Artefact Auctions

Jules

On the contrary, I think the new argument is that some people have more disposable time than others :P  I am entertained.  

Cooper

Jules said:

On the contrary, I think the new argument is that some people have more disposable time than others :P  I am entertained.  

Jules

Cooper

I tried to find the woman in the Simpsons who says something like 'All I have in my purse is disposable income' and then she throws a fist full of cash in the air, but I failed

Froh

Aerek said:

Are we still discussing economics 101? Some people have more disposable income than others. This is not a crime, it's life.

True, but a business selling skill-based game mechanics in a fantasy setting needs to pay careful attention to a balance between giving someone with cash in hand what he asks for and making either the game mechanics or fantasy less fun to a critical mass of their customers.

It's not at all unreasonable for customers to have an opinion about the continuing possible combinations of skill, money, and time required to achieve their personal goals in the game.  Personally, I think there's been some inflation over time both in-game and out of game: ab levels considered minimum, levels considered minimum, artifacts, and things like svo.

(and yes, Froh is turning into more than a bit of a twink through the monthly membership and very little time invested recently)

Aerek

Yes, but we're not talking about any of that. We're talking about auctions, a form of sales that caters specifically to the wealthiest and most uninhibited spenders in any situation, that are selling completely unnecessary RP or convenience items. This has no effect on the fun or gameplay of the masses outside the general sense of envy.

It's not unreasonable to have an opinion on the difficulty of achieving your personal goals, but it is unreasonable to have one of those personal goals be to win an auction without an unreasonable amount of investment, or to make auctions more "fair" to everyone. Auctions, by definition, are "unfair," designed to fleece the people that win them. The Shop of Wonders is there for cool, unnecessary RP or convenience items, where everyone gets a fair chance, not auctions.

On a tangential note, there certainly has been an inflation of skills/artefacts needed to be "competitive" over the years, but that's not the fault of anything the game or Admin has done, it's just the way of things. Just like advances in science and technology in the real world, we have advances in automated curing and artefacts in the game world. We can lament the present and wish for the past, but it you still have to keep up with the Jonses if you want to stay relevant.

Trey

Speaking as someone who won an auction once, it was kind of fun knowing that I'd accomplished it. I think the most I've used it for was to gather fruit on Prin (and get people who can't shipreturn or gare stuck), but it -did- cut down on the amount of auctions @Yen won, so... yay 3600cr gimmick? As an aside, I wonder.... @Tecton, can you do artie tradeins/escrow bids with auction items? Would be such a waste with some of the higher items, but it's an interesting notion.

Jules

Trey said:

Speaking as someone who won an auction once, it was kind of fun knowing that I'd accomplished it. I think the most I've used it for was to gather fruit on Prin (and get people who can't shipreturn or gare stuck), but it -did- cut down on the amount of auctions @Yen won, so... yay 3600cr gimmick? As an aside, I wonder.... @Tecton, can you do artie tradeins/escrow bids with auction items? Would be such a waste with some of the higher items, but it's an interesting notion.

A waste?  In most cases, it would be an incredible boon to the auction winner once the novelty of the item wore off.  

Iocun

Depends on what their value would be. It being valued at actually the price you paid for it would be an incredible boon, yes, but I doubt it would be. (I assume auction items don't have any assigned "value" at all, so the point's moot anyways.)

Trey

Jules said:

Trey said:

Speaking as someone who won an auction once, it was kind of fun knowing that I'd accomplished it. I think the most I've used it for was to gather fruit on Prin (and get people who can't shipreturn or gare stuck), but it -did- cut down on the amount of auctions @Yen won, so... yay 3600cr gimmick? As an aside, I wonder.... @Tecton, can you do artie tradeins/escrow bids with auction items? Would be such a waste with some of the higher items, but it's an interesting notion.

A waste?  In most cases, it would be an incredible boon to the auction winner once the novelty of the item wore off.  

A waste in the sense that if you used mine for example, I'd be losing almost 1200cr in the tradeoff. For something like Chenubian wings in the last auction? Losing a full third of the credits used is cripplingly expensive on the high dollar stuff.

Argys

Iocun said:

Depends on what their value would be. It being valued at actually the price you paid for it would be an incredible boon, yes, but I doubt it would be. (I assume auction items don't have any assigned "value" at all, so the point's moot anyways.)

