In-cave wish list

[tjekan]

Problem: The "wants" box on the online market is tiny. Like, 1/4 of a Twitter tweet. If you want anything more complicated than, say, "CB gold," you can't explain it there, and anyone who wants to trade with you is left guessing. I especially felt this during the holidays. All I had room to say was either "2nd-gen garland with named parents," in which case people kept offering me 2nd-gen garlands from lineages I already had, or "2nd-gen garland from winter/silver lunar/green siyat," in which case people kept offering me eggs with unnamed parents, and also there was only enough room to list a few of the breeds I was looking for. End result, lots of annoyance for everybody trying to make trades, because it's impossible to know what anyone really wants unless you go on the forum.

Related problem: It's forbidden to direct people to your forum profile where you can list what you are actually looking for.

 

I understand that TJ doesn't want to open the website up to people free-writing unmoderated stuff, and he doesn't want to link to forum profiles from the main site. Okay, fine. So then what if our scrolls had attached wishlists, where we could build things we're looking for from a drop-down menu? We obviously still wouldn't be able to fully describe what we're looking for (like "I want a checker lineage from four spriter's alts" and so on,) but we could at least select generation CB/2nd/3rd/4th/5th/any, lineage checker/stair/other, named/coded/don't care, and the breeds of both parents. That would adequately describe 95% of dragons people are looking for and save everybody in the trading center a lot of wasted time and frustration. And since the drop-down menu for breeds already exists in the trading center, it would hopefully not be too difficult to implement.

 

What do people think?

 

ETA: How about giving us a wishlist and allowing us to choose the breed of each dragon we want from the drop-down list, then free-describing it in a text box? That would discourage people from using the page to chat around on, but would give us the freedom to say things like "3rd-gen snow angel from a checker with two different wing patterns in the 1st gen"-- WITHOUT the smallness of the trading box forcing that to be the only thing we can ask for. It could be just one item on the wishlist at that point. There could automatically be a link from anyone's trade post to their wishlist, so traders in a hurry could just read the trade post and offer away, while people who didn't want to waste their time on an unwanted offer could read the wishlist. It would be a win-win really.

Edited December 30, 2018 by tjekan

[pinkgothic]

An on-site wishlist sounds great! Personally, I wouldn't even want to restrict it. Let people report bad wishlists the same way they can report bad descriptions?

[HeatherMarie]

Honestly I think it would be easier to simply expand the Want box so we can actually fit what we want in there, rather then creating a whole new feature for what we want. The feature is already there, it just needs more room. 

 

However, I'm not opposed to this suggestion if it has more chance of happening then mine!

 

edit: However, if we did have an on-site wishlist, it needs to be less restrictive. More free-form, not just drop-down boxes. If I'm going to use a wishlist feature, I'm going to want to describe what 'messy' means to me, list specific dragons I don't want in the lineage, etc. Otherwise it's just as useless (to me) as the current Want box restrictions.

Edited December 30, 2018 by HeatherMarie

[tjekan]

Considering TJ's strict take against any 'chatting' in the trading center, I suspect the smallness of the trading box is intentional, to stop anyone from saying anything much there. Hence my suggestion for a more menu-based wishlist, which would at least improve the problem for many (though not all) lineages. An UNlimited wishlist page on our scroll, automatically linked to any post we make on the trading center, would be absolutely ideal from my perspective, if TJ is willing!

[relaks]

8 hours ago, tjekan said:

but we could at least select generation CB/2nd/3rd/4th/5th/any, lineage checker/stair/other, named/coded/don't care, and the breeds of both parents.

The problem with that is, as TJ mentioned a couple of times, that all this lingo is user-created and not official yet. I believe he said something about first finding a consensus for what everything means (does a "checker" mean the same for everyone? an "arrow"? etc) so before implementing this on a dropdown menu, it would need to be official.

