Tuesday, November 6, 2012

7 Things I Wish I Could Do With Contracts




Setting Up Contracts



This would be awesome. Right now, militia pilots have resorted to 'Open a trade with me if you need a ship' and 'X in fleet if you want a ship' methods of exchanging resources. With the increasing of upgrades in Retribution, allowing people to make contracts to militias would open the door to a niche profession --supplying a military.

Also, it would give Manufacturer's and others the ability to directly involve themselves in Faction War within their chosen profession.



  • I'd love a 'quick contract' option for quickly setting up private, item exchange contracts.

I want to select multiple items in my hanger, then right click a person's name in a chat window and have the ability to quickly create a private contract with those items to that person.

It can skip through the entire workflow to the last page where I specify price, just before the summary page. This might be a little difficult behind the scenes, but I really feel that dumping some stuff in a contract to a friend should be quick, easy, and intuitive, and not involve some multi-step ordeal.

Viewing My Contracts


  • I want to be able to remove/hide columns. (On the My Contracts tab)

We can currently do this in the Transactions portion of our wallet. I think it would be nice to hide information we don't care about, and possibly even rearrange the columns.


  • I would  remove redundant information. (On the My Contracts tab)

I would completely delete the 'Status' column. You have to select a status when you perform a query on this window, either "Outstanding" "In-Progress" or "Finished." It makes no sense that there is a column telling me what the status is for each contract when I just selected which ones I want to see!

I also wish there was a way to combine the From/to column, so that when I look at my own contracts I don't see my name a million times. (Perhaps separate by color contracts that I bought vs ones that I sold, or an icon of some sort.

  • I would add several column options. (On the My Contracts tab)

I want to see my descriptions! I would almost rather see and sort by my own labels on my contracts then the 'Contract' column given. I sell a LOT of contracts every week, and seeing how many I sold labeled 'Shield Thrasher' would be worth a lot more to me then seeing a column with a bunch of [Multiple Items] in it.

Secondly, I want to see the price! In a column. Even when I mouse over a contract I can't see this, and it's very annoying when you're trying to keep records or see how much ISK you made that day on contracts! I actually have to individually open each contract to see how much I sold/bought it for...

It would be nice to see the location in a column. (But have the ability to remove it.) Right now, you can only see the location when you mouse over the item.


Viewing Available Contracts


  • Similar to the My Contracts tab, I want to see the Descriptions!  

The above screen shot is a picture of alliance contracts, and as you can see you can't tell them apart very easily. We have alliance members that sell fully fit ships of all sorts and it would be really nice to be able to easily pick out what I want, instead of mousing over each and every contract to see what it is...

General

  • The ability to renew a contract.
I'll pay all the fees, and etc. However, it would be nice to be able to simply hit 'Renew' on a contract when it's expired, instead of having to delete it, then start from scratch to put the exact same thing up again.

Another idea that's kind of 'out there' is if Fitting Links would automatically show in the info for a contract if it contains fit ships. Sometimes, it's hard looking at a long list of modules and understanding what you are really looking at.

Related Reading:
 7 Things I Wish I Could Change in Unified Inventory

4 comments:

  1. Great post, linked for more visibility.

    One more idea: "modify contract price": you pay the same fees as deleting the contract and recreating it with the new price, except you don't have to go trough all the clicks.

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  2. jup. many things that can be improved there. either displaying the description of a contract or placing a separate "name" field (optional) for a short version and a long (more lines) field for description.

    Giving place for a short descriptive name (like "shield thrasher") and a more "marketing" like field for description (like "rapier with double faction web, dead space mwd and XXk EHP buffer tank")

    and +1 for no captcha :-)

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  3. May I do a plant, and give a link to my post @ the little thing thread;http://goo.gl/lsF7g, I also have a lot of idea on contracts ;).

    ReplyDelete
  4. I create somewhere between 100 and 500 contracts per week. (I'm the ship fitter for RvB, providing prefit ships for both sides of the conflict.) This basically entails receiving contracts full of modules, ship hulls, ammunition, and rigs, then doing a basic inventory of currently available ships (I think I currently offer ten different hulls/fits). Once I have my inventory, I "farm out" the actual ship fitting to a few of my helpers. In turn, they fit the ships and contract them back.

    First "Gotcha!" - when you put multiple prefit ships into a contract, you HAVE to click "YES" on that stupid warning for EVERY. SINGLE. SHIP. For contracts with the numbers I deal with, it can have some of my fitters clicking "Yes" a few hundred times.

    Once I get the ships back, I start creating my contracts. Some ships are listed in singles, and most are listed in groups of five.

    Second "Gotcha!" - If I create a contract (containing a fitted ship, with ammo, rigs, etc), I can currently right-click the contract and choose "copy contract". This, however, merely creates another contract with all the individual parts in it, and does not actually create a contract with an identical prefit ship (with ammo, rigs, etc), even if such a ship exists in the hangar.

    This means, if I have 50 prefit Rifters in my hangar, and create a contract from one of them, and try to "copy" it, the contract which is subsequently created will contain a packaged Rifter hull, modules, rigs, and ammunition. It will not create another contract with a prefit Rifter in it.

    So, if I could add one thing to Eve Online to make my contracting "job" easier, it would be this:

    Copy Contract should copy the contract identically. If the contract I'm copying has a prefit ship, the resulting contract should have another prefit ship identical to the first in it (provided there is one available in the hangar).

    ReplyDelete