We've all heard it - the cries from people maintaining that they 'can't sell anything', or that the 'game is dead'. They blame it on the lack of buyers and how the devs have seemingly abandoned the project, but this is simply untrue.
Every day I see users looking to buy properties from others who want to sell, but the method of tracking down the right land is tedious and often leads to an injured forehead after smashing a keyboard ten times over.
The Real 'Issue'
After receiving the dreaded text message that 'you have Covid', I wondered what I would do for the next two weeks in order to keep my sanity intact. Then, the Marketplace reopened for the first time in 15 days - and I found myself struggling to find the right property to buy, even though I knew exactly what I was looking for.
Connecting buyers with sellers is a simple issue with many solutions. Currently, Earth 2 offers a few search parameters to help you find the perfect plot.
They are: Tile Value, Country, Class, Owner and Tier.
These filters, while seemingly very precise, leave hundreds of pages of property for you to scour through, and are riddled with properties from locked countries that are impossible to buy.
A Positive Example - And the solution
The Jewel Bazaar, whilst not being the prettiest page on Earth2, is probably the most functional and best-optimised. The demand for jewels is consistently very high (on par with tiles), but because of their simplicity and price, sell in the thousands every day. Jewels can be bought in under a second and can be refined down to a single quality (rarity) with only a few filters.
But unlike Jewels, Properties need further filters to really narrow down search results. Here are some examples:
A map to find properties for sale in a determined area, rather than a whole country.
Filters to sort by minimum/maximum tiles
Either remove or revamp Market Value (as seen in one of my other articles)
These would kickstart marketplace sales and allow more users to find their ideal property.
My Twitter poll (posted only minutes before this article was released) showed a clear need for this. The only question about it is whether Earth 2 will listen.
Here is another intelligent answer from a community member:
Stay safe.
Toba, out