TSM and the Transmog (random enchant) market

[twitchietgw]

TSM is an awesome addon for automation for so many markets. What I'm hoping to achieve with this post is gauge how much support there is for development to suport the automated posting of randomly enchanted items (while comparing them to all the other random enchants). If you want to be able to use TSM for posting in the transmogrification market without ignoring your competition, please reply to this post!

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, read on for the quoted requests for this funcitonality.

Remember too, that this thread is just to give the team behind TSM a picture of how much we'd all like this functionality, so maybe include some words of support. Keep your expectations of when this might be delieved in check as well.

I know a new version is coming out, so forgive me if it's already made it in there. One of the big new coin makers is flipping Transmogrification items, and the biggest hurdle to automating that process is that many of the pieces are randomly enchanted. So currently, if I have some thing "of the Boar" and I put that into a auctioning group, it will only undercut other items that are also "of the Boar". For Transmog, no one really cares what the enchant is, they just want to grab the cheapest piece that is in the set or looks right.

I noticed that in the TSM data file, that all the items are the same item ID, and there is a seperate value to describe the random enchant (for example, "of the Boar" is -45). Just as a quick test, I removed that variable. The generic item showed up in the auctioning group, but TSM failed to post the item (which was as expected).

What would be involved for TSM to compare a specific random enchant item against all the other randomly enchanted items for the same item ID so that it would undercut and post at the cheapest possible price?

When I queried on Twitter, the response I got back was that no one had gotten the desired behaviour out of TSM, but the mobile armory worked the way I'd like by default.

Really looking forward to the new version.

There have been at least two of us who are asking for this functionality, as well. As it is now, trying to sell items for transmogrification at any sort of scale is very difficult; involving filling bags with non-stackable items, searching the name of the item set, sorting by name, then comparing the lowest price from all of the random suffixes that happen to be posted, buying the items that are posted for a lot less than the price level you want to post at, then posting each of your items at a manually calculated undercut if the lowest price is above the minimum of what you're willing to list at.

Basically all the tedium and manual steps that the Post Scan makes so much easier for most items still has to be done for the transmog market.

At some point, it may be more efficient for me to dive into the Posting code to see if it queries by item id and then adding a way to flag whether to chop off anything from the first ":" on. For example, I have a Sundered Helmet of the Elder in my bags, with an itemlink of 24898:0:0:0:0:0:-44:1025376309; I would like to flag the Auctioning Group/Category that I have this item in to just query the itemid 24898 for prices, and then continue the normal Posting logic with the returned prices.

Again, this would be a huge quality of life improvement for me and, presumably anyone who tries to sell items for transmogrification use.

[Keelhaul]

I begrudgingly support this, ha. Twitch is right, if you can account for all the nuances of transmog items as he's mentioned, you'll make life much easier for auctioneers trying to chase the market. That said I wouldn't mind if you kept it as-is since I do most of my real work via iPhone RAH which DOES account for "of the Boar", etc. It gives me a bit of an edge on the items I sell which are more boutique, and these days any edge I can get on my competitors is a breath of fresh air considering most of them have read my diary on the topic. So fix it for the 99% like Twitchie has asked, or stay behind the times of the iPhone RAH and leave the 1% here in me to my business.

-Keel

[Reverb]

I use the RAH @Keelhaul and it is superbly slow in comparison to posting things on the desktop, and it has some interesting behavior when it comes to unit pricing that can result in some heart stopping moments, such as posting multiple items at once for the price of one of them unintentionally. If TSM did analyze items in such a way that suffix was not important, which is only useful for transmog markets, then your posting method would be eclipsed in efficiency by logging in remotely (over a remote desktop iphone app) instead of using blizzard's remote AH app. Also, in regards to 1% competent mog auctioneers vs. 99% mog auctioneers: it doesn't matter what percent of the AH seller market you represent when out of the 1% competent mog population derives 99% of the market activity.

[twitchietgw]

There's a trend I've noticed in Transmog for profit. People tend to be simplifying their operation:

1) Lets say Jim (or @fluxdada ). They are streamlining their inventory because it is cumbersome to manage so much stock. They refine their stock to the best bang for buck and try to sell items they know will move quickly. They buy more discriminately, because they want to keep their inventory manageble. They are also tending to make up their pricing just based on how awesome they think the item looks each time, because it's difficult to remember what they sell different sets for.

2) Lets say @Faid . They buy AAALLLL the transmog stuff, and manage a massive inventory. Say... 700+ items on a single server. They approach the market similar to the glyph market in that they post a TON of stuff, and if only 10% sells, they are making a LOT of gold. Due to the size of the inventory, they use TSM and post without concerning themselves about their competition... not buy choice, but because they can't sensibly do it any other way.

