Twilight Forums

Hi y'all.

First, let me get right out that I'm a long time KoL-er and that I really appreciate Ryme's effort to reimplement KoL mechanics in a completely new setting and with its own peculiar twist. I know the game is young and that it's not quite fair to critisize it too much, but some things just..well.. don't click to well in my opinion.

By that I mostly mean the Auction House. At first it seemed to me like a nice, inventive idea - instead of direct trading, you bid for the stuff you want. However, after some time I realized the concept of AH is heavily flawed, and either it merits some serious revamping or perhaps even nuking from orbit.

Let me elaborate by analyzing AH's usefulness in moving high end items (stars, IoTMs and rares once they get discovered/implemented) and low end items (everything but).



1) Low-end items - Low items and auctions don't really mix too well. Buyers don't really want to wait 1-3 days to maybe get an item. If I want to buy myself a better melee weapon I usually want it now, not tomorrow. Even if Ryme implemented lesser window intervals it still wouldn't do - cheap items should be readily available. On the seller side situation is almost as bleak - I'd rather autosell then use the clunky interface to set up an auction on a cheap item. Also, I usually want to sell it, not wait too long for my money.

As a direct result, people will either not trade the low end items in AH, or more likely just set up Buy-it-now prices in bulk until they slowly gravitate towards autosell prices and make the entire auction concept redundant - if Buy-It-Now is the foundation of low item trading, why not just have a regular mall for them and get done with it?


2) High-end items - now THOSE thing should really benefit from auction system, right? Wrong. If I want to buy myself a high-end item, my only chance is camping by my computer for at least 24 hours and relentlessly refreshing the auction page - or perhaps I'll get extremely lucky and place a bid just as the auction is nearing its end, which is even now nigh-impossible and will be even worse when more players flood in.

But it gets even worse. If I REALLY want to get a high-end item, what's stopping me from creating an AuctionBot which will constantly monitor AH and bid for me 24/7? Hell, I could probably create it today if I wanted to and had the time. A real person just cannot compete with that, unless he wants to have a real life. And trust me, AuctionBots will surface quite soon.


So.. to sum up, my opinion is Ryme will eventually have to do one of the following:

1) Make the "time remaining" readily available - a seemingly nice solution, but kinda impractical because it heavily interferes with playes RL time. Think about it - the AH would basically force you to log in at the EXACT time to join in the end of auction madness. Noone wants to schedule his/her life around a game, but rather the other way around.

2) Make the bids a secret, so you never know what the highest bid is until the auction is over - I think this would be quite elegant, and would give everyone a much better chance of getting the highest bid. Still, this wouldn't exactly be an "auction" anymore.

or

3) Nuke the AH altogether and, sadly, emulate the KoL Mall because, let's face it, that thing actually works quite well. AH could perhaps be a little side area, like the flea market in KoL, but NOT the place on which the entire economy is based on and which creates the strongest influences on the item prices in TH as such.

There, the rant is done. Cheers!

I rather like the silent auction idea.

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The churches are empty / The priest has gone home / And we are left standing / Together alone
--October Project: "Dark Time"

So do I.

It's hard to say without testing it, but it could either work very effectively in the favor of the person auctioning things, or very effectively against them.

Are people more inclined to bid high to be sure to get it, or bid low in hopes that everyone else is bidding lower?

At any rate it's one of the most interesting ways to sell game items that I've seen.

In theory, people are more likely to bid what they think it's worth, thus stabalizing the market.

_________________

The churches are empty / The priest has gone home / And we are left standing / Together alone
--October Project: "Dark Time"

The system as it currently stands already works very much in favor of person auctioning things (and heavily against the person trying to buy stuff). The auctioneer can bid for his own stuff freely, effectively raising the bidding price to high heaven. If he wins the bid, he only pays 5% of the "selling" price to the AH, a risk I'd be quite willing to take while trying to up the price as much as possible. This unfortunately effects the percieved price of the item, because following auctions tend to look upon the previous ones to get the feel of the item's worth.

With silent auctions auctioneer's hands would be a little bit more tied, because he wouldn't be able to constantly push the price higher. Also, it would help item prices gravitate to their "natural" worth.

Actually, that should be prevented regardless of any other changes.

_________________

The churches are empty / The priest has gone home / And we are left standing / Together alone
--October Project: "Dark Time"

Further suggestions:

1.) Diversify the Time Frame indicated
With other words -
<2h left until the auction ends: Short
2h-12h until the auction ends: Medium
12h-24h until the auction ends: Long
24h+ = Very Long

2.) More Options to accomodate for this change
Add options for less-than-a-day auctions. 6h/12h/18h, something like that.

