Guild Wars 2

DarkSpirit.7046:

aeneq.1760:

Works just fine, sure the bot can have a UI interaction to allow pickup but it wont fix it. Cancelled money orders are queued just as pickups, i.e. if there are a lot of items before the gold from the cancelled order then you wont see the gold.

Since inventory space is limited and we can assume the bot is actually buying something then he will run out of inv space and thus wont be able to pickup gold from TP anymore.

If there are items in its queue, I am sure it would be picking them up regularly to flip them, otherwise the bot wouldn’t be generating income. As it is picking up items, it would also be picking up any gold from cancelled buy order since they come in through the same queue, unless there is something I am missing from your statements.

It shouldn’t be running out of inventory space if it has sell functionality which can be enabled through driving the UI and I would expect any TP flipping bot to have that.

I would assume the opposite, building a working UI driven TP bot is not this straightforward. Also since you are describing a flipping TP bot you would have to assume he would have to hold off selling certain items due to existing sell orders which in turn would clog up the inventory.

I am very confident that TP bots in majority is all about getting the buy, selling is a more “sensitive” and in most cases requires some hands on experience (or if the user is not flipping but doing something else).

Anyway, I bet there are efforts to automate UI process as well however I dont think they are viable for a number of reasons. If ANet had a working sell API then it would be very straight forward indeed…

DarkSpirit.7046:

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Doesn’t work if the bot has UI driving functionality to take its money back from the trading post NPC after canceling its bids. I am sure many bots already have that feature since it is easy to implement.

Works just fine, sure the bot can have a UI interaction to allow pickup but it wont fix it. Cancelled money orders are queued just as pickups, i.e. if there are a lot of items before the gold from the cancelled order then you wont see the gold.

Since inventory space is limited and we can assume the bot is actually buying something then he will run out of inv space and thus wont be able to pickup gold from TP anymore.

Ofcourse this trick is restricted to bots who actively adjust their buy order down (i.e. if someone below cancels an order the bot adjust the price to the lower mark). Otherwise youll just ramp up the bot to his maximum limit.

Ofcourse raising it to the maximum limit is an alternative way to combat the bots but since they can track several hundred orders its hard to realise it.

Oh btw just wanted to clarify another thing as well, a TP bot is very different to a farming bot. A farming bot can be set loose with the only directive (in its simplest terms) to kill and loot and thus gaining profit.

A TP bot however doesnt automatically make you money, you will still need a valid TP strategy that turns a profit and then a TP bot can optimize this further by providing a larger flow of items for your strategy (whereas this is flipping or others).

As all know the biggest trick when playing the TP is actually finding a working strategy/niche (which gets harder and harder over time).

edit: if you suspect that you are working against a bot there is afaik only one strategy to disable it, make it run out of money. If he is forced to repost bids over and over eventually his cashflow could be drained and hell stop working. This is ofcourse not viable on low cost items due to the amount of trades involved but this little tip might help someone…

Advent Leader.1083:

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The problem here is that programming it as bots already violates the ToS (if the session key retrieval is the grey area, the bot part is pushing it to the black area) because you need to modify and spoof game memory to authenticate the buy order with the funds necessary – unless the reduction of gold ingame can be done via the unofficial TP API.

Just 2c.

Two things are needed, one is the session key (which ties the session to an account) and the second item is a character id. After this you dont need anything from the game client and you dont need to modify anything.

Buy orders automatically reduce the money from character (now with the wallet I would assume character id isnt actually needed anymore). Canceled buy orders put the money into the TP pickup just as in the game.

edit: The commonality between the TP Bots, TP Notifiers, TP scrapers (gw2spidy) etc are only that they use the same API and that they violate the TOS to gain access to session/character keys.

However I wouldn’t classify that to mean that they all is on the same level of violation, notifers/scrapers are publicly out there and ANet has yet to act harshly on them (if they ever will), bots however automate in game mechanics.

Not sure why they havent acted on TP bots yet, it could be thakittens harder than farming bots or it could be that the TP bots dont add gold to the economy i.e. it doesnt break the game economy so its less of a concern.

The mats are moot, noone is going to have a mesmer porting people up at JPs all the time, this is most likely for specific times only. Thus they usually get one stab at the chest for the mats and that not something to be worried about (if they want to repeat it when the JP isnt “popular” anymore theyd have to jump it).

Heck the T7 mats is actually forcing these people to jump to get the reward

The issue is that you actually get an achievement for not doing anything which cheapens the achievement in itself. However since there is nothing related to these achievement points (like a title) it doesnt really matter…

Yeah he can be annoying but mostly due to people now knowing what todo and messes things up with using guns on bots to early or bots who are already controlled by other parties.

Easiest is just go in and take a gun and a specific alcove then camp it, clearing the bramble when needed. If one is advanced you can actually cover two alcoves and then having 2 clearing/ranging the boss.

