TTC website issues thread
 

Please post any web site related issues here instead of using the addon section

To answer your question of why I have decided to force ads:

Feels like I need to explain the situation here a bit. So I started TTC 7 years ago, built an addon + website for everyone to use for FREE. I have quit the game for more than 4 years already but I am still maintaining the site using lots of my free time.

The business model is simple. People uses the addon to collect data and the website's ad revenue will keep the whole project going. From day 1 I already knew people are using ad blockers and the percentage is not low. But I wanted to believe in people, I wanted to believe people will help the project they really love so I did not force ads for the past 7 years.

I have tried like 5 different banners to explain the situation and the need for Ad revenue to keep the project alive. But 7 years past and the result was pretty disappointing. Percentage of ad block users went up significantly and the number of people who donated was less than 0.02% of the entire user base.

The donation I have collected over the course of the past 7 years was just barely able to pay for 2 years of the server's cost. If everyone was using adblocker it will mean that I would have paid 5 figures out of my own pocket in additional to all the free time I have spend to maintain and develop this project.

Based on the growth rate of adblock users I will probably have to shutdown the entire project in about 2 years from now. So there are only 2 options before me if I do not want that to happen

1. Force ads on everyone and allow people to sub for ad free content
2. I start selling the data by offering premium(paid) customers access to real time API when a cheap item is made available.

I do not like the level of P2W #2 brings even though it will probably yield me much higher revenue compared to #1

It was a hard decision but something has to be done. Prior to turning the anti-ad block wall on I further reduced the ad load (slider is dragged to about 20% mark) and made the change so that you will never see more than 2 ads on your screen (1 for smaller screen) and there are at most 3 ads per page (2 for small screen). Full page ads are set to about <1% chance of appearing. Regular users shouldn't see the full screen ad more than once per day.

So please. I am not asking for too much. Having some ads on your screen is not the end of world but no ads will be the end of TTC.

I'm all for option 2
 

You could probably handle this like TSM from World of Warcraft does. https://www.tradeskillmaster.com/premium

I am sorry that people (including myself) are suggesting ways to keep the site up and asking questions rather then post site issues. However, I sympathize with your situation and support having to find some kind of way to fund the site.

May I ask, do you have a way to keep the site and the file people download with the client.exe separate? It would be a shame if the lack of site revenue affected the ability to download the price table.

If you are able to keep the site separate could you experiment with a login that only allows you to search a certain amount for free like 5 searches and then have a paid structure to search more? Do you have a way to know that someone is abusing the ability to have a certain amount of free searches by creating new accounts?

Do you have any site statistics to see what kind of traffic you have? Meaning some people will probably visit the site and search on occasion. For others maybe they search for common items they want to flip for the traders and contribute more to the site traffic. Maybe knowing what people search for and how often would help determine how to resolve your funding issues.

I feel bad for the situation you are in and I hope there is a way to keep the price table available to download for free, while having some kind of funding for the site to enable people to search for items they are looking for. Having the ability to search for items is a convenience and people should understand that it requires some kind of revenue to provide that convenience.

Addon/Client and price table are unaffected. They are still free to download and can be used even without ads. The forced ads potion only applies to the search and details section of the site.

idk about the 5 searches/account is a good idea. I can see people will either register bunch accounts or rage even harder about membership only.

People who are willing to pay are probably paying the $2 sub for ad free content already. The ones who complains are the ones that does not want to see ads and does not want to pay either.

The main problem is the growth rate of adblock users. Right now TTC sees around 70% in EU and 60% in NA of users using ad block. If you plot the rate of growth it will reach 90+% in 2024. Doesn't matter how efficient the infrastructure is 90+% adblock rate is not going to fund the project at that point.

No one of the site admins, namely me, deleted it. The author of the addon hasn't done a damn thing wrong. They aren't charging for the addon. Hell, they aren't charging for their website. Websites cost money to run. - Cairenn




I don't care if he charges for his site. Absolutely do that. He deserves to have enough money to keep it running.

He's forcing people to disable anti-viruses though and is running intrusive scripts.

