Thread: GTN Changes

  1. #1

    GTN Changes

    This is reguarding the recent change where they made it so you have to use 3 or more letters to search something on the GTN.

    Originally Posted by SWTOR
    Howdy everyone,

    I'm jumping into here to give a little more insight on what happened here. First off, I wanted to apologize for the lack of the patch note at release - that was an oversight on my part.

    Now I wanted to address why this change was made, and how it will be changing in the near term. Since we have launched, we have continued to add many more items to the game. As we have added more items, there are more items the GTN needs to search against whenever you enter a search team. What we had been seeing is very broad searches were causing enormous performance problems with the GTN. These performance problems would impact everyone using the GTN and not only the person conducting the search. This actually made the GTN unusable for some players.

    For example, if I searched the GTN for "a b" then I would end up causing a performance issues for everyone else using the GTN at the same time. In our efforts to provide a solution and address this, we inadvertently impacted y'all pretty severely and created a wretched inconvenience. This is unacceptable for us.

    To that point, we have a possible solution that will solve everyone's needs without crushing the GTN performance. This change will go into a future patch (not tonight’s unscheduled maintenance). However, we feel that this will be a solution that will work for all parties.

    Again, we apologize for the inconvenience and annoyance this has caused everyone. The last thing we want to see is us adding frustration to your experience in-game. I hope this little peek behind the curtain helps explain our rationale and lets you know just how serious we are about fixing this!

    (Source)

    I just wish he would have gone into a little more detail about what they plan to do to fix this :/

  2. #2
    Quote Originally Posted by Arlee View Post

    I just wish he would have gone into a little more detail about what they plan to do to fix this :/
    I wish they would regulate the price you can put f2p/preferred only unlocks on the GTN.

    People are catching on now but it was an unnecessary learning curve and scared the hell out of f2p/preferred players who saw unlocks for 5 million credits. Probably made many of them, I know several posted here, think that it wasn't worth waiting around despite me, and a few others, assuring them that the market would sort itself out.

    Self inflicted injuries seem to be biowares new thing.
    Last edited by Bardarian; 2013-02-14 at 08:03 PM.
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  3. #3
    The Lightbringer WarpedAcorn's Avatar
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    Its really annoying that the 3-letter limit is in effect for every seperate word. That means I can't look up "Might Augment 22", instead I have to look up "Might Augment" then adjust the level to 49-50 range.

  4. #4
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by WarpedAcorn View Post
    Its really annoying that the 3-letter limit is in effect for every seperate word. That means I can't look up "Might Augment 22", instead I have to look up "Might Augment" then adjust the level to 49-50 range.
    This. GTN interface was terrible before and the recent change made it significantly worse. I really wish they would use four or six weeks to patch, streamline and fix issues instead of adding new stuff to game and cartel market.

  5. #5
    Yea... that's the really bad part of it. I think if they just made it over all more than 3 letters it would be fine.

  6. #6
    Deleted
    Meh they kinda "fixed" something that wasn't really broken and nothing on anyone's top priority list. Now it's irritating because I can't search for specific mods or gear, like people already mentioned

    Quote Originally Posted by hk-51 View Post
    I wish they would regulate the price you can put f2p/preferred only unlocks on the GTN.
    perhaps, but F2P/Pref players are quickly learning to 'play the game', forcing those who want to sell Head Slot unlock for 800k to go down to sane level (just an example)

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Haruss View Post
    perhaps, but F2P/Pref players are quickly learning to 'play the game', forcing those who want to sell Head Slot unlock for 800k to go down to sane level (just an example)
    They don't have a choice in terms of "forcing" people to sell at 350k or lower. They are forced by bioware. Unfortunately, there weren't equal sanctions placed on subscribers who tried to sell things like "hide helm" for 3 million. F2P/preferred players looked at those items and their credit cap and said, "well. Unless they stop trying to charge me that, I won't be able to get that." and so some of them just said that this is an unworkable situation and left. If bioware had applied the GTN price cap to a few of the key unlocks, the ones subscribers could not use, we would not have had to deal with the flood of complaints about the GTN.
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  8. #8
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by hk-51 View Post
    They don't have a choice in terms of "forcing" people to sell at 350k or lower. They are forced by bioware. Unfortunately, there weren't equal sanctions placed on subscribers who tried to sell things like "hide helm" for 3 million. F2P/preferred players looked at those items and their credit cap and said, "well. Unless they stop trying to charge me that, I won't be able to get that." and so some of them just said that this is an unworkable situation and left. If bioware had applied the GTN price cap to a few of the key unlocks, the ones subscribers could not use, we would not have had to deal with the flood of complaints about the GTN.
    Wasn't there when F2P initially launched, started playing in late December so can't say anything about F2P/Pref players leaving when seeing 5 million unlocks on GTN. When I was on, prices were already down to sane levels on many unlocks. However, there's one that's the biggest problem. Artifact Equipment unlock. It goes below/at 350k extremely rarely (at least on my server) and the only reason I have one is because of one very generous user who I met on this forum. Most will never get lucky to met someone like that or spot a rare deal on GTN. I never spotted any myself. 90% of them are grabbed by TOR millionares who log on every 5 minutes to check GTN for deals and sell unlocks for millions later on. When I was leveling up my first character, I met a bunch of people along and we were all leveling up at around the same speed. Now when I look at my friends list, 90% of them don't log on anymore after hitting lvl 50 and finishing the story. Most of them were F2P/preferred and obviously, without being able to wear purple stuff, there's next to nothing to do at lvl 50. So this is IMO the biggest problem