The most annoying in that encounter is when people run around fiddling with your bots and/or aggroing them.

Anyway I think we made as much headway as we can in this discussions, its clear to me that there are a lot of opinions that vary and its unlikely well make any progress either way until ANet has an official stance on it.

In the meantime I guess well just keep pushing the limits until something breaks

DarkSpirit.7046:

A notifier doesn’t need to scan buy/sell orders. It simply obtains those from http JSON responses just like for the other web apis. Like I said, it has nothing to do with whether you use your character’s session key for your own buy/sell list or for the gem conversion rate. The point that you were trying to put forth all along has been a suspected TOS violation in getting that session key in the first place.

Gaining access to the session key is a TOS violation, the TOS is very clearly defined in this aspect. How ANet decides to act/not act is up to them nothing Ill speculate in, its moot really people will still use the API even if they publicly stated it wasn’t allowed since there is no easy way to protect against it.

With regards to the buy/sell orders, i was referring to the notifier using the /me.json sub api to retrieve the accounts current buy/sell listings. Without this information the notifier has no means to know which items are ordered/listed by the account and thus has no means to decided if a notification is needed.

All the responses from the API comes as JSON encoded data, im not sure what your point was? Maybe you thought I meant scanning game memory for buy/sell listings but thats not the point I was making. The point I was making was that the notifier uses a part of the API thats meant for account specific information which puts it apart from how gw2spidy and others use the API.

edit: The reason I made this distinction was to bring to light that the notifier does more than what gw2spidy et al does, its a minor distinction but since it has been mentioned that there is no difference between them I thought it would be helpful to make this distinction clear

edit2: one could argue that the API is there and the session key is already extracted so what is the point of this distinction, well if one argues that the API is there why not use it then one would wonder why not use the buy feature as well?

It thus comes down to how the API is used to determine how “ok” it is, some people would argue that accessing /me is crossing the border, some might argue not. Likewise some would argue that using /buy is ok as long as it requires user input and the some would argue its not.

DarkSpirit.7046:

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Another thing that I want to correct from your statement is that gw2spidy also has an app to directly interface with the game client. How else do you think they managed to get the in-game session key to check their gem conversion prices? You can check their source code doc here: https://github.com/rubensayshi/gw2spidy. As stated by him: “I do have a small tool (provided by someone else) that quickly grabs the session_key (by seaching for it in shared memory) without much hassle, I won’t be sharing it publicly but you could consider joining the IRC channel and asking for it”

I am very familiar with the codebase from Ruben, I went over it way back (last year). The character/session key can easily be read from the awesomium cache database and the character id from snooping the http traffic.

DarkSpirit.7046:

That is not condoning bots though, as obviously they are disallowed and ArenaNet has made that very clear by taking drastic actions against them. A TP notifier app, however, is a different beast, we have checked with them many times, and we didn’t get any direct reply as they don’t want to set any precedence to be in the free app verification business and I can understand why.

Its true there are minute differences between the gw2spidy functionality/access methods and the one used by notifier. However to play the devils advocate (which my wife hate when I do) the gw2spidy codebase never access or make use of individual account/character informatio such as buy/sell lists and only uses the session/character key to be able to scrape the database.

A notifier however relies on scanning and processing the buy/sell orders and provide character/account specific actions based on this information. Its a minute difference in base functionality but the point could be argued nonetheless…

Unfortunately at this point it all comes down to personal view and opinion which are things rarely changed

Notifiers fills a role, IMO anyone who have tried to actively pursue any serious TP trading knows that after around 1-2 screens of trades you feel like you are punching yourself every time you check on their status.

As such they fill a beneficial role for anyone and anyone using the TP should probably consider using one.

However! It does violate the formal interpretation of the TOS (as long as you are directly interacting with the game client and not using external sites like gw2spidy et al). Since it is a violation of the TOS I can fully understand many players not being comfortable using one and thus the one could consider the “morally challenged” to have an advantage.

Unfortunately there is no way to resolve this conflict until ANet updates the core API that lies at the heart of this or alternatively updates the ingame UI to offer similar functionality.

Notifiers will not go away anytime soon imo and one can make ones voice heard to ANet (ticket/suggestion) but not much else would make a difference.

Just to be clear

We are talking about notifiers now right, bots we all agree are bad (with bots meaning automating in game mechanics).

DarkSpirit.7046:

aeneq.1760:

DarkSpirit.7046:

If you have not seen any such indication in any of my posts then do not insinuate that I have said this in another thread by calling it a “cross reference mistake”. I have never condone the use of bots in any other threads.

The cross reference was referencing Jazzllanas post about a post I made in another thread and you werent mentioned/referenced in any way.

