Trade spam enforcement

bah .. just add this to the looooooong list of fixes needed

No need to ADD it to any list really

The games been out for what a year?

People have been asking for it since release, instead we get minipets, ill shutup now as i cant be arsed to argue with fanboys anymore.

2 words: wisper spam.
If someone is spamming the local chat with stuff that should be in the trade channel, get all your guildies and friends to spam them with wispers saying "stop using local channel to sell your junk". The person may ignore some of you but you will basiclly shut his bussiness down since his chat window will be flooded with PM's. Nice? not really, but thats the point. Use the right channel, thats why they put it there in the first place.

I'm pretty certain vigilanteism leads to more problems than solutions. For one, you and your entire gang of friends could be given timeouts for harrassment.

As I said, because ANet still hasn't created any kind of easy trade mechanism (auction house, for example) the PLAYERS need to adapt to make things easier.

Since LA Dist 1 is the unofficial trade location for items (for example) and has been since the first player reached it over a year ago, then let the natural order of things settle instead of getting your panties in a bunch over something you (the player) are never going to fix anyway.

You (the player) can NOT change the current system by insisting they use GWG trade/auction for example. As much as you'd LIKE it to happen, it's not going to. Only ANet can, and this change isn't going to solve anything.

What ANet SHOULD do to fix this? Create a town in the same location as all of the PVP towns (Battle Islands) that is openly accessible to everyone post searing, and designate it as "World Bazaar". The town has no quests, or missions, or instanced exits. You travel there by boat. it has all of the NPC traders. And it's designated as THE place to buy and sell.

Boom, there is your auction house.

You can even make it with portals to separate added locations created specifically for genres, runes, crafting, mods, rares, greens, etc. if ANet wanted to make it less chaotic.

I don't see how creating anything this simple would take all that long, and it would eliminate almost all of the trade issues (except scamming) within the game.

and u ll be answered that Auction House is useless since everything is being done to remove expensive/rare stuff from the game ... look at the Factions Collectors/Crafters

what ll u sell in yer Auction House? non perf rares already impossible to sell ..
the few minor runes / crafting material u just dropped ? .. got a trader for those already and faster than watching auctions

what's left ? :/ just add a minipet selling NPC and it'll end all this

We don't have an auction house or any trade system yet because this is ArenaNet. As mentioned by someone earlier (and myself on my gw-blog/rant), Guild Wars has existed for over a year, and they've done what? Made a pink channel, and add a filter for "WTB" and "WTS."

Are you fscking kidding me? That's all the developers can do?! That's a pretty horrible performance. I will grant ANet that they're on top of skill fixes (most of the time), but the rest of the game with bugs and broken systems is almost outright ignored. And yet we're supposed to simply accept broken mechanics just because we're not paying $15/mo for broken shit?

Free or expensive, broken is still broken, and it's been broken as long as it's been out. I suggest waking up ArenaNet, and dealing with the crap you half-heartedly work on and rush to implementation.

Just check on Guru Auctions to see what can be sold or not. An Auction House wouldn't be useless imo, with more than 3000 auctions active all the time, there would be for sure a utility to it.

I agree in a way and let me explain why - that pink color for trade is REALLY hard to see when you have 6mill + people selling stuff - I am always greatful for those people who break the rules and use local (gives me a place to shift in a slight bit of pink that might actually be seen!).

I think we need auction houses - now this is something I saw in Silk Roads, but they were booths just set up at random in towns. Above the booths were the type of items they sold - high end, materials, cheap, all rare, swords, or other various weapons. If they had just one item that was the description for their booth.
I think it was against policy to sell in actual local chat (not certain on that).

Now the only flaw I saw in this was that they were EVERYWHERE! I mean you would see them lining the roads and so forth (granted the game didn't have instances). But it was so cluttered it was hard to find the NPCs that ya needed to find. However I think this could go decently well if GW had a trade house or two where you could setup in a similar manner. This would take them out of the major towns and make them available elsewhere. Then they would have to enforce the no selling in towns rule - If the filter can catch these guys and move their text to the Trade channel then why can it not report them and take away their local chat functions for a certain period of time if they are caught breaking the rule?

But the way it is setup now I prefer watching the white scroll of WTB and WTS, cause the pink just friggen hurts watching it -_-

While I do think that spamming local chat is wrong it is for the most part contained to D1 of LA, D1 of Droks, and D1 of Ascalon and whenever I am looking to buy or sell those are the places I go, otherwise I stick to other districts.
There has to be a better way and some form of Auction House is the ONLY way I can see this being settled and everyone being happy. That trade channel goes so fast I can't keep up and half the time its impossible to scroll back and find what you need. And forget about posting a WTB in the trade channel - I can do that for hours and get nothing, but do it one time in local and I get 2095720957 messages (tested and tried theory trust me -_- but it only counts for D1 of major towns.)....

