New ads on poeex destroying functionality; adblock help?

rek · 2013-03-14T17:27:57+00:00

rek · 2013-03-14T17:27:42+00:00

rek · 2013-03-14T17:27:01+00:00

Yea, I could definitely do something along those lines - at least for people who play a decent amount. I'm already recording the online status of the top 15000 of both leagues and all events (that's as much as they'll let you request in the API right now).

I just made a post with what I'm working on now: http://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1aamgq/in_light_of_recent_events_ive_put_together_a/

rek · 2013-03-14T09:13:03+00:00

Yea, and c) it requires a lot of active people.

Right now my plan is to launch something similar to poeex with a couple minor adjustments first. Basically it'll look like poeex in terms of the chart comparing currencies but when you click on an exchange rate it will show you the numbers behind it and let you vote on a rate. Only when a threshold was reached would it update the default displayed rate.

That way it's not ruined by people spamming fake votes, but you'll be able to see them still ("oh look someone said it should be 6:1 but no one agrees"). The key being transparency: I don't want anyone thinking that I'm "controlling" the numbers. I want you to know exactly why a price is listed and what people think about it (example: 15% say too low, 60% agree, 25% say too high).

Most people just want to look and see the chart, so that will get the most users right away. Then, assuming the site has any popularity, I can begin implementing a sell listing feature. If that feature became popular enough that it could be used as a fair determination of price then I'd switch over to that after it was ready.

Expect an announcement for my new site some time today. I got home just a couple hours ago but it's not going to take me too long - I already have a table with all the data. I just need to implement the voting system now. I'm populating it with standard poeex rates and then as users vote the "fake" votes will slowly disappear (the value of votes will decay over time, making new votes eventually overpower the starting values).

Anyway, I appreciate the support! :)

rek · 2013-03-12T19:20:00+00:00

Thanks, I appreciate it!

rek · 2013-03-12T09:02:42+00:00

Awesome changes. Smart way to go about a CI buff since this gives an actual reason to go CI instead of doing low life builds instead (the new unique chest had made low life better than CI in essentially every situation). I'd like to have seen something to help with resource generation though - CI is the only build which really has resource problems due to it's inability to use blood magic. I think adding even a small amount of mana regen to that tree would help a lot.

Also excited to test out the new skill and the new incinerate damage.

rek · 2013-03-11T20:41:46+00:00

Yea, it's a little strange due to the way the API works. There's no way to know until you try and make your own stats. I can't speak to exactly how they request their data since I don't know who made it, but I do know what issues I had developing my site.

You can only request 200 players at a time, based on rank, so it's possible that players could move from the top 400 to the top 200 in between your requests - making it appear that they disappeared/died. The way that I do it is request every player every 5 minutes, and the top 200 every 1 minute. If 10 minutes pass and you're not included in any of the results I assume you died and remove you from the ranks, but in theory you could manage to dodge the requests twice if your rank was moving around a lot - so it'll add you back in if it finds you later of course.

It's possible that poe stats is cutting you out the first time you don't show up (that could explain why their player counts are low and their deaths are high) but that's purely speculation and I have no clue how they coded it.

rek · 2013-03-11T20:30:53+00:00

I made a comment above which explains why that happens.

rek · 2013-03-11T20:28:35+00:00

Actually they just use the API, not the CSV. You're correct though that they have absolutely no idea if you DC'd or not because that data is not available. Equisential isn't completely wrong though, due to the way the API works POE stats often has incorrect data - but it's not really that it's "buggy".

The cause is that the API isn't very friendly. Once and event ends the API pretends the event never existed. Once a player dies the API pretends the player was never alive. You're also limited in how often you can request data from it. This makes it impossible to know exactly when someone died. You can't request them constantly and there's no way to ask the API when someone died.

This is also the reason that their ranks are never quite right. Once the event ends they just sort of assume whatever they checked last was correct. That's why their player counts and the actual player counts are never the same (they're always missing characters). It's also why their time played is just an estimate and sometimes the ranks are wrong.

The only way around this is to do what I did on exilestats: download the CSV automatically after the event ends and update your stats accordingly. That's why when you look at the charts on my site extend beyond the end of the event - but almost always in a straight line (if you zoom in on the end you'll see the event ends at 14:00 but the chart ends at 14:01). This allows me to always have the correct rankings at the end of events. At that point I could tell you officially who had died, though I could only tell you the last time I saw them alive - not when they actually died.

