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Hello everyone!

We’ve been busy working on ways to improve Mycena Cave as a whole, and revamping the marketplace (currently known as the Bazaar) is one of our priorities. At the moment, the marketplace is fairly limited and not particularly easy to use. We want to change that!

Our staff team has been discussing potential changes to the marketplace to make trading and selling a better experience on Mycena Cave. To help ensure that our efforts are guided by what you actually want, we’d love to hear from you.

We have come up with a list of changes that we think would make the marketplace more useable to players. Please note that we may not necessarily make all of these changes and that there may be other useful changes we haven’t yet considered.

• Remove shop size-limit upgrades. We would remove the upgrade barriers and allow everyone to have a large shop right off the bat. There would be a hard upper limit in place.
• Add the ability to organize one’s shop. We would add more organizational options like making pockets and being able to shuffle shop stock around easily.
• Add the ability to buy and sell for gems. This would be in addition to being able to buy and sell for nuggets.
• Add the ability to buy and sell pets. This would include site coats as well as unique pets.
• Add the ability to personalize shop front. This would include the ability to write a shop blurb and perhaps to select a shopkeeper from the player’s pets.
• Create a more nuanced search.
  • Separate by category (e.g. Site Coats, Unique Coats, Equippable, Consumable, Transformative, Openable, Other).
  • Search by name input or by a visual/categorical listing.
  • Create sorting options (e.g. most expensive, least expensive, newest, etc.).
• Add the ability to create trade lots. This would allow players to engage in more nuanced trading without the use of the forums.
• Add an auction house. Auctioning isn’t a prominent player behavior, but this could be useful in certain circumstances.
• Add the ability to create public/private wishlists. Many players like to create wishlists, so it may be useful to have an official way to make and reference wishlists.

The easiest way for us to get a feel for what our community is thinking is through a survey! We find that we get to sample a greater slice of the community through surveys as opposed to forum discussions where many players may be reluctant to post. It is also easier to analyze data through a survey.

We would love to hear from players to get a sense of whether restructuring the marketplace is something that would encourage more players to use it. We also want to know if we are missing any mechanics that many feel should be added to the marketplace.

As always, we welcome discussion in this thread if players have thoughts they’d like to share or bounce off of one another!

This survey will end on June 8th at 23:59 Server Time!

Yoo I honestly love all these ideas. Browsing player shops can be such fun in other games, and it’d be fun to bring this to MC. ^^

OH! I really love these ideas! I believe a revamp would be beneficial for mobile users as well… as I know sometimes I have issues using the drop-down feature on my phone. ;;

I do have a few questions that I inputted in my survey response as well. If we do get the option for auctions, will the item/pet be automatically given to the highest bidder or will that be done by the user manually? Also, if the size-limit feature is removed, will users who have paid to upgrade their shops receive compensation?

I REALLY LIKE ALL OF THE POTENTIAL IDEAS SO FAR! But im also seconding Avis’s question regarding those who’ve paid their gems to expand already and compensation towards this if the size barriers are removed.  All in all, I look EXTREMELY FORWARD to a revamp of the bazaar in the bearish future!

Thank you staff!!!

Ahhh!! I’m really excited about a lot of these features!! :D I’m curious about Avis’s points, as well, but overall just really pumped about this. I’ve been hoping for more features for the marketplace for a long time. I think these will really help with people who aren’t as comfortable doing business in the forums. Should also help streamline things too because sometimes I’m just too busy to push things in the forums and you risk not being seen people who are really interested. Better search will be really handy for sure!!

We would love to hear from players to get a sense of whether restructuring the marketplace is something that would encourage more players to use it.

How much I use or don’t use the marketplace isn’t really due to anything wrong with the marketplace.  It’s more that buyers are scarce and if we all dump our items into the shops it would just be a downward undercutting spiral between sellers until the items are cheaper than they “should” be.  That said I do like many of the ideas presented, so kudos to the team on that front.

Those are all fantastic ideas! I really look forward to these changes! I find myself browsing through the bazaar quite often and making it easier to search would be super useful!

