Artisan Archive
Thread: Bazaar Improvements (based on much use)
Rthr-X wrote:You -can- copy and paste; I do it regularly. You have to go into the options and create a key-mapping for it, though. I use Ctrl-Shift-C and Ctrl-Shift-V... you just highlight the text with the mouse and copy from there.
And does the permium sale 'highlighting' actually work? I can't say I've ever seen anything stand out on the list, including the stuff I've put on premium...
Thanks for the tip, Rthr and Stan.
Last I checked, Premium sale does not highlight. However, it will sort your item to the top the first time the user enters the page. However, if they resort at ANY time during the session, it seems to wipe out the premium. Now, I have not experimented since Beta.. but thats how it worked then. Or didnt work, as the case may be.
krank13 wrote:I would like a search field, that you can type into. I would also like a mouse over, on the list of filters, to show the products you can find in them. (most of them are self explanitory, a couple are not).
I like the idea of merchant giving you more slots, but I would also like more slots, anyway. 25 is not enough. I make a lot of small goods, and I can't post them on the terminal, and that is frustrating. I agree with being able to remotely remove goods. It would also be nice to remotely change the price of goods, so, just before a sale ends, you can try to dump the goods, before you loose your 20 listing fee.
I agree on their being a text search. That alone may help solve two problems: Finding a scout blaster in a sea of cdef weapons, and people renaming their items to non-standard things. If they make a scout blaster, but call it Dumbo Arms X-1000 then its not going to come up in a text search for scout blaster. This will encourage people to name things with the correct name. Sadly, it will also encourage people to make fraudlent listings, the most common of which seems to be the CDEF "Scout Blaster".
Regards,
Artuk
Thing is - you might think your stuff is premium, but I think its crap. I dont care if you paid more if I dont want to see it on successive resorts per the preference of what I want to see.
You pay premium to get first sight - youll get plenty of quick buys like that. I sort to see what I want to see.
I am an artisan also - so please dont pretend my opinion isnt valid here because I wont be paying for premium auctions - because I just may do that. But I also buy things and I dont want spam/crap/unwanted sort options in my way after the first initial sort.
Rthr-X wrote:
I kind of like the idea of giving architect's the ability to build / post billboards. You know, perhaps choose from a little clip-art collection and a fifty-character text message... "Eat at Joe's, fifty kilometers north of Coronet!"
... well, it ~could~ work.
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Scylla: Corellia; Coronet - Kaeline Aerie, Master Artisan
SCROLLING BILLBOARDS!
There's a new profession. Billboard managers. You have to pay them to get your ad listed.
lol
I agree with all of the items you mentioned as I have run into the same problems. I even sent a message to customer support asking for some clarification and was told "I cannot reveal to you in-game information. Please check with other players." So here I am.
My biggest beefs with the Bazaar are the following:
1. Sorting of items only works for the current page (typically items 1-102, 103-204, etc.) you are on and not across the entire set of pages for the litem you arelooking at. I have never found out how the system determines what items will be on page 1 vs. any others. I have even tried Premium sales with little effect. I would like to see that when I press the "Type" column or "Item" column for a sort that it takes the entire listing into account rather than just the current page.
2. I agree that premium sales should be highlighted (to stand out), but I also agree that they should not always show up at the top of the sort formy above reason #1(more that 102 premiumsales means you might never see anything else).
3. There are currently no lower-level grouping options fo clothing like there are for everything else. There should be some kind of grouping added for things like Wookiee outfits, Shirts, Pants, Shoes and Boots, Jackets, etc. It would make it much easier to wade through the Bazaar for the specific things people are looking for.
4. I would like to see the base item be a part of the search capabilities and sorting. As a maker of clothing I would be very interested in giving my products cool, catalog-like names and colors but I am afraid that if I do that nothing will sell because of the inability for a buyer to easily find a "Casual Shirt" when I have it listed as "Goldenrod Tee."
Random thoughts on an issue close to my heart.
Well one of the changes i would like to see in the bazzar is a better grouping of items. Something more in the effect that the customer does not have to go through pages and pages of CDEF pistols just to find the item they want be it a scout blaster or a DLT20a rifle.
