Display Morei dunno where to put it, and basically, we also can add a definitive link to kamadan tradechat in favor alert thread.
i think it should be in the top UI bar, always visible:
also a definitive link to the trade chat website already exists, even though not for favor reasons. putting a link in a thread misses the point, the thread was about getting notifications when favor occurs, and a link could lead people to stop posting in the thread altogether. and you would always need to actively check for favor by clicking on the link, which not everybody always remembers to do. the point of the permanently visible live status is precisely to not have to check anywhere else, which would need extra clicks and remembering. only when its always visible do we get the proper (and enhanced) functionality of the favor alert thread notifications. the favor status could even have an optional extra notification when favor starts.
and a live favor status on legacy would just be really cool
someone should ask for the permission first :3
permission for what exactly? to run a favor bot in legacy's name? i'd understand if legacy doesn't want that but thats not necessarily what i was suggesting. im thinking to use kamadan tradechat's favor status either from their website or somehow from their bot directly with a custom favor-API. the second option would even provide redundance in a situation when the kamadan tradechat website is down but their bot is still up, and it would also allow for more flexibility in the implementation.
and in case you meant permission to use their favor status: yes absolutely, i think it should be a collaboration with the tradechat website dev, since they already have the infrastructure (their chat log bot). and legacy already links to the website, so it cant be argued that the chat log bot is not approved, at least indirectly.
calincalin is 100% correct here - such a thing would require us to ask permission from the author. It's also not so simple - we could build a bot ourselves too, and then parse the messages from the game and display it up here. It's something that I've considered doing a while back and looked into it.
Now, it's not as simple as just writing a bot - I'm pretty certain I could do that, but there's no API to do that, so you're going to have to read memory addresses and figure out where the chat information is coming from. We'd need to either read the output that comes from the chat, OR send input (which is technically breaking the EULA) in the form of /favor and parsing the response.
Every update - especially those with bigger changes - have a tendency to change those memory addresses, so you would need to go in an updated version of Guild Wars and figure out what the new memory addresses are for the information you need, update your bot, strap things up and launch your bot again. And then you'd need to write the logic for your bot to run, handle game updates, preferably reporting/monitoring so you know if something breaks, handle disconnects and so on.
It's not a trivial thing to do and it requires more work than one might think. And, with it being a bot, it can also get flagged by the bot detection systems and get the account banned (if I'm not mistaken, that recently happened with a few of the Kamadan trade chat accounts).
So there's a lot to take into account with this.
The Toolbox/Kamadan Trade Chat devs have figured this all out and they know the Guild Wars works on that level way better than I (or almost everybody on Legacy) does, and that comes with years of experience. I know of the existance of GWCA but that is not publically available and that's understandable and also the right thing to do.
While I do understand how the Trade Chat website works and where the information is fetched from, that information belongs to them. They haven't made it a public API and aren't stating that it is OK for anybody else to use that data.
Unless they publically state that it's OK for others to use that data (and in which way), there is no way that I would even consider using that data. In my opinion it displays a lack of respect for the work that was done by the original party, but it is just also poor etiquette to do so and invites rivalry and bad vibes in a community.
I certainly wouldn't appreciate it if a private API that I built was being used by other parties without permission. And that mostly leads to making things difficult for each other, by slightly changing the API, modifying how it works, adding authentication layers or just straight up feed wrong data when you detect that the API calls come from somewhere else.
In this case, I have a termendous amount of respect for the developers of GWToolbox and Trade Chat and due to that, it has always been linked on Legacy. Could I have used their private API to display all posts on Legacy somewhere? Absolutely, but you don't do that.
It's not because you can't do it, but because of respect out of the work they have done. In this case, I see little value in adding this to Legacy because it is just a click away to - let's be honest - a very useful tool/website.
My vision for Legacy was always to collaborate, link to others when appropriate and ensure that we, as a community, are stronger as a whole.
Now, should ArenaNet come with an official API that offers this data, I would absolutely consider adding this. And should we get permission from the Toolbox/Trade Chat team, I might also add that, with a clear mention that that data was provided by them.
I hope that this is clear why permission is needed and what my vision for things like this is (and I'm absolutely open for discussion on this).
- Kevin
If only I was able to afford that... but yes, those 10 years flew by!
Any match you share here will be given a trophy, even if you already got a match.
