lil wish - freeze buffs in bazaar like food/water

[KyrosKrane]

There was another thread where I mentioned a bazaar wishlist type thing. My comments are buried rather deep, and the thread is about another topic, so I'll quote the relevant portion here.

My ideal bazaar system would eliminate the trader avatars entirely. In the bazaar search window, you can currently right-click to face your chosen trader. Instead, make it so that you can right-click a trader's name in the search window and open that trader's sales window from anywhere in the bazaar! This solves several problems.

First, there is no longer incentive to bunch up at the banks. People don't need to run to you any more, so the perceived advantage of being close to the banks is nullified.

Second, it completely eliminates the issue of ogres and trolls sitting on gnomes to hide them. Who cares? If I want something from a gnome trader, I just open his sales window from anywhere in the bazaar. I don't need to physically click on that trader's avatar any more.

Third, the issue of suddenly ending up on top of a pillar again becomes moot, as proximity between buyer and seller no longer holds.

Fourth, it can help remove lag. Since traders no longer need a physical presence in the bazaar (i.e., a visible avatar), do away with the avatars completely. When you enter trader mode, you become invisible to the rest of the world. The only way to reach you is through the bazaar search window. That will hugely reduce the video lag associated with the bazaar. I realize this is a controvertial aspect, but think about it for a bit.

This would remove SO many of the hassles that occur in the bazaar and basically eliminate video lag in the zone.

[Sanna]

ah, i remember that thread, kryos, and my thoughts on it half tie into a reply to Iceblossom (about a bazaar alt)

(and let's see if i can say this more comprehensibly than my first draft)

while it's a good idea, and i wouldn't mind the ability to buy from across the bazaar...

1) removing avatars entirely also removes the possibility of 'random sales'. Yes, they happen; bored shoppers going down the line and seeing what they didn't know they wanted.

2) removing avatars and/or selling through an alt:
the idea of totally eliminating my 'Blue Druid (TM)' graphic set... people I know browse me and occasionally buy. I'd had friends refer their friends to me by name and graphic. 'Iroke, the blue druid chick halfway down behind NexBank.' 'I' need to be selling my stuff. People buy from 'me'. A significant chunk of my (apparently former) food customer base bought because I was the kinder option at the time (my rival is a very coarse person, and now all HMP/MTP/pop markets are in a state of crashed chaos thanks to her, but that's another rant). They know my name, and to an extent my Luclin face; they wouldn't buy from an alt, they buy from known names. Or else they don't buy from that known name.




what if...
there were a small fee for saving your buffs when going into trader? if you wanted to save your buffs, you have to pay a (for example) 10p fee, removeable directly from your bank and not necessarily just from your inventory. Thus, if you wanted to /trader for the purpose of buff saving, it would at least keep you from doing so flippantly. I can afford 10p to save a kei. also, if you just wanted to /trader with no care for your buffs, you just don't hit that particular button, and your buffs tick down like normal.

and please let's not re-open that whole 'should i be getting kei anyway'. there's another thread for that.

-- sanna
wants to be sufficiently leet too.

[Grimina]

The problem of people setting up for raids in the bazaar would remain. You would have to charge quite a bit more than 10p to stop people from cramming in there to prepare for HOURS. Because a person that will pay 100p each for KEI and HoV would have no problems paying 10p to save em. You'd need to charge 200+p to make them balk at paying it. Hell if I were fully raid buffed and really wanted to save em (and for some unknown reason couldn't just log off) I'd pay 500p+.

So the option you want would have to be something only the insane or rich would take advantage of...therefore you yourself couldn't/wouldn't take advantage of it LOL.

Also as to people buying from you because it's you...let them know your mule is "you" My mule is named Grimslave. People that I SWEAR I don't know have sent Grimina tells asking about some product I have on Grimslave. Because I've been around long enough and the name is so obvious...that people know it's me. At first your sales may slack off, but give it a week of talking through your mule as if you were on your main and word gets around. Name your mule "Sannamule" and put it in blue armor, and everyone will know. Especially if they are only looking for the "blue druid" they may never notice the name change LOL

[Morani]

I like the CONSEPT behind saving buffs for trade mules but the only way I can think of to make it happen is to put a minimum timer on it. Something like 2 0r 3 hours. If you have buffs, you go into trader mode and then have to stay in it for a minimum amount of time (or log out directly from trader mode that way people who get dropped don't loose their buffs) or you loose the buffs when you come out, even if they would not have expired by that time. It wouldn't be prefect but it's a step in the right direction and it would be harder to abuse.


