Filter unfair trades in trader

[ET-inf3rno]

A neighbour of mine thinks it is a good idea to flood the trader with a dozen pages of unfair tier1 trades. Probably s/he is playing for accidental acceptions of these trades, I am not sure, but every time I open the trader I have to look over 10 pages of junk before I can trade with my real neighbours posting 2- or 3-star trades. It would be beneficial to add a feature to filter this kind of trades out because they are just noise and if you accept a lot of neighbour trades you might accept them by accident due to the auto-reorder feature, which encourages him/her to post even more. I don't mind accepting sometimes unfair trades when the trade was 2-star, but there is a fee on it, but this kind of behavior ruins my gaming experience.

correction:

A player can post 7.5 pages of trades, so 10 pages was a slight exaggeration, it was actually 7.5.

current state:

• We came to the conclusion that ignoring cities is a bad idea.
• Another conclusion that not allowing unfair trades is a bad idea either.
• The issue with the neighbour was resolved meantime.
• The unfair filter in the trader is still under discussion.
• Another possible solution to order trades by stars instead of good types.

 

[DeletedUser12423]

Why would a player hope for accidental t1? That makes no sense at all. Now, if a player was posting starless t3 trades (which is also not against the rules) that might be closer to what you're thinking. It's probably just a new player, not a scammer.

 

[ET-inf3rno]

Why would a player hope for accidental t1? That makes no sense at all. Now, if a player was posting starless t3 trades (which is also not against the rules) that might be closer to what you're thinking. It's probably just a new player, not a scammer.

With the current trader the trades are reordered every time after you accept a trade. By accepting a trade you get some kind of goods and you lose another kind of goods, so if you don't have a huge deposit of all of the goods, new trading options can open and another options can close after you accept a single trade. This can result in radical reordering by accepting a single trade, which can lead to accidental trade acceptions if you accept 20-30 similar trades in a sequence and you don't wait out the refresh lag every time after you accept a trade. Most people don't wait it out.

The actual player (let's call it a he) is new indeed, he has 3k points and is in a small fellowship. He posted a lot of circular trades, for example 200 planks for 300 marble and 200 marble for 300 planks on many pages. Which means he does not need to exchange those goods for an upgrade or balancing, he is just posting these trades to earn some profit on accidental acceptions or on desperate people, who don't have enough planks or marble and really need the goods for upgrades. I think this behavior is unethical and it is disturbing if you need to dig through 8-10 pages of this kind of small unfair trades every time you want to accept fair neighbour trades. I had a few mail exchanges with him, some of them contained mutual insults. Last mail I told him to reduce these kind of trades to 2 pages or I'll write to the support to resolve this issue. (This might violate the fair play rule of the game. Ofc. insults are forbidden as well, but I am guilty in that too.)

I have a much larger city, so I have many newcomer neighbours, sometimes they post a few similar unfair trades, but they never flood the trader with 8-10 pages (64-80 items) of unfair circular trades and after a while they realize on their own, that this is not acceptable, and stop doing it. Most of the fellowships have fair trade regulation not by accident, obviously his fellowship doesn't. I always accept small fair trades to help smaller cities, because they usually don't have a supporting fellowship, but these unfair trades makes it harder to filter out the trades I want to accept. Ofc. I could accept all of them easily just to clear the trader, but I won't support such a player and he would send another 10 pages immediately, just to earn more on it.

 

[DeletedUser13467]

ignoring players = less future game activity = slow death of elvenar = you're brilliant

i have a better idea. lose the trader all together and replace it with a real auction house that is unlimited by location to stop the tears. join the dark side.

 

[Laochra]

Is this an actual 'discovered' neighbor that is doing this or is it a province neighbor that is undiscovered? I was getting irritated by the same issues, until I realized that the trader is now automatically deducting its fee & in turn it is listed as a 1 star trade. When I hover over the trade, it shows me the trader's 50% fee for that undiscovered neighbor.

 

[SoggyShorts]

 

[ET-inf3rno]

Is this an actual 'discovered' neighbor that is doing this or is it a province neighbor that is undiscovered? I was getting irritated by the same issues, until I realized that the trader is now automatically deducting its fee & in turn it is listed as a 1 star trade. When I hover over the trade, it shows me the trader's 50% fee for that undiscovered neighbor.

I just discovered this city and I wish I could somehow undiscover it. I don't consider trading with undiscovered cities with 50% fee a problem. They use to post fair trades and the game puts 50% fee on those trades, so they are nice players and when I really need those goods for some reason I gladly pay the fee. I use to discover toward these active cities to trade without fee with them on the long run, so I like this feature. What we are talking about here are many pages of trades set intentionally unfair to earn profit on other cities...

Here are 8 pages I have to go through every time I open the trader:

As you can see 200 planks for 300 marble and 200 marble for 300 planks many times without fee. The same with steel and planks...

