Public Stats API

I think Xadoor is saying people could try to manipulate the information to their advantage. Misinformation can actually be more harmful than no information.

 

I think that assumes that price manipulation isn't already happening.

If we had the detailed transaction data exposed to us we could see it for ourselves and take corrective action. With zero data, all we can do is guess.

 

If anyone wants to back up their credentials, they can simply show what query they use, so other people can verify the data themselves. No biggie here. Just have to take data interpretation with grain of salt.

 

My concern would be that then the best deals would go to whoever has the best API alert system implemented and the most characters around the map to catch the deals/price errors/market-flipping.

Recently someone told me they found a blood fountain for relatively small amount of gold. Instead of it being a race from the people who had rigged an API alert system it went to the person out adventuring, and they scored a lucky deal.

No point in browsing market towns if you got a ping that someone missed a zero listing their deed in Nowheresville.

 

Are you sure that the API display the data in such detail?

 

I'll spill the beans...

I've tasked @Undone with creating a list to support our food team: if there were sushi rolls in Shroud, what would some of the roll names be?

 

crunchy wrasse

 

No, I'm concerned that people seem to be asking for that level of detail.

 

Greetings all. I think price manipulation is already happening both in game and in forums which affects game prices. If you see something in the forums marketplace that sold for $10 last week sell for $5 this week would you pay more than 35k for it in game? My confusion is what are we really asking for? I have seen post asking for real time pricing of vendors both player and public with their location. I have also seen post asking for 24h to 1 week or more delayed pricing with no location data. Lets all agree on what is an acceptable level of information and then ask for that instead of being all over the board. The info is going to get out either by way of the API or by way of a user that is willing to make the rounds and post it as a service.

As for people exploring the world... if you are here to "play the market" you will be running from vendor to vendor not looking at anything else. If you are here to "play the game" each area has soo many thing to see that multiple visits of an area will be fun.

 

Yes this is the concern.

It's also why we've made numerous suggestions for ways around it. Delays, only showing SALES not POSTS, etc.

Personally, my interest is broader pricing statistics, so any (or even all!) of the proposed limitations are fine for my purposes.

My understanding is delays where difficult to implement. Only recording sales should be easy to implement and difficult to exploit. Yes you could see if someone was consistently super-cheap, but I don't think that's a huge issue because it's going to be quickly discovered anyway.

 

I have personally done arbitrage transactions in other games, and occasionally done them here. If you consider that to be "price manipulation" then it's DEFINITELY happening, because I've done it. Here's the thing though, it's valid gameplay. For some (including to a degree, myself) it's fun.

Now, just like we don't allow bots for your fighting, we don't want the API to turn into a bot for market-players. Properly manipulating a market should take effort, at-least as much as(if not more then) slaying the largest dragon.

 

Sure the best deal will go the person who can quickly identify an mis-priced item and get to it before anyone else. A single transaction like that is not going move the needle in a health economy anyway. Does it really make that much difference to the health of the game if the "Explorer" is walking around towns or diving into the API? To the game economy as a whole, it's the same either way.

Of course our requests are going to be all over the place. We all had differing ideas as to how best protect and grow the economy. Initially, I was in the "aggregated data only with some amount of delay" camp. As I look more into healthy game economies, I'm now in the "all the data in realtime" camp. If you look at games like Eve Online, the economy has become the "sticky" meta-game for a good number of players. They enjoy that part of the game more than any other and would not be in the game if that wasn't available to them. This has happened almost entirely because their more open API filled with all the market data you could imagine.

 

^^^ THIS!! ^^^

not everyone wants to use data as a personal step up to beat everyone else. Some people want to use the data to help EVERYONE.

And sometimes, someone posting an item for sale for 1,000, instead of the market value of 10,000, made a mistake and didn't type enough zeroes.

 

This sounds like a great idea. I'm not a fan of re-inventing the wheel

 

it might have been. but, there was no traction from the community and the amount of free time i had to try and build such a thing has gone. so, i took it down. feel free to create another community with the name though. i would love to contribute to such projects.

 

Well, once I get the next iteration of my site going (I don't have an ETA, I've got some code that's not working yet ). I can come up with an outline for this.

I'm not presently doing anything with the API for this content, but it is on my agenda. Unfortunately adding API things is dependent on what I'm working on now. Once that's done though, dumping it to a CSV or some such, shouldn't be bad. @Archer, if you wanted to start a new thread, and start working on a standardized format for it, that would be a great start.

 

I've only recently started looking into the statsAPI, so I need to actually get somewhere with the data before I could start standardising a format. ;-)

I created a new organisation on Github, ShroudOfTheAvatarOS. I went with the longer name to differentiate it from the numerous 'sota' projects that have nothing to do with Shroud, and the OS to show it's intended to be Open Source/Community access. If any one wants to join the organisation, please message me on Github.
I'll start a new thread in the forums to announce the organisation and its intent to create/host formalised data/formats for Shroud

 

Posted the new thread here https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...le-data-formats-files-related-to-sota.138117/

 

All,

1. Why is there even a request for such an API?
2. Why is Portalarium even implementing such an API?

I thought market inefficiencies was a valid characteristic of this game/genre and part of the immersion.

Why are we now, trying to have an API to give aggregate data — no player should have such access to such data. (Whether the sales data is pre or post or delayed is beside the point and irrelevant!)

Why can’t we just play the game and stop making requests to “game the game”??

If you want to know who’s selling what at what prices, then play the game and find out by checking the vendors.

Each player’s knowledge of market prices should be EARNED, not given out by some API.

Why don’t we just make a centralized auction house like WoW and be done with it then??

 

The API already exists. It allows us to see a number things, both for fun and information. A number of us find this type of information interesting.

I'm not from Portalarium so I cannot say with certainty, but if I had to guess I'd say because it allows at least some players to enjoy their play more.

Depending on the proposal, it will not eliminate market inefficiencies. Even if we were given real-time data, the inefficiencies in the real-world markets strongly indicate that market inefficiencies would not be eliminated.

I already do have access to this data (I help run a vendor survey 4 times a year, so I have the results). I'm sure others do as well. Making it more accessible just makes the group of "haves" larger and the "have nots" fewer.

One avatar's game-play is another's gaming.

I do. Wouldn't it be better if more of the playerbase had access to the same information I do?

It's good to know all that training in programming has no value. When I spend a bunch of time writing and debugging code that it's not really EARNING anything, it's just being HANDED to me.

Because that's nothing like what is being discussed. You're being completely hyperbolic, and I suspect you know it.