Something else I'd like to add to a wish list for the bazaar; tiered merchant space. It's easy to stack people 3 deep under those stall awnings but it REALLY hard some times to see the person in the back. So, make the space tiered like choir risers so the person in the back has a chance at being seen. If you really want to add something, make a thin roof that goes over the lowest (front) tier that only Dwarves, Halflings, or Gnomes can stand in and Elves, Humans, and Erudians have to crouch to get into or sit down in. Thus forcing the front row to be lower. Any larger class trying to get into the space simply goes over it to go to the back.

Since I'm wishing; I'd REALLY like to be able to walk into the zone, pull of the bazaar search window, highlight an it in the window, click the buy button and initiate a vendor window with the seller from where I am rather than having to look for them while staring at my feet in a VERY laggy zone. But I know that one'd be a LOT of work and maybe not possible with the current coding.

[Sanna]

re tiered merchant space: really good idea. I also wish there were another bank back by the arena or something, with the idea of clearing up the congestion around the 2 current banks. Maybe not even a full 'house' type bank, maybe just a 'caved-out' area in the existing wall.

re buy without facing the merchant directly; that's pretty much what Kryos is after, and I see the allure. Less movement = less lag = happier people, and perhaps even more /traders allowed.

ooh, here's an idea: when you enter the bazaar, regardless of /trader status or not, you 'lose your body', ie, you become only your head with your name floating above. Your head is still at the normal height it would be at, but for all intents and purposes your body is not there. Even if there were a dwarf trader behind an ogre, I could still click the dwarf's head without interference from the ogre's body... because the ogre 'HAS no body'. (Granted this would negate my 'blue druid' status tag, but.... well, i don't know 'but what'. cross that bridge when it comes.)

re paying 10 or 500 to save raid buffs; sure. save em. if you're raid buffed, presumably they're high lvl spell buffs, and that's the point of what's being kept. When people ask for sow, I sow em. if they are desperate enough to ask for steel skin (rather than find a cleric for a better one), then i'll give em that too. the low spells aren't hard to find, and therefore don't "need" to be saved. It's the higher stuff that, for most of us, is harder to track down, and therefore would benefit by being saved. So, just 10. a sow isn't worth 10p. a raid is worth 10p. Unless you can afford to buy White Dragon Helms every day, even a raid isn't worth 500p.


re a minimum timer to stay in /trader to keep buffs.... that, to me, does not seem like a bad idea. maybe a little complicated, but i see the use. Gah, it's times like this that i wish i knew more about HOW stuff was coded, to know if/how that is possible.

-- sanna
wonders how one gets hired to be a content designer.... wonders if she should be afraid of that contemplation...

[Itek]

test changes

51+ buffs won't stick on < 46 ...

I won't state my opinion. It won't change the outcome.

But isn't that the same patch that will add "Shared Bank Space"

this will pretty much make Trader Mules -the- easiest thing since sliced bread...

Yes yes, people buy from names....

Itek
Itekious

Itek the druid in purple at this location
Itekious the druid in purple at this location

Itek the druid in purple in Made-Up-Guild at this location
Itekious the druid in purple in Made-Up-Guild at this location

(voyaging into beating a dead horse, so I will stop now)

I heard people asking about "will we be able to transfer money back from trader mules" ...

Do you need to?

Buy the storebought items with your mule and transfer them. (you can transfer / buy CHA items, and hopefully you have PoP so running from town to town shouldn't be too hard, and newbie chars keep stuff on them if they die...)

Buy the /bazaar items with the mule and transfer them...

I might be missing something that you HAVE to have cash for... oh, buying training in the guild...

Buy with the mule something at fixed cost and sell it back with your main. (Peridots come to mind, buy at 10.5 sell at 9.5 ... 10 percent tax.... surely if you had to you could find something better return.)

Shared Bank Space = Buffs Saved while Trading

[Grimina]

Sanna the point is that the "fee" would have to be "not worth it" to the majority of people, otherwise the bazaar would be crowded with people just wanting to save buffs and lag would be infinitely worse than it already is. Ie: You'd have to be pretty desperate to pay 500p just to save buffs. The only way I'd consider doing that is if I just got those buffs then something killed off the majority of the raid and a 2 hour corpse run was in the makings. I'd need to stay online to know when it was time to come back..and I wouldn't want to lose those buffs. Therefore I'd pay 500p to keep em.

