The Bazaar grows Bazaarer

Fallen London
21

I know people have worked hard on this, and I know the kind of work that goes into building this sort of thing.

That being said, I like the general feel of it, but it’s too chunky on the real estate.

Positives: shop names and flavor to where we get these things.
Negatives: Busy interface.

The + and - buttons are the kind of feature that people struggle with all the time. There is a group of people who will use them instead of keys for inputs, but they are a tad ugly and detract from the &quotyou are browsing a shop&quot feeling that this should have. Using <input> type from what I understand eliminates the need for these for some webkits, making these simply a nice-to-have (or disposable, depending on your take).

The second interface item that could be reduced is the static &quotshop categories&quot pane. Instead of keeping that list visible at all times, it would feel more elegant to have a mouseover event (or touch on mobile) cascade the nodes out to be visible. This could also be used to add the narrative hooks such as &quotVisit a different shop&quot that aren’t being used now due to needing the screen real estate for the crammed interface.

It could also be cleaned up by splitting buying and selling. Right now you list an item at the far low level, and that item contains a buy and sell option in it’s class. This is necessary because &quotMy Things&quot is (the default) shop class. If My Things was given it’s own class that allowed Sell and shops had Buy options, then when you called to display a new item, it would be context aware. How many items do we own that can’t be purchased anyway, and now we are forced to see grayed boxes with options never to be used.

I only noticed a performance issue on the initial load. It made me think about the loading_large.gif used during calls. If we know we’re going to be having a longer page wait with this new feature, maybe have a more context appropriate gif that ties in with the idea of a Bazaar that is invoked with this tab. Perhaps something like a shop door swining open/closed or handing over/receiving a purse.

Again, I know people worked hard, and this is only the first (public) iteration. Keep up the good work.

Edit: reserializing/reloading the array after a sale is a crime, especially when you have a great flavorful sale message that pops up. This feels like the sort of thing that has to already be on the high priority list for the next release, but you know, feedback.
edited by Theus on 5/30/2013

22

I enjoy the flavor of the new layout immensely, but I concur with other in saying that having all &quotmy things&quot on one page was incredibly convenient. I highly appreciate the page doing the math for me prior to purchase/sale as well, though I do agree that the default sale amount should be changed to zero to avert unintended catastrophe (can you imagine the outrage of someone accidentally selling their overgoat?). [li]

23

It seems like it’s been a year since anything happened on my original Ambition. I try to get excited about all these other additions to the game, the transition to the StoryNexus platform, etc., etc. But as the original Ambitions seem to be stuck at Content Boundaries, it does feel a bit like all the rest is so much drumming of thumbs on the desk waiting for what will never come …[li]

24

Don’t like the new interface for two main reasons:

  1. Can’t see all my stuff under one page! There are now like 4 pages. Very annoying.
  2. Too many categories. Clothing under 3 tabs now? I really think one is enough. Bazaar should be practical. It’s now probably prettier, but confusing. I prefer the old one.
25

I actually quite like the new shops, between Merrigans Exchange and Nikolas Pawnbrokers most things I can safely sell-off for a quick Echo are neatly in one or the other.

Navigating through my things for the more obscure and high-value items is a bit difficult but it’s not something I’ll be doing often.

26

As of this morning, the default is now 0, so an errant misclick won’t accidentally sell off an heirloom. However, the items array is now serialized in a new way. I’m sure we’ll get used to the ordering, but it doesn’t seem to make much sense right now.

27

[li]
I’m grateful the default is 0 now. And Theus, the ordering in the &quotMy Things&quot tab is in ascending selling price, which makes navigation much easier (even if we are stuck with multiple pages to sift through)

28

Hi All,[li]

Yes, we’ve just put a patch live that has addressed a couple of issue that have been noticed:

  • The default sell value is now 0[/li][li]The ‘My Things’ tab is now ordered by sell price, then by name[/li][li]Shops are ordered by buy price, then by name[/li][li]The message popup when you buy something now appears in the center of the screen rather than overlaying the item, so when you are buying something from another another page or are buying the last of an item, it will still appear (click these will close them immediately by the way if you’re sick of waiting for it to fade)[/li][li]The sidebar has been altered to accommodate the shop names (this was an issue for some people and in certain browsers)

Thanks for all your feedback so far, we are working on fixing these issues in future iterations of the interface.