I am sorry but your posts are actually agressively claiming I have tarnished you which I haven’t. Thus by claiming this you are doing it to me and frankly I would expect an apology for making false assumptions.

Since you were replying to my post which was accusing Jazzllanas of lying and you said: "The mistake here is the cross reference from the other thread which could cause confusion. " Then the insinuation here is that Jazzllanas was referring to my post from another thread where I was supposed to have said bots should be allowed. But the fact is, I didn’t say that.

I am sorry if I have misunderstood you, but I wish you would pay more attention to what you wrote because it can be easily misunderstood.

The only crossreference made before my post was Jazzllanas reference to my post in another thread, afaik you made no references so I thought it was clear that reference was not referencing anything you posted.

Further there is no mentioning of bots other than that I didn’t consider notifiers to be bots.

Just a suggestion; this is an online forum, you’ll find people who are not so well versed in the language used, are tired or are confused in general. Instead of assuming that they are adversary I suggest trying to read posts with the attitude that they are not.

And if they are adversary then whats the point in responding, nothing good will ever come from it.

DarkSpirit.7046:

If you have not seen any such indication in any of my posts then do not insinuate that I have said this in another thread by calling it a “cross reference mistake”. I have never condone the use of bots in any other threads.

The cross reference was referencing Jazzllanas post about a post I made in another thread and you werent mentioned/referenced in any way.

I am sorry but your posts are actually agressively claiming I have tarnished you which I haven’t. Thus by claiming this you are doing it to me and frankly I would expect an apology for making false assumptions.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

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Since I don’t have any notifiers, I don’t know what programs they work off of. I’m basing my argument on the example of Spidy’s API.

To clarify, a notifier that reads game session data is bad, but one that read’s Spidy’s data is ok?

With regards to the TOS yes.

Using the data Spidy has gathered doesnt violate the TOS, gathering the data yourself does.

edit: that said I doubt ANet would act on the violation as long as in game mechanics arent automated

Hell Avenger.7021:

aeneq.1760:

Hell Avenger.7021:

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High Frequency Trading! hahahahah, hilarious

Not sure what your comment refers to, there is no mentioning of high frequency trading in the post… Would be helpful with some clarification…

HFT is a program developed to monitor the market and make money off through price spreads. It can get much more complex than what I described, but it sounded people are making things that a real world investment bank/hedge fund would do.

Kinda funny and interesting. To be honest, if it is not against the rule, I would like to make one just for kicks, and see how much money it makes and lose

Ah interesting! Yes you could do some pretty advanced analysis based of data from sites like gw2spidy without being in violation or risk of being targetted. Their data is slightly out of synch with the TP but for broader analysis it should be fine.

Yes, there are a lot of money to be made on the TP. The only big problem is managing trades which is hard due to the ingame UI (which is why these external tools are so popular).

Smooth Penguin.5294:

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In order to continue, it’s been said that Anet has no problem with Spidy accessing the data and sharing it. Spidy in turn releases an API that grants access to Spidy’s data. Someone comes up with a program and uses the data from Spidy to give alerts.

So where is the problem here?

Again not quite true… but I’ll get to that shortly…

• ANet has no official policy in regards of scraping the TP data, kitten far no action has been taken and they “unofficially” most likely have their blessing.
• Alerts based of Spidys data (or others) are not in violation of the current TOS (Spidy is however if one reads the TOS in its formal def.)

What should be noted is this;

• Notifiers usually dont operate on Spidys data since they need access to character/account information.
• Notifiers datamines GW2 session information and are thus in violation of the TOS just as Spidy is but even more so since actual character information is accessed (buy/sell listings).

I Dont have anything against notifiers!

I am however a stickler for details and dont like misinformation being spread just by assumption. Better to have all the details, things arent usually as clear cut as people want them to be.

DarkSpirit.7046:

aeneq.1760:

DarkSpirit.7046:

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Slight overreaction IMO, the only time that specific notifier was mentioned was by you in an earlier post and this thread has never been about a specific tool so calling out for name tarnishing etc is extreme (BTW maybe you should stop referencing that tool all the time, there are other ones out there and you don’t bring anything to the discussion when naming specific tools).

Again, no I did not say that bots should be allowed. If you think that I did, anyone is free to point that out.

I can understand the need to win the argument especially when it is ending in my favor, but you guys should not have to resort to lies and libel. Please do not create words out of thin air and pretend that I said it. It just shows the kind of person you are.

Don’t know where you are getting the idea that I specifically said that anyone thought bots were ok, I have not seen any such indication in any of your posts. If you are inferring this meaning from my posts then I have no idea why that is the case.

