Suggestion: Sparklines

from Stardock Forums

Sparklines are tiny graphs that often show trend information.  Here's what OTC might look like with sparklines for resources and stock prices:-

OTC Sparklines

Each sparkline could show trend information for the last rolling five minutes, with perhaps a sample taken every five seconds.  Perhaps the sparkline could be colour coded indicating whether the last movement was up (green) or down (red).

 

 

 

14,651 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Very cool! Thanks for mocking this up! I will talk about it with the team.

Thanks!

-Scott-

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

Yep, this would be fantastic.

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

Cool! I like it; though it certainly has the potential drawback of misleading players...

Past results do not guarantee future trends! :-)

Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

Yes! This! I'd been chewing over how to mock it up, but yes --- absolutely.

 

There's going to be a challenge around how you present current price (ideally, something super-simple like a dot at the end of the sparkline) and fluctuations against the longer-term (how far does the line reflect? the longer view is handier for seeing overall trends, but loses detail of volatility, the shorter shows what's going on but might not show wild price wars that occur in instants), and then the axis (does the axis stay at 0-100, making a commodity hovering at 1-2 look dead, or does it show the range for that commodity?).

 

This is a fantastic idea.

Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top

You're right, there are a few different ways to go on this one.  As prices can fluctuate from $1-$300 within seconds, having a general bar graph from $0-$500 would look dumb.  It needs to show changes in relation to where it is at this time, like a stochastic graph irl stocks.

Perhaps an easy way to show fluctuations is if the graph is constantly calculated in relation to it's current price.  So if it shows $1, and it's been that way for a while, then it would have a flat line.  If it was $100, but just rose from $50, the bar would be twice the size as it were a minute ago.

I think a 5 minute increment would have to be a maximum, as these games usually only last 20 mins or less, and anything further is irrelevant.  Perhaps an update twice per 'day' - at noon and midnight would suffice?  This would be an update every 1 minute & 20 seconds?  Enough to show how things have changed, spot trends between day/night cycles, and allow the interesting interaction where people can purposely manipulate the market around noon/midnight to try to skew these graphs.

I think it's a great idea, unless the devs want us to keep track of this ourselves, and would thus increase a player's "skill" by following the trends with the naked eye while also focusing on other issues.