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[Feedback] Vendor Search - Search Criteria

Petra Fyde

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What would you have liked to search for but couldn't?
That's to say, not things the search couldn't find, but searches you were unable to define.

Example: Power Scrolls by value and skill.
 
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Frarc

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On first sight 3 extra criteria are needed. Powerscrolls, Bulk Order Deeds and Artifacts.
 

Tanieran

Adventurer
Stratics Veteran
I notice that the search is defined by item name but not by item type. This makes searching for player books very problematic. I'm really loving the vendor search very much! Would it be possible to add the ability to search for Item type -- like "book"? I was able to search for player made beverages by searching for part of a known name of a type of player made whiskey but searching for "whiskey" only returned bottles that players had not made. Admittedly, this is rather small in the greater scheme of what players search for, but I still squee'd when I found my tavern vendor and the "Great Leaping Zot" on it.
 

Smoot

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id like to be able to type in "artifact" and have it show anything with "artifact" on the item
i often search for armor of a certain level and search for "major majic item" or "artifact" as thats the level of item im looking for.

this goes along with any of the shame loot / shame loot properties
i tried searching for "of haste" because i often look for items with that tag/related properties but it came up with nothing.
 

DJAd

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id like to be able to type in "artifact" and have it show anything with "artifact" on the item
i often search for armor of a certain level and search for "major majic item" or "artifact" as thats the level of item im looking for.

this goes along with any of the shame loot / shame loot properties
i tried searching for "of haste" because i often look for items with that tag/related properties but it came up with nothing.
Yes this. Also the same for "reforged" then the different levels. Minor, lesser and greater would be nice.

For example I could search "reforged greater leather tunic" and see all tunics in this category. Then be able to pick the mods I wanted like 20 lrc and certain resists etc.
 

Riyana

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I was directed here from UHall, so apologies if you've seen this before:​
The third party search sites still have much more functionality than the new vendor search. For a lot of items, yes the new search may be an improvement, but for some it is completely useless. It's a promising start but it still needs a lot of work.

-A search for "recall" yields pages and pages of free shop runes and I have to wade through all of that to find recall scrolls. Not worth the time. There should be a better breakdown of resources and non-armor/weapon craftables/consumables.

-Speaking of free shop runes, you can't search by the shop name (that the rune creator entitled the rune). Nothing that the seller has as description seems to show up in the search. This can be important on certain items. Adding a parameter that searches seller description would be nice.

-In fact, nothing in a lot of items' actual descriptions seems to show up either. I tried to search for Age of Shadows items. "Age of Shadows" got nothing. The individual names of items I found on AoS items for sale did not show up either.

-You can only search your own shard. There should be options to search or not search each or all facets and each or all shards. (This alone will keep third party sites going, as they search all shards. While I personally don't care for the way that shard hopping is currently managed, it is clear that the UO economy is not shard specific anymore.) Furthermore, not all accounts have access to all shards! There are plenty that can't get into Ter Mur and probably quite a few still that can't get into Tokuno lands.

-A search for 'artifact' only turns up Minotaur Artifacts? It would be nice to have more browsing capability here.

-As other have stated, there should be an option to go highest to lowest price OR lowest to highest. Some searches you may wish to jump to the highest if you know that what you want is going to be pricier but the search limitations clutter what you are looking for with lower stuff.

It looks like they just took the menu for imbuing and turned it into a search function. I can only speak for myself, but I hardly ever buy armor off of player vendors. I either make it myself or someone else makes it for me. This search seems to heavily favor armor and weapon searches, but I suspect that most player vendor sales are not armor and/or weapons.