And I have said nothing to directly tarnish/slight you as a person so why are you responding in that manner? Please keep discussions civil…

Hell Avenger.7021:

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High Frequency Trading! hahahahah, hilarious

Not sure what your comment refers to, there is no mentioning of high frequency trading in the post… Would be helpful with some clarification…

Smooth Penguin.5294:

jazzllanna.1278:

What lies? And as the thread progressed, as is the case with most discussions, new views and ideas came out. I started by stating that getting text for the tp from an outside program is wrong. Another person stated that they could be used by bots, I agree and it strengthens my case that these programs should not be allowed.

Since you’re so adamant about continuing this discussion, let me ask you something. Since the Trading Post is website based, how do you ban programs that basically reads information from a website (i.e. crawler)? Mind you that these types of programs are not accessing the game client itself. Going further, how would you ban a program that gets its information from another program such as Spidy? Spidy is just reading the information from a website, and the other program is just reading Spidy.

Not quite true, in order for anyone to read accurate TP data a character key is needed, this key is datamined from the connection between game client and TP server. You also have an authentication mechanism involving the associated account.

So none of the information on spidy etc is “publicly” available and the means to access this data breaks the TOS which is why they (spidy et al) contacted ANet before continuing with their projects.

hold on, peeps are clearing out the bank atm so the price is low should go up in the long haul.

DarkSpirit.7046:

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Slight overreaction IMO, the only time that specific notifier was mentioned was by you in an earlier post and this thread has never been about a specific tool so calling out for name tarnishing etc is extreme (BTW maybe you should stop referencing that tool all the time, there are other ones out there and you don’t bring anything to the discussion when naming specific tools).

The mistake here is the cross reference from the other thread which could cause confusion. To be clear I doubt ANet would consider notifiers bots, they are in the more advanced cases in violation of the TOS but probably not severe enough to warrant any action from ANet.

The point made by me earlier was that any notifier tool is just a small step away from being modified for full automation. But that said this thread was about notifiers…

How is this a question?

jazzllanna.1278:

I think you just mentioned in another thread that bots could use these programs to be active in the trading post.. to me that is a huge red flag that they need to be discontinued or altered in some way.

They can be modified to be automated tools yes, that said its limited to putting in buy orders (i.e. overbidding and cancelling buy orders if they want to put in lower bids).

However I also stated that there is no easy way to block this behavior at present, the functionality is a core component of the in game Trading Post and I don’t believe ANet will modify this API anytime soon.

The only quick solution is behavioral analysis on identified traders who has a high/constant/changing buy listings. But even then it becomes a bit tricky and bots can be programmed to be more human like (with lower profit, but if you spread this over multiple accounts they would still be able to accrue the same profit as before).

DarkSpirit.7046:

aeneq.1760:

Not necessarily, devs doesnt make such statements unless they have internal directives and guidelines in the matter. The statement can be read in many ways I however always interpreted it as Sure go ahead but we dont have an internal opinion on the matter yet so we might disallow it at any time.

Well if they say “Sure go ahead..” doesn’t that sound like a approval at least at this point in time? If they change their minds later, and they are very much entitled to do that, then we would stop our work. At the meantime, they have not shown any indications that they have disapproved despite what Buttercup said, which was my point all along.

Back in the days of GW1, they took the same stance with a program call Texmod. They declared that they don’t offer any technical support for it but they don’t stop or punish people from using it either. Many Texmod modules have been created for GW1 and distributed freely on the Internet, even on the official wiki.

My point was that a single dev doesnt make official policy and from what I know there has been none, a lack of response is not the same thing as approval. But given their unresponsiveness we at least can go forward until something changes…

The fact is that there are open source projects out that allow interaction with the Trading Post, these atm dont use the buy features officially due to it being classified as automating ingame behavior which is disallowed.

However its very easy to add such behaviors so that bots can track orders and quickly update the order if it gets outbid. It will not be instant due to protocol and polling delays for getting the new data but it would be very responsive either way.

The bad sideeffect of a bot is that they basically can corner markets, tracking several hundred items without problems and implement a “trading strategy” with good turnaround since it can track several hundred bids without problems.

This basically means over time that each profitable “strategy” will be occupied by bots and manual TP players will not have markets to play anymore. It also means that bots might compete with each other thus eliminating their own internal profit margins…

In the end well see very little TP profit margins if bots are running rampant, which in turn is actually favorable for drop farming, go figure…

DarkSpirit.7046:

aeneq.1760:

AFAI remember, there was never an official statement on these kind of tools from ANet. Ruben (gw2spidy) did get a response from a dev when he submitted a question to them and the response I believe was more in the line of “Not an official API, use at your own risk, no support offered” and not an official approval of the tools and the use of the API.

I have been trying to find the reference but am having a hard time doing so, I was sure Ruben linked it on the gw2spidy page but if he did its not there anymore.