These aren't accusations. It's what's happening. It's everywhere in the ESO community right now. All my guilds are talking about it, reddit is talking about it, etc etc.

Why are you guys squashing feedback and criticism of this? I haven't insulted him a single time. - Sainguin

Lol cool so ESOUI is okay with an addon creator admitting he'll take money for VIP data AND he's selling players data from his website?

woof

This website deals with addons, not other websites. That is our concern. What happens on some other site is not. Plus, you obviously have not bothered to read what the author said. You can still use their site absolutely fine for free, just just have to deal with seeing some ads. If you want an ad free experience, you pay a fee. It's pretty reasonable. Sites aren't free.

No rules are being broken that I can see, no one is forcing you to use the AddOn.

Meow

Uhhhhh this forum post is literally to talk about the website issues????????

Yea somehow both of you missed this forum post was specifically supposed to be about website feedback.

But thanks for deleting my feedback and ebing guard dogs for the guy selling people's data.

Feedback is one thing. Accusations are another.

Also, see the edit to my other response.

(I type really slowly right now, just had surgery on my shoulder so I have to hunt-and-peck type everything one handed.)

You guys do realize it's not just disabling ad blocker right?

It's also demanding people disable their anti-viruses and people have found data scraping scripts running.

It's a lot bigger than you're making this out to be.


I'm fine with him making money to keep the site running.

This is some really low stuff.

Also I'd love to know how it's "accusations" when he admitted he's thinking about selling VIP status for first access to data. It's in the first post.

The comments thus far violate #1 and #2 of the site rules.

From the Nexus Forum and Commenting Guidelines even though that is a different site, there is also flame baiting under Be Civil!

I'm not defaming, name calling, or spreading rumors.

I'm being perfectly respectable.

The creator themselves said they considering adding paid VIP for early listing data.

Explain to me how I'm creating a rumor or defaming them or being uncivil.

I'm giving feedback.

Why is this so awful?

Why don't you guys just say the truth and tell me I'm not allowed to criticize a decision I disagree with.

Or better yet, point out where I broke those rules.

The increase in "adblock users" was probably also in part due to Firefox disabling tracking by default. I always had script blocker disabled on TTC. But the ads require you to disable all tracking protection as well. I'm just too European to disable that, so I pay with money instead of paying with my blood. If there was no tracking free option I would not use it at all.

So the paid model for ad free use sounds OK to me. Premium features like price alerts (mail or push) or special search filters would be cool as well.

P2W features like first access to data or exclusive API access are problematic, not sure if I would like that. It would turn me away and I think other people too.

If the donations are enough for server upkeep you might consider some small incentives for uploaders because without them, there is no data. Small stuff like ad free "trials", bonus features or just cosmetic stuff like user tiers/levels.

If donations are not enough you could consider letting people pay for highlighting/pinning a certain amount of their auctions in the search or have them show up in a showcase box like "popular items".

@SainguinLibras
Got a source? Scraping what, where?

Where does he say to disable anti virus programs?

Don't get me wrong, your points might be valid but I have seen lots of criticisms of TTC for years and most of it was just misconceptions or lack of technical knowledge.

Cyxui created a site that is used by tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of users for over 7 years. Thousands of users a day. How many people have thanked him?

Some players are members of smaller guilds in small out of the way locations. Guilds that aren't in major cities or guilds in Outlaws Refuges. These people depend on visitors using TTC to find what they are selling.

Make a TTC website and see how you will finance it with the traffic that it gets for people searching for items to purchase. Then you can have an opinion.

I worked on TES5Edit with Zilav and Hlp back in 2012 and brought a tool that was directly responsible other then the fact mod authors had to use it that directly impacted the modding community for the last decade. I can empathize with doing thankless work for the benefit of others not once asking for anything in return.

Besides that he may find a way to fund the site differently. He may also have others help him host the search capabilities on another site. Which could also have adds and they may have a better way to still show adds even with adblocker. Now that the author has asked for help there are people trying to come up with alternatives to help him.

People trying to resolve the issue, that is constructive and has a meaningful purpose.

The only evidence I have for the anti-virus is anecdotal, but I don't mention it from one person saying it happened.