3.) For the Love of All Things Cute And Fuzzy, Let Us Cancel Auctions
I got a positronic PC back today because I mis-typed and set the buyout price to 10500 instead of 15000, and it slipped below the minimum starting price (which I set at 12500).
Waiting three days for an item no-one buys is annoying. (However, the moment I put it in with buyout, it was gone 3h later.... with the same starting price as earlier..)

4.) Encourage shorter auctions
No-one is interested in low-level items without a buyout price if you have to wait three days to get it. Make the deposit scale with the overall auction time, so that 3d auctions are limited to items that are worth the deposit, whereas shorter auctions pose a much smaller drain on both initial deposit and post-sale auction house fee.

5.) Give the player a hint how much of a fee he/she has to expect to pay to the AH once the sale is done.
There is a difference between getting 15.000 chips and 14.250, after all, and some might not realize that the AH takes its fee. (At least I think the AH takes its toll, or where else has my money gone to xD)

But, yes, ultimatively I agree that a mall-type is better for day-to-day purchases, whereas an AH is for luxury items like donation-stuff and other high-end gear (like Positronic Computers right now)[/b]

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"The world of madness is a lot bigger than the world of sane."

Cornuthaum, #1234

There's a lot to think about here, and I agree that it's not perfect and improvements are in order. It's a really delicate system, though, so I want to be cautious about the changes.

However, I think speeding up the auctions is pretty likely to happen. I set them at 1, 2, and 3 days back when I had maybe 20 people playing, because we needed time to actually see and bid on the stuff. Shortening that up to 3, 6, 12, and 24 hours would probably be fairly reasonable. I'm not opposed to giving slightly more useful gradations in terminology about how close they are to ending. Precise end times aren't given in order to discourage sniping, which, even if it's not actually harmful, seems to piss a lot of people off.

I asked the early testers about canceling auctions, and it was an almost unanimous no--they feared it would lead to people putting stuff in and pulling it out repeatedly, or waiting until the last minute and then pulling the auction if they didn't like the price they were getting. I think that's why I left in the ability to bid on your own stuff: if you're really desperate you can buy yourself out, but it's going to cost you a little for the mistake. Also note, if you buy yourself out it costs 5% of the final price. Canceling would cost 5% of the listing price. So the current system is much more expensive for the seller than if we killed the bidding on your own auction and added a cancel button--if things were reversed, I think we'd see even more manipulation by the sellers.

Somewhere in the auction form--or in the manual, I forget--it says exactly what the auction house costs. I really do expect people to read the manual. I can't make them, but if they don't know what's in there, it's not my fault.

While I can see the appeal of a silent auction, there is no way in hell I'm going to track dozens or possibly hundreds or thousands of silent bids (half of them almost guaranteed to be for the minimum price) on an auction, just to redistribute the losing bids at the end. It's an administrative nightmare, and would probably lead to a ridiculous level of overhead. And if the silent auction gave your money back immediately, players would just start at the minimum and keep escalating over and over to get in, again causing unreasonable traffic.



The main answer to this is if the auction house is essentially reduced to the mall for low-end items, then "getting it over with" by having a mall is *also* redundant. However, it's a redundancy that would eat up weeks of my time which could be spend doing other, better things. At this stage, I'd rather work on new stuff than duplicate old stuff. For instance, would you rather get a couple of new quests and an improved chat, or a duplicate way of buying cheap items that's essentially identical to the existing one?

I think improved reporting on the timing of the AH would address' skinny's second concern some. I don't know about the "my only choice is to reload the page repeatedly for 24 hours straight" ... sounds like a bit of exaggeration to me. Besides, once prices have a chance to settle down a little, I've got to think more people will use the buy-it-now option for the quick sale (they want their money quickly, too).

As for scrapping it all in favor of a KoL-style mall, I dunno. It's funny, but I've heard the KoL folks on the radio multiple times saying if they were given a choice to do it all over again, one of the first things they'd do is scrap the mall in favor of the auction house, because they think that system works better (referencing World of Warcraft ).

Also just want to note, at this stage of the game I do NOT approve of mallbots.

I have been taking some notes on the auction over the last week.

I am a veteran of the SPAM auctions is Everquest, and really worked the auctioneer in WoW.


I have to agree that there are a number of issues that are skewing the auctions. Not making them completely worthless, but diminishing their potential.

The categories are alphabetized and that is good. But within the category, the items are random. Either auto-sorting them alphabetically (or even better, by power or level requirement for the wearable items) would be much much better. Not saying we have to go as far KoL did, but a better listing interface would be nice. As a lower level fix, can the Items in the Categories be persistently listed rather than how they are now? I am not a coder, so I don't know the effort involved.

