Specific Bot market channel?

[RallosZek]

So you would like to get PMs or (even worse) replying to your querey directly to the channel from 200+ bots? o.O

 

I do not like this idea.

This would only happen if all 200+ bots had the item you're looking for. The idea is you will only get responses from bot(s) that are either buying or selling (depending on the command) what you requested.

There's a few of those items in game (SR/HE I'd say), which is why I'd like a command that can add some restrictions, like minimum quantity and location. However, these are details that can be worked out, when there's an actual go ahead.

[LabRat]

Yup it's me again, glad to see the poll is biased.

 

Where is the "Hell no I paid for the bot, I fully intend to use it to advertise as now on channel 3" option?

 

It will take a commandment from g0d to get me to move my bots from channel 3, not yet another idea that should be locked as soon as some bright spark comes up with it.

 

Go on, say you are surprised with my response, it isn't like I haven't said the same thing *numerous* times before.

 

[jamincollins]

Yup it's me again, glad to see the poll is biased.

 

Where is the "Hell no I paid for the bot, I fully intend to use it to advertise as now on channel 3" option?

Where does it say that we are proposing to stop your bots (or others) from using channel 3? The question of the poll is entitled "Would you use a bot specific market channel?". For those that want a market channel free of bots there is channel 33. This is a proposal to make interacting with the bots easier for the players and give them control.

 

So, how is the poll biased?

 

Go on, say you are surprised with my response, it isn't like I haven't said the same thing *numerous* times before.

Nope, it was only a question of when the response would appear.

[RallosZek]

Yup it's me again, glad to see the poll is biased.

 

Where is the "Hell no I paid for the bot, I fully intend to use it to advertise as now on channel 3" option?

It isn't there, because this poll (as indicated) is for end-user perspective, not bot owner.

 

It will take a commandment from g0d to get me to move my bots from channel 3, not yet another idea that should be locked as soon as some bright spark comes up with it.

About your bots: I use agneum from time to time, and when I do, I take her from #ignore, because her advertisements are totally useless to me. They contain no current information whatsoever, just the same old same old set of ads over and over again. Sorry, I can use the space for better things.

 

So, retry posting as end-user, not bot owner, cause you're off-topic atm.

[LabRat]

Please read all of this before voting.

 

I would like to get player opinion for something a few of us have been tossing around for a while. A bot specific market channel.

 

Obviously, the exact command set would need to be discussed and documented, but I'd like to get an idea of player opinion on the topic first.

So since when am I not a player?

 

We have already had requests for bot specific channels, nothing in your post is new.

 

My bots already do pattern matching,

/agneum inv fur
/titanta wanted potion

I am willing to reiterate what I have said, and maybe clarify it.

 

All the polls you can think of asking what the players think will come to naught if there are bot owners (like me) that see the negative side of a separate channel

More bandwidth required as each line in the channel must be broadcast to however many bots there are is the first and most important one to me - my bots log into channel 3, post and log out all in the space of less than a second.

 

I do not have anything or anyone on #ignore, I live on channel 3 and channel 4 (until recently - I left channel 4 because of *player* spam a couple of days ago.)

 

I saw a bot advertising the new cool headwear on 3 and immediately I PM'd the bot. Use the human brain for one of the best features it has - filtering unimportant information before it enters your consciousness.

 

As a player I say no - I only have access to three channels, I already have the market channel open, another (undiclosed) channel (hi jez ) and most of the time channel 4. Where am I supposed to be logged into a fourth channel so I can monitor the bot channel too?

[LabRat]

Some bot owners have also changed their ad interval to an hour or more in order to cause less of a problem in the Market Channel.

Others don't ever post on market. I know my bot doesn't. And, yes it is a trade bot.

I knew I saw you say this somewhere - your idea would only increase your bot's exposure at the expense of all the others.

 

And surprisingly (not) this was posted in a thread from over a month ago that discussed pretty much exactly the same thing. Do you really think we have such short memories?

[Aislinn]

I may be wrong on this, but I was under the impression that the main point of this whole thing was not for bots to get their own channel to spam the same ads they do now, but to have them be coded so that players can query for specific information of their choice.

[masterpiter]

I like the idea as a bot owner, market channel user, bot customer and a player (:

[LabRat]

You may be right, but i would love to see the bandwidth bill (which the bots contribute to) stay at the same level.

 

Cause and effect:

Cause: 200 bots permanently on a channel

Effect: Bandwidth is used at a faster rate

Effect: More bandwidth is needed

Effect: Bot owners get another price hike to cover the bandwidth charges

 

 

Ok then, how about i put an ad in the market forum asking for 500,000 gc and I will drop my bot ads entirely? Think I will get any takers? Me neither.

[jamincollins]

We have already had requests for bot specific channels, nothing in your post is new.

There's an existing poll on this subject? If so, I apologize for the redundancy. However, I don't recall one.

 

My bots already do pattern matching,

And this means that each player needs to PM each bot one by one to see if they do or don't buy or sell the item(s) in question. That can lead to a fair amount of wasted time and bandwidth.

