Slow sales - "processing transaction" - bug, not enough servers, and is there a workaround?

[zPhoenix]

When I sell a bunch of stuff things slow down to a crawl, making me waste a ton of time or even give up on selling.  This usually happens at the butcher and Dr, but can happen anywhere.

 

Is this a bug? 

 

Is it just that they don't have enough servers? (Unlikely because I see it happen even at times when there should not be many players on)

 

And most importantly, is there any way to get out of this "sluggish sales" cycle?

[DentureDynamite]

That I know of, nothing from the user end can be done--it's all on the R* server side.

 

FWIW, I've noticed that transactions on the PS4 are much slower than the PC, though occasionally it's ridiculously slow on both systems.

[AmyStone]

Not a bug. This was introduced after the cougar glitch. Friends of mine were doing this and sitting in the butchers menu selling constantly. I think this was added as a really basic fix to stop you selling things over and over and would put a stop to a lot of glitches - or at least slow them down. But it's a stupid fix and I'm sure there would have been better ways. And the really stupid thing is that you are also prevented from buying things rapidly. There isn't really a simple fix. Jumping lobbies doesn't help. The time spent jumping just means you can sell a few more things when you load. No better than just waiting in the same one. 

[StyxTx]

3 hours ago, zPhoenix said:

When I sell a bunch of stuff things slow down to a crawl, making me waste a ton of time or even give up on selling.  This usually happens at the butcher and Dr, but can happen anywhere.

 

Is this a bug? 

 

Is it just that they don't have enough servers? (Unlikely because I see it happen even at times when there should not be many players on)

 

And most importantly, is there any way to get out of this "sluggish sales" cycle?

Normally the slow down starts when you get to 35-40 sells and it's been happening forever so I'm sure R* knows about it and they set it up that way intentionally, or it's another thing they can't fix. All you can do is stop at that point and sell some more later. I think it also happens when you try to buy a lot of things one item at a time.

Edited December 16, 2020 by StyxTx

[zPhoenix]

Thanks for the replies.  Sounds like they tried to fix something too quickly and instead made it worse. 

 

As a software designer myself one "right" solution is pretty obvious: 

• Replace the "Sell All" and "Sell One" buttons with a field that lets you select how many to sell (default to one, with simple ++/+/-/-- to increment/decrement by one/all, and allow typing the number), and a single Sell button that would sell however many you requested. 
• This would mean that each item type gets a single transaction, minimum load on server, and minimum hassle for the user.

 

Now... if R* would only *read* this.

[StyxTx]

2 minutes ago, zPhoenix said:

Thanks for the replies.  Sounds like they tried to fix something too quickly and instead made it worse. 

 

As a software designer myself one "right" solution is pretty obvious: 

• Replace the "Sell All" and "Sell One" buttons with a field that lets you select how many to sell (default to one, with simple ++/+/-/-- to increment/decrement by one/all, and allow typing the number), and a single Sell button that would sell however many you requested. 
• This would mean that each item type gets a single transaction, minimum load on server, and minimum hassle for the user.

 

Now... if R* would only *read* this.

You should apply for a job there but since you have common sense I don't think you'd qualify.

[zPhoenix]

1 minute ago, StyxTx said:

You should apply for a job there but since you have common sense I don't think you'd qualify.

 

They probably can't afford me.  I once worked one floor down from the studio that wrote Ages of Empires and became friends with a few of their developers.  I got quite an education about how gaming companies hire and pay.  Before that I always had thoughts about applying to one, but after that I put the idea aside and never considered it again. 

 

But my advice is free for any game I am playing... if they want to take it.

[AmyStone]

13 minutes ago, zPhoenix said:

Thanks for the replies.  Sounds like they tried to fix something too quickly and instead made it worse. 

 

I think it's intentional. It's why it's been that way for about one and a half years. You just have to work around it by selling frequently so you don't accumulate loads of stuff to sell. And if you need to buy lots of things then best to do that through the online catalogue. There are no limits there.

[zPhoenix]

Just now, AmyStone said:

 

I think it's intentional. It's why it's been that way for about one and a half years. You just have to work around it by selling frequently so you don't accumulate loads of stuff to sell. And if you need to buy lots of things then best to do that through the online catalogue. There are no limits there.

 

I would love to sell frequently... except that you have to go to a butcher or Dr.  

 

A solution to make us sell frequently is also obvious:  make it easier to sell.

 

For example:

• Maybe allow selling through the mail like they do for the collections (although that might break immersion)
• Or better yet let you get NPCs in those roles for your camp.

[DentureDynamite]

On 12/16/2020 at 12:15 PM, zPhoenix said:

Thanks for the replies.  Sounds like they tried to fix something too quickly and instead made it worse. 