Auction fees. When you list an item for sale, it should state the listing cost up front in terms of absolute chips or percentage of autosell value. It should also tell you what the percentage of "hold-back" the Auction house will get. Their "cut."

Market Ecomonics. I have seen comments regarding supply and demand, and I wholeheartedly agree that the price of an item should be what the market will bear.

Having said that, I agree that you should not be able to bid on your own items. Granted this isn't Ebay, but the same concept of artificial inflation interferes with the comparitive market price.

You should be able to "cancel" or "buyout" your own auction, but you should lose the auction fee, and perhaps pay a penalty.

I agree also with the above comments about how annoying it is to see items I want NOW with no buyout. Especially the low level items. With the ability to bid on your own auction, there is no motivation to set a buy out. Self-defeating system, as market adjustments are skewed. I would propose an additonal "incentive" to set a buyout price... Higher fee for no buyout, lower fee for with buyout... maybe the up front listing fee is more for a no-buyout than for a buyout... As Cornuthaum mentions above, scaling the auction fee to the length of the auction is also good motivation to list non-buyout items for shorter times.

Granted this can be overcome by those using multis, but then the mult-account guy is still violating the rules (I woudl think) by bidding on stuff listed by the other account.

As far as showing "who" is offering an item... There are advantages and disadvantages to this, but I do not believe it will have a significant impact on the economy. The biggest advantage I would see is to identify who the gougers are and not buy from them.

I wont blather on about the "time left" auctions. Cornuthaum laid that out quite well I thought and if it is implementable (is that a word?) it would be very welcome.

Lastly, it would be very helpful for a Hero to see all of their currently active auctions (both those offering and those bidding on) at once. This definitely falls in the nice to have column.

Huntsman

Why do you think you'd need to take all bids at the time of the bidding, and disburse all losing chips back at the end? Just set it up thusly:

"Each bidder puts in a bid. All bids/items are sealed until the auction is over. At the end of the auction, the highest bidder is charged what he/she bid. If said bidder does not have the chips, it defaults to the next highest bidder, etc. If no bid exceeds the 'reserve' price, the item is returned to the seller."

This seems like much less administrative overhead, yet seems to accomplish the same result. Then you can make the "time remaining" readily available, since there's no point in "sniping" on an auction where the other bids are unavailable for you to see.

All you'd need is a warning: "When this auction comes due, if you cannot afford the bid you made, you forfeit the item." Perhaps include a penalty to discourage reckless bidding.

That said, if you go to silent auctions (which I like, a lot), you'd (ideally) give new sellers and buyers some idea of what the market is already bearing, so to speak. A link of some sort to see all completed auctions in the past week, or 3 days, or whatever.

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Alexander Cherry
Twisted Confessions

It's a pity silent auctions won't work...
Anyway, I definitely prefer the auction house to any "mall". It's just more innovative. I think shorter time-periods would be a good idea (maybe even a 1-hour option.)
As for the low-end items problem, well, if they go for just above autosell, that's OK. They'll keep selling, because people will buy in bulk and the auctioneers will want the small profit. There might be a problem if an item starts going for only autosell, though. That could be taken care of if the minimum bid for an item was always 105% of it's autosell or something similar.

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The electro swoosh sends a greeting!

Lxndr, keeping track of each bid without taking the money is exactly the same amount of overhead as taking the bid and then returning the money at the end. It still requires recording and sorting tens, hundreds, or perhaps thousands of individual bids for each item.

Also having to scan through all the bidders to determine if they have the money on them at the moment the auction ends is kinda awkward. Not only conceptually, but for the players who have to remember what they've bid on, when the auctions end, and make sure they keep enough in stash.

Perhaps make it so that an auction could be cancelled if there have been no bids yet? That'd take care of the last-minute thing, and allow players who mislisted an item with the wrong price to get it back without losing a lot of chips/waiting 3 days for something that won't sell.

As for putting stuff in and out repeatedly, could just let the auction house keep the deposit on the items. Should be enough of a discouragement to stop people from being dicks.

Would it be difficult to add a "listed items" tab to the auction house so players can see what they still have listed for sale? It's being tracked anyways, so it's nice to be able to see without keeping track of the items themselves..

Someone said this wasn't Ebay, but the buy-now option does kinda remind of it. Could we have it specified in the auction manual that listing a group of items in an auction lot sells them all together, instead of puts them all up at the same price like Ebay does? I almost listed 10 cosmic crystals for a buy-it-now of 300 yesterday >_<.