View attachment 2812
View attachment 2813

Nice idea! Indeed the flood is the biggest problem here, while I still find posting circular trades for profit unethical. I can skip 1-2 trades, but skipping 8 pages every time I want to trade is cumbersome. Another thought would be that reordering could be manual instead of automatic after every accepted trade, so we would not accept trades by accident because of this reordering feature.

ignoring players = less future game activity = slow death of elvenar = you're brilliant

i have a better idea. lose the trader all together and replace it with a real auction house that is unlimited by location to stop the tears. join the dark side.

Ignoring one city - I have issues with - from 150-200 neighbours has close to zero impact on the game. It is less than 1 percent. I would ignore those trades anyways... I think inactive neighbours kill the game more, but that's another topic.

MERGED BY XELENIA

 

[DeletedUser12423]

I think this behavior is unethical and it is disturbing if you need to dig through 8-10 pages

How are you getting 10 pages of trades from any single person? That isn't even possible, is it? If you are looking for a single type of good? Ok, anyway.
There are two other issues here, I think. First, you need to be more patient and maybe more careful. Getting angry because you make a mistake is not someone else's fault. And Second, if all power players, greedy players, or our game veterans start ignoring new players, I think you're going to find nothing at all on the trader one day, because the game died. I'm sorry, but I totally disagree with people like that.

Now I do agree with a better filter, like what Sog suggested looks good. But I personally make sure to check before I accept trades. Maybe you should check before you accept, too? The bottomline is maybe the real problem isn't the trader, isn't the people using the trader how it was intended, or Inno?Maybe the problem is somewhere else.

With respect,
-Ironman Rob

 

[samidodamage]

How are you getting 10 pages of trades from any single person?

I think this may be a slight exaggeration, but can still see how it would be frustrating. According to the Wiki, you can have up to 60 trades. At 8 trades/page that's 7.5 pages of trades possible for 1 player. And all tier 1 goods would make them be in the beginning of the trader. Sometimes, I don't sort for type of goods, I just browse the trader looking to see what's available. But, I have a different take on why he may be doing this. If he is indeed new to the game (not just to that world) and the small FS he's in is also made up of new players and has no rules about fair trades, he may not realize what he's doing is frowned upon. While this is my first MMO, I have played other games where the goal is to get trades that make a profit from the goods you have. Since you weren't playing against other people, just the game, it worked. I realized I needed an FS within the first week I played, and landed in one that required fair trades. But I do remember having to change my thinking about making/selling goods for profit to building boosted only and trading for the others via balanced/fair trades. You could filter the trader for just the goods you're looking for, but if you're looking for tier 1 goods, some of his will come up as well if he's got all 3 types listed. I might poke around in the overview for his FS, look at the member scores just to see if they all appear new. Maybe visit some of the other cities to get a feel for how they're building/progressing and see if I could get a feel for it. I look for old event buildings still in small cities, then I know they've been around a bit and probably have larger cities in other worlds. If it all looks really 'new' it may be a case of the blind leading the blind.

 

[DeletedUser13467]

Ignoring one city - I have issues with - from 150-200 neighbours has close to zero impact on the game. It is less than 1 percent. I would ignore those trades anyways... I think inactive neighbours kill the game more, but that's another topic.

So, this thread isn't really about the trader, but about your personal issues about someone that isn't even active?

Really.

 

[ET-inf3rno]

How are you getting 10 pages of trades from any single person? That isn't even possible, is it? If you are looking for a single type of good? Ok, anyway.
There are two other issues here, I think. First, you need to be more patient and maybe more careful. Getting angry because you make a mistake is not someone else's fault. And Second, if all power players, greedy players, or our game veterans start ignoring new players, I think you're going to find nothing at all on the trader one day, because the game died. I'm sorry, but I totally disagree with people like that.

Now I do agree with a better filter, like what Sog suggested looks good. But I personally make sure to check before I accept trades. Maybe you should check before you accept, too? The bottomline is maybe the real problem isn't the trader, isn't the people using the trader how it was intended, or Inno?Maybe the problem is somewhere else.

With respect,
-Ironman Rob

Sorry, but I cannot agree with you. I accept hundreds of trades daily, and it goes fast only if I click in a sequence until one type of trade becomes empty. If the trader changes the order, then there is no time to react and I accept one trade totally unrelated to what I wanted to accept. If this trade happens to be a big intentionally unfair trade or a trade with fee, then I lose for example 10k tier3 with that single trade. This happens every now and then not with just me, but with many people including some fellowship members. Waiting a few secs after every trade acception is something not practical. This topic is discussing filters for unfair trades, not some kind of global ignore feature. In the current case I asked support to do something about it, and they might took it serious, because the actual player reduced it now to 1 page of bigger unfair trades instead of 8 pages of small ones.