Many thanks,

Liam

29

Oo, I like these changes a great deal - both the aesthetics and the item ordering are very pleasing. Would it be possible - now or some time in the future - to implement a button that would set the Sell quantity to our current total? Ever since the copyright protection text change, we can’t just select-copy-paste-sell our goods anymore…

30

Also, all but one? I like to have one of stuff =)

31

[quote=Liam Welton]Hi All,[li]

Yes, we’ve just put a patch live that has addressed a couple of issue that have been noticed:

  • The default sell value is now 0[/li][li]The ‘My Things’ tab is now ordered by sell price, then by name[/li][li]Shops are ordered by buy price, then by name[/li][li]The message popup when you buy something now appears in the center of the screen rather than overlaying the item, so when you are buying something from another another page or are buying the last of an item, it will still appear (click these will close them immediately by the way if you’re sick of waiting for it to fade)[/li][li]The sidebar has been altered to accommodate the shop names (this was an issue for some people and in certain browsers)

[/li]Thanks for all your feedback so far, we are working on fixing these issues in future iterations of the interface.

Many thanks,

Liam[/quote][/li]
[li]
And thank you, Liam and the rest of the team, for listening to our responses.

Sir Frederick and Aximillio, however, I disagree with your requests. At the moment, the new layout is not overly cluttered, but another button alongside every item might push the line. It’s easy enough to see the amount you currently have and type in the number (or one less than it) into the input box

32

I like the new bazaar tab, now that these few tweaks have been added. It still doesn’t solve my problem of not having enough items I’m willing to sell, but that’s a problem with me, not with the Bazaar itself. :P

33

Would it be possible to keep the player on the same page when they sell something from the my things tab?
I have 8 pages of things that I can sell and whenever I sell anything it takes me back to page 1 again.[li]
(it’s not a huge issue, more of a little annoyance than anything, but…)
edited by Flapdragon on 5/31/2013

34

I’m with pretty much everyone else–I love everything except the My Things tab, which I dislike because one page was more convenient and because getting kicked back to page one after every transaction is bloody irritating.

35

I had a thought. Would it be possible for the My Things collection to have a simple search box? Then if we knew what we were looking for, we could get to it quickly by name (or possibly by price, like everything that sells for 50p). When I’d load up the old list of my things, I always popped open my browser’s search box anyway to get to where I needed on the page instead of scrolling through or trusting the item image. I know nothing about what would go into this and it may be way more trouble than it’s worth–I don’t even know if there IS such a thing as a &quotsimple&quot search box–but I thought I’d propose it, since the multi-page listing could be retained that way.[li]

36

Hello all,[li]

Just published an update to the bazaar to address some of the issues that have been arisng:

  • Increasing the quality of items to buy or sell now takes place in a dialog window, preventing accidental purchases and allowing more room for the buttons to be larger.[/li][li]+10 and -10 buttons have also been added.[/li][li]As a result of the dialog box, the general page interface has been cleaned up and the performance issues that have been reported should no longer be a problem.[/li][li]There is no longer a panel refresh when you sell or buy an item, meaning you will stay on the same page.
37

I also notice that the “My Things” tab has been renamed to “Sell My Things”. Nice touch–I like it a lot. ;-)

38

A minor request: Could you also say the value of all carried surface currency to the right of the sell price for a single one? It would be an apple for my eye =)

39

Thank you – I just sold a load of excess stock to test it out, and it’s certainly a big improvement. I think 30 items per page is about right, and now that selling something no longer refreshes the panel, it’s much more pleasant to use. That said, there are a few things I’m less sure about:

[ul][li]The +/-10 buttons aren’t aligned with the +/- buttons and the text input box. I’m also not sure they’re useful. I generally either sell just a few things at a time (with expensive items, like Blackmail Material), or sell upwards of several hundred (in the case of cheap goods), in which case it’s easier to type. I suspect this is pretty typical. The button that’s been requested to set the sell quantity to the current total would be more useful, although I could get by happily without.[/li][li]I don’t like the new dialogue window. Now that selling and buying take place on different tabs, it seems to me that there’s plenty of space in the main interface for all the necessary buttons and information. The accidental sales issue was already resolved by setting the default value to 0. Can it be dispensed with without reinstating the panel refresh?[/li][li]Right now there’s a lot of wasted space in the dialogue window. If you do keep it, it could use a redesign.[/li][/ul]Thanks for all the hard work.

40

Messing around, I hit a bug with the sales dialogue window where it hung open on me and wouldn’t give me the “sold” message. If this happens to you close the window and try again rather than attempting to click-spam the “Sell” button - I ended up selling multiples of what I had intended, 1680 Cryptic Clues instead of 420.

It only happened once, though, and I haven’t been able to force it to happen again.