use more because they also need to be kept track of
Considering that guild wars players don't like bartering much, what purpose would those messages even serve ?

I suppose that if the store title generation distinguished max and non-max items for the search filter it wouldn't be an issue for the players. Maybe have the weapon type number give a different number for max and non-max weapons of the same type. I concede the point of disallowing items.

Allow me to reiterate.

Your idea is brilliant. It's excellent.

No, irony is ridiculous on the internets.




There are, however, two major problems.




1. Logistically: Server capacity


I'm a regular active player, playing since May 2005 with all three campaigns on one account. I never quite saw the need to either buy a second account (or even additional player slots for that matter, but that's besides the question).

If this trading system is implemented tomorrow, I will go to the store, grab the cheapest copy of Guild Wars Prophecies I can find and turn this into a permanent afk trading account on my notebook, while I normally play the game (on my actual account) on my PC; visiting my afk trading toon from time to time with an active toon to replenish his stock of items for sale.

An afk'er takes bandwidth, if only to keep his connection alive. There's a limited number of people that can connect to a single server. Even if all of them are afk'ers taking a very small amount of actual bandwidth, the server would still only allow a given number of people, since all of them could potentially turn non-afk any second.

Hypothetically (just making up numbers here), a single server can handle 1000 active connections, or could also handle 10,000 non-active ones. Well, that server's only going to allow 1000 connections either way, since nothing forbids an afk'er to become non-afk and become an active connection.


Okay, so maybe not a bad thing, ArenaNet will sell more accounts, since everyone and his dog will have a real account and an afk trading account.

It's, however, a lot more lucrative for them if they can sell copies of other campaigns, additional character slots etcetera on the same account. Even people with several accounts can only play one account at once (unless you're a truly leet dude able to play two games at a time on a dual screen setup).

At the end of the day, ArenaNet will have to increase server capacity just to cater to all the dummy afk trading accounts. Seems expensive to me and might once again happen at the cost of network latency.


If, however, a system is implemented that allows you to simply play the game while this [Xunlai Trading Center] guy sells your items, you basically have the same infrastructural problems as setting up a full-blown Auction House. You just don't call it an Auction House.




2. Idiosyncratically: Trading is a time sink


Once you've normally played through the campaigns, Guild Wars is basically one huge timesink, keeping you busy till the next chapter, campaign, whatever.

Oh, hold your rotten tomatoes! I'm not saying it's not fun, but it's still a timesink. Every game is. The idea behind old Geedub is not being productive, it's wasting time.

Now trading is an awesome timesink. Making it so that you can afk trade your items while potentially doing other things is, well, bad for business. You're not busy playing Guild Wars. Heck, you might even stop caring about the game altogether while you're having fun playing another game. Not good.




Anyway, you guys were on the right track and I already read quite a few good ideas in this thread.




How to realistically improve trading:

• A trading outpost.
  
  Seriously, I cannot believe this does not exist.
  
  When Factions was first released, I thought The Marketplace had been made specifically for this purpose. Apparently not. Right now, I'm still not sure whether the best place to go sell my stuff is Kamadan ed1, Kaineng ed1 or whatever.
  
  Best bet would be to have a Xunlai Trade Center.
  
  ZOMG HEAD ASPLODE!!
  
  Yup, call it a Xunlai Trade Center. A separate outpost on the Battle Isles.
  
  Simple as that.
  
  
  
• Get rid of the Trade Channel and Trade in Party Search everywhere except in the Xunlai Trade Center.
  
  Radical, but should work.
  
  If someone types in WTS/WTB in Local, he gets a friendly green message to go and visit the Xunlai Trade center on the Battle Isles. You can still freely try and sell things in Whisper, Team, Guild or Alliance.
  
  
  
• Item preview in the Party Search window in the Xunlai Trade Center.
  
  Same way as with Template preview, but you could open up your Trade Window by yourself and Ctrl-click it to the Party Search window (viewable in all districts of the Xunlai Trade Center) with a 31 character description.
  
