Topic

auction ideas

Hey, I'm new but made some observations of the auctioning system and have some ideas to improve.

The main problems I see are that some of the items are at a massively inflated price. Next, undercutting seems to be a big issue - if I post up say four items at 200 each, someone will come along and post the same items at 199 meaning I'd have to remove my listings and repost them if I wanted to sell them.

Surely it would be a good idea to actually auction items - you put it a starting price and time limit (1 hour/2 hours/5 hours). You could also have a buy it now price so if you were desperate for an item you could potentially pay a premium price.

Another problem is the quantities - say if I need 50 cherries and look on the auctions then often there is only like 5 cherries to buy or 500. I notice that the site tells you the price per unit. Would it be an idea to be able to buy a certain quantity? So if I had 500 to sell, I could put them up at say 3 per unit and people could buy how ever many they wanted?

Posted 19 months ago by hoppy Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Interesting ideas! There's another start-up's worth of work in there building auction systems and stores for game economies :-). *cough* flickr spin-off *cough*.
    Posted 19 months ago by girlhacker Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Nice ideas hoppy. +1.
    Posted 19 months ago by gia Subscriber! | Permalink
  • All I want is a type in search box. I still cant find cheese!
    Posted 19 months ago by Hizzie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 Hizzie. A search box would make it so much easier to find things.
    Posted 19 months ago by LinsM Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 on the search feature!
    Posted 19 months ago by Riverwalker Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @hizzie @LinsM @Riverwalker go to the encyclopedia and look for the item you need, then look for auctions for that item.  Someone taught me this trick and I've been using it since.

    @Hoppy I guess calling it an item auction is a misnomer.  Think of it as a market instead.  You compete with other sellers to sell stuff and the customers benefit from price competition.  Find your niche if you want to make a go at being a retailer in game.
    Posted 19 months ago by Snuffleupagus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • another thing that would be very useful is having a "back to *specific category*" option. the new test with categories was a huge improvement. however, unless i'm missing something, each auction takes you back to the whole list of auctions. it would be great if you could go back to the category you were searching.
    Posted 19 months ago by greenkozi Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 to Greenkozi's idea.

    An "alphabetical order by object name" would be handy - maybe implement clickable column headings to allow people to order any way they like, name/date/price/price-per/whatever? Although since it's not actually an auction, I guess order by date is pointless.
    Posted 19 months ago by Spong Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Another tip: say you need an item, something in-game is prompting you for it (for example, the recipes in the awesome pot).  You can click that item in that menu to bring up its info, which has a link to the auctions on it - no need to go to encyclopedia.

    But a search option would be stellar.  This app is also awesome:
    feedyourglutt.com/

    So, auctions. The pagination and categories certainly helped!

    But I still think this is a feature in search of a philosophy.  It's the free market aspect of the game, and wow, have I seen some truly inspirational capitalist tendencies there.  If that is the philosophy behind auctions, then leave them be - they are doing really well at both inflated market value for some items and for Wal*Mart-style price undercutting for other items.  Not to mention the folks buying up the cheap stuff and re-selling it at an inflated price.  

    Unfortunately, since there are rarely instances of limited resources in-game, there can be no true free market.  I spent 15 minutes gathering 750 cherries - they are ubiquitous.  It took me a while longer to gather that many beans, but the point is, there is an unlimited supply of nearly everything (except for DR3 music blocks!).

    Setting auctions to be true auctions would be fantastic, although the unintended consequence of that change would mean that people could not use them to quickly transfer things across the world to a distant project (well, with a Buy It Now price, you still could, so we'd still see the price inflations for those desperate to quickly contribute something).

    The issue of  "I want to buy 50 but my choices are 5 and 500" could be resolved by either buying the 500 and then turning the other 450 around (so, we can do that now) or by letting players set up actual shops - a feature request.  I'm not sure how that would look in-game, though, since I'd love to have a storefront, but might quickly tire of having to sit there to sell things.  Perhaps our storefronts could have a spirit we could pay to sit there and sell the wares... as well as an 'online catalog' for long-distant purchases.

    One thing that annoys me about auctions is the rather random inability to auction certain items.  I cannot auction an emblem, but I can auction gems? Huh? Why? - at least tell the reasoning behind those choices.  Emblems at least have an on-going purpose for mood/energy/XP... the *only* thing that gems are good for are donations to shrines (ok, and their trophy).  But the donation value is *fixed*.  Anyone buying a diamond for more than 2k is getting ripped off because you can only get 200 favor from it (10% of the item's value) -- which is just weird to me.  It goes beyond the other inflated auctions because, well, if you're desperate enough to pay a ridiculous price for cherries because you don't have the time to collect them, fine, so be it - that's the trade-off between convenience and cost.  But gems????  

    The *only* thing you can do with gems is donate them.  You get 10% of the value of every item you donate.  If you are at a shrine and looking at gems on auction, you're throwing your currants away because you could spend the same 3000 on whatever that vendor is selling to get your 10% favor from that shrine.  It's the most icky thing about auctions; thankfully the categories now make it so I never have to see what people are doing trying to gouge other players in the worst imaginable way possible.

    Other thoughts:
    - what greenkozi said: if i am browsing a category or item and make a purchase, please dump me back on the item or category list.
    - plz give us the list price that a vendor would sell an item for on the auction page, so that when I view an item, I can make a rational choice about buying it.

    :)
    Posted 19 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'd agree with hoppy on the ability for some kind of batching or price-per-item capability for auctions, so that, say, I could create an auction for 10x Meat Gumbos with the option to sell them individually at a tenth of the original lot price.

    Right now, I think it's it's mainly speed that leads people to create auctions with high lot sizes: it's easier to set up one 10x auction than ten 1x.
    Posted 19 months ago by Holgate Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I didn't bother to check this time around but I was wondering if there was a barter system in place alreadyl? Something where you can put up something in exchange for something else as the price. Maybe even setup a combination of currents and items in trade? Or set it up for a certain amount of currants OR items?

    Often I don't care so much about money as I do about accomplishing a task that requires certain items. In those cases I don't care so much about the monetary value of the items in question.
    Posted 19 months ago by Freeman Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I haven't used it yet, but there is a trade system in place.
    Posted 19 months ago by FrankenPaula Subscriber! | Permalink