Suggestion: Shopkeeper Database In-game

[ChairmanEdgewise]

Hi,


Lately I've been running around browsing shopkeepers, and to be honest its such a p.i.t.a. locating them that I started wondering why there isn't a database in game, everyone can access, and it shows the last date the shopkeeper was updated.

A big list, starting with

"Today"
"2+ days ago"
"7+ days ago"
"2+ weeks ago"
"1+ month ago"



If you see a shopkeeper recently updated, click the "Waypoint" link right next to it, adding the waypoint to the estate where the shopkeeper is located.


Planet-wide list only, if you want a different list for a different planet, you have to visit that planet.

This might help shop owners having their shop discovered by new potential customers too.

Shopkeepers decay,
why not help owners promote where they are located?


Regards,

Edge

 

[Orion]

Players are asking for this since 2004 or 2005, when the apartmenttowers and shops got introduced and sold by MA.

Sadly MA treats QoL like poison.

 

[ChairmanEdgewise]

I dont know how many hours i spent running around looking for shops.

I dont know whats the worst part,
Not being able to find the shopkeepers or the stunning amount of MA owned shops / estates.

 

[Ace Flyster]

I guess MA don't want to advertise prices in shops/shopkeepers, and i think that's the right way to do it. But they could have a searchable UI list, that shows all shops/shopkeepers that are selling the item you are looking for, but without the price, so you at least know where to go for said item and have a look.

Rgds

Ace

 

[ChairmanEdgewise]

Quality of Life improvements can be made, and are most welcome in regards to shopkeepers and shopowners.


I do not own a shop, I just like to visit them. Finding them is a damn struggle.

 

[Manitou]

I would love this

 

[Deleted member 74680]

100% onboard for this.

Sometimes it is nice to just walk thro.

 

[Manitou]

100% onboard for this.

Sometimes it is nice to just walk thro.

Yes, but with direction. Browsing can be fun, but if you have a particular thing you are looking for, you can waste a lot of time going from Mall to Mall hoping to stumble on what are looking for.

 

[Deleted member 74680]

Yes, but with direction. Browsing can be fun, but if you have a particular thing you are looking for, you can waste a lot of time going from Mall to Mall hoping to stumble on what are looking for.

This is true.

Easy to burn out while at it.

 

[TheOneOmega]

Players are asking for this since 2004 or 2005, when the apartmenttowers and shops got introduced and sold by MA.

Sadly MA treats QoL like poison.

Well, it's true that SOME players were asking at that time, but others were raising counterarguments. I have not been around for quite that long, but I'd say the sentiment for and against such a change around 2008-2011ish was fairly evenly split.

In my opinion, calling this proposal a QOL change comparable to Control + Z in the sticky notes doesn't do justice to the real tradeoffs involved. With a database, any opportunities to find better deals than on the auction would be arbitraged away extremely quickly. Omitting prices from the database might help a little, but whenever an upward market move occurred on the auction, traders would check the database and jump straight to the relevant shops to capture the differential. As is, good deals can persist for a time just because browsing is required to discover offers. If one misses an opportunity to purchase something on the auction at a certain price, whether for trading or personal use, it might still be possible to find the item in shops.

The framing of finding items in shops as a pain or a struggle misses the point. Browsing shops is an activity Entropia offers, and finding good deals is one of its rewards. The aim isn't just to solve double coincidences of wants as time-efficiently as possible to get folks back to the "real" Entropia experience of F mashing. Browsing a shop is in and of itself an atom of real Entropia experience, which much like sweating mobs before killing them, some players will like to do, and others will not, but as a general matter we should not want the Sweat price to fall to zero, or shop prices to immediately collapse to auction prices, on pain of the set of rewarding experiences Entropia has to offer shrinking.

 

[Orion]

Having the shops with no market database is like having the internet without any search engine.

Go have fun with it. It is basically useless.

 

[SleePy]

Probably not getting implemented because MA makes a lot of money from the ah fees, a decent compromise could be a terminal at each shopping center, where you can search for the contents in that specific center.