Trading again ;)

[Sweetpee]

First off, lets all agreed on thats this is Settlers Online, a game which will heavily rely on the interactive between players.
The plans for future pvp and the current play-contents like chatchannel, creations of guilds and the tradetab all supports that.

But as always, its never enough and i do believe that we can make some improvements.

As of now, where we are not allowed to talk about trades in the global chat and we are only allowed to make 1 tradeoffer every 10 min is really hindering the trade alot.
It feels like an arrow to the knee!

Qualan summed it up nicely (http://forum.thesettlersonline.com/t...l=1#post166957)

1) no dedicated trade chat channel to get supply and demand to meet up. The trade functionality just doesn't bring people together to work out a trade- once together they can whisper to work it out but there is no way people can signal interest in buying or selling an item and then negotiating a price
2) Trades do not automatically conclude when you post it nor get removed when someone buys an item. This adds a lot of needless clicks and appearances of randomness/impoliteness on the part of the seller when canceling 3 or 4 trade requests because the items have already been sold to someone else
3) long waiting time on wrapping up sales- this means that your goods get tied up till someone decides to decline a trade or it times out

basically the trade system is a barter system as there is no real uniform currency in use. This makes trading harder to accomplish due to the huge number of possibilities. A system like that needs far more interaction on a personal lvl than just the ability to post an item for 10 minutes and hope for the best

I therefor ask of you to:

Please give us a dedicated tradechannel.
It seems that the software (chatserver) is there for it, so it would probably only be a minor tweak to update the game.
Its a social game, where BB even thamself have given us a chatfunctions. And then to tell us not to use the chat for trade, which is a large part of the game is just cersorship at its worst.
BB even made a quest to trade 200 wine/beer, a quest where we have to interact with other players and trade with them, but we are not allowed to talk about it!!!

Please lift the "only 1 trade at the time every 10 min" curse.
That would really help make the traderoutes flow more freely.
I would prefere that we got an auction like the auctionhouses in WOW, where you could have all the auctions you wants, but only if you got the stuff on stock for it.
It would solve the grief of waiting for the seller to accept.
It would solve the grief of people getting deals declined.
And it would allow people to have several auctions at the same time.
It would probably take a complete redesign of the auction and i would be more then happy if just the 10 min lockout was lifted.

All this is ofcourse just my thoughts and wishes.
That i really wants the most is knowing BB's view on this situation and the vision they have for the auction system.
Why these restrictions and will they be eased?

On the last note, my hats off to BB, despite the whine, i still think its a great game and i look forward for even more content like pvp etc.

Regards
Sweetpee

P.S. MOD_Calen, please have the heart to have a talk with molder and consider lifting his ban.
His way of handling his frustrations wasnt the best, but a perma ban might be a little harsh.

[molder]

Very nice post, totaly agree with evrything !

[Calen]

obviously molder isnt telling everything.. and no i dont need to explain myself here or anywhere else for that matter.

[Damocracy]

P.S. MOD_Calen, please have the heart to have a talk with molder and consider lifting his ban.
His way of handling his frustrations wasnt the best, but a perma ban might be a little harsh.

No because I ninja'd MOD_Calen to banning him. He was unbanned, then the first thing he does when he gets back is offer a trade for items in Global-1 chat.

[marlock]

i think a good idea for being able to have more than 1 trade going at once would be too upgrade you branch office and every time you do that you get another slot

[Damocracy]

i think a good idea for being able to have more than 1 trade going at once would be too upgrade you branch office and every time you do that you get another slot

+1 cookie for you. Great suggestion.

[BB_Azariel]

Hi guys,

First of all, Molder was banned on multiple occasions, by multiple people... and every time for one unique reason. His ban will not be lifted as he has shown us that we can not trust him to respect the rules. Frankly I was really very close to banning him from the game.
Once again I must ask him to contact support if he wants to plead his case.

To come back to the main topic of discussion:
I agree with most of what you said. The trading system is really bad I must agree: to restrictive, not enough options, hard to negotiate or find what you're looking for. I know for a fact that BB are looking into a better system as they have had the same complaints on every server. The only thing is, I don't have any information about when it will be changed. (please pass this info on as it is not the first time I have given it)



Now understand our position though!

For the moment, the number of players is quite limited due to the fact that we are in Closed Beta. Already we have people who spam the chat, disturb and interrupt other player's discussions for nothing.
Can you imagine the chaos it would be if we let people trade on the global chat? Just look at the number of interactions per minute and multiply this by 10 (roughly the increase of players we will have when we go into Open Beta), now add all those who would be spamming for trade on global 1... Do you really think this is enjoyable for players? Do you really think it is a possible solution for MODs?

NO.

I really hope everyone understands the importance of not having trade in the Global 1 chat. In the meantime I have asked BB to open other chans (Global-7 for trade for example) so you can have a temporary solution until they implement a real trade system. I'll get back to you as soon as I have any information about this.

Thanks,

BB_Azariel