There's a reddit thread where people have claimed they can't use the site without disabling their ad blockers and antivirus, and the same thing is being said on the official forums too.

I also run a 400+ social guild and at minimum 5 people have come to me saying the same thing. Our guild has been discussing this for 2 days straight now. Everyone is dropping TTC over it.

So while it's all word of mouth, a lot of mouths are reporting the same thing.

As far as the scripts go, I'm going off of the words of someone far smarter than me in this department, but they've said in all their years working within IT and web development, they've never seen such strict setups for detecting ad blockers and collecting data.

I know it might not seem like it, but I've been a fan of TTC for almost a decade now. It THE go to pricing tool in ESO.

I'm really disappointed in this turn of events, and I can only hope a course correction is coming soon.

Cause as it stands, the community at large is not happy about this.

Ok but why does any of that give him the right to pull shady practices like forced ads and data selling?

I appreciate the free work. I appreciate everything a lot of you have done for the community.

Even if I disagree with you strongly right now Sharlikran, you're absolutely prolific in the ESO community and you've done some great work.

Regardless, none of you are free from criticism.

I'm not the only person who disagrees very strongly with what is going with the TTC website. I'm just the only person who managed to find this thread.

And I have given constructive feedback, the ESOUI moderators deleted it.

I literally asked him to create a Patreon. There's no way the community wouldn't rally around that.

But it wasn't even a option and cyx won't even respond to it.

So it's kind of hard to give him any benefit of the doubt in this situation.

10 000/7 year = 120/month
That seems rather expensive, no wonder you need ads or payments. Are you renting a full/dedicated server? It might be worth to switch to a VPS/virtual server, because I'm not sure you will be able to cover that cost even with the new ads.

For HarvestMap I also provide a program and server to upload and download data, similar to TTC. In my case, a simple VPS that costs just 1EUR/month is enough.
I assume the additional TTC web interface requires a bit more power, but I don't think it would be much more expensive.
I rent my VPS for HarvestMap from IONOS.

yeah this ^

sounds like there arnt many people using the site = no ad revenue, so why are the server costs so high? bots scraping the site for low prices?

sounds like it would be more cost effective to make scraping the site useless, rather than forcing ads

I can't reply to every single post. But I can address couple issues you mentioned.

1. You dont need to turn off your anti-virus. However some antivirus providers have ad block module built in. For example Malwarebytes has something called Browser Guard and kaspersky has a module called internet security. Those modules blocks ads and needs to be either turned off or whitelist TTC.

My privilege inside your browser is very limited. I can't even reliably tell which browser you are using so let alone checking what you have installed on your PC. All I am able to check is whether ads are being loaded or not.

2. I failed to see why Patreon would work when Paypal donation button failed miserably hard.

If we are being realistic here we can look at how many sites in the history have managed to survive purely on donations. Only one website comes in mind: Wikipedia. And it is in fact one and the only one that ever came close.

Even for a site as famous as Wikipedia this is what they wrote on their donation page

"We're a non-profit that depends on donations to stay online and thriving, but 98% of our readers don't give; they simply look the other way. If everyone who reads Wikipedia gave just a little, we could keep Wikipedia thriving for years to come. The price of a cup of coffee is all we ask."

Public donation was actually not the only source of income for Wikipedia. Company sponsorship, federal funds, and services are playing big parts.

So back to the question: was there any website that survived solely on donations? Sadly none.

3. So what are the options for publishers nowadays with the rise of ad blockers? Well not many.
a) bite the bullet and hope the revenue can sustain
b) requires paid membership
c) other revenue stream like selling data
d) put on banners to request users to remove ad blocker and support the site
e) ask for donations
f) anti-adblock

Based on the growth rate of ad block uses we already know a) is not an option.
No explanation needed but we know b) is not going to work
Just like you I dont like c) either
d) and e) have already been tried for 7 years and failed

This is not a TTC specific problem but the internet as a whole. More and more sites are choosing f) with no better choice. So if you have a better idea please do not just limit it to TTC. Share it with the whole internet and you can potentially have your name written in the history book as the savior of all publishers.