Avis  We haven’t yet delved into the finer details of each proposed update.  Currently, our goal is to get a broad idea of what players feel would have the most impact on their use of the marketplace before investing resources into figuring out specifics!

personally the only thing i’m wary of here is the proposed auction house (assuming it would function similarly to FR’s). our economy moves slowly even in peak activity times (~2016 etc) and bazaar pricing has always been an unreliable indicator of price floor; there’s always someone or other (innocently or not) quoting an arbitrary and/or hyper-inflated bazaar price as the “going price” when discussing a potential trade.

i think i’d be intrigued if it worked kind of like the kelph custom auctions around kelph species release though? could only bid on one auction at a time and could only host one auction at a time, mechanics would be similar. i feel like such a feature would be primarily used for gem/nugget unique pet auctions, which…doesn’t super help the non-unique pet economy, but it offers an easy venue for people wanting to sell or lowkey putting out feelers on what people would pay, but who don’t want to interact in forums or manage a sales thread. keeping pp offers out of the picture for user hosted but automated auctions of unique pets and stuff would also encourage nugget/gem value i’d think!

In general I’m 100% for more nuanced search features in all aspects of the site, not just user shops. (e.g. I can’t count how many times I’ve gone though pet pages looking only for dras, or only for active ineki, etc).

I don’t use the user shops enough to feel swayed one way or the other by most of this stuff, but I’m not sure my lack-of-usage is because it lacks so many features (if that makes sense? lol). I look forward to reading everyone’s suggestions :)

Echoing others Qs about if the shop limits are removed, will people be refunded their upgrade costs?

Edit: Actually, I have a question about the survey. (pinging Dove just in case).
The questions are framed “I am more likely to use the marketplace if….” and then the Likert scale ranges between 1 (strongly disagree) and 5 (strongly agree).

Am I supposed to read a 1(strongly disagree) as “I am less likely to use the marketplace”, or as “My marketplaces usage will be unaffected (ie how often I use the marketplace will not change)”?

My initial reading was that 0 = less likely to use the marketplace, and 5 = more likely, and 3 = in the middle. But then I realized that NONE (edit: MOST) of these changes seem like they would cause people to use the marketplace less, since they’re all positive UE changes. So it would make sense to “lop off” those responses and only ask about people’s positive results - essentially, the survey is asking for for users to rate which features are seen as more positive, and wants to get a gradient of 5 level of “want” (1-5) rather than 3 (3-5)?

I was reading it as 3 being neutral and 1 being less likely to use the marketplace. And personally, I’d be less likely to interact with it if the shops largely switched to auctions since I’m just not a fan of keeping up with auctions and dealing with being outbid. I’d much rather just have static prices and buy what I want if it’s at a reasonable price without having to worry about coming back later to see if someone else was willing to pay higher for whatever reason. I also feel about the same way for trade lots, though less so.

Myla, thank you for the reply. Again, I love these ideas and my questions were just thoughts I had when I considered the dynamic. I wasn’t sure if there were already ideas floating around about these suggestions so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask. :)

Jacq  Selecting 1 indicates you are very unlikely to utilize the marketplace more than you do currently if the feature was put into place.  Selecting 3 means you neither disagree nor agree with the statement—you may end up using it more or you may not.  Selecting 5 means you think it very likely you will utilize the marketplace more than you do currently if the feature is put into place.

If one of the features would make it so that your current usage of the marketplace would wane, feel free to make a note of that in the section that asks for additional thoughts about the proposed features.

We have not yet discussed the details and mechanics of each proposed update; we are waiting to see what feature set players would be most interested in before we do, so I don’t have answers in regard to refunding upgrade costs!

Avis  And nope, no ideas floating around besides in our own heads!  Feel free to discuss here. :D

I’m really loving so many of the ideas here. :‘3 Anything to make the MP easier to use and a bit more helpful is much appreciated. I hope my feedback made sense!

i may just be dumb and not have seen it, but a link in the places drop down that leads directly to your own user shop might be nice ?

Mmh I’m not around anymore, but I filled out the survey anyway to show support for features I would have really loved to have. I think most of the potential features listed are great and will go a long way toward making the marketplace and economy in general more robust. These are the kind of “convenience features” other pet sites have so it’s not hard to see them in practice and understand how useful they are.

Edit: OH!! I just thought of a feature that would help a ton! Could we get a recent sales history for items in the bazaar? Like, when you search for an item, it could display the price the last 5 etc sold for to help people get a more reliable idea of what things are actually going for.

