Agreed. While yes, there has to be certain appeal to buying various Items from your shop, the Trade Chat is just one big annoyance with people spamming the same message every minute or even worse. It is a good idea to have such a chat, yes, but there should be an option for everyone to opt out of it.

 

Instead of asking for another thing to be free on the server, how about we encourage new players to actually spend a few hours working and earning money in order to enjoy server features?
That said, trade chat has become the most annoying place to be since the proliferation of autobots. I personally think that this would not be as big an issue if we could just see ads only every 15 or 20 minutes from each player.

 

I feel like if this is your reason behind the suggestion a more apt priority would be reducing the amount of spam in trade chat, rather than just making it easier to avoid.

 

Fair enough, I suppose.

 

You say it is an ethical issue, however, there are many servers that do not allow any ignoring at all and also allow pretty much anything in chat, including massive spamming. I am glad for this server and the ability to actually leave or ignore, even if it does come with a small price. That to me is not ethics, it is economy.

 

I think they should be able to leave global chat. It can get a bit rowdy in there and you see people ask about leaving that chat. If they don't want to see it I think they should have that option because they might find playing here more enjoyable when its a bit quieter. Not everyone likes the loud crazy stuff hehe.

 

The whole point of trade chat is that people see what you advertise, so it makes poor sense to allow more people to leave it (on the contrary, I think that even donors shouldn't be allowed to leave it - but that's secondary, in any case please read my whole post).

However trade chat is spammy and something must be done for sure, but I don't think that raising the cooldown between ads would be a good solution: what if someone wants to advertise two different things? Why should there be a 20 min cooldown between a "buying diamond ore" ad and an "offering water service" one? The cooldown can't really be made longer than as it is now, 5 min is more than enough.

On the other hand I completely agree (again) that trade channel is spammy and that we should do something about that. I use macromod and therefore I'm going against my own interest saying this: we should make trade channel be pay-per-message (or pay-per-character). Not anything too small, but not too big either: something around 10-20 ecd per message or 0.10-0.20 ecd per character. In this way:

• non wealthy people who post there occasionally won't be affected that much;
• people who advertise massively with macromod (usually wealthy veterans) will be discouraged to set the macro to post too often:
  • say trade channel costs 10 ecd per message;
  • times 2 messages per ad;
  • times 12 ads per hour (no more than one 2-msg ad every 5 min);
  • it makes 10x2x12=240 ecd/hour:
    • if the business you advertise returns less than 240 ecd/hour, probably it doesn't really fit the market and you will be discouraged to advertise it that often: I don't think it would be that bad a thing if a marginal business is forced by market to advertise less;
      
    • if, on the other hand, your business returns more than that, then it means that it fits the market well and you will be fully justified to advertise it every 5 min, after all;
• another advantage of this method is that, unlike the cooldown, it doesn't really need to be enforced by staff: users will just be charged automatically, as simple as that, and they will just chose whether they want to advertise every 5 min or less often, according to the value their business brings to the market.

Ok, I'm done and ready for the witch-hunt, please kill me quickly and painlessly.

 

Non-donors can already leave global.

I also don't like ideas that promote a philosophy of 'rules/courtesy don't apply if you have money' which this seems to do.

 

I don't understand what you mean here: which one are you expressing your dislike to:

1. the fact that currently donors, unlike non-donors, can leave spammy channels; or
2. my suggestion to make trade channel pay-per-post; or
3. both?

 

I still stand by my comment that every 20 minutes is plenty to get the message across without being (as) annoying. I do like the idea of the "auto" cool down and the possibility of charging for ads (somewhat like shouts are done currently)
I will say that though I appreciate and respect you as a player, you are always one the first players I usually had to ignore as there are times that I see your name fill up my screen completely. Since ignore does not ever work for more than a day or two it seems, I have found it it much easier just to leave trade chat which is sad because I feel it misses the point of having a trade chat.

 

I know my ads fill the trade channel, as many others', but that's just the consequence of it being costless. And if one didn't take advantage of the fact that it's costless, their ads would be covered by others' ads and they would be removed from the market, unlike those who do take advantage of it. So, you see, I'm kinda forced to keep that way, until something changes. And I'm itching for a change, honestly. I have serious difficulties even having a private chat (which usually stands out for its color) because messages get scrolled up very fast, and whenever I make a chat contract I have to disable the macro and leave trade channel. I know that it's currently a nightmare, but I can't just give up my activity while it wouldn't probably make any difference in any case, because anyone else would understandably keep doing it.

About the 20 min delay: I understand that you don't see much point posting the same ad every 5 minutes, but what if someone has different ads? I, for instance (and I have no reason to assume I'm the only one), currently have 5 different ads for different things and my macro cycles through them: so each ad actually gets shown again only after 25 min. If the delay between ads of a player was to be 20 min, then each ad would be shown again after 1 hour 40 min: that's why I dislike the idea of raising the delay. There's a high amount of people who stay connected for about just an hour and therefore some ads would never be seen.
If, on the other hand, ads had a cost, I (anyone, actually) would be forced to carefully analyze which ads yield more and therefore would calibrate better their ads pool frequencies.

 

-1 the only reason I donated was to leave chat channels.

JUST KIDDING

True opinion: +1, trade chat can get very annoying sometimes, and I think that everyone should be allowed to leave it. Heck why not allow non-donors to leave all channels?

 

...

The one that makes it pay-per-post. I feel as if this skirts around the issue by disproportionately affecting smaller operations while being able to largely be ignored by the bigger ones that are more likely to have larger amounts and more regular ads anyway. You say that a cost will force you to analyze yield from each of your ads and re-distribute them, but wouldn't a longer period between ads force the same? With a limited number of ads your less profitable operations would still see less adspace so your more profitable ones can be see more. So not only do I disagree with the premise, I also fail to see how it changes the outcome to be significantly different from the one you're disagreeing with.

 

-1 I won't be able to take advantage of as many builders because not all of them will see my my n star ads. I'd rather make money off of them. They can also ignore the trade chat or just donate or make some money

 

As much as I like your idea, it simply won't work. What about builders - no money and looking for a town to join. They would probably move to advertising in other chats making more work for staff.

+1 to the original suggestion.