Eliminate Duplicate Items in GTN Search Results

[Alzikar]

Shopping for gear has become a multi-hours long process. The problem is when searching for a specific item, say adaptive chest items, hundreds of pages are the result. Most of the listings are duplicates where the same item appears in the lists sometimes dozens of times. This bulks the results pages needlessly.

 

Solution: Condense the GTN results to only show one item of each style. The price a player pays for any particular item should therefore default to the lowest price available. In this way it doesn't matter if there are 50 identical items for sale, the consumer only sees one of those listings, and if she wishes to purchase one of those items, the lowest price available is what the shopper pays.

 

Thanks

 

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Updated: 08/24/15 with revision of original idea with options to collapse or expand listings as desired:

 

Executive Summary:

Seeing all the duplicates available could be easily accomplished by including an option to expand or condense the listing(s).

 

Problem:

For example, search for adaptive armor, chest. Currently on Harbinger there is 197 PAGES of adaptive chest pieces available in the listings. Simply clicking through these pages one after another, pausing only long enough to allow the next page to refresh, takes over 10 minutes. For the purposes of simplicity, let's assume each unique item has 6 copies available, Let's do the math: if there are 197 pages and each page lists 8 items per page and there are 6 duplicates per item = that means there are only 262 unique items. If the listing could be condensed, then the same search would result in only 32 pages to sift through, which would be far less time consuming to page through.

 

To pick one as a specific example: It is unnecessary to see 17 separate copies of "Fearsome Harbinger Chestguard" in the listings. This only serves to inflate the number of pages one has to page through to see all the different chest pieces on the market.

 

Therefore a condensed overview of all unique items available is a far more efficient option.

 

Solution:

A more streamlined interface would be to condense all duplicates to a single line item, perhaps with an (x17) next to the item's name to let one know there are 17 copies of that item listed. If one does in fact wish to see all 17 duplicates and their respective prices, that could be possible by clicking on a "+" sign next to the line entry to then expand that item's list to show all duplicates.

 

There could also be a check box on the GTN page to default to expanded view or condensed view for all listings, depending on user preference.

 

Thanks for your consideration,

Edited August 24, 2015 by Alzikar
Incorporate Refined Idea

[Turshek]

As both a buyer and seller, I'm against this, I need to know the market before I buy or sell something.

 

There's already plenty of filters on the left, including typeing a few letters or the full name of the item you're searching for, and of course sorting results by item price.

[Theeko]

Vote No, once you find the item you want simply shift click it and then it will let you search for only that item Edited August 23, 2015 by Theeko

[Alzikar]

I understand how to search with filters and words and also shift clicking on an item to get results for that specific item. These techniques do not help when one has no idea the exact name of an item she may be interested in.

 

To continue working with my first example of searching for an adaptive chest piece: there are hundreds of pieces to choose from. Without knowing which one looks good on a character, one would prefer to preview each in turn. Having 35 copies of one chest item showing on the GTN and then flipping 7 pages to get past that item is unnecessary and tedious.

 

With respect to feeling the market before listing: I have 5 toons which craft for their primary source of income and frankly when I need to know the market with respect to any particular item, I shift click the item from inventory and then sort the lists by price. Sorting listings by price for the same identical item is tedium and superfluous. All I need to know is the lowest price available for that item and then list my wares accordingly. Seeing 20 separate and duplicate items in the listing for the same item is pointless.

 

Thanks,

[Unchosen]

No thanks. This suggestion is unappealing to me.

When I'm shopping for or selling an item it's extremely important to know exactly how many of those items are available. It's also something I want all potential buyers to know when I'm selling stuff.

I don't need, want or trust the system to tell me what my best option is.

Edited August 23, 2015 by Unchosen

[Alzikar]

How about a toggle option then?

 

Click it to condense the listings to a single item of each type with the best price available for it, or leave it as default where 3,000 + items and all of their hundreds of pages can be scrolled through if one so wishes.

 

Personally, I would like the ability to condense the list.

[Monumenta]

So you don't want to see competing prices and sellers? No thank you.

[Jaryk]

How about a toggle option then?

 

Click it to condense the listings to a single item of each type with the best price available for it, or leave it as default where 3,000 + items and all of their hundreds of pages can be scrolled through if one so wishes.

 

Personally, I would like the ability to condense the list.

 

I understand why you want this feature, and there have been times when I've felt it might be nice to have, but ultimately I am against it.

 

If it was done without the ability to toggle it on or off, it would eliminate a lot of the buy low sell high strategies that people use when looking at the prices of GTN items. If the GTN only showed the lowest price, it would be difficult to tell if that price was a good price. Is it about the same as the second and third lowest? Is it significantly less? Is the average price significantly more?

 

While these concerns do get addressed by adding a toggle to the feature, new ones come up. When you activate the toggle, does it list items by lowest unit price or lowest total price? Sometimes players may want to buy just a few of an item, but to do that they may need to buy at a higher unit price because all of the lower unit prices have stacks sizes that would ultimately see the player spend more.

