Local chat is doomed -_-

The filter for WTB and WTS just isn't working....

Right now in Euro Drok District 1. Local chat is being spammed WORSE than trade chat itself with a few morons who simply cannot use the fricken trade channel.

We might as well leave local to it's doomed stance and make a new channel called "Talk" at this rate >_<

I've met quite a few people in my travels talking about the local chat spammers,asking them to stop. Though once in a district in Kaineng Center me and some other people were able to have a conversation in local chat!

Then once that channel fills up we can start up the "Speak" channel and then eventually the "SCREAM" channel

Maybe they'll just take the new trading system we've been promised to come "after factions" and bundle it into Chapter 3 as a "feature" to boost Christmas sales.

It's actually because Anet seems under-staffed or something and cannot focus on many issues at once. A few months to fix a major issue with factions elite missions on a game that just came out.. come on Anet, that's just unprofessional and if Ch. 3 comes out before......

Anyways, filters (as many already know) don't work, and unless they come up with a solution to trading, the local chat will always be spammed to get more attention for people looking to sell. You can filter my chat all day long and I am sure there is a way to get around it.

You can't blame people because the trading system is worse than many games out there (which is kind of sad considering the quality of the game). Well that didn't come out the way I meant, what I mean is that you can't expect, with a large community, that people will remain civil and act appropriately.

....Should we start chatting in the Trade channel and see how they like it? XD

I agree that ArenaNet's handling of sale-spam in Local Chat is horrible and their efforts for an improved trading system has no evidence to support it exists. Is the filter their idea of an improvement, or is it just a touch they felt should be implemented while they work on bigger fixes to trade? I wrote my thoughts/feelings on this on GWS. http://gws.echoshift.net/?p=9

Hrm.

I actually agree with people using the local chat instead of the trade chat to buy/sell items, and I do it myself. I can say, from personal experience, that it is much faster to sell items on local chat than trade chat. Most other people trying to sell items will agree with me.

First, approach it from a seller's stand point. You have an item you don't need, and have no reasonable way to sell it. There are no merchants for many of the items that are often sold (green items/ special event items/ minipets/ etc.), and the only way to get any gold from these items is to sell it to another player. Whats the easiest way to sell an item? Have it seen by as many people as possible. Restricting your advertisements to the trade channel means alot less people will see your advertisement, which in turn means you will spend much more time trying to sell your item. I know people will argue that "if I wanted to buy an item, I would turn on trade chat", but this is a pretty weak argument. Of the many items I have sold, a lot of them were to players who had not entered the town expecting to make the purchase. These are people who were just passing through town, happened to hear an item being sold that they thought might be useful, found the price to be reasonable, and bought it. This is how a majority of transactions are done.

Coming at it from a buyer's standpoint, I know that I had not given much thought to buying a Ragos' Flame Staff for my elementalist, but had happened to be passing through Camp Rankor when someone was selling one for what I considered to be a good price. I thought about it, and went ahead and bought it. I'm sure a majority of the players can relate to experiences like this. Of course, I am referring to players with enough surplus gold in their banks to make purchases like this (I know some players have never had more than 10k in their storage and couldn't make a sizeable purchase even if they wanted to, maybe all the hate is just bitterness at being poor?).

Its just basic economics. Anet has not given us an efficient way of doing player to player transactions. They instead expect us to spend an hour or two in town spamming advertisements. Of course people are going to find the quickest way to make these sales (i.e. spamming local chat), there are no better alternatives.

Except Local Chat isn't intended to be the chat channel for trading. That's what Trade Chat is for. Screw economics, what about respecting your fellow players so they can have a damn discussion in local chat without having to see you traders spam your ads?

Agreed. I dont care how much better it is to use the all chat to buy/sell, theres a reason theres the trade channel. We dont spam trade channel with conversations, dont spam all channel with trading

As much as its great to be honest and act appropriate.. there is almost no chance you can ask an entire community to stop using the local chat when the trading system is just poor. It is another problem in the game that isn't being adressed that is causing this problem. It isn't people, they will go to great lengths to make some cash

