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Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
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Something that REALLY needs to be fixed
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Dave Viker
Do you even Exist.
#1 - 2016-09-07 16:47:48 UTC
Hello guys,

I wrote a brief article about the market search system on reddit.
You can view it here but I am going to copypaste the text in here too:

Quote:
The search functionality found in the EVE market is beyond terrible, compared to today's standards. As a person who worked for Europe's biggest search engine provider for online shops, I cannot accept that.
It is also one of the biggest turn offs for new players, those people CCP wants so desperately. I will explain why, along with a few simple improvement solutions, that can be [depending on how EVE's market background works] easily implemented.

So, why is the search a horrible problem for new players?
There are two kinds of people when it comes to online shopping (which, in fact, is kinda the same thing here):
Type A prefers to use the search function to get to the products they want, where type B prefers to use a category view. Players of type B won't have that much of a problem, when they at least know what kind of thing they want. Type A players, people who don't even know how modules could be called, will terribly fail when trying to find anything.
EVE's Item names are hard to remember, even for veteran players and fitting officers. Searching for "Shield" won't even return 50% of all shield related items.
And "EM Ward Field" doesn't come to mind if you never went through the entire Market Browser.
Please don't get me wrong, I do not hate the item names - I actually like them. They're just not customer friendly.
I have introduced a LOT of people into EVE (about 20, of whom 7 turned out as active players), and this problem occured to me every single time. I hope I got my point across there.

The current search's logic behaves like a full word search. So "lar shi boo" won't find Large Shield Boosters.
This is the first point I would consider changing: Some kind of "split" search, that doesnt just use the full search term, but each word within it, seperated by spaces. Now this would be a really easy thing to add, no matter how complicated EVE's market services work.
A few more examples for this would be "neutron II" for the 'Heavy Neutron Blaster II' or "CCC" for all Capacitor Control Circuits.

Now for my second suggestion: At the moment, items are just matched by their title, nothing else.
It would be a great idea to add things like description, type, race, attributes, traits, tags and so forth to comparison - just with a lower match factor compared to the title. So if I searched for "battlecruiser bonus boost" I would get the Cyclone as a result.
This is the most important feature for newer players, as they often do not know any of EVE's item names. Searching for "shield boost" would return all items related to shield boosting, sorted after relevance - wouldn't that be great?

More advanced stuff like typo-tolerance are neat, but absolutely not neccessary in this case.
Another, more performance-drawing feature (at least for the server), would be adding some kind of autocomplete (little box below the input field), that only lists items with exact word match (something like the current search)

Also, as big_lynx already stated, this is also very important for veteran players, not just for new ones - I did not state that clear enough.

tl;dr: Fix EVE's market search by adding 2 simple features.

Inb4 "If you don't like the game, don't play it": I LOVE EVE as it is my favourite game since I started playing it, and you did not get my point.

Indie GameDev & Audiophile

Checkout my Soundcloud page.

Hitech Trance, Chillout, Acoustic Stuff.
Big Lynx
#2 - 2016-09-07 16:54:51 UTC
I endorse this. Great idea! CCP plz make it real!Cool
Lugh Crow-Slave
#3 - 2016-09-07 17:08:32 UTC
-.- this has needed to be fixed for so long.

BLOPS Hauler
The 16.8km Bubble
Ralph King-Griffin
New Eden Tech Support
#4 - 2016-09-07 17:36:29 UTC
I'm dyslexic , ****the current search bar.

Murderers of Negotiable Motivations

=]|[=
Nevyn Auscent
Broke Sauce
#5 - 2016-09-07 20:35:46 UTC
Already in the game, it's called the category browser...... Which you yourself listed in the topic.
If people can't handle to read market categories and display the tiniest bit of self reliance then frankly, they don't actually have a place in EVE. Also expecting CCP to keep up with the community abbreviations and such is simply unrealistic.

Naming conventions CCP is cleaning up with Tiericide (To loads of whining and protests) to make sure they do appear under the same keywords as the T1 & T2 modules for all the meta modules.

In short, none of what you are asking for is 'little' or 'simple'. You are asking for an incredibly complex change when features already exist that allow you to do it in short order.
Dave Viker
Do you even Exist.
#6 - 2016-09-07 21:17:14 UTC
Nevyn Auscent wrote:
Already in the game, it's called the category browser...... Which you yourself listed in the topic.
If people can't handle to read market categories and display the tiniest bit of self reliance then frankly, they don't actually have a place in EVE. Also expecting CCP to keep up with the community abbreviations and such is simply unrealistic.