 

I wouldn't mind being able to make a wishlist in-cave, honestly, I think it would be great. But I don't see the point if it's with pre-made options in dropdown boxes, as I think it wouldn't fit everyone's need. It would be better if we could just write exactly what we're looking for. Even if we had a longer box in the trading hub, sometimes we don't want just 1  specific egg/hatchling but would be happy with any egg of our wishlist... and that would be impossible to list on a want box, even if it was unlimited. 

[Fuzzbucket]

Shortening text is easier than some people seem to think though.

 

Quote

"2nd-gen garland with named parents," in which case people kept offering me 2nd-gen garlands from lineages I already had, or "2nd-gen garland from winter/silver lunar/green siyat,"

 

could say: "2g garland w/named SLunar/winter/G siyat parent"

 

That actually fits.

 

But I DO think we need a separate wants box so that we can also say what we HAVE.

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

10 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

Honestly I think it would be easier to simply expand the Want box so we can actually fit what we want in there, rather then creating a whole new feature for what we want. The feature is already there, it just needs more room. 

 

Generally really agree with this. An expanded want box seems like a simpler solution, and while I know TJ doesnt want chatting, we aren’t asking for a full 1000 characters, just 150 or 200, barely more than we have now but still enough to make a difference.

 

Regarding the wish list though, I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to it, but I don’t think it fully solves the problem: at some point you’re going to want one specific breed of dragon, instead of just anything on your wish list, and then you might have the problem of the limiting want box again. I also think it could become complicated. Instead of actually seeing what people are wanting, they’d probably write “anything off my wish list” which involves extra clicks and searching around. I also imagine it might be a bit confusing to search for specific breeds: say you have a blue Firegem and you search Firegem to see people who want it, you’d then have to scout through everyone’s wish lists to see if they want a blue one, and I imagine people’s wish lists would get preeetty long, and then when you finally find the Firegem, they want a green and not a blue. Things like that.

 

Yeah, I think it has a couple of kinks that could be ironed out, but I certainly don’t oppose the suggestion. Probably wouldn’t use it since I’m not a lineage builder tho

[tjekan]

3 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

Shortening text is easier than some people seem to think though.

 

 

could say: "2g garland w/named SLunar/winter/G siyat parent"

 

That actually fits.

 

But I DO think we need a separate wants box so that we can also say what we HAVE.

 

Well, that was only an example... there were actually about 12 breeds I was looking for. Which means there were about 150 breeds I was NOT looking for. It was impossible to tell people which was which. I did a lot of declining.

 

I don't think forcing us into using telegraph-style shorthand does new users any favors either. I've been playing the game forever and I still had to squint to puzzle out that "GLH" meant "gold lunar herald" and so on. It's an unnecessary chore.

4 hours ago, relaks said:

The problem with that is, as TJ mentioned a couple of times, that all this lingo is user-created and not official yet.

That's true. I don't think that would be a deal-killer, though. We can and do already use this unofficial lingo at the trade center, after all. Using it on an on-site wishlist would be no different.

 

How about giving us a wishlist and allowing us to choose the breed of each dragon we want from the drop-down list, then free-describing it in a text box? That would discourage people from using the page to chat around on, but would give us the freedom to say things like "3rd-gen snow angel from a checker with two different wing patterns in the 1st gen"-- WITHOUT the smallness of the trading box forcing that to be the only thing we can ask for. It could be just one item on the wishlist at that point. There could automatically be a link from anyone's trade post to their wishlist, so traders in a hurry could just read the trade post and offer away, while people who didn't want to waste their time on an unwanted offer could read the wishlist. It would be a win-win really.

[VixenDra]

There are so many factors the dropdown would have to cover... e.g. me and my bf seek for specific zombie fodders, what matters is the breed, gender, being CB AND biome, also often it's important it's at below 200 unique views(because otherwise the hatchie would gender under fog). I doubt limiting everything to dropdown would be ever enough. Also, many people look for "unrelated to X" or "bred from a CB caught in XX year/day - especialy true to prize breeds, etc. not to mention SAs (especially if one already has some and seeks for those they don't have yet only). Allowing a reportable free-text area would be much more efficient and user-friendly, but the breeds could indeed be from dropdowns, to kind of prevent unrelated text or at least reduce it greatly by kind of imposing the topic.