Also do the same thing with clothing. Allow the consumer to choose what particular type of clothing. And not just have it all grouped together like it is now. It will cut down on the loading time of the bazzar if we just create some sort of filing system for then items instead of having 7 pages of useless materials and 1 page of pretty good items.
If we do that and fix the premium auctions i think the bazaar will work a lot better. Also i agree that we should get more space after spending the skill points to learn all the business skills.it would give people more incentive to take the business skill trees. Instead of just leaving them to sit there unused.
Windrunner made a post about this ... post, in the discussion forum. So I am including a copy of a post I made there earlier today.
Title of other post:
Need a better way to advertise goods.
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I was going to start my own thread on this today but I will place my thoughts here.
We live in an electronic society. Spamming your wares and coordinates in town is just silly and takes up too much space in the chat window.
The Bazaar is where people go to find products to buy. The bazaar already covers the whole galaxy, although most people only search locally so they can buy the item now.
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The Business skill tree should include the ability to have your vendor machine's items listed in the bazaar.
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The Bazaar should have 2 new tabs Local Vendors and All Vendors.
Local Vendor tab includes vendor machines that are closer to the current city than any other city on the planet. Each line then lists:
- The Crafters name
-a current list of item types that are currently in the vendor
-Promotional advertising
-Coordinates
You could then view the contents of one vendor and place bids for auctions or make purchases like normal. Then travel to the site and pick up the item.
You could also view all local vendors by item category, like the current system. Coordinates would need to be listed per item.
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All Vendors
This would be a rather long list so it should be sortable by planet. For example show a list of all Tatooine vendors which could be sorted by town.
Or show a list of all vendors who are nearest to a selected town.
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The pricing limit cannot apply to vendor prices
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The bazaar itself needs some better search functions, but I wont go into that now. I think others have mentioned this in the past.
Zant Mozzi
Well, I daresay we're unanimous about a better sorting system. The question of how to implement it remains...
I suggest making it more-or-less like standard Windows columns... in that you can turn on/off any particular detail you don't need to see (with columns like seller's name, current high bidder, base item name, etc), plus filtering options - only show immediate / auction sales, price limits (min and max),only showpremium auctions,and so on.
And premium auctions really should simply be highlighted in an obvious way, not placed at the top of the list.
Scrolling advertisements on thebazaar window is a great idea... and Artuk is right about my billboard suggestion. Unless, of course, the billboards are prohibitively expensive and require high Business skills to place. But even then... local city fields would become rather unpleasant.
(Odd thought... the more items placed, eventually creature spawn points dwindle and don't return... so encroaching industry starts to impact the wildlife and people need to travel further to hunt. Eh? eh? .... naww)
Final thought - perhaps, in the filtering system, there could be a complicated "by profession" filter? You know, filter by Artisan will show sampled materials, basic clothing, and simple engineering works... and filter by Armoursmith, Weaponsmith, Droid Engineer shows the obvious items, plus all those little bits 'n' pieces they require.
Maybe.
dvisti wrote:aka,
Thanks, I know you can sort on the columns--the problem is that if I sort by auction type, then the Item Name column is randomly ordered. When I am shopping, I usually want to be easily able to compare prices on a single type.
It would be cool if we could indicate multiple columns we want to sort by. Then you could sort by auction type, product name, and price in descending order. That might be a little tricky to interface though. Might be cool if we could set a default page length. I think 100 is proving to be a little too short. On my display (1280x960) I could easily handle 200.
Windrunner wrote:I agree with all of the items you mentioned as I have run into the same problems. I even sent a message to customer support asking for some clarification and was told "I cannot reveal to you in-game information. Please check with other players." So here I am.
My biggest beefs with the Bazaar are the following:
1. Sorting of items only works for the current page (typically items 1-102, 103-204, etc.) you are on and not across the entire set of pages for the litem you are looking at. I have never found out how the system determines what items will be on page 1 vs. any others. I have even tried Premium sales with little effect. I would like to see that when I press the "Type" column or "Item" column for a sort that it takes the entire listing into account rather than just the current page.
2. I agree that premium sales should be highlighted (to stand out), but I also agree that they should not always show up at the top of the sort for my above reason #1 (more that 102 premium sales means you might never see anything else).
