Merchant Archive
Thread: The mystery of the Next page button.
I had a member of my guild ask me if I could make a T21 for him, I know he is not new to the game and have grinded out several holo professions, so him simply being a new was not the reason. I of cause asked him if my vendor was out as I knew that there was suppose to be 4 left, and he said yes. This got me worried as I have receive no sales or end of auction emails, and the credit was not in my bank account, and I thought that items might have disappeared. So I rushed over to my vendor, to find out that nothing had disappeared, that the 4 T21 was still there.
So this was obviously a case of "the next page button syndrome" or what ever you wand to call it. I told him to try the to use the "next page" button, and the situation was solved.
I shrugged the incident off with no further thought, just like I shrug off the strange questions I get about the nature of weapon smithing, thinking nothing further of it.
Then a few days ago I wend out to look for a shop that sold vehicle customisation kits. I looked in any shop could find that sold droid, or artisan goods, and well as resource vendors. And I started to notice a tendency, vast majority of shops had less then 100 items for sale per vendor. Many was completely empty, and the rest had perhaps 40 items tops. When I finally came upon a vendor that stocked more then 100 items I was actuarially spruced.
And that was when it dawned on me. As a merchant, I am very aware of the "next page" button. However, I can se how many players being so use to empty vendors, and vendors only having a few items for sale, that when they find a really well stocked vendor it never occurs to them that the vendor might have more the 100 items. They are just glad that the vendor is actuarially stocked, and thus they ask the owner why they do not have thus and thus in stock. (No reason to ask the owner of an empty vendor)
It is not that they cannot se the button, or that they do not know how to use it, more likely it is because they do not expect it to even exist. Obviously they wound find what they are not looking for.
SeaRaptor wrote:
I agree that this is part of the problem. But also part of the problem is the less-than-stellar vendor interface that makes it virtually impossible to even notice that button in the first place. Also note that nowhere in the game help or manuals is a section entitled "How to use the Bazaar or a Player Vendor".
A computer game that doesn't have a section in the instruction manual on how to use a simple user interface? oh no!
/sarcasm off
Come on they managed to install the game by clicking on the next button in the install wizard didn't they, the next button in the bazaar is exactly whereyou would expect it to be, bottom right. Its in the same position as you would find the next page button in any number of computer programs.
Anyone who can't see it is either too lazy to look properly or needs glasses. In most cases i suspect it is the former.
DocSavag wrote:
I rarely have vendors with more than 100 items on them at a time because peole don't use the Next Button so why bother?
I don't think the button is all that unnoticable. The real problem is that you sort the items by Name and you look for T21 if it doesn't show up there why would you KNOW to look at Next? Wouldn't those be the ones sorted below where you are already looking? You would think so kowing how data is generally sorted. Fix the sort issue and people will use the next button more because they will realize T is on the next page!!!
A true sort would help a lot...
But how about simply making the button more noticeable? Please run this by the devs and see what they say. If "next" or "previous" is active, make it a different color (like red). That might actually benefit us more than simply changing the sort (though ideally both need done).
Happymob wrote:
DocSavag wrote:
I rarely have vendors with more than 100 items on them at a time because peole don't use the Next Button so why bother?
I don't think the button is all that unnoticable. The real problem is that you sort the items by Name and you look for T21 if it doesn't show up there why would you KNOW to look at Next? Wouldn't those be the ones sorted below where you are already looking? You would think so kowing how data is generally sorted. Fix the sort issue and people will use the next button more because they will realize T is on the next page!!!
A true sort would help a lot...
But how about simply making the button more noticeable? Please run this by the devs and see what they say. If "next" or "previous" is active, make it a different color (like red). That might actually benefit us more than simply changing the sort (though ideally both need done).
Yeah, the sort bugs me more simply because it is so non-intuitive (and drives me nuts on the bazaar looking for a specific resource). But it's possible that changing the UI is a 3 minute change while changing the sort is hours of work. It's obviously hard to tell without seeing the code, but if I had to guess the UI change would be trivial.
DocSavag wrote:
I can ask but given the choice of how to spend our developer time I would prefer they fix the sort. *shrug*
lisasdarren wrote:
A computer game that doesn't have a section in the instruction manual on how to use a simple user interface? oh no!
/sarcasm off
Come on they managed to install the game by clicking on the next button in the install wizard didn't they, the next button in the bazaar is exactly whereyou would expect it to be, bottom right. Its in the same position as you would find the next page button in any number of computer programs.
Anyone who can't see it is either too lazy to look properly or needs glasses. In most cases i suspect it is the former.
If it is so simple, then why do I constantly get tells from people who have been playing for months who do not know the button is there? I used to think the same as you do, but I deal with people all the time who are "vets" who don't know that button is there.I have 3,000 weapons on my vendor, anyone attempting to find anything in it withoutbeing able to workinterface is liable to get lost. As such, I get a lot of tells on this issue, despite having my vendor bark inform people about the "Next Items" button, and having a static item there telling people about it as well.
To my thinking, when a problem is this systemic and has been going on this long (nearly a year after release), somebody needs to simply put a screen shot up in the online manual with a few arrows and a big, yellow highlight for the next items button.
Anendo wrote:
come to think of it, a search button would help..
So would having the next button 'flash' or 'blink'if it's there. Perhaps just on the first page, so it doesn't get annoying.
The eye is drawn to change and movement.