  This would only work in this outpost (and also in Whisper, Team, Guild and Alliance chat, anywhere).

What does this amount to:

• Centralized trading center.
  
  No more going to different cities on different continents to try and buy or sell something.
  
  
• Trade spamming completely and utterly gone from other outposts, forever.
  
  Kamadan ed1 would be full of, well, players. Like, playing the game. Not tradespammers.
  
  
• People actually using Party Search for trading.
  
  Well, at least in the Xunlai Trade Center.
  
  
• No afk trading, so no extra resources for ArenaNet.

Just one extra outpost and a way to ping your self-opened Trade window to the Trade Party Search in the Xunlai Trade Center.

Trading will still be an active timesink.

Tada!




P.S. On second thought, don't call it a Xunlai Trading Center.

Um, Xunlai Trading Co-- no...

Xunlai Trading Post?

Xunlai Exchange?

Xunlai Flea Market?

You'll figure out something.

/signed

This is a terrific idea that would help cut down on all the random trade chatter xD

/signed

This is a terrific idea that would help cut down on all the random trade chatter xD

It's true they need to make trading more accessible with the new focus on items for income. This idea is not bad, tho I think they could add a few more features. Hope they consider this!
/signed

Great idea, and I'd sign for it. Problem is, like all great ideas, ANet will just say no and make excuses that they might add it, then a few years later back out of it.

Anyone notice yet that the best ideas that got added were the easiest to add? Yet the best ideas that should be added (Auction House/Player Merchant Shops, /favor, colors on compass for guild members, etc.) were never added? Funny thing is, there are free games out there (Last Chaos anyone?) that have added pretty much all of those things and more.

Except for adding more NPC traders (for things like weapon mods, inscriptions, tomes, etc) which should be easy to add because they are already coded, and just need adapting to different items.

So.. who wants to be the lucky guy to send a Pm to Gaile asking her to specifically forwards this thread to a dev?

Seriously though This idea combined with a trading outpost would be really awesome. That way we can shove all sellers into one area. And no this will not waste bandwith (Without the XTC anyways) Since its already happening in Keining, Kamadan, La Districts One.

@ bilateralrope :

I see you haven't been much into GW ingame trading. If you did, you would know that a majority of players DO like to barter and keep doing it. The vocal minority on forums saying that they don't, says so because they're against the rude behavior of some sellers in game, and that's the reason why such threads appear.

Even if an average player wouldn't fill all the slots for sale and might even be selling only one or 2 items, a notification about selling the LAST one item is even more important than selling one of many.

I trade a lot, in the past I AFK wts'ed with the help of a simple macro, now often AFK selling with the use of the primitive PartySearch, and I must say that being able to read potential buyer's whispers, comments about the price, or alternative offers is already extremelly valuable. It would be even more so if buyers were able to look at more items.
I know that a disconnection would mean losing those whisp messages, but it's the same right now and nobody complains.

While an ingame email system would be nice, I think it's too big an addition to be worth the work on it. It would be an entirely new thing, enirely new data structure and server storage space needed. Probably even separate servers would need to be run to do it (like a friend list server, guild membership server or the PartySearch server)
These things are the backbone of the system and of course would have to be done for it to work. Maybe with an exception of the search functions which are (nice) improvements on the system.

And a source of my info on GW server capacity - these 3 short articles are a must-read for anyone trying to 'invent' something to be done for GW1:
The Database Technology of Guild Wars
The Technology of Guild Wars
Guild Wars Game Notes

@ Lagg :

[1. Logistically: Server capacity]

So you're basically saying that making a better game, which will sell more copies is bad because it may affect the performance of the servers. So wrong.

Do I really have to explain why more copies sold would be better for them? That it's in fact their goal...

And don't forget that an afk player generates much less network traffic than actively playing. And buying a copy you buy the right to play it, actively play using up to those 2kb/s.

If they really cared about how many hours an account is online and wanted it to be minimum, wanted players to finish the game once and put it on the shelf and wait for next campagin, GW would be a completely different game.

