Discussion: "Auction House" Do we REALLY need one?

I'm a boomer - I grew up to EQ. I know most people have gotten used to AH from WoW who made it the standard but I still gotta ask - Do we really need it?

Everquest did not have AH and IIRC Ragnarok either. EQ later in the Luclin Expansion created "Traders" aka Stalls like Ragnarok.

But during its classic days - Players who wanted to sell their fancy loots normally convened to East Commonland Tunnels to auction off their loot. This was organic and became a thing. A ritual - basically every Sunday the entire zone would show up to this area to sell their stuff. It was beautiful, it was also at the time CHAOTIC with dial-up modem and having 2000 players in a zone. But it was fond memories.

Where as AH - it removes the social interaction and it creates another mini-game. Playing the AH game, buy low sell high.

Now, I highly doubt something like that will happen in AOC But we can still do away with a official Auction House in cities and do more of a stall / Trader.

Let's look at Ragnork Online and even Ultima Online.

Nothing is global and if you wanted to buy goods - you would have to go to the city of your choice. Many times people would designate a city to be the MAIN HUB for trading / selling and sets up their cart to sell.
This makes sense with out caravan system. They shouldnt just drop their stuff to a NPC and have the NPC sell. We are creating jobs (crafter, processor, gatherers, smithies, etc) thus we should create sellers, vendors, carts. Let the players sit in town and sell their wares personally imho.

Actually let's look at Ultima Online (UO) which is probably the better one that aligns with AoC. In Ultima Online - you were able to place a home/castle/tower anywhere in the world. You were also able to purchase "NPC" who would sell your stuff at your home. So many players turned their little homes into shops. Able to use their anvil, and check each type of NPC, who sold different things (armor, swords only, spell component only) etc and decorate their stuff. While the owner can do his thing and/or also be in the city to sell his top shelf stuff.

Should AoC have a traditional Auction House like World of Warcraft that is localized to the city they are in or
Should we allow to organically create our space, market, bazaar - location of where we trade/sell?

Would you prefer a Cart to sell your wares or perhaps a NPC to sell your wares in town?
Would you prefer a cart in town and NPC at your own property?

how would you like to see AoC deal with players selling their goods.

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Comments

Sathrago

look ill put it simple. If not having AHs causes this game and its players to create 3rd party addons and websites that are annoying to engage with just to sell to other players like Path of Exile, I would much rather have the issue of AHs being a thing.

MaiWaifu

Strevi wrote: »

MaiWaifu wrote: »

On the flip side, are you really going to travel all the way with tons of gold in your pockets just to buy some potions 5 gold cheaper than where you are now?

How much gold can you carry?

Just double checked the wiki.

It's infinite. Sadly you don't actually drop any when you die...

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Currency

George_Black

Sathrago wrote: »

look ill put it simple. If not having AHs causes this game and its players to create 3rd party addons and websites that are annoying to engage with just to sell to other players like Path of Exile, I would much rather have the issue of AHs being a thing.

How could a program track what people are selling in their stalls?
I get it in esos case, where the traders are localized AH, but I dont see how this can be the case for player made shops.

Strevi

MaiWaifu wrote: »

Strevi wrote: »

MaiWaifu wrote: »

On the flip side, are you really going to travel all the way with tons of gold in your pockets just to buy some potions 5 gold cheaper than where you are now?

How much gold can you carry?

Just double checked the wiki.

It's infinite. Sadly you don't actually drop any when you die...

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Currency

Hmm, but unused gold is also useless.
If you need materials to repair your legendary, you may not be able to gather gold fast enough to keep it shiny.
Maybe having resources will be more important than having some gold.

Sathrago

George_Black wrote: »

Sathrago wrote: »

look ill put it simple. If not having AHs causes this game and its players to create 3rd party addons and websites that are annoying to engage with just to sell to other players like Path of Exile, I would much rather have the issue of AHs being a thing.

How could a program track what people are selling in their stalls?
I get it in esos case, where the traders are localized AH, but I dont see how this can be the case for player made shops.

