Universal Trading System (UTS)
(I posted this in another forum, but not many people responded, so I thought I would try posting my idea here.)
NOTE: I have searched the forums and have found that a lot of people want something done about trading. I know that people have proposed auction houses, bazaars where people open up shops (like in Everquest), and probably some similar to this, but I wanted to post my thoughts in their entirety and see what people think. So, read this all the way through and post your thoughts, be they good, bad, long or short, just post something, even if it's just somthing like "This sounds like exactly what I've been looking for" or "Wow this is really great."
The Problem:
I have been thinking about the current trading system in guild wars for a while and I think it needs to be reworked or added to. Currently the way people trade is they say WTS “some item” on the trade channel and hope that someone will respond and buy it. If that does not work then people turn to the local chat channel and tell everyone the same WTS message and hope that people will respond and buy it. (The same applies for WTB)
I see several problems with these two options.
First, the biggest problem is with people “spamming” the trade and local channels with their requests. One obvious example of this is in Lion’s Arch in district 1. When you go here and have the local and trade channels on all you see is a continually scrolling chat window. You cannot get a word in edgewise and no one will notice anyway since they are just looking for WTS or WTB. If you do want to buy something then you will have a tough time finding it because you basically just have to scroll through and hope that someone has your item.
Second, when people put descriptions up for their items they either run out of room for some items or they put almost no description at all. To continue with the Lion’s Arch example, when you are scrolling through the entire chat window you don’t always see good descriptions of things that people are selling. You see things like “WTS Godly Gold Bow” or “WTS MAX DAMAGE AXE”. This makes thing difficult when you are looking for a certain type of axe or bow. While you could say, “WTB Insert name of item here”, there is not guarantee that people will see your request since many people, myself included, turn off the trade and local channels when they are trying to sell things or when they are just wandering around town.
Third, you cannot always find what you want. Since trading happens in a certain district within a certain town you are restricted to what people in that town have to offer. If they do not have what you want or they are asking for more than you think it is worth, you have no alternatives but to go to another town or district and start over there. This can become very time consuming and very frustrating. This leads us to the fourth problem.
Fourth, trading can be very time consuming. If you want an item, it might take you a long time to find that item because of the spamming, the lack of description and the problem with people not all having one common trading area or chat window. This might not apply to lower leveled items, but once you are over twenty and want a certain item or a certain mod to put on an item, it can be difficult to find. When you want to sell things because you know they are worth more than the one or two hundred gold that the merchant offers you, it can take you a very long time to sell them. If you have an item that is not max damage or max defense and you know someone in Ascalon would love to have the item, but sometimes you just cannot find the person right away. It may take a while and you may have to go to many different districts to sell the item.
Fifth, it is hard to know how much an item is truly worth. The only way, right now, to know how much something is worth is to ask someone. This is a very rough estimate though because there is no way of knowing if that person knows what they are talking about. Finding someone with a good estimate in game is a fairly difficult task especially when some people think items that are worth 70k when you can really get it from someone else for 20k. The actual price of different items can never truly be ascertained. People also post in the different guild wars forums asking what certain items that they found are worth. People do this because they have no other alternative. Since people do not always have the best knowledge about how much they should ask for an item when selling or how much to offer when buying, they either get overcharged when buying or don’t get what their item is truly worth when selling.
Other Options for Trading:
The only other options besides the trade and local chat channels in game are to use trading websites online such as RPGtraders.net.
Personally I would not want to use the site over trading in game because I don’t want to have to leave Guildwars just to sell an item. Also, I don’t know how well these online trading systems work but I would not want to have to wait for an online auction before knowing if I can get the item I want.
I am not saying that online sites that offer trading for Guildwars are bad; I just want to see Guildwars be improved so that people do not have to resort to places like these.
My proposed solution:
I would like to propose a new trading system to be added to Guildwars, the: Universal Trading System (UTS).
The UTS would be a User Interface window just like the inventory, guild, and friends windows. It would be accessible to everyone in the game across all towns, all districts, and all regions (U.S., Korea, Europe). Literally everyone in the game would have access to the same trade system at the same time.
The layout of the UTS User Interface window would be similar to an item window of a trader, except with tabs, check boxes, and/or dropdown menus. There would a tab or drop down for the main categories: weapons, shields, foci, upgrades, runes, material, and rare material. After you select the tab or drop down menu for one of these main types of items, you could select another tab or drop down menu for the sub category. Lastly, if you select the subcategory for upgrades (i.e. axe hafts) you could then select the particular kind of upgrade that you want for that weapon from another tab set or drop down menu. Below is a list of (what I think are) all of the possibilities for the previously listed items.
