I want a *silent* auction house.

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ikorack wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Hold on a second. Let's back up.

PoE does not have a single currency; it's a multi-currency system. Thus, bids are not likely to be strictly superior to other bids; the seller would have to make a choice between one or more.

Let's consider a situation where the auction closes, and the item sells low... like seller rage low. (I'm sure this has happened to you before if you've sold things on eBay.) The seller is pissed. So the game is waiting on the seller to choose between options (no more will be added because it's closed), and since the bids are all low the seller doesn't really need them, and thus decides to grief and just delay the decision.

There are ways around this I guess. You could prevent the seller from playing in that league again until he makes a decision and completes the transaction. But that's an awfully drastic step, don't you think?

Does anyone else out there (Polaris, Dalai) have a more elegant solution to this?

Just give them the option to walk away, if you don't give that option sellers aren't going to use this system anyways, it would be far to big of a jump from the level of control they have currently.

I think you could do two things. One allow players to put a minimum opening bid. If the seller doesn't do this or sets it too low, a very low ball final bid is the seller's fault.

I'm not sure how the game would determine alternate currencies. For example would 700 fusings meet the minimum bid of 8 chaos, or a Kaom's heart meet the minimum of 25 exalt for a Soul Taker sale? Maybe the buyer would have to set up currency/items that they accept and then list their own exchange rate for the alternates.

As for the walk away ... if the buyer failed to set a minimum, or if they set it too low and the buyer/buyers met the minimum, than the game would randomly choose between one of the offers automatically.

I'm not sure if the minimum listed bid would just become a defacto buyout or pricing guide.

Maybe the minimum bid would have to be entered when placing the item in the "for sale" tab, but hidden from the bidders? If they met the minimum, than it should be a done deal. Players setting too high a minimum will learn from their mistakes and start to price lower, so this would help keep prices varying somewhat.

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DalaiLama wrote:

I think you could do two things. One allow players to put a minimum opening bid. If the seller doesn't do this or sets it too low, a very low ball final bid is the seller's fault.

[snip]

I'm not sure if the minimum listed bid would just become a defacto buyout or pricing guide.

It would, and therefore isn't an effective solution. I'll give you some credit for halfway predicting it, though.

At this point, I'm thinking the best system would be:

Auction Host

• Primary skill-tester (theme of design): When to have the item open for bidding, and for how long.
• Gets to specify how long the auction will last, down to the second, within a certain range.
• Does not have the ability to retract the item.
• Cannot accept bids until the auction is closed. (Otherwise, the correct duration is always "as long as possible," with regular checks to see if any bids are acceptable; if the correct duration is always as long as possible, there is no skill-test, and sniping comes into play as well.)
• When the auction ends, stash for that league is read-only (cannot add or subtract) until the player chooses a winning bid for closed auctions, completing the transaction.

Bidder

• Primary skill-tester (theme of design): How many bids to make, and how large to make bids.
• Can make one or more separate bids on the same item.
• Cannot see other player's bids, only his own.
• Cannot see when the auction closes.
• Can retract bids at any time. (This is actually a part of seller design; if this isn't in place, the correct answer for the seller is always "as long as possible.")

The gorilla in the room: You can't really replace the trade forums with this. If you try shutting down the trade forums, and players really want buyouts, they will still pursue buyouts; they'll just go to some d2jsp clone, upload screenshots of their items, some hacker type will create a parser which makes the image text, and thus item affixes, searchable (low-level captcha-solving tech), and you've got the whole system on a third-party site.

The exception to the above is the radical measure of disabling direct trade. However, I feel that particular idea falls in the realm of batshit insanity, and thus cannot be seriously considered, which essentially means there isn't an exception.

So trade forums would still be up, trade chat might as well also still be up... would anyone still use this? The only way in which the practice of buyouts would decrease is if players chose to use this feature; forcing them is not an option. Does it offer enough advantages over forums and chat? It seems that the main thing this provides that current venues do not is the ability to break the timezone barrier, allowing Europeans to enter American markets and vice versa; I don't see much else that a "cheat mentality" player, who has no interest in skill tests, would get out of it. Is that enough? Is there some other advantage I'm missing? Help me out, game theorists.

Auction is the wrong name for this. I tend to agree with the suggestion but I consider it more of trade system. The objective here should be to introduce a trading system that does not require both parties to be online at the same time to complete the trade. It should therefore use the same 3 steps that the current in game trade window uses. Being propose, offer, accept.

The system should work like this

Seller puts something up for sale
Buyer makes an offer
Seller accepts or rejects.

Truncating this with buyouts is what causes most of the issues with trading systems and turns games into mini-trading simulators. This works in both directions weather the seller perceives themselves to be a buyer or a seller because they want to sell or use currency to acquire the item they want.

The point here is that the system should prevent rapid exchange and require the buyer and seller to communicate or have at least implied communication via acceptance.

The point should not be to make the system faster but to make it simpler to use. The waiting time does not need to change but the mechanism that is being used should be available in game rather than on a website.

Currently. trading works like this.

Search POE.xyz for item.

Wait for 5 days for both you and the seller to be online while spamming whispers/tells to see if they are online. get into the same place to trade, etc etc. They system should not need to be faster just easier.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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DalaiLama wrote:

I think you could do two things. One allow players to put a minimum opening bid. If the seller doesn't do this or sets it too low, a very low ball final bid is the seller's fault.

[snip]

I'm not sure if the minimum listed bid would just become a defacto buyout or pricing guide.

It would, and therefore isn't an effective solution. I'll give you some credit for halfway predicting it, though.

Darn tree weasels everywhere trying to circumvent the system!

SNIP.

That looks good to me. As you say, many people might bypass with trade forums and whatnot, but I think current non-traders might find it quite useful. Although I rarely trade, I would give it a try to sell off some of the gear my characters found useful and have outgrown over time. They won't sell for a lot, but they will make some mid level characters happy and I won't have to spend all my time in the trade channel either.

Good alternative scrotie, i sure hope they implement something like this in the future.

The main issue atm is like you mentioned EU/usa timezones. (this is exually a *thumbs up* to poe meaning they have a great playerbase) And also the different type of gamers, your system should be build around appealing to the players that currently don't interact in the trading system. Most likely these are players that can only spend 1/2 hours playing and don't feel like wasting there time idling in a trade chat but actively want to participate in the game content. For them an automated trade would be a major help and it would not prevent other players from trading in the old fashioned way.

I do feel that there should be a way to automatically accept a bid, maybe the seller can accept this option when putting up an item for sale.

The reason for this is simple, in my own experience i have visited trade shops where the player hasn't been online for over a month, but he does hold a valuable upgrade for my character. I am fairly confident that both the seller and myself would be equally happy if i could stil purchase his item even if he decided to take a brake from the game.
a. he would gain currency while taking a brake.
b. he will lose some items and gain some inventory stash.

Hope u can put something for this problem in your sugestion.