I don't think I've ever seen an intelligent conversation in local chat, so I don't think anyone is missing much. I don't really see that as the issue, though. Originally, there was no trade chat, and all advertisements were on local chat. Anet implemented the trade chat to help with the advertisements, but no one really benefitted. The traders spent even longer trying to sell their stuff, which meant they had less time to play the actual game. If you want someone to blame, blame Anet for not implementing some form of trade house where I can spend 5 minutes putting my stuff up for sale and continue about my business. Instead, I have to spend hours spamming chat, and if I have to do that, I'm going to cut my time as much as possible, which means spamming local chat.

either way dont expect to have an intelligent conversation in dist 1 of any place because it is always drowned out with trade caht anyway, yes you can turn it off but even half the time you got 12 year olds that just learned their first swear word and want everyone to know about it. Most intelligent convo tends to be in Fishermans haven i have found

I'd rather see some people trying to actually have a conversation then seeing

~~~~~~`WTSELL~~~~~UBER LEET ZODIAC SWORD~~~~~~100k +50 ECTOS~~~~~~~~~~1

~~~~~~`WTSELL~~~~~UBER LEET ZODIAC SWORD~~~~~~100k +50 ECTOS~~~~~~~~~~2

~~~~~~`WTSELL~~~~~UBER LEET ZODIAC SWORD~~~~~~100k +50 ECTOS~~~~~~~~~~3

I do agree with ya on that, but it isn't the traders you should have the issue with. Take issue with Anet for not giving us any alternative (trade chat isn't a viable alternative).

Please, explain how the trade channel isnt useful.

Uh, reread my original post? I think that was the entire point of it. Getting your advertisement seen by as many people as possible means you get your item sold faster. Advertisements on local chat reaches more people than advertisements on trade chat. Experience has proven this time and time again.

Please reread my original post.

I am certain you wouldnt mind a commercial interupting every phone call you make given your standpoint then.

It is essentially the same thing.

Not really, no one has the ability to interrupt a whisper, and you can turn off local chat if it really bothers you.

How is that a weak argument or even something to be argued? Seems pretty plain and simple to me. Kind of like saying, "Sorry, not interested." without saying anything. People don't have to buy other people's crap all the time in this game to get something good, or have to be rich to do it. This isn't really a game that has uber weapons or gear that you have to rely on to succeed, it's just vanity items.

I'm sure if you had a gang of about 5-6 people that harrassed people on the streets everyday, most might get mad, but you might catch a few people off guard that didn't know they wanted to buy anything. Another term for it relating to real life, would be door-to-door sales, but since we can't really close the door on you (unless we turn all chat off), it becomes utterly annoying.

I don't think so, I have plenty of money that I got from not selling items to other people, but to the merchant. I still find it annoying, and a bit rude actually. They set up a filter to filter WTS and WTB into the trade channel automatically, but they also gave instructions on what is not filtered (at least on what I read). Gee, what was the point of that then, lol? Would of been better to just be anonymous, but I'm sure sellers would of tried something eventually anyway.

How about, if nobody wants to buy your crap in the trade channel, to just give up and go about your business doing something else? Is it that important that somebody needs to buy your junk, and fast? I've also heard that your items sell better when we have favor, there's a full moon, your sales text is neon colored, toss salt over your shoulders, etc.

Seriously though, if you want better alternatives, and there are none right now, how about making money some other way? There's plenty of ways to earn money in this game without relying on others to provide it for your items. One thread I looked at talked about selling rare and common materials when prices go up. If the majority of GW players are poor, and there's an overstock of vanity items, seek alternatives or cheaper selling items. If they're affordable by the majority of buyers, then you're back in business. Then you have economy again, can't base all products on much higher value than the average person's income can you? Who's gonna buy, the rich? There's not alot of them running around, and if there are, chances are they're into exotics or something.

I knew that.

This isnt a weak argument. Its true, if you dont wanna buy anything, and you dont wanna see all the spamming, you turn off the trade channel. Instead of being so selfish and using all chat, think of all the people who dont wanna hear the trading crap. How are you being selfish? You will use the all channel so YOU can sell YOUR item so YOU get money.

This game isnt all about selling/buying. If you REALLY wanna sell/buy something, you'll wait an hour or two. How about this, forget basic economics, and think of basic rules. Again, you dont have to spam local chat. Ive sold many items IN TRADE CHANNEL (Omgz, no way )

To sum up, stop thinking about yourself and think about the others that dont wanna see spamming. Sorry, its true.

