Topic

SDBs vs. auctions

Do you think auctions will slowly be phased out with the new functionality of SDBs? I know that we currently cannot sell furniture via SDBs. Therefore, the auction house is still useful. I've always disliked the fact that we have to pay fees to list our items. Where do those currants go? See this thread about the 7% fee: http://www.glitch.com/forum/general/23177/

Do you think the fee will apply for SDBs eventually? If so, would you still sell from your towers? Would that make towers obsolete?

If the fee only applies for auctions and we can put our furniture in SDBs eventually, the use of tower resource routes will be tremendously useful. My issue with selling my items out of the SDBs is price. I usually list my items at a very decent price. However, I don't know if I should list them at the lowest auction price or just set my own price. What do you all think?

Posted 5 months ago by ☠ lala512 ☠ Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • stoot said that auctions would not be removed.
    Posted 5 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Set your own price. I will be selling "need a few more" building supplies, so will price elastically simply to make sure the SDB remains supplied.

    From a basic value perspective SDB bought items are 10 minutes more useful than auctions, so should get a slight price premium *over* auctions. Any underpriced items of real value will just get arbitraged, so not much use trying to discount.
    Posted 5 months ago by Sturminator i` Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Auctions are more useful, even if delayed, because an item has known details. Such as price and quantity.

    Buying from a tower means having to know whose street to go to AND 2 loading screens. That might be minor for some but....

    Already I've found the trade channel either dead with no responses or completely off subject.

    Tower routes are a good start and the best we can do from the player's side.

    Right now, even if the trade channel leads to an appropriate seller unless the seller is in their own tower watching their supply....they can be sold out and not know it. 

    I'm hoping there will be a unified way to see what people are selling in their towers. 

    Even if it's 2 loading screens away at least you have a chance to find something if a seller is offline or ignoring the bajillion off topic messages on trade. 

    It is certainly better to have the frog take those 10 minutes to find me than me take 10 minutes to find an empty SDB and worth the markup.
    Posted 5 months ago by M<3tra, obviously Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The problem is no centralized directory of SDB stuff. Wading through the charming chaff of the trade channel is not a good way to do cost-comparison.
    Posted 5 months ago by Pascale Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'd love to see an option for real auctions. Items go up for 24 or 48 hours and high bidder gets it.
    Posted 5 months ago by Pielwyn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I personally still much rather buy and sell in the auction house as opposed to towers.

    On the buying side its just SO much easier to use the search feature in the AH to both find something and compare prices, whereas in towers I would have no idea how to find what I'm looking for amongst all of the towers in Ur, and even if I find what I'm looking for, how will I know i'm not getting hoodwinked on the price?

    As for selling, I still prefer AH over towers. With the AH there's no need to research what the going rate is for something, nor is there a need to advertise since so many eyeballs are already looking at the AH, whereas for towers you need to actually attract people to your street. Furthermore, the AH froggy delivers, leaving me free to go about my business whilst he arrives. Finally, towers take a lot of time, energy, and resouces to build... and are therefore not going to be readily accessible to many players.

    This is not to say that I don't like the idea of towers. If someone has the resources to build one and is really dedicated to selling and adversiting their wares, I'm sure they could do very well... but it's definitely not something I'd enjoy as it would make Glitch feel too much like work. I still might eventually make a tower, but likely not for the purposes of selling.
    Posted 5 months ago by Rezzie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Team Auction!

    No need to move in-world, easier to compare prices, and generally nicer than boxes... Go, Auction, Go!
    Posted 5 months ago by Ayzad Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Personally, I think there is world for both.

    Tower Stores will gain popularity for me once they are settled down. I would much rather buy from someone I know and in world than I am to just go for the lowest price on auction, regardless who is selling.

    The real tell will be with newer player.  People who come into the world who have never known a world with tower store. Hard to predict how they will act.

    (Also like the option of picking the quantity I wish to buy. That is a big plus.)
    Posted 5 months ago by Lord Bacon-o Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 Lord Bacon-o
    Posted 5 months ago by ~Arabesque~ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Now that we have towers and a zero teleport cost to go home to stash our inventories, I would like to see the auctions transformed into real auctions with bidding, etc.

    In the past there were always (at least) two camps, those who liked the idea of a consignment store; a way to share with other players items generously and a way to free up inventory when needed. And the other camp who wanted an actual auction where items without specific values could be sold (like the Christmas Yeti, GNG, etc.) and the market would determine the price.

    Now that the former has been resolved with our towers and zero transportation cost home in a far better manner than before even, I think it would be good if the auctions were now improved so that their function better resembled the description.

    And if you are having trouble with finding the best price via the towers I would recommend: http://glitchmarket.com/tools/marketplace/
    Posted 5 months ago by Mithax Subscriber! | Permalink
  • That link goes to a private site that requires permission to modify your character, in addition to reading information about your character.  It also requires that you manually update your sales information each time the quantities or price that you're offering change.  It is a limited list, and is frequently just plain wrong, since many people don't update.  

