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Fix GTN sales of millions for common mats


WygaMan

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No decimals is a good start. Just round everything to +1 credit, if there's a decimal part.

I don't think prices should be regulated, but maybe selling any crafting mats over 100000 per mat should trigger an extra, additional warning. Not the regular "hey, you're buying a rancor for 5 mil, are you sure?", but a red "this is a crafting material, and we suspect it's being severely overpriced/you're being scammed. are you still sure you want to buy it?"

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The derpishness is strong in this thread. Cover me, I'll handle it myself.

 

IF... there are decimal points in the per-unit price, then it's a stack, and you're not paying for one unit.

You took a derp round right to the head there, dude. That seems to be implying that if there are no decimal points, it isn't a stack. That's not true.

 

Any time the price is an exact whole-number multiple of the number of items in the stack, the unit price is a whole number, and the GTN UI does not display any decimal places.

 

This is actually how the so-called scam works. Let's say that a typical price for a "Fragment of GTN complaint thread" gives, taking the example from the beginning of the thread, 505.05 credits when converted to a unit price. That is, 50,000 credits for a stack of 99. The entrepreneur who wants to take advantage of the haste of avaricious feebleminded players will post a stack of 10 for 500,000 credits (must be a whole number of credits per unit), unit price 50,000. To the hasty eye, this looks like a better deal: 50505 versus 50000.

 

If the GTN UI displayed all unit prices with the same number of decimal places, the unit prices would be 505.05 and 50,000.00, or 505 and 50,000, or, compromising a bit, 505.1 and 50,000.0, and the hasty-eye stupidity would end, or at least greatly diminish.

 

Or people can do what Morgan Sporlock said (in a different context) in the end of /Supersize Me/, and take responsibility for the consequences of their own actions. (People often overlook this point, and think of the film as a pure-blood anti-McDo polemic, but it isn't.)

 

On the GTN, that means using the tools provided. Sort by Unit Price when buying stacks. Sort by Price when buying single items, and don't rely on the little triangle in the column header - by default, Sort by Price is marked but the items aren't sorted by price. Use the price limits when searching, so you don't even see items that cost more than you want to pay.

 

So we have only two things to look at, and they are, in essence, both bugs in the GTN UI.

 

1. Inconsistent number of decimal places displayed in the GTN unit price column.

2. The initial sort condition says it sorts by price but does not sort by price.

 

((WARNING: Hyperbole.))

The only thing more effective than fixing those two things (both of them!) would be to have an armed supervisor watching over every player to make sure he doesn't buy something stupid. I think that we all agree that fixing the bugs will be more cost-effective.

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I have never been scammed. The GTN has all the tools needed to tell how much an item cost, you only need to filter and read.

 

The only suggestion I would give is to have the GTN default to sorting by lowest unit price. That would help these people who seem to get scammed and would be a quality of life addition for me as it would save a few clicks. :cool:

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The only suggestion I would give is to have the GTN default to sorting by lowest unit price. That would help these people who seem to get scammed and would be a quality of life addition for me as it would save a few clicks. :cool:

Then we'll have complaints when some players inevitably and unwittingly buy a large stack instead of a single item because it "looked cheaper."

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Then we'll have complaints when some players inevitably and unwittingly buy a large stack instead of a single item because it "looked cheaper."

There's no way to fix "stupid". It is possible to mitigate the consequences of "inattentive" by more careful UI design, but in the end, stupid is as stupid does, and what stupid does is stupid.

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There's no way to fix "stupid". It is possible to mitigate the consequences of "inattentive" by more careful UI design, but in the end, stupid is as stupid does, and what stupid does is stupid.

 

This. As stated, at the end of the day, you cant cure stupid...

 

And dangit i read your sig and now that song is stuck in my head... /bonk

Edited by XiamaraSimi
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Glad to be of service. :D I called her that because I was trying to get just that line of the lyrics out of my head. It didn't work. :mad:

 

Could have been worse, you could have been watching Mary Poppins and gotten "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" stuck in your head :D although im pretty sure thsts way too many letters for the system to allow in a name ;)

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sigh

 

it's not a scam.

 

Pay attention to what you're doing on the GTN and you won't get burned. There's a frickin confirmation window with the item you're buying 'and' the price you're paying for it. Take a second and review the window and this'll never get you.

 

I lost 4mil credits a long time ago to this....tactic....and I've paid very close attention to my purchases ever since.

 

Same experience in another MMO years ago. I've watched AH/GTN prices exceptionally closely ever since.

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Could have been worse, you could have been watching Mary Poppins and gotten "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" stuck in your head :D although im pretty sure thsts way too many letters for the system to allow in a name ;)

It is indeed too long. I had an insane moment, and decided to try the name of, well, not-exactly-a character(1) in one of the Flinx novels, Abalamahalamatandra. It got cut off just before the "tandra" part.

 

(1) Abalamahalamatandra turns out to be a sort of machine, but it follows Flinx around for most of the novel. I like the sound of the name, that's all.

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all I have to add to this is when I GTN I have a scratch pad for writing on and my phone's calculator. I keep track of whichever matts I buy/sell the most.

 

lol my avatar makes me look like I double posted *waves at her twin*

Edited by RavenSkysong
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