So, your answer then to having a wider audience of advertisement is to force everyone away from the medium in which the advertising occurs.

Ok, im glad we got that out of the way. Seriously go back to the trade channel and the original situation is restored.

waitwaitwait

So, the best way to sell something is by having it seen by as many people as possible...

So unless there is a way to reach more people, the sellers will keep using all chat?
So the only way to get them out of the local chat is by euh, finding a way to annoy people even more? Like having huge flashing ads or something?

I don't know about the laws in other countries but I know a few where you can refuse to accept ads and if you get ads anyway, you can sue.

So in the end, the only way to get rid of the WTSers is by giving them an auction house of some kind and by making it illegal to advertise in the chat. (If it wouldn't be illegal then they would do this:

WTS VICTOS AXE, BEST WEAPON IN GAME, CHECK AUCTION HOUSE ENTRY #4776632__________1

WTS VICTOS AXE, BEST WEAPON IN GAME, CHECK AUCTION HOUSE ENTRY #4776632__________2

WTS VICTOS AXE, BEST WEAPON IN GAME, CHECK AUCTION HOUSE ENTRY #4776632__________3


Make it an insta-bannable offense to advertise in ANY chat and add an alternative way of trading among players.
Looks like that is the only sollution?

then how do we set up a PUG? How do I ask questions? The Local chat is there for people to talk to each other, to set up groups, to get help. The Trade chat is for trades. I'm sorry that you are unable to follow directions. But I'm not going to turn of local chat so that incosiderate people can spam crap. I'm sorry that you feel that you have the right to abuse everyone else and don't care how annoying you are, but it is YOUR fault, not ArenaNet's. You made the choice to spam local, even though you know how much it annoys everyone. You made the choice to ignore the rules and guidelines set up for the game. And I am NOT going to turn off my chat for idiots such as yourself.

I think you all are really missing the point. I am not disagreeing about how much nicer it would be to have a clean local chat. That being said, though, a majority of sellers, like myself, are not farmers with a constant inflow of items that they want to sell. They just happen to pick up a green or two here and there, maybe a few holiday items, that they have no way of selling to a merchant for a reasonable price. The only option is trade chat, but I am not going to spend 2 hours trying to sell something on a broken system when I can spend 30 minutes selling it on local chat. If you want to take issue with someone, talk to Anet, ask them whats up with the trade house that they promised. In the mean time, take it a little easy on the traders who are just trying to get back to playing the actual game.

I understand where your coming from. I used to always sell in all channel, just for little things that I picked up. Sure, your only 1 person doing 1 little thing. But its not just 1 person, its 1 person AND the people already there. Only thing I can think of is selling to a guildie I guess.

As it is near imposible to read (at a peak hour) all the trade WTS/WTB in d1 of any major city.The people whom want to Lfg or just chat almost don't exsist there.Not to mention the migrain headache of trying to read the adds or the "message suppresed due to exsisive messaging"as we players that don't use spam bots see often.

The solution is so obvious.Put in a Trade island and eliminate the trade channel all together.Players will need to band together to support this idea.i.e. don't buy ANYTHING outside said island from another player.the only NPCs in this island should be a storage unit with 5 agents/a merchant/and the armor upgrade guy(to upgrade yer fow armor) ect.
This island should be in between tyria and cantha that all players can map to via the travel icon(this will do nothing for pre-searing sry guys)And upon this isle you could put a city(the npc controled action house)it would funtion like a city in a city so that the whole area is public domain.

will this completely get rid of spam? probably not. But from a sellers perspective,"why sell to people that are not looking to spend there gold?when i can go to said place where people who are looking to buy/trade/sell items are all gathered.

On this isle your party is limited to 2 people,and there should be a Local,Whisper,WTB,WTS,WTT,party,guild channel only.there should also be a monitoring of repeat spam(bots get banned) and you can only repeat your message when it no longer apears in the text box.(with the party and guild exception,if you spam your guild you prob wont be in it very long....lol.)

well, there its is in a nut shell kids.
please feel free to add your comments/ideas.
i would LOVE this feature.

/signed

I hate to say this, but it looks like this is the only reasonable suggestion. This or anyone who uses all channel gets banned.

I've used both local and trade chat to buy and sell.. most of my purchases have been from items I have seen from local chat just due to the color of the text. Local chat is nice because it differentiates the name of the player and what they are saying using different colors (yellow and white). Trade is all pink, if I watch it for a minute it just all blend together making it quite hard to read. I don't know if this is the case for other people, but it's one reason I have used local chat over trade chat.