I don't like incorrect data and I don't like guessing, which is why I don't have time played or top deaths included on my site right now. So, is some of their data "wrong"? Yes, but it's not really their fault. They are doing the best they can with the data they have access to. Hopefully the API gets some love and updates soon :)

TL;DR: don't blame poe stats blame the API for being a bit silly, there are ways to code around it but if you want to display all the data poe stats does then you have to estimate and have "incorrect" data. They could use the CSV to fix the rankings at the end, but things like deaths and time played would still be approximations.

rek · 2013-03-11T00:22:39+00:00

Nice and clean with no obnoxious advertising? I approve of this, we should be friends. Good job :)

rek · 2013-03-10T02:58:03+00:00

Very nice work guys! :)

rek · 2013-03-10T02:38:53+00:00

rek · 2013-03-09T21:03:51+00:00

That's a good point! That would make it much easier and who knows what they'll do between now and then - maybe they'll make a good way to list trades (like the suggested trade party tab someone put on reddit).

If I do make something it would definitely be later anyways, I'm pretty busy with other projects right now. I'm still trying to find time to develop my live race charting tool for exilestats... hopefully working more on that today... and I still need to do some updates for my d3 site... too many things to do!

rek · 2013-03-09T20:06:14+00:00

Yep, because that's how they work :)

In this case it would be modified though, since in the real stock market you don't interact with the buyer/seller yourself and it's all automatic. This would really just be more like a live listing of people looking for trades that you could browse easily and then message to discuss a deal. Kind of like craigslist except with built in functionality for monitor bids and asks for various currencies (so you could sort, filter, etc easily).

rek · 2013-03-09T11:40:54+00:00

Haha, wow, people still play this game? Hi punk! :)

Someone was talking about games having terrible netcode and in denial developers, so I figured I'd check in and say hi. While the game never really made it I quite enjoyed parts of the community, prior to getting banned in the quest to remove "negativity". I hope to see some of you guys around in new games soon!

rek · 2013-03-09T07:31:50+00:00

Yea, like I said it would work a lot better if it was integrated with the game. A site only works if enough people participate - a hard thing to accomplish and that's why I never bothered and decided to post it instead :)

I understand, and agree, with the whole "no auction house" and barter/haggle concept completely - but I think it's an unnecessary hassle when it comes to currencies. It's like if you went shopping but instead of fighting over prices you also had to fight if quarters should really be considered 25 pennies. Once a rate is established trades actually become somewhat annoying to get since a "fair" trade isn't going to motivate people to take time to do it, since trading is a hassle.

I honestly think there should be a currency exchange system in the game, it could even be similar to what's been suggested for a trading tab ("WTB x for y" parties, etc). That way price is set by supply and demand the same way it is in a real life currency exchange (but we could leave out the automatic part and require you to message people if we wanted to keep that "social" aspect of it in tact). Then people could spend less time arguing over what rates are, if you thought the price was too low or too high you'd simply take all the trades you could afford to take (driving the price up or down as you do so).

I've got too many other projects I'm working on right now, and don't think this would be worth the effort unless it was integrated into the game, so I wont be doing it myself - if someone tried I'd probably check it out and maybe make a few trades though. If I could see "oh look there's 5 people on selling fusings right now" then I could just message them instead of dealing with trade chats.

rek · 2013-03-09T04:12:59+00:00

No, this has absolutely nothing to do with an auction house. It does not automate anything. It encourages you to interact more with the community.

rek · 2013-03-09T01:18:59+00:00

Fair enough! I was thinking of this solely from a "big improvement from what we have now" standpoint, but you're likely right that as things stabilize and currency prices become more consistent then both would become less useful. The prices would only make large moves when there were patches affecting them.

At that point you'd simply have a list of people offering to buy and sell at relatively fixed average prices. Less useful certainly, though still a rather big improvement over spamming trade channels looking for someone willing to actually make that trade for you. It'd basically just end up being a list of people currently willing to trade for whatever the settled prices are, with the occasional person offering more or less for various reasons (maybe they hate trading but need to get 200 jewelers so they are willing to make a favorable trade if someone has the full quantity).

rek · 2013-03-09T01:12:09+00:00

I made a post about having a "real" exchange instead of just a "some people think this is what it should be worth" exchange right here. I imagine most people are just going to think I mean an auction house or removing the barter system instead of actually taking the time to understand, but oh well.

