Galactic Trade Network (Auction House) Suggestions

[Raggnarok]

Buming for greater justice. This feature needs the be fixed ASAP!!! I'm truly amazed how that crappy and archaic GTN interface went trough beta testing.

[GemX]

I would heavily agree that this is one of the worst (if not THE worst) aspect of this game. I usually, in any MMO, sell my wares happily at whatever auction house they have. Here.. I've been avoiding it at all cost.

 

10 / 15 of my items came back to me. They were affordability priced and were orange (yeah those didn't sell), blue, and a few greens. Seems I'm not the only one avoiding the GTN

[Lynear]

signed

[YannALET]

I so agree with the OP.

Please Bioware fix this, it's just unusable !

[Fredrikmannen]

* Allow search by name without any required fields.

* Shift-click on an item in the inventory while GTN is open should fill out relevant fields to search for that item.

[elvigy]

Bumping because I agree. Also, the fee to list seems a little high. I priced something at 2k credits for 2 days and paid 300 credits for that. Seems a bit excessive, but I can live with it if some of these suggestions are implemented.

[Overdoz]

totally agree with that!

 

Please BW update your AH asap

[Solaron]

Yea this 50 item limit thing is bullcrap

 

 

 

 

I have 3 gathering professions and am level 35

 

 

 

I was planning on putting my massive amounts of materials on the GTN right before launch day.....imagine my surprise when I can't even put 1/10 of my stuff on...

[skurken]

I think this a great post with some really valid points and good recommendations on how to fix this. I am a big crafting and trading guy so I really need these changes. I feel my long term enjoyment will kinda depend on this. I love that your development team has bragged so much about your crafting system, which I do think is great, let's just get the instrument of delivering these products up to the same level. I also do recognize that beta testers may not have given you good feedback on this since they may not have been as invested in it, but this definitely should have been caught there. It does feel like this ui has been overlooked and thrown together. Hopefully this forum will stay troll free and we can get some official response to what bioware is thinking on this issue.

 

 

/signed

[Fomore]

First-- congratulations to Bioware for their first foray into MMO gaming. The game is very good and will be around for many years, however, as good as things are they can get better. I'd like to talk about the Galactic Trade Network (aka the auction house)-- because it seems to be the least polished aspect of the game.

 

1. I hope a 50 posting limit is a temporary limit until full release because if not that will turn off players whose main source of enjoyment is the auction house. The only reason I see this type of limit is hardware issues, it serves virtually no in-game purpose except frustration.

 

2. Requiring people to enter categories and sub-categories is a waste of time for most users. They know what they want and should be allowed to just type in the name of the item.

 

3. A function to remember your previous pricing and auction length would be greatly appreciated. Having to re-enter pricing on like items is very annoying.

 

4. Being able to shift-click an item in your inventory and have it auto-fill the search category is a staple of most MMOs that is taken for granted...until you notice you can't.

 

5. The default price on items posted should either be vendor price or left blank. The current system of a standard price above the vendor price is creating a needless price ceiling. If new players see the price is above vendor price they will most likely just click post without thinking about the value of their goods or searching for what others are selling theirs for. In effect when the lowest price is always what the game defaults to there is a lack of dynamism in the marketplace. Sure, one could buy out all the default priced items that are undervalued, but with the current 50 posting limit it would be impossible to re-sell all those items at appropriate prices in any reasonable time frame.

 

6. Allow for true auctions and not just buy-outs. On higher end rare items with no previous auction history sometimes the market itself needs to set a price point, not the vendor. Allowing people to bid on said items helps set the standard price and can be exciting and fun for both the vendor and the bidders.

 

7. Don't send mail for notification of a sale and then a message when the credits arrive. A simple system notification of "your auction for XX item has sold" and then just the message with credits itself would do. Having the extra messages in the mailbox with notification of sale just creates mailbox clutter and confusion.

 

Again, thanks to Bioware for creating a very unique take on the MMORPG genre and I hope these suggestions help push the game forward.

 

yea love the game but this needs work

[Demorgoth]

yea love the game but this needs work

 

 

An intern working for one month would've come up with a significantly superior UI. Hell, with zero training and after looking at a few articles on xml coding, I came up with a decently workable UI for EQ years ago. I'm astounded they thought the UI was so unimportant that they didn't bother putting a tiny amount of effort into it.