Here comes info that may shock you: They want players actively playing their game!! It was confirmed multiple times by Gaile and in other interviws, and obvious evidences for that are weekend events, introduction of hard mode, having all those titles that require THOUSANDS of hours grinding...

And i repeat that actively playing generates far more server power usage than afk selling.

[2. Idiosyncratically: Trading is a time sink]

This is so wrong it can't be worse. It certainly wasn't a design decision to have trading as a time sink. It's just a necessity coming from the lack of better solutions.

In fact GW was made according to a rule of having NO timesinks at all, just fun gameplay. They just forgot about importance of a trading system back in the earliest design decisions. (remember when there wasn't even a trade channel? you should)

And your 'improvements' ideas are completelly missed, like:

*Separate Trading Outpost

I, as a seller, am absolutely certain I wouldn't want something like it in game.
It's best to sell where the buyers are, and I know for sure that buyers aren't always in the biggest towns because they want to buy something.
The international districts of Temple of Balthazar were predicted to become the new universal trading place but we know it didn't happen, no trading there except finalising deals from forums.

further disadvantages of this idea:
-having to design a whole new outpost - it would be new free content, requiring work of level designers and graphics people.
-going there, and more importantly FROM there would require another annoying map jump,

And the most important:
-it wouldn't improve anything!!!
Yes, seriously, it would be just 7-15 districts full of spam, everything we already got spread around 3 big cities.
And there would be no reason to go there for anyone, unless...

*Get rid of the Trade Channel and Trade in Party Search everywhere except in the Xunlai Trade Center.

Absolutely Awful idea. Would get hated by huge masses.

If you don't like traders in the big towns just turn off the trade chat! You won't notice them. You can also close the trading section of party search if you don't want to see it in Kamadan.

All you suggest aren't improvements but very serious major NERFS to trading!
Give them nothing useful but instead take away what they got? Horrible ideas...

*Item preview in the Party Search window in the Xunlai Trade Center.

Finally an improvement, but quite small, obviously not worth all the nerfs above.
However it would be very nice if it worked in any town, if it was just an improvement to what we got now. It's like a half of my original idea but without the best part, passive selling.
When one of the biggest reasons of improving trading is saving the time otherwise wasted on active selling, your idea doesn't help here.

And what's wrong with the name? Got a better one? I think it's good enough.

Seriously, Lagg, this isn't a contest on how to make trading even WORSE, so you probably opened a wrong thread.

Awesome idea. I'd love to see something like this put into the game!

As I said before, they'd much rather have you buy 7 accounts, just for storage, each used separately (never more than 1 account online) than see everyone have 1 active account which they're playing and 1 afk account online all the time.

No matter whether the afk is using up 2kb/s or 10kb/s, he's still using up a server slot, which means ArenaNet will have to buy additional servers, simply because of the huge number of afk accounts.

So yes, they want players actively playing their game. They just don't want players to actively play their game on one account while another account is also online afk trading.

And even if they do want it, then it's going to come at the cost of network latency.


Just think of the horrible lag during boardwalk weekends and the huge number of people afk'ing. Same thing.



How is trading not a timesink?

Isn't getting the materials and money for your FoW set a timesink? Or maxing out a title? Or reaching rank 12 in HA?

These are all things to keep you busy. Timesinks are not evil. They're just that. Things that keep you busy. It's why you and I play this game.

And as far as you and I know, they want you to actively play the game. Afk trading on a second account is not actively playing the game.



These all seem like very minor drawbacks to an ultimately much more efficient trading system.


Designing a new outpost is not feasable?

Considering the number of utterly deserted small outposts throughout the three campaigns, I don't see how the making of one extremely useful outpost could hurt.


Mapping there is annoying?

Let's see. What I have to do right now is map to Kamadan, change districts to ed1 and hope I didn't have to go to Kaineng ed1 to find what I'm looking for.

Otherwise, I have to Temple of Balthy and map to the Trading Outpost. I don't even have to change districts.


7-15 districts in this trading outpost?

