[New] EMC Market Buy/Sell Portal - Suggestions/Bug Reports

It seems as if the drop down choices when typing a search for an item has disappeared? If I type g it does not provide anything until I hit enter and it then takes me to gold. Strange and irritating lol.

edit while posting: seems to be fixed.. strange

Ah, fair enough. Hrm. Guess you could get it from the rupee history reader but that'd be about it. Ok, well, thought I'd try. Thanks nonetheless!

I am not sure what may have happened, however it's possible that there was a delay somewhere in the connection causing the results to not come from the server right away. In the future, I might be able to store the item list client-side since it's only up to thousands of items and it's a false economy to keep it server-side.

I absolutely love this. I save so many rupees by using this, and when I'm selling items, I get tons of rupees. Thank you so much for making this!

No problem! Thanks so much for taking the time to be so thankful.

It should have a search by price, instead of the item you specifically search for.

I second that!

I'm confused what you're both suggesting. Would it be a list that starts with dirt and eggs (lowest price) and progresses up to beacons/promos (highest price) with every single item in the game? How would that be useful?

Could you give me an example of what kind of search you're thinking of and what the output would be?

Well, my idea of that, since I don't know his, was that you would be able to search for prices after you got to the item you are searching for, but that doesn't seem to be needed as I can't seem to find a thread that is really long.
Is that due to your system only displaying the cheapest options with there being more, or are there only that many shops that you have recorded with those options? (Things like wood, stone, saplings, veggies should have a large number of shops that sell them, shouldn't they?)

I don't understand. Every item is identical to the same item. Why would you want to pay more than the lowest price? If a shop doesn't have enough stock to meet your needs, you buy what they have, mark it out, and move on to the next shop. Eventually you meet a shop which has enough stock to actually meet your demand, and since all the cheaper shops are hidden, that's where people buy from until the out of stock shops have restocked again.

Maybe you can explain a bit more about what you're trying to do/learn so I can better understand the problem and your suggestion?

I would like the other to make his point, I am curious of it, but with mine, the only thought is someone in a hurry and wants to make sure that what they have is available/a known good median price.
That doesn't seem necessary looking at the system again because of how you set up the marketplace pricing. I was thinking of something like Diamonds being volitile at cheaper prices, so someone wanting to get them would want to go closer to the median price range.
I suppose you could setup a range of prices someone is searching for, but again, because the pool of shops is so low, it doesn't seem necessary....

I understand that shops with higher prices are sometimes bought from less often, so they will have more stock. It also increases the likelihood that others will stock them, assuming they accept buy-backs and enough people know about that deal.

However, here are the reasons why a price filter would not work as you hope:
1) Many items can be mass produced. In this case, mass producers would make more money by pricing below average or at a significant discount. Despite being one of the best places to buy an item, these shops would be cut off.
2) Shop owners can price an item cheaper because they have a lot of it or because they really enjoy producing it. These shops would be cut off.
3) Many shops price cheaply because the owners of them really enjoy running the shop and providing a great service to others. It’s more about doing something they enjoy than any money they make. These shops would be cut off.
4) Most people aren’t as price picky as you might think. For these customers, there would be little or no difference to the rate of purchase at the different prices. Certain items would be more or less price sensitive than others.
5) Most shops don’t accept buy-backs, and people supplying to shops are not very reliable or active unless the shop is already popular, and even then they wont be as reliable or active as a dedicated and passionate shop owner.

The end result is that we would cut off a set of low-price shops for each item, including some great quality shops. In exchange, we would have almost the exact same set of problems, since our new cheapest shops would all be bought out and only some of them would restock. There might be a slightly higher percentage restocking, but it still would not form a majority. We’d be in basically the same place, just with having paid a higher price for the items.

It’s much more effective to remove listings that are out of stock, so that they don’t show up for the next searcher. This is fundamentally how the site works. When you hit the “Out” link, the listing is hidden.

Now, that system alone would result in listings disappearing one by one until there were none left. Meanwhile, not every shop will remain out of stock. Therefore, it makes sense to have listings show up again after some time. However, if an item is out of stock more than once, it’s less likely to be restocked, so the amount of time increases exponentially based on the number of times a listing is found to be out of stock. After several times, the listing is effectively gone from the results for good.

That means that if the site is used and updated actively by more people, search times to find items will get faster, because there will be more people per the same number of out of stock shops. Unfortunately, if a lot of time passes and no feedback is generated from a human user searching for that item, the number of out-of-stock listings that show up again will accumulate and it creates an unpleasant experience for the next user, which is most likely what’s happened here.

Upon reflection I have thought of a tweak for this algorithm. The probability that an item is restocked in a given time period is most likely correlated with the shop owner or the level of activity at that shop. Therefore, it would make sense to have the time that an item reappears be based on the likelihood that all items are out of stock repeatedly in the shop as a whole. This will vastly increase the timing for shops which are not restocked, and help listings show up again faster for items in shops where other items are restocked.

However, this would only reduce the issue. I will have to think further on any other tweaks I could make. But I do think the best solution is if more people used the site.

K o0Okay!

That makes sense. The whole problem with the system is simply that it isn't very well known.
Is there a way that you could partner with the developers of EMC to get more advertisement for it, and the system itself supported by them?
How does one advertise a system like that? It doesn't really seem like you can advertise it like a shop and just server hope like I see you do time to time....

The site is used every day with at least dozens and sometimes hundreds of searches, however there are a lot of items.

I think the easiest way to promote it is to put the advertisement in your signature. You can find the BBCode on the website here.

Another effective way is to mention it over time to people who are trying to find places to buy things. If anyone is asking "who sells ___" then you can show them the site. It's also a lot more helpful to that person than just listing a couple shops that might be out of stock.

Yeah, I tried the whole thing (http://azoundria.com/emc/market/link.php), but I couldn't get it to work...
My new signature is the end result....

Well, that's strange, it works perfectly fine...

What happened when you put it in your signature? Should look like this (copied straight from the site):

All I did was try to put that in a quote. It doesn't show up in the preview. Also, I cannot seem to get the first one to link....

Why does it only show a small portion, 12 items out of 157 item that I sell.
When I log in I see my whole list. But my customers only see a very small amount.
Thanks

For the record I've marked some Shops from SMP5 as Closed. Thought I would post since I wasn't logged on and you might wonder if someone was screwing around.

Is this the place to post suggestions?

I noticed that once a Shop has been marked as Closed, it doesn't automatically show as being Closed. Is this accomplished manually? The link at the bottom to mark a Shop as Closed might be confusing to some Players as the link labeled "This Shop Is Closed" might be misinterpreted as meaning that the Shop is actually closed. Perhaps change to something like "Report Shop As Closed" ?

Are Shops that have been verified as being closed just removed, or are they marked in some way? If so, does it include the date that it was reported/verified closed.

Also, I was wondering if reasons for closure could be added. I ran across a couple already:

• Some residences were still owned by the same Player that was on the Shop listing, but there were no Shop signs to be found. This might be due to no Shop existing in the given location, but also could be due to a Player remodel or temporary shutdown without obvious announcement of closure or access to the Shop area.
• In one case there was immediate signage from the Shop owner stating that the Shop was closed (and in this case also a reference to another active Shop).
• Another residence (in addition to no shop signs) had gone derelict, which might be relevant info.
• Other residences were now owned by a different Player than the one on the Shop listing (with different items offered for sale).
• Residence change of ownership could also be with no apparent Shop signs.