Would be great if someone could post a link to it…

I was expecting more like a “This violates our Terms Of Service! Please do not do that!” response from ArenaNet if it was a disapproval. Clearly this shows that ArenaNet doesn’t mind Reuben to go ahead, but expect no technical support from them, which is fine. It sounds like an ‘ok’ from them, to me.

Not necessarily, devs doesnt make such statements unless they have internal directives and guidelines in the matter. The statement can be read in many ways I however always interpreted it as Sure go ahead but we dont have an internal opinion on the matter yet so we might disallow it at any time.

One can view their lack of response on the matter (there have been several attempts for a more official statement from ANet) as a silent go ahead, probably due to the poor in game experience while they are working on updates.

However I myself believe that they simply don’t want to change the existing API due to complexity reasons (given that this would change/modify a core functionality of the game). Since there is no way to stop a program using this API instead of disallowing it and thereby forcing this to be used by a select few (personal developer/usage) they allow it to be open “silently” for the masses.

However that’s just my speculation, the API has been as it is form the beginning (small changes) and the 3rd party tools has been around for close to a year now with no change/opinion from ANet and I doubt anything will change soon.

AFAI remember, there was never an official statement on these kind of tools from ANet. Ruben (gw2spidy) did get a response from a dev when he submitted a question to them and the response I believe was more in the line of “Not an official API, use at your own risk, no support offered” and not an official approval of the tools and the use of the API.

I have been trying to find the reference but am having a hard time doing so, I was sure Ruben linked it on the gw2spidy page but if he did its not there anymore.

Would be great if someone could post a link to it…

DarkSpirit.7046:

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The point is if everyone has access to the same programs/tools then nobody can claim that it is unfair that they do not have access to them.

There is no unfair advantage going on here. The only thing that is unfair would be that some people are more lazy than others. People who are too lazy to install/learn to use these tools themselves. They prefer to come in the forums just to complain about others, who have gained an advantage over them through due diligence.

If I can learn how to use Zicore’s tool, why can’t someone else? It is not as if only I have the special privileges to download it from his website because anyone can do the same.

I fully understand what you are saying but what you did when you made the reply is thread jacking, you totally jumped track with regards to my post. If you wanted to make this point again then you shouldnt have included my post, period.

DarkSpirit.7046:

aeneq.1760:

Think you are missing the point…

Lets say as an example that we have two competing parties for one item, one of them have access to an automated tool that alerts him when he is overbid and the other has not.

You forgot that all the outside automated tools so far that we mentioned are free and available to everyone. It is no excuse to claim that they have no access to it because that is not true!

If the other party chooses not to use them then that is his loss, and shouldn’t be forcing his choice onto others. In others words, if I am too lazy to even look up the wiki or gw2spidy, I shouldn’t be forcing others not to look it up as well.

If you want a more specific example, download Zicore’s TP notifier app http://notifier.zicore.de/

It is free and open source but don’t say that you have no access to it because you know that is simply not true.

Not sure what you are responding too, the example I wrote was a specific one to show the benefit of using a third party tool it had nothing todo with whether that tool is available to both parties or not (which wasn’t an disussion point in the post I made my reply to).

edit: and why should I use a program someone else wrote, its more fun writing it yourself

I am not concerned, I was just commenting on your statement which made the point that outside programs doesn’t matter which my example clearly exemplifies as a wrong statement.

Also if you have a few bids its might be quicker to rotate between them hitting refresh, but as you are coming up to more than a few that’s not true anymore. Also an alert allows you to go watch a movie and just pausing to outbid someone, clearly a more efficient use of the time (even if you are in game you save bid check time so I cant see how your gaming time would be more efficient without a tool).

Also alerts doesnt mean having email/popups it could be as simple as listing your orders in red in a TP listing UI.

Anyway I cant be bothered with these TP threads anymore, they all come down to one single thing and that is that the in game UI is very very poor.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

The whole point of this thread is that you don’t like outside tools that assist in game. That’s fine. But we’re telling you that it doesn’t matter, as players are still required to be in game to do something. So back to my counter argument – if I outbid you, it doesn’t matter what happens outside of the game. I still outbid you.

Think you are missing the point…

Lets say as an example that we have two competing parties for one item, one of them have access to an automated tool that alerts him when he is overbid and the other has not.

Now assuming the alerted player updates his bid directly and that the other player manually updates his bids every 5 minutes.

In such a scenario the alerted player will have a greater coverage (ie. top bid) then the other player over a certain time frame.

Since we don’t know when someone will sell an item by using the highest buy order its more likely the alerted player will be able to get his buy order filled thus the alert tool have given him an advantage not present to the one who is simply using the game ui.

The easiest approach is ofcourse to add an outbid alert mechanism for any bids inside the game, however email notification wouldnt be acceptable due to the high level of over/under bids and instead youd need a new bidding/selling tab in the TP that shows the current state of all your listings imo.