Also, outta curiosity why is there a Talismans section in the AH? I've been collecting talismans, and they all seem to be non-tradeable or sellable; even the ones that nobody would wear =(

That is exactly what my problem was - the current system lets you post an auction if the Buyout price is below the starting price, removing the buyout option outright. I implore you, please invent something that stops this from happening. Seeing a high-value item going into AH and having to wait three days for it because no-one ever uses the bidding (I mean, why didn't they bid on a 12500 PosPC but buy-out a 15000 pos-pc?! the logic... argh.) hurts a lot.

What about this: Within 5-10 minutes of creating an auction, the seller can still cancel the auction? (too tired, i remember i wanted to write more but can't remember what )

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"The world of madness is a lot bigger than the world of sane."

Cornuthaum, #1234

I have some suggestion to add in the auction house.

First is a button to show show all of our current bid.. because sometimes I join for bidding in several items, it's just a bit troublesome to check all categories to see whether the auction is ending soon or not.

Second, same as above, but to show our own auctions. So I can check whether anyone bid on my auctions in one click.

How about that?

Edit: I second the idea where you can cancel the auction too.. it will be useful especially if you put wrong price and want to adjust it.. currently we can't do anything about that..

Another thought crossed my mind:

Please make the minimum price twice the autosale value. As it stands, one makes a loss when selling items at autosale value in the AH, given the 5% fee on sales.

Just a little thought, hm.

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"The world of madness is a lot bigger than the world of sane."

Cornuthaum, #1234

Yeah, but then there's not really any decent way of providing newbie items to newbies generally, who probably can't really afford the 2x cost.
Besides, if you want 2x value, you can always put it in yourself =P

By popular demand the Auction House now sorts items in each category alphabetically. Additionally, auction durations have been shortened to 1, 3, 12, and 24 hours, and the estimated "time left" has been fine-tuned a bit.

Also, caught a time bug which was causing evening auctions to end half a day early.

I'll probably leave it like it is for a few more days to see if this helps much, or if more adjustments are necessary. (Still weighing the merits of being able to cancel and whether or not you should be able to bid on your own items.)

I'm not agree with bidding your own item. It can be misused to boost the price of your own item.. well i know that they can just put higher starting price in the first place anyway.. but IMHO it's better to let only interested buyers do the bidding..

I think that a player should be able to bid on his own items. If he changes his mind on how much he thinks it is worth than he should have the right to raise it. A player deserves as much control as possible over his own auction.

If this is somehow abused then it could be changed, but until then it is fine.

I'm personally not even sure if using it to raise the price is really "abusing". It seems to me that the auctioneer has every right to alter his own auction, especially since no one HAS to bid on it.

/em ducks out of this conversation because he never uses the AH, except for when there is a buy it now option.

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Part Spock, part Yoda... a bit of a freak, to be sure!
Of only one thing can you be certain...
He DEFINITELY has pointy ears.

If you put a Silver Star in for 100 chips, you should be willing to accept that someone will get it for 101 chips. If you aren't willing to sell it for less than 30k, but that as the starting bid. This is also why I hate reserves.

Anyway, perhaps making people able to exercise the "Buy Now" option but not bid. That gives them the panic button, but should limit abuse.

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The churches are empty / The priest has gone home / And we are left standing / Together alone
--October Project: "Dark Time"

Will there eventually be a mall in addition to the auction house or anything of the sort? I'm tired of all these bidding wars to maybe get an item I've got my eye on. And with the auction house taking commissions to stock stuff, people tend to be rather conservative as to what they put in there. With the limited availability, it can be rather difficult to get what you're after as there will be plenty of people bidding on the few auctions present for a particular item.

The Buy-it-Now option is now the only "mall" you have, and your only option to be certain you'll get an item you want. The auctions are more or less pure gambling - either you'll luckily bid just as the auction is ending, or you'll be lucky enough to hit a "silent interval". More often then not, someone will overbid you - and I guess if the price is low enough, it will most likely be the auctioneer himself. If you don't want to camp in the AH for an extended time, you'll lose.

What I also don't like about the AH is how - because of the insanely high luck factor - people always make "sweep" bids. So I guess more often then not instead of items getting evenly spread amongst bidders, there is always one "winner" who gets a crapload of that particular item and others get nothing. This guy most probably puts all the extra items on auction again and the whole thing circumvents. The inevitable result is AH is constantly overflowing with auctions but at the same time it is nigh-impossible to win one. Frustrating, that. However, it seems as more items flood in, Buy-it-nows get lower and lower and AH transforms into a clumsily interfaced mall. Which is kind of a good thing, especially if you are a buyer.