 

Maybe I could see this working if you add a feature to the toggle that lets you choose which low price you see, but that seems like a lot of work for this one feature.

 

If they did a revamp of the entire GTN system, then adding this toggle as a feature might be nice, but unless they are already doing other work on that system, it seems like an inefficient use of resources.

Edited August 23, 2015 by Jaryk

[Alzikar]

Executive Summary:

Seeing all the duplicates available could be easily accomplished by including an option to expand or condense the listing(s).

 

Problem:

For example, search for adaptive armor, chest. Currently on Harbinger there is 197 PAGES of adaptive chest pieces available in the listings. Simply clicking through these pages one after another, pausing only long enough to allow the next page to refresh, takes over 10 minutes. For the purposes of simplicity, let's assume each unique item has 6 copies available, Let's do the math: if there are 197 pages and each page lists 8 items per page and there are 6 duplicates per item = that means there are only 262 unique items. If the listing could be condensed, then the same search would result in only 32 pages to sift through, which would be far less time consuming to page through.

 

To pick one as a specific example: It is unnecessary to see 17 separate copies of "Fearsome Harbinger Chestguard" in the listings. This only serves to inflate the number of pages one has to page through to see all the different chest pieces on the market.

 

Therefore a condensed overview of all unique items available is a far more efficient option.

 

 

Solution:

A more streamlined interface would be to condense all duplicates to a single line item, perhaps with an (x17) next to the item's name to let one know there are 17 copies of that item listed. If one does in fact wish to see all 17 duplicates and their respective prices, that could be possible by clicking on a "+" sign next to the line entry to then expand that item's list to show all duplicates.

 

There could also be a check box on the GTN page to default to expanded view or condensed view for all listings, depending on user preference.

 

Thanks for your consideration,

[Jaryk]

I could see that working.

[Theeko]

I could see that working if the price doesn't show right off the bat but instead under the sub menus

[Frybert]

Executive Summary:

Seeing all the duplicates available could be easily accomplished by including an option to expand or condense the listing(s).

 

Problem:

For example, search for adaptive armor, chest. Currently on Harbinger there is 197 PAGES of adaptive chest pieces available in the listings. Simply clicking through these pages one after another, pausing only long enough to allow the next page to refresh, takes over 10 minutes. For the purposes of simplicity, let's assume each unique item has 6 copies available, Let's do the math: if there are 197 pages and each page lists 8 items per page and there are 6 duplicates per item = that means there are only 262 unique items. If the listing could be condensed, then the same search would result in only 32 pages to sift through, which would be far less time consuming to page through.

 

To pick one as a specific example: It is unnecessary to see 17 separate copies of "Fearsome Harbinger Chestguard" in the listings. This only serves to inflate the number of pages one has to page through to see all the different chest pieces on the market.

 

Therefore a condensed overview of all unique items available is a far more efficient option.

 

 

Solution:

A more streamlined interface would be to condense all duplicates to a single line item, perhaps with an (x17) next to the item's name to let one know there are 17 copies of that item listed. If one does in fact wish to see all 17 duplicates and their respective prices, that could be possible by clicking on a "+" sign next to the line entry to then expand that item's list to show all duplicates.

 

There could also be a check box on the GTN page to default to expanded view or condensed view for all listings, depending on user preference.

 

Thanks for your consideration,

 

I was just thinking this very same thing.

[Zharik]

Yes. This would make browsing for new armor/clothes a lot easier and faster. Also dye modules and the like where duplicates are making previewing back and forth a lot harder.

 

This would have a side effect of only showing the cheapest crafting mats too, so those d-bags who try to mimic a cheaper price with the decimal confusion would not be shown.

 

I say yes for a toggle to show only cheapest vs show all. Let *us* decide as individuals.

[SethMyst]

This... is not a good idea.

 

If the buyers are only seeing the items that are lower value, it could potentially cause the market to crash due to the fact that the already tedious auction house even an even worse place to earn money. The only reason (for high level players) you would want to use the auction house is if you can make some sort of profit. If players see no sure-fire way of making a potential profit, they won't use it, reducing the amount of players selling and, after a time, causes the market to crash.

Basic Economics, people! Incentive pretty much drives everything in this game.

[Corvald]

I believe the intent of the updated suggestion is that the price would not display if this filter option is selected. Whilst the more streamlined expandable view would be nice, a simple compromise that could save on development time is simply to restrict the results to remove duplicates and just not display anything in the price column and disable the buy button if this option is used. Then people could use the display to search for items they like and shift-click to search for them when they find the item they wish to buy.

 

Plenty of people turn huge profits without having to rely on people being unable to figure out which item is actually cheaper due to the crap display of the GTN.

 

I posted a suggestion a couple of days ago for a similar feature to this. I also suggested some improved filters such as a dropdown to show only cartel items, exclude cartel items or both (the default) as there are many categories where this could be useful (pets, mounts, decorations, etc).

 

It would also be nice to have a second keyword filter box to exclude certain words from the result, e.g. "Series" or "Socorro".