In the old days the main shops cleared once an hour on the hour. These days we get times when the shops don't clear for hours followed by shops stocking a few bits of junk, clearing and stocking the same bits of junk over and over again for hours.

Few people restock these days but I don't find that surprising. I'm retired so can go away when nothing useful is restocking and come back when the pattern's changed. Many players, however, don't have this luxury. If they can only get on when it's the junk, clear, junk routine, they aren't going to be restocking anything unless there's something they need for a quest which is a few hundred sP cheaper than player shops.

I have to agree, I wish the shops would clear in more of a set pattern. I used to really enjoy restocking but now I mostly just find myself vending to fill up my shop instead. When I do get the urge to get some restocking done, it ends up being at a time when the shops are all empty, and it's a little annoying waiting for a shop to fill up a little just to have it all clear again so soon.

Edit: I think them clearing once every hour on the hour might be a little too much though personally, maybe once every 2-3 hours (I can't really remember how long it takes them to fill with a decent amount of items?) I like it when the shops are full of stuff, it's fun to dig through them. ^-^

I agree. I've been trying to restock a lot lately and I'm finding the restocking times to be very odd indeed. Some days I make oodles of finds, other days I end up buying nothing at all. Its very discouraging. I'm not even saying there should be more rares, some days I'm not even finding "normal" rarity items.

I've come to the conclusion that it's a complete waste of time and energy trying to restock these days so I'm not going to bother. I'll compensate for my drop in income by not getting any more CWs from the Pawn Shop so I won't have to buy so many CSC gift cards from other players.

Odd, because it seems to me they're clearing much more regularly. Yesterday I was in the stores and they cleared twice in the span of five minutes.

Also not sure how clearing the stores more often would solve the stated "junk" problem, as the next restock would just supply more "junk" - IE, the common items that are already least popular and sell the least.

The solution seems as though it won't fix this particular stated problem. I think it's unrealistic to expect that every single user be able to find useful, high value reselling items in the store every single time they visit, which is how this sounds to me.

I don't see what will be made better by this change. It will be more of the same, just the stores'll be a little emptier, the way they were after Keith instituted the "no RS war" restocking rates (whereupon people complained bitterly). The items themselves and the rate they appear in the stores won't change. So no support.

I think you misunderstood the complaint. The fact that the shop cleared twice in the span of five minutes, for you last night, is the problem. The suggestion is that restock times should be more consistent with less needless clearing; with a minimum time between clearings so the shop does have time to fill up, making restocking less frustrating as you are not plagued by items being removed the moment they're restocked.

I don't think I did misunderstand. Quoted from the OP: "These days we get times when the shops don't clear for hours followed by shops stocking a few bits of junk, clearing and stocking the same bits of junk over and over again for hours."

According to the OP, it's not just the shops aren't clearing often enough, that it's the same old junk. It's the fact that "nothing useful is restocking" that is the main issue in the OP, not how fast/often it restocks. Changing how often shops clear won't change what is being restocked. It's conflating two completely separate things.

Edited for clarity.

@ Lirikai

When the shops clear every few minutes the same few junk items are replaced over and over again. This isn't much help for people who can only get on when the shops are going through one of these phases because there's nothing for them to restock for their shops. After all, who wants to buy something from a main shop just to sell it for less than they paid for it?

Three people in this topic agree with what I'm saying so it's not my imagination. There will also be a lot of people who have been here long enough to remember when shops cleared once an hour, every hour.

As for junk in general, Keith explained that in this topic - http://subeta.net/forums/view/902577/1

Things just get worse as more and more items are added to the site. The items which get ridiculously inflated because they don't restock as they should do turn up eventually but that's not much use if they don't stay in the shops long enough for people to find and buy them. The old system of clearing once an hour wasn't perfect because there were times when a restock happened at one minute to the hour so everything cleared almost as soon as it came in. This didn't happen very often, though, so there was a much better chance of people finding stuff throughout the day.

I said this on another topic but I wonder if it would be possible to have something where the shops restock an item then put that item on a "blacklist" to not restock again for a couple of restockings. I don't know if this would make those items that don't restock as much show up more or not.

This would mean having to do new coding on the shops of course, I know that.

edit- I should say have the item not restock again after a clearing.

12pm: shops clear then restock A Bottled River Water restocks this time. 1pm: shops clear then restock A Bottled River Water won't restock since it already did an hour ago

I've been restocking for the past couple of days, and I don't know if the shops I've been in are popular or not, I don't know if the items I'm looking for are popular ones but I've gotten a good variety of rarities, including items that it took me hours to even see in the shops. It does get tiring looking through an entire page of junk, but I'm really not sure blacklisting items is the way to go about fixing that. Honestly I don't think there are enough items to keep a decent stock if things got blacklisted.

I can definitely see how items clearing at regular intervals would help because there wouldn't be as much time for junk to accumulate (and on the other hand, the same shop wouldn't clear 2-3 minutes apart like I saw last night).

@ Darkrai Ah, that was an example. I have no idea how many times an hour the shops restock or clear out as I'm not a restocker. ;) That would be something that would have to be played with to get everything going correctly.

Edit- Darn cat stepping on the mouse.

I have no idea what could work other that just flat out retiring items. Besides in time then we'd have so many items retired.

Yeah I really am not sure what would work better either. There are tons of items that rarely get bought, but unfortunately not all of them are the ones that will be retired first. The Fur Trimmed Vests and Cropped Jackets sit for quite awhile in Icy Goods, but they're pretty far down in the shop when it's full.