Linking items to chat

[EDarkness]

Lotro has easy to use drag and item drop into chat window so others can click it to examine it. Not sure how great of a help that would be here since once you read what an item is here you know what it does and there are way fewer named items in this game as Lotro. Many there just link stuff to show off like how many times person X for example has looted the same Rift piece and is vendoring it when 99.99% of others havent even got I on 1 character. May help for the newer items especially for players who never read forums.

That's not really true. Various things added to an item have different point distributions. For example if you have a +2 Seeker Longsword, then how do you know how much of a boost Seeker gives you without typing it in the trade wndow. Or how about a helmet that has wisdom and escape in the name...how do you know what the stat distribution is without typing that out? Why do all that typing when you can simply link the item in the chat window and the person looking at it can compare it easily to what they have? If I have a piece of armor that I want to give to my wife, it's hard for me to tell her how good it is since the window only shows it's AC bonus in relation to my own stats. What I've been doing now is opening a trade with her and sticking the item in the trade window for her to compare to what she has. That's not a good solution to the problem.

I don't see how this is a waste of time. Shouldn't take that long to add it in.

[Gorby]

PERIOD.

Not sure what that meant, but man was that the wrong color choice.

[Magnicallus]

Was thinking a lil on this.... Wonder if you can copy the the "loot link" into your BIO and then the pull it from there back to your chat window after bio is saved. If someone can try this out great, if not I'll check it out when I get home.

[Gorby]

I've tried putting the loot link in my bio before and it just places the tags in plain text.

[Uska]

Not sure what that meant, but man was that the wrong color choice.

ooh didnt think about that. fixed it.

[Uska]

i dont by the "waste of dev time" excuse on this one. It would not take anytime to make a item link option. You can already click on the item if it is the loot report.

if it takes a second its a waste of time to me I just dont see the point of this its not needed just look at the item in a trade widow.

[EDarkness]

if it takes a second its a waste of time to me I just dont see the point of this its not needed just look at the item in a trade widow.

It takes longer to set that up than to simply link the item in chat. I don't see how anyone can be against the idea, honestly.

[Muku]

I completely agree. Linking would make things so much easier. And I don't buy that General would be any worse off. You can always ignore the people who like to spam. They'll spam whether there's linkable items or not though. It would however make actually trading and selling items much easier. Heck, they could limit it to only certain channels as well to work in if they feared any spam fest would begin.

I know many of the long time players are pretty ... stubborn, I suppose is the best word here. Yes, you've been here longer than a lot of us, but that doesn't invalidate our opinions. We're posting on these forums as well to see that this becomes a better and more enjoyable game. I think we're all gamers that just want the best for the game(s) we play. The responses here for any change are rather bitter. I may not like all the changes that occurs in games, but you have to move on. MMOs change for a reason. At least fight over things that are worth the fight.

As for "turning into WoW", for being such a taboo game to mention, it sure does get mentioned a lot. Though, because of one feature, it becomes more like another game? How does that work? Just seems like bitter comments because one or two people don't think it would be interesting, or are so stubborn they don't want change. Some features are worth it in games, linking being a top one in my opinion.

I love dealing with AHs, trades, and such in games. That's just the part of the game I get a lot of enjoyment out of. I like to wheel and deal, but in this particular game it's much more difficult to do so without the feature. It would be much easier to deal with if it gave base stats instead of basing the information on my own stats. I can't give anyone that information because it wouldn't work for them. And for those who say put the item in the trade window... yes, it works. But it's not optimal.

[Raysiel]

Well... I say

1-Would the opinion of a vast amount of players mean something?

Case it would then

2-Why don't you just make a poll and discover how does everybody feel about this?

Sorry for the bad english ;D

[Garth_of_Sarlona]

all you'd need to be able to do this is the ability to convert an item you already have into the UID that you get when you loot it - it's probably not a lot of work.

EDIT, Also, once the my.ddo.com XML interface is exposed - I expect the UIDs will be presented via there somehow - so it might be possible to reverse engineer them out of the protocol and use that to paste in game. in fact, I'm gonna have a look at the my.ddo.com interface it's possible they are there already but hidden.

Garth

[vectner]

Why should we have to do all the work. The purpose of a GUI is to make things easier. There are way too many little things in this game that make it difficult to do simple things. Some small UI changes, like this, could add a great deal of playability to the game. Making a game more accessible is not self defeating, I don't understand the negative reactions here.

[sugarsmack]

Why should we have to do all the work. The purpose of a GUI is to make things easier. There are way too many little things in this game that make it difficult to do simple things. Some small UI changes, like this, could add a great deal of playability to the game. Making a game more accessible is not self defeating, I don't understand the negative reactions here.

