Feedback talk:User/Tennessee Ernie Ford/Bulk Salvage and Materials

Good idea

I can see your point. I feel my brain going into lockdown when i have to press 2 buttons (req. quote and buy) 25 times for a stack. I think being able to get a merchant or material trader to do a mass salvage is a good idea, made better by the fact repetitive salvaging can sometimes trigger a logout bug. Teh Eviscerator 22:42, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that salvage bug is always annoying. Thanks for your feedback.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:08, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I would frown upon this.

I would frown upon this. It wouldn't truly benefit many people very often, and could probably be abused. However, you do point out some other outstanding issues: salvaging many items, opening many gift bags. The problem with bulk-opening those is inventory space. It already checks your inventory to make sure you have at least one inventory slot available free when you click it. What would it do if you try to open 250 of them? (Note, I'm pretty sure that A.net would like to reserve their ability to keep the number of possible drops from such things not so out in the open as to let us count open inventory spaces until we see when a full stack will let us open/salvage it.) It does bug me when I go through a stack to open or salvage that I do have to click so many times. --Emkyooess 00:33, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean be "could probably be abused" — could you explain that a bit more?

This is strictly meant to cover items that already have dedicated NPCs, but do not have a mechanism for dealing with bulk goods: salvage (expert and ordinary), materials (purchase and sale to NPCs), and Dyes. That would leave the opening of gift bags (ToTs/GotTs/etc) as the last remaining stack type without a bulk solution. I've made an edit that I hope clears that up some; please let me know if you think it's still confusing.

And thank you for your feedback.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:07, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Bulk buying of materials could lead to market manipulation, such as when someone finds out that the material that Nick needs this week is glass vials, made with dust. They could rapidly [try to] buy the trader out of glass vials and sell them at profits, while the trader himself is out of stock. --Emkyooess 01:18, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I don't think it's that much of a problem for three reasons: (a) it doesn't come up often; (b) when it does, the NPCs already run out of the mats; and (c) in each case, within hours players were selling at prices lower than they would get if they sold to the material traders.

More on pricing: In every case, the mat's prices dropped extremely quickly. Within a few hours, players were offering WTS prices slightly lower than the NPCs were willing to pay. In one case, the prices were low enough that people were able to make easy money by buying at the worst player trade price and reselling to the NPC at a noticeably higher price.

So, I agree that, in theory, there's the possibility of market manipulation. In practice, there are still too many players trading (with each other and with NPCs) for this mechanism to cause a major change in the market. Regardless, I appreciate the idea; it would be very bad if this made things worse.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:35, 13 November 2009 (UTC)