“Vendor Trash” Banished From Broker, Fertilizer Oops
Optimization of the Broker is something that’s been on EQ2 Lead Programmer Rothgar‘s long term To Do list for quite a while. So it was a surprise when a change we first heard about in September 2011 partly arrived in yesterday’s Update Notes.
All of those ‘vendor trash’ items with a description like “You might be able to find a merchant who would give you a few coins for this item.” are now NO BROKER. This change should help clear tens of thousands of items off the broker whose sole purpose has been to provide some flavor to players rather than just giving them gold pieces from certain mobs.
Now, this change did not go without a hitch: All Fertilizer ended up getting flagged NO BROKER.
These items which have played triple duty as food for Burynai house pets, the Guild Hall amenity of similar function, and Plant Food for house plants also got flagged as NO BROKER. As these items (ie. a flask of distilled water, a bag of compost, a large decaying bone) have traditionally traded north of 25 gold a piece, this has led to a certain amount of consternation.
According to Gninja, a fix for this issue is coming soon:
Keep an eye on the patch notes, fertilizer loot will be once again be able to be sold on the broker. Sorry about that folks!
A few people doubted that there had even been cause or request for this feature, to which Rothgar replied:
Here’s a thread from late last year where people were complaining about all the “junk” items on the broker.
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/…topic_id=504565
Here’s another thread where people were asking for a “sell all junk” type of feature to instantly sell everything in their bags that don’t have a purpose other than for coin.
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/…46?
The point of this change is to keep things off the broker that have no usefulness in the game except to be converted to coin at a merchant. If any items were flagged as junk that have an actual use (like fertilizers) they should be fixed.
Not surprisingly, it was brought up that long-standing issues with mechanics, zone bugs, and the half-finished itemization of Game Update 61 haven’t received so much as a peep, to which Rothgar replied:
I did this in my spare time last August because I felt strongly about improving the broker performance and adding a feature (sell all junk) that many players have requested and that I would like myself. It only took about 10 minutes of coding to give our design team the ability to flag items and keep them off the broker.
However, we were building an expansion at the same time and since this wasn’t a team initiative. I couldn’t rightfully expect the design team to start flagging items because of my own personal desire to see this get into the game. And with no clue as to when the items would be flagged, I didn’t spend the time doing the “Sell All Junk” feature because it was a little more time consuming.
With the expansion behind us now we are starting to knock out some other features and this was one of them they were able to get to. I don’t think it took them a lot of time to flag the items but unfortunately the fertilizer items were mistakenly flagged because they lumped in with a bunch of other items.
Now that we have the items flagged properly, we can finish the “Sell All Junk” feature and it’ll actually work. Even without Sell All, this change should start improving broker performance and accessibility right away, and that’s the biggest win.
Discuss this on the EQ2 Forums.
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Comments (15)
Kwill
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Check your work before you turn it in. Project grade: C-
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Karith
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It’s because they are all too busy working on SC items. Game gets 2-3 weekly SC item patches but GUs get pushed back two months. Lovely.
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Savas
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Glad to see this feature put in and hopefully sell all junk as well will make bag clearing and organizing quicker. Anything that lets me save time so I can play more is a good thing. I wonder what else Rothgar has worked on thats waiting for another team to finish.
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Lakoda
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Jeez! There were test posts telling them of this issue before it was pushed live. /fail
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Gunthore
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@Lakoda That’s the norm and has been for a while now.
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Eschia
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Never use a axe on a job that needs a scalpel. SOE seems to have a nack for forgetting about older content, and mows over it in a future update, breaking it. Trash items such as bird beaks and perfumes don’t have a use, however things like flasks bones and fertilizer are used for things. Those items plus adept books, are the largest part of my broker profits. Without those I’d be poor as dirt. 😀
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Llenwyn
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While they are working on fertilizers, it would be nice if they made the DoV ones edible for my Burynai house pet…
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skippydippy
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Honest to god something that should be simple and the clueless crew get it wrong..
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Dorath
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Sell All sounds great! Looking forward to it.
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LimeSplitpaw
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a while ago \aITEM 728229990 1414895014 0:[a vampiric incisor]\/a would sell for a few silver to vendor. they removed that option by making them no-value. now ironical when trying to add this no-value item to broker the error test say “The broker isn’t interested in that item. Try selling it to a vendor.”
eater this shouldn’t be an item it should autoupdate lore and legend quest when killing vampires, or it should be sellable to vendor (as other lore and legend item are) or it should be sellable to broker.
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cmors
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“However, we were building an expansion at the same time and since this wasn’t a team initiative.”
What expansion? SOE didn’t give us an expansion, no new content, the GU date for Feb is being pushed back. So WTH were they so busy with.
I appreciate the ability to sell all junk with just a click but that would have been useful years ago but come on, don’t try to sell your lies to us, we’ve heard them all before and SOE’s track record speaks louder than the lies you are trying to peddle.
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Kwill
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I don’t think Rothgar was lying at all — he saw the need for this project, and did it on his own time. It was not a team priority. He spent ten or twenty minutes writing a little script that allowed items to be flagged as junk — and then the person who took over the project made a hash of it, because they didn’t take the time to figure out what was junk and what wasn’t. Oh, corpse item, junk, done. Wait, status items aren’t junk, leave those out…and that was that. Completely forgot that fertilizer is a comodity.
I am sure sell all junk is easy, because all the database has to do is check for the junk flag and then pay out the cash value for the item.
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Kwill
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One more comment about Sell All Junk — I wonder if it will work, only because I think WoW’s system, which they are copying, was actually pretty sophisticated in what was flagged junk, now that I think about it.
Clearly SOE’s version of what was no-broker didn’t work, so I worry that moving to the next level is going to be a mess. Let’s hope a convenience feature doesn’t turn into a nightmare.
If I was doing it, I think I would have flagged as junk first, implemented the sell all junk, and then worried about the no broker flag. Because if people were selling vendor items in bulk, they wouldn’t be putting them on the broker, thus problem partically solved.
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Arcturys
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I personally think this is a good idea for another reason that no one seemed to mention. Lots of players have been selling vendor trash on the broker for high prices because it just happened to have the exact same name as an item that was actually useful. “A flask of water” anyone?
This should help cut down on not only the useless junk cluttering up searches, but also help limit the scam attempts by those dishonest players.
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Crystal
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It’s about time. I know that there’s a lot of pressure to work on things that will be seen as ‘higher priority’, but things like this make the game less time consuming and more enjoyable. Thanks, Rothgar, and keep up the good work. I look forward to the sell all junk feature. Now, about that “search for collectibles I don’t already have” feature… 😉
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