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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
What kind of auctionhouse do you want to see?
ArchivedUser
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Tl.dr.: Bring back older styled auction houses (y/n)/and possibly improve on that. (see list at the end)
Edit: Please, this posts purpose is to talk about mechanics and presentation of an auction house.
NOWHERE in this post, nor it's intention is even a sliver of desire to change the regional markets into a global on.
I DO NOT wish for/want to talk at all about a GLOBAL auction house, I am merely bringing to the table the fun of auctions.
Let's talk, auction. I have looked through our known stuff again and from what I remember additionally the word >>auction house<< came up a few times. (mentioned in the blogpost now too)
When I hear auction house, I associate actual auction to that:
List an item, it will be listed for a few days, people can bid on it or may have a buy out option to acquire an item instantly. Examples: World of Warcraft, Perfect World.
That's how I knew it for the longest time, buyers fighting buyers for items. In recent years I saw more and more of some kind of listing market where everything is instant buy out and you are only allowed to buy the cheapest item (even tho you need like 2000 but you first have to buy 40 times a 2 item stacks before you get to the big stacks... yeeaahh BDO awesome...)
I don't like the "modern" listing system. It accomplishes mainly the same thing, but it feels boring and in little way interactive.
I hate the anonymity in other cases. You are buying from x people y items. You have no clue from who you bought.
The older styled ones were a flawed system for sure, my main critic is that it mainly reduced the whole process to, "wait until 5 min of auction end and bid". It certainly wasn't the greatest thing but it could at least provide some thrill to see if your bid came through and if your bid was well placed with the price you envisioned. Maybe you even got a 2nd chance to rebid.
If I could have any say in how the auction house would work I would put down several points in no particular order.
1. Bring back names. Associate items with sellers. (I don't mean who crafted something, we already know that's a thing)
2. Let me choose what items I buy, even when there are less expensive ones.
3. Bring back the auction into the auction house.
3a Improve on the auction house concept.
3a.1 Let people bid on items to put down interest/scare off other bidders during the normal item listed period. At certain intervals, all listed items with less than (random number) 30 minutes list time will get taken out. Everyone who claimed interest (and is present) will be put into a 15 (random number) seconds mode to bid on an item, going forward from the last bid put down in the previous period. If there is no bid after 15 seconds, last bidder wins the item.
3b.1 To elaborate on that, there should be an interface or whatnot to allow participation in several such auctions.
3b.2 That should include a list of names that participate in those auctions. Again away with anonymity
((I could imagine a chalk board that updates with some magical chalk. It would be a funny balancing mechanic. The more auctions you have the tinier the writing becomes due to limited space including name participation list.))
3c. Alteration/Expansion due to an idea @Pooka brought up from FF-XI
Instead of simply listing an item, the seller puts down an asking price which will be hidden from bidders. Once a day(random thought) there will be a big auction where all items are put to sale. It will go like above mentioned, but instead of auctioning for specific items all duplicate items are put together and after the auction concludes are given out in order from highest lowest to lowest bid for the lowest to highest asking price until the bid price is lower than the lowest remaining asking price.
We don't know what their specific plans for auction houses are, but we can wish for something fun right?
Well, that's basically it. Discuss?
Edit: Please, this posts purpose is to talk about mechanics and presentation of an auction house.
NOWHERE in this post, nor it's intention is even a sliver of desire to change the regional markets into a global on.
I DO NOT wish for/want to talk at all about a GLOBAL auction house, I am merely bringing to the table the fun of auctions.
Let's talk, auction. I have looked through our known stuff again and from what I remember additionally the word >>auction house<< came up a few times. (mentioned in the blogpost now too)
When I hear auction house, I associate actual auction to that:
List an item, it will be listed for a few days, people can bid on it or may have a buy out option to acquire an item instantly. Examples: World of Warcraft, Perfect World.
That's how I knew it for the longest time, buyers fighting buyers for items. In recent years I saw more and more of some kind of listing market where everything is instant buy out and you are only allowed to buy the cheapest item (even tho you need like 2000 but you first have to buy 40 times a 2 item stacks before you get to the big stacks... yeeaahh BDO awesome...)
I don't like the "modern" listing system. It accomplishes mainly the same thing, but it feels boring and in little way interactive.