It would be nice if trade chat could be made so the player name and what they are saying are different colors (pink and white?).. It may help a bit but for sure wouldn't get rid of all of the local chat WTS spam.


It would be nice, but on the 'monitoring repeat spam' part, rather than when your message leaves the text box (since you can resize it), make it so you can only send that same message again after X time has elapsed since you last sent that message.

perfect....ty

I don't think its fair to go telling ppl to stop spamming when they clearly feel that the trade channel is insufficient. The root of the problem is trading, and local chat spamming will stop if the root of the problem is addressed.

Similar to a previous post, why would I spend 2 hours to sell something when I can get through to more people and possibly sell something in 1 hour? I have to agree it is true that I buy things based on what I see sometimes in the local chat, and that selling is sometimes very difficult because the trade channel is all spamming WTB, WTS and it's a headache to look at, so I wouldn't even want to trade (even though thats what the channel is for).

The main point is that trading needs to be fixed, that has not happened and signs to improve it are non-existant. So, it could be safe to assume that Anet doesn't feel this is a pressing issue and communication is not a problem in the game.. which is completely false and helps make a good game bad.

I am sorry that you don't want to take the time it takes to sell something in trade chat but I'm not about to boo-hoo you. Just because you don't want to make the effort to do something correctly does not in any way, shape or form give you the right to annoy people and use anything other then trade chat to sell you items. If you really want to sell an item then you will spend the time to do it right instead of being lazy and impatient. Yes, it is laziness to do anything fast a**ed instead of correctly and there is absolutely no excuse for it.

You can list excuse after excuse but there is a trade channel for a reason and your excuses do not mean a thing to joe average that you are annoying with your spam. How about instead of being part of the problem, you try to be a part of the solution? Take your whining to A-net... you’re the one in the wrong and if you want a solution then you'll do something about it. So get off your lazy duff and yes, it may cost you something (effort), and take your gripes to the appropriate people.

~Andi

I've rarely had any problems selling things on the trade chat. It is a waste of time sitting around town for "hours" trying to sell something, I agree. But, there's plenty of people out there who leave trade chat on all the time. Here's some tips for using your time more efficiently when using the Trade channel:

1. Droknar's Forge, Ascalon City, and Lion's Arch are the cities that people go to (In Tyria) when looking to buy things - people who have trade chat on!. (Where do they shop in Cantha?)

2. Don't spend all your time camping in one district. I usually switch districts every 10 - 15 minutes.

3. Have more things to sell than just that one uber-leet bow (or whatever)! When I'm out selling stuff, I've got a boat-load. I make sure I have access to all of my crafting materials, dyes, and weapons I want to sell. I've made 40 - 50K in a few hours selling things to people who post "WTB" ads.

For the ones who want to chat, I agree that sales spam in Local is a pain in the rear. I avoid the major market places when I just want to hang out and chat.

The only thing anyone can do to discourage the local chat spammers is to put 'em on you're ignore list (you can always take them off later) and never buy anything from them.

I'm looking forward to an Auction house, tho. It'd be so much easier than: take SS, convert to jpg., crop picture, upload to photobucket, post ad in GWGuru Auction, and arrange to meet the winning bidder in-game somewhere.

Do it correctly eh? That's silly. Giving us blend-in pink chat that no one notices to sell items in town is like telling everyone they can only whisper to buy and sell shares at the New York stock exchange. It's an unnecessary obstacle.
This isn't a noble war or a midterm; you speak as if there is some sort of code of honor in riding a pink crippled horse for the Trade Chat Cause. But there isn't. You're just deluding yourself.
The invisible pink chat doesn't work. There is no reason to bind yourself to a broken system.
If you're looking to have a conversation, just follow common sense. The smaller the district number, the more spam. Stay out of the first districts. No one has any good reason to be in LA ad1.

I got an idea - 2 colors for trade chat - baige only is not readable!
Make it mixed - first trade channel message - baige, next for example green - it will make it much easier to recognise separate offers.

People who turn the trade channel off dont want to buy things. How are you reaching more people? If they want an item they will either say so on the trade channel or turn the channel on and see if anyone is selling something they want. Spamming the all channel does nothing but annoy people. I know I and several people in my guild refuse to buy from people who sell in 'all'. Im also pretty sure we are not alone in this! You want to sell your stuff us the channel Anet was so kind as to provide you with.