Using VPS. IDK how familiar you are with DB but allowing users to search while others are inserting takes significant amount of resource (mainly RAM and I/O) compared to just occasionally merging two data files.

Web interface is like the least resource consuming part of the whole project.

I haven't calculate the rate in quite a while. Last time I checked it was like 150-200 queries/second. I have optimized TTC numerus times. All sql queries are written using raw sql and have optimized the query plan for maximum performance. All the sql dead lock errors have been fixed. Indexes are regularly being monitored and any under used indexes are either merged or dropped. I analyzed every single query to make sure the query plan is efficient.

You can look up how much the DB part alone will cost given the I/O rate requirement.

I am pretty confident that the VPS i am using is the minimum spec with all the super deep level optimization I have made in the past few years.

Can you reduce DB load with a Redis layer or are you strictly reliant on the DB for getting and storing up-to-date information?

I don't mean to discourage you, but 150-200 queries per second is next to nothing for a database server. Of course it highly depends on your actual queries, database scheme etc, but usually SQL servers should be able to handle 10k+ queries per second even on small virtual servers that go for like 5$ per month.

As for running a patreon, you can't really compare that to a PayPal donate button. Patreon is different in that you build a community around whatever you are doing and offer rewards to increase willingness of people to donate to your cause.
Take esologs.com for example. I'd say it's rather similar to TTC in a sense and they run a pretty successful patreon: https://www.patreon.com/warcraftlogs

I honestly think if you had just tried the Patreon route first, you would of got supporters and this would of went completely differently.

I'm not sure if you still have the community goodwill to go that route, but I'd really like to try one last time to persuade you.

There are better options than forcing ads and selling data.

It couldn't hurt to try it, ya know? Like what do ya have to lose? Some time setting up an account and putting a banner in your addon page?

My bad. Should have used the most current data instead of something years old in the first place.

Its around 250 insert/s and 18342 index search/s, 38561 page lookups/s + 54.14 GB disk space used with large amount of pages unable to fit in memory.

Even if it does not fully pay for it, I think a Patreon should be something to consider.For one, it's far more consistent than PayPal. Where most donations on PayPal are one time donations, Patreon is monthly. You won't be as dependent on random chance of people deciding to donate. Amount you get from Patreon per person is also probably gonna be more over time, because it's going to be a donation each month.
But the big thing is that one problem/theme with what you currently have is people thinking 'pfft this guy can't be losing money TTC is so big'
Well, Patreon can help there as well. Make a goal 'server costs are paid for, I can turn off ads' at x amount of money and suddenly, people can't as easily dismiss the claim of you losing money. You could also do another tier 'partjal server costs are paid for, anti Adblock is off'. Seeing the actual dollar amount it costs you may also prompt more people to donate.
If no one joins the Patreon? You still come out ahead, because now it's much harder for people to say you're losing money. You don't need to change anything, and if somehow it *does* pay for partial costs or full costs, well, then they win as well.


So even if it gets you $0 you still shut down quite a bit of the criticism, and gain in that sense. (I think you'll probably get some, but nowhere near enough for the entire costs. But some is better than none)

Patreon will work, it does so for many many modders as well. But if you scoff and hem and haw and don't try it, it won't.

Just don't get greedy with initial support amounts like some people do and you might be surprised.

There's been a few times where I've supported a modder and simply forgot to unsub from their patreon long after I stopped playing the game (ff14 being one)... so there's also the ADHD aspect of it lol.

Edit: I just looked at your site again, and the ads aren't *that* bad... the worst one was the popup wanting me to watch something. I find those more intrustive and annoying that the side banner and that big one at the top. My concern is sometimes ads can be hijacked and your site just turns into a host for malware and viruses - NOT saying you would do this willingly. Also I have issues with flickering/strobbing ads, I don't get seizures but they do give me migraines sometimes... if ads were just static pictures I wouldn't have problems with them at all.

So heres what I am thinking. I can potentially get some first party affiliate style ads where the only components are one static image + a referral link. No 3rd party cookie or connection (unless you click on it ofc).

Those type of ads are cookie free tracker free beacon free. They will work even with your adblocker on and without changing any of your security settings.

Does that sound like a good enough solution to everyone?

