New Auctions

Kyrra

I have no words for what I am feeling right now. Not a single one.

Congratulations on your win Cooper. I hope you enjoy it.

Iphis

Cooper said:

It had absolutely nothing to do with driving the price up.

Calling bullshit on that:

Cooper said:

 My bid was just a 'lol' bid, as I "knew" (jokes on me) 

Trey

To be honest, I'm less pissed than I could be. I would have still bid on a weapon and likely won, but it definitely wasn't what was advertised at first glance. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it would be a more badass item if it was really 'all level 3 melee' and not 'all existing level 3 melee, except if you're not the class that uses them primarily.' I like bardiche just as much as the next guy, you know!

Cahin

I think the morphing weapons went for about what they should have gone for, seeing how unnecessarily gimped they were.

Silas

This all got pretty melodramatic.

Tvistor

The 3rd level morphing weapon killed family.

Cahin

Silas said:

This all got pretty melodramatic.

All I picked up was Cooper ruined Valentine's day and he's a horrible person.  If anything this thread is right on course.

Tvistor

The auction ending at a weird time blows, but placing that bid was also a bad idea.

Mishgul

Placing bids is never a bad idea. Balls deep my friend. Balls deep.

Ryukishi

Mishgul said:

Placing bids is never a bad idea. Balls deep my friend. Balls deep.

Truer words were never said.

And yay, I won shinies.

Tsara

Cooper said:

It is a pretty sweet item. I would be less upset if I could use it. You know, being a monk and all.

And for a kicker: is morphing forceable? :P

Sarapis

We're having a conversation at the moment about how to revise auctions to accomplish the two following goals:

1. Diminishing the impact of the auction end time on people across timezones.

2. Diminishing the impact of last-second bid sniping.

The Wikipedia article on auction sniping is good. I thought the Sorites Paradox was pretty interesting. In short, it just says that if the minimum bid increment is small enough, it is difficult/nigh-impossible for people to identify a maximum bid beyond which they are firmly 'out' of the auction. For instance, if you're willing to pay 3000 credits for an auction item, you probably want it badly enough to also pay 3005...and 3010....and 3015...Where do you draw the line? It's very difficult to do psychologically.

Some things we're discussing:
* Explicitly making the end-time of the auction random. You know which hour it ends in, but not when within that hour. This would make last-minute bid sniping much harder. 
* Auctioning off duplicates most of the time, and having those auctions end at different times. I think people might refrain from bidding on the item whose auction ends later until the first auction is finished, but I could be wrong.
* Automatically extending an auction by X minutes every time a bid is placed with less than X minutes left in the auction. This reduces bid sniping, but unless bid increments are substantially increased (very doable obviously), this is likely to turn into a "who can stay online continuing to place bids the longest?" 
* Increasing minimum bid increments.
* Possibly increasing minimum bid increments even more in the last hour of an auction.

Any thoughts?

Sarapis

Tsara said:

Cooper said:

It is a pretty sweet item. I would be less upset if I could use it. You know, being a monk and all.

And for a kicker: is morphing forceable? :P

If it is now, it won't be soon!

Tsara

Have tiers: for example

between 1-50 credits min increment is 1 credit

50-100 :5 credits

100-200: 10 credits

200-500: 25 credit

500-1000: 50 credits

1000-2000: 100 credits

2000-5000: 250 credits

etc

Sarapis

Yeah, or can just do a straight % too. 5% or something.

Horatio

Sarapis said:

We're having a conversation at the moment about how to revise auctions to accomplish the two following goals:

1. Diminishing the impact of the auction end time on people across timezones.

2. Diminishing the impact of last-second bid sniping.

The Wikipedia article on auction sniping is good. I thought the Sorites Paradox was pretty interesting. In short, it just says that if the minimum bid increment is small enough, it is difficult/nigh-impossible for people to identify a maximum bid beyond which they are firmly 'out' of the auction. For instance, if you're willing to pay 3000 credits for an auction item, you probably want it badly enough to also pay 3005...and 3010....and 3015...Where do you draw the line? It's very difficult to do psychologically.

Some things we're discussing:
* Explicitly making the end-time of the auction random. You know which hour it ends in, but not when within that hour. This would make last-minute bid sniping much harder. 
* Auctioning off duplicates most of the time, and having those auctions end at different times. I think people might refrain from bidding on the item whose auction ends later until the first auction is finished, but I could be wrong.
* Automatically extending an auction by X minutes every time a bid is placed with less than X minutes left in the auction. This reduces bid sniping, but unless bid increments are substantially increased (very doable obviously), this is likely to turn into a "who can stay online continuing to place bids the longest?" 
* Increasing minimum bid increments.
* Possibly increasing minimum bid increments even more in the last hour of an auction.

