The Xunlai Marketplace thread

Why not?

(12 characters.)

The only difference between the original AH and the Xunlai Marketplace will be that you have to be online to sell youre items ( if im not wront of course ) and they have to be in youre inventory which i think is kinda stupid would better be add a specal xunlai market storage which will hold youre listing .
Definitely a good addition!!! I hope itll be added soon.

Yeah. The inventory thing it's a bit annoying. It would be better if it used the Storage space.

But if making it that way to just use the same systems that are used in normal trades (get the item in your inventory, put the items for sale, trade) then taking up inventory slots it's a price I will be grateful to pay. I'll just put the tuff from my inventory to the storage while selling.

That would be counterintuitive because of A.Net's costs... it would probably be cheaper to find a way not to have people logged on to use the XMP than the opposite.

Otherwise, I will be logged on all day...

or ten hours at anytime idle. can't forget about that

but yeah, i think it'd be nice to do storage as well as inventory, but, meh, any type of marketplace will probably be better than what we work with now.

Bandwidth costs are fixed.

They're not on a 20 year old dial-up, being charged by minute or byte transferred.

Sounds cool! ..

The're also not on a home ISP "unlimited" plan. An increase in traffic that puts them over their normally expected amounts will cost them more, probably in getting more bandwidth to the servers that run GuildWars. Either that or we'll see about a million threads about lag issues. Depending on their contract with the service provider, there may also be some charges there for going over a set amount per time unit.

there was an interview with the guild wars devs about how this crying about bandwidth costs is unjust in this day and age and its still used as an "excuse" by companies that run MMORPGs on why there is a monthly cost to begin with

so you're just kind of adding to that oldhat belief and not really helping

i will dig up that interview ...

http://www.gamona.de/article/detail/...net_187508.htm

but on the other hand, it's not really THAT expensive - even if this is common belief.

And as you can probably imagine, companies running MMO which have to be paid for on a regular basis are quite happy if everyone thinks they have huge costs.

This is true. They made a reference to the idea that bandwidth for persistence & such is not an issue. That using bandwidth as a reason for charging subscription was unfounded. They did however agree that GMs, active monitoring & other services are a feasible reason for fees.

My point was not so much that bandwidth is a significant cost, as that it is something with a cost per unit. Many home ISPs sell "unlimited" bandwidth packages and this leads some users to believe that there is not per-unit cost for bandwidth. The person I responded too sounded like he was making that mistake when he said "Bandwidth costs are fixed."

Especially when you're getting about the same amount of traffic every month (or week or what ever), the cost is small and the price stays basically the same. However, if there were a big enough jump in traffic (I don't think there would be, honestly) from lots of people selling AFK while online because of the hypothetical XMP, then they would need to increase capacity. This would be a one time fee that's more expensive then the usual costs of maintaining the connection.

This is prolly one of the best ways I've seen to sell items. Like many others, I'm sure, I loathe selling items in-game or on the forums. Especially the forums, 1 hour after you post, your thread is 3 pages in. As for in-game, I just plain don't have the patience for it. This new way, however, will allow me to leave my "seller" character in game with all the items I have for sale, while I'm sleeping or at work. Yay! Or even while I'm playing I can run my 2 accounts at the same time, play on the main and use the 2ndary to sell stuff. I gotta say, I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it.

The way it seems to work, you would be able to play on a character while selling with that character. Physical presence doesn't seem to be required.

Don't forget it's all speculation until there's an official announcement, though.

Yeah, I just wish they could confirm or deny.... I hate when it's more benificial for companies to say nothing than to say anything, lol!

Maybe they wanted ideas about how to make things, give it for free or for a fee make it worldwide or require bine in an outposts and many other things, and they started the rumors to see what people think and act accordingly.

I realize that, but if I was playing a character with a bunch of stuff in his inventory, i wouldn't be able to pick up too much booty while adventuring, would I?

Could hinder bot mass farming.

They could use a system that, if you put an item on the AH , its stuck there and you have to get it back(or the gold) after the auction has ended.

People have pointed out before, that could lead to things like "10 Kournan Coins - Cost 100k - Duration: 99 days" because people might use the market as storage. I think leaving them in the characters regular storage space (either inventory or Xunlai chest) is an easy and not too inconvenient solution to this potential problem.

Abuse of trading mechanisms as extra storage dated from UO. Having to keep your item in your inventory is neat fix for that and it also reduces complexity if feature needed to implement (or at least i think it does.)

If we were to dig back to Gailes comments, we'd find that she said, "an auction house would be impossible to impliment" auction house would be, yes? but this type of trade house wouldn't. plai n and simple. If it were implimented then she wasn't lying as it isn't an auction house. Its a trade system. Also, how would the devs know its impossible to impliment unless they've tried? I think they've tried an auction house and discovered that it would be impossible but found that if they had done something different, it would work.

Just a thought. I belive it will be added sometime soon. There is just no way that they would continue to update and change files related to it if they were not actively working on it.

Possible issues with the trading system as we know it and important things that we don't know yet:

The reason why GW didn't get any trading system was the way GW handles storing of item info (binary large objects), no database-like structure, that made it impossible to do any searches and stuff. But apparently the new system CAN do searches and dividing items by cathegories, so there must be something like a database, with new records added for each new listed item.
But the item sold must remain in your inventory, which suggests that the database can't hold complete item data but just enough information to perform the searches.
To make it work the record has to include:
-seller's id or character name (not necessarily displayed, but the system must know that),
-unique item's id or a locked number of inventory slot the item takes,
-the price set by the seller,
-and enough information about the item to perform searches and to possibly display a complete item info frame.