You see the usefulness to traders in saving the buffs, but you have to look at it from the "exploiters" point of view to see why it just wouldn't be practical from Sony's side. How happy would you be to be able to get buffed up for a grouping that evening and then just sit in trader mode /lfg saving those buffs until you are ready. And for raids, people could buff characters up pre-raid to save time when the raid actually starts then just sit those people in trader mode until everyone is ready to take off. Just think how much more money the buff sellers would make sitting in the bazaar selling it to people that would be more willing to buy because they don't have to worry about putting it to use immediately. How often have you passed up getting a KEI because you didn't know how long it'd be before your friend logged on to group with you, then when your friend was on no one was selling? If buffs were saved enchanters could double their KEI money selling in the bazaar. Essentially doubling even tripling the amount of people dawdling in the bazaar. The lag would be phenomenal.

In the end, in a perfect world that would be a great idea. But this isn't a perfect world. Before introducing something that a few would like, Sony has to look at how many people would use it for the wrong purpose first.

[Sanna]

ok.
i admit defeat, and let this thread die now.

-- sanna
for whom the sufficient leetness will stay a dream.

[Dunthor Warsmith]

Itek
Itekious

My only question is would the name filter allow that? My main is "Dunthor". For my mule, I wanted to have something along the lines of "Dunthor's Fine Arms" (I smith mostly). Trying things along the "Dunthorsarms" and "Dunthors" and "Dunthorsell" and a number of other things which I can't remember now (I got kinda fed up and tried things I wouldn't be happy with even if they did go through), and *nothing* that started with "Dunthor" would be accepted. I wound up shortening it to "Dunsarms", which finally worked, and for utility alts (Hole dragger, track mule, Hollowshade watcher, etc) I've used "Dun" as the base rather than "Dunthor", and they've all gone through just fine.

(one a semi-related note, anyone understand why Expertwo would be "Acceptable" and Experthree wouldn't? I was doing "Experimenter #", but from a censor point of view "Expert Wo" seems more like a title+name than does "Expert Hree" to me)

Sorry for the bit of a hijack, I just had had that same plan of using my name for my baz mule to get the recognition, and ran into the stumbling block of the name filter/GM on duty.

As for the topic ... to me it seems like one of the endless "Great idea that gets cancelled due to exploitative uses". I always hate it when stuff dies for that reason, but so very many ideas do

[Itek]

Would the name filter allow it?

You are joking... right?

*shudder*

1) There isn't really a "name-filter" as such. Some "bad words" and "bad names" are on a filter list. Words the Mum would edit here can't be part of a name.

2) The rest of the names are "filtered" by Guides online. They have 10 seconds to approve or reject a name. If they don't act, it's approved. If they reject a name all subsequent names from that account go to THAT GUIDE if more than one is on, until one gets through or you give up. Boy, that's hard to beat... /who all GM "no one matches those filters" ... Whee...

yes, I have numerous mules with variations of my Main's name.

Itek
Itekious
Itekax
Itekam
Itekai
Abox
Aboxious

Seriously. Those are the actual names of my mules if Itek were my character name. (it's not)

My wife currently plays 4 different characters.... all of which share 5 letters. Twife. Twiife. Twwife. (you get the idea.) And by plays I mean the lowest is level 11. The highest is planar. Nearly tier 2 planar.

[Sanna]

0_0 gms deal with names?

the more i hear about these GMs, the harder it is to decide if i want to be one, or if they are the Customer Service reps from Hades. I have half-illusions of joining 'and being the first good GM' as my friends joke is needed, but then i snap to my senses and wonder....

hm. we already know content designer is out of the question for me (^_^)... and they ARE looking for Guide applications...

[Dunthor Warsmith]

Interesting. I knew that as a general idea, but not nearly to the extent you seem to Basic "name filter", if it passes that and a GM/guide is online, it gets passed to them for approval. If no GM/guide is online, the name is approved. I've just learned that through hearsay - your added details make sense, so I'll assume they're right.

I had assumed the "name filter" included both "offensive" names (the profanity, insults, etc) and the "inappropriate" names (a short list of words, Greek gods, and such - things that are common/obvious and ruled out by assorted aspects of the naming policy (although that seems to change periodically... annoying when your name gets changed due to a rule that later gets removed )). Based on experiments with names, I was starting to wonder if the "inappropriate" aspects of the filter were dynamic, and if it took into consideration all the other PC names currently into existance, trying to ensure someone couldn't come along, make a close name, and try to ruin/take advantage of someone's reputation.

I don't know if the "inappropriate" aspect exists. I've never been a guide, or known someone personally who has been one, so I don't have any first hand knowledge with *why* so many of my names get rejected :P I just have a lot of weird experiences ... some I can account to other people having the names - when I tried to get my character Memmnoc's name, most versions were rejected (I've since learned that's the name of a character in something or other), but some just leave me wondering. I do find it weird that "Dunthor" gets rejected on Test and a few other servers I've tried...I'm curious why.