It's flawed I know, but such is life and while I don't break the trading rules I won't complain about how they were. We need something better and that is all there is to it.

I do feel sorry for the new people who are confused by all the spam and if it comes to my attention I steer them to another district where help is probably better provided (that is if it is nothing I can personally help with).

I understand both sides and I think that was what the quoted poster was trying to say.

[Edit] Thats what I get for not reading the whole fast moving thread - Mimi posted pretty much what I said

I do think it is important that Anet has come out with a change that at least says "Buying and Selling should be done in the trade channel, and we are trying to enforce that", even if the effort is ineffective. I would bet that there are plenty of people out there who never used the trade channel simply because they thought that it was irrelevant. Maybe this will be a bit of a wake-up call to tell people that there is a place for this, and to please use it.

I agree that the solution is ineffective so far, but at least they are trying.

There is the Trade channel, people could have adapted to use it, but instead they insist on spamming on Local, people should have adapted to use trade channel efficiently, most of the annoyances of the current spam would be avoided.

Where-ever are population hubs, there is trade spam. Droknar's Forge, Kaineng Center, House zu Helzer and Cavalon are spammed to the ends of the earth with the trade spam.

We could insist them to use the trade channel instead.

A good system in theory, but I'm afraid it won't be that simple if they really implemented this. People hang out at Cavalon/Hzh/Drok's to craft armor and use the advanced traders, I'd believe they are lazy enough to continue using these current hubs instead of zooming out in the planet map, clicking on ship, clicking on great island, clicking on bazaar to make their shopping at NPCs.. And when people don't want to be bothered to click their way out to the new area, the sellers will stick to the current hubs. No idea in spamming your juicy WTS's in the 'bazaar' with only other people doing their WTS's.

But yes, we do need a centralized shopping system for selling the stuff, I'd favor an additional broker NPC in these hubs, who would store all the items players want to sell among their prices. Although I don't believe even that would kill off the spam unless the channel policies are enforced for some time.

I see this update totally pointless, players will just make a new WTS/WTB and spam will be still there.

as long as there are trades, local ll be spammed since it's the place u can be seen when trade channel is closed ... u want ppl see yer items ^^

u can add/remove any nomber of channels and filters it wont change even if u ban half of the dictionnary in Local chan
even if ppl have to type W.T.S.E.L.L

But not spam proof! Seriously. Wow has a pretty solid auction house, and guess what? There's still trade spam.

Serios questions then

How much spam

In how many/what districts

Is there a reason for it (eg, auction house costs money to use, for seller and buyer / is it just crap)

A solution is needed, so lets look for one!

Trading in the local chat WORKS, and thats why people use it. The answere to stop it is simple, come up with something BETTER, nothing else is going to realistly work.

job done

I only have problems with the spam when I want to find a pug....then its almost impossible to get a 'LFG' in amogst the WTS/WTB......and its NOT in the districts mentioned above...but toa and others.............oh well. henchies it is.

I play Magic: The Gathering online, and they always have moderators (adepts) in the chat areas. These are volunteers from the comunity that help enfoce the game rules and have the power to mute people, or report to the comany banable offences. This is a very effective way to deal with this problem. And yes, rouge Adepts that abuse their power are quickly dismissed and punished acordingly. GW sould implement a similar idea.

You can't expect players to use the trade channel - everything goes by so fast in that that it will give you a migraine in no time flat.

The devs really need to take responsibility for the headache-inducing mess that is the Guild Wars trade channel. Put in an auction house instead of punishing players who actually bother to try to trade at all, even in local.

I personally hardly ever trade and I know many people who never trade because it's too much of a pain to bother with. Those people who support the game and economy by making an effort to trade in local instead of not trading at all, should be rewarded by the devs.

Saying to ban people for trading in local is ludicrous. I'm sure the devs don't want to be responsible for giving people migraines - and that is exactly what forcing people to use the trade channel will cause to happen.

This new filter is very stupid and an insult to the players.

The spam on trade channel gives you a migraine because it is so fast?

But the exactly same spam on Local doesn't give you a migraine?

I don't follow your logic. If the color of the channel is wrong, then why not make a suggestion to change it. :P

Trade-channel is named 'Trade'-channel for a reason. o_O?

trade channel dosnt work

come up with an alternative rahter than defending a broken system

What do you mean? I just hit $, typed "testing", and it showed up fine on the trade channel. Seems to work perfectly here!