I hate the anonymity in other cases. You are buying from x people y items. You have no clue from who you bought.
The older styled ones were a flawed system for sure, my main critic is that it mainly reduced the whole process to, "wait until 5 min of auction end and bid". It certainly wasn't the greatest thing but it could at least provide some thrill to see if your bid came through and if your bid was well placed with the price you envisioned. Maybe you even got a 2nd chance to rebid.
If I could have any say in how the auction house would work I would put down several points in no particular order.
1. Bring back names. Associate items with sellers. (I don't mean who crafted something, we already know that's a thing)
2. Let me choose what items I buy, even when there are less expensive ones.
3. Bring back the auction into the auction house.
3a Improve on the auction house concept.
3a.1 Let people bid on items to put down interest/scare off other bidders during the normal item listed period. At certain intervals, all listed items with less than (random number) 30 minutes list time will get taken out. Everyone who claimed interest (and is present) will be put into a 15 (random number) seconds mode to bid on an item, going forward from the last bid put down in the previous period. If there is no bid after 15 seconds, last bidder wins the item.
3b.1 To elaborate on that, there should be an interface or whatnot to allow participation in several such auctions.
3b.2 That should include a list of names that participate in those auctions. Again away with anonymity
((I could imagine a chalk board that updates with some magical chalk. It would be a funny balancing mechanic. The more auctions you have the tinier the writing becomes due to limited space including name participation list.))
3c. Alteration/Expansion due to an idea @Pooka brought up from FF-XI
Instead of simply listing an item, the seller puts down an asking price which will be hidden from bidders. Once a day(random thought) there will be a big auction where all items are put to sale. It will go like above mentioned, but instead of auctioning for specific items all duplicate items are put together and after the auction concludes are given out in order from highest lowest to lowest bid for the lowest to highest asking price until the bid price is lower than the lowest remaining asking price.
We don't know what their specific plans for auction houses are, but we can wish for something fun right?
Well, that's basically it. Discuss?
0
Comments
2. There is no global auction house. Things will be put up for sale in individual node markets. So peruse what is available, and pay more for the same two swords if they have listed two different prices on their stall if you like.
3. Once again, no global auction house planned, just like there will be no fast travel. The only large style market planned is a ZOI wide vendor listing once an economic node makes it to stage 6 and has decided to invest in that improvement.
I recommend aocwiki.net or browse this thread for quotes. https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/10158/quotebin-quotes-of-intrepid-team-from-discord/p1
Will save you time and trouble of wishing for systems that they have no plan to put in place and you can concentrate on improving what you are going to be handed.
Edit: realized my script blocker was running and messing with my forum posts. @Belewyn that may be what stops you from posting images if you are running security in the background and forget.
I enjoyed doing that in ESO. Admittedly in ESO you had to visit each and every stall so AoC will be a step up from that and list all local sellers in one place (which is fine as long as there are lots of places to check. if there are only 2-3 then it might as well be a universal auction house)
I really like the idea of local market stalls as to global auction houses. I've played games before which had stalls only and I personally feel they are more socially interactive and exciting as a buyer and seller.
I loved taking my goods to the stalls and and checking out the local competition and prices before setting up my own stall.
In Ashes of Creation markets are local to zones. We know that crafting will require items and materials from all across the world so travel will be important which means that you have two options:
Seller
The idea of risk/reward makes the memeories and experiences you'll have in game
Oh yeah
Option 3 : Whilst travelling you see a caravan. You don't know what it carries, maybe it's a player decoy? Risk attacking the caravan for a percental supply of free random things - or die trying.
Ontop of that here is a quote from Node Part 2 Developer Blog
"Economic Metropolises break that convention, and they have the capability to build a market that integrates with all the Nodes in their zone of influence, providing for a far larger market than any other Metropolis could hope for"
We don't know 100% as to what that system will be. It may be a form of a region Auction House. With reference to the topic of this thread I would prefer it to be a bidding system only. It should feel exciting to try and buy something at a good price without the risk of travel. If it was bidding only it wouldn't take the focus away from market stalls because many players would prefer to sell at higher prices and wait. "Winning" a bid should be a fun activity and used as a fun tool.