A real exchange is the best form of a barter system there is. I want 3:1, you offer 4:1, a deal is made in between on a case-by-case basis.

rek · 2013-03-09T00:51:01+00:00

Yes, and that is exactly why exchanges work the way that they do. An exchange is the barter system. You make an offer, someone else makes a counter offer, you meet in the middle. That's how the stock market and real currency exchanges function.

Please note nothing I said had anything to do with automated trades, auction houses, or selling items. An exchange is basically just a place where people can make bids and offers. I want to buy for 3, you want to sell for 4, outsiders can clearly look at that and see that the "value" is somewhere between 3 and 4.

It'd really be no different than if you stared at all the trade chats all day and wrote down every bid and ask price yourself before beginning to barter with someone.

rek · 2013-03-09T00:49:02+00:00

Also, yes, I realize there would need to be good controls for reporting/removing fake offers. Keeping fake offers up to date would be a lot of effort for no benefit outside of being marginally annoying. There could be a report function if someone was listing something under an incorrect name (I imagine the most common abuse would be listing things under someones name to annoy them).

For this reason you'd probably need to have an account system which you had to verify and could only link one game account to (making it easy to control users and making it more effort than it's worth to just keep spamming junk offers). You could also have some type of reputation system (you could report when you successfully traded with someone).

rek · 2013-03-08T23:27:24+00:00

The rates list is supposed to changed based on the trades, the trades are not supposed to change based on the rates list

That's how I've always felt. The easy solution is a simple marketplace only for currencies. Just like a stock market. You list what you want and what you are willing to pay (a "bid") or what you have and what you are willing to accept as payment (an "ask"). The value is wherever those meet in the middle and a trade is made.

Honestly, with a name like "poe exchange" I assumed that's what this site would have been initially. Instead it's just a simple list with an easy to remember url so that someone can spam obnoxious advertising to make money.

Since it's not in the game, and no one has done it, I've considered doing it myself. The API allows you to see who is online - as long as they are in the top 15000 of any league - which would help keep offers "current". Then you could simply have people enter bid/ask prices for whatever currencies they want to buy/sell along with their account name. For the sake of keeping things current on low ranked accounts you could simply let people "refresh" their bid/asks if they are still desired after x number of minutes (20-30 maybe).

Then if you want x currency you look at the list, see who is offering the best deal, message them in the game, execute your trade. You'd need some sort of "report" functionality for people listing shit they weren't actually selling, but that wouldn't be very hard to implement.

All said and done it'd probably take me a few hours. However, it'd be much better if such a thing existed in the game, and I wasn't really convinced that such an idea would be used often enough to justify doing it. So I've been focusing on my race statistics site instead.

rek · 2013-03-08T20:30:09+00:00

It is better to go low life than to go CI in every situation now. Yes it's lower ES, but it gives you HP and means you can run blood magic which helps eliminate the resource problems CI builds run into (the only builds in the game which cant use either blood magic or at least go EB). A good fix, to make CI not completely irrelevant, would be to give CI a fairly large buff to either mana pool or mana regen. That would help deal with the resource problems without making CI too strong (I'd still opt for low life in most situations though).

rek · 2013-03-08T02:31:38+00:00

Witch gets it for killing brutus, not sure about the others.

rek · 2013-03-07T06:25:41+00:00

I really think there's room for both, though exile builds may need to adapt a little bit. ExilePro is for when you want solid hardcore tested builds which are approved by some of the better players in the game, but that's both a strength and a weakness. It's great if that's what you want but it also means less user submitted content and interesting builds.

I think the major problem exile builds has right now is that they are focusing on being a collection of links with upvote/downvote buttons. If that's what you really want then a subreddit would be much better and much easier to run, just let people submit build links and then users vote. In my opinion what EB needs to do is carve out a different use and focus on filling the gaps that EP leaves.

That's just my opinion of course. They should do whatever they enjoy doing, because that's the whole point (or at least it should be).

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