• = main category o= subcategory ▪ = upgrades
(Edit: removed diagram that goes here to save space, I'm sure you can look up all the catagories, subcatagories, and upgrades)
Anet already has already implemented filtering functions for the skills user interface window where you can sort by type, attribute, name, etc. Something like this would work great for the UTS; only multiple drop downs would be necessary (but I leave it up to Anet programmers and designers to make the layout that they deem suitable). For example after you select the main drop down, another one could appear with the sub categories and if you choose upgrades, another drop down could appear next to it for all of the different types of upgrades for that subcategory.
In addition to the tabs or drop down menus, there should be checkmarks for the possible upgrades in weapons, shields, and foci. They should list all of the upgrades that can be added on (which are listed above) in the form of checkmarks and they can also optionally have checkmarks for inherent qualities in items like those found in foci and shields. One thing that could also be added for further filtering would be minimum and maximum slots for the upgrades. For example, the fortitude upgrades for some items range from 20 to 30 for the health they give; the UTS could have slots to change these values to something like from 25-30 or 20-22 or 30-30 to limit search results to find exactly what people are looking for. The values would initially set to the actual min and max for the items. This would certainly help people find those hard to find items that might not show up as much on the trade interface because they could just display items that give the max for that upgrade.
People would be able to sell a certain number of items at the same time (as decided by Arena Net) and could ask for any price they want. Initially, to see if Anet likes the UTS, they could make it so that people could only sell one thing at a time. This way their server or servers with the item trading database would not get overloaded.
Another feature that people might find useful would be a search function. Some people like to search more than use menus so this is another option to be added. This might be useful for high demand items that are hard to come by and are only sold sometimes so that people can look for them more quickly.
Now for the benefits…
A system like this would be a better option than just selling things that you don’t want to merchants. As they say, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I’m sure some people in ascalon with low level characters would love to have some of the things people get from drops later in the game, even if they aren’t max damage. (I actually had someone turn down a max damage weapon because it had too high of requirements for that person’s character at the time)
Since there will be a lot of things being sold, people will be able to refer to the UTS and see what price things are selling for. This would help them decide how much something is worth. This way they would know whether to sell something to the merchant or hold on to it and sell it to someone on the UTS or elsewhere. This would also help if you want to sell something to a friend and they want to pay you for it. They would at least have an idea of what it is worth and they would know whether to give you a little or a lot. (I know this does not apply to all people and a lot of people might give things to their friends for free, but I still think it does happen that people want to sell things to their friends)
Another benefit is that prices would automatically stabilize. When people go to sell things they can ask whatever they want for their item for trade. If someone else is offering the same item for less then the cheaper item will be bought first usually. These price wars that will naturally occur will help stabilize the price of items in a very short amount of time. This way people will know how much stuff is worth instead of not knowing if things are more expensive for some reason.
To address the items at the top of this post listed as problems I say the following. As for the spamming, people would have less of a reason to spam if everyone is trading on the UTS and not in a certain town. The lack of description would be solved because the items’ descriptions could be viewed in their entirety, just like for any NPC selling items. As for the problem of not finding what you want; since everyone in the game would be trading in the system and since people could trade basically anything, you could find anything you want. For the time consuming problem, the UTS would not be time consuming because you just put an item up for sale and list how much you want for it and then you are done. If you want to buy something it would not take much time to find what you want and see if you can afford it. The last problem has already been discussed; people would know how much things would know how much things are worth because all of the prices would be listed.
A Couple last notes...
Trading is one of the only things in this game that annoy me now. I would really like to see something like this implemented for Guildwars. I think it would improve the over all game play and remove some more of the monotony from the game.(which is what the overall design of the game is)
Please post your comments and tell me if you think this system is good or if you have any ideas that would improve it. I know people will comment about coding this up, so if you do keep in mind that the developers want to know what people want in the game. Once they know, they can then figure out how plausible the idea is with their teams. What I’m saying is: Let the Anet staff decide if it’s too hard to program or do.
Anyway, please post on this; tell your friends to post on this; tell your neighbors to post on this; tell everyone you possibly can to post on this, because I think it would improve trading and make it a quick, convenient, and painless system.
Oh yeah, I also wanted to say before I go that the only limiting factors that apply to the UTS are the same as trading right now. People are limited by NPC trader prices for runes, materials, and dyes. But, don't let that stop you from posting because there are plenty of other things to trade and the UTS would still make selling those 247 griffon wings that you have from farming a lot easier.
Thanks.