Now possible issues with it:
*There's no mention of listing time, of items not being sold because of time expiring. Does that mean the item stays there forever unless bought or unlisted by the seller? I doubt that.
*The item must be in character's inventory so the whole selling system is character-based. What if you want to relog and play another character? The items get automatically unlisted or there's a new mysterious way the game can handle taking an item from another character than the active one and putting gold onto it?
*And if you just log off completely? Or get disconnected while in an outpost? (no reconnect) Having the items unlisted because of game crashes or network failures can be extremelly frustrating.
*If the Marketplace database can't hold complete item info, what data that might be important doesn't get stored there? It may be merch value (useless), it may be the dye combinations used (also useless if there's no preview window), or even the item skin (that's not in the name) - that's the problem! - gl buying a Serpent Axe which may be Tyrian or Canthan version, or some rare versions of Earth Staff (orrish) or Flame Artifact (eyeball).
Each item stored in inventory may contain even more data that has no use in Marketplace system, like unique id code or a timestamp (duping prevention).

Another thing:
Is there anything else in GW that refers to "in this game"?
The other line is more disturbing, it may mean that the whole search engine isn't even cross-district like Party Search. So you would have to go Xunlai Marketplace int-1, do your search, go int-2 and search again, go int-3 and repeat... pretty sucky.
Or you can do 2 kinds of searches - all districts with possibility that you will only see "Only the oldest %num1% matching item[s]" (bandwidth issues i guess) OR search your current district. That would be fine but no other texts suggest 2 ways of searching.
Or maybe those strings are used only when someone wants to perform a search while being in a different place than the Marketplace, or they come from an old version of the system that allowed listing items in all towns.

Also:
We know the item listing cost doesn't get refunded when you want to unlist the item. This makes sense, it's a mean to make players double-think before posting something bad or overpriced (or both).
But what if the item sells? Does the cost get refunded then, as (I heard) some other games do? That would open a possibility for owners of 2 accounts - just buy your own items and avoid any costs. Then relist them using the other acc... and so on.
Better don't refund listing costs.

Not sure I see what that will benefit anyone... I thought the point of selling an item was making money, not transferring it.

The "There are no items for sale in this district." sounds crappy. Even the party search is cross district so I don't see why they would do that. Maybe it's a search parameter?

Also, one of the lines was something like "You cannot drop this item as it is listed" so it seems that you can list items then go and play normally.

I'm saying it could be a way to bypass the losing item listing cost and letting certain players list items at higher than market value. Or simply never use the 'unlist' button as we know it means losing that payment.

As for transfering money, great idea, I haven't thought about it, good help for those who have more than 1 acc but can't run 2 copies of gw.

But all that only matters if the listing cost is refunded upon selling, which it's probably not.
Yes, but what if you want to play normally using a different character? It seems a bit complicated if the system could perform the trade with a nonactive char.

It doesn't seem like you can sell when you are logged off, But I'm not sure.

It would be awesome though, instead of GWG, you wouldn't need to have a meeting place yada yada.....

Well, you don't really have to play when you are online ... AFK, you can be online even while you are sleeping.

Could be that you could place traded item in storage, so switching characters would not be much of issue.

No comment....

That would make the most sense but then what's the point of this line:
Also, we can't see an opposite one - about moving item from storage to inventory, that

The best solution would be listing the items only from your xunlai chest (even better - putting them into a new tab used just for selling) to allow playing different characters, and having the gold from sales go to your account storage first, then if it's full, to your active character's inv.
The way it's now:
having a high-end item sold while you were playing can leave you unable to pick up gold.
key to success is simple: first to storage, then to your inv.

I don't remember her saying it was impossible. Just that there wasnt going to be an AH.

But, yeah. I know what your saying here, this isn't an AH.

never used it i need too tho

Lets hope it will get fixed pre-release (instead of after wave of minor QQs after release).

Maybe they require items to be in the inventory because they just made an 'automated' system that sues the already existing trade system.

Instead of talking to someone, hit trade, and then trade items, you go to the market, put the items on a list, and the existing trade mechanic is used with those items.

That's the most probable reason, since you cannot put items in the trade panel to sell from the storage, they must be in the inventory.
On top of that, the game do not considers items in the storage to be owned by you. It's like if they where frozen or something.
Try it with quests. Put in storage, you don't have it, you lose the objective done. Get it again, you regain the completed objective.

So, problably it just uses the already existin mechanics to ease the implementation, and the market is just a way to sell without having to be in the same outpost or using the trade panel, but internally would work the same.

That should explain it all.

Sounds reasonable for GW1. Hopefully in GW2 we see another non-AH trade system but more advanced then the XMP.

"XMP" BTW, if and when this gets released we need a bunch of people to call it "XMP" so the community doesnt let "AH" catch on in this situation.

I'm getting more and more hopeful every day, as the devs hide from this discussion.

Any changes in .dat from Todays (31) update?

Well, all strings pertaining to the marketplace were nuked out of my dat. Very odd. No new information from me

you ruined the surprise lulz

I expected something like that happening. Of course, it tells us nothing one way or the other. Only that it prevents us from tracking progress.

Maybe the devs liked my sadistic streak and are now scrapping the idea because everyone is far too nosy :P