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Exchage is early worthless as it is, please change it!

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
I am sorry, but the exchange is about as worthless as it could possibly be. I do hope Cryptic will listen and manage to roll in some changes to improve the system so that its usable. It its current state, its ripe for abuse by upcoming gold sellers. A technique they use in WoW is for the player to post a low value item for a high price. The player posts a piece of beef jerky that costs a few copper for 250 gold. The gold seller then buys it at the high price, thus selling the gold after the player has paid real cash on the seller's webside. The exchange, as it stands, is a perfect environment for this gold trade. Implementing some of my suggestions below will remove or at least curtail this activity.

# The exchange is full of TRIBBLE.
Why? Because there is a rudimentary set of flaws in the system. The first and most critical flaw is that there is NO fee for posting an item. Seriously. Some will whine about this but, really it is a needed thing.
@ Add a posting fee
It SHOULD cost a fee, say 5% of the asking price, to post an item. It should be paid up front when the item is posted. Why will this help? It will totally eliminate the complete BS that is in there now. Tribbles being posted for 99,999,999 credits. Good God. Starter beams starter engines, food. My God the garbage thats in there. A fee based on the asking price will squelch this activity real quick. People will begin only posting items they are serious about selling and will also have to consider, carefully, the asking price as its going to cost them 5,000,000 credits to post that 99,999,999 credit tribble. How many people do you think will continue this practice? Not many. Some, but not many. Those that continue the practice will be pretty serious about selling the item at that elevated price. It will also stop the use of the exchange to transfer credits from character to character as it will cost a fee to do so.

@ Add a posting time limit
Another flaw in the system is that there is no time limit for posted items to remain in the exchange. At this point, the TRIBBLE in there will NEVER disappear. Postings need to be limited in time. Perhaps take a clue from the WoW auction house, which runs pretty well. The AH in wow, lets you post an item for various times that differ in the cost to do so. Posting something longer costs more money. This will also help clean out the garbage and penalize those who over price their goods. If you combine this date limit with the up front fee that they will loose if an item doesn't sell, it will force people to price things reasonably so they DO sell. This encourages competition and under bidding. This also keeps prices reasonable for the consumers but still allows those rare items to be sold. This system will also stimulate player to player trading and selling in attempts to avoid the costs of the exchange. This encourages player to player interaction in trading goods.

# There is no sorting.
Really? Why? There is no ability to sort by price, quality etc. The exchange really needs this feature to be of any practical use. Sorting will also help to avoid those over priced items as they can easily be sorted to the bottom of the list, another discouragement to over pricing of items.

# Give us the ability to find other items by a player.
This feature could easily stimulate sales. If a player posts a bunch of stuff and we find one of them, it would be nice to be able to see what else that player has posted.

# How do we find our own stuff?.
How do we find the things WE posted so we can see how they fit with the other exchange items.

# The exchange is not an auction house.
No. Its not. Perhaps by design, perhaps by oversight. In any event I see alot of requests and complaints by players that there is no auctioning in the exchange. I wouldn't use it, I simply want to click buy and get it. Other players enjoy the ebay like auctioning with a minimum etc. I certainly hope that this is implimented for those players who enjoy this aspect of buying/selling. If so, please don't eliminate the instant buy for those of us who just want to get it and go.

# Give us additional filtering
I would like to see a level or rank filter. I want to search for rare beams Mk3. Or Uncommon Torpedos for a LtC. Allowing us to search by item level (mk1, 2, 3 etc) or by rank (LT, LtC, Cmdr,e tc) would allow is to weed out the stuff we are not interested in. Please.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Ah, yes. The exchange is quite lacking in usability as it is. I'm forced to sort through 13 pages of tribbles were i to want to find a tribble deal. Though this is better for me because most people aren't so determined...

    Generally I agree with everything you've said. I dislike posting limits though, I don't want to have stuff randomly drop out and fill up my bank nor do want to lose any energy for the large amount of postings I do. With that said I can understand why it is needed. Not everyone plays nice.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Quakcow wrote: »
    Ah, yes. The exchange is quite lacking in usability as it is. I'm forced to sort through 13 pages of tribbles were i to want to find a tribble deal. Though this is better for me because most people aren't so determined...

    Generally I agree with everything you've said. I dislike posting limits though, I don't want to have stuff randomly drop out and fill up my bank nor do want to lose any energy for the large amount of postings I do.

    Heh, you think it's bad now, wait until more people start hitting the endgame. After they get the gear they want they have no reason to spend any more money because there's no need for repair or replacing. The short term benefit of having nothing happen to you when you die is going to kill the economy in the mid to long run.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    It seems to be a very basic, bare bones exchange. There are a lot of features which I thought were pretty standard across mmo's that are conspicously absent. Maybe it is just a place holder though.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Zellemen wrote:
    Heh, you think it's bad now, wait until more people start hitting the endgame. After they get the gear they want they have no reason to spend any more money because there's no need for repair or replacing. The short term benefit of having nothing happen to you when you die is going to kill the economy in the mid to long run.

    Hmm, there really are no energy sinks unless you want to change your ship and uniform every 23 minutes. I'd happily go along with scaling fees and adjustable limits.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    i agree for the most part with the OP. first day of headstart there was quantum torpedoes selling for a minimum of 200k.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Yes they need some better filtering systems but in game auction UI's usually go through a lot of revisions and tweaks after launch.

    I made 400 off of it last night so it is not worthless to me. I know, I am RICH!

    Was just testing it out and I liked how they sent an e-mail notification to my forum e-mail about the sale.
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