Why the continual rescanning ?

[ZalidTheBur]

I've been using the gold guide for a short while now and I feel that the AH shopping module is atrocious.
I think you need to go back to the drawing board on this one.
I just do not understand why it has been designed the way it has. It feels so clunky and slow.
I've been using auctioneer for years and their buying module is light years ahead in usability. You should seriously look at how they handle it and see if you can improve the Zygor one to be as efficient.
Buying anything via Zygor is just way too time consuming.
With so many items up as singles, which is of course an issue with the darn stupid sellers, if you have to buy anything of good quantity, it can take absolute ages. Every time Zygor finds a new auction, I am left waiting ages for it to rescan slowly through every page of that item.
eg, Just tried to buy around 3200 Blackrock Ore and it's taken me over an hour. Every 5 or so buys, Zygor finds a new auction and with over 100 pages of auctions, you can just imagine how much time is being wasted.
Surely the sane method would be to let us buy all the auctions it found originally and then at the end to do another auto scan for any new ones ?
Or have I missed an option that would actually do it this way and the default is just no good on larger servers ?
Also, every so often the scanner seems to just go into continual auto-scan mode, where it will just continually rescan the item you have been buying and never stop. Not sure why this happens, but the only way I've found to stop it is to actually log out.

[ZG Support 1]

If you have Auctioneer installed and running try disabling that and see if you keep getting the constant scanning. I know there is an option in Auctioneer that does automatic scanning of items that might be causing some of this.

[ZalidTheBur]

Sorry. I should have mentioned that I do not have auctioneer running. I knew that there were issues with them both running, so I turned it off.
Not seen any mention of Auctionator or Undermine Journal being an issue. Those are the only other auction addon that I have running that I can see.
I'll try a run through with only Zygor running tomorrow and see if there is any improvement.

Just to clarify - Are you saying that Zygor should not be rescanning every time it finds a new auction ?

[ZG Support 1]

I personally haven't seen that happen and no one has reported seeing any problems with it getting stuck in a repeating scan so I'm thinking all of the scanning happening might be some oddball addon conflict or something else going on.

[ZalidTheBur]

Okay. Looks like I need to do some testing tomorrow then and see if it is an addon causing this issue.
I'm glad this is not how the shopping system should work as it has been slowly driving me up the wall ;-)

[ZG Support 1]

You can also try using the wrench icon on the desktop client to do a reinstall of the guides, then go into the settings and sync the realm data again. It's possible that there might be a corrupted file in the Zygor folder.

[ZalidTheBur]

Still having issues with this module.
I've been trying it for a few days now since making it the only addon running and reinstalling the guides.

I just think its the way you have designed it, which I is getting way too annoying for me.
Every time it does this "Unexpected auction found. rescanning.", it means I have to wait for it. When I am trying to buy out a lot of items, with many pages for it to rescan, it just makes me want to give up at times. I just do not understand why it keeps rescanning, unless people are posting auctions as I am buying.
Surely a better system would be to just buy all the items that you found during the scan and then if an item was found, rescan again at the end ? Rescanning numerous times while trying to buy items is just not user friendly.
The module works as I am making gold. But this rescanning is just making me to almost not want to bother.
What takes a few seconds in Auctioneer takes many minutes in Zygor. Please can you sort this out. I am sure I am not the only one having the rescanning blues. Or am I ? Anyone else seeing this issue ?
I would just love the Zygor buying part be as quick and painless as Auctioneer.

[ZG Support 1]

I'll talk to the team to see if this is something that is in the code or a bug or what.

[ZG Support 1]

Ok, according to our dev team that re-scanning needs to happen in order to make sure that you are buying out the cheapest item and/or still making a profit if the cheap item has already been purchased.

Rescan takes place if the item from last scan is not there when we try to buy it out. That can happen if someone bought out this item, or posted some cheaper auction, thus pushing our expected target out of position. Since our target is to buy out cheapest auctions for given item, so we can relist it for profit while still having our posted auction being cheapest, we cannot bypass rescanning in such cases. If we did not, we would buy stuff out, only to find out that the current cheapest auction is below what we expected, thus killing our profit unless user manually buys the auction out (and we will not be able to tell them what to buy, as the shopping task is already done and unlikely to show up again with just couple auctions added).

[ZalidTheBur]

I had a feeling it was something like that. But I must respond to the logic of the Dev Team on this.

Rescan takes place if the item from last scan is not there when we try to buy it out. That can happen if someone bought out this item, or posted some cheaper auction, thus pushing our expected target out of position.
As I suspected and understand.

Since our target is to buy out cheapest auctions for given item, so we can relist it for profit while still having our posted auction being cheapest, we cannot bypass rescanning in such cases. If we did not, we would buy stuff out, only to find out that the current cheapest auction is below what we expected, thus killing our profit unless user manually buys the auction out (and we will not be able to tell them what to buy, as the shopping task is already done and unlikely to show up again with just couple auctions added).
Surely, as I already stated, the system could be and should be changed to do a rescan when you get to the end of buying out all the items tagged for buying. This would mean one scan at the end instead of the 20 scans I can get for some items. With upwards of 40 pages on some items, those 20 scans are really not good.
As the program already scans auctions when it does not find an item, then I cannot see the logic of having numerous scans during the buying out of an item, instead of one at the end of buying the tagged items that are present.

Can the Dev Team elaborate a little on the comment "thus pushing our expected target out of position". As I have no idea about the programming behind the AH, I can only take this comment as the AH being a big list (to keep it simply), with each item posted being given a slot in that list. Zygor then tags that slot for purchase. The list is organised via the Buy Out Price and anyone putting up auctions causes the items to be re-arranged within the list. Meaning cheaper items move the tagged items out of their slots and therefore Zygor then has no idea if that item still exists and therefore has to rescan for it. Does that sound about right ?
I therefore can see the need for rescanning and why it has to happen when any item cannot be found, as all tagged items will have been moved too.

There must be a better system for this tagging and finding the items. Auctioneer seems to have found a way as I have never had to sit there while it does a slow scan of each page of the item. I have seen it do a quick scan at times while I am buying stuff. But it is very quick. Though I will admit that I have never purchased items on the scale that I am with Zygor. I may try a test and when I find another large amount of an item to buy out, I will try buying it through Auctioneer just to see if it is my imagination that it is quicker.

Many thanks for the responses from you and the Dev Team.

[ZG Support 1]

There will be a response for you but it will take him a while to get it written up since he does have other coding work that needs to be done as well.