Any thoughts?

If all this prevents me from bidding nearly $900 worth of credits on and winning an artefact I don't want, it's a bad idea!

Prythe

I wanted a Humgii. I was spending an absurd amount of money. Had I been online I might have been caught up in the frenzy and regretted my purchase. That said, I am still sad I did not get a Humgii. (Yay to Lucine who did, and promises to share with meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!)

I am more upset by the fact that I sold credits (at a loss) and the gold went into my account, so I had to lose a percent of the funds in order to escrow for something I didn't end up winning.

I'll suffer the "loss" on the credit sales, but I would like to suggest we are able to "escrow" from our bank accounts, much like we can credit escrow from currently owned Artefacts.

ETA: The Achaean equivalent of "First World Problems"

Tsara

Sarapis said:

Tsara said:

Cooper said:

It is a pretty sweet item. I would be less upset if I could use it. You know, being a monk and all.

And for a kicker: is morphing forceable? :P

If it is now, it won't be soon!

But that would make it completely useless for Cooper cause now he could at least give it to someone and force them to morph it (or is forcing as a monk too hard to pull off?)

Tsara

Sarapis said:

Yeah, or can just do a straight % too. 5% or something.

Higher increments will let the bid increase rather quickly and avoids the Sorites Paradox. If your bid is topped you will need to be willing to invest 10-20% more then your previous bid. This should deal with snipe bids as well because the snipe bid is considerable more than the previous one and the next one will be as well, making sniping bids really tricky.

This might partly deal with the time zones cause the final bid might come earlier leaving the auction stagnant.  

What people who cant make it to the auction time miss is the chance to bid against others in real time.

Which makes the bidding go more slowly for them. 

You could add the rule that any bid which stands for 24h wins and have no end time.

The other thing I was thinking of is giving people who bid early a reduction in what they need to pay: For each hour a bid stands before winning the winner needs to pay x% less (with a maximum of 10%) But this would favour the people who can log in 10 hours before the end too much I think.

Iphis

Tsara said:

You could add the rule that any bid which stands for 24h wins and have no end time.

I don't see this working. The auction would never end. It would just go on and on, my friend. 

Ryukishi

My auction experience is derived from a combination of Fantasy Sports, Ebay, Silent Auctions and those As Seen on TV.  Some points that I've taken from this:

Time Transparency.  Outside of the nature of internet lag, you always know when it ends.  In the case of Fantasy and In Person, you receive a time extension mechanic for subsequent bidding near expiration.  There are merits to both.  On the one hand, sniping creates a definitive "conclusion" vs extending time for more bidding may lead to more accurate "cost" of an item or bid frenzy.  What is valid as a time extension can be 30 seconds or even a full day.  Regardless, I think an accurate representation of when an auction "should" end is necessary.

Bid options - In Fantasy, there is a cash-cap, which I don't think would work here, but offers the +1 bid option at the press of a single button.  No need to do fancy ass math when you're typing in an extended command.  Fantasy, you are trying to 1-up the next guy until you bow out or win.  Spam that Bid button!  If you didn't want to bid, you shouldn't have pushed it in the first place.  For % increase, I'd wager 2.5% increase.  On the pipes, for example, that means 3-5 credits.  On the weapons, 75.  On the wings, 250-300.

Currently:

Id Status   Max/Min      Title                    Winner     Days Left 

1  WON      3055/3055    Morphing Level 3 weapon  Cooper     0

VS:

Id Status   Max /Min /Current  Title  Winner  Time Left 

1  Ongoing  4000/3075/3000     Cooper TBD     2d 19h 35m 30s

Rinzai

The only thing I can think of to prevent sniping and still have some system of order, would be that if there is a 'snipe' on an auction, you could easily look at the bidding history and then open up a 'live auction' with whoever is left so that the deciding factor is who is willing to pay more, not who gets lucky with internet timing or what not.

Wouldn't have to be live, I would imagine even just a chance to put in a one more final bid would be enough to at least let people feel that they had an unhindered chance at it.

Sena

It probably wouldn't make a huge difference, but implementing some form of escrow for gold auctions would help make it less necessary to wait until the end of the auction to bid.