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Haruss View Post
    Wasn't there when F2P initially launched, started playing in late December so can't say anything about F2P/Pref players leaving when seeing 5 million unlocks on GTN. When I was on, prices were already down to sane levels on many unlocks. However, there's one that's the biggest problem. Artifact Equipment unlock. It goes below/at 350k extremely rarely (at least on my server) and the only reason I have one is because of one very generous user who I met on this forum. Most will never get lucky to met someone like that or spot a rare deal on GTN. I never spotted any myself. 90% of them are grabbed by TOR millionares who log on every 5 minutes to check GTN for deals and sell unlocks for millions later on. When I was leveling up my first character, I met a bunch of people along and we were all leveling up at around the same speed. Now when I look at my friends list, 90% of them don't log on anymore after hitting lvl 50 and finishing the story. Most of them were F2P/preferred and obviously, without being able to wear purple stuff, there's next to nothing to do at lvl 50. So this is IMO the biggest problem
    Nope, there wasn't. However, there were many people point out there should be, but as always biowarEA just kept trucking.
    So I had to make like 20 threads explaining how to get a good deal out of f2p and how the prices will sort themselves out ect ect ect.

    It was awful and pretty horrific transition to f2p.

    I wish there had been a cap. I wish there was a cap now.

    And yes, artifact authorization is extremely overpriced on the CM.
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  10. #10
    SWTOR at its finest.


    "Howdy everyone,

    I'm jumping into here to give a little more insight on what happened here. First off, I wanted to apologize for the lack of the patch note at release - that was an oversight on my part."

    Howdy? Really thats how your going to adress the players after you screwed up the GTN?

    At least they came in and talked to the players, right? Well not really. This is only here to apologize for it not being in the patch notes not for being in the game not for them screwing it up.


    "Now I wanted to address why this change was made, and how it will be changing in the near term. Since we have launched, we have continued to add many more items to the game. As we have added more items, there are more items the GTN needs to search against whenever you enter a search team. What we had been seeing is very broad searches were causing enormous performance problems with the GTN. These performance problems would impact everyone using the GTN and not only the person conducting the search. This actually made the GTN unusable for some players."

    Its good they are trying to increase preformance but even if that was an issue you have to take into consideration of what your fix will do. I think everyone could have listed a better way to fix this than what they did. Make it a 3 digit minimum to get a search, allow numbers under 3 to be entered into the search. Think those two are the best fixes to the issue that would allow them to improve the preformance and improve it for the players.


    "For example, if I searched the GTN for "a b" then I would end up causing a performance issues for everyone else using the GTN at the same time. In our efforts to provide a solution and address this, we inadvertently impacted y'all pretty severely and created a wretched inconvenience. This is unacceptable for us."

    You mean to say that once you tested this not one of the people working on it noticed the issue? Just another example of them not caring about the game at all.

    "To that point, we have a possible solution that will solve everyone's needs without crushing the GTN performance. This change will go into a future patch (not tonight’s unscheduled maintenance). However, we feel that this will be a solution that will work for all parties."

    How about instead you actually tell the truth. You guys screwed up again with one of your fixes and since you have gotten so many complaints you are actually going to fix it correctly. But, NO. YOu cant tell us what the new fix is going to be, it has to be a secret just like the SSSP. Then you also cant say when its going to be fixed?

    List of failed fixes possible.

    1. They remove many items from the game so they dont have that many items for the GTN to search through.
    2. They make it a 2 digit search instead of a 3.
    3. They put a Que on the GTN so a limited amount of players can use it at one time.
    4. Whatever fix they do thats not the simple fixes noted before.

    "Again, we apologize for the inconvenience and annoyance this has caused everyone. The last thing we want to see is us adding frustration to your experience in-game. I hope this little peek behind the curtain helps explain our rationale and lets you know just how serious we are about fixing this! "

    Once again they didnt screw up, this is just an inconvenience. SWTOR can do no wrong. What peek behind the curtain? this is just basically another we didnt screw up but since you guys dont like it we are going to change our change into some other secret change, that you cant know about. This will be SOON but its not on the top of our priority list so learn to live with it cause in 2 months its most likely nt been changed yet and when they do they will screw it up again.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by WarpedAcorn View Post
    Its really annoying that the 3-letter limit is in effect for every seperate word. That means I can't look up "Might Augment 22", instead I have to look up "Might Augment" then adjust the level to 49-50 range.
    This x1000. I fail to understand why they left out NUMBERS in the allowed search strings? I'd like to know what kind of time savings or whatever they thought they were going for with this change.

  12. #12
    The GTN has been an awful pig since beta - a textbook example of "It's Our First MMO Syndrome." They underestimated what a screamingly optimized database and API you need to run an auction house in a big online game. Blizzard could have told them, but -- no, wait, I can't stop giggling.

    Anyway, all these search restrictions (which started before launch) are designed to work around the weakness of the back end. I wouldn't look for much improvement in this title's lifespan. But they will fix the numbers thing, that was just an error.

    Still experimenting...

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