Is it really worth ruining the game for someone else for virtual gold? Because in the end thats all it is. I know which i see as being more important.

I myself spend about 2 seconds in each district.

1. Ctrl+C your message with a "PM me" on the end.
2. Ctrl+V in whichever chat you like.
3. Change districts.
4. Instantly slap down another message.
5. Repeat steps 2-4
6. Ask whoever pms you what district they're in and you're golden.

Ok so the only people who would actually want to buy my item, are the people that are standing around camping in a city waiting for someone to start selling exactly what they're looking for? There are so many mods, levels of those mods, weapon/shield skins and item colors (gold/purple/blue) that camping a district or city to try and find someone selling an item with the specific mods/skins/whatever that you want doesn't seem like a wise use of your time.

Also many people have a weapon mod lying around that they aren't trying to sell at that exact time because they're just passing through the town doing some quest or w/e. But hey, they see someone saying "WTB your mod" then they're like, "oh hey, I've got that mod, lemme go get it!".

The same for selling an item. Many times people are just passing through town and they see that someone is selling something they might want. Now how would they have known someone had the item that they're looking for if we were all confined to pink chat, and they had turned off pink chat because they weren't in "buy mode"?

You're right. You are not alone as a person that refuses to buy things solicited in all chat. But you are far outnumbered by the people that don't care either way. There are plenty of willing buyers out there.

This idea I actually like a lot. It still isn't the perfect solution but it would definitely be worth it to put the coloring system into the game until they finish whatever improved trade system they're working on.


EDIT: Power-merged my triple post.

What I'd think would be a GREAT idea is to just incorporate an "advertise" feature into the game, such that you put the item you wish to sell (ie: Saundering Zodiac Axe of Leetness!), specify the price, and the system will generate nice probably formatted ads for you.

What really makes me turn Trade Channel off (and local too if the spam gets bad) is that all these ads are so inconsistent, what more the item names are not highlighted so it is really hard to pick them up. If green/gold items are coloured accordingly in the advertisements that'd be so much better.

Also make this highlighting work ONLY in Trade channel, so spammers will have to have their ugly looking spam competiting with professionally layed out ads. They can't be beat.

So many negative posts -.-

Lets face it. ok the WTB/WTS chat filters aren't perfect, far from it. But the fact remains they have made a minor difference, a lot of chat is now being filtered into the trade channel.

There are all manner of ways around the chat filters, but I'm sure A.net are most likely logging all the common new tricks people use.

Taking all these new work-arounds like "W.T.B" and "Buying", and then adding a type of text string analyser it should be become possible to catch out MOST of the trade spam.

Trust me, I already have numerous times on my blog. People don't appreciate people who criticize ANet, so I'm forced to do it off-forum.

Sorry to let you know, but your not reading. Ignorance isn't bliss. Instead of expecting an entire community to act ethically and only use a broken feature of guild wars, you may want to read the underlying issue of the thread. For one thing, your not preaching to 1 specific person.

It actually isn't about "that guy" stopping spamming in local chat, it's about why he resorts to doing it, because it's very evident that it won't stop.

A very "related" analagous to this is how to make people stop going afk in factions missions. There is an obvious feature that is not working as intended, but even though people can stop, there is no feature that really encourages them to do so (even if it annoys the community).

Similar to the chat, the trade channel repels more people than it does attracting for those who want to trade (average players, not those intent on waiting 2 hours to find their item in all that spamming), so they resort to trying the local chat (why not? even though its annoying.. they still get their voice heard). There isn't any feature that really motivates them to use the very very poor trading system that Anet has.

So please, I hope the underlying issue of the trade chat being a very poor system is fixed, and I believe that as long as there are no major changes to this system, there will always be people spamming in local chat for reasons already stated.

It then follows that as this system doesn't seem to be improved and a rumor of a better trade system in ch. 3 is comming.. it is fairly clear that Anet does not feel pressed or really concerned about the poor communication in GW. Communication being an enormous aspect of an online game, it is a very demotivating feature to have in a game for new players to realize they cannot carry out a conversation in local chat. It is also a sign that certain priorities of the game may be mixed up.