Excelsior

Hi.

I've seen items go for less than i guess what they are worth, and ive seen items go for way more than they are worth.
An item is not worth more than anyone is willing to pay for it. This may be more than what its worth if more people want it, or less if less people want it.

An auction system where people could put items, and other players could bid would be awesome.

I'm thinking of a system like exex where one has categories.. weapons / armor / rares / other

user would put item on auction, set a "minimum end auction price" -> Like if I had an item where I want minimum 100k, the item would still start bidding at 0gp, but there would be a green /red X thingie that says if minimum price has been reached.

If the price never reaches the minimum price, the owner can choose to sell it at that price, or end the auction without selling the item.

What do you think?

sounds a bit like ebay, although i like it. It would be nice to see implemented on this shard,but i know it would take a lot of programming. I am sure with the new facets coming, something like this would take the back seat. Still a good idea though.

there has to be a nice cost for placing an item for sale though for it to be a type of gold sink or else there is no incentive to script something like this. another alternative is to charge 5-10% of the final sale price.

Alex wrote:there has to be a nice cost for placing an item for sale though for it to be a type of gold sink or else there is no incentive to script something like this. another alternative is to charge 5-10% of the final sale price.

Actually I was thinking flat-fee, max 1-2% of saleprice.

It should in no way have a HIGH cost to use, if it does people will do like they do today.. Drop exex, and sell in [c because theres a 3% fee on exex. I myself think its insane to charge 3% .

Or you could do this. Announce your auction on global chat and Town Crier; post your items on the forums with the minimums and also date and time; get feedback and RSVP's there; have all interested meet you at the Town Center auction sight on appointed date and hold your auction. Players used to auction items right after regular auction so it has been done. Don't know what happens now as I haven't attended an auction in years. (Too many rude people) They used to have player submitted items at the normal auction but I am sure they abandoned that idea due to the junk many players tried to unload. It was waste of time for all. But holding your own auction and advertising it would entail little to no staff involvement, you control how it runs, what kind of currency you would sell it for, and it is done all on your time. And it involves no scripts. Other than that, I think EXEX works just fine to quickly sell the day to day items that players need in bulk. And as a service, it should have a charge for the use of that service, especially when the 'I Haves' and the 'I Needs' play in different time zones and may never see each other in normal game play. 3% seems quite trivial to me to charge. If you had a check for $100 and wanted your cash fast, spending $3 to get $97 doesn't seem unreasonable at all, especially if someone is going out of their way to help you get your cash.

Cygnus wrote:Or you could do this. Announce your auction on global chat and Town Crier; post your items on the forums with the minimums and also date and time;

How would this work for 50 users at the same time?

if everyone is gathered in one place, simply make sure you can see everyones text, and highest/last bid wins... use your journal to track it.

Asmodean wrote:if everyone is gathered in one place, simply make sure you can see everyones text, and highest/last bid wins... use your journal to track it.

Well yes, but how does it work when 50 people have something to sell?

I think that would be hard, there should be some kind of GUI with an list of all items on auction. Maybe make it so its not accessible from everywhere. (Maybe.. )

THe good think is that there would be no minimum requirement for what you want to sell. Want whatever people are willing to pay for a commodity deed with 10k boards? Then put that on auction.

It would work by taking turns Have the host call up a person, one at a time to auction their item, or collect the items up front, and auction them for the people involved.

They used to have player submitted items for auctions. The last one I think +Chaos hosted....I think the complaining afterwards probably made them not want to do them much anymore. Players felt they were cheated on items that didn't go for their "intended price" and were upset they could not set a "Reserve" and they shouldn't. The auctions never have a reserve to be met. If you want a certain amount at least for your item, sell it yourself.... Just a thought into why the staff does not host player item auctions anymore. Also Jack Penny used to hold his own auctions at the youth center. Could be the same reasoning for that not going on anymore, or he could not have time to anymore...Either way, You could technically set up your customized house in away to host your own auctions if you wanted.

Colibri has had plans to modify the exex to accept all items for years now, but it is a massive amount of work and he's a very busy man. On top of that, there are now two facets that both have lots of coding requirements in order to get developed so he has put those to the top of the priority list for the foreseeable future. He also has another very, very cool project for the shard to finish after that. I'd say "someday" we might see the exex accepting all items and being used as the sort of auction house you describe, but not for some time.

+Nyx wrote:Colibri has had plans to modify the exex to accept all items for years now.

To be honest I dont see exex working the way I was thinking of. If we both are selling same type of item, they should both be listed at the same time. Not only the one with lowest price.

Items would also have to have an "Minimum" price as I described earlier, where it would be up to the seller to sell or not if it is below this amount.

Some people also dont use exex because of the transaction fee, so I see myself also moving partly away from that system.

Also I am amazed that you are only 3 people in staff.

you know when you create "buy" and "sell" orders you get the price you are willing to pay and there are NO fees associated with the transaction. the risk you are taking is that you will never get the item because your offer price is either too high or too low.

also, stop looking at fees. 3% is pennies when you can make back any amount you spend on fees in a few minutes back farming. 3,000 gold on a 100,000 gold transaction. peanuts!

To be honest I dont see exex working the way I was thinking of. If we both are selling same type of item, they should both be listed at the same time. Not only the one with lowest price.

Items would also have to have an "Minimum" price as I described earlier, where it would be up to the seller to sell or not if it is below this amount.

Some people also dont use exex because of the transaction fee, so I see myself also moving partly away from that system.

When you set up a buy order, you list it at the price you are willing to buy it at. Same goes with a sell order. It makes it very convenient for people to trade with each other, without the need for vendors. When you think about it, if you run a player vendor, you are paying probably 3% of the value PER DAY the item does not sell, so in all reality the 3% exex fee is probably cheaper, since you aren't paying a 'vendor fee' if your stuff sits there for a year.

Your 'minimum' value or reserve you are talking about is what you set the buy/sell order at. The most/least you are willing to pay/receive for some item on the exchange.
Its not meant to be an auction. Its meant to be an exchange, and it works perfectly well for its intended purpose. It is 100% player run. The GMs don't stock it with stuff, so if nobody puts up stuff, it WILL RUN OUT. Thats one reason for price fluctuations. When one person is unwilling to sell something at a lower price, people either pay more, or they wait for someone who will sell lower, or they get it themselves.

Do you really want to have an auction for each and every keg, or blood moss that sells? Should we create a new currency that's worth 1/10th or 1/100th of a gold to support auctioning 1 reagent at a time?

Its your choice and theirs to use or not use the system. People probably throw away more in un-looted stuff from one play session than they would save by avoiding exex.

Oh but I put everything in my token bag! Congrats... you are still losing out, if you aren't receiving an amount of tokens equal or greater than the gold amount of ingots a metal item can be smelted, and/or sold for. Etc etc. Those scrolls people leave on corpses? They can be sold too. How bout gems? Leathers? Cloth?


edit: Why would anyone want to pay more than they have to for an item? What would be so amazing about listing every single buy and sell order, when everyone would buy from the cheapest and sell to the most expensive anyways? They system removes a TON of clutter and does that dirty work for you. Are you saying if there were 2 buy orders up, one for 5 gold, and one for 10, you would sell to the one that paid you 5? Are you saying if you could buy something for 100 gold, you would rather pay 1000?

If so, let me know. I have a ton of stuff I can sell you much more expensive than the going rate