No they are allowed, just like using google to find walkthroughs are ok.

Whats is against the TOS is to use programs that directly interact with the game client (or modify it). The tools online are allowed since they dont directly interface with your client.

What is argued is that the data they are using are gathered from methods that are in violation of the TOS so the only one who broke the TOS is the actual 3rd party tool when scrubbing the information not the tools he makes available based on the data.

edit: what could further be argued is whether game assets used by these tools are ok to be reused for 3rd parties (ie game icons/assets etc). However ANet has not take a firm stance on any of these arguments so far.

Buttercup.5871:

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And it’s always the same programmers that enter these threads, too. The persons that created the notifiers.

You, mister programmer/notifier user, have a MAJOR advantage over normal players who (1) presume a notifier is against the TOS + code of conduct (which it is, don’t make me show you again) or (2) don’t know about these programs because, and here is the real deal they shouldn’t have to.

Don’t deny your in-game advantage while stating it in the same thread. Just don’t go there.

Hey!!!!

Dont talk down on programmers, we are the guys who are actually pushing the limits of the modern society!

Ah well I dont see the point in continuing this discussion, these are the points I am arguing and I have yet to see anything that would change these.

• I agree a official informational TP API would be great, however I would like to see an in game update first.
• The amount of work involved in offering an account bound API is too large/complex that I don’t think we will ever see an API offering buying/selling
• Any open API would be abused in any way it can and there is no easy way to formalize protection without impacting user experience.
• Any such open API should probably mean reworking the current TP API so 3rd parties cant use it.

To end my contribution to this thread;

IMO the only potential API ANet would publish would be informational only, now whether this would happen is very doubtful imo. I would almost bet money that they are more likely to create developer api (informational) that are on developer request only and rework the TP internal api to block non authorized access totally

Just my .5

DarkSpirit.7046:

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Then sorry but I don’t think you are being realistic. In a perfect world, ArenaNet devs would have infinite resources to implement whatever features we can dream of in the game. But we are not in a perfect world are we?

In what way am I not being realistic? You are looking at this from a “wishing well” position and I am arguing that this wont happen for a number of realistic complications (one of them being alienating in game players).

And frankly the in game TP browser has been a serious eye sore from the beginning and if this isnt high on ANets todo list I would be surprised (and disappointed)

DarkSpirit.7046:

ArenaNet devs have higher priority bugs to fix and features to add. This is why they decided to release APIs to invite third party devs to add features to the game through external programs. Furthermore, their APIs have ALREADY given a superior game experience by providing information not available to the in-game client which I have mentioned before.

NONE of their APIs has been anything else than informational and is totally different to what is being proposed here (which actually ties into specific account/characters).

I am NOT arguing against an open API for the TP!

I am instead saying that such an API would/should be informational only ie not account/character bound. If you tie the API to a specific account quite a lot “hidden” work pop up that are vastly more complicated than updating the ingame TP ui with far more reaching indirect complications as I have already tried to explain.

DarkSpirit.7046:

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Guesting time is not limited but you are only limited to 2 guest servers within 24 hours per account. Having multiple accounts, like I do, would circumvent this easy limitation.

But you are still very much limited and its not like its farmable with huge turnouts so I dont see the example you are trying to make.

DarkSpirit.7046:

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Like I have already mentioned, bots emulate the game client, legit third party programs don’t so they operate differently. If ArenaNet has a legit TP API server for apps only, then both of them would be hitting different servers.

And as I already mentioned any selling/buying would still have to hit the real servers, further complication if the proxy has old data and the buy/sell orders are inaccurate for this reason.

For an informational only API a proxy offload with a reduced update time (ie very similar to gw2spidy et al) is workable.

Musing:
Lets say you provide this API, you also provide application keys for unique monitoring/quota to handle system load and abuse monitoring. What would stop a gold farmer to register for a large quota license and then spam the TP for every item he can flip for a profit?

DarkSpirit.7046:

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Didn’t ArenaNet already said that they are going to use OAuth2 authentication and limit quota access through registered developer keys to their API?

How would that impact my musing? The musings was considering a proper API using a proper authentication mechanism. Oauth2 has its issues and doesnt necessarily mean allowing for account access, instead I believe they would use it for client identification (ie app. verification).

The musing was that they would have to allow for large quota users in which case what would stop a farm group to obtain one and use it for internal use only.

DarkSpirit.7046:

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Like I have said, a bot and a legit app would work differently. A bot would try to emulate a game client and a legit app would declare itself to be an external program. A bot would not have a developer key and a legit app would need one. A legit apps would be bound by quota using the legit API while a bot would be using the game client API.

A bot isnt defined by which API he uses, its a matter of automation.

What would make it impossible to write a bot using the public API? Quota is as I tried to explain not a good answer…

Did this forum just change name?

