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Horrid exchange

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
edited February 2012 in Controls and User Interface
There are very few things that I dislike about STO, the exchange is one of them. What is with the simplicity? It is exactly the same as it was in closed beta, I thought they would have updated it by now. It would be nice to have purchase history, duty officer specific filters and attribute filters at least.

Did you just forget about the exchange?
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    its been said since a year, that they are going to improve it. i dint believe in this anymore. esp bo and doff search is horrible, and theres no way to filter out all those 1pc stacks of things. and the 400 page limit is bad too.


    we need: a filter for doff, to search for career ( i need an explosive expert ...) and for traits ( that is agressive)

    an bo, to search for abilities we seek.

    also there should be an ability to sort from price, highest and lowest first. and to search for a price range. (show only prices at or below, or at and above)

    and much much more ... the exchange is the MOST horrible thing ever. its technically in vain to search for specific doffs or BOs ....
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    The 400 item limit is actually counter-productive: It causes a titanic explosion of exponential growth in the number of stacks being posted not long after there are 400 total available.

    People aren't deliberately going to post a stack nobody is going to see: when it ends up that the reasonable price for a maximum size stack is too large to be in the first 400 items, they are thus forced to split up the stack in order to get that reasonable price and still have it be visible. By splitting the stack, they're now adding multiple items where they would've added 1 before. This causes there to be massively more items on the exchange, which pushes the 'maximum price' lower, and thus the maximum sellable stack size lower. It forms a positive feedback loop that causes a very rapid dive to massive numbers of very small stacks.

    Case in point: When trying to sell a stack of 250 alien artifacts, the largest stack I could find in the first 400 items was Twenty-Eight out of a possible 250. I had to split that stack of 250 into 10 stacks of 25 in order to have them be visible at my selected price.

    I had to split a stack of 250 encoded data into four stacks, two of 62 and two of 63, in order to have them be visible.

    This has to be putting a massive load on their database and storage capacity for the more common items that can't be filtered down further.

    There are only two possible solutions: remove the 400 item limit, or even better, add more filters.

    The ideal would be: Add a price per unit display on hover like most modern games have, then have filters for: price, stack size, and price per unit, all of them as ranges.

    These would make it possible for people to find what they're looking for by filtering out all the useless, overpriced chaff (especially the micro-stacks that are causing the problem in the first place). This would make it possible to sell items in large stacks no matter how many of that item were on the market, and likely also severely punish people who post overpriced or small (or both) stacks by having people not even see them, thus discouraging these wastes of resources.

    Doffs and Boffs are a different problem, and really need more granular categories as well as faction-specific filters.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    its been said since a year, that they are going to improve it. i dint believe in this anymore. esp bo and doff search is horrible, and theres no way to filter out all those 1pc stacks of things. and the 400 page limit is bad too.


    we need: a filter for doff, to search for career ( i need an explosive expert ...) and for traits ( that is agressive)

    an bo, to search for abilities we seek.

    also there should be an ability to sort from price, highest and lowest first. and to search for a price range. (show only prices at or below, or at and above)

    and much much more ... the exchange is the MOST horrible thing ever. its technically in vain to search for specific doffs or BOs ....


    It's rather impossible to search for doffs other than searching for a, b, c, etc, because they are currently listed by name.

    Other than that I'm fine with the other Exchange searches - just have to type in exactly what you want, like Phaser Array Mk VI, otherwise the item list gets flooded.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    This is becoming an increasing issue (and compounding itself, due to positive feedback described) with the influx of new players.

    It is becoming impossible to find things on the AH due in part to the 400 search result limit, but also due to a lack of filter options.

    There seem to be two problems that seem to be intrinsically related:

    Items sold in large quantities are flooded and users are forced to sell in small quantities, perpetuating the flooding.

    Items which have much variation within a category, but the distinguishing data is not contained in the name or rarity (doffs, boffs) either sometimes can cause desired items to be impossible to find or require inefficient methods of searching.


    Allowing the user to sort by price per unit could solve the first problem, assuming the 400 search result is not based on a server query throttle and a query would actually be able to access and sort all entries in the exchange. If this is so, then the 400 result limit would not actually be a problem for most things as anything above 400 results would be undesirable to buy in the first place. UI suggestion: WoW's addon Auctionator has a very good and popular ui for sorting items by price per unit. http://auctionatoraddon.com

    To solve the second problem, one of two things needs to happen. One is a sort of workaround, which is to do a similar thing to weapons or armor, and include relevant information in the name. For example, including a doff's spec in the name, such as [MEng] for Maintenance Engineer, etc. This could get extremely complicated for boffs, and could complicate algorithmic generation (perhaps make it impossible, I'm not sure how item ID's work for boffs). The other, more useful method is to include the ability in some way to explicitly search the exchange by parameters not included in the name. I won't make any suggestions on exactly how this could work, because I don't know how the exchange backend works.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Ya, the exchange system needs to be improved considerably.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    It was already said that the Devs know about the problem with the exchange. But changing it is not an easy task. From observation i would say the exchange can currently only browse item names, so changing it for more sophisticated search option would basicly a complete new programming of the exchange and this is a massive task which will take a good amount of time before it is done. Also it was said that they are looking to implement catagories for duty officer careers.

