Auctions with duplicate items

Iocun

I know this is too late for the current auction, but it is something I'd like to be considered for any future ones.

The current automatic bidding system works great if there's only a single one of each kind of item up for sale. You can place your maximum bid and leave it at that, reducing the incentive to only enter the auction at the last minute and trying to get an optimal bid in there.

It doesn't work quite as well when there are several identical items for sale though. If we have three blood-filled clasps being auctioned off, you don't want to just put your maximum bid of, say, 800 credits on one of them, because if someone else puts a reasonably high bid on that same clasp as well, you might end up having to pay much more than the other two clasps are going for. So it's again back to slowly nudging the price upwards, or to optimize it: trying to snipe the auction at the very end, to get the cheapest of the set of identical items.

In order to prevent this and make the automatic bidding actually work as it should there, I propose not auctioning such multiple items in separate auctions though, but simply having a single auction per type of item, with multiple winners. Everyone would bid in that auction as for a single-item auction, but not only the highest bidder would get the item in the end but the N highest bidders, depending on how many of the item are for sale. The price they would have to pay would be identical for all of them and be determined as the price the N+first highest bidder was willing to pay plus the increment.

So, as an example: three blood-filled clasps are up for auctioning. There is a single auction announced for them, and it is stated that it will have three winners. Sarapis, Tecton, Maya, Clementius, and Aeyr all want to bid on the item and place their maximum bids. Sarapis bids 300 credits, Tecton 50, Maya 500, Clementius a million, and Aeyr 3. Since there are four winners for the auction, Clementius, Sarapis, and Maya each win one blood-filled clasp. They have to pay 55 credits each for it: the amount Tecton, as the fourth-highest bidder, was willing to pay, plus an increment of 5 credits.

As a side-effect, this of course also means that nobody can win more than a single one of such multiple items, but I actually think that's a good thing, as it ensures a wider spread of auction items and results in more people getting something out of it.

Nemutaur

I like it, you could create groups of items where it does not make sense to own more than one such as the flute or the blood-filled clasps but still allow single-item groupings of the level 3 morphing weapon or pipes though.

Xith

Does make sense.

Avto

The basis of your suggestion contradicts with purpose of having auctions - overbidding.

Iocun

Avto said:

The basis of your suggestion contradicts with purpose of having auctions - overbidding.

I'm not quite sure what you mean with that. People may still raise their bids if they find they aren't among the winners with their current bid. If you mean that my solution wouldn't encourage bidding wars and thus ever increasing prices as much as it currently is, that is correct. But that's what the whole automatic bidding system does in the first place. If bidding wars should be encouraged more, they should go back to the old auction system where there are no automatic bid increases.

I believe my suggestion is only the next consequential step from the status quo. Auction sniping also rather unfairly favours those who can be logged in at the time the auction ends, which is almost always at midnight GMT - meaning that it favours players of certain timezones and/or people with flexible work times who can rather freely decide when to be logged in. Making auction sniping less relevant is thus a good step towards more fairness. 

Xith

Speaking of sniping, how high do we imagine the Delos shop will jump before the end?

I know I'd put up like 7.5 mil if I could.

Iocun

I'm willing to bet it will more than double its current price.

Sena

There's no way it's going for as little as 7.5 million. Even with 15 million you definitely won't get it.

Nemutaur

Xith said:

Speaking of sniping, how high do we imagine the Delos shop will jump before the end?

I know I'd put up like 7.5 mil if I could.

I think last time it went for 18 mil or so. That's all my house had to bid and we lost.

Avto

So, as an example: three blood-filled clasps are up for auctioning. There is a single auction announced for them, and it is stated that it will have three winners. Sarapis, Tecton, Maya, Clementius, and Aeyr all want to bid on the item and place their maximum bids. Sarapis bids 300 credits, Tecton 50, Maya 500, Clementius a million, and Aeyr 3. Since there are four winners for the auction, Clementius, Sarapis, and Maya each win one blood-filled clasp. They have to pay 55 credits each for it: the amount Tecton, as the fourth-highest bidder, was willing to pay, plus an increment of 5 credits.

By this example you provided, Maya decides to overprice her bid, because she doesn't want to have competition. She bets 500 cr, for something that is worth (or would go for in auction) 50-60 cr. Then if Maya has to only pay 55-65cr, that means loss for achaea. Like Penwize increased his bid on last auction from 10K credits to 15K. Now that was only one item, but having three items would mean game would lose 5K credits or more, as third bid was much lower then top one.

This idea is fair for people who buy, and don't want to overpay. But overpaying is additional income for the game. These are auctions and fairness has no room here. I as player would also like this to go in, but looking at the other side of the coin I don't believe it will.