I guess I just have bad luck with who gets to accept/reject my names :P

[Itek]

Sanna-

Do it. Apply. They need good guides. Desperately.

I advise everyone who meets the requirements to apply.

If you don't apply, never EVER AGAIN do you get to complain about how long it takes to get a /petition answered. And, since you know now that Guides can block silly names like, I kid you not "Tradermule" and "Wakkyweed", you don't get to complain about silly names either if you don't at least TRY to be a guide.

But, remember, the washout rate for applications is pretty high. (would roughly guess at least 20 and maybe 50 percent not accepted, and they DON'T tell you if they reject your application)

Also it takes about a month to have the application reviewed.

Then nearly 25 percent of accepted applications... never show up for initial guide training.

Then you have a 2 - 6 week Apprentice Guide period. Again nearly half wash out.

Then you become a Full Guide. The washout rate on Guides hovers around 2 guides per server per month.

Being a Guide for a full year is a MAJOR accomplishment. Being a Senior Guide is, for all intents and purposes, almost a second part-time job.

My hat is off to all the current guides. Hang in there.

[Itek]

Dunthor-

Most good names are taken.

Case in point my friend had a name he liked. But he wanted to remake the character.

He checked to see for visible guides, then deleted and remade... rejected.

Logged back in with his main. GM on. /petition I accidentally deleted "Name" can you roll it back? (he got it back)

Naming policy at SOE is....

*Itek claps a hand over his mouth.*

Well... put it this way...

1) I strongly disagree with the policy of makeing rules and having no intention of actually enforcing them.

2) I know how name approval works.

3) Read my post directly above.

4) Draw conclusions.

But, that being said... the name space is HUGE. My friend argues that it's impossible to make enough names for 400,000 people while not allowing any copyrighted, historical, or profane / offensive names.

He's wrong. Math, again.

Six letters in a name. At least 2 of them vowels. At least 2 of them consonents. (to make the name at least pronounceable)

(26 ^ 2) * (20 ^ 2) * (6 ^ 2) = 9,734,400 names.

Which leaves 24 names available per account. So even if 90 percent of them were "offensive in some language" ... There's no problem.

(Especially when you consider that I only calculated for 6 letters per name. If you go to 8 letters you get in the neighborhood of 6 point 5 BILLION names. Shall we add 10 letter names? 4 point 4 _TRILLION_ names with 10 letters requireing 2 consonants and 2 vowels. Not counting if while allowing 10 letters we don't require all 10 and add back in shorter names. -there-is-no-shortage-of-name-space-)

Again, just my opinion. (Even the math might be wrong, I am using the calculator built into Windows and might have entered the numbers wrong.)

[Sanna]

re GMing being a second job --

I'm fairly certain I'd get it. I fit the basic requirements (age, character levels, etc) AND *gasp* I can write with good grammar! (When I try, oc; i can be lazy too.) (The jab there was directed at all the gfay noobs who do NOT try, not anyone on this board.) And if I liked it, or at least liked it more than I disliked it, I'd do my best to stick with it. but....

The time consumption is the main thing keeping me from having filled out an application already. Just like nearly everyone else on this planet, I need money. I'm dropping $5k on this Germany trip to get a university major out of the deal (to graduate with a German/Creative Writing double), but I don't get to make any money this summer; no one will hire someone for 4 weeks to have her leave for 8, so she can come back for maybe 2 and then quit for the school year again.

Anyone who manages to work AND go to college, even if part time on both counts, has my eternal applause. I only do the second, granted full time, but between the comic and the classes, with EQ on the side, it's enough to nearly do me in.

I like helping people, and in the past I haven't minded doing relatively time-consuming things free (ie, the storywindow mods). Unfortunately, until they decide to pay me (or even give me my EQ free, that would be enough, though i think Everfrost will melt before that happens), I think I get to be sad and say no.

I think I said all that in the hopes that someone will come back and say, 'oh, but they do give you your EQ free (if you be a guide for a certain length of time or something)." or some other equivalently 'nice thing'.

Hah. too bad i can't get paid for dreaming. ^_^!!!



re math on number of possible names:
math was never my strong suit. I used to say I could balance a checkbook and that was all that was needed, but apparently now i can't even do that. (kinda creepy; I write everything down, check everything exactly off in the book AND on the bank statement, and the math STILL doesn't add up the same in both places.) If you say there are that many names, I accept that number. MY thought on why names were rejected is pretty much "there already IS someone with this name on this server". Hence, my surprise that there actually IS some sort of real, human-based, approval process.