I'm really glad to see the devs working on this, but I think it has quite a ways to go.​
 

Thrakkar

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Stratics Legend
Ok, here we go:

I'm not quite sure, how the item name criteria works so far:
  • Searching for "haste" returns several weapons, i.e. mace of haste, etc...
  • Searching for "of haste" returns nothing, albeit i found several items with this wording in the title.
  • Searching for "crossbow" returns various x-bows, heavy, repeating, normal ones, etc.
  • Searching for "heavy crossbow" returned just heavy crossbows, also a Vampiric heavy crossbow.
  • Searching for "vampiric" did not return the x-bow, instead I just found vampiric embrace scrolls.
Not really intuitive, would need some work here.
  • The current UI doesn't let us remove a single criteria. We can just clear all or nothing. A button next to the selected criteria to remove it would work wonders here.
  • We can search for "Gargs only", "Elves only", "Cursed", "Brittle" and "Cannot Be Repaired". This is nice, but chances are quite high, that I want to exclude these specifically, since i.e. I'm human and don't want garg & elf stuff, as well I don't want to buy cursed or brittle items.
  • There are no criterias for armor materials. I.e. leather, chain, studded, dragon armor, plate, etc. Also criteria for inherent LMC, stamina loss protection bonus and medable would be highly desired, if I i.e. just want something medable, but don't care if it's leather or cloth or if I want high stam protection and don't care if it's plate or dragon armor.
Also I would break down the search criteria into something more like this:
  • Equipment
    • Weapons
    • Armor
    • Spellbooks
  • Consumables
    • Food
      • Plain
      • Magical
    • Potions
    • Scrolls
      • Powerscrolls
      • Transcendence
      • Alacrity
      • Magical
      • Necromancer
      • Mystic
      • Weaver
  • Commodities
    • Ingots
    • Wood
    • Stone
    • Cloth & Leather
    • Gems
    • Imbuing Ingredients
    • Reagents
  • Miscellaneous
    • Runes
    • Bulk Order Deeds
    • Furniture
    • Dye Tubs
    • Books
This list should just serve as an example. There are tons of things I haven't mentioned. Maybe some subcategories could be moved to another parent category etc.
Nevertheless, if I i.e select weapons, only criterias should be displayed, which are applicable for weapons and of course only weapons should be found. If I i.e. select equipment all applicable categories for weaps, armor & spellbooks should be displayed. If I select i.e. ingots, no criterias would be displayed, since they have no properties and I would only be able to search by name, but at least the result will be limited to ingots. And so on...

Now for the result list:
Displaying just five items per page and having to hover over each to view them isn't very convenient.
We are currently able (in the EC at least) do display scrollable lists (a container in list mode can display up to 125 items). This feature could be used for browsing the results.
When selecting search criteria, you could add the functionality, that up to 3 selected criterias are displayed as separate custom column in the results list. I.e.:

I do a search for a ring with 3 FCR, 1 FC, +50 luck, 5% fire resist. Then I enable with a button next the selected criteria luck and fire resist to be displayed as custom column in the search result. The search result would then i.e. look like this:

Code:
              Luck  Fire res  Price Facet  Map
(ring icon)    +75  8%         8000  Tram    X
(ring icon)    +51  5%         8500  Tram    X
(ring icon)    +96  6%         3700  Tram    X
(ring icon)    +84  7%         4900  Tram    X
And also add a up/down arrow next to each column header, so we can sort by that value either ascending or descending. Price column in every case. If we get custom columns, sorting would also be highly desired there.

Other than that, good job there.
 
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Smoot

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im not a computer guy, so maybe someone can answer - how hard is it to make a search that encompasses all writing on an item? everything. not just the title or part of the title.
 

Thrakkar

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Stratics Legend
im not a computer guy, so maybe someone can answer - how hard is it to make a search that encompasses all writing on an item? everything. not just the title or part of the title.
There are several approaches to this. But since you say yourself that you're no computer guy I won't get much in to detail. Let's just say, there are some simple ways, which would require to store some redundant data in the DB and there are more sophisticated approaches, which take more time and more expertise (and might produce a heavier system load)

Nevertheless, a full text search over everything is a VERY VERY BAD IDEA! Why?
Imagine you're looking for an item with at least 6% LMC. So you type in Lower mana cost 6. And all you would get is a ring with:

Lower Reagent Cost 5%
Mana Regeneration 1
Fire Resist 6%

With full text search you will generate a lot of noise in your search result, you will get tons of items you never wanted to search for...
With the current system you can fine-grain the search by selecting the properties, which has three major benefits:

1. It cannot be mistaken with another property
2. You can enter a minimum value, thus search for LMC 6 will also net you LMC 7 to LMC 10.
3. You can't misspell anything, since you don't have to type it in.
 