EKKM said it perfectly:

Also try to remember that most of the vets in DDO play it precisely because it it is not WoW and resist changes that will make DDO more WoWish like an old man holding on to his rotary phone. Even if it may be a good idea.

I really don't buy the whole "WoW has <insert useful UI feature here>, I like DDO because it's very different from WoW, we don't need <insert UI improvement here> as it will make DDO more like WoW!" thing. As someone else has mentioned, even with UI improvements such as item linking in chat and ability to search by keyword in the AH, DDO is still a very, very different game to WoW.

A small amount of people are always going to spam silly things in general chat, regardless of whether item linking exists or not. As long as there's a quick way to ignore general chat spammers, the positives of having item linking in chat far outweighs the negatives, in my opinion.

[cyanpill]

Hm I find this thread pretty interesting. I tried pasting the Kyosho's Ring but of course it said I didn't have access to that item. Then I went to myddo, and checked the html to see what item ID they use there. Unfortunately that didn't work, but it's possible the reason is that the examine code give here is in hex (0x0...) and on myddo it is in decimal. Possibly you can just convert between the two, but I don't know where to start on that. Or myddo could be using it's own system, since they just link to other pages online for the actual data.

Also, keep in mind WoW is far from the only game to have item linking... pratcially every game has it in some form. People just default to using WoW as an example... much like when people talk about tv shows they end up mentioning freinds or seinfeld or something.

[guarana90]

If the item is in the trade window you can examine it there before either player hits "accept".

Also try to remember that most of the vets in DDO play it precisely because it it is not WoW and resist changes that will make DDO more WoWish like an old man holding on to his rotary phone. Even if it may be a good idea.

Your right. the game was much more interesting and it made you have to think about things differently. you would have to go to that person to get the goods. or to see it. it would make every character *different*. i dont remember what i was getting at but yeah were becoming too far from the real DnD.

[Strakeln]

+rep to the OP and other newer players posting in here for sticking to their guns.

It's a good idea, don't let the crabby vets convince you otherwise.

[chessmaster4242]

Just so that everyone here is aware, this feature is listed on the patch notes for Update 3 (which is currently on the test server).

Here's a link to that page: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=206066

Enjoy!

[madcatsden]

I am amazed at the hardcore non-progressive attitudes here.

Don't be afraid to "borrow" ideas from other MMOs in an attempt to improve our experience with this MMO.

If we never attempt to make anything better then we might as well go back to playing Zork on monochrome monitors.

I myself am GLAD that the developers are "wasting development time" in implementing item linking.

As a new player but old school pen and paper D&D player I have NO idea what some of these items do and welcome the chance to easily reference item stats to compare to what I currently have.

As a word of advice to those that are against improved information sharing on items: If you don’t like item linking for god’s sake DON’T USE IT. PERIOD.

It neither harms nor hinders you in any way at all and could help others of us greatly.

[Arlith]

Not all ideas are great "just because they are in other MMOs"

I really don't care. I used to enjoy general chat, but now it is so full of spam/bs that I have general/trade/advice turned off on all toons. So it makes no difference to me if they add this feature or not. It might have been a useful tool before chat got so full of umm... well you get the idea.

Sadly, I am becoming more and more blah towards this game. In the past I could argue about changes and be upset about what is being done and still get in the game and play. Now I find myself torn between DDO and that rerun of House I have only seen 4 times. The worst part about it is that it isn't the game, I still think it's the best **** thing since sliced bread. It is dealing with people who don't have a **** clue about how to play the game and won't take one when it is offered.

[chessmaster4242]

As a word of advice to those that are against improved information sharing on items: If you don’t like item linking for god’s sake DON’T USE IT. PERIOD.

It neither harms nor hinders you in any way at all and could help others of us greatly.

First of all, QFT. Second, this is implemented and working in Update 3. We should have item linking by sometime next week when the patch is supposed to go through. Yahoo! About time :P

I think they're concern was not the use of this feature but rather the mis-use / abuse. Granted no matter the game, there will be players who will enjoy abusing the system only to the detriment of the other players. We have no control over their actions. At best we can report them but after that it's out of our hands. I think this is an excellent new feature and I'm looking forward to being able to use it on the live servers.

[madcatsden]

I think they're concern was not the use of this feature but rather the mis-use / abuse..

While I can't understand the viewpoints of the naysayers in this argument I try to sympathize.

The main cited problem of people spamming linked items in chat "just to do it" seems absurd to me. People have plenty of options to abuse chat and do so regularly without item linking.

I've played many MMOs that use item link to chat and have never had the experience that these others are afraid of. It seems very theoretical and I can only assume that they have not played an MMO with item linking available.

In any case, charge onward and we shall see progress!