Sure, but why not try patreon too? See which one is better. At least with patreon you don't have to deal with some potentially shady ad partner or offensive ad.

Feel like doesnt matter what I set people will find ways to flame and I am not super convinced this will work so probably going to defer it.

First party ad experiment is ready. No tracker no privacy invasion no security adjustment required.

sounds good 👍

If patreon is completely optional im not sure why anyone would flame you for using it?

I think you're being a bit pessimistic.

One of the first messages I sent to my guild's discord today was:

"Big news with TTC! No more forced ads!"

and the reception was pretty positive and that sentiment has stuck all day. Everyone's happy to see the change. People are still a bit put off by how poorly the first attempt was done, but that's not a big deal if you don't do something like forced ads, etc again.

Try a Patreon. It can't hurt, and you have multiple people in this thread telling you they'd support the idea, and possibly you through Patreon. I probably would. I can't imagine how many people would be willing to give to help if you put a big banner on your addon page saying "hey I need help keeping our beloved addon alive, please support me on Patreon so I can continue working, etc etc".

I think part of the reason nobody knows you need help, is you're not saying it. There's no indication on your addon page, from what I just re-read, that you're having any kind of financial struggle maintaining the project.

I understand it's on your main site, but most people are gonna see the addon page first. That's your best shot at reaching people.

I really think it could work if ya just give it a chance.

Nobody is going to flame you for doing something we've been suggesting from the start.

EDIT: Even shut off my adblocker to show support. Now that I'm not worried about some crappy ad being a malware or something stealing my information, I'm gonna support the site. That's all it takes dude.

Another way to get help would be adding info to the client e.g. Just a text line with the patreon link.
Or add the link to LibAddonMenu settings of TTC as a new submenu "Support TTC server". As it is closed Noone would be disturbed. And if you open it let it show a description control and a button that opens the website of patreon, or your website where one is able to see the info and patreon link.
I bet this would reach a lot supporters, just don't make it a disturbing pop-up or anything like this.

Please add the Steadfast Society motifs database.

+1

Patreon should work with all these tips. It worth the try. You might be surprised. :)
Also maybe find a cheaper provider for your vps? i don't know. You probably already did that.

The fact is, there's people who can and will happily donate, and there's people who can't or simply won't.

The question is--how much money is needed? Well, who knows, as it's all obscured for anyone but the author to see. I would suggest they set up a monthly goal to cover expenses, then prominently display that figure on the TTP website. For every dollar that is donated, a dollar gets subtracted from that amount, and the displayed figure updated in [near] real-time. If the monthly goal is met, then the service remains online, and any additional funds goes towards the following month(s). However, if the goal isn't met, then the service goes offline until the appropriate funds are raised.

This would seem to be fair to both the author and the users, would it not? Actions in the dark can appear to be sinister in nature. This can be rectified by putting everything out in the open so people can see what is needed, when it's needed, and how their donations are actually helping the site.

Hi! Since Spanish has been included as an official language, are there plans to update TTC for Spanish? Thank you very much for your work!

I wouldn't mind the ads (not like I have a choice the way the website is coded now - pretty clever programming btw, not loading if adblocker is active, however that might work) if they weren't so damn obtrusive.
A banner covering like a fifth of a screen on top of the results? Ad popups that require me to click on buttons in order to display the actual website behind?
Seriously, is THIS necessary? You need to pay for servers and there are no other means of income for it, by all means, use ads, but not this.

The adds that do not popup and just stay where they are are quite big, yes, but they do not disturb me that much.
But I agree with that popup adds, they really annoy and suck! Like I press on the main website icon and a popup opens which blocks all website interaction, and only provides a very small X button, about the same color like the background? This really sucks.
Make the adds show as fixed images, remove those popups please or at least let the close button at the popups show bigger and better (who ever designed that). At least they do not show that often within the same website search and navigation...

I wouldn't mind a small banner on top of the site and another at the bottom. Heck I don't care about the side ad at all because most of it is outside of the browser window somehow (lol), but a huge banner where the results are is just too bad. Surely the placement doesn't affect how much you get paid, right? Just shove it at the bottom if not (I hope) or something...

