Thoughts on the New Galactic Trade Network

In technical terms, patch 7.4's major new gameplay feature was a revamp of the Galactic Trade Network. I've never been an auction house baron in any MMO that I've played, but I do tend to buy and sell small items pretty regularly, so I was very curious to see what this would look like.

In fact, I was interested enough to download the Public Test Server client and check out the changes before they hit the live servers. I had a little play around and provided a bit of (what I hope was) constructive feedback in the dedicated forum thread on the subject, but I have to admit, my first impression wasn't super positive. It wasn't exactly negative either, it was just... for a revamp of such a major feature, I'd expected much more. The difference between World of Warcraft's classic and current auction house is like night and day for example.

The updated GTN however didn't seem that different, and while there were a few new features that looked nice, we were told that we were also losing a couple of bits of old functionality. It just didn't feel like more than a sidegrade, and I was honestly left with a slightly uneasy feeling initially.

Then the patch actually dropped, and fortunately things were fine, though I did see more than a couple of forum threads complaining about the lost features. There wasn't a huge outcry or anything, but I did see a few comments along the lines of "why such a major revamp for so little gain".

In fact, let's make a list of all the pros and cons of the new GTN that I can think of (feel free to let me know in the comments if I forgot anything).

 Pros:

• We get to see information on what price an item has been selling for historically, both in the long and short term. This makes it easier to judge demand and whether something is priced fairly.
  
• There are new buttons to see the most recent listings, popular searches, or a small selection of favourite searches, for items you like to look up regularly.
• Listings can now be set up to last for up to seven days (up from three).
• There is now only one search result per item, and you simply enter the quantity you want to buy (without having to scroll through pages of one item each or anything like that).
  
• Filters have been cleaned up, with some outdated categories removed and new ones added (I think?)
  
• Seller names are no longer shown, which makes it harder to launder money or get up to other shady business.
• Whenever you want to purchase something, it will only ever take the cheapest listing(s). This prevents people from buying overpriced items by accident or getting scammed by intentionally confusing listings.
• Whenever you buy something, you can pick it up right there from the GTN; you no longer need to go to a mailbox.

Cons:

• The listing fee is no longer refunded once a listing sells or expires. This can result in a loss when low-priced items fail to sell repeatedly.
  
• Crafted items with an augmentation slot on them now have that slot removed when put up for sale.
• Most random gear drops from the open world can no longer be listed on the GTN.
• When searching for crafting schematics, ones you already know are no longer greyed out. Thanks to Medullah for pointing out that this one was actually fixed between PTS and go-live.
  
• With every purchase defaulting to the cheapest listing and seller names no longer visible, you can't intentionally purchase from a seller you like, or message someone to make them an alternative offer.
• If you sell something or a listing expires, you get mail about it but also have to go to the GTN to actually pick up the goods; you no longer get them delivered to your mailbox.
  
• This is probably a bug that might get fixed, but sometimes when you've performed a search and want to perform another immediately afterwards, you have to hit enter/the search button twice before the results update to the new search.
  

You can see that the number of pros and cons is almost equal, though of course not every item on either list is of equal importance. Having to hit enter a second time right now is not a big deal, while the new pricing history is a godsend for potential sellers.

Still, overall I would have expected more. For example, in the aforementioned WoW auction house revamp, they made it so that when you put something up for sale, it immediately shows you the current listings with their prices, which is information you'll definitely want so you know what price to set for your own listing. On the new GTN however, you still need to go to the search tab and perform a search first as if you were looking to buy, and in fact there is now an extra click required to see the full range of existing prices for that item.

Also, some features are double-edged swords... I was initially pleased to be able to list items for seven days for example, but it turns out that the fee for this is higher per day than for the other options, and with the new system encouraging undercutting like never before (since you literally can't buy anything but the cheapest item), leaving a listing up for that long is likely to just end up being a waste of credits as you're likely to be undercut pretty quickly.

That said, I'm hopeful that the answer to the question of "why such a major revamp for so little gain" is that there is more to come. I'm not a developer, but I know from my interactions with devs at work that sometimes when you want to update something, it's actually easier to code everything new from scratch than to untangle decades-old spaghetti code written by someone who left the company years ago. I imagine that SWTOR's GTN could have been in a similar situation, and that it was simply easier for the SWTOR devs to rebuild it before doing anything else than to try and bolt new features onto the existing framework. They do still want to add those buy orders after all...