Trade Party Search works across districts. And since it would preview items, people would definitely use it. This effectively creates an in-game trading directory using current technology already implemented in the game.



This pretty much answers itself.

Yes, it's radical, but it would centralize trading.

People would hate it at first, since all change is hated at first, but it would greatly improve things in the long run.


Personally, the tradespamming districts don't annoy me, on the contrary, it's where I go to sell my stuff. It's not an elegant solution, but it works to some degree. But this isn't about me personally.

However, I'm sure quite a staggering number of new players are completely disoriented when they first set foot in Kamadan. They arrive in the major city and all they see are people trying to sell them stuff. Not parties being formed, not social interaction, not people helping them around, just traders trying to rob them of the few precious plats they've gathered while just starting out.

And that, I'm sure, is a major concern to ArenaNet. Making the game more accessible to new players.


Also, what is the point of having a Trade Channel or Trade Party Search in -- let me pick some outpost at random -- aha, The Aurios Mines.



Right.


Better yet, what's the use of the Trade Channel when you're in an instanced area?

Okay, it's fun to type in things like "WTB monster AI" or "WTS noob monk that doesn't heal", but otherwise it really has no real use.


Even Local Chat has more use, since you often get those automatic messages in Team Chat from NPCs, meaning that Local Chat is more readable in an explorable area.

Not to mention it's a way to communicate with your opponents in PvP. Anyway, this is about Trade, not Local.



I'm awfully sorry for being critical of your precious idea. This is a suggestion forum, everyone gets to voice his ideas. If I thought your suggestions were completely horrible beyond belief to begin with, I wouldn't even have bothered replying and in doing so bumping your thread.

So let's try to remain civil, shall we?


I've stated it before, I like your ideas. I think they're brilliant, seriously. But they will not lead us to an actively organised trading system, but a passively disorganised one. Very likely at the cost of network latency, my primary concern.

Yes, a passive system would save everyone time. But that's not what this game is about. The whole point of the game is to interact with people. This isn't supposed to be the NYSE where trading is automated. It's a game. You waste time playing it. You're not being productive.

If you take away the interaction element, you might as well have a [Rare Skin Crafter] and a [Weapon Modification Crafter] (actually, I think we should have that one by all means, but that's besides the point).


Oh and about the name, seeing people like to acronymize things, I'd really pick something else.

So its your word vs the word of multiple of people ?

Why should I trust you more ?
How so ?
So you admit to breaking the rules and running a bot ?
Yes I can see it being helpful now. However with a decent search system such information can be better obtained by running the search, seeing what other people are selling things for, then setting your price based on that information.
I don't see too many people complaining about losing the whisper messages.

But I do see people complaining that they can't run their stall because:
- Its a shared computer, and the other people using it keep closing GW
- Their parents won't let them leave the computer running overnight
- They want to do other things on the computer, but GW causes their computer to run too slow if they leave it running.

But if they can run their stall while offline, those problems vanish. Actually if you allow running the stall while offline or doing other things and someone wants to barter then if your online they can easily contact you. If your offline they need to wait till you come online again.

If the system either required online AFKing or saved the messages, I still don't see a barter working between players sitting 12 hours apart from each other (timezones) and only able to send and receive 1 message a day.

So I say let people stay online to AFK if they want, and let them recieve whispers. However don't force us to since some people aren't in a position to be able to do so.

The things I listed were to make the point that this isn't as simple as an idea as you make it out to be.

As for the search system, we are looking at having tens, probably hundreds, of thousands of stalls operating at any one time. With this number of stalls, I don't see how a search system can be anything but required.

However using 4 bytes per item for the store title and having a client-side filter (like I described above) would be an acceptable system if the stalls are limited to one place (which is a good idea even without a search system).
Interesting articles, though the 3rd link is just a page that links to the other two. Though I don't see anything that makes an offline stall different to an AFK one, except maybe a larger data blob for the stall list.

Lets go through what I think the steps will be for operating such a stall. Steps in italics are only needed for AFK stalls.