3. There are currently no lower-level grouping options fo clothing like there are for everything else. There should be some kind of grouping added for things like Wookiee outfits, Shirts, Pants, Shoes and Boots, Jackets, etc. It would make it much easier to wade through the Bazaar for the specific things people are looking for.
4. I would like to see the base item be a part of the search capabilities and sorting. As a maker of clothing I would be very interested in giving my products cool, catalog-like names and colors but I am afraid that if I do that nothing will sell because of the inability for a buyer to easily find a "Casual Shirt" when I have it listed as "Goldenrod Tee."
Random thoughts on an issue close to my heart.
I agree on the sorting issue. Its odd.. it will remember how you sort each page, but it wont resort the entire result set before paging them. I think the sorting is client side, but the paging is set up on the server side.
I never intended that premium auctions presist through pages. I just want to get my first impression. Right now if you look in armor, and resort by price (for instance), then go to weapon, it will still be resorted by price and my premium weapon auction will never get floated. Premium auctions shouldnt be a tyranny of the businessmen, but it should provide the function and value paid for both in skill points and in auction cost. As a Merchant I see my selling perks as very important. I am paying good skill points to get those skills.
Yes, we should have stores. I do. I use the Bazaar [i]too[/i].
As for base type.. we are all having that problem. I would LIKE to add clever naming or description, but at the same time I want to inform my customer what the product is without confusing them. More functionality in this direction could make the bazaar more fun as well as more useful.
Rthr-X wrote:I kind of like the idea of giving architect's the ability to build / post billboards. You know, perhaps choose from a little clip-art collection and a fifty-character text message... "Eat at Joe's, fifty kilometers north of Coronet!"
... well, it ~could~ work.
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Scylla: Corellia; Coronet - Kaeline Aerie, Master Artisan
Heh.. we passed laws here in New Hampshire now because the billboards were cluttering the scenery. We dont allow new ones to be built except under very specific conditions. My fear is a similar thing could happen in game. A sea of harvesters is bad enough the moment you cross the build line, a sea of billboards would be rough.
BUT... if you could have a billboard outside your store rather then the absurd little shingle they give you.. that might be cool. Make it easier for folks to recognize your store as such right away.
gatekeep wrote:
I'd also like to see some level of merchant skill allow short text ads to be placed for a fee. These could show up google-style in a section of the screen near the search results. Ideally, they'd allow you to attach a waypoint to a shop as well and be displayed according to what types of items the user is currently viewing.
An advertisement, perhaps scrolling as PadawanChong joked, that appears on bazaar terminals would be really nifty.. and provide some nice additional functionality to the business and merchant professions.
Regards,
Artuk
I think that most of the people in this thread have touched on the big issues that most of us feel are important. I especially like the prospect of being able to take out an add that would display to people when they're using the bazaar. I think some sort of ad that displays/refreshes on the purchase/search window, perhaps limited to 50-100 characters, is an excellent idea. If there are any other artisans out there who agree with these improvements, please at least add an I agree post, so that the Devs know that these are issues that most of us want addressed. Don't let your voice go unheard just because everyone else already said what you would have said!
Raise the maximum price on objects sold by instant sale to something over 3000 cr.
Frankly, why have a cap at all? I see no good reason for this - and it cripples the market for anything more desirable than the average garbage.
In addition, it would be FANTASTIC if artisans with higher business skills could obtain sales reports showing what kind of products are selling where. It would be enough to make the whole line of skills worth taking...
>
> We need categories for each ranged weapon and melee weapon type. We need a seperate
> category for CDEF entirely. CDEF weapons are stifling arms sales.
More categories sure... but at the very least, better organisation of the categories there are now. It is seriously non-intuitive to find certain things (like, say, travel packs) in the bazaar right now. Sure, you could click on each and every category, but the bazaar is usually slower than a stoned bantha...
There should be a general "WANTED" category as well. People should be able to pay their 20 credits to put up a want ad showing their name and what they want so that artisans can email them with offers. If nothing else, this will let crafters get an idea of what's in demand in their region. Shouldn't be too hard to impliment.