Must be a troll…

Wouldnt work as it is now, what people dont understand is that the API used by the 3rd party tools are the same as the one used by the ingame client, if you want to add a delay to the information you would suffer the same within the game.

Atm there is no easy way to remove this issue (if that’s what one wants), the quick fix which is locking down an authentication mechanism so out of game use isn’t possible would still require a big redesign of the current TP functionality and with Asia launch/Test Verification etc. we are talking about several months turnaround time at least.

My fundamental issue is that you cannot and should not provide an out of the game experience that’s superior to the in game one. Atm this is what is happening when it comes to browsing but this is a grey area for now.

Not sure how you could jump server to server since questing is time limited? Was that a limitation they added after, in which case it speaks to my original interpretation of said functionality.

Current bots are limited in what they can do due to limitations in the API as we touched on already, removing these limitations will make the issue several magnitudes worse.

Granted you can do a more advanced bot using key macros and more advanced communication between those programs and the bot however since there is no way to “specify” which item you want to sell youll have to rely in image recognition and not all items in the game have unique art (also frankly a selling bot is not that great, you wont relist items due to the fees and adding new items to handle undercutters will just make the price go down and your items stay longer).

Working from a proxy is only valid for informational data, selling/pickup cant go over a proxy due to the risk of timeing issues.

Musing:
Lets say you provide this API, you also provide application keys for unique monitoring/quota to handle system load and abuse monitoring. What would stop a gold farmer to register for a large quota license and then spam the TP for every item he can flip for a profit?

Multiple sites doing the same will always ramp up the price for “profitable” items to the max level possible while retaining flipping profits. This will mean after a while that all items will basically be going for buy price-15% and there will not be any margin for error for normal TP users. Atm this behavior is limited to a small number of identified items but if there is a profit for it and the traffic is “allowed” then farming groups will abuse it.

One could argue that this could be handled by dev key monitoring but how would this be formalized in a legal text? x% of traffic must go to unique devices/accounts would not work, one could not offer large quota licenses but this would hit sites like gw2spidy and others.

One option could be to say that large quota licenses are not allowed to use the buy/sell API but even this is not a good option since a bot could be designed to use a large quota license for information and another (or several) for buying/selling

Im sorry, no matter how this is viewed a programmatic API with full features for the TP is just too risky

The problem is not buying a luxury market, i.e. control it the problem is getting people to buy the stuff you are holding. There is a steady inflow of items over time and it becomes a sales/demand game, however this is quite obvious…

10k is doable and maybe even up to 20k but the sale/demand of luxury items arent that big that it slikely anyone accrued much more (unless some glitch has been exploited but I am fairly certain the high rollers are always on ANets radar).

I’m not debating the benefit of such a tool, that is quite obvious. However such benefits should be realized within the game so all can benefit and not just the l33t people who know the various 3rd party tools?

Temples is also a bad example, that “feature” only occurred after guesting was introduced and was primarily a means to combat lack of interest in the temple chains and with the design of the game its hard to implement it within the game itself.

And frankly the “benefit” of knowing what events/temples are active is not really that great. However the TP is a totally different beast…

edit: True bot applications would never be released, only used within closed circles. Also a TP app is not hard to write as it is currently, making the API easier would only allow for more “private” apps to abuse it, and don’t kid yourself it would be abused.

edit2: Btw the backend server load would increase drastically due to the increased workload form different clients polling for updates all the time, as it is atm that workload is managed by proxy, not sure ANet would be willing to support the amount of traffic we are talking about

The potential in open access is always impressive, however I fully understand ANets statement that no API will provide features not available in game as such would provide too large of an advantage to current normal players.

Example; lets say (hint) you can write a tool that lists all your orders (listings) in one page and show whether you are the highest bidder or not and with a refresh button.

Just this simple tool provides a HUGE advantage of anyone in game tracking more than one order.

Arguing that you could do the same in the browser is true. However; TP trading is about having the right bid at the right time and anyone manually doing this will not have a chance to compete.

IF ANet was to provide a public API they would be forced to block all actual trading (selling/buying) of items and limit access to informational gathering only, any actual trades would have to occur in game (The potential of external automation is just too great).

The other issue is of course where all the items are stored in between trades, the pickup is designed per character atm which wouldn’t be possible in an external API.

So if it gets transferred to the bank then you have a new behavior that’s counter intuitive to the in game mechanics thus you need two separate APIs (without the consideration that this behavior would make one of the permanent trader/bank obsolete).

The other option is to have it stay in pickup line and be able to pickup specific items, this however has the side effect that items will be kept in pickup for a long time and thus will have performance issues with the backend (think selling list).

edit: Another implication/complication of a selling API is that you would have to be able to index the inventory, this means both whats in waiting to be picked up and whats in the current bank and/or character. This kind of API would not be TP specific and could be used for Character indexing instead, additionally you would need to be able to determine inventory space as well.