- Seller decides on an items price and adds it to his stall.
- If the stall isn't already running he starts up the stall. If his character is needed in a certain location, he is moved there automatically.
- Stall is added to the list of stalls.
- If the seller logs off, then a message must be sent to remove his stall from the listing
- Buyer enters stall
- Sellers online status is checked to see if he went offline since last check. If he did, buyer gets an error
- Buyer decides to purchase an item from his stall.
- Buyer clicks the buy item button.
- Buyers funds are checked against items cost.
- Sellers online status is checked in case he went offline since the last check. If he did, buyer gets an error
- The stall is checked to make sure the item hasn't been scooped up by someone else since the buyer opened the stall.
- Items are moved between sellers and buyers inventories. Trade complete.
- If the sellers stall has no more items for sale, then the stall is closed.
- If the seller still has items for sale, the stall is renamed to remove the entry for the sold item.

During this process there will be regular check on the age of a stall, closing any that are older than the cutoff age. For offline stalls this should probably be about a week. For AFK stalls Error 059 will take care of things.

Sure I'll admit that being able to receive whispers can be an advantage. But its no reason to force people to keep the stall running if they don't care about haggling the price. If you want to receive the whispers then stay online.

And AFK stalls might also cause some issues with updates since the stall owner is AFK, and thus not able to restart GW.

So allow the stall to keep running while the owner is offline or doing something else

Trading is a forced timesink. The other examples you list are all optional timesinks. Forced timesinks do make sense for games that charge per month because they keep you playing. But they don't make sense in a free to play game.

Personally I feel that even if we do have stalls, keeping them in one place is a good idea. So we will need an outpost created.

And with the current system, even if it was contained to one outpost, selling is still a major hassle.

Except that hardly anyone actually uses party search for anything. However the plan for the stalls is to have them only exist in their own window.

Please elaborate on this point.
And how exactly does this follow from automating the trading system ?

And how does the current trade system help players decide what price to expect when selling something ?
How would confining all the trade chat to one town change it ?

This system does so because people run the search, see what price other people are selling similar items for, then price slightly below that.

Sure I can see confining all the trade chat to one town being a good idea. However I think this thread is discussing a better idea.

I bet they would jump in joy if this update caused people to buy more accounts, and it doesn't
(Of course I realise that they're making a slightly bigger profit when a game copy is added to an existing account instead of creating a new active account, but trust me, the accounts pay for themselves and they still earn good money on them no matter how much they're going to be used)

Now a blink of reality for you - I suggest rethinking how many people would actually buy new accounts to afk sell with them while playing on their normal account. This requires either:
-having access to 2 computers at once
-or doing the 2 on one trick, not easy for the vast majority of players to do and also requiring quite a powerful machine so running 2 clients wouldn't affect the game performance.
Also don't forget that those hardcore traders can do the same even right now! 1 more account is 1 more line in the current party search and 1 more district to be wts spammed by a macro (undetectable). Only the most hardcore do it.

I'd say that much less than 1% of all active players would do that, only the hardcore traders and those of them who fulfill the requirements. This just can't fill or lag their servers. Not at all.

And lags during events aren't an argument, as lags caused by the boardwalk afkers happen only there, in shing jea. No matter what event is running, during weekends the pings and network problems are always higher than during weekdays. It's like that on the whole internet, not just GW.
I must repeat myself again... Trading wasn't designed as a timesink, trading wasn't designed at all. Instead of a timesink I would rather think of it as of grind, trying to actively sell something is a grind and is the main reason why trade improvements are needed in the first place.
Unfortunately yes, making a new outpost is making new content and it would require interrupting the work and schedules of the designer teams working on a big project like gw:en or gw2, require the work of more men than some interface/engine improvements the 'live team' would be possibly capable of doing. The tons of useless empty outposts we have were part of the big campagin design and had to be done.
But I think it won't be needed at all! We already know that the expansion will bring Eye of the North - one big city, the center of the new world, accessible early in the game and including the entrance to Hall of Monuments. People will be there, and we know that trading happens where people are and not where they're told to be. It's just doomed to become the new big trading place, probably bigger than any of the current ones.
Nerfing what isn't broken, taking away from players what they could do and did and forcing them to play in a different way than they did before is bad by definition.
Removing trade chat and trade section of party search from all towns is easily the worst idea i've read in a very long time.
You're forgetting about local markets, things that get traded mainly in certain places, like
ectos and shards in Temple of Ages,
Gemstones in Gate of Anguish,
Trade Contracts, Rubies, Sapphires in Kodesh Bazaar,
Celestial Sigils in Hero's Ascent,
and newbies trade their chunks of drake flesh and iboga petals in all outposts around Istan.
FORCING all of these people to go to one place is plain ridiculous.