I’m a very casual user of Mycena, but I get really excited about game economies in general so I had a few thoughts to put out there. (And these are expansions of what I put in the free response boxes of the survey)

Right now, my biggest barrier for finding and purchasing items from other users is knowing what items exist and what they look like. Let’s say I want my pet to be holding something that glows. I can go to the Help > Item Listing - great! Except, every single equippable item is under the same heading in (to me, as an infrequent player) what amounts to an arbitrary order. Furthermore, there’s no way to see what the items look like on a pet without having a Magic Puddle tab open and checking each one individually. Going through the 20 pages, I have to guess which items are probably handheld and glowing from the item icon/name, and then try them all individually. Then, if I find an item I like, I have to have another tab with the User Shop search open to check its price. (An aside, but I also have no idea how to tell which ones stock in which Mycena site stores.)

That’s a lot of work to explore items. I think the nuanced search options are the most important feature listed here because it allows exploratory searching - you don’t have to know exactly which item you’re looking for before you start looking. If it wasn’t already folded under the idea of the nuanced search, then I also want to emphasize the ability to have more than one item returned by your search. It would mean I could search for the word “glow” under “equippable items” and see the price of every item matching the criteria in one screen. If these had any kind of image attached to the search, all the better.

Here’s a few concrete thoughts from other pet sites. I frequently use Flight Rising’s broader search terms to “window shop” for dragons. I don’t have anything specific in mind, but I know the types of things I like and take a glance at what gets returned in case there’s a good deal or a new sale that piques my interest. It’s my favorite search of any site I’ve been on. It might be overkill for Mycena, but it also has the ability to have a sort of “or” logic that groups completely different search terms together. I can see any dragon with blue or with pink colors. I don’t know if the same might be useful for seeing any equippable item here which contains the word “glow” or “light” or “light”, etc?

For trade lots, I really appreciate how Tattered Weave allows for flexible lots with custom names and descriptions. (Disclaimer: I’ve been inactive for a while) User conventions popped up such as including “ingredient” in the lot title of any lot that contained ingredients, so people could search for that instead of needing to search under ALL foods. Descriptions also allowed things like cute puns advertising that you’d consider alternate currencies or trades. I’ve also been inactive on Dappervolk, but I’d be interested to hear how the trade lots have been playing out in their economy. When it first opened, I really liked pet auctions and trades, but it was also annoying to be checking both auctions and sales for good deals plus a not insignificant amount of trades that were looking for currency only but not listed under auctions. I think the biggest issue with separating out auctions and trades for Mycena would be fragmenting an already scrawny user sales market.

On most sites, I make a lot of my income interacting with the user markets. On Mycena, it just hasn’t been reliable even when my items are priced lowest. It would be awesome if some of these changes could help! (Or even if they could just help me discover new items without wading through a dozen pages of archives.)

Thank you for all of your responses!  We’ve gotten a lot of feedback and we’re looking forward to going through all of it soon.  We’ll collect survey responses through the end of the 8th (23:59 Server Time) so we can take an in depth look at what you all had to say! We will release a feedback summary of the results once we have that prepared. :)

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Gracie88  Those are great points and a very thoughtful analysis! <3 I appreciate the time you took to write that out!

Definitely loving the idea of more search options. I forgot to add it to my survey, but I’d love to see categories for item types (i.e., companions, held items, accessories, clothing, hats, etc).

I do look forward to the potential to personalize our shop fronts with text, even better if we can select a shopkeeper (choosing from either our human character or one of our pets) or at least add images via bbcode.

I also didn’t mention it in the survey (since I’ve been around for so long I pretty much know all the items and never considered the issue) but I think an improved search feature could be really helpful for newer users or those who don’t keep up with the items the same way I do! Just having them subdivided into categories like Diglett suggested could be very good.

Heck I’m an old user and I don’t know half the items.

Heck I run this site and I don’t know half the items ;)

Lol Glitch

In total, we had 132 responses to our feedback survey!