What's this talk about scrips btw? These are (as things are right now) some non-standard ads?

It sure does. I can't provide the actual number due to Google's term but the bottom ad generates less than 1/5 of the top one for example.. Not sure what script we are talking about here

Popup/full screen ad is set to almost min rate which is about 1% chance of appearing. That TTC to do 1-3 banners per page instead of 3-5. Some people might prefer one way or another unfortunately i dont have the ability to change it on the fly.

oooooooooooooooooof!

That's not good.

And people who say the ads are related to whatever you've search for before, I have several blockers on my browser and regularly delete any cookies I might have.
I once got a ad on the TTC website for male balding. Which is just funny if you know me at all. I don't need to worry about male balding, thank you.

Anyway, my point is... the TTC website admin may want to try to filter their ads a little better, if possible?

I think he basically confirmed things will stay the way they were in the post above yours :D

loooooooooooooooooool
hey, at least it is game-related
lmao

After couple weeks of attempt I have to say Patreon's API is just too awful to work with.

Firstly their documentation sux. Documentation only provide one sample payload with the most important piece missing and doesnt tell you what the payload might differ for different events.

Based on their documentation their trigger doesnt fire if user paused the pledge. Which means users can just create a pledge and then pause it before the payment is made. Patreon will still happily report that the user has pledged to the campaign.

Also they specifically mentioned that any fraud event will not trigger any trigger. I.E. you can just put in a fake card and the server will never know.

The way their API is designed right now is super developer unfriendly and requires too much manual labor. Unless people are ok with no perks I dont see myself working with that awful API/webhook until they made it better.

I can't find anything in the setting that allows me to filter on individual ads but i can try harder. Not sure how the relevance algorithm works. But maybe lots of ESO players are interested in male balding and Google just assumes you might be interested as well lol?

HAHAHAHA! I love that. That's hilarious. :D

I've seen worse... The last time I looked into their API it was relatively straight forward (I use this package as well as their wordpress plugin), but I have to admit I don't use events or webhooks directly and only retrieved data about patrons on demand.
I also don't think it's possible to create a pledge without paying. Last time I checked you will be charged immediately when you pledge to someone, even if it's the last day of a month (in which case the patron will get charged twice and may ask you for a refund). On the off chance that someone pledges to get a reward and then asks their bank for a refund (= chargeback fraud, which afaik gets their bank account banned from patreon if they do it too often) you could still run a cronjob to sync the status via the api to lock them out after a while.

My problem is that they only provided the API for the happy path and 0 protection for exploits.

Couple red flags I see are

https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us...46-Patreon-API
"As of June 22nd, 2020, we no longer provide Patreon developer support for our API due to resource constraints. Endpoints will continue to function as normal, and you can also find peer-to-peer resources in our Tech and Dev channel on Discord."

"Unfortunately, at this time, we do not offer a separate testing/sandbox API."

"Fires when a user stops pledging or the pledge is cancelled altogether. Does not fire for pledge pausing, as the pledge still exists."

and then

"APIv2 is still in beta, and while the scopes and endpoints are stable, the specific properties returned on the resources may change."

yea great so property might even change within the same API version. Why bother versioning it after all. Best part is that v1 is deprecating and V2 is not even stable.

I initially thought Paypal's API was bad enough but Patreon is just another level lol

Man, I know this thread is supposed to be for website issues (I have none), but I just read through this thread and it doesn't seem you've gotten much good feedback so I thought I'd share a few thoughts that might be constructive, hopefully it's useful, and if not just ignore the crazy person.

First off, I feel like a tool that I haven't donated, TTC is the de-facto market tool..it's like the NYSE. So just kicked a hundred your way right now. Anybody else who reads this thread should too.

Secondly...

I think you're pretty much spot on with your challenges. There's probably some optimization you can do on the infrastructure, but it likely won't be enough given your volume.

Personally, I disabled my adblocker and have no issues with the ads and haven't identified any malicious scripts being deployed, looks like your ad network is pretty legit...looks like google. You could also join an affiliate marketing network, these have a higher return and your audience will probably be receptive to tech/gaming related affiliations which pay out the most.