I believe they do, actually, have trade-in value, having poked through some of the old announce posts in interest. I couldn't pull it up immediately which post this is mentioned in though.

Jules

I was assuming he's suggesting the ability to trade in on the same terms as other artefacts.  But yeah, I think what Trey is saying is that he understands there's currently on value at all, and would like it if there were.  

Trey

Jules said:

I was assuming he's suggesting the ability to trade in on the same terms as other artefacts.  But yeah, I think what Trey is saying is that he understands there's currently on value at all, and would like it if there were.  

I'm not sure I'd ever get rid of mine, since having a way to pull an entire raid group off-continent to escape in 5 seconds is pretty fun, but in the event that it ever becomes more desirable to trade it in for either a chance at another auction or more mundane loot options would be spectacular.  

Sena

Announce 2813 (referring to the first custom wings auction):

Q. What about trade-in? Can I trade these wings in later?
A. Yes, at the usual 2/3rds of whatever was paid.

Kyrra

So, when are the next wings coming up for auction?

Trey

Good lord. Just over fifteen minutes and @Sena is already here with an answer. Are you.. are you 1337-J35|_|5?

Sena

Trey said:

Good lord. Just over fifteen minutes and @Sena is already here with an answer. Are you.. are you 1337-J35|_|5?

Argys gets credit for pointing out that it was mentioned in an announce post, I just searched and found which one he(?) was referring to. Before that, I had no idea.

Jules

I found Sena's real homepage:

http://cadiesingularity.blogspot.com/

EDIT:  I want that brain search app

Argys

Sena said:

Trey said:

Good lord. Just over fifteen minutes and @Sena is already here with an answer. Are you.. are you 1337-J35|_|5?

Argys gets credit for pointing out that it was mentioned in an announce post, I just searched and found which one he(?) was referring to. Before that, I had no idea.

Affirmative.

Froh

Aerek said:

Yes, but we're not talking about any of that. We're talking about auctions, a form of sales that caters specifically to the wealthiest and most uninhibited spenders in any situation, that are selling completely unnecessary RP or convenience items. This has no effect on the fun or gameplay of the masses outside the general sense of envy.

 

...

It's not unreasonable to have an opinion on the difficulty of achieving your personal goals, but it is unreasonable to have one of those personal goals be to win an auction without an unreasonable amount of investment, or to make auctions more "fair" to everyone.

...

On a tangential note, there certainly has been an inflation of skills/artefacts needed to be "competitive" over the years, but that's not the fault of anything the game or Admin has done, it's just the way of things. Just like advances in science and technology in the real world, we have advances in automated curing and artefacts in the game world. We can lament the present and wish for the past, but it you still have to keep up with the Jonses if you want to stay relevant.

Obviously, being relevant isn't a priority for Froh, but I do think that the balance changing over time has been a deliberate business decision rather than some inevitable law of nature: more paid staff, corporate overhead, etc.  I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, just noting that the cash+time basline has been raised (though you can trade off one vs the other or gain through other skills).

A business characterizes the desires of its customers as "unreasonable" at its peril.  What I'm hearing is not "*whine* I should be able to compete in a cash contest with people who have more of it *whine*", but "You're holding a high profile event and I'm feeling left out. Can we have some other simultaneous things that would be fun for me too?"

It seems like there should be a way to accomodate that.

 

Antonius

Artefacts aren't like gear in games like World of Warcraft, where it all becomes obsolete after a few months when the next tier is available. The artefacts you purchase now won't be inferior to what's available in five years time, and that's a large part of why the balance has shifted. When the majority of your playerbase has been playing for RL years, and the items they purchased years ago are still the -best- they can get, they're going to accumulate more and more of them as time goes by.

The big promotion this month was the auction, but there are also the weekly competitions that - while only a small amount - do give free credits to everybody for a bare minimum of participation doing things they do anyway. The monthly promotions are always targetted at the people who spend real life cash, because that's how IRE makes money. They want to convince those people to spend more of it and to convince people who might not normally do so to spend some.

Besides, the monthly promotions aren't fun in and of themselves. Entering a credit card number on the website to buy credits isn't fun just because you're getting an extra 30% for free that month, or because you can then use those credits to bid in an auction (also not exciting!). People spend money on Achaea because it's fun to play, it's not fun to play because they spend money on it.

Chryenth

Every time I look at artefacts, I think 'I wonder what that looks like?' and then start thinking about customisations and get distracted.