 

As a software designer myself one "right" solution is pretty obvious: 

• Replace the "Sell All" and "Sell One" buttons with a field that lets you select how many to sell (default to one, with simple ++/+/-/-- to increment/decrement by one/all, and allow typing the number), and a single Sell button that would sell however many you requested. 
• This would mean that each item type gets a single transaction, minimum load on server, and minimum hassle for the user.

 

Now... if R* would only *read* this.

Yeah, there are several fixes/improvements that the inventory GUI needs:

 

* Navigation on the PC is inconsistent (jumps from left-to-right to up/down without warning) when using a mouse scroll wheel (possibly arrow keys too; haven't tried that yet)

* Users should be able to one-click switch to any section via its tab without having to guess if or how 'deep' they are into the section (i.e. you shouldn't have to "back out/up" to the main level just to switch sections)

* Mouse clicks on items (to either use them, or just select them) are often totally ignored, making item usage highly impractical--I've been killed numerous times because of this, just trying to get an item to actually be "used".

 

On 12/16/2020 at 12:30 PM, AmyStone said:

And if you need to buy lots of things then best to do that through the online catalogue. There are no limits there.

Actually, I've run into snail-slow transaction issues even in the online catalogue.

 

Most of the time I'm waiting for something in this game: whether a simple animation to finish, mouse pointer to be recognized, etc.

 

RDO is, quite frankly, the most "modal" (programming language speak) and laggy game I've ever played--might make it easier to find bugs, but it's a royal pain to deal with when trying to play.

Edited December 21, 2020 by DentureDynamite

[StyxTx]

20 minutes ago, AmyStone said:

 

I think it's intentional. It's why it's been that way for about one and a half years. You just have to work around it by selling frequently so you don't accumulate loads of stuff to sell. And if you need to buy lots of things then best to do that through the online catalogue. There are no limits there.

That online catalogue does help out a lot.

[Krommer]

15 hours ago, AmyStone said:

Not a bug. This was introduced after the cougar glitch. Friends of mine were doing this and sitting in the butchers menu selling constantly. I think this was added as a really basic fix to stop you selling things over and over and would put a stop to a lot of glitches - or at least slow them down. But it's a stupid fix

 

Ah, did not know that. Thought it was just buggy code/poor game design on their end.

 

So they punish us all, for cougar duping glitch - lame.

 

Here is the fix I proposed:

 

SELL HALF (for stacks, the way you can "sell all") 

 

You don't always want to sell the ENTIRE stack, in case you'd need some of that later; nor do you want to sell them one at a time and get this "slow processing" thing.

If there was a "SELL HALF" option, I'd be doing that every time instead.

Edited December 17, 2020 by Krommer

[AdamNortonUK]

They have added the option to change quality for cooking meats, they just need to add it to the buying and selling options in the future, even if it’s a set amount (3,6,9,18 etc), that would eliminate the slow down, but I think it’s sever end as it slows down even quicker when doing sell all so they’ve set a limit on number of items sold even if your using sell all instead of sell one so at the moment it doesn’t matter which one you use as soon as you hit that item quantity number it slows down so even if was changed in game, they’d have to remove or increase it sever end too.

[AmyStone]

There is also a new bug with selling things so you need to be careful. If you are selling sets at the gypsy and don't move the cursor but keep pressing the sell button it will actually sell single items and not the set that is selected. I've lost sets when this has happened. A similar thing happens at the post office. The only difference is that you might not sell things when you press the sell button but you'll have to back out and then go back in again. So when you are selling at the gypsy make sure you move the cursor between selling sets or alternatively only sell sets at the post office until they fix it.

[StyxTx]

5 hours ago, AmyStone said:

There is also a new bug with selling things so you need to be careful. If you are selling sets at the gypsy and don't move the cursor but keep pressing the sell button it will actually sell single items and not the set that is selected. I've lost sets when this has happened. A similar thing happens at the post office. The only difference is that you might not sell things when you press the sell button but you'll have to back out and then go back in again. So when you are selling at the gypsy make sure you move the cursor between selling sets or alternatively only sell sets at the post office until they fix it.

Nice to know.

[kcole4001]

I most often run into the sell limit at Madam's by selling off extras over 7 if I haven't been to see her for a couple of days.

 

The timer then sets to 14 seconds, but sometimes will restart itself after selling one thing so you have to wait for 28.

The only way around this I know of is to go do something else for a while, it will eventually go back to normal until you start selling again, then will start counting until you hit the limit again.

 

Typical greedstar move implementing something to hamper glitchers yet it mainly restricts legit players.

 

The solution should be to have a slider to sell items like any other game published in the last 3 decades.

Literally every other game I've played since the late 1980s has had this feature in their sell/transfer menus, where you have the option to slide or manually enter the quantity you wish to sell to a vendor or transfer between characters from your inventory screens.