However, offering the trade improvements only in selected places may be a good idea, but if there aren't any technical obstacles in doing so, I see no harm in allowing for example someone waiting for the FoW group to form to show his stuff for sale across all the ToA districts through improved PartySearch.

So you speak on behalf on ArenaNet and say things like trade spam on the trade channel which can be disabled make the game less accessible for anyone? Woah crazy! If there was no trade channel in Kamadan it would be either a desolate place or rather filled with other kinds of spam on local, even trade spam or even worse. Now at least they know the'yre coming to a busy place, know it's a huge marketplace and learn to use it too.

Having a selling improvement that requires the seller to remain active doesn't really improve the current situation at all. Selling takes a very long time and the time could well be spent on playing the game instead of standing in some town shouting. I again compare it to some worst kinds of grind, forced time spent on something not liked.
Taking away some of the interaction doesn't automatically destroy the whole market and economy, so it can't be compared to having a crafter for all the goods. However a normal supply/demand based modifications trader npc is an improvement that's really needed.

Gw trade system sucks (sorry Anet but it does) compared to almost every game I've played, even free mmorpgs like knight online have user stalls,

/signed a million times over

/signed

/signed

/signed

i want it more than i want Gwen or GW2 yes oh yes give me a personal stall to sale my wares omg life in GW would be sooo sweeeettttt!!!

Syn

/signed

I gave up on selling purples and golds a long time ago, I ended up resorting to giving them away as prizes for finding me in Ascalon City, I hate selling purples and golds to vendors.

I am not going to read through all 6 pages. But I agree with what I read on the first page.

With all these Elite Armors and titles that require gold (booze, candy etc) gold is needed. As it stands the system is horrible. I can't be bothered to sit there spamming and I can't fit anything but 1 item in the party search.

I also can't be bothered to sit around untill someone acutally wants to trade.

This system reminds me of Ragnarok Online, there was a blacksmith class who could set up a stall and sell stuff. Also the hordes of crappy korean free MMOs all have the ability to set up a stall.

This is really a needed part of GW and I am not lying when I say that the current system has driven me to abandon GW for a week or so at a time. I have tons of stuff that I know sells, but I can't stand the process of selling.

Hopefully something like this can be implemented in GW1 and I know it will be a deciding factor in me getting GW2 or not.

This is an amazing idea. I agree with any sort of AFK auctioning thing. I have so much random crap, greens, golds, etc, that I have been wanting to sell but don't want to put up with the spam and unruly buyers.

/signed

/signed too. I love Guild Wars, but the trading system is complete crap. This would help so much.

/signed

I've been wanting to suggest something like this for a while, but it does still sounds too Maple Storyish. I'm not experienced in this, so I want to ask a question. You suggested having a single extra NPC to open up the trading window. Right now, for example, if you go to the rune seller there are a handful of tabs at the top representing the different classes. Click on the class, and you see the available runes. Instead of having everything in a party search type window, how about having it all done by item type (weapon, dye, material, etc.) and automatically organized by cost (cheapest highest)? Or for weapons and offhands organized first by color then by price? This eliminates any search function, people get the best deal available without having to browse all the stores, etc. It would resemble the merchant interface. The lists might get long, so there might need to be further breakdowns (such as weapon types or character classes). I'd like to know the feasability of something like this and why it would be more intensive than what you are suggesting. Everything else stay the same: automatic buy, money transfered to storage, etc. To make matters even simpler, just like you have to buy storage accounts, require purchase of vendor accounts that will keep your item on sell and hold your money until you come and pick it up. This way it could all be done offline as well.