Maybe unbound credits could be counted towards gold bids, with credits either valued at some low fixed amount (4k-5k) or a value based on recent credit market sales (they should be valued lower than the actual prices, to ensure that they can be sold for at least that value in a timely manner). Like with credit auctions, you would be expected to either sell those credits or get the gold some other way if you win.

Silvarien

Cahin said:

Silvarien getting the blood filled clasp is great, because it either means he regrets his children or he doesn't trust their future decisions.  Had a good laugh

Could have got more out of the morphing weapons if they morphed instantly requiring only balance/eq and they were sold as a packaged deal, imo.

Actually, I love my daughter Aslin, the clasp is in case I bloodline someone terrible, who brings shame to the family, disowns the family, etc. The Da'Navis are a pretty tight bunch, but we all have skeletons in the closet. I have a son that disowned us, so the clasp is mainly for him. It's like the Sands of Aeon or the Veil of hte Libertine. Privacy, essentially,

Yen

I think the cleanest solution to the sniping/time zone issue is to randomize the end time of the auction.  This would (hopefully) ensure that everyone who wants to bid does so well before the auction actually ends.

Trey

Yen said:

I think the cleanest solution to the sniping/time zone issue is to randomize the end time of the auction.  This would (hopefully) ensure that everyone who wants to bid does so well before the auction actually ends.

I'm positive this has absolutely nothing to do with me snaking that ship in a bottle away from you a few auctions back.

(btw, 5.2 seconds between my bid and the auction ending)

Silvarien

Regarding the auctions...

Sarapis and Tecton, maybe make a set of global auctions and a set of regionals. You've stated you would like to auction off duplicates. This would probably be good for everybody because duplicates dilute the attention and resources of interested bidders, and though IRE gets a good chunk of credits, most auctions will not be as unreachable and more people will be pleased. For the global auctions, if you just want one unique item to be auctioned off, decide a "fair" time, when everybody has a reasonable reach for that one item. So, instead of ending at like 6 PM for Americans it would end at maybe 1 AM for Americans -- when people are still up in America but when it's not horrible for Europe and such. The exact time should be decided by the staff, because I don't know enough about time zones to suggest the one perfect time.

For duplicates, make like two or three auction groups, by region, and force everybody who wishes to bid into one of them. This is not flawless because there's always the chance that more people join one group than the others, and bidding will be skewed. But, if each group corresponds with reasonable time zones, then people in Europe will have one ending at 6 PM for them, people in America at 6PM for them, etc. Alternatively, the administration could place people into an auction group mandatorily, corresponding with their listed time zone. If this system could be hammered out, then everybody has auctions that end at 6 PM or whatever for them. There will certainly be more than one of each item floating around, but I think enough people are warm enough to the idea of certain items being auctioned off in multiple that this won't be too bad.

As far as sniping bids... I personally think there will always be a way to try and exploit the system. The one thing I was against in Sarapis's post is extending the auction because someone makes a late-minute bid. I can see the positive in this, but the negative is that it will cause the auction to skyrocket while putting forth a time ending that seems reliable but is not. I think simply make a rock-solid end at Serenade, with the understanding that people will bid sometime in the last hour. I've won my share of auctions, last minute bidding is a factor, but more so is simply the ability to stockpile enough gold or credits that you cannot be outbid.

The one other thing I would suggest is some sort of escrow system for gold bidding. With credits, you don't charge new credits or trade-in items unless you win, but with gold auctions, unless yours is the winning bid, you have a large chance to lose a LOT. People should not be selling credits at like 5500, and then rebuying them at 6200 several hours later. They are probably already upset that their efforts in auction were not enough, but losing that much makes the auction system necessarily penalize everybody except the winners.

Sena

Separating players into different auctions by time zone is a terrible idea, even if it would work (which it won't, because there are a lot of factors besides time zone that influence when a person can log in).

Silvarien

Sena said:

Separating players into different auctions by time zone is a terrible idea, even if it would work (which it won't, because there are a lot of factors besides time zone that influence when a person can log in).

...which in turn shows that no fudging around with the last hour, sniping, or anything else., will be a perfect solution for all of the problems people have listed in this thread.

I am not hard-and-fast sure about the regional thing, but I AM pretty certain that a gold auction escrow system would benefit everybody.

Ryukishi

I don't see how skyrocketing auctions is a problem.  People bid what they are willing and able to.  If you overbid, that is your own fault.  The economy of the game is what we make of it and if that means 15k-ish wings so be it.