Bots channel

[Entropy]

I think it's a very good idea. I have a question though, you said "all participating bots", does that mean bot owners would have the option to advertise on the "bot channel" or the market channel? Or does it mean that if they chose not to use tha bot channel, they would not be allowed to advertise at all?

 

If a bot owner decides to enroll the bot in this program, then their bots would be allowed to advertise on that channel and monitor it for certain commands then PM the person that issued the commands. They will not be allowed to post in the market channel though.

 

If a bot owner decides NOT to participate, then thye can be posting on the market channel, but not alowed to post on the bot channel, or monitor that channel to respond to players.

 

@senkrad

Your suggestion is nice, but it's too complicated, no one will remember all those channels offhand.

[Desertus]

Taking bots out from market channel is great idea, they are more active on that channel than people, they are very annoying now and number of bots in game is rising.

I would probably use that channel and that feature becaus so far comparing bot prices by pming each one is a pain.

[Aislinn]

I could go either way on this...both players and bot owners have valid points for wanting it or not wanting it. However, IF this does go through, in my opinion these issues need to be addressed: (I'm sure I'll think of others later)

 

1. Ability to be in more channels than just 3 at a time.

2. Rules need to be set up as well for the bot channel since it will have to be moderated as well.

3. This should be mandatory. If it is optional, all we will have is the same bots in both channels and it defeats the purpose. Still should be mandatory imo (saw ent's post after).

4. Possibly some required coding for all bots so that they state their location (c1 or c2) up front in their ad. Starting to divide this up even further by continent or pricing is going overboard imo.

[JohnTheWarder]

Filtering by price, quantity, and item shouldn't cause only problems. I only see good reasons to implement this.

Edited February 12, 2007 by JohnTheWarder

[senkrad]

Having now read other posts -

 

I would also be glad for a bot, or maybe just a channel, where one posts requests and recieves PMs from all apropriate bots. If it is a channel just for requests then the players maybe could also choose to pm the requestor with their wares.

 

Requests could have a format - action cost item qty continent - with continent and qty being optional.

 

My suggestions for breaking down the channels have to do with clumping together items that have something in common, price can be very valid. If a low cost channel exist say under 2gc/item then many of the harvested items and drop items will show up there thus removing them from the everything else channel leaving it avaible for other types of trades.

 

However, also on prices divisions, if divisions of the channels were to happen division based on price might be hard due to the items that will hover in the area of the price barrier say thread for example trading between 1.99 to 2.01 gc. some traders might end up in one channel with other traders not showing at all. I am sure this would have interesting effects on the market but not sure if these effects would be good.

 

@Entropy - thanks for that, as to the concern about resulting in too many channels 15 covering flowers to books plus 1 for listing, and 1 for marketing. The listing channel takes care of remembering what the channels are and the public anouncement in the market channel sends them to it(or to listing and marketing channels). One might go to a supermarket to get everything in one stop but, even there, they give you categories of purchases. So to get what you are looking for you visit the areas you want.

 

oh and I agree with the suggestion that this should be a mandatory change and leave the market channel just for non-automated interactions.

 

edit:clarifying the idea a bit

Edited February 12, 2007 by senkrad

[pennifuin]

sounds like a good idea Radu, I'm backing it. But what implications does will it have concerning market prices. Surely it would create a more competetive market? (Good or bad?) A system like this would allow for direct comparison and competition between all the bots array of prices (which can only mean that prices for certain items would not flux as much as they have in the past)

 

Addressing the issue of the channel going unnoticed due to lack of knowledge of its existance, if its in the Official Channel's List I'm sure there wont be a problem. And if there is, A message every 15 minutes in the market channel reading something like 'Don't forget to check out the Bot's Market Channel for some great deals etc blah blah'

 

I think it might be a good idea to have a Bot Channel for each Continent. It saves overcrowding of the Channel, and could create some continent specific pricing structures. Plus as mentioned before, it would be convenient as Intercontinental (for those without TPTC2PR) can be time consuming and tedious.

[LilBear]

3. have one public service announcement message every 15-30 minutes directing players to the 300 series of channels for more choice

 

 

I support having a bot channel. Senkrad's idea above came to my mind as well. Instead of having 100 bots posting once every 10 minutes you could have ONE single announcement about the bot channel on the market channel, every 5 or 10 minutes. It could even be in a different color, e.g. blue. That would get the word out to people effectively.

 

I do however support one channel for all the bots, not broken up by continent or price range or color of their boots or whatever.