Sena

@Avto It sounds like you're unaware of how the auctions currently work, since the current functionality seems to be what you're arguing against, not the suggested change.

This is how it works right now: Say there are only two bidders for a single item, Maya and Tecton. Maya bids 500 credits, because she really wants the item, and Tecton bids 50 credits. Maya only has to pay 55 credits, because that's all it takes to beat Tecton's bid.

The reason the wings in the last auction ended up at 15k credits is because someone kept bidding to push Penwize closer to his maximum bid, not because he bid 5k more than he needed to at the end.

Iocun

Why then did they introduce the auto bid increase system? Penwize also didn't pay the full amount he was bidding for the wings, but only only what the second-highest bidder was willing to pay plus an increment. The reason Penwize had to pay that much wasn't that he was willing to pay so much, but that another person was willing to pay almost as much.

I doubt it has that great an influence on the final prices. Maya would very unlikely actually have had to pay the 500 credits she was willing to pay in that auction, no matter the system, as Tecton wouldn't have raised his bid by much over his limit of 50, so Maya would only have increased her bid gradually until Tecton no longer kept up with it. It is possible that Tecton would have raised it a bit more in the thrill of auction fever and bid 60 or so, but that doesn't make a huge difference in the end.

Delphinus

This suggestion would probably undermine the sorts of bidding wars on which auctions are based. "Oh well," says the guy who was just outbid, "I'll probably still get one anyway." It doesn't matter if he's right or wrong; the bid was not pursued as voraciously.

The solution here is to just not bid an exorbitant amount as your maximum. Sure, it largely undermines the option, but it remains just that -- an option.

Achilles

I liked the old live auctions Sarapis used to personally oversee. Bring it back and you can assign proxies to bid on your behalf if you cant make it. Also drives up the bidding as people get into auction frenzy.

Iocun

There are many bids though that don't seem "outrageously high" to you in principle, but you'd still be annoyed if you had to pay that amount while others of the same item are going for much cheaper. I might really want that blood-filled clasp and be perfectly willing to pay 2000 credits for it and would absolutely hate not winning it. To ensure that, I pretty much have to bid the 2000 credits I am willing to pay. But it'll still piss me off if I then end up having to pay almost those 2000 credits, while the other two clasps are being sold for 100 credits each. It might have been worth 2000 credits to me, but I'll still feel almost "cheated". So I'll avoid actually bidding what the item is worth to me, and only slowly nibble the bid upwards, preferably at the very end of the auction.

The proxy bidding system was created to make this easier, to remove the worries about when exactly you bid how much exactly, but simply bid the amount the item is worth to you and let the rest sort itself out naturally, with nobody in the end having to feel as if he got an unfairly worse deal than others.

And as I said: anything that encourages last-minute bidding creates imbalances between players of different timezones.

Avto

I was not aware of new auction system. Thank you Sena for pointing that out. In this case I concede my point and agree to the suggested idea.

Kyrra

Iocun said:

And as I said: anything that encourages last-minute bidding creates imbalances between players of different timezones.

The timing on when auctions end really favour the US, which already makes timezones a bit harsh. When the last auction ended, I had just arrived at work for the morning and logging in wasn't an option for me. The last-minute bidding might have been viable but I knew I wouldn't have been around for it. Would be nicer if more stuff ended on weekends.

I rather like the idea suggested, as it ties in rather nicely with maximum bid auto-bids.

Veldrin

You need to know if you're winning one of the items at least, else I like the idea

Cooper

Kyrra said:

Iocun said:

And as I said: anything that encourages last-minute bidding creates imbalances between players of different timezones.

The timing on when auctions end really favour the US, which already makes timezones a bit harsh. When the last auction ended, I had just arrived at work for the morning and logging in wasn't an option for me. The last-minute bidding might have been viable but I knew I wouldn't have been around for it. Would be nicer if more stuff ended on weekends.

I rather like the idea suggested, as it ties in rather nicely with maximum bid auto-bids.

Cases like this are -exactly- why the current system is in place. Some people aren't able to be here when the auctions are finishing, so you can put a 'max' bid in that you are willing to pay, and it auto bids against your competition for you. 

Xith

So then your autobid would only increase enough to keep you in the top 4 (or however many of the object are for sale).

Iocun

Veldrin said:

You need to know if you're winning one of the items at least, else I like the idea

Yes. As I imagine it, you would. You'd be notified of other bid increases and know if you're currently among the winners or not. You wouldn't know how much exactly the other "winning bidders" have set as their maximum bid, but you'd know if you're among them and how much the first person not among the winners was willing to pay.