 

The lineage type names are so widely used it wouldn't be much of a problem to just prepare an index of terms to place on-site, maybe with preview illustrations (like those used in recently released breeds' breeding plans).

 

[HeatherMarie]

5 hours ago, RealWilliamShakespeare said:

 

Generally really agree with this. An expanded want box seems like a simpler solution, and while I know TJ doesnt want chatting, we aren’t asking for a full 1000 characters, just 150 or 200, barely more than we have now but still enough to make a difference.

 

Regarding the wish list though, I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to it, but I don’t think it fully solves the problem: at some point you’re going to want one specific breed of dragon, instead of just anything on your wish list, and then you might have the problem of the limiting want box again. I also think it could become complicated. Instead of actually seeing what people are wanting, they’d probably write “anything off my wish list” which involves extra clicks and searching around. I also imagine it might be a bit confusing to search for specific breeds: say you have a blue Firegem and you search Firegem to see people who want it, you’d then have to scout through everyone’s wish lists to see if they want a blue one, and I imagine people’s wish lists would get preeetty long, and then when you finally find the Firegem, they want a green and not a blue. Things like that.

 

Yeah, I think it has a couple of kinks that could be ironed out, but I certainly don’t oppose the suggestion. Probably wouldn’t use it since I’m not a lineage builder tho

 

This is a good point, and one I hadn't really considered. Would 'wish lists' be searchable? Right now, even as limited as the Want box is, at least we can search specific terms. Would we be able to do that with wish lists, search for any wish list mentioning Firegems? But it would still take extra clicks and probably a lot of reading/skimming to find where in the wish list the Firegem was mentioned and if it's the right color and such. That sounds like a headache in general. 

 

Having a wish list but also having drop-downs for the breed of dragon would help to some extent, but drop-downs only filter out so much. I've used the current breed drop-down and had 5-6 pages of results. Then, again, there would be more clicking and searching to find what exactly the wish list says, instead of it all being right there with the trade.

[tjekan]

Just now, HeatherMarie said:

 

This is a good point, and one I hadn't really considered. Would 'wish lists' be searchable? Right now, even as limited as the Want box is, at least we can search specific terms. Would we be able to do that with wish lists, search for any wish list mentioning Firegems? But it would still take extra clicks and probably a lot of reading/skimming to find where in the wish list the Firegem was mentioned and if it's the right color and such. That sounds like a headache in general. 

 

Having a wish list but also having drop-downs for the breed of dragon would help to some extent, but drop-downs only filter out so much. I've used the current breed drop-down and had 5-6 pages of results. Then, again, there would be more clicking and searching to find what exactly the wish list says, instead of it all being right there with the trade.

 

The wishlist wouldn't replace the trading box, it would supplement it. The trading box could still say "H: 2g holly from gold, W: 2g garland, 2g holly, or 3g holiday checker." But there would also be a link to the person's wishlist, which would then have the additional explanation of which 12 garland and holly lineages they are looking for, or the 8 lineages they already have and thus don't need, or the data that they only want named parents without "CB" tags in their names, or that they don't want mistletoe or holly or solstice checkers but want any of the other holiday breeds, or that if you don't have any of that stuff they're still always in the market for a CB silver.

 

It would be additional info for people who wanted it. People who don't wouldn't have to click on it, they could still just offer a 3g holiday checker and hope for the best the same way they could have without the wishlist.

[Cinspawn]

What you're suggesting sounds a lot like a suggestion I made in the thread mentioned earlier:

 

Specifically the " A (more...) option, to eliminate all character space problems " part. I feel like the ideas are pretty similar, except no dropdown menu (what's the point of the menu if we can type freeform too?)

 

So I do support this, though I'd like it more as part of the Trading Hub (like I described in the post linked above) than as a separate on its own thing.