 

I do see one drawback - If Entropy implements the feature where you post "buy fire essence 3" and you see every bot that sells for 3 or less, it could lead to a price war amongst bot owners. I actually think that would be a drawback for players too. Sure, you'll pay less for your fe, but the bot will also now buy it for only .1 gc .... Okay, so I'm dramatizing, but I think you get my drift. I don't understand the economics well enough, but for reasons stated by others I too support having a separate channel for bots.

 

lilbear

[HeLLRaiZeR]

I would find this amazingly great. Been thinking in the lines of forbidding bots to advertise in the ch 3 for a long time. In the recent the bot per player ratio has increased alot, and when you as a player try to sell items on market you usually get spammed down by all the 100's of bots trying to advertize.

 

Full support!

 

I do see one drawback - If Entropy implements the feature where you post "buy fire essence 3" and you see every bot that sells for 3 or less, it could lead to a price war amongst bot owners. I actually think that would be a drawback for players too. Sure, you'll pay less for your fe, but the bot will also now buy it for only .1 gc .... Okay, so I'm dramatizing, but I think you get my drift. I don't understand the economics well enough, but for reasons stated by others I too support having a separate channel for bots.

 

Welcome to the capitalistic market system.

[masterpiter]

Removing bots from market channel will make it less scarry,so its great solutuion

 

eMPi

[Scratch]

Here's a thought.

The bots could advertise freely on their channel. When someone types @pc wooden branch, the bots PM the requestor price/quantity/location instead of spamming the channel. This would cut down on people abusing the bots to spam the channel.

[Schmurk]

I would be very glad to see bot owners implement such a simple feature. Since some weeks, I've turn off the market channel because I was fed up of the spam so it could be a really good idea

Moreover, as everybody already stated, it's a pain to PM all the bots to know who has an item to sell and at which price.

And I don't worry about the spam of bots who answer you by PM. I prefer having 90 PMs with a usefull information than 90xN inventory items...

[Rockfall]

as a player I think this would be great, and I would use it too

[Suessie]

Removing "botspam" (ppl call it so) from market channel is a very good idea.

But...

There are also some players who does not know about all the things which are buy/sellable in that game. They only hear about it from the bot's advertising. Or maybe other players suddenly need more water essences, because they are cheap from bot A, and decide to polish gems because of it (its only an example).

So I think it is not so good to ban all the bots from the high frequency marketchannel.

 

As someone mentioned above, it would be really nice to get one bot polling all the others and announce in an adjusted way cheapest bot on FEs or steel bars with price and location (should be random things). And also announce a rare item with bot name, price and location at a reasonable way to not annoy all the maket users.

 

I think this will be fair for both bot owners and players.

There wont be so much "spam" and players will be introduced in some bots, they do not hear about them before.

 

In my opinion market is, where advertisement should be, maybe one/two ads per half an hour?

 

This botchannel sounds good but it should be an additional not a full replacement.

 

sue

 

PS I'm botowner and my bots do not use the market channel.

[Lotheneil]

I thing the idea of bot channel is marvellous. In fact I'm not on the market channel anymore, because of all that bot spam.

My thoughts:

1. This channel should be mandatory for bots.

2. Wonderfull idea of @want <item> <max price> command - all the bots should pm the person wanting specific items with the quantity, price and location.

3. I'm not afraid of bot spamming me, just pm a few bots with INV gives me more spam anyway.

4. People state that this channel won't be used, cause people won't know about it - they DID learn about #3 somehow, right? They'll learn about bot channel as well.

5. I think one channel for all the bots is enough, many people (me included) will probably use mainly @want command.

6. As for price war... It may happen to some extent, but I'd rather buy something 10% more expensive than go to the other continent to buy something, so the location will be important as well.

7. Maybe at last market channel becomes a place for people to buy and sell their stuff, not for bots to spam...

 

To sum up:

Edited February 12, 2007 by Lotheneil

[Ulrih]

I like this idea. I hope the bot owners and coders will have an unified item name list, maybe with some known acronyms, like "ele" or "sr".

[Raz]

Everyone is mentioning a dedicated channel, and simply saying in channel @buy fire ess or similar.

So all that would be seen in the channel would be a series of:-

@buy fe

@buy he

@sell ae

etc...

Surely this is a waste of a channel. It could all be done without the need for a channel, simply have a master bot/npc to which you send a pm.

 

ie /marketwatch buy fe

The npc/bot would then pm to all the bots enrolled in the scheme, each bot would then reply direct via pm to the originator of the request.

 

Whilst this would need an additional bot/npc to be developed, it would save each bot having to watch ch X, save people joining a channel, just to type @buy fe, and then leave, and avoid the issue with only 3 active channels.

 

An introductory message to this can be added if a player chats to the npc, or help provided on ch 2?

 

To take this further, a common 'message spec' to each bot can be determined.