The point is that any advanced TP functionality will have big impacts on the API level in general and this wont happen anytime soon.

DarkSpirit.7046:

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Obviously the current unofficial TP api is sorely lacking and I am well aware of that, otherwise I wouldn’t be starting this thread in the first place, would I?

I also don’t expect them to release the current TP api as it is. It doesn’t support the mobile scenario, at least not in any legal way that is clearly not a violation of their own rules. It barely supports even the desktop scenario well enough.

If they were to release an official TP api, I presume that they would do a good job and release a proper one.

And thats where we diverge, the current API and internal mechanics has been in play since the game went live, no changes in the ingame browser that I can recall (except previewing).

With the upcoming asian release I am certain no fundamental change in EXISTING functionality will happen in the near future. Heck you posted your first suggestion over two months ago and there has been no action…

Instead of asking for 3rd party API you should be asking for an updated internal TP browser that offers what you want.

I am extremely familiar with the current TP API… In its current form its too tied into the player character mechanics to just release an API for it, you would have to not only add an auth mechanism but change the behavior on several levels.

Also in case you werent aware, the same API is used atm whenever you do ANY TP ingame tasks, lookup, browsing etc etc. The only limiting factor is selling which is not possible.

edit: btw the API development in progress is about information and building tools for players that mostly enhances group functionality (offline guild chats etc etc). Also they have EXPLICITLY stated that NO API will offer more than whats currently possible todo ingame

An offline tool for improved TP functionality will not happen until the ingame TP offers the same functionality

With ANets currrent bug fixing progress I would estimated 6 months maybe for the ingame features to have improved (at a minimum)

Understood, but you realize that sites such as gw2spidy is covered by this as well.

Ok from the description I assume he left when everyone got the chest but hadn’t transported back to the hub yet?

Sorry but in order to properly support a public API and put in mechanics for protection against bots (access limitations) they would have to redo the whole TP backend/API. I.E. not gonna happen…

jazzllanna.1278:

I don’t see how the price would ever come down on a rare item. If a person never lets another buyer win on a bid and the item is rare enough that there is not a steady flow on the tp then the only person that is truly buying and selling the items is the one that can increase their bid in a minutes notice (without even being in game! Text message alert) of an overbid to keep others out or force them to buy from them. That is going to keep the prices high imo because they have little competition to undercut them on buy now orders and no competition on the buy orders placed. They have essentially locked down the price. Granted there are not a ton of items that this can happen with.. but the ones it can happen with- It is happening.

Well the thing is…

The flipper/s has identified a profit margin and are willing to pay X and still get a good margin on the item, you are then complaining tht you can buy it cheaper and thus not get your profit from it. Too me it seems you are complaining that someone is interfering with your TP plans which it just silly…

If you are not flipping the item and actually wants it for personal use then put in a fair price, just because you want it for the cheapest amount doesnt mean that you can complain about having to put down a proper price for the item.

edit: Also this is an ALERT the user still has to login to the game and update his price, also the user has to spend the extra time to set up/update the alert mechanism for the price adjustments.

I see the alerts as a way too work around the stupid interface ANet has implemented where you cant even see the orders properly…

In a very loose definition, macro is a repetition of in in game events/keys, this is a reduction of said items and would def. not go under the normal def. of a Macro.

The alert in itself is also not against TOS since its not YOU who use 3d party components to do this but instead react to a third party tool (Which MIGHT be against the TOS).

Depending on the alert mechanics you enter another grey area, its unlikely that the service tracks your specific order (would require detailed account/listing information which no sane person would share) but instead the sell/buy price in general and the alert they get is a notification that the alert limits set by the user has been reached.

As such the alert they get is a general alert that an item has reached a specific limit set by the user. The only way to disallow such mechanics is to hide the API from external applications which means any online TP tracking service has to shut down and the question is wether this is something we really want????

Dont understand the grief on the legendaries, no player would get a legendary they think looks like crap and if they have the time why would anyone be negative towards them?

I have played the game from launch, I have 8 characters each @lvl 80. Getting world completion twice is just playing the game.

With the amount of karma from that and pve/wvw and the glorious FotM relics (which gives either obsidians and/or skill points and I dare say its the best way to grind for shards/skillpoints) I have had no problems with karma/skill points to craft three legendaries.

That said I did a lot of TP trading as well so I had the gold to buy an additional two.

Im not bragging im just saying that I didnt actively grind for these items heck I didnt even get my legendaries until I got bored with the game and was looking for something new todo.

If I can get that heck why do everyone think its just grind grind grind. The only real “work” i did was to get the dungeon tokens and that doesnt even take that long…