Edited December 20, 2011 by Demorgoth

[Putok]

Another request: When you put an item in the sale window, it should display all auctions currently posted for that item. Having to look up the going market price on an item before selling it is needlessly timing consuming, especially when we can't just shift+click the item into a search field. Getting a random trade good from a mission skill, and having to go through a bunch of categories or look on torhead to see what it's actually categorized as is also VERY annoying.

[Beastfury]

Reposting from my other post, mostly same stuff

 

Lets talk Galactic Kiosk.

 

Disclaimer:

From now on in this post I will assume that convenience is the ultimate goal of any search interface. That there is no hidden important game element hidden in messed up search experience. We will also assume that a simple and effective search interface is slightly less complicated then starship so there is no logical problem with game having it.

 

Ok so as it stands right now whole trading experience is well… how to put it lightly … lacking. Lets get to issues shell we?

 

1) Required fields.

These have to go, period. They create 2 major issues:

a) You have to know type of the item to find, in case of mats it is FAR from obvious in some cases. I need shadowsilk, I don’t care what type of item it is, just find it. Top that of with misclassified items and you have yourself a problem, huge one.

b) Even if you do know the type and it is not messed up, it still adds 3-4 extra clicks. This slows down search drastically. There is a reason Google is #1 in search world… Bottom line this is 100% not needed, slows down experience is prone to tons of bugs and over all frustration from setting wrong category.

 

 

2) Minimum price of 1. This drives me through a wall. To those who haven’t tried it yet. As of right now if you try to clear item price it reduces it to 1 instead of clearing the field. So if lets say you want to post item for 500, you have to do following. Clear field type 500 get 5001 then go the end and delete 1. I mean OM#G is that for real?

 

3) Lack of ability to post item name into search box. I am trying to sell XXX, first thing I need to do is check the current price. But before I can do that I have to pass a typing test and no mess up the item name. Or maybe I did mess up and now I think there is no such items on market… Convenience is key, this is STAPLE ability.

 

4) No ability to sell in stacks. Not like you didn’t take >50% of the features from WoW, please take their auction house. Being able to set size of stacks and # of stacks is amazing.

 

5) This brings us to next point. For the love of god remember the item price, if I am posting more then 1 of the same item, guess what 99.9% chase I want to post them for the same price. So if I just posted XXX for 100, and making another sale for XXX remember the price I set.

 

Next 3 issues are not actually market issues but they are related since they are part of whole working market experience.

 

 

 

6) Splitting sucks, it is inconvenient hard to figure out and take few extra clicks. Improve it, especially since you don’t have option of stack selling on market.

 

7) This is another one that drives me through a wall. There is no way to consolidate stacks automatically. Here is what I am talking about. As I ran out of space in the bag due to 2-3 tiers of mats accumulating in my bag I dump them into bank (since companions can use mats out of the bank, great feature fyi) Anyway a day later I found that I ran out of space in the bank… Why? Because as it turned out to be it has 2-7 stacks of each item. So I dump 5 fragments now and 5 fragments in an hour I end up with 2 stacks of 5 in the bank. Now that my bank is full I have to play mahjongg and I DON’T LIKE THAT GAME, MMK? I don’t want to sit for 10 min looking at my bank trying to find 2 of the same items are we clear on that?

 

 

Added several more gathered from responces:

 

8) Actions are caped at 50… What????????????????????????????????

 

9) Sort by price sorts by total price not item price.

 

Something tells me this is not a full list of problems, and there are more. So please if anyone ran into more issues post them I will add them.

[Rollskanardly]

GALACTIC TRADE NEEDS THE FOLLOWING FIXED!!!

 

My 2 biggest issues with the current Galactic Trade Network are:

 

1) Items listed on planets are only available on those planets. It is called Galactic Trade Network... make items in the entire system available from ALL PLANETS/FLEETS/ETC... (i.e. you list an item for sale in Nar Shaddaa it is only available to players on Nar Shaddaa, please fix).

 

2) PUT THE TERMINALS AT EVERY STARPORT ENTERANCES. Since the map doesn't always work correctly, make them EASY to find. A little consistency is all I ask. And make sure all planets have terminals.

 

 

--

Edited December 20, 2011 by Rollskanardly

[Putok]

Oh yeah, integrated "Price per item" display would be very nice to have for stacked items. Sometimes my brain is working well enough for quick head math with big numbers, and getting a calculator is a PITA :-p

[Amnolith]

There is already a long thread about the Auction House. May I recommend copy pasting recommendations in there to maintain a single long thread until they re-implement the search function on the forums:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=42536

[UhClem]

1. I hope a 50 posting limit is a temporary limit [...]

A posting limit doesn't bother me. It encourages players to competitively price items and avoids problems with GTN abuse.

