(sorry, I tend to write long posts lol, if you only care about reading the suggestion itself skip to the part in green colored text) Hello Folks, As we all know, with the recent changes to many of EMC's rules, many players have become quite upset. Like many of us, I don't particularly like the changes that were made regarding Auctions; however, it is clear to me that the staff have a clear goal of making auctions less intrusive on the other aspects of EMC (such as the forums and in-game), NOT a goal of angering the community. such as many people seem to believe. As such, I have been trying to brainstorm solutions that would give players the best of both worlds in a compromise rather than abolish the recent rule changes entirely. One of the rule changes made prevents players from advertising their auctions anywhere - including in game. I personally rather liked being able to see auctions advertised in-game, as I do not frequently browse the auctions forum. Players often advertised their new auctions in-game shortly after posting them, so I would learn about potential bidding options as soon as possible. So, the change I am suggesting is simple. Why not add a toggleable chat channel meant specifically for advertising and discussing auctions? The channel could be called "Auction" using the letter A, and since it would be toggleable, only players who wished to see chat related to auctions would have to participate. As far as I can see, this should allow everyone - the auctioners, the customers, the bystanders, and the staff - to be happy. Pros: Simple to code Allows in-game chat to be clear for those who don't want to see auction-related chat Allows auctioners to advertise their auctions to those who wish to see them Allows customers to see what brand-new auctions are available to them Cons: Would make the chat system slightly more cluttered and complicated due to the addition of another channel Would require coding, albeit a small amount If there is another pro or con you as a reader think should be on this list, let me know and I'll add it. In conclusion, while having a clear chat is nice, I don't think that it's really fair to take something such as public advertising and discussion of auctions away from the players. In all honesty, I don't see a reason why an auction channel wouldn't be a good idea in this situation - it should allow all parties to be happy. Let me know what you think in the attached poll.
This is what I like about our community; sharing your (dis)likes, and then we move on and try to work with the setup and maybe even help try to improve it. For what's it worth I think this sounds like an interesting idea. Maybe this could even be set up to be "opt in" by default (meaning: players would need to turn this channel on before they can use it). It would take away the 'spam' on the forums and still give players an option to advertise their auctions. No bumping but advertising. +1 from me.
I'm going to share what we are currently working on, BUT we don't yet know if it will work right. So if we have to later say it doesn't, then just be aware. This is why we usually don't reveal things until they are a sure thing. So here goes (sry Aikar)... We are working on a restructuring of the Market chat system. We don't know yet what it will be called precisely, but we're going to make it run less like a chat channel. This channel will be used for advertisements for shops, casinos, and auctions. Here's where the great part comes in. If Aikar pulls it off, this channel will work more like a broadcast system (optional to see) where auctioneers,shop and/or casino owners will not be required to server hop in order to advertise. They will simply type a command and voila, their message will be sent to this channel, seen across the 10 servers for those players that don't opt out. This solution will cut down on log-in spam that comes with server hopping, as well as be AUTOMATICALLY monitored for time between broadcasts with a special cool-down in the code. Time between is still being discussed. In addition, Aikar is also still trying to get the Auctions separated. In the meantime, they have managed to create a neat search bar for the forum categories. So there you have it. (Don't ban me Aikar) This WILL take some time to get up and going, but the developer team is working to create this solution to address the various player concerns that have been given. We are listening and we do have plans to try to fix the system. Once again though, what we explain may not be super simple to pull off in the code, so it may take some time and we may have to go a different route. But just so you know we ARE listening.
Kryssyy.. honestly (I'll be very honest here).... I am feeling a little uncomfortable now. <cut> If only you started the whole project with this I'm going to do exactly the same thing I did for that community poll. But honestly, you should have started with this. Not that (somewhat cold (no offense!)) "Here are the new rules, we hope you like those!" while anyone could honestly have expected some protests and backlash. Because, with all due respect, the current set up is severely lacking. But now that you explained all this I can somewhat better understand your thought process as well And I am pretty sure that if you would have said this from the beginning (for example): "Sorry everyone, but things are going to be bad for a moment because we're really busy with more additions and more changes. But we need to do these one step at a time, we cannot do the other things without having these changes" then most of us would have understood and would have respected the fact that things don't work nicely now, but you guys are working on it. That would have been so much different from this. For the record: I still stand behind every critical piece I wrote yesterday, but knowing this definitely changes a lot for me and I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one who is more than willing to give you guys the benefit of the doubt. But just don't leave us on the dark with a change which, at first hand, affects us rather negatively. Enough of all that. Thank you for clearing this up. Sorry to say this but if Aikar or another staff member gets upset at you for posting this then I think they're pretty clueless as to what is going on within the community. This was honestly really needed to defuse this whole nasty situation. Thank you once again for the time and for being honest with the community.
We don't know yet if it will work and we don't like to make false promises. We don't announce changes to the community until they are confirmed. I make the comment about Aikar banning me because USUALLY I receive clearance before revealing anything to the community, as all Staff must. The post I wrote was written without clearance and doing so is usually frowned upon because we work as a team. I feel my actions were justified and he'll forgive me though. The most I know is that what I described he's going to attempt and 'should be possible'. That's nowhere near set in stone and it could definitely change if necessary. I'm glad that people like it, but I'm only going to repeat about a million times that this is HYPOTHETICAL as of this moment and we don't know if it's going to work as described. If you are going to be critical of the staff's handling of the situation, please remember to also look at the other side of things. Going to be straight up and call some people out here. If more of the community were a little more willing to give things a shot instead of assuming it will be the end of days, it would have been a lot smoother as well. We still fully intend to disallow bump spam on auction threads because they are not necessary. As far as the last 48+ hours have shown, auctions are active with real bids and players are utilizing the forums instead of relying on the recent active threads slot. Threads stall once they reach a price no one wants to bid over and that's working as an auction should. We're still waiting for data that is not skewed, but this is what we see and what we need to have to shape the system we're looking at.
+1 for me! A lot of my beginner friends who aren't on forums would love to see this in action Thanks for clearing that up, Market chat was a kick in the butt but I believe if this does happen then it could be much much better.
Phew, for a bit you got us at turmoil, but jokes aside now. The rules still wouldn't make sence for the actual situation because we still can't use in game chat to advertise. The rules are still flawed. If the system that you propose now, then yes the rules would make sense.... But they don't and why it's a bad idea
I'm pretty sure she meant that this new system would be specifically designed for advertising shops, casinos, and auctions - and therefore, the rule that prohibits advertising of auctions in-game would be alleviated ONLY for usage with the new broadcast system. Thank you for the update, Krysyy. I think many of us were worried, as the way the updated rules were presented made it seem as if this new system would be kept indefinitely - however, knowing that there is a *potential* updated system in the works, hopefully everyone will now be reassured. Hope it goes smoothly. As a side note, I admire your patience with all of the outbursts that have happened over the last couple of days - especially since many of the people making those outbursts don't deserve the patience you showed them. It's impressive, actually.
They were easy to miss among the 23+ pages, but we plan to run a poll after the rules have been in effect for a little bit in order to see what the community thinks about the influence of it. This data will then be used to help fix issues in the (hopefully) automatic system.
I know this is not related but have u meat Aikar And +100 for the idea about broadcasting Would that be an idea for events?