• 66% of respondents indicated they would be more likely (4 or 5) to use the marketplace if size limit upgrades are removed.  30% indicated they may or may not be more likely (3) to use the marketplace.
• 54% of respondents indicated they would be more likely (4 or 5) to use the marketplace if organizational tools are added. 40% indicated they may or may not be more likely (3) to use the marketplace.
• 96% of respondents indicated they would be more likely (4 or 5) to use the marketplace if the ability to buy and sell pets is added.
• 76% of respondents indicated they would be more likely (4 or 5) to use the marketplace if the ability to buy and sell in gems is added.  23% indicated they may or may not be more likely (3) to use the marketplace.
• 47% of respondents indicated they would be more likely (4 or 5) to use the marketplace if the ability to personalize store fronts are added. 40%  indicated they may or may not be more likely (3) to use the marketplace and 13% indicated they would not be more likely to use the marketplace (1 or 2).
• 92% of respondents indicated they would be more likely (4 or 5) to use the marketplace if the search mechanism becomes more refined.
• 77% of respondents indicated they would be more likely (4 or 5) to use the marketplace if the search mechanism includes visual options.. 19% indicated they may or may not be more likely (3) to use the marketplace.
• 58% of respondents indicated they would be more likely (4 or 5) to use the marketplace if trade lots are added.. 34% indicated they may or may not be more likely (3) to use the marketplace.
• 53% of respondents indicated they would be more likely (4 or 5) to use the marketplace if an auction house is added. 31%  indicated they may or may not be more likely (3) to use the marketplace and 16% indicated they would not be more likely to use the marketplace (1 or 2).
• 72% of respondents indicated they would be more likely (4 or 5) to use the marketplace public/private wishlists are added.. 20% indicated they may or may not be more likely (3) to use the marketplace.
• Players indicated that the most valuable features of a revamped marketplace would be a) adding the ability to buy and sell pets (78% of respondents selected this), b) making the search more nuanced (62% of respondents selected this), and c) adding the ability to buy and sell for gems (46% of respondents selected this).
• The least selected for being most valuable was a) adding the ability to better organize one’s shop (17% of respondents selected this), adding an auction house (22% of respondents selected this), and adding the ability to personalize one’s storefront (25% of respondents selected this).

We got a ton of great feedback!  We’ve gone over it a few different times to soak it all in and sort out general trends—all in all, this gives us a much better sense of what we should focus our efforts on. Below, we’ve done our best to include the major themes seen in the feedback, regardless of feasibility or whether some contradict others. There were also a lot of other great comments/feedback that were less common but are being considered as well.
Common Feedback about Proposed Features

• Generalize search terms (e.g. be able to search for “flower” to bring up all items with flowers even if it doesn’t have flower in the name).
• Approach auctions with care if we include it in the feature set; there were a few differing opinions about value of auctions and their implementation.
• Prioritize functionality and ease of use over looks/personalization. Be careful of clutter.
• Personalization is important and helps to connect shops with lore.
• Approach the gem option mechanics with care if we include it in the feature set.
• Visual search may be unnecessarily clunky/hard for mobile users to use.
• Visual search is important because it has hard to tell what many items are by their name.

Commonly Requested Additional Features

• Public price histories in order to price check.
• Price/price range filter in search.
• Advanced options for pet searches.
• Advanced options for item searches (in general: have more information about items readily available such as release date/release method).

To sum up
The feedback survey gave us a much clearer idea of where we should focus our efforts. The most feedback was in regard to search. Search and search options are important to most players, and our searches/information available needs to be improved! This is a great thing to include in the marketplace revamp that can be used more generally on the site as well. Being able to sell pets is also important to the vast majority of respondents, though there were much fewer comments related to these two potential features.  It is also clear we need to put a lot of thought into the interface—many players want a lot of options at their fingertips, but also don’t want to be overwhelmed by options and clutter.

Our next step is to figure out how to balance what players want from the feature and to decide exactly what we want to include in our marketplace revamp.  Once we’ve done that, we’ll start delving into more detail about mechanics and interface! We expect this revamp to take awhile partially because we’re balancing it with other features (like the adventuring feature) and events, and because our marketplace will be getting a complete recode which will take time.  Nonetheless, it is a priority and we’ll be chipping away at it! <3

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Thank you all for taking time to give us feedback! Any updates and developments in regard to the marketplace will be included in our news annoucements!