 

[ET-inf3rno]

I think this may be a slight exaggeration, but can still see how it would be frustrating. According to the Wiki, you can have up to 60 trades. At 8 trades/page that's 7.5 pages of trades possible for 1 player. And all tier 1 goods would make them be in the beginning of the trader. Sometimes, I don't sort for type of goods, I just browse the trader looking to see what's available. But, I have a different take on why he may be doing this. If he is indeed new to the game (not just to that world) and the small FS he's in is also made up of new players and has no rules about fair trades, he may not realize what he's doing is frowned upon. While this is my first MMO, I have played other games where the goal is to get trades that make a profit from the goods you have. Since you weren't playing against other people, just the game, it worked. I realized I needed an FS within the first week I played, and landed in one that required fair trades. But I do remember having to change my thinking about making/selling goods for profit to building boosted only and trading for the others via balanced/fair trades. You could filter the trader for just the goods you're looking for, but if you're looking for tier 1 goods, some of his will come up as well if he's got all 3 types listed. I might poke around in the overview for his FS, look at the member scores just to see if they all appear new. Maybe visit some of the other cities to get a feel for how they're building/progressing and see if I could get a feel for it. I look for old event buildings still in small cities, then I know they've been around a bit and probably have larger cities in other worlds. If it all looks really 'new' it may be a case of the blind leading the blind.

Ye you are right, it was a slight exaggeration. It was 7.5 pages. I already added a merged screenshot to a previous comment, you can check it there.
I remember too when I started to play with this game 8 months ago that it would be a good idea to post unfair trades. I think I never posted such a trade though, probably I was not greedy enough or I joined to a good fellowship after 2-3 weeks. Btw. you can earn profit with fair trades too by relaying the 3-star trades of your neighbours. For example somebody posts 1500 gems for 1000 dust and another neighbour posts 1500 dust for 1000 gems. If you relay it you earn 500 dust and 500 gems without getting unbalanced and everybody is happy...

 

[ET-inf3rno]

So, this thread isn't really about the trader, but about your personal issues about someone that isn't even active?

Really.

The actual city is active and it is an example that too many unfair trades in the trader worsens gaming experience. Ignoring cities you don't like for example because of unfair trades might be a possible solution for this problem, but considering that support resolves issues quite efficiently, I think you are right, and adding an ignore feature is a too radical, and so not a good direction. On the other hand I still think that adding an optional unfair filter to the trader would reduce the noise related to them and it would be much easier to find the trades you want to accept. Another advantage of this solution, that it would reduce the possible impact of accidental trade acceptions. Not allowing unfair trades would be another possible solution to the problem, but it would not work, because you'd still have the trades with fee on the list and you would not be able to lend resources to your fellowship members when they manage to zero their goods on a tournament.

I don't see a way to remove the ignore part from the title. So I think I edit the post and write there with bold.

 

[DeletedUser13467]

They could actually do a number of things, but a new filter is probably the most likely change to be made. I never liked the trader, myself, as I prefer more of an auction house type in games like this. An auction house where lists never move and are server-wide. Thus eliminating multiple problems.

 

[ET-inf3rno]

They could actually do a number of things, but a new filter is probably the most likely change to be made. I never liked the trader, myself, as I prefer more of an auction house type in games like this. An auction house where lists never move and are server-wide. Thus eliminating multiple problems.

Ye, not moving lists would be fine. Displaying every players trade close to real time is not an obvious task especially if the client is a mobile phone with limited memory. I doubt we will see something like that any time soon.

 

[DeletedUser12423]

If this trade happens to be a big intentionally unfair trade or a trade with fee, then I lose for example 10k tier3 with that single trade

Again, I thought you were refering to some 8-10 pages of t1 goods? Now, noone wants to lose 10k of anything, and I think we all agree on that. The way the trader hops up and down is a problem, and a better filter would help with that. It's ok to disagree, too, you have a viable point. I guess what I disliked in your original post was your comment about ignoring people on the trader. Filter new players out, but a 100% no on the ignore idea. It's a horrible idea for many reasons, first being the fact that they won't be new forever. I'm still fairly new myself, so I can relate to this. And although I only do 2-3 stars now, when I first started I did no-stars trades for my first week. Eventually, I realized they don't sell and started doing 1-2 stars. And finally, since I've joined a great FS with a good leader, only 2-3 star trades. She took the time to explain to me that unfair trades are frowned upon, and cross tier trades like t3 for t1 could hurt a new player that accidently accepts.

I think you'll find that new players won't be new forever. So to sum up my vote, it's split:
I'm with you on a better filter: (Yes)
I'm not with you on ignoring people on the trader: (No)

 

[DeletedUser6260]

I don't see a way to remove the ignore part from the title. So I think I edit the post and write there with bold.

If you created the thread, there is a Thread tools link at the top right that will let you change the title.

 

[DeletedUser6260]

Have you tried sending the person a message?

Maybe they haven't found you, and don't understand the trader fee, so they see all your trades as unfair, and are annoyed that you kept taking their fair trades and offering nothing but bad trades in return?

 

[ET-inf3rno]

If you created the thread, there is a Thread tools link at the top right that will let you change the title.

Thanks!

 

[ET-inf3rno]

Have you tried sending the person a message?

Maybe they haven't found you, and don't understand the trader fee, so they see all your trades as unfair, and are annoyed that you kept taking their fair trades and offering nothing but bad trades in return?

I think you completely misunderstood the post. Nothing like that happened. I opened a support ticked and support might already solved that issue, because now I see only 1 page of bigger unfair trades from that player. Anyways that is just an example of why it would be good to add an unfair trade filter to the trader. It would have advantages by the trades with fee too.