weeeee Bazaar and Barter zone will be combined to 1 zone

[Maevenniia]

What I want to see, more then the two zones combined, is a more advanced interface for /barter! Having to type in the names to see what people are buying? At least just add in an option to browse by trader name. I would use it a lot to look and see what people are buying for what prices, for when I go vedor diving.

Now I can just use a blank search string, but if we get more people setting up, that wont be possible...

I suggested the 'search by buyer name' feature and a Dev responded positively, so I think that this WILL make it into the interface (although maybe not in this particular patch.)

[Bolas]

Also in this patch, rumor has it that the movelog off of Zek will happen then.

-Bolas

[Kakg]

Checked the barter area of Stromm last night to see how things are shaping up. Of 350 or so traders in the bazaar there were exactly 8 buyers in the barter zone. The idea of combining the barter zone and the the bazaar is a great one but until they allow setting up as both a buyer and a seller at the same time then the barter concept is doomed to failure.

[Boleslav]

Neebat wrote (among other things):

"Why would anyone want buyers and sellers in separate areas since everyone uses find anyway?"

It would make buying several things from multiple vendors much easier. When you have to go from one hall to the other you spend a good deal of time just running to the port of one hall to the port of the other. By keeping all the /traders in one half and the /buyers in the other you eliminate having to jump between halls during your shopping spree.

This would be a big improvement for me. For example, I wake up at 5:00 am (work starts early) and as part of my morning routine I check for any supplies I use regularly. I might buy 10 items from 6 or 7 different vendors; frequently taking 3 or 4 trips through the portals to get to the other hall. This easily takes more than twice as long as it did in the old bazaar. The extra couple minutes taken up by running around make a difference to me!

Boleslav Forgehammer
Paladin of Brell in his 67th Campaign
E'ci – Sacred Destiny

[Anexkahn]

At least just add in an option to browse by trader name. I would use it a lot to look and see what people are buying for what prices, for when I go vedor diving.

This exists already, just open /barter window and click find with a blank search line, all buy lines and prices will be displayed, and then you can re-sort the list by buyer, price, or item name. I'm sure it is truncated at a certain amount of returned buy lines, but with the "overwhelming" amount of buyers setup on zek *cough* all 4 *cough* i've yet to have the list cut short.



Also, it has been stated a couple of places by the devs, that a combined barter/bazaar zone was the original intent of the new design, but they had to change that due to loading reasons at first. I'd guess that the actual number of people set up as buyers has little to do with the combination now, i believe it was more of an issue of having both engines running in one zone, and they've found a way to rectify that.

I'd personally like to see them move away from interacting with traders at all and just let us buy items through the search interface, I'd also like to see a fully integrated buyer/seller system where if someone puts up an item at or below your buy price on their seller, you'd automatically buy it... but thats asking for too much i know!

[Trellium]

Its up on test server now with the changes. The Red section of the bazaar is for /Traders, the blue section is for /Buyers, but all in one zone. Right now you can't zone in to the barter zone from bazaar anymore, but the exits to Nexus and Shadowhaven seem to be working as expected.

Ooo just checked and you can enter from the PoK to the bazaar directly using the old Barter zone entrance. It leads to a new door within the BAzaar, near to shadowhaven. You can use that door to go back to the pok as well.

[Blayze Meduenin]

bah i hoped they were gonna just bring back the old bazaar and let you have both buyer and seller vendors in same area.

This doesnt change anything for me, i just hate the new bazaar layout, too much running, bank and vendors spread out, no more arena and just plainly looks hideous!!

id rather have old bazaar and scrap barter totally. This issue wont be fixed till they bring back the good old bazaar and get rid of this idiotic design thing they call the new bazaar.

[Trellium]

I found the old bazaar only useful if it was dead empty. It was a silly design, forcing a million people in to a few "prime" spots. The only issue with the new one is the interconnections between rooms is confusing without the map. A simple spoked wheel design would do a lot, with the bank in the centre. That way there are many "prime" trader spots the same distance from the bank center.

[Blayze Meduenin]

you do know that with the old bazaar you could hide traders, then when you searched you would only see the one trader you selected with find.

you could have 500 traders all stood on top of each other right beside the bank and it wouldnt matter!

so the old bazaar looks better, has the banks right by the vendors (literally in fact if all crowded close as most did) also had the merchants close, had an arena and was a nice central meeting/bind spot

versus a wildy spread out, bad looking design with no arena and banks and merchants remote to the vendors

looks like a huge downgrade to me

[Dyllwin]

The biggest disappointment is that the change doesn't realy affect what many were complaining about, that was having to run two accounts to /bazaar and /barter. So while collecting all sellers into one of the hubs is a nice upgrade, this doesn't really address the root of much of the issue with the /barter implementation.

[Astroshak]

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that the barter hall being seperate was just so that we could live beta test the barter hall's functionality before it goes into the bazaar?

[Kakg]

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that the barter hall being seperate was just so that we could live beta test the barter hall's functionality before it goes into the bazaar?

Possibly but considering how few people currently use the Barter hall for anything other than a short cut to the bazaar then I don't think they got much of live beta test out of it.

[Trellium]

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that the barter hall being seperate was just so that we could live beta test the barter hall's functionality before it goes into the bazaar?

No, they assumed that new commands would be used as heavily as the old bazaar commands were and built an entire other zone to deal with server stress. They took a cautious approach to something they thought would be a big hit.

Of course, if they had just added the commands to the bazaar and then discovered "Hey, wow! People actually use this all the time!" and flooded the server with search requests (and causing major issues), then everyone would be saying "Sheesh! Why cant they EVER test this or set it up properly? Couldn't they figure out this would double the server load, since they doubled the number of search commands?".

[Trellium]

you do know that with the old bazaar you could hide traders, then when you searched you would only see the one trader you selected with find.

Yes, wow, what a point. You have to turn off the game to play it. Wow, what a wonderful concept.

[Kakg]

"Sheesh! Why cant they EVER test this or set it up properly? Couldn't they figure out this would double the server load, since they doubled the number of search commands?".

A very valid point I hadn't thought about. I suppose that a peak times the highest load on the server would be caused by the number of search requests rather than the number of people in zone. Hadn't considered this since the bazaar is the only zone where this would be an issue.