Still, anything is better than what we have. I only know of one place I can sell consistently, and that is gems and trade contracts in Kodash Bazaar. I can't seem to sell anything else.

Regarding how this might adversely affect new players who do not know the costs, speaking as an inexperienced trader who frequently sells too low and buys too high, I think that's how it ought to be. Learn from experience, the most experienced do the best. If you can find someone to take you under their wing and help out, great. But people should at least know to check the merchant price before buying anything. That always saved me a lot of grief in Maple Story and in GW.

There are multiple well known and officially confirmed technical difficulties that make things like putting all the items up for sale by all players into one place and dividing them into cathegories impossible. Such an improvement would require reworking the way item data is stored on their servers (items aren't treated separately, no database like structures exist for items that would enable making queries and sorting item displays) and creating a whole new server and database structure, similar to what an Auction House would do, just without the bidding. And this is what we know we won't get in GW1.

To put it simplier, the way that certain npc traders like Rune Trader can show their stuff is determined by the fact those items are very standardized, and they're treated as a bulk - for example all Minor Vigor Runes are treated as one record in the mini database, no specific data to be remembered about every single copy of them. Goods sold by players are far different. Every single item would have to be put separately into a huge bag (database table) with complete item info (all stats and details like dyes used on it, seller account and buyout price). There's no data structure in GW even remotely similar to this thing.

This is why that what my suggested system does, uses the technology the game has right now, just adding a new degree of automation to it. For getting large number of sellers in one place we already got the PartySearch engine, but the improvement is that the short 31-characters description is just the beginning, the main thing being the [View Items] button. A player can already show up to 7 items in a trade window, the improved system allows others to view (just view, the actual transaction is a separate operation from technical point of view) what he shows + it shows the b/o prices. The actual transaction is also automated and performed just like a trade between 2 players, no npcs or separate transaction processing servers required.

Great idea. It's unfortunate that this making something like this is not a bigger priority for Arena.net, as it's clear that a vast majority of the playerbase would like to see it implemented. Especially when the most of the chat spam in Lion's Arch, Kamadan, Kaineng Center, & Droknar's Forge are related to Trade advertisements. From my experience, this has made spending more than 20 seconds in those places pretty aggravating. Any sense of community in the game is lost in these places.

My reasoning behind their unwillingness to revamp the trade system lies in the major flaw of their business model: "pay up front, no monthly cost." Unfortunately, their only incentive to make this happen would be if it guaranteed that it would increase their sales for GW2.

I've got to give the OP alot of credit for spending the time and energy on trying to be helpful and create an open dialogue between the players and developers, but I wouldn't get your hopes of if you're expecting an official response.

NOTE TO POSTERS

Could all posters please take note of the Sardelac Sanitarium sticky which asks users to not simply post "/signed". Any attempt to by-pass the 12 character limit will lead to post deletion.

Repeat offenders will be noted.

Why not? /signed for god's sake

/signed Excellent idea.

Hmmm... They could use one of their regular set of answers... "We're too busy with GW2", "Not to important", "Interface issues", "Technical issues", or just plain old silence (they use that quite often).

Officially confirmed means wack. Remember the "official" reason for not having 7 heroes? Yes, your interface would look ugly and would look like a mess. And that "reason" was the official one until they snapped and told us the real one. So, don't give me official "technical" dificulties. Any half good programmer could (given some x amount of time depending on its expertise) add the interface and backend needed to implement this trade improvement. It's not a very complex design.

/not signed

Not saying that GW does not have a major problem with trade / spam. But your system does not seem to help the buyer.

Say I want to buy an Enameled Shield 9 Req tactics. How I would I find it with your system. Unless the saler sets up a shop for that one Enameled Shield I would have to open hundreds of shops just to find that one item.

