Bug - Not A Bug In Store Manager, lowest-column/right-pane prices are drastically different

r18422

Sometimes, in the Store Manager, when I click the right-bracket button to load prices for an item in the right column, the lowest price there is drastically different than what's displayed in the lowest column for that same item.
  • This happens with more than one particular item. I'm seeing it now with porquoise, but I also saw it a couple days ago (on an older version) with a different item. I didn't have a chance to follow up on it, then.
  • This does not happen with all items. In most cases, the two prices agree.
  • I don't think this has do do with stores that have me blocked... On a multi that doesn't really interact, and therefore should not be blocked by anyone, when I search the Mall, I only see the higher of the two prices (in this case, what's displayed in the right pane). So I'm not sure where the lower price is coming from.
 

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Darzil

Developer
It may be something in the way that we are updating (or failing to) historical prices. I notice that there was a day in the last week the zombie pineal gland price would have been accurate, according to coldfront :

* Jan 12, 9:00am: 1 bought @ 79,995.0
* Jan 12, 4:30pm: 1 bought @ 40,000.0
* Jan 13, 7:00pm: 1 bought @ 78,000.0
* Jan 14, 8:00am: 1 bought @ 78,000.0
* Jan 15, 6:00am: 2 bought @ 78,000.0
* Jan 15, 11:00pm: 1 bought @ 78,000.0
* Jan 16, 3:00pm: 1 bought @ 78,000.0
* Jan 17, 2:00pm: 1 bought @ 78,000.0
 

Darzil

Developer
I think we are misunderstanding what min price is.
KOL offers two prices up when repricing, the min price (lowest price sold for in X days I guess, was 1000 for Porquoise - Jan 12, 7:30pm: 6 bought @ 1,000.0), and the cheapest (current lowest other price).
Mafia displays the min price as lowest, and will show cheapest if you click on the arrow, along with the other prices.
 

Darzil

Developer
This is the KOL data we are parsing, which you note does not display the cheapest current price (or I'd just add it!) :
Code:
<tr><td><b>porquoise   </td><td>1</td><td>500</td><td>1,000</td><td><input class=text size=10 type=text value="999999999" name=price0[706]>   </td><td><input class=text size=5 type=text value="0" name=limit0[706]>   </td><td>1,000</td></tr>
 
Oh. Wow. That changes the whole ballgame. I never knew that the lowest column had anything to do with historical data. I've been pricing my shop based on that column for years :(

You mentioned that this is the "lowest price sold for in X days..." Do you know of any way to determine how long X is? Is it the same X for every item?

This is getting outside the realm of a bug report, and into feature-request territory, but I'll say it anyway, because I'm interested to hear what other people think. For me, the "lowest price sold for in X days" is a potentially useful feature, but only occasionally. It would be cool to have that in a different pane, or behind a button. What I typically care about in this interface is "what are the prices I'm competing with if I sell this item right now?" ie. what's displayed in the right pane. I propose that it would be more useful to have the current-lowest price in the lowest column, keeping the expanded version of current-prices in the right pane, and move the "lowest price sold for in X days" somewhere else.
 

Darzil

Developer
Lowest price in X days is the price that KOL presents.

So it's a feature request for KOL, not Mafia, unless we're going to hammer KOL for the cheapest information.
 

Darzil

Developer
Would be pretty easy to add the Mafia Historical Mall Price - which is the price of the 5th cheapest item as seen in your last mall search for an item or the last time someone who is sharing their mall data did a mall search. This is the price usually used inside Mafia.
 
Lowest price in X days is the price that KOL presents.

So it's a feature request for KOL, not Mafia, unless we're going to hammer KOL for the cheapest information.
I see what you mean. Populating the current-lowest price for every item would mean a server hit for every item when the Store Manager is opened.

Would be pretty easy to add the Mafia Historical Mall Price - which is the price of the 5th cheapest item as seen in your last mall search for an item or the last time someone who is sharing their mall data did a mall search. This is the price usually used inside Mafia.
Good idea - I think that's a good compromise.
 

fronobulax

Developer
Staff member
CFStat will get the average price for an item from Coldfront, along with the volume. It is using timespan=2 which I think is a week but I can't confirm quickly. You can get a transaction list for each item so finding the lowest price in the timespan should be hitting a url and then parsing the page. Does not scale "for every item" but it might be worth the effort for a couple of items. I could be talked in to extending it...

That said, I like the mafia historical price solution more. No one's servers get hit.
 
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