Either that or the system works as a UI that displays all "active stalls" - meaning you still need to set up your stall as normal, be present at your stall, but your stall amongst others will be displayed on the Zone UI menu. Your stall will be seen by larger audience and like the billboard, will be able to travel to your stall from that interface. It also would mean that perhaps your prices won't be as high as those that don't have this economic metropolis UI because your competition will be more visible and prices may become competitive
Note : One game where I played with stalls allowed visitors to your stall to leave messages so that you could then negotiate prices ^^
Or the Star Wars Galaxies mix of a traditional localized auction house (per city), and its great shop-keeper mechanic where people could set up shop in their respective properties (houses).
I never even assumed anywhere a global auction house, I was taking the regional market as a norm. I was especially looking at an economic Metropolis which has a rather extensive Zoi and a unified marketplace and as I said, the word auction house was used in several places.
It's not so much wishing for something, but assuming that there will be an auction house of some kind due to wordings used.
So while I appreciate the hint of research, it is rather miss placed.
I mean think about it just for a little, there are only so many market stalls in a city. How will mister fancypants who doesn't own one of those for the time being sell all the epic rare hides he gathered? He gona have to wait for one to be free or sell them by spamming local trade chat? That's what you want to see?
Per City trade houses could be just as well a thing. You know with the downside of a tax
I also liked how every player could be their own store anywhere. All players had to do was "inspect your toon" to see your goods. It was nice selling food and potions during group activities directly from my inventory with out me needing to micro manage it after it was set up.
As far as what they have planned I think during PAX they discussed having to use caravans to get goods to foreign markets. There would also be a risk in doing this. My mind thinks about it being attacked and all your items getting stolen.
Whatever they decide to go with in the final product I just don't want to see empty vendors. I do not mind running around to try and find items but limited places to buy things, and guilds with monopolies on the market making it where I cant reasonably buy or sell items is not ok.
This meant to buy anything you had to just randomly open trade with one of these NPCs and hope they had what you needed. If not, repeat with another NPC.
No search function, no ability to really price check, and if someone summoned their retainer over yours, it was fucked and hard to click on. Also to top this all off, the system would randomly delete items.
I'm fine with any system that isn't that one.
Nowhere do I even mention a desire for a global auction house. If I want anything at all, then I want to make sure auctions will be a thing and a fun thing.
All I discussed were mechanics of auction houses that I experienced so could we please return to that and stop stating something that was never the topic?
There is always the argument "Auction House leads to goldsellers", but auction house can be done right.
BDO does it somewhat good by forcing to buy the cheapest item, so goldsellers cannot exploit the marketplace to sell cheap items overpriced and sell their gold that way. If you need to buy large stacks, suck it up.
Another method is localized auction house, each node has it's own market. I believe this idea would fit the concept of AoC the best.
No auction house at all is simply not acceptable to todays standards. Who wants to leave you PC on all day just to have a localized stall in one of the cities to be able to sell some stuff, just to DC due to a lag spike and leave your PC on all day for nothing. Oh I know this just too well, considering all those games I have played that didn't have an auction house (but eventually got one later on).
Though if Intrepid makes it so that you leave your stuff for sale on your stand and then log off, and turn off your PC, while your sale stand still stays available for other players to use, then I guess this could work.
I am also definitely against having to leave my PC on all the time.
If IS would want global markets, they would not implement caravan system at first place.
Also there is no need for auction house. Market place with straight buys/sells and possibility to create buy/sell orders is enough.
I don't mind the anonymity in it, I mean, some people who sell stuff in Auction Houses would actually prefer to be anonymous :P
Hmm, let's see.
1. I disagree since people would want to be anonymous, as well as it counter my idea of an Auction House (Will be at the end)
2. That should always be an option, but I would much more prefer they sell regular stuff etc at stalls and stores, instead of just putting everything into a common auction house, making it a completely socially uninteractive system.
3a. Agree (see my idea later for why)
3b. There's not really any need to improve, more go back to the roots.
3b1. That sounds overly complicated.
3b1.1. I don't see the need for that either :P
3b1.2. Again, why not anonymous? :P
Ok, so here is my idea:
Bring back the Auction Houses as they should be.
Where Auction Houses are "Events" that only happen at certain times (day of week).