Seriously, Pool of Radiance had this in 1988.

Edited December 17, 2020 by kcole4001
details

[AdamNortonUK]

19 hours ago, AmyStone said:

There is also a new bug with selling things so you need to be careful. If you are selling sets at the gypsy and don't move the cursor but keep pressing the sell button it will actually sell single items and not the set that is selected. I've lost sets when this has happened. A similar thing happens at the post office. The only difference is that you might not sell things when you press the sell button but you'll have to back out and then go back in again. So when you are selling at the gypsy make sure you move the cursor between selling sets or alternatively only sell sets at the post office until they fix it.

 

14 hours ago, StyxTx said:

Nice to know.

 

Selling to Nazar has been slowed down quite a lot too on single items without the bug (which is another bug then too I guess, or the same one).

 

I've sold more than wanted to of items I have 10 of than I intended because the selling froze for a second so it didn't update so end up selling more than I want to, this is without the processing transaction being slowed down!

 

11 hours ago, kcole4001 said:

I most often run into the sell limit at Madam's by selling off extras over 7 if I haven't been to see her for a couple of days.

 

Nice to know I'm not the only one that brings everything back down to 7, for the Dailies!

 

I usually do 7 for everything but Alcohol Bottles and Flowers which I sell most of for the useless ones and keep the ones for Moonshine at 5, since they are most commonly looted and also since getting 3 American Flowers picked is much easier having less than 7 as you can just get the 3 sometimes in a small area without going to far and remembering to sell them off as I only visit Nazar when she is near me for whatever else I may be doing as I don't go out of my way to go to her location when offloading my overstocked collectibles.

Edited December 18, 2020 by AdamNortonUK

[DentureDynamite]

On 12/17/2020 at 12:25 PM, kcole4001 said:

The solution should be to have a slider to sell items like any other game published in the last 3 decades.

Literally every other game I've played since the late 1980s has had this feature in their sell/transfer menus, where you have the option to slide or manually enter the quantity you wish to sell to a vendor or transfer between characters from your inventory screens.

Seriously, Pool of Radiance had this in 1988.

Yeah, even Escape from Tarkov has a user-editable buy/sell quantity when dealing with all their traders (including the Fence)--very handy.

Edited December 21, 2020 by DentureDynamite

[Krommer]

On 12/17/2020 at 11:16 PM, AdamNortonUK said:

Nice to know I'm not the only one that brings everything back down to 7, for the Dailies!

 

Ah, I always sell off all but 4... 

 

The only ones I keep as many as possible of, are the more "rare" ones; like if I ever had Agarita/Blood flower (or even Creek Plum (especially since for a moonshine recipe) ) in 8 or something I'd never sell any of those.

Being around Hennington's Stead, Rhubarb is the one I always have WAY too many of (one grows right in front of my Moonshine shack...)

 

I've also learned to never sell antique booze, now that selecting one and buffing with it works (so if I have 5 Tennessee whisky, I'll "buff" with that one.)

 

 

On 12/17/2020 at 11:25 AM, kcole4001 said:

Literally every other game I've played since the late 1980s has had this feature in their sell/transfer menus, where you have the option to slide or manually enter the quantity you wish to sell to a vendor or transfer between characters from your inventory screens.

Seriously, Pool of Radiance had this in 1988.

 

Man I LOVED THOSE; played the SSI AD&D gold box games originally on an IBM XT in glorious CGA 4 color, with 5.5 floppy disks and then broke down and got my

first 20 meg (YES, MEG) hard drive for $200 bucks for them. Finally, with "Dark Queen of Krynn" I "upgraded" to a PACKARD BELL I got rooked on by Best Buy (horrible computers, Packard Bell)

which was 486SX25 and a whopping 4 MEG (yes, MEG) of ram fully upgraded; I was even 3l33t enough to figure out the jumper setting to make it a whopping 33mhz from 25!!!!

 

Later I played Ultima 7 and 7.5 on that computer, which actually played them really well! I downloaded an "UMB" driver, from USENET NEWSGROUPS, which still let me load sound

and PCXDUMP (for cool ultima 7 screenshots!) "high", getting around the weird "Voodoo" memory manager limitation of not being able to run emm386.exe so you could not load stuff "high." Sometime after that, I got wise and started building my own computers mostly from Computer Shopper magazine. Around the time the Xbox 360 came out, I got REALLY WISE and started to see that consoles were the way to go for gaming with computers

only really needing minimal upgrades to do other stuff; this was especially true with my now Xbox One, even more so with the Xbox Series X (and especially with PC lamenting the modding in RDO   )

I need to buy one of those when they are in stock again, locally (xbox series x.)

Edited December 24, 2020 by Krommer