Another problem I see if AFK shops is that it will affect the servers because hundreds of people that break one of ANET's major rule and will setup one account to sale, one account to farm, and one account to sale gw gold for real money (that will eventually get closed down & another opened in its place). The sale account would stayed logged on countinously and use up band width. Right now they are forced to sit in town and spam so it is not so profitable to re-sale items every item.

Trade Island is a good ideal if heavily policed.
Auction house is a good ideal if the player can set reserves.

I still like the ideal of item traders added such as we have now with dye, material, runes, rare materials, etc...

Sword & Sword Mod Trader
Axe & Axe Mod Trader
Hammer & Hammer Mod Trader
Shield & Shield Mod Trader

Of course this ideal will only help with spam if they implement one the other ideals such as a trade island availably to all players at all levels.

Read this whole thread. I've given details of how a search system could be implemented if we give the stalls auto-generated names.

As it stands there is no reason to force people to stay online and AFK to run the stalls. Sure there will be some people who are willing to negotiate their prices and sleeping players won't be negotiating even if they want to. So I can see why people should be allowed to be online while running their stall

But I can't see a single reason why people should be forced to stay online simply to run an AFK stall. Just have the stalls automatically close after a while to deal with players who setup their stall, then stopped playing guild wars.
Your only moving the trade spam from the port towns to somewhere else. Considering that the trade spam is pretty well confined to trade chat, I don't see this actually doing anything.

ANET has said that because of the way Guild Wars is designed, an auction house would take too much work.
Agreed. But since the trader NPCs can operate alongside any other trade improvement, that is a topic for another thread.

/signed

gg I must addmit You got the best AH look-a-like idea I rly like it

/signed

I like the ideaaaaaaaaa

Oh please oh please I'm all for easy selling!!

/signed

There's no reason not to sign this.

/Signed.

/signed

This is sorely needed. Could be tested and perfected here then dressed and spiffied up for GW2. Give us a "real" economy to play with.

man i wish they'd skip on a couple of weekend events to work on this. Even a whole month would be fine but we NEED something better. The party search was a good start, but it's completely random. FFS it doesn't even sort the WTSs from the WTBs. At least with that i could buy/sell easier.

/signed a gazillion times

A solution to that would be to have an automatic time limit on AFK players... I know it sounds like a dragg but seriously alot of Monthly Fee Based MMOS already have this to save them cost of hosting so I think everyone could deal with it. (Age of Conan kicks a person off the server for being inactive for over an hour i think)

If you told me that the trade off for Guild Wars getting seller shops set up would be they would implement an auto kick for inactive players after an hour I would gladly accept!

@ Anet I completely understand your reasons for not implementing a traditional auction house in GW1 (doesnt mean that I like it) but I think this idea is a great compromise and I think that the comments on this thread have worked out most of the issues... so PLEASE GIVE US THIS! If not ( you are unable or see another issue that has not been discussed) please tell us why not so we can brainstorm on ways to fix it.

/signed with both my accounts!

I suggested the "kick person from full district if AFK over 15 minutes" thing almost a year ago and it was about 90% /notsign. I personally still feel it is a good idea, but...

Although, what would be the point of having a seller shop if you got kicked after an hour for inactivity? I would hate to have to sit at my computer and run around just to keep my seller shop active. Also, all the 9-rings (un)Lucky title farmers wouldn't be able to do it. Same with drunkards.

OP's idea still good after 13 months, so still a /sign from me

/signed, I think this is an excellent idea. Not only would it be easier to buy/sell items, it will remove a lot of the unwanted trade channel spamming.

1. nice necromancy

2. heard the GW devs are a little busy right now


(p.s it starts with G and ends with 2

1.) It is never necromancy if the need is still around and a appropriate solution has not been reached. No, WTS under party search is not an appropriate solution.

2.) Just because they are currently working on GW2 doesnt mean we should be content to let them ignore GW1. I would say that this is a serious flaw in GW1 and it is never too late to fix this as we still have years to wait for GW2.. every mmo should have a solid trade/barter system, even the makers of the crappiest free Korean mmos understand this.