If the players opt-in to a 3rd party addon that can take their listings and place them on a virtual market it should be possible. all the addon would require is the item id and the prices listed for buying/selling. It would literally be on your screen so im sure someone can take that information (plus location), load it up into a website, and create a global market for each server with just that. I expect this to happen even if there is an in-game AH.

to clarify I understand that "addons" are not allowed according to steven. What im talking about would be more like ACT for ff14. Its not in the game with you, its a 3rd party program that extracts information and slaps it into an excel spreadsheet to tell you the dps. Another program that does something like this is PoE Overlay.

Garrtok

In economic metropolises I would see them as a nice fitting bonus. Besides that there shouldn't be any

George_Black

Sathrago wrote: »

George_Black wrote: »

Sathrago wrote: »

look ill put it simple. If not having AHs causes this game and its players to create 3rd party addons and websites that are annoying to engage with just to sell to other players like Path of Exile, I would much rather have the issue of AHs being a thing.

How could a program track what people are selling in their stalls?
I get it in esos case, where the traders are localized AH, but I dont see how this can be the case for player made shops.

If the players opt-in to a 3rd party addon that can take their listings and place them on a virtual market it should be possible. all the addon would require is the item id and the prices listed for buying/selling. It would literally be on your screen so im sure someone can take that information (plus location), load it up into a website, and create a global market for each server with just that. I expect this to happen even if there is an in-game AH.

to clarify I understand that "addons" are not allowed according to steven. What im talking about would be more like ACT for ff14. Its not in the game with you, its a 3rd party program that extracts information and slaps it into an excel spreadsheet to tell you the dps. Another program that does something like this is PoE Overlay.

Any GM using that program could track and Ban everybody.

Azherae

George_Black wrote: »

Sathrago wrote: »

George_Black wrote: »

Sathrago wrote: »

look ill put it simple. If not having AHs causes this game and its players to create 3rd party addons and websites that are annoying to engage with just to sell to other players like Path of Exile, I would much rather have the issue of AHs being a thing.

How could a program track what people are selling in their stalls?
I get it in esos case, where the traders are localized AH, but I dont see how this can be the case for player made shops.

If the players opt-in to a 3rd party addon that can take their listings and place them on a virtual market it should be possible. all the addon would require is the item id and the prices listed for buying/selling. It would literally be on your screen so im sure someone can take that information (plus location), load it up into a website, and create a global market for each server with just that. I expect this to happen even if there is an in-game AH.

to clarify I understand that "addons" are not allowed according to steven. What im talking about would be more like ACT for ff14. Its not in the game with you, its a 3rd party program that extracts information and slaps it into an excel spreadsheet to tell you the dps. Another program that does something like this is PoE Overlay.

Any GM using that program could track and Ban everybody.

This is not required, in the standard implementation of 'stalls' and similar. It is less work to broadcast all information and changes relative to stalls to a player in the area than to set up a transactional check server for every time a single player actually interacts with a shop other than to make a purchase. Saves load times, for one thing.

That information can then be interpreted. Another method is simply to have an account walk around and check the stalls and screenshot what they find for less up-to-date information, which is sufficient for most users of these sites.

Both of these are generally undetectable and do not interfere with the game client. Auto-shopping is also simple depending on the way the player stall is implemented.

Workarounds for this exist, but most are equally easily defeated.

George_Black

What are you talking about bot?
I am a player and I want to use that illegal website to quickly track some animal bones. I type animal bones in the search bar and I find GeorgeBlack, selling 50 animal bones for 2g each at the Cavern Node.
A GM can do the same and ban GeorgeBlack, if AoC chooses to prevent the use of 3rd party tools to circumvent the fact that there won't be any AH except for eco nodes.

What workarounds are you talking about, and what kinda of player is going to use them to attract mass attention to the goods they sell?

