Zedwork

Hello,
Recently I have noticed a large increase in the spamming nature of our chat for particular items. I have seen players try to sell/buy items every 2-5 mins for multiple hours straight. Even when no one new comes on. I think we should find a way that on our forums we can post needed items for projects and then be able to respond to said posts. Wee have many shops in game but there are a few items that no one stalks and everyone wants. for ex. (need 30 stacks of sand) (I have 30 stacks of sand and will contact you when you are online to configure a reasonable payment.) This should allow for our chat logs to be less cluttered. This is just one option and I would love to hear other suggestions.

Thank you for your time and consideration,
Spamtron

Something like a trading forum? Not just a topic in general discourse, a place where people can arrange trading with others without in-game chat getting filled with those repetitive spam-like comments.
That sounds like a brilliant idea to me!
People could advertise their shops as well, since there are so many business' popping up in our ever-growing community. ^_^
Also it would allow players who don't usually see each other due to a difference in times and playing schedules meet up and arrange trades without the issue of trying to "catch them" when the guess the person may be on...

That was a little rambling there, sorry, but i think if we can get a couple more players and protectors behind this it'd be a brilliant addition to the forums and the server in general! (might also attract people to joining the forums and getting involved a bit more )

Great idea Spamtron~
-Goldy

Players are not allowed to spam the chat with their sales. They can do as lala does, build a reputation, or maybe sell here on the forum. There was a third option, and I'm not sure what happened to it. It might not be operational, but we had a place in cityregion where you could sell your items. It was based on emeralds.

The plugin for the item trading in the City Region had some issues. I'll take a look at it again, see if it has improved.

For now, using this topic for trading would be a good idea. If it becomes popular then adding a forum would be a great idea, but I wouldn't want to pre-emptively create separate forum unless I can see it being used

Using a trading post on the forum is a great idea, which i would not mind using myself.
Here is some of the pros and cons of using such a topic:

Pros:
1. Less chat spam as it was mentioned earlier in this topic.
2. Easy to arrange how/when/what to trade by using a trade topic. (IF the players actively use the forum)


Cons:
1. Most players who play on the server does not use the forum at all. (I only see the same 5-10 players posting on a regular basis)
2. Long reply times. If you need something right away, you don't want to wait 5 hours for a forum reply, and then another 10 to figure out when to trade the items, and then wait for both players to be online at the same time.

I like this idea! Maybe we could use google docs instead of a forum topic for trades, because it is more organized?

A google doc page on which we can make a list of regions and their shops. They can say what they are selling in their shops (for example: potions) and they can name the price of a few items they are currently selling.

Also we could make a buy/sell page on which people name the items they desire/want to sell.

We could make this google docs accessible trough a link. We could also make the topic with the link visible for registred forum users only to prevent non-zedwork people to see it.

I made an example spreadsheet (let me know what you think):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... sp=sharing

I wish more people would start using the forum. I really like the spreadsheet and am personally in love with Google docs but not one person has posted on it yet I wonder how we can direct more people to use the forums without filling the chat log with webpage suggestions?
---Spamtron

You're never going to be able to actually end people in chat asking about a forum, where they need to go for it, and about stuff they want to sell/buy because new people are going to join. Since this thread started it has gone down some among the regulars, but now instead of asking if anyone will buy this or that people are arranging meet ups continuously. Plus, new players join and they want to sell or buy stuff to start getting settled, but they still aren't sure if they are staying on the server and are opposed to setting up an account on the forums for that reason. It's going to be there in some form or another so I say might as well deal and ignore it when it happens.

I would say that redirecting anyone trying to sell or buy items to the forums is most likely going to be the most direct way to get people on the forums. Most players just don't know it exists, or why they would want to sign up at all. I've opted against constantly spamming the chat with announcements, where other servers use broadcasts every 5 minutes to encourage donations, forum sign-ups etc. There isn't a lot I can do to encourage it beyond spamming the chat, so it's really up to word of mouth amongst the community to inform and encourage others to use it.