Ok, this isn't only about spam, guys. There are people who play this game (like me) who would love to sell stuff but don't feel like sitting around shouting "SALTED NUUUUUUTS!!!!!" all the time.

I could care less about the spam. there is ALWAYS a district without spam that I can zone to. ALWAYS. What I want is a way to actually sell the stuff I want to sell without requiring I participate in this insanely broken Bazaar system where you have to try and fool a spam filter just to get people to nitice you are selling something.

An auction house would be a start. Take Wow and SWG, they did it fine. Start there and improve on it after there's at least something people can use.

It's freakin' stupid that it's been a year and not even the first step towards a healthy barter system has been implemented. EVEN A FAN CONTROLLED FORUM CREATED AN AUCTION HOUSE THAT WORKS WELL!!! HOW HARD COULD IT BE FOR THE DEVELOPERS OF THE GAME???

Seriously, there is no real reason I can think of. GWGuru has a better trading system created by unpayed fan-devs than the game we paid for.

Make a basic auction house.
Stick it in the game.
Make improvements if you need to.

I've been in tiny out-of the-way towns with under 10 other people in them and there was still trade spam. Some idiot would "WTS" every minute for a while even though no one else is even saying anything. To say only a few major dist.1 hubs gets spammed is absolutely wrong.

I agree there needs to be an auction house or something- i've been playing 11 months and NEVER bought/sold ANYTHING. I'd rather give it away than be an annoying spammer-in fact just last night I gave out 3 gold hammers for free in Sardalec. They might turn around and sell them, but they might use them and either way it's better than just getting 150 gold from a merchant.

ROFL can I go with you?

Point is I shouldn't have to turn off a channel that shouldn't be used for trade anyway...that channel is for questions and finding groups.

NEWS FLASH IDIOTS!!!!! TRADE GOES INTO THE TRADE CHANNEL!

I don't feel like reading tons of mindless rants. But due to the new update, messages typed in ALL CHAT included with the words "WTB or "WTS" at the beginning of the sentence places it in trade channel automaticly.

So say the chat is checked on "all chat"
1) Type WTB Mini Pet
2) New trade update puts it in Trade channel message than all chat.

[Quote]
Trade channel doesn’t work

come up with an alternative rather than defending a broken system
\[quote]

Um your logic is strange
Using the common chat to spam your sale pitch is no different from spamming in trade chat. With people spamming in either location they both become unreadable. The problem here is not the area used but the excessive spamming by sellers. To the people who need to trade, you only need to type your message once!!! If people want to purchase your items they can scroll the chat back up to see your message.

My biggest gripe with the trade chat is the pink text can be hard to read at times.

I think that the filter move is a good one as it finally sends the message to the sellers that no, it is not all right for you to sell in common chat please use the trade chat.

since vendors are already coded, i really don't see why they don't add vendors for mods, greens, or even mini pets. then follow this up with the coup-de-gras of using local chat for trades becoming bannable. by having the gap between price bought for and sold for at npc merchants they are kind of encouraging people to use chat to market them to increase profit margin. briefly spamming local chat is for the legitimate player the release from farming. ie, if i could get a decent amount for this +1 20% air wrap i won't have to farm for a few days, thus making the game more enjoyable for me, and enabling me to spend more time gvging, helping with missions, w/e. since the trade channel is ignored, it is ironically a poor trade channel. flame away, but when i eventually get money again and i see an add in local chat for a 20% death, blood, enchanting, or mod i need, i won't be mad at the seller. before i run out of patience trying to sell things i often answer questions people ask about the game in local chat with pms. takes away some of the tedium.

well at least i dont have to waste my time changing from local to trade and back and forth -_-"

Trade,the hell of online games. This is why I'm not a merchant in-game!

whatever..... its not lik eanything will change.

i have been ok with traders, if i wanna buy something, i just go to ascalon and read posts, usually i see it in a min or two. ive made it so far with with traders making groups in D3, and i'm not complaining.

anyways, any person who uses a tiny little common sence knows that to sell a product you need to expose it, and so far the only way to do so it in local chat.

if i turn trade chat on, everything runs buy sO freakin fast from all those posts i cant even read properly, and if item i need comes along i spend time scrolling and serching for the seller. so yes i keep it closed.

for whiners, i think GW should just do a personal filter, to be able to block not only words, but groups of words, like : "W T S" or "selling" or "want to sell"

in your last few lines of your blog you said but on the website at guildwars.com/support/gameupdates. they state it's an don't think that's lying. not sure what Mrs. Gray has said about the chat stuff... but i'm happy w/ the improvment.


not a coder or programer but can't you do some sort of wild card function for the spaces and dashes?


i'm glad there working on fixing the chat. and like someone else said turn off the trade or go to dis 2 or highter.

to bad no one uses the "market place" to market stuff in factions

oh ya... like someone said.........Auction house FTW!!!!