Where you have to show up personally to bid on things.
Either make it an NPC held event where gear and materials above a certain Tier (or some other system that only allow for so and so many items to be sold in 1 event) can be sold one by one, holding it like a real Auction House.
Or make some form of systems that Players can use to hold such Events more easily, where players dicern what is rare and valuable enough to be sold at an auction instead of on the market, letting players sell stuff for others and trying to sell it for as high as they can while taking like a 5-10% commission of the sale from it. And the things they sell, are things handed to them by other players in the week/month before the Auction.
I'd rather have the choice to experience the thrill of a proper auction rather than just click and buy..... unless time is short, hence choice.
Also given that those with more cash would likely always snatch what you need, or trolls would force up the sale price with no intention to buy, I do think the sealed bid has its attraction.
There maybe local auctions in addition to player stalls, but so far the dev's haven't announced anything in that direction yet.
. Allow the owner of the item to list it for (Bid Only) or Bid & Buyout if it hits a certain amount.
The biggest problem with auction house with bidding system is (Bots) and cheaters who will dominate the market by using automated programs to bid on items 24/7 as soon as its out-bid someone else will bid higher, and so gold sellers get the items then sell again. A good way to prevent this would be to put like a fun "Mini Game" in and in order to access the market in game every so many hours you have to enter a random color code or something that changes each time Possibly a "recaptcha" like system. where players have to click a word or something this would prevent automated bids.
Which leads to the other issue with "Ashes OF Creation" Bots, and Third Party Gold Sellers, I hope that this game gets it right by "disallowing" people to convert currency like in "Albion Online" or "EVE Online" the problem with Albion for example because its the most recent game with no security in place at launch is people would buy currency with stolen credit-cards to gain a unfair advantage and then launder the currency out in game, even give items away to people and a hand full of long time founders got the ban hammer which totally sucks and is the down-side to games having such a system.
. Instead to combat bots there needs to be a reputable Anti-Cheat put in place to prevent cheating to begin with aka automation of game-play, and then selling the items on the market.
. I Share many developers stances when it comes to "RMT" but personally I couldn't care if people sell items in a game for "Real Money" for example lets say I played ashes of creation for a year after release and decide to stop playing so my friend in Real life gives me $20 for all my materials in my bank, Who should care what arrangements people make outside the game at least backing this game on kickstarter I haven't hear a lot about this subject yet.
However the biggest problem is those who automate the game I won't post the many sites but if you Google like "WOW Gold" you will see there are many sites online selling currency, the problem is that many of these people use bots or automated programs in currenct cases they use stolen cards to buy wow tokens and sell them for gold then sell the currency to others for example, and these are the people who need to be removed from the games, not the person or friends who pay $5 for a stack of 100 wood, or something like that.
In other words I have seen some of the biggest BS in certain games when it comes to the stance on RMT, and the type of market I would like to see (Free Trading) all around aka people can do whatever they want to in game trade whatever they want to without the risk of getting banned for accepting items through a market, or through trades without knowledge it comes from a 3rd party gold seller as in some games like Albion does, people got banned for life just for accepting mounts and starter items from gold sellers who freely handed them to people (this is something I really hope doesn't happen with Ashes OF Creation) backing this game for $500 possibly more over the coming year or so I hope free trading will be allowed within the market and auction house without risk of getting banned, and currently there is no EULA or user agreement regarding this issue either for those who backed, or purchased packages from the store I am told it comes later though.
The biggest issue with "RMT" aka gold sellers, is to sort the legitimate goods from the illegitimate goods, and this is something I hope developers of this game take seriously to put a stop to cheaters before goods make it onto the market for example if I used a bot to gather 1000 wood and then sell that to other players and launder that gold to other accounts using IP Spoofing on a legitimate account and such, it creates a problem for legitimate players, and there are ways around this one method is having a PC with 32 GB of ram running "Ashes OF Creation twice" and using a VPN with Hardware spoofer then talk to myself across two different accounts each with two different hardware profiles and make it look legitimate in a trade always think that there are some dishonest people or guilds in games that actually do this, which is why keeping the illegal goods off the market before they make it there is the best way to keep things balanced.
Cause inventory has to be stored somewhere.