I would say the "donate" button could use some work...it moves around on the screen with the ads and looks like an ad. I'd make it more intrusive, small banner at the top of the page, place a button next to every listing...also indicate that it's donating to TTC instead of just "donate", looks kinda sketchy otherwise.

Also, you need a couple of good "benefactor's" to help with the donations, I know most successful donation projects have a few benefactors who provide the majority of funds. Maybe some outreach to Guild Masters of large guilds or Devs of popular add-ons could help out. Guild masters can crowd source funds pretty quickly.

Patreon's API is garbage, just do a quick search on how to view Patreon content for free and you'll uncover at least a dozen exploits. Paypal isn't so bad, but yeah, plenty of issues. I haven't tried myself but some of my friends have had good luck with Buy me a coffee for their open source projects.

I think your best bet will be monetizing the data. The people you're catering to have money and will definitely spend it...I bought a mountain goat for $25 this week, so yeah...

Real-time API (you could even do a day delay on the website by default and paid users could get real time), premium alerts, market trends, paid Discord bot integration, etc...you could leverage the guild community greatly in this, I'm sure. Also, several add-ons rely on your data as well..mine included...I don't think it's possible, but charge other add on developers access to your data could be something.

It would be cool to provide some analytics, some of my guildies today are wondering why sales have been soft the last couple of days. They are speculating it's because there's a drop in the usual mats and PvE items in favor of the PvP items due to the event. I would bet you have the data that could confirm or reject that hypothesis...how cool would it be to present that to users a week before? "ESO has a PvP event coming up, here's the top selling items during the event last year".

I think a challenge you'll have though is the desktop client, people volunteer their data with no real benefit to the individual...so you may have to make it so desktop client users don't have to pay for certain premium content, or something. Also, maybe make the client grab more info, not just the individual user's sales but all they see for sale and all their guild sales. That'll amp up the amount of data but also not require you to have as many users active with the desktop client to maintain reliable data.

Anyway, hope something in there is helpful. Thanks for the add-on, it's killer.

Where is this? There are no cookie settings on the website anywhere.

Happens automatically when your browser blocks tracking.

cyxui:
I clicked on TTC download as the auto updater refused to work somehow, even though it was allowed and not blocked anywhere.
As I tried to download the TTC addon from the website a popup showed directly after I had clicked on the download link at the top of the website.
I did not pay attention 100% and thought I was downloading the TTC addon, but all of sudden it started to download a silly browser expansion...


There only exists a really small "Ad" info at the top left corner, and if you do not look twice and slowly you think you are going to download the just clicked TTC client.

This is really a no go and sucks big time. You can show as many website and affiliate links you want there but why is it providing an installer download as I click on the TTC download? This looks like it was intended or AI just made it look like it was. At least this was annoying.

I'm not against adverstisements but being tricked into some other software installation is just bad!

Fair enough. Ads has been disabled on that page so it shouldnt cause anymore cases like this.

i have a better one (dont worry, i dont care too much, but think it's kinda funny)




edit... well, tbh it is a bit annoying..., because when i click on them they are all blocked in my country -.-

Sorry, does not look like ads were disabled there.

https://eu.tamrieltradecentre.com/pc/Trade
Language German.
Clicked on "Erweiterung" (AddOn) at the top, then on "Herunterladen" (Download)

Screenshot from today:


The add still shows and still makes me think I need to click on that zip file of the add...

I disabled all ads on the download page. so it might still show up in other pages. Unfortunately, i dont have control on each individual ads. If you feel like the particular ad is misleading/baiting feel free to click on the report button and Google should have a review process to remove those ads.

@cyxui
 

I was looking for some Winter Festival Writs to see some of the differences to make sure I have a material cost for them. When looking on your site there are a lot of them from "Made in USSR" with no location.

If you allow translations and such do you check that the translators are using a newer EXE and update their Lua code? It seems odd they would miss the location. I personally think is would be better to download all the translations and incorporate them into one download for consistency if you database is flooded with seemingly suspicious data.

I would be willing to make the Lua changes if needed. However, I can not manage the EXE portion.