EDIT
here's an ideal....

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...9&postcount=22

make a misson/quest chat.....

The problem with an auction house system is that it would be easily avoided by potential buyers, just as would a specific trading location. This would make it unattractive to the WTSers.

Their tactics are chosen specifically to place them where the largest market is and they are not phased by any criticism you might direct at them or the disruption they cause. Think of a cold caller who phones during dinner to sell you a new mobile phone/kitchen/insurance etc. No matter how much it annoys everyone, they keep doing it, so must be making some money.

An auction house might be used by legit players, but the bots and griefers would stay where they are now (maybe using auctions as well). The only way it might impact on them IMO is if so many traders used the auction house that it made it unprofitable to trade elsewhere.

Ohhhh humor.

Why not try addressing the issue. Trade channel does not work in the sense it is not a good place to trade. Often i have sold things in minutes that wouldnt shift for several minutes, or up to half an hour in trade.

IT DOES NOT WORK.

why not come up with a solution rather than using bad jokes, or sarcasm to brush aside the issue.

Another fanboy resorting to insults rather than using his brain and coming up with intelligent responses or suggestions.

obviosly beyond you.

Saying they are exactly the same is incorrect.

Both channels are indeed capable of giving migraines However, the trade channel tends to scroll by much faster and hence is capable of giving migraines much faster, because there are more people spamming in the trade channel than there are spamming in the local channel.

Naming the channel "Trade" is not very apt in my view. I think they should rename the channel to "Free Migraines" or something like that.

you know what you are dont you... you are the in game equivalant of the door - door salesman that barges into your house to try and get you to buy a vacuum cleaner (or whatever). if i want a vacuum cleaner i will go to the shop and buy one. i wont buy one off you.

using the global chat is the same thing you are forcing your way where you arent wanted. if people want to buy things they will go to the trade channel and buy from the people there not from you. if they have the trade channel turned off then they arent potential customers and therefore you have no valid excuse for using global chat in the first place

There won't be any difference if Local really was defacto trading channel, no-one would use the trade, and every single want-to-sell spam would be on local, there is no difference in the end. Luckily, or unfortunately, this isn't the case, as there are some 'smart' players who actually do use Trade-channel. Maybe they should start spamming on local as well because trade channel is totally useless as people say? Especially seeing that they are 'punished' by doing the 'right thing'.

The situation is a little similar in GW as it is in RL with eMail spam. The spammers send out millions of emails, to pretty much everyone who they can, and they just need couple real buyers from this group of millions to make it profitable. And there always is people who buy stuff from spammers, otherwise there wouldn't be so much of it.

In similar way, spamming your WTS in Local reaches more people than those who are buying their vacuum cleaner from the shop, most of people don't care, but the minor fraction that buys stuff from people spamming on local makes it profitable, ie. worth their while.

Yes, the current system isn’t great. Yes, it needs to be improved. However sometimes the improvements are MUCH more complicated then you can imagine. The users say: give us an auction house, but in reality the BEST solution may NOT be a trading house at all. Anet will want to INVESTIGATE and TEST, and TEST somemore. These things take TIME. This is further complicated by the fact that trading is NOT a SIMPLE matter and of the whole game it is the ONE feature that CANNOT AFFORD TO FAIL.

The simplistic things Anet have been implementing are short term fixes, because short term fixed ARE REQUIRED between now and when they finally finish testing and implementing whatever long term solution they come up with.

A filter is certainly a good step. With the filter implemented to divert chat to the appropriate channel, keywords which trigger the diversion should be fairly easy to update. Assuming that is, that the devs have programmed to check a source of words (ie all on a list) rather than only checking for two (wtb & wts). I'm assuming that the devs aren't completely stupid and the list will be updated. Sure, it isn't going to stop people doing it, but I think sellers are going to have to use a little creative thinking in the coming months in order to get around the filter. Judging by some of the things I've seen some traders write, creative thinking might not be their strong point.

it doesnt make it right though

When I'm trading, I generally turn the local channel off because I don't want to listen to local chat or do business with anybody stupid enough not to use the trade channel.

What the hell is the problem with using the trade channel? None.

Bottom line: Anybody who doesn't use the trade channel is a bot or a moron.

Is there SOMETHING wrong WITH your CAPS key?

your right it cannot afford to fail, or they look silly.

So they put in a non existant system (a chat channel is not a trade system), theve had a year, and nothing has happend so far. It would be nice if they told us what they where planning.

im bored now