Monitoring is something they’ve allowed. They’ve even advertised gw2spidy multiple times. Simply monitoring doesn’t require you to be logged in, or even have an account.
Buying and selling can only be done when logged in. Selling can only be done through the client, but that doesn’t mean a 3rd party program can’t do it.
The GW2 extended experience probably would have featured a trading post app, since it would have been so easy to make. It is after all just a website. The project was dropped though and the community is now in charge of making that type of app, something which ArenaNet has said they like to see. One day they’ll probably add to and make the trading post API official, which will allow an actual, fully functional trading post app to be created.
Monitoring is allowed because they’ve officially ok’d it because of gw2spidy.
Buying and selling is something they have neither allowed nor disallowed. In order to stop it, they would have to remake the trading post to not be a website. You could say they allow it because they can’t not allow it.
There is nothing wrong with using an app to use the trading post. I think your actual complaint is why do they allow “botting” the trading post. Using a bot to spam buy/sell orders/listings isn’t exactly safe. No actual player will be able to place 1000 orders in a second, and this can be easily detected on their side, but doing so is also going to have a performance cost. Unlike actual bots, these bots are a gold sink and do the reverse by causing prices to rise, rather than fall. Additionally, if it wasn’t a bot doing it, it would just be one of the many thousands of players that are already doing it. So the question is, should they bother trying to catch bots when stopping them would result in nothing changing at a cost of performance?
If they did implement anti-botting, which I imagine would be very similar to their anti-spam, expect to see “you have bought/listed too many items recently”
My question was not about botting, that is a separate issue. it was about why the use of 3rd party tools to monitor, access and use the tp while not actually logged into to the game is allowed and encouraged. A developer response to clarify would be great.
New Main- 80 Thief – P/P- Vault Spam Pro
221 hours over 1,581 days of bank space/hot pve/lion’s arch afk and some wvw.
You wont get a response to the question so no point in asking for it.
The 3rd party tools could be seen by ANet as another semi permanent tie to the game, i.e. you as a gamer will be reminded about the game and causing you to login therefore it can be seen as one of the “keep playing” reminders.
A game is frankly just as successful as its implementation of these “reminders”, ofcourse the biggest “reminder” is the social hooks/pressure from your m8s.
My question was not about botting, that is a separate issue. it was about why the use of 3rd party tools to monitor, access and use the tp while not actually logged into to the game is allowed and encouraged. A developer response to clarify would be great.
Because it allows 3rd party developers to provide convenience tools for the players, without using ArenaNet’s dev resources. Well they still need to maintain their api, but once that is stable, that maintenance work should be minimal.
Believe it or not, there are people who want to check TP prices, view events, view the maps, chat with their friends/guildies, etc. on their mobile devices.
Thats the motivation behind the APIs provided and supported however as DarkSpirit knows the TP api is not part of that API group officially.
The question becomes “Since the API has been there now for more than 2 years why hasnt it been officially supported like the other APIs are”. Well the reason must be that ANet either dont want to support it (which they have to for the game to work) or that they know that in its current form is unacceptable for official use.
Now changing it isnt as easy as you think since it would impact the current games backend as well so in other words…. “Welcome to limbo.”
Thats the motivation behind the APIs provided and supported however as DarkSpirit knows the TP api is not part of that API group officially.
Which was why I said “check TP prices” instead of performing trades on your mobile device. To perform trades, you need authentication so the server knows who you are. You can easily check TP prices today, on your mobile device, using either of these methods:
1) Use the publicized gw2spidy api. Doesn’t even require login credentials to work.
or
2) Use the unofficial TP api. Requires your GW2 login credentials to work. Risky for users because they have to trust the app.
However, ArenaNet is working on enabling OAuth2 with their official api. Once they have that up and running, they can then enable trading on mobile devices if they choose to. I suppose that answers your question.
It is not so much that ArenaNet is against legit apps hitting their TP server for trading but they just need a non-hacky way of acquiring login credentials outside of their game.
Two years aeneq? Wow you must be from the future because the published API on the API board isn’t that old.
So who wins the Super Bowl in 2014?
Ok true, I am off by a little bit considering that the game hasn’t been out two years yet.
However! The “published” api isnt published by an ANet official, its from datamining the protocol between the game client and the server and is posted by a user. That API was “discovered” way before he posted it on the forums, I remember looking at this stuff (and developing for it) in December 2012 and I wasnt by any means part of the first batch.
Again there is NO official TP API (and ANet has been working on oAuth support not for 2++++ years, pun intended).
Again there is NO official TP API (and ANet has been working on oAuth support not for 2++++ years, pun intended).
The TP API is not official because it is not meant to be officially released as it is. But that does not mean that ANet is against legit apps using their TP api. If they are, they would have shut down gw2spidy, Zicore’s TP Notifier, and many other apps down by now. Yes, they can detect them and ban them if they really choose to. That api was reverse engineered and is just too hacky to be officially released.
Furthermore, they have to support the mobile scenarios and they can’t directly support the mobile scenarios, for trading, as the unofficial TP api is right now, without jumping through hacky hoops. Thus, the need for OAuth2 before they can officially release a TP api.
yes there is in wow – BUT blizzard gave it a limit per day so you cant exploit it
and for the inofficial api – Arenanet could atleast limit the buy orders per 10 second to a human level so this bots dont undercut all buyorders on all exotics and a lot other items nearly instant and WITHOUT A PLAYER INTERACTION
Why is this a big deal if everyone has equal ability to access it?
It is not a big deal. ArenaNet would want to have GW2 everywhere, in every device so anyone can play GW2 anytime and anywhere. Especially when it costs them zero dev resources to achieve it, as it would be done by third party devs.
That includes accessing their gem store from anywhere which is tied to the TP since gems are how people convert real money into gold so that they have enough to buy what they like on the TP for instant gratification, so all these make sense.