Azherae

George_Black wrote: »

What are you talking about bot?
I am a player and I want to use that illegal website to quickly track some animal bones. I type animal bones in the search bar and I find GeorgeBlack, selling 50 animal bones for 2g each at the Cavern Node.
A GM can do the same and ban GeorgeBlack, if AoC chooses to prevent the use of 3rd party tools to circumvent the fact that there won't be any AH except for eco nodes.

What workarounds are you talking about, and what kinda of player is going to use them to attract mass attention to the goods they sell?

I am telling you that the player stall can be checked without any third party program being involved. You the seller just put up a regular stall, but the website still has your data because it can be obtained by any player in the vicinity.

George_Black

How is that relevant to players creating an unofficial AH?

George_Black

Sathrago wrote: »

look ill put it simple. If not having AHs causes this game and its players to create 3rd party addons and websites that are annoying to engage with just to sell to other players like Path of Exile, I would much rather have the issue of AHs being a thing.

How is anything you say relevant to this, bot?

Azherae

George_Black wrote: »

How is that relevant to players creating an unofficial AH?

Never mind. Given your reactions to me, I feel as though it is best if this explanation comes from someone else. The fact that you do not understand it has now been clarified such that any person with the knowledge can attempt to explain it to you.

Ludullu

George_Black wrote: »

How is that relevant to players creating an unofficial AH?

I'm fairly sure I've seen those kinds of sites for L2 back in the day. Some dude would just go around, talk to every player stall and compile all that info onto the site. That's it. No vendor took part in the creation of the site so no ban could come their way. And no GM/Admin would know who exactly compiled the info because it was done through legal means.

I think that's what Azherae is talking about. The site doesn't even have to be profitable to have that kind of information, because there'll always be people interested in compiling information in such ways, so you'd just find those players (easily done through discord groups and shit) and then have them check their local nodes every other hour for the changes on the market.

And if such a site becomes profitable in any way - oooooh boi would your info become way more relevant real quick.

George_Black

come on man.. such a tool is useless, it won't serve anything. By the time you go to the nearby node to collect information for the site (not metropolis, just a nearby node) this information has changed. The shop is empty and the site isn't providing useful information. There is no way to track in real time what items are being sold in what shops and what node and for how much with what you describe.
A seller must post the goods on a website if he wants to provide real time information. And if a player chooses to do that, they break the rules. Banned. The seller TOOK PART in cheating to recreate an AH.

Besides there are marketplace sections in most videogame forums. It's not automation, not a third party program and it doesn't break the rules. If the proposed system is so useless, it serves just as another example of azhreas long but empty posts.

https://eu.tamrieltradecentre.com/pc/Trade
Imagine this being illegal in ESO if the guildtraders (which are npc AH) where players instead. Every single listing could help in banning a player.

Ludullu

George_Black wrote: »

come on man.. such a tool is useless, it won't serve anything. By the time you go to the nearby node to collect information for the site (not metropolis, just a nearby node) this information has changed. The shop is empty and the site isn't providing useful information. There is no way to track in real time what items are being sold in what shops and what node and for how much with what you describe.
A seller must post the goods on a website if he wants to provide real time information. And if a player chooses to do that, they break the rules. Banned. The seller TOOK PART in cheating to recreate an AH.

Besides there are marketplace sections in most videogame forums.

I've seen player stalls that didn't change for days in L2. And that shit had TPs and a quite limited range of useful items. I'm more than sure that AoC's markets will move even slower, so checking it every other hour could work just fine.

Either way, people will find a way to make their own kind of AH, be it discord groups, forum threads or player-made sites. And none of that can be bannable, unless Intrepid decide to completely forbid that, which imo would be quite dumb.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

George_Black wrote: »

come on man.. such a tool is useless, it won't serve anything. By the time you go to the nearby node to collect information for the site (not metropolis, just a nearby node) this information has changed. The shop is empty and the site isn't providing useful information. There is no way to track in real time what items are being sold in what shops and what node and for how much with what you describe.
A seller must post the goods on a website if he wants to provide real time information. And if a player chooses to do that, they break the rules. Banned. The seller TOOK PART in cheating to recreate an AH.