 

Where am I supposed to be logged into a fourth channel so I can monitor the bot channel too?

Monitor? Who would want to sit in a channel that only receives bot commands? I guess you could if you like, but I see most players logging into the channel, sending their command and leaving as they get their responses.

 

Others don't ever post on market. I know my bot doesn't. And, yes it is a trade bot.

I knew I saw you say this somewhere - your idea would only increase your bot's exposure at the expense of all the others.

 

And surprisingly (not) this was posted in a thread from over a month ago that discussed pretty much exactly the same thing. Do you really think we have such short memories?

What point are you trying to make? That I'm generally against bot advertisements on market? Absolutely, they are little more than a waste of bandwidth as far as I'm concerned.

 

How would this increase my bot's exposure at the expense of others? I'm not stopping you from placing your ads, if you wish to continue sending them do so. In fact, what I'm proposing would increase the exposure of all participating bots (not just mine) without trying to bombard players with advertisements.

 

I may be wrong on this, but I was under the impression that the main point of this whole thing was not for bots to get their own channel to spam the same ads they do now, but to have them be coded so that players can query for specific information of their choice.

No, you're not wrong on it at all.

[Lorck]

Well, i don't have a bot, but i buy stuff often from bots, so i can offer my perspective. There is tons of bots, and i don't know not even the name about the name of the new ones.

 

Imvho, the bots could still advertise on channel 3 AND have a channel in which they don't advertise, just listen to their customer's querries, just like it was proposed..

 

"Oh, but players would get spammed and don't use the channel" Well, if the players don't like they will not use that channel and the channel will not suceed for lack of customers.

 

"Oh, but it will increase the bandwidth use by the bots and it will increase mantainence". If the disadvantages of the bot listening to channel offset the advantages, the bot will stop listening to that channel and the channel will not suceed for lack of vendors.

 

I don't think its too hard to code that things out. And again, imho, why not try to see if the stuff works. If it does, great, if it doesn't the bot owners/coders will lose 15 mins of their life coding that stuff out.

[sithicus]

there is nothing that stops any of you from proposing the feature to entropy, claiming a channel, and making sure the bot owners use it, some way or another.

 

No one is forced to be on this channel of yours.

 

No one is forced to have their bot on this channel.

 

No one is forced to take their bot off market.

 

And no one is forced to #ignore or #unignore any bots because they post on #3 or not.

 

Entropy might disallow it, on the onset, or after some time if it goes out of hand. It's not useful to speculate on traffic right now, perhaps it will not be a problem at all even if someone asks for 'book'.

Edited June 18, 2007 by sithicus

[frogimus]

For bots, it would be easier to have a buddy-list type window automatically populated with tradebots (name and possibly the map name). click their name and automatically get an INV PM from them. Then you could // them for WANTED and LOC.

 

I have Meep_Meep advertising mainly to let new players know shes out there. If the function for bots were this easy, I'd not advertise her at all.

[MistickIce]

I support this idea.

I how ever do not own a bot but I would like to see the market channel cleared up of the bots.

I have noticed wile on market a lot of messages from players get missed because when to send there message or as some would call it there ad the bots start flooding the channel i do not like to sell or go on market for this very reason. I am not sure how much work it would take from the owner's of the bots but in the end i feel it would be worth it. But that is just my opinion.

 

 

__Icy__

[Cycloonx]

You may be right, but i would love to see the bandwidth bill (which the bots contribute to) stay at the same level.

 

Cause and effect:

Cause: 200 bots permanently on a channel

Effect: Bandwidth is used at a faster rate

Effect: More bandwidth is needed

Effect: Bot owners get another price hike to cover the bandwidth charges

 

 

Ok then, how about i put an ad in the market forum asking for 500,000 gc and I will drop my bot ads entirely? Think I will get any takers? Me neither.

 

 

If a player is searching an item by using the inv command it gets spammed with lets say average 25 lines of text. Now take an average of 3 bots you need to search before finding the item, that makes 75 lines.

 

Now if someone on the channel types buy 1 titanium shield he will get maybe 20 bots offering a tit shield, that's 50 lines less!

 

And the channel wont be used for chatting so there wont be much bandwidth load. It's easy to say: Oh it will take a lot of bandwidth, oh it will cost bot owners more to have a bot,... without even thinking a little.

 

Why is it always you that is crying on these kinds of topics? You have something to lose or what?

[RallosZek]

Cause and effect:

Cause: 200 bots permanently on a channel

That would be quite ineffective programming. One site, can service all it's hosted bots, by having one listener and sharing the command received via whatever means it wishes.

[LabRat]

You may be right, but i would love to see the bandwidth bill (which the bots contribute to) stay at the same level.

 

Cause and effect:

Cause: 200 bots permanently on a channel

Effect: Bandwidth is used at a faster rate

Effect: More bandwidth is needed

Effect: Bot owners get another price hike to cover the bandwidth charges

 

 

Ok then, how about i put an ad in the market forum asking for 500,000 gc and I will drop my bot ads entirely? Think I will get any takers? Me neither.