3) Lets say @twitchietgw . They like the transmog market and have had some success. They have a very low tolerance for posting things one by one. They don't have access to the mobile auction house. They love automation. They use TSM to post every conceiveable profitable end game consumable. They recently send all their mogging items to a bank alt, but can't get excited about listing it. Admitedly, they have a bit of a hangup about posting items higher than their competition. They would love this enhancement to TSM.

For Jim, he can expand his inventory, won't have to remember his pricing from post to post.

For Faid, she can more easily match her competition's price without having to add any extra effort into the posting cycle. Also, if Faid wants her items to "stand out" at particular price points, she can still elect to post at fallback when her newfound competition is posting below her threshold.

For Twitchie, he can get excited about the transmog market again, and enjoy the fantastic timesaving automation that TSM offers for other markets!

How would this change revitalise your transmog operation?

[Reverb]

@twitchietgw , I personally would enjoy this change if it is toggleable for certain groups. It is very vital that some suffixes in jewelry be evaluated differently, where as transmog items are grouped as the suffix is irrelevant for fashion purposes. I'm hoping @Sapu94 figures something out for this. When I was heavy into the dense grinding stone I was managing around a thousand items resulting from those trade ins every month and would not have had near the efficiency without TSM groups, and as any serious goblin knows, the greatest limiter in our gold efforts is time and how many actions per minute we can do, which is the motivation for outsourcing in part. But you all know how insanely busy most of us are that are WT or Devs.

[Itchytrigger]

I completely agree and would be extremely happy if TSM Dev's were to update the new TSM with the ability to differentiate BoE Suffixes. I primarily make my gold from transmog items, and the suffixes mean nothing to me besides being an annoyance when posting to the AH, and its very cumbersome to have to make continued trips to the bank to relieve myself of multiples of specific items just so I can auto post without fear of duplicates.

TSM Dev's please please please hear our desperate cries! we need more automation in our wow AH lives! (/sarcasm).

No but for serious, it'd be incredible if we could check a box that would allow us to ignore suffixes and undercut solely based on the prefix of an item. Thanks for your time and thank you for making an incredible auction house addon that I, as well as many many other greedy gold goblins, swear by. Good day good sirs.

[Keelhaul]

@Reverb I could see how you might misinterpret me, but neither were my points. That said I didn't register and post to debate my methods. Just came to support Twitch who is spot-on. If TSM were to enable auctioneers selling transmogrification items with the means to account for these suffixes, it's a 360° win for both sellers and buyers.

I support him, he's spot-on. No worries, I'll not post here again.

-Keel

[Stede]

I think you should go bigger. Randomly enchanted items should be toggle-able, but this shouldn't be an 'everything or single' random enchant sort of deal. For leather leveling gear, it would be awesome to have a group for caster gear, another for melee gear, and yet another for healing gear.

A Random Enchant section that toggles on Advanced options would be nice. Further, let it have the standard names, and checkboxes for each: Windflurry, Feverflare, Boar, Whale, Landslide, etc. This would be a quality of life improvement that everyone could get on board with.

[Raistlan]

I begrudgingly support this, ha. Twitch is right, if you can account for all the nuances of transmog items as he's mentioned, you'll make life much easier for auctioneers trying to chase the market. That said I wouldn't mind if you kept it as-is since I do most of my real work via iPhone RAH which DOES account for "of the Boar", etc. It gives me a bit of an edge on the items I sell which are more boutique, and these days any edge I can get on my competitors is a breath of fresh air considering most of them have read my diary on the topic. So fix it for the 99% like Twitchie has asked, or stay behind the times of the iPhone RAH and leave the 1% here in me to my business.

Hi, Keel! Like many, I have been inspired by your lists to get in the transmog market; unfortunately, you're in the same AH as I am [Chronk is my transmog seller]. I had looked to see if anyone had written an addon to make posting transmog auctions easier, but hadn't found any; apparently, the "addon" involves giving a lot of money to Apple and AT&T.

I spent over 7 tedious hours yesterday after writing what was quoted above posting my inventory [and much of what I posted was probably undercut fairly quickly]; that time could have been cut down to 10 to 15 minutes if I could use TSM like I do for other items.

[Reverb]

Hi, Keel! Like many, I have been inspired by your lists to get in the transmog market; unfortunately, you're in the same AH as I am [Chronk is my transmog seller]. I had looked to see if anyone had written an addon to make posting transmog auctions easier, but hadn't found any; apparently, the "addon" involves giving a lot of money to Apple and AT&T.

I spent over 7 tedious hours yesterday after writing what was quoted above posting my inventory [and much of what I posted was probably undercut fairly quickly]; that time could have been cut down to 10 to 15 minutes if I could use TSM like I do for other items.

This doesn't really effect the essence of your point about the "fix" requiring use of a dataplan and a cell phone (an ipod touch would likely work for this purpose though since it supports iOS apps), but blizzard has a client for Android now, so if that is something that appeals to you you can take advantage of the RMAH still if you have an android phone.