Naming conventions CCP is cleaning up with Tiericide (To loads of whining and protests) to make sure they do appear under the same keywords as the T1 & T2 modules for all the meta modules.

In short, none of what you are asking for is 'little' or 'simple'. You are asking for an incredibly complex change when features already exist that allow you to do it in short order.


The first improvement is in fact simple, no matter how "legacy" your code is.
Changing the string matching logic can't be hard, and I've seen and worked on a lot of code to be able to say that it is easy - at least easier than an *actual* search engine.

Indie GameDev & Audiophile

Checkout my Soundcloud page.

Hitech Trance, Chillout, Acoustic Stuff.
Brokk Witgenstein
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#7 - 2016-09-08 06:51:39 UTC
If you don't like the game, do- oh wait! This is actually a good idea! Shocked
+1
Wimzy Chent-Shi
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#8 - 2016-09-08 07:09:25 UTC
It's nice.

Come get some cancer @ my blog !

"This clash of opinions is like cutting onions. We are creating something here, that's productive, ...and then there is also salt." -Wimzy 2016
Luscius Uta
#9 - 2016-09-08 11:27:07 UTC
Of course that you can't type something like "shield" and expect some results, it's just too wide of a term. What do you even expect it to do, find you all your shield-tanked ships? Show you shield percentage on all your POSes? Try typing something more specific, like "shield hardener" or "shield extender", it'll probably give you sensible results.

However that doesn't mean that the market could have few improvements - for example, when updating my orders, I would like to have an option to hide orders that I can't update so I can skip them faster. Also, regional averages sometimes give values that aren't anywhere close to any fulfillled orders (this more often happens with rarely traded items, although I've seen it once happen with T2 Damage Control in Jita), resulting in annoying popups whenever I try to update them, despite my sell or buy order value being reasonable. In fact, I don't see much sense in regional averages at all, they should be replaced with average Jita price. Nobody's going to buy an EC-900 drone in Kor-Azor for 1 million or whatever value the game calculated as regional average when they can buy it one jump away in Amarr for a fraction of that price (this is just an example and it might correspond with actual item values).

Workarounds are not bugfixes.
Scipio Artelius
Weaponised Vegemite
Flying Dangerous
#10 - 2016-09-08 11:51:46 UTC
Liked it on Reddit and same here.

Hope this is implemented.
Mordachai
Eternal Darkness.
#11 - 2016-09-08 12:32:46 UTC
Pretty much yepp..

However regarding the em ward field... for us veteran players its more annoying when they change the names of modules like the em ward fiel wich was if im not mistaking photon something something.

i would like to get a box you can tick in for the following:
High slot modules
Mid slot modules
Low slot modules

maybe more ? not sure

It would be nice if you got like 1 mid slot left and your thinking what could i fit here thats beneficial to my fit.
Wrench Conne
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#12 - 2016-09-09 07:19:00 UTC
Mordachai wrote:

i would like to get a box you can tick in for the following:
High slot modules
Mid slot modules
Low slot modules




Other random box to tick ideas:
It would be great to have an advanced search area with a bunch of box options to check to help in your search.
Weapon types Long, Medium, Short range
Power types - Amount Increase, Regen Increase, Instant Increase
An option for price % above/below average - might help out those guys I've heard of who weren't paying attention when they bought something and instead of paying 1million they paid 1billion
Tons of other possible box check possibilities.
Shallanna Yassavi
qwertz corp
#13 - 2016-09-09 07:45:01 UTC
Keep the names, but have database tags trigger searches:
EM Ward Amplifier II could have tags: [Shield], [Passive], [Hardener | Resist], [Electromagnetic], [Meta Group]

Search terms like "T2 passive shield hardener" would return all the tech 2 passive resistance mods.

A signature :o
Beta Maoye
#14 - 2016-09-09 09:01:13 UTC
I think a small database such as the in-game market items don't need internet search algorithm. The number of items in the game is not that big and they are well categorized. New players can gain more knowledge about the game by browsing through various categories of items in the market. How could a player search for "lar she boo" if he don't know there is large shield booster? Similarly, how could he search for "CCC" if he don't know there is capacitor control circuit? Players have to know the market first before he can use the search feature for a short-cut. I think new players should be encouraged to browse through the categories to grip a general ideas of what is available in the market, because it also helps them to understand the game. For example, to understand the difference between beam laser and pulse laser is important in fitting weapons. Search feature provides convenience but it cannot help players to understand the game.