Trading Hub- Separate 'Have' box, more characters in 'Want' box

[HeatherMarie]

Just what the title says. Since the trading hub feedback thread has been closed but there are still *SO* many things that can be made better, here is an actual thread for my personal favorite trading-hub-related suggestion.

 

The 'Want' box is severely limiting, character-wise, as it is. As it is we already have to be fairly selective about what we 'want', because that little box can only hold so much (currently 100 characters). There really is no reasonable way to put both 'wants' *and* 'haves' in that one tiny box, you have to choose which one you prioritize. Describe what you have, which leaves little to no room for what you want, or vice versa. 

 

People in the original Trading Hub Feedback thread expressed they wouldn't want to slog through long paragraphs of 'wants' (or haves), but I'm sure there can be a compromise between 'too little room' and 'too long to read'. Even just increasing the character limit to 150 or 200 would make a *huge* difference from what we have now. And having a separate, specific 'Have' box would make it a lot easier to fit both types of information. Also, the 'want' box is searchable, through that 'filter' function. Which means tons of users putting 'haves' into their 'want' box makes that filter relatively useless. I search that filter a lot before posting trades, and a good 90% of the trades that come up are trades that *have* the thing instead of *want* the thing. If we had a dedicated 'Have' box that wouldn't be an issue.

[catzrule1990]

Oh man would I ever love this. 100% support this!

[Cinspawn]

Yes, would love to have this, with the 'Have' box on top. 

 

And definitely the functionality to search haves and wants separately! 

[Jack_Indivisible]

I support this 100%, the trading hub is kind of bad for people who are casually into trading and not really into the trading hub, and it also selects for simpler lineages that aren't as interesting.

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

Totally support. The lack of space also makes accurately communicating difficult, and I know a lot of problems have arisen because of it. 

[Shokomon]

I support this too! 

 

Definitely the "Haves" box, at least. 👍 

[GhostMouse]

Support! It drives me crazy to search the "wants" for something I have only to find trades listing that breed as a "have." It really makes the whole search function useless. I'm also in favor of the increased character limit so people can be specific about the exact thing they're interested in.

[Forever_Monee]

Absolutely support! With the current implementation, the Wants filter and the Breed select box basically do the same thing. For example, I like Florets and so I use the Breed select box to find trades that have that breed. However, if I have a Floret to trade and I use the Wants filter, I still get trades that have Florets but want something else. 

[pinkgothic]

Yes please, especially the separation of wants and have for the searchability! I'd love to see that improved.

[osmarks]

Sounds better than the current system (like many things). I support this.

[Pilauli]

I recently found it impossible to fully specify my wants/haves.  Try cramming in "BSA reds, CB/EG Magelight/Mimic Pygmies, or other offers" (usually the sort of thing I'm looking for) with any other description.  Actually, just splitting the wants and haves (it's kind of important, for example, if my dragon is neither CB nor messy) would probably give me enough characters to reliably work with.

 

And yeah, I could probably drop a couple of words from my example, but I think it's clearer with them (or I wouldn't include them).

[Confused Cat]

15 hours ago, GhostMouse said:

Support! It drives me crazy to search the "wants" for something I have only to find trades listing that breed as a "have."

 

^ This.

Both searching for "wants" and searching for "haves" is useful (I'd say necessary), but it would be so much better if it could be done separately.

[Nimrodel]

I'd very much like a separate "have" box. As you say, dividing a set number of characters between haves and wants can be tricky. Besides, having these things in separate boxes would make it a lot neater too, easier to read through and identify what's what. 

[Jazeki]

Yes please. A lot of times when I search, people's haves come up instead of wants. I also like for things to be in their own little spots instead of crammed together.

[Laryal]

Yes 100 % agree.

[Pilauli]

Oh, and it's kind of absurd to see "Wants: H: CB gold W: unbreedables", but "Wants: unbreedables // H: CB gold" is actually momentarily confusing because so many people seem to put their haves first.

[Tetelestai]

Total 100% support!!

[purplehaze]

I thought I had already responded to this, but apparently I haven't.

I definitely support this. It makes no sense to have to lump everything into one box and it really does negate the effectiveness of filtering.

I really can't imagine any reason for not changing this.

[osmarks]

I think the want box should be at least the size of a tweet, since we aren't allowed to link offsite to pictographic wishlists.

[Fuzzbucket]

280 characters ? That's WAY more than necessary. Please no. (and WHY would one need images in a want box ?)

[Cinspawn]

I made a mockup because I think people have a hard time visualizing a certain amount of characters.

 

 

The above mockup used 100 characters (the current limit) for both Haves and Wants, so 200 characters total.

 

I personally think this still looks OK, keep in mind it's not likely every trade will use all characters allowed.

But I don't know if it's enough characters for some of our breeders who want to specify things. So if they do want way more space, perhaps it's important to think about ways to accomplish that without making the Trading Hub one big wall of text, with big empty spaces in between.

 

 

 

A possible solution is a "More" button:

 

Basically if you reach an X amount of characters, a (More) button would appear, and if you press that you simply get to the page of the trade itself. We could easily have a little 500 character limit box there and voila, people can properly include details of what they're looking for, and only people who are interested in the trade have to click it.

 

Only downside I can think of (so far): bit harder to moderate. But I don't know if mods actually look through trades on their own, or only act on reported trades. If the latter, this shouldn't be too much of an issue, I think? I don't know.

 

 

Thoughts?

 

 

And I realize I should have put "Have" not "Haves" but I realized too late and I can't be bothered to fix it  

[HeatherMarie]

I definitely like the idea of a clickable 'more'. While I understand concerns about cluttering the hub with too much text, some things *really* can't be properly communicated in 100 characters. Seriously, I have tried *so* hard to cut my wording down to fit into that little box and I *always* have to sacrifice something, whether leaving off that I only want egg offers, or leaving off a particular line I don't want, etc. It would be so so so awesome if the character limit could be expanded a bit... Honestly even 50 more characters would make things easier, but more wiggle room with a 'more' cutoff would be even better.

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

Exactly. The “display more” is a really good option, and those mockups look really good imo

[Terces]

Definitely support a 'Have' box. I'd be happy with either increasing the character input limit or the 'More' option.

[Zeditha]

I was going to suggest a third description box that's only visible within the trade page itself, but honestly I like the idea of a 'more' better. 500 characters should be sufficient for that, and then perhaps keep the 100-character limit on the 'Have' box? (Surely the 'Have' shouldn't need to much explanation, especially since you can look at the eggs/hatchlings in the trade...)