The auction house kinda sucks. A mall would really be better.

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The Auction House will be better once there are more players. And once there are chat notifications of bids. But it would be nice to have a mall in addition to the AH.

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TheK3vin- #325

http://soundcloud.com/thek3vin

But would the mall make an AH obsolete. It would be much simpler and easier, thus get a lot of use. However it is not very unique.

I have a question: Who of you misses the 3 days option?

When I put in three days worth of farming the cube in the AH .... getting half of the stuff back the next day is extremely aggravating because auctioning off multiple items is a lot of repetitive work.

If I could put them up for three days at once (instead of one day three times successively) I /know/ at least half a time as many of the items would've sold.

Ryme, I greatly appreciate the shorter options - it really makes 'short time burst sales' possible, but, please, could you bring back the 2/3 days options?

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"The world of madness is a lot bigger than the world of sane."

Cornuthaum, #1234

Once chat is upgraded I assume there will be an exchange channel, where we can exchange things if we need them instantly.

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out-out the lights-out all! and over each quivering form
the curtain, a funeral pall, comes down with the rush of a storm
and the angels all pallid and wan, uprising unveiling affirm
that the play is the tragedy man, and its hero the Conqueror Worm.

Auctioning off multiple items is an immensely irritating clickfest whether 3 days is an option or not. Also, since much more people are farming the Cube now there is an inflation of Cube items (which will only get more intense) so you will most probably not sell the items anyway, or sell them pretty close to autosell price.

My advice - forget about the 3 day auction and just autosell the damn things. Much less hassle.

actually, you can make one auction and simply use the 'back' and 'forward' options (in my case, mouse 4 and 5, also available in the top bar of your browser) to create the same auction over and over...

as for autosell... I can get 5-7 times the autosell via auctions. For someone who is saving up for 10 silver stars before the end of the year, this is a big no-no.

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"The world of madness is a lot bigger than the world of sane."

Cornuthaum, #1234

Is there a function to see whose did was the winner, and also possibly see who is bidding on your item a little like the ebay bid system, where you can see who your bidding against and eventually who one?

Unfortunately no. 'Cause that would finally unveil those scammers who raise the price of their own items by bidding on them. (Something I hate, very, very much so.)

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"The world of madness is a lot bigger than the world of sane."

Cornuthaum, #1234

Our suggestions have been heard and taken on-board, apparently.
They work awesomely Great job, Ryme.

About the recent change...

Currently, under "Open Auctions", you get a handy list of everything you have going on. All your items are hotlinked, but they just lead to the "Open Auctions" screen. Which is... kinda pointless, really.

Would it be possible to have those jump to the appropriate auction? In other words, when I click on "fusion pack", it takes me to the fusion pack listing under miscellaneous items. That would let me compare my auction to the other fusion packs on auction.

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The churches are empty / The priest has gone home / And we are left standing / Together alone
--October Project: "Dark Time"

Yeah, that's pretty reasonable.

The auctions aren't perfect, but the recent changes have been very helpful. I agree that it makes no sense to watch people bidding 2000 chips for an item with a "buy it" price of 1000, but stupidity is part of life.

I also notice the auction dynamics vary considerable with the time of day and day of the week. Those who are resourceful can use this to their advantage.

You shouldn't be able to bid more than the buy-it-now price. Or do you mean bidding 2000 chips for an item when there are OTHER auctions for the same item that have the lower buy-it-now price?

I was just thinking, as I put a silver star up for auction, that the maximum auction time is not long enough. I'm glad that it was changed to give people shorter options, but for big ticket items, like a silver star, I'd want 2 days. For a Ebon Eye or a Hero's Cape, I'd probably want 5 days. In the future I might want a month for a Hero's Cape, since it'll be a rare(r) commodity. I'm not sure if it would cause problems to make this possible, but in my opinion, more choices are always good.

I've been meaning to add 3 days back into the mix. I could maybe see five days or a week--though before the short term options existed almost everybody was complaining that even three days was too long and stuff just sat there because nobody wants to bid on something that they *might* get in a week. A whole month is probably pretty unrealistic--I don't see anyone having that level of patience. You're just going to get 0 bids for the first 25 days (or pathetically low ones), and then a day or two of hot bidding at the end. And in the meantime you'd just be cluttering up the auction house with something everyone's going to ignore anyway.

I've sold a bit on eBay with the traditional week-long auctions, and I never get any reasonable bids until the last 2-3 days of the auction. The winning bid almost always comes within the last few hours of the auction. I think the same is likely to hold true here, too, especially as the community grows.