 

 

If a player is searching an item by using the inv command it gets spammed with lets say average 25 lines of text. Now take an average of 3 bots you need to search before finding the item, that makes 75 lines.

 

Now if someone on the channel types buy 1 titanium shield he will get maybe 20 bots offering a tit shield, that's 50 lines less!

 

And the channel wont be used for chatting so there wont be much bandwidth load. It's easy to say: Oh it will take a lot of bandwidth, oh it will cost bot owners more to have a bot,... without even thinking a little.

 

Why is it always you that is crying on these kinds of topics? You have something to lose or what?

I sure as hell do - the almost $1000 I have invested in my bots.

 

If you specify a specific item to my bots, you only get returned any matching lines. How's that for a reduction in bandwidth?

 

I actually put a lot of thought into another channel, and yes - bandwidth is an issue even if you don't believe it is. Someone has to pay it - are you going to paypal Entropy with a couple of hundred dollars for bandwidth charges? Here's the link:

http://www.eternal-lands.com/page/donations.php

 

or did you seriously think that Entropy is using the game income to reinforce the battlements on his castle and pimping out his Ferrari?

[bkc56]

From having read the previous threads on this topic, there's a couple main items at play.

 

1. The desire to reduce the clutter (spam) on the market channel.

 

Some bot owners have addressed this by increasing the time between their bot's postings. Some people have addressed this by just doing a #ignore on any/all bots they don't want to hear from. A few people have addressed this by moving to channel 33 (but from what I've seen, it doesn't get used much).

 

The proposal in this thread has nothing to do with this issue.

 

2. For users - the desire to easily find the best deal out there (the highest price for selling to bots, the lowest price for buying).

 

For users this would seem like a good thing, but there is a down-side (see below).

 

For bot owners this is probably a bad thing as business will tend to decline to other bots that have a lower price. The concept of "fair market prices" doesn't apply here because people are very willing to sell goods at a loss (for various reasons) thus cutting out the more balanced sellers.

 

The down-side is that it will encourage a kind of price-war as bot owners compete for business by trying to lower their prices below everyone else. Some may even be willing to go lower than market or cost-of-ingredients thus ruining the market. Once a buyer sees a price (even one below cost) they are not often willing to pay more than that. The fact that the price was bogus is not significant to them.

 

3. Implementing solutions is complex since it requires the voluntary support of both bot owners (to use the feature) and bot creators (to program the feature).

 

This is clearly an issue as any new solution will probably not get 100% of the bots to participate. And if the percentage is to small, the idea fails (even if it had potential).

Edited June 18, 2007 by bkc56

[Walt-Her]

seeing all the pro's and cons i still think i would love this idea, sure ther might be a prize correction, but simply keep out prices and then there wont be any problem anymore

[Shujral]

Two questions/observations.

 

-You would have to get the bot owners to change their coding, and for many who had OTHER people write the bots program for them, that could be an effort. (edit: I guess I'd have to hear the bot owners perspective on this, i cant say im speaking from experience)

 

-Would the bots advertise in this channel too, or would it be specifically for stock checks?

Edited June 18, 2007 by Shujral

[jamincollins]

Two questions/observations.

 

-You would have to get the bot owners to change their coding, and for many who had OTHER people write the bots program for them, that could be an effort. (edit: I guess I'd have to hear the bot owners perspective on this, i cant say im speaking from experience)

 

-Would the bots advertise in this channel too, or would it be specifically for stock checks?

I'm ready to make the change to the bot code I provide, which is available to everyone. I can't speak about the code provided by others.

 

There would be no need for the bots to advertise in this channel, it is intended as a means to check which bot has or wants the good(s) in question.

[nigol]

I will only use it if all the bots are removed from #3

 

This one, of course

[Kedrigern]

If a player is searching an item by using the inv command it gets spammed with lets say average 25 lines of text

You can pm bots with "/botname inv itemname" command, and get only 1 line.

[majestyk]

A bot specific channel would be cool, then I could finally unignore them again. The list currently contains 62 bots (which did advertise on #3), and it's increasing every other week...

[Llywar]

I really like this idea. If I want a good price on a common item I don't mind having to scroll through 200 lines of PMs. And if you don't really want to know about EVERY bot selling something just look at the last 5-10 lines.

 

How much bandwidth could that text REALLY use? We're talking about maybe a few kilobytes, and how often are people going to run these queries if you hit every bot at once?

 

I often buy or sell from bots in small quantities, and half the pain is finding one that has a decent price. I don't mind walking a little, but if I have 100 steel bars to unload for quick cash I'm not going to try to hunt down a human when some bots offer 45gc for them. It would be nice to find out where the good deals are quickly.

 

Hopefully entropy will weigh in as to whether this idea is acceptable, and then bots can go ahead and implement this. If a particular bot owner doesn't want to no big deal - they just won't get as much business...