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Smoot

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hmmm thanks thrakkar. i guess i was thinking it would be nice to be able type in "lower mana cost 8" then something like "artifact" then select options for the other requirements, mins and maxes. in the current system you can only select options and extremely limited words, which is very frustrating

Example: on third party sites i often type in 2010 (i do this alot for holiday rares)
the in game vendor doesnt have this capability

Same for "Artifact rarity 12"
 

Thrakkar

Certifiable
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Stratics Legend
in the current system you can only select options and extremely limited words, which is very frustrating
I don't know, what exactly you mean with "extremely limited words", but all you can choose from are properties from items. This shouldn't be confused with words, which would imply, that this just a text search with predefined search terms. This is definitely not the case here.

i guess i was thinking it would be nice to be able type in "lower mana cost 8" then something like "artifact" then select options for the other requirements, mins and maxes.
Same for "Artifact rarity 12"
But this is actually what you can do right now! Just select "lower mana cost" and enter value 8 there.
With the exception though, that there is no search criteria for artifact raritity, which definitely is something, which should be added.
Also you cannot enter a max value. But all entered values are min values. So you will find LMC 8, 9 & 10 with it. To be honest, I'm not sure, if a max value would really be necessary. Usually a higher value means a better stat, so it shouldn't hurt to find better items. Adding a second input field for a max value might lower the usability or might confuse people, so I can understand that there is just one input field for a min value.

Example: on third party sites i often type in 2010 (i do this alot for holiday rares)
the in game vendor doesnt have this capability
The current system doesn't allow to search for 2010 or any other number. For whatever reason, I do not know. I also do not see any point here, because when I enter some text there, it should search in the item name and shouldn't worry about wether these are letters or numbers. They're just characters of a string after all and parsing for numbers doesn't make much sense, since we can add item properties as search criterias for this exact purpose already.

The odd thing is, if I'm searching for 123456 I get the error message "The search string must include at least three characters which cannot all be numeric".
But when searching for 1234567, there is no such message and a search is performed. Very odd input validation...
 
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Smoot

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i guess im just saying the search is horrible for when your looking for an item class or level, but no specific properties in mind.

For example. if im looking for an armor class with 6-9 properties theres currently no way to find items that im looking for without including hundreds that im not looking for (ones with under 6 properties)


it hard to search for rares.
one way to track down holiday rares is to search for "2010" since many holiday rares were from 2010, and other holiday rares are often on the same vendor.
that brings me to my next qualm with the search, that you cant find an item, and then see all the other items on the vendor. you have to actually go to vendor. which isnt a big deal, but when your doing this maybe 10 or 20 times its all just extra time.

I guess im probably asking for too much, but just wondering why the exact same word type search the third party sites use isnt an option for the actual game. maybe its too complicated and doesnt fit into how the game runs. im just not sure.
 
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Thrakkar

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i guess im just saying the search is horrible for when your looking for an item class or level, but no specific properties in mind.
For example. if im looking for an armor class with 6-9 properties theres currently no way to find items that im looking for without including hundreds that im not looking for (ones with under 6 properties)
Well, they could add a new search criteria called quality level, where you could then select the minimum quality level: Minor Magic Item, Lesser Magic Item, Greater Magic Item, Major Magic Item, Lesser Artifact, Greater Artifact, Major Artifact or Legendary Artifact.
This could be quite easy to implement.

that brings me to my next qualm with the search, that you cant find an item, and then see all the other items on the vendor. you have to actually go to vendor. which isnt a big deal, but when your doing this maybe 10 or 20 times its all just extra time.
This definitely can't be hard to implement. But the question here is, do they want to add that feature? Or do they want you to actually go there? Sure, that feature would be pretty convenient, but most probably the devs want to have the players out there.

I guess im probably asking for too much, but just wondering why the exact same word type search the third party sites use isnt an option for the actual game. maybe its too complicated and doesnt fit into how the game runs. im just not sure.
Please keep in mind, that you currently cannot search for everything that is displayed as item name. Most probably because they have to overcome some technical hurdles (currently they're searching with the whole phrase, then they would have to split the words by whitespace and would have to query over several columns in their tables; I guess I'm getting to technical here). If they fix that, you get exactly what you want.