    The Trade Channel is also a poor source of information.  No one can monitor and respond to requests 24 hours a day.  If you're not awake, logged in, and paying attention to that channel, then you can't provide information to potential buyers.

    Towers require that people travel from street to street to collect and pay for the items they need.  They are much less convenient than the auction for many folks, and have in no way resolved the buyer's issue of obtaining the goods they need in a convenient way.  

    All in all, towers provide a convenient vending machine set up for sellers but they are still almost useless to buyers, except for those who have broad friendship networks and can find out via word-of-mouth where specific items are being sold. 

    I use towers when I know the price range I'm willing to pay and have some certainty that the seller is reliable enough to keep their tower stocked even if they aren't online. 

     I use the auction when I need a predictable quantity of an item and want to see what competitive pricing has to offer.  The towers have in no way replaced the auction house for a group of players that are not even mentioned in your either/or assessment.  
    Posted 5 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Hopefully more widespread use of the vendor directory http://www.glitch.com/groups/RHV8DB12E533QR9/ would take care of some of those problems. 
    Posted 5 months ago by diaveborn ♥ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think that the two forms of selling should be integrated. If what people had in their SDBs was available through the AH as well, people could use the AH for searching and then go to the seller's tower to buy it directly if they didn't want to wait for the frog.
    Posted 5 months ago by Janitch Subscriber! | Permalink
  • If we didn't have the auction house how would lower level players without towers sell things? Presently we can sell to the tool vendor but that is probably going to disappear. Yes, they could sell through the marketplace forum but that is a rather unwieldy method, as is the trade channel (once there is an influx of new players). 
    Posted 5 months ago by Captain Daisy Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The biggest problem I have with the auction right now is the prices, which IMHO will hurt new players (one reason why I want to go to an actual auction system). When pricing on the actions people usually try to price compared to the other postings. In the past as everyone was using the auctions sometimes it was so competitive it seemed as the price was a race to the bottom. But as many people are using towers there doesn't seem to be the same volume of pricing/competition on the auctions and the prices are creeping up so that in some cases they are much higher than what is usually priced in the towers. A standard auction would have (supposedly) have the prices start out low and would top out when the market determined a fair price.

    But naturally even in a pure auction system it could be exploited to raise up the prices and even though we will loose some vendors (from my understanding) I hope at least a few are kept in every region specifically for new players.

    As far as the site I posted. I just posted it because I like it and enjoy using it. I don't worry too much about turning over my Glitch account info to a site like that (that is ran by a long term Glitch player) as it really doesn't contain an personally identifiable info, but everyone has their own tolerances as to how much info they want given out. In case anyone is curious about the website but is concerned about the permissions, the only modification to your character the website does it to post auctions for you so it needs access to your inventory, everything else its just read only I believe.

    Also it really needs widespread adoption to be fully accurate, right now it's a great advertising tool for those who use it but doesn't give the whole picture by a long shot. And it does require active use of the sellers to keep it updated. Any attempt at indexing SDBs until TS creates an API for it (and who knows who complicated that may turn out to be) will have to be manually updated for the towers. However the website did introduce a new feature where if you notice something is out of stock and you flag it on the webpage so other people don't make a wasted trip. (Boy talk about a long post)
    Posted 5 months ago by Mithax Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Mithrax, by "real" auction, do you mean a real-time, in-person auction where the price is determined by a final bid that no one tops within a certain time (3 to 5 minutes)?  If so, Glitch already has the mechanism to do this.  Simply advertise your auction and use the party chat feature to manage the bidding. 

    Or by "real" auction do you mean an asynchronous internet auction, where the price is determined by the last person bidding at the last second before the end of the auction, thus allowing snipes and other bidder methods for keeping the price low?  
    Posted 5 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • As long as it takes to load streets these days, I will stick to the auction. So many things I don't do because of the long wait, sure fragments the game. I have always loved escaping real life and just spacing out in Glitch, but now I am to busy waiting and re-loading. Wah!
    Posted 5 months ago by Priscilla Parsley Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Both types are basically the same thing with the later just allowing for proxy bidding (Now if TS also allowed for Dutch auctions that would be different [edit: different as in creative not different as in a different style, which is would be but that's fairly obvious]). Yes it introduces potentially different issues but will allow for a more options when it comes to selling. I've see people do their own in chat & forums which is one reason why I want a better mechanism for it. But again its just my own personal preference.
    Posted 5 months ago by Mithax Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm from The Netherlands, what on earth is a Dutch auction??
    Posted 5 months ago by WeavingTheWeb Subscriber! | Permalink
  • A Dutch auction is where the starting price is high, and progressively drops until somebody bids. First person to bid wins the auction.

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch...
    Posted 5 months ago by dopiaza Subscriber! | Permalink
  • My bad I was thinking of the auction type where you only get one private bid. Ah well.
    Posted 5 months ago by Mithax Subscriber! | Permalink
  • That's often known as a Silent Auction, where people submit written bids and at the end of a certain time period, the highest bid wins.  Sometimes you can submit more than one bid, and only your highest bid counts.  
    Posted 5 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink