I think this is a good compromise as well. I don’t pretend to know much about what is going on in the back end, but if cancel scanning and sniping were being the majority of the problem then this seems like a pretty okay solution.
I know some of you are pretty upset that you can’t spam cancel constantly, but if you were itching that badly to make the sale you’ll lower the price.
I was on Stormrage and I couldn’t use the auction at all at times in legion. The redid the AH for a reason and it was because of this sort of issue.
They redid the AH because people spammed single posts of stackable items (and probably other reasons) but issues like this were not mentioned (not that they’re always truthful or comprehensive in their explanations).
Sure they were mentioned.
Didn’t they do that by throttling it? Isn’t the functionality of processing as many queries as possible what the addon needed to be able perform what we are discussing? And aren’t DBM and BigWigs still around even though some functions might have been removed?
Maybe I’m just misunderstanding your point, but I think taking selective action shows that Blizzard is ok with addons, just not parts of them if they go against the spirit or intent of what Blizzard is trying to accomplish. If the entire addon is the problem, I guess they’d break the whole addon, but that’s not always necessary. It’s 100% up to them to determine what is the spirit of their game and what they think is fair.
Then they should elaborate on what this is. Rather than scape goating addons or the player base.
It would also be nice to understand why the shift in philosphy 15 years later.
They did not, i can still do all of it, i’m actually posting faster than ever thanks to all the people who were scared off.
If addons, or specific functions of addons were the problem, they would have disabled them. Back during Icecrown Citadel, there was an addon that put an overlay down to show you the actual edge of mechanics, since the actual fire didn’t always match up to where the fire was on the screen. Blizzard outright broke the ability for this addon to function.
They didn’t like addons being able to draw lines between players for the Mythic Archimonde encounter, they broke that function so that it couldn’t be used. They didn’t like the radar range function, they broke it. When Blizzard believes an addon or addon function is a problem, they remove the ability for it to be triggered.
They have not broken the function for AH addons, hence, it’s not the addons they view as the problem.
I thought they did in the bug report thread?
Haven’t they altered addon functionality in the past? This isn’t the first time they messed with one specific function while leaving the rest intact.
This is a bit different this time, because I think it’s clear that Blizzard doesn’t have a problem with cancelling and reposting auctions, just doing them at automated level speeds. Doesn’t leaving the cancellation throttle in essentially disable the addon’s ability to function through limitless actions in that regard? I’m not sure what function could be disabled to “break” that kind of speed cancelling without affecting it through normal means.
They don’t want to break cancellation as a function, which is different than drawing overlays during a raid encounter as a function.
No, I’m still able to cancel repost just fine, in fact it’s even faster than before. However, I only have about 30 different items that I’m routinely running. Any of my transmog/pets, I post for 12 hours and then leave it up. They don’t sell often enough and the repost cost (for mog) are way to high to play the Undercut game.
There is no way to get rid of the mass cancel/repost, even the throttle isn’t effective, people like me with 2 accounts aren’t affected at all, just takes a bit longer. This really only hurts the people that are focusing on a large number of individual items.
My guess is that the problem originated when the removed paging. Before 8.3, the Auction House had pages, so there were ways that addons could do a ‘quick scan’ which just skimmed the data to provide very fast but not 100% complete results. I use both Auctionator and TSM for different reasons, one of the functions of Auctionator was the Quick Scan, which would take maybe a minute, and then there was the Full Scan, which sometimes took 15+ minutes. Without the function to just look at the last page of any given search, now when an item is queried, it has to find every single item that matches that search, rather than just 1 page at a time. That’s my theory on the lag with the new system.
As far as a solution, I have no idea. I am not personally affected by the cancel throttling, since the diversity of item I cancel scan is well below their threshold, but I do know that it is a detriment to anyone that is trying to cancel tmog (not sure why they would), but more importantly, anyone that is just trying to cancel everything they have so they can post up for full duration before they log off for the night.
Someone (don’t remember who) suggested they add an option to just instantly cancel all of your current auctions, no scans required. This would be of great benefit to the people that are trying repost before log out, and since it wouldn’t require 2 functions (scan and cancel) of each individual item, it wouldn’t hamper the system too bad.
The other solutions I’ve seen: disabling cancels, canceled items take an hour to mail, charge fee for canceling, will not stop the mass scanning/posting. All those things will do are drive prices up as the people with enough gold to do so, like myself, simply craft enough to make sure they can repost non-stop without needing to cancel (I routinely do this now, I generally run 3-5 post scans before I cancel anything). Anyone without the gold to craft/gather that much to continue posting will just get pushed out of the market completely.
Sorry for long post. Once I got started, couldn’t stop myself.
That’s a you or them problem.
The point still stands. Everyone can use addons.
Or I suppose I should say… Everyone has access to use addons.
If they don’t use them, that’s on them. No matter their situation.
I like this idea but i doubt it will happen because it encourages the same behavior they’re claiming to try to combat.
Depends. If the problem is canceling scanning, which requires 2 functions for each item, this option would be a large step in the right direction as it would bypass both of those functions. So if someone has say 500 pieces, instead of 1000 functions, it would take 1.
Don’t apologize, it’s much appreciated. I don’t know as much about the technical/coding aspects of the game, so it was informative.
If Blizzard is being truthful, they only wanted their changes to hit a small targeted group. Their initial action was heavy handed, and they modified their response. Actually, their response to only going after a specific function mirrors a lot of the suggestions at the beginning of this thread. Didn’t they reverse course so that scanning and posting aren’t impacted anymore?
In all honesty, I think the real solution was already mentioned several times: buy orders. The Auction House is really a Reverse Auction House. A buyer should be able to post that they want “Sword of Dragon Slaying,” everyone has X hours to put in their lowest bid they are willing to go, and after the time expires the lowest bid wins and everyone else gets their item back. Or something similar to that. You can leave in real time elements, I’m just not sure it’s necessary. Winning bid amounts could be shared so you know how far off you were or know what the going rate is, but you get the drift.
I feel a reposting throttle/cooldown would need to happen if all items could be cancelled at once. Even if it’s just 10 minutes. Canceling and reposting to play the LIFO game needs to have deterrents.
I’m all about them buy orders, but there’s a lot of issues there. They become even less user friendly and favor people who just keep an inventory of 1000s of items.
rather see a real free trade,instead of posting hoping to sell unless crafted items but on mats you could wait till the prices gets better.
Yes, currently only canceling is throttled, which again, is only hurting the small goblins and people that want to cancel everything to top off duration before logging off.
The problem with Buy Orders is that unless they allow the option to be set to 30 minutes or an hour, it’s going to be a real pain for a lot of people. For instance, there are times where my guild gets ready to go work on a progression boss and realize that I forgot to stock the Guild Bank with a certain consumable, let’s say Vantus Runes, since Inscription is not a not something I’m willing to spend the many many hours milling and converting ink. If the Buy Orders don’t have a significantly short duration, I just wouldn’t have the opportunity to get the Vantus Runes before we pull. (This is an actual scenario that has happened twice). With the current AH, I can buy them and have them 5 seconds later and divide them amongst the group. With Buy Orders, we would be SoL.
Again, this would only hurt the people without the capital to just have a larger stock to continue reposting while waiting on the canceled items. It’s ALWAYS been the LIFO game, they just made it so you didn’t need to undercut by 1c anymore.
The deterrent there would be posting fees. Cancelling thousands of auctions, when only a few were actually undercut, would cost tons of gold. I only have about 500 auctions and reposting each day costs around 500g just in fees.
Imagine someone with 2000 auctions and 2000v of posting fees. If they cancel all to repost just because say 10 items were undercut, they’re spending 2000g each time. Plus the huge amount of time it takes to post all of that.
I only post once per day, and generally at the same time, so usually I have to cancel all of my auctions, around 500, because they are all expiring in 45 minutes to an hour. I would love to be able to just cancel them all, even if it were restricted to cancelling shirt duration auctions about to expire. It’d save me a lot of time and it’d save Blizzard 500 api calls.
What’s wrong with one action per second. Everyone else using the default UI is doing it.