    regards,
    Mr. J
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Granted they know about it already, something needs to happen very soon. The problem is being exacerbated by new accounts flooding the exchange with items. More tools need to be developed ASAP before the market dies to UI inadequacy.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Doff exchange is supposedly being made now... Regular exchange just needs a few more features, i find nothing wrong with it atm, a purchase history would be nice. The ability to filter Certain raritys would be nice. not just rare but Uncommon and up no whites, or rare and up.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    One of the Dev's said the code was a mess, and working on it was even more of a mess...

    I think they will re-build the code, rather than upgrading the old one.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    you can't honestly complain that your stack of 10 items isn't being seen because the single items cost less and push it off to page 10.

    That's silly. That's just how it works! It's a user-defined exchange system. If the users aren't willing to pay your price you don't get anything. If you're not selling, you either break it up or you lower the price. Whatever it takes.

    That's the nature of the system. It's supply and demand. When lock boxes came out they were selling for the thousands each. Now you get a stack of ten for 1 EC. That's not to blame on the exchange. That's the severely lowered demand of the product in question. If you listed 1 for 7,000 initially then find them going for 1 EC each, you need to either take it down or to lower the price.

    For the sake of finding things, it would be nice to have a "stack" toggle but I wouldn't cry if never implemented.

    What WOULD be nice is to fix the searching for DOFFs. Took me hours to find a bloody bartender! Not even a good one! Kling/Fed toggle would be nice. I wouldn't go into attributes, but job description would be a nice filter.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Supply and demand has nothing to do with it.

    Both the buying and selling parties have to drudge through listing and buying in small quantities simply because the stack of 200 samples they want to buy or sell is pushed off the page. Even if you are selling 200 units for 1/100th the cost per unit of the current market price, your auction would get pushed off by 400 single items at market price.

    This benefits nobody and is in no way natural. Price per unit should be the driving the economy, not price per stack.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    No, you're taking offense at the lower priced single stacks. The demand is for single stacks. That's lowering the price of the first pages. If you want your stack to show up you break it up, or you sell it at a loss. You can't hold on to it and force folks to buy at your price. It's not a dealership. It's a game marketplace. You're not making back any lost profit. The question is: Do you want to hold onto it in the vain attempt to recoup losses, or do you want to recycle it for more than you'd get selling it?

    If anything they just need a couple new "sort" parameters, like "most quantity" instead of "lowest price". Outside of that, it is supply and demand at work.


    EDIT: P.S. As a buyer I'm more than willing to buy 10 single items at a lower price than I am to go and get 10 items in 1 stack for a higher price. To me it makes no difference, and I usually get the better deal. It also automatically re-stacks them in my inventory.

    As a SELLER, I have to balance what I want to get from it with how much effort I want to invest. Or with how many of my 40 slots I have left. Naturally breaking it down into smaller groups is a gamble, takes more time, and more slots. If it's a hot commodity I'll take down some long-run stuff to make room for it. etc. There's plenty of tactics.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    The demand is often not for single stacks of items. The system mandates that things be sold in single stacks, regardless of what the demand is, simply for the quantity of listings on the exchange.

    Things are usually sold at a lower, not higher price per unit when they are sold in quantity. It has been his way for a long, long time, and I have always skipped to the last pages to find things sold for half or less price per unit when I can buy them by the hundreds.

    This is simply impossible with the sheer amount of listings overflowing the exchange. This causes the sellers to be forced to split stacks, and forces buyers to buy at higher price per unit. This also exacerbates flooding, as now things that would have been stacks of 100 are now taking up 100 slots in search results, further causing even more flooding, and causing the same effect to cascade.

    I don't know where you get your definition of supply and demand, but that is not the problem nor the solution.

    The solution is sorting by price per unit. Your proposed solutions are workarounds and don't solve the problem.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    No, you're taking offense at the lower priced single stacks. The demand is for single stacks.

    In my experience, buying large stacks is always more cost effective than buying singles.

    It's not the "lower priced" single stacks at all. The single stacks drive prices up. If you sell your stacks of commodities or materials in singles, you will get the most money for them. That's why people do it. So many, in fact, that the entire 400 item search return is singles. People interested in selling stacks are cut out of the equation unless they at minimum cut their prices in half (the smallest multiple item stack possible is 2, and you have to list at the price of a single just to get on the search results, hence selling at half price per-unit).
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Filtering by price, then stack size would be nice.
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