Besides there are marketplace sections in most videogame forums.

I've seen player stalls that didn't change for days in L2. And that shit had TPs and a quite limited range of useful items. I'm more than sure that AoC's markets will move even slower, so checking it every other hour could work just fine.

Either way, people will find a way to make their own kind of AH, be it discord groups, forum threads or player-made sites. And none of that can be bannable, unless Intrepid decide to completely forbid that, which imo would be quite dumb.

Please note that depending on the implementation, what the game does when someone ELSE in the area interacts with a stall and buys something, is broadcast that change to every player in the area so that their client can be up to date without having to recheck the database entry for the player's stall (for example, so that if two players are viewing the same stall and one makes a purchase from that stall, the other's client updates to prevent certain much more complex duping scenarios).

There are reasons why this would be possibly the best implementation depending on multiple factors (some others have lower actual security against duping and bugs, for example).

This information is easily tracked. You might receive it while afk. You might even receive it while standing in your own stall. Encoding does not generally matter because you can teach the sniffer to understand the data packet stream without knowing what the data represents exactly in many cases, since you can crossreference Item transactions to your own database. You can write programs to do that too, they are very short.

You now have enough information, I think, to clarify anything other than 'Packet Sniffing won't be allowed while your computer is running the Ashes client' and 'Intrepid obviously won't implement it that way'. Thank you for assisting as much as you have already.

MaiWaifu

Other than being an interesting metric to overanalyze price fluctuations and market trends, I don't really see external trade listings being very useful in AoC.

Without fast travel or easy access to get to the location the listing is in kind of defeats the purpose.

PoE listing makes sense since you can teleport to the player hideout instantly and complete the trade. Even that has people spamming whispers hoping for a reply and hoping you don't get blocked because someone else messaged a few seconds earlier than you.

I can't imagine external trade sites working very well in AoC, when you whisper someone, travel half the continent for the trade and then find out they sold it to someone that was closer.

I can only see external listing working for really rare, lucrative items that are either too expensive for the average person to buy or you want to keep off the radar so no one PK's you for it later.

Sathrago

MaiWaifu wrote: »

Other than being an interesting metric to overanalyze price fluctuations and market trends, I don't really see external trade listings being very useful in AoC.

Without fast travel or easy access to get to the location the listing is in kind of defeats the purpose.

PoE listing makes sense since you can teleport to the player hideout instantly and complete the trade. Even that has people spamming whispers hoping for a reply and hoping you don't get blocked because someone else messaged a few seconds earlier than you.

I can't imagine external trade sites working very well in AoC, when you whisper someone, travel half the continent for the trade and then find out they sold it to someone that was closer.

I can only see external listing working for really rare, lucrative items that are either too expensive for the average person to buy or you want to keep off the radar so no one PK's you for it later.

Ah you see though, they are gonna have a whisper chat, right? That won't be limited by the zone you are in afaik. Spot a purchase you want, whisper the owner to reserve it, travel there and purchase it. Naturally there are some issues with this (afk, scams, time spent, etc) but this alone undermines the exclusion of an AH system. Especially if people popularize this method of trading, the increase in people following the proper etiquette created by this third party site would reduce such problems.

Sigh, anyway, not having an AH is bad for the health of the game. It encourages degenerate behavior that could easily be resolved. LOOKIN AT YOU GGG!

akabear

I see markets being tracked if there is data to be obtained..

L2 had a site run by "Himred", players installed the app, it uploaded the data from what they engaged in and the website kept an up to date data base of all buy/sell shops for the server.. and from that one could determine their own pricing to make sales.

Very good to backcheck past sales or rarer items too, as one could see if the current price was in line with market trends.

BDO did this in game.. but I felt it was doctored and not as easy to browse, even for something made 10 years later.

One one hand I would really like to be able to review something like this again, but then again, after working out rates by solo in NW and making good coin by being one of only a few playing the market between towns, I think working it out solo is best for all.

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