Blind auctions

W

will-A

Dalayan Beginner
I recently used a merchant system in a MMO that I would consider probably the BEST so far.

It uses a blind auction system and something like this in SoD would reduce the amount of spam we see daily and give the consumer a quick way to bid on what they need. Also, allow a merchant to sell what they have easily and finally police those that would abuse the consumer.

Here is the idea as it could be integrated into the current system.

The seller:
The player places an item in their shared bank slots using /cm listprice as normal.

The Buyer:
1. The buyer uses "/cm listsold player" to view items sold.

2. The item price on each item displayed is the price of the last successful sale against a modified moving average.

3. The buyer uses "/cm listbuy player item# bid_amount_PP#" to buy the item with a BID price. If the bid price is less then the hidden requested amount of the seller, the buyer is sent a message. "Bid not enough"

4. Bidder either receives item or they decide how much they are willing to pay or go look elsewhere.

5. On a successful purchase the average in the database is updated for that item.

Modified moving average:
( (Current_Average_price * N-1) + price_paid) / N = new_average


Advantages:
+Consumer has a more informed decision on price cost
+Seller has less work to figure price cost of item (less PC in guild chat, newbs sending tells "GIMME FOR FREE!", etc...)

Potential issues I see:

+Intentional price inflation (Someone buying items from an ALT to increase average price):
Make anyone abusing this fair market value feature or inflating this price jailable (or IP bannable)
--Example: Soandso buys 1000 Rare crystal dust from their alt for 1 plat.

In closing:

I don't want to see the game dumbed down. What I want to do however is focus on fighting with my character(s) and not concern myself if a rare crystal dust is worth the 40 plat the vendor offers me or 200 plat (after 20 minutes of looking on listsold/vendor list). I want to be able to sell an item and eventually use the proceeds to buy more armor, not learn an hour later that I could have sold the spell I found for 2,000 and not 200.

I am willing to perform the in game market research or provide assistance to implement this system.

Thank you for you time.

Will
 
?

As the end user, you change 1 thing. Add a PP bid value on the buying command. Not that much more complicated vs. what you do now.

I added some steps of implementation for developers to think about.

This actually simplifies a lot of what you have to do as a Consumer and Seller. (not spending hours of looking at Vendor List and sending tells, price checks etc...)

For example here is what I see now (kinda?):

/cm listsold SoAndSo

#1 Rat Meatx10 100
#3 BoneChipx20 2
#4 Fine Silk Dodad of ultimate power 5000


Here is what we could see with a modified moving average check

#1 Rat meatx10 1
#2 BoneChipsx20 10
#4 Fine Silk Dodad of ultimate power 150

now I bid

/cm listbuy SoAndSo 4 150
System: "Bid not enough"
/cm listbuy SoAndSo 4 200
System: "Bid not enough"
*I think, Forget that...*

now i move on

/cm listsold FairMarketDealer
#1 Fine Silk Dodad of ultimate power 150

/cm listbuy FairMarketDealer 1 150
System: "Bid not enough"

/cm listbuy FairMarketDealer 1 200
System: "You pay 200 platinum for Fine Silk Dodad of ultimate power" ... note FairMarketDealer set item at 151 plat and got 200p. woot!!!

Easy as pie. Little difficult to developer but oh so much gained.
 
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I'm not really a fan of the idea. If someone wants to do this, just set it up in the /auction channel. I think most people prefer to set their own price on what they sell, and this system would block them from doing so.
 
The price of an in-game item is always going to be whatever someone is willing to pay for it. Take Ruby Hilted Long Sword as example. Got mine for 1K. When i decided to do the quest and get it pristine, I put it on alt's listsold and got 1.2K for it. (woot!) A buddy leveled up his warrior and picked one up, not 2 weeks later, for ~800. I have seen them as high as 1.5K. Now considering how many things have died at the edge of my sword, and what it brings to the table for my tank, i would have gladly paid 1.5K back then.

Conversely, learning the approximate price of items is also part of the game (within the game). We've all gotten wicked awesome deals on gear (got a Mithril helm of Rage for 500p!). We've all gotten robbed at some point (paid ~300 for a Wyverhide Tunic back in the 30's). Part of the beauty of this game, for me anyway, is it's intracasies outside of "see mob, swing sword, next". I get that the OP wants to focus on combat, and that's fine, really. This game does that for you very well. There are other facets that we enjoy, as well. Tradeskilling, RP'ing, adept hunting, PVP (not so much, but it's there), hell I remember reading one of Nodnal's posts where he said the thing he enjoyed the most about this game is selling the gear he farms.

Long and short of it: Is it a good idea? Sure, it sounds good. Would I vote for it if I were put to it? Prolly not.
 
This sounds bad. There is no reason to institute another artificial price floor above what already exists as vendor purchase pricing, and that is the only feature this would really add.

If you want to auction your items, use /auction. If you want to sell them to players for a fixed price you use listsold. If you need money NOW you vendor them. What's wrong with this?
 
Thank you for your response and time.

Not looking to set a price floor as the price can very easily slide by supply and demand and what you as a developer set as the averaging amount. (10 purchases? 1000 purchase?).

Even more radical idea: Set the current vendor rate to half the current market average. Damn ... I impress myself with how out of the box I think. Now whoever implements this, has effectively created a TRUE mmorpg player driven market and can get a job developing anywhere.

I see nothing wrong with what is in effect now only to increase efficiency of the systems in place and help your users. More efficiency in terms of your servers, databases, the sellers and consumers. Everyone including the hard core buyers/sellers will have a lot of time back to spend playing the game they desire.