Nevertheless, doing it like the 3rd party sites do it (full text search over everything) is a very bad idea. (See previous post of me). If they would really implement that, I would see vendor search as failure.
 

Pinco

UOEC Modder
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I tried this new tool and I have few suggestions:

1. Since the gump is HUGE, put some alpha on the background so we can see a bit through it.

2. If you really can't put a button to edit the current criterias, at least put an X buton near each criteria to remove it without having to clear the whole thing when you have to edit a single value....

3. 1k to teleport, seriously? I could understand it if when you recall you're going exactly over the vendor with the inventory open and the item highlighted, but you get under the house sign and the luna houses are filled with dozens of vendors that looks all the same... So you have to pay 1k to go near the house, then you have to search the vendor when they are all equals (and often with the same name), and then search for the item that could be anywhere? Remember that some vendors are filled with rings that looks all the same, so you can get nuts searching for the one you have found before (always if the items stills there, since someone else could have bought it and you're going to waste your time).
Listen to me, just make the map to work as a recall rune for the house and forget the 1k thing :D
OR color the map with a random hue then color the vendor AND the item inside the vendor with the same hue (just for the player and just until you have the map) so when you recall you can recognize vendor and item immediately without too efforts. And in this case you can justify the 1k cost.

4. Put a small window (like the square that shows the item in the results) as a reminder of what item you have chosen (able to shows the item properties on mouse over) with the green border if stills available and red if not (someone bought the item/the vendor owner has removed the item). The window should disappear with the map.
You could also make this small window clickable so when you are near the vendor, it will automatically open all the parents containers and shows the item without having to search for it manually.


5. Add another context button: Locate the vendor. So when you are near the tracking arrow will point to the right one. Obviously it has to work only if you are near the vendor :p
 

Val Van Wolf

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
How often does the vendor search re-search. Is every vendor on the shard included in the search? I am about to put up some vendors on Atlantic, in a rather out-of-the-way location. Thanks for any response(s)!
 

Shandara

Adventurer
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I really like that my vendor house in Felucca Magincia works on this new vendor search. Now the major concern I have is that they want us to test on the test center but could not find any one to report problems to! Very specifically I searched for "spined runic sewing kit" nothing found, but I had 30 of them on a vendor in Luna... while same vendor had six clothing bless deed and those items showed up searching for the whole name. Any guesses? was it because the name is over 20 characters, wrong, I tried three words in combination and that did not work. Using "runic kit" did however.
 

Thrakkar

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I really like that my vendor house in Felucca Magincia works on this new vendor search. Now the major concern I have is that they want us to test on the test center but could not find any one to report problems to! Very specifically I searched for "spined runic sewing kit" nothing found, but I had 30 of them on a vendor in Luna... while same vendor had six clothing bless deed and those items showed up searching for the whole name. Any guesses? was it because the name is over 20 characters, wrong, I tried three words in combination and that did not work. Using "runic kit" did however.
This is a known issue and has been reported several times:

I did some very very time consuming deciphering of how the database is stored and I came up with the reason why we can't search for 120 power scrolls (and probably the scrappers problem too)
if you go letter by letter, symbol by symbol, and 1 number at a time to try all possible combinations, you can figure out what's actually stored in the database - as you can imagine, this took quite a while but here it is:
this is how powerscrolls are stored in the database... "A Legendary Scroll of ~1_type~ (120 Skill)" ... and that's why you can't search for a particular powerscroll by name - took about 2 hours to figure this out ... you're welcome - hehe
type in "scroll of ~1_type~ (120" into the search box and you'll see that you get all the 120 powerscrolls back as a result
they're doing a simple string comparison for the search (ex: if search_string in database_string then %found = true)
It's the same with runic sewing kits. The leather type is not part of the name in the database and this is the reason you can't search for it.

I really hope, the devs get a fix for this out soon, because searching for a name, which is displayed in the game client ist the most obvious thing, someone will do.
Also people should be made aware of such known issues, so that threads don't get spammed with one and the same problem. Maybe a separate sticky thread for known issues would help...
 
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