Im Confused about Broker

Discussion in 'General Gameplay Discussion' started by Fixit, Jan 6, 2023.

  1. Sweety D Well-Known Member

    I think this would cripple the market. There are tens of thousands of items for sale that we would no longer have access to.
  2. Mugwort Active Member

    Perhaps they wish those who want to "play the market" to actually "play the market", and not have a set and forget mode.
  3. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    They'd only be unavailable until the person logged back in. It's not much different than the current implementation, honestly.
  4. Sweety D Well-Known Member

    Maybe you’re not thinking about the tens of thousands of players that have quit the game permanently, that will never log back in. We’d permanently lose access to all those items for sale. I explained this in more detail a few posts back.
  5. Avirodar Well-Known Member


    That is an interesting perspective.

    You present an argument making a case based on the two following points:
    1 - There are tens of thousands of players that have quit, and have items listed for sale.
    And
    2 - Removing these listings would cripple the market.

    I agree with #1 but would like further explanation as to how you came to the conclusion for #2.

    Delisting items that are on inactive accounts, that may have remained unsold for many years, has the potential in limited scenarios to case minor inconvenience. To suggest that it would cripple the market is an extraordinary claim, that I believe justifies calling for evidence to match.

    While I personally believe a 10-day limit is a poor design choice, and have my personal ideas on how DPG could better handle this, I believe the whole debate is being made out to be far more extreme than it actually is. The motivation for the change appears to be more indicative of DPG attempting to reduce lag by throwing "mud" at the wall and hoping it sticks. They do not have a good track history at this, and the current iteration of the change appears to result in player inconvenience for no tangible benefit.
    Juraiya likes this.
  6. Sweety D Well-Known Member


    My statement about crippling the market might have been hyperbole. I should have said “removing broker items from inactive accounts may cripple the SIZE of the market.” Though even this statement, I admit I can’t prove. I’m just assuming a large portion of items for sale are from inactive players. The problem is making this adjustment is irreversible. If the players indeed are inactive, once we lose those listings, they are gone. I really enjoy having a very large and item-diverse market.

    So, just to be more clear, for me, losing old items for sale on the broker is what I consider(ed) crippling the market. I hope this further clarifies my position.

    The last thing I will mention is, I am a full stack software engineer (well I used to be, now I manage engineers, lol). Anyway, I can say for certainty that shrinking their database, and thereby reducing the size and length of queries against that database will indeed reduce the load on the server and have an impact on lag. To what degree? I have no idea without more information. I should also state, that I rarely experience lag and I play 6 accounts at the same time. So I have not noticed any performance increase but I also didn’t see a need from an end user perspective.
    Geroblue and Juraiya like this.
  7. Dude Well-Known Member

    Isn't that the whole point of the change? I'm not saying it will or won't work, but they specifically said the intent was to limit the amount of items in order to address performance. I don't understand they way they're going about it because it actually won't affect items listed before a certain date (I think it was an update early this year or late last year).
    Breanna likes this.
  8. Sweety D Well-Known Member


    What I am saying is "the juice isn't worth the squeeze". Meaning, even if they fix lag issues (which I very rarely experience), to me, it's not worth shrinking the size of the broker. To be clear, I am addressing what some other players have suggested, which is to remove old listings.
    Juraiya likes this.
  9. Dude Well-Known Member

    If it would actually fix the pervasive lag, I think the majority of people would be on board with delisting any item on the broker for longer than 30 days. The feedback in this thread, however, is the no one has noticed a decrease in lag.
    Juraiya, Twyla and Breanna like this.
  10. Sweety D Well-Known Member

    I agree with both of your points. I realize I am in the minority for wanting to keep old listings on the broker. And it appears that those that experience lag, are still facing this issue. I do wonder though, how much of the lag is due to players playing on very old hardware. The problem is probably a mixture of things from back end to front end.
    Juraiya, Twyla, Breanna and 1 other person like this.
  11. Kenn Well-Known Member

    Is that 10 day listing limit for all account levels or just the freebie account? None of my stuff has been delisted.

    Seems like it would be less annoying overall to delist for players who haven't look at their broker in 10 days.
    GrunEQ and Twyla like this.
  12. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    Everyone. But some stuff that was listed a long time ago doesn't get delisted. Dunno why not.
    Twyla likes this.
  13. Avirodar Well-Known Member


    All sides of the discussion are speculating and assuming. There is no harm in expressing personal opinion. The more views, the better.

    The explanation behind your view has made me curious. How much stuff do you believe is listed on the broker, that is both:
    1) Listed by accounts that are now inactive/retired.
    And
    2) Has actual value to the player base as a whole in remaining listed?

    I personally believe the number of listings that checks both #1 and #2 is insignificant and does not justify keeping all old listings from retired accounts on the broker. I am of the belief that if the listed items were of value to the player base as a whole, they would have already sold.