 

2. Requiring people to enter categories and sub-categories is a waste of time [...]

I strongly agree. All the search fields should be optional and just filter items when you use them If I type "shadow" in the search box and leave everything else at default, I should see all items with "shadow" in the name.

 

3. A function to remember your previous pricing and auction length

Agree, and it's just good UI design. User specified options should persist.

 

4. Being able to shift-click an item in your inventory and have it auto-fill the search category

IMHO, this is what the GTN needs most. Before selling, I always research whats already posted, and it's painful as it is now...

 

6. Allow for true auctions and not just buy-outs.

I don't miss true auctions. As a seller, I get my credits sooner, as a buyer I get my items now without camping the GTN. With no visible history, you probably won't know what the "standard" price is anyways.

 

8. Armor should have slot categories so someone

Strongly agree. Since many items have "family" names, this would really help narrow search results.

 

10. Shift-clicking to break up stacks is bugged and annoying.

 

11. Like items should always auto-stack.

 

12. Windows should be movable.

Hopefully, at some point BW will take the time to clean up their UI. There are unpolished bits of UI everywhere, not just in the GTN.

[doombomb]

I'll be honest, I wan WoW's auction house design here. It's so accessible and easy to navigate.

[Locavore]

There are some good parts of that post as well and I am just hoping we will get some news from the devs recognizing our concerns and complaints. I would love to hear some of there opinions and what there feelings are on all of this.

[Beastfury]

There are some good parts of that post as well and I am just hoping we will get some news from the devs recognizing our concerns and complaints. I would love to hear some of there opinions and what there feelings are on all of this.

 

 

You wont. As it stands right now their communication with community is nonexistent.

[Neo_]

This is a simple interface request, but when moving items in the inventory I would like to not have to click on the space I want the item to actually end up. Instead, I would like the option to hold down click for the duration of the movement and let go on top of the desired slot.

 

Also, for splitting stacks, rather than shift-click-drag, why not just shift-click the item, type in the desired stack amount, then click on the desired slot for the new stack to go in the inventory.

 

Other than that, everything else on the OP's post is spot on.

Edited December 21, 2011 by Neo_

[Xerolyfe]

Co-signed. One of my favorite parts of an MMO is the economic game (GTN/AH). This and crafting is pretty much all I do for hours a day when my friends are not online.

[Kefistila]

My primary concern is there needs to be an auction house on the other planets - I'm not running all the way back to the capital just to use the auction house. If my companion can go do underworld missions on the black market, he can surely do a shopping trip for me.

 

That will help the economy tremendously.

Maybe someone already mentioned it here but each time i was on my ship I was begging into the air that there is also a GTN terminal there. I think that it would be amazing to have GTN terminal on your ship and it would basically make the GTN present on each planet you go to.

[Neo_]

Co-signed. One of my favorite parts of an MMO is the economic game (GTN/AH). This and crafting is pretty much all I do for hours a day when my friends are not online.

 

I agree. When I got bored with Wrath in WoW, the AH was pretty much all I did for hours a day. I literally lost interest completely in all other aspects of the game. I pretty much ran the economy on my server. I was definitely going to look forward to doing some auctioning in this game, but not while the GTN is so terrible to interact with.

[Locavore]

Truthfully I totally understand that this is a multiplayer game and I don't mind having to visit a city or fly to the fleet to use the trade network. Truthfully there could be a gtn on my speeder that I could use anywhere and I would not care as much as getting the UI overhauled. At this point it doesn't matter if there is a gtn everywhere if it is so poor to use. Compile this with the fact that if us power users ( expierenced auctioning users form other games) are having such problems, and find it confusing to use, new players will just opt not to use it at all, and all that focus you spent on the crafting system will be for not. Unless you really do want /1 general to be just filled to the point crazy with people trying to sell there goods there, because this is where people will move to and the gtn will be abandoned as a reasonable tool. I have tried my best not not sound overdramatic about these issues, however the communities outrage stems from the fact that the game you have made is so great in so many areas and many people, myself included, want to make it their game-of-choice, however this system seams to be such a glaring oversite and so poorly designed it really takes you out of the game and looks poorly on the game as a whole. I would be very surprised to hear a fix is not in the works, bit I wish we would get zone kind of yellow about this, also I beg someone to bring this up in a Q&A or some other bioware event so we can get some feedback on our concerns.