Unless of course this buy/sell timesink is necessary to slow the rate of item influx and exp'ing. Not that I would argue against that need.

If the opposite is true and you want people to get back to playing, this allows those that want to play (instead of selling) to do so.

Is there still a problem with people hording? This ends that too. The horder (who scalps up all the bonechips and sells them at twice the cost) will have effectively set the average record very low or whatever he scalped all the items at.

If there is a high demand for an item... people will set the price higher and higher (like I showed in my example) and up the market average goes. wheee. This also can be a great analytical tool in seeing item demand and amounts on the market. Just spit out the average list.

To answer your question...

"If you want to auction your items, use /auction. If you want to sell them to players for a fixed price you use listsold. If you need money NOW you vendor them. What's wrong with this?"

With a blind auction system in place, this becomes
If you need money now you vendor them. If you want to sell to players at a fixed price use listsold.

With more people doing it, more players will have a better selection in the market. Especially all the new ones from your account drive.

But I digress. If I can further clarify what this can and can not do. Please do PM me.
 
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will-A said:
Even more radical idea: Set the current vendor rate to half the current market average. Damn ... I impress myself with how out of the box I think. Now whoever implements this, has effectively created a TRUE mmorpg player driven market and can get a job developing anywhere.
Click to expand...

We already did this.
 
As I understand it, the reason the online listsold doesnt show prices is that the bosses don't WANT there to be an "established price" for everything.

Also, auction is nice because I dont have to be sitting at the bank to buy something I see auctioned. Changing that confuses and infuriates me.
 
The reason that the online listsold portal doesn't show prices is because it would be retardedly easy to datamine and you don't need to log into your character's account to do it.
 
made me think of the FFXI system, you basically bid how much you wanted to pay and if you were over what someone put it on the AH for then you paid that much. It also had a history of the last 10 sales so you had an idea of what the going price was.

that said, i have no problems with the current system
 
The one part of this idea that would be nice, is if a player were looking at a listsold but wanted an item for less, he could make a note of it to be sent to the selling player with an offer.

For instance, I'm selling an item (#23) for 150 pp. Player A sees my listsold but I'm not on, and he targets the banker and types /cm listoffer Allielyn 23 120. This would notify me of an offer of 120 pp for item 23. Then when I get online and see a listoffer, I can choose to accept it or reject it.

The offer acceptance can either be automated, where an acceptance removes monies from the offerer's bank and sends the item over, or manual, where I can pick it up the item and send it. I'm partial to the prior, because otherwise persons can go around making offers and the items can be tied up in the system for days if they don't accept it. (In this case offers would expire after a certain timeframe, like 72 hours). It would be even better if a player who has put in an offer can see his offers and cancel them singly.

I like that it would make the system as a whole a little bit more flexible, and help promote communication across players who maybe play different time zones.

I don't know if it's worth the coding effort though =[
 
Speaking from IRL experience best offer is a very nice option for both sellers and buyers. I have no idea how much coding it would take, but over all it will boost sales and make more buyers and sellers happier over all.

Sellers have a chance to move inventory quicker, and buyers get to feel like they made a great deal, walking away happier about the sale.

It's pretty win if you ask me. :)
 
Bah! I remember when eBay was a BBS on a non-secure server! You younggins with your reserve prices and buyitnow... get off my lawn!

Seriously tho... THAT is a great idea. The guys asking 100pp for 20 yasinth pestis might get clued in that they're idiots when they get a half dozen 5-10pp offers. Sent offers (that can be accepted (option A)) would significantly improve listsold imho.
 
You'd have THOSE guys, though. You know, THOSE guys, the ones that will spam the hell out of every item > 500p with 5-10p offers, in the hopes that some absent-minded fool (me, namely) will accidentally accept. Sure, caveat emptor and all that.

I'm just of the mind that if it ain't broke, you don't fix it. And I don't think the current system is broke.
 
jules4099 said:
You'd have THOSE guys, though. You know, THOSE guys, the ones that will spam the hell out of every item > 500p with 5-10p offers, in the hopes that some absent-minded fool (me, namely) will accidentally accept. Sure, caveat emptor and all that.

I'm just of the mind that if it ain't broke, you don't fix it. And I don't think the current system is broke.
Click to expand...

It might not be broke, but it isn't quite as straight and level as it could be either.
 
It is not meant to be super user friendly. It is meant to be clunky. The idea is that you want to encourage user interaction. And no matter how you build the listsold system, it is going to detract from that interaction. IMO its broken the other way right now. There are SO many alts being used as bankers that you have no idea whos actually selling the item.

What I rather see is a /cmd make mained. You can have up to 2 mained characters per IP/player. All your banker alts are listed under the main's name. So the new cmd would be /cm listadd price (nameOfMain optional for when your botting someone else or want it on your 2nd mained)

For instance, I know Lovok sells the augs I want. I can never remember which banker bot of his carries my type 2 AC augs... I rather be able to /cm listsold Lovok and see all his crap for sale, rather then /auc Who sells type 2 AC augs? every time I need a new aug.

This way you can actually get a feel for whos who on the server. It would also cut down on the huge amount of tradeskilling bankers. Seriously, I hate seeing 15 people in a row selling aug type X, aug type Y, aug type Z, tradeskill level A, tradeskill level B, etc etc etc. when I am looking for a particular spell. And you know that its all the same person.
 
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