    As mentioned before, I believe the current implementation is a poor design choice. But I also believe it is a good idea to have a limit to how long retired accounts will maintain broker listings. It just needs to be done right.
  14. Shunio Member

    maybe the delay problems are from the other ui brokers, I don't think so, that's the problem
  15. Shunio Member

    ui surface -dark usw
  16. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    If there is broker lag, then my personal bet is on people running broker bots.

    Though I will admit, the change requiring me to relist stuff does make the idea of a broker bot way more attractive than it should be.
    Juraiya, Tkia, Dude and 1 other person like this.
  17. Sweety D Well-Known Member


    Here is how I came to make that "extraordinary claim" (which is a fair statement, it is extraordinary). Also, I am not pretending that I have any evidence for my assumptions. This is just the thoughts I have:

    Facts:
    • There are 131,023 items for sale on the broker at this moment.
      • 63,520 level 0 items. This means these are mostly crafting, housing, quest items etc. It's impossible to tell which of these are old vs. new with out reading each item.
      • 55,210 items level 1-120
        • 40,200 of these are below level 100
      • 12,293 items level 121-125
    Obviously there is no way to know which of these items are from inactive accounts. I would assume the vast majority of inactive accounts are selling items below level 100. I'm sure there are active people selling items below 100 on their alts. But I'd image this is not the norm.

    Just for fun, I will give my worst case scenario. Perhaps we assume all of the 55k level 120 and below items are inactive. And, perhaps we assume all of the 63k level 0 items are inactive. That's roughly 66% of the broker items that are inactive. Admittedly, this is not likely a real scenario.

    Now a more realistic scenario (to me). I assume most of the 40k level 100 and below items are inactive. I will only count 20k as inactive, that's half. And, I assume 25% of the 63k level 0 items are inactive. I will count 15k. That's roughly 27% of the broker items that are inactive. If this is true, that's a massive loss of items on the broker.

    If sacrificing 27% of the least important part of the market made the game work flawlessly, I would say the end justifies the means. However, I have a couple problems with this. First, I rarely (almost never) experience server lag. It's my understanding that we were told (via discord) the reason this was done was to reduce server lag. I play with 6 friends and family and they also never have this problem. Second, even if there are people experiencing some manageable lag, I think server lag is the extremely low on the priority list of things that need fixing. I have not seen complaints of people say the game is unplayable.

    So, to clearly answer your questions:

    How much stuff do you believe is listed on the broker, that is both:

    1) Listed by accounts that are now inactive/retired. 27%

    And

    2) Has actual value to the player base as a whole in remaining listed? 100% - I have 6 accounts with 10+ level 125 characters and combined 20+ alts that I actively play. I am constantly buying low level items. Considering that I have been playing since launch in 2004, I have accumulated a lifetime of wealth. I pay ridiculous amounts for items that have zero value to my character beyond looking cool. To me, this is value. I assume I am not the only person doing this, though it's certainly an edge case.

    Lot's of conjecture in this post. But's it's my opinion. :)
  18. Taled Well-Known Member

    What, exactly, do you consider 'actively play'ing? I can't imagine you can actually meaningfully 'actively play' 30+ characters. Even if they are across 6 accounts and you're playing 6 at a time. (which means you definitely aren't actively playing them)
  19. Sweety D Well-Known Member

    My definition of “actively playing” may be different than yours. But you are not really in a position to define that for me. I am actively playing many, many characters. Regardless, this is getting a bit off topic.
  20. Mugwort Active Member

    Since it is not known exactly what problems the "Powers That Be" are working on concerning whatever lag it is they see on their end, there are other things to consider when thinking about the broker/consignment system in EQ2.

    10 characters across 6 accounts is not the same as 100 characters across one account.

    Housing is tied into the broker. Housing has grown. Changed. And certain servers with different rule sets have been merged over the years. The game has gone through different owners with different visions for the game. So, who knows what it is they are really looking at. Who really knows what type of lag problem the issue at hand is.

    However:

    There is the potential of "Unlimited" character slots per account. Each character gets 6 sales slots and each slot, for the time being, has a maximum of 100 slots.

    The system allows the ability to pack numerous sales crates into a single house to create "shopping malls", each house with six slots for maximum sales crate size of 100 items. Each house, if a sales crate is placed, may have a crate of varying % of broker discount which is also determined by the citizenship of the character, which, if crates are placed by other characters in the house, then the broker fee is still calculated accordingly.

    The consignment system is not simple. It is tied into another complex system, housing.

    With housing tied in with the broker, with the inclusion of some houses also containing a literal army of apprentices, and upwards of 50 or more of the new depots that can also house thousands upon thousands of items. Then the hundreds upon hundreds of house items on top of all of that. Goodness. Ground zero for lagfest. A type of lag most of us are familiar with.