 

Players able to blacklist bots (some of them have rediculous prices as it is)

[2coolfool]

i like the idea of a separate market channel for bots. it would make it easier for the players who like to trade with each other, and not bots. however the number of allowed channels should be raised, to about 4 or 5.

[Lotheneil]

That's a good solution as well, but I think a channel is better, as it leaves a possibility for bots to advertise their wares, some people may get interested in something and buy it even if they didn't intend to do this before

Form my (a player) point of view both solutions are acceptable, though I think the channel is going to be less stressful for the server, a bot pm-ing all other bots everytime somebody is looking for something may generate too much traffic. In channel only bots who have a specific item in stock will send a pm.

[Misery_Machine]

as a person that is constantly on the market channel, i think it would be a great idea, i know of a few people which can't use the channel at all, because they lag out and get disconnected due to the increased traffic flow. This might give those people an opportunity to sell items, rather than getting people to do it for them.

 

As for the Bot channel, i like the idea, but don't think there should be a price involved in the request.

 

"@ buy FE" would be sufficiant i think, rather than having to put "@ buy FE 3". due to if i am unfamiliar in the cost, and have no idea what it is worth, having to put in a number, i would have to keep increasing till i got a response, hence channel spam, or having to go back and forth asking PC's on market and such. just a thought.

Edited February 12, 2007 by Misery_Machine

[Egarra]

As a bot owner and someone that buys a lot from bots, I dont know if a bot channel is the best sollution. Yes, there is a lot of bot traffic on ch 3, but maybe just changing the advertising interval to 30 min will get rid of the spam. If we did not have the channel limitation, it may not be an issue. I will change my bots to 30 minutes today as a gesture of reducing spam.

 

Everything that bots sell are made by a player, when we start focusing on the absolute lowest price to obtain items we may force the market way too low. Bots=convenience for players and also are a 'safe' trade, free from scamming. As a bot owner I try to ballance out the buy and sell price to give players a place to sell their product at a fair price, then mark it up just enough to make a profit, but still stay within the market price. If I have to drop the sell price to stay competive, that also means a lower buy price :/

 

As a bot customer, when im looking for a quantiy of items ie, Air Essence, I will travel all over and may buy out several bots to get what im looking for. If that means going between c1 and c2, so be it. Price is usually less of an influence then availability.

 

If we are going to have a central clearing house for bot info, I would be more interested in a list of bots that have certain items in inventory, then price. I dont think that all the information i.e. price should be layed out on a 'golden platter' just to drive the market lower. There are a lot of hard to find items ie feran horns, ede, etc. and it would be nice to at least find out which bots have inventory of these hard to find items, instead of having to pm every bot in game.

 

Now to think of it, I advertise buying and selling on ch3 less because of bots. I only go to ch 3 if I cant find a good buy/sell to a bot.

 

As a side note, what about merchant NPC's. If there is a clearing house of sorts, dont forget to include them.

[Lotheneil]

There are a lot of hard to find items ie feran horns, ede, etc. and it would be nice to at least find out which bots have inventory of these hard to find items, instead of having to pm every bot in game.

 

Now to think of it, I advertise buying and selling on ch3 less because of bots. I only go to ch 3 if I cant find a good buy/sell to a bot.

And that's exactly what all this topic is about - to reduce spam on market channel (which became unbearable to me) and to help people find what they need without having to pm every single bot in the game...

It could be done in a form of website as well, something similiar to Learner's bot page, but with all (or most) bots and a possibility to search - then you could just pm the bot who has what you want about location and go buy I don't know how hard would it be to code and maintain, so it's just a loose idea...

Searching bot wares has it pros and cons for bot owners - the obvious con is the possible price war, but on the other side it's a chance for less known bots to make a sale (if they offer reasonable prices).

Reducing interval between bot adverts will help reducing the problem, but in my humble oppinion isn't a solution. Bot number will continue to grow, which means the problem will keep coming back. I think separate channel for bots is acceptable for both sides, ability to search is what makes bot owners worried...

I would really like to see it in game though, it would make many things easier and in fact it'll make me buy more things from bots. Now I don't buy from them almost at all, because looking for things I want is what backs me off...

I can understand though, if most bot owners are against that idea. Even if search isn't implemented, a separate channel won't hurt anybody, and cleaning market channel will make it much more useful.

Edited February 12, 2007 by Lotheneil

[Marwen]

I dont like it, so if I can, my bot stay on @3 (for more info read my posts in bot section)

[peeper :)]

i think its a good idea but should be optional for bot-owners

[Ermabwed]

It's a great idea. You shouldn't force bot owners to use it, I'll just ignore the ones that insist on spamming me in channel 3

[Lotheneil]

Same here, Ermabwed.