Ad-blurbs on vendor inventory

We should be allowed a short description on items we sell. Only visible on the tool tip. And clearly marked as "Player Name's Adblurb" or some other clear indication that the comment is not provided by Portalarium or a character created by Portalarium.

Mainly this would benefit new players but also players starting a new activity.
Some examples I would personally use:

Chicken zerothis arathorn's Ad-blurb:"Like all pets, repeatedly dismiss and summon this cheap loyal bird to slowly yet surely increase you taming skills. (It takes about 795g of materials to tame a chicken not counting lost collars. Then there's labor.) Keep away from fire pits and mobs. Train for taming in Braemar in Hidden Vale (boat outside Central Brittany). Message me for taming recipes, training, and other ranger-rogue items. Repeat customer discounts."

Small Brown Bear zerothis arathorn's Ad-blurb:"Not inept for Tier 1 combat against single normal opponents. Use caution in Tier 2 (dismiss or teleport when HP drops). Will probably die quickly with special mobs, multiple mobs, or in Tier 3 areas. Keep away from fire pits. Message me for taming recipes, taming help, and other ranger-rogue items. Repeat customer discounts."

Large Grizzly Bear zerothis arathorn's Ad-blurb:"Good in combat to Tier 3 areas and groups of weak mobs. Be careful for Tier 4 and groups. Always monitor pet HP fastidiously in Tier 5 areas. Keep away from fire pits. Message me for taming recipes, training, and other ranger rogue items. Repeat customer discounts."

Cruelty-Free Large Grizzly Bear (Large Grizzly Bear) "zerothis arathorn's Ad-blurb:"Tamed at 100% health. I didn't attack him at all. I'll tame you a pet while you watch if you want. Message me for taming recipes, training, and other ranger rogue items. Repeat customer discounts."

Maple longbow +1 zerothis arathorn's Ad-blurb:"Today's fortune: Kill mages and archers 1st, from a safe distance, and use a better weapon...for long life and happiness. Train for ranged combat in Soltown. Message me for other and better ranger-rogue items. Repeat customer discounts."

Maple Staff +1 zerothis arathorn's Ad-blurb:"Use this weapon and learn staff skills so you can Knock'em back, Knock'em down, and Knock'em out. Train for Bludgeon combat in Etceter. Message me for other and better ranger-rogue items. Repeat customer discounts."

 

Advertising 101: don't use colours that are unreadable.

 

Yes the blue is really hard to read. Perhaps yellow. I like your idea though.

 

My thoughts:

• Limit tool tip text to 255 chars or less, or 150 or less. Data bases like 255 or less (not sure if Portalarium designers would care).
• In the OnHover (the tool tip), would show who made the tooltip, e.g., "(by zerothis Arathorn) ..." if players are allowed to create their own tooltips on items. Would the tooltip remain after the item is purchased?
• Maybe there could be "pre-canned text" in the official data base for items [thousands of items] (we players would probably need to write them to help Portalarium, so they could put into the data base) so we don't rely on Every Vendor person to write the text properly and be helpful to shoppers.

Creating unique text (player created) is interesting idea. Are you mainly looking for "more detailed explanation/help info" of an item being sold? Would every person selling the item need to create a "unique text tooltip", or maybe they also choose to use a standard accepted tool tip text that is in the database to help new players?

Interesting idea... Tooltips (explanations) for the thousands of items that exist in the game. Could be a big project if we help Portalarium make standard tooltips; it's not such a big project if players can simply add tooltips to their liking on anything they sell.

 

Agreed. There should be a relatively small limit. I knew my sample ad-blurbs were too long when I posted. In practice, I'd rearrange my ad-blurbs to fit all the ideas into fewer words. I actually do this on a semi regular basis for uvlist.net where editors are asked to limit most description types to 150 characters. However, keep in mind that the ad-blurbs will expire after use. Unlike say, player notes that will last as long as the player keeps them and server keeps the player. 255 aught to be enough for anybody.

No. It's an ad-blurb. Not an opus of great literature. It sells or repels and thus fulfills its purpose. If its worth remembering it will become a meme in the game. If the player forgets and wants to remember what it said they can message the seller. This is encouraging the social aspect of the game. And I personally dislike the idea that a seller can "brand" someone else's work (I am both a seller and crafter. One of my friends in the game regularly buys upgrades and resells my work, thus becoming my competition as a seller and I'm cool with that).

Yikes! I don't think so. I say let individual sellers fowl up their own text. This helps to make them an appealing (or not) seller. For instance, my sample ad-blurbs contained minor spoilers (master trainer locations) which may offend some potential customers. Just let me suffer the consequences. Portalarium has continually chosen to let the players determine economy and advertisements are an important part of an economy. Especially if the economy goes into recession, we'll probably see some very create ad-blurbs.