Topic

I want to control prices Whats a good AH bot?

Where do i get a good AH Bot?

Posted 91 days ago by WhereIsTheCandy Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Have a look here
    http://www.glitch-strategy.com/wiki/Unofficial_API_Tools
    Posted 91 days ago by shhexy corin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Not entirely sure how one would go about "controlling prices," (not to mention, there's been discussions on that before, and I believe that consensus is it isn't possible) since I only ever buy things off AH that I plan to use, hoard, or give away, but in case I need to do so in bulk, I use Glitch Auction Sniper.
    Posted 91 days ago by Jus​tin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Bring lots of money and a time machine
    Posted 91 days ago by ☣ elf ☣ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • First you will need to bring me two purple flowers, a piggy, three diabolic acid and a fuel machine. We will need a crystal ball, and twelve glitches to stand in a circle naked. Someone will need to supply a ro0k bed (the 0 is very important as it breaks the glitch time continuum when properly powered) Finally we'll need a TS developer to be sacrificed to the giants and 2 million credits for my time. Thank you.
    Posted 91 days ago by Ramus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • hahahahaha.
    no.
    I wants don't get.

    ok, to make that a bit nicer, it may not be a good thing. TS might decide that you're beaking terms of service by trying to control the price of something. This is why there is a 10 minute wait time on item delivery from AH.
    It would be easier to find all items in towers and go around buying up the cheaper ones of them and selling them in towers so you don't have to pay AH prices.
    Plus nobody HAS to buy what you sell, items can always be got elsewhere.
    Posted 91 days ago by jiva Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Not at all.  Sniping is within the TOS, Stoot has explicitly said it's Ok.  

    Where you will run into problems is trying to close the spread that is introduced by auction fees.  If you snipe just below your target price, everybody will sell at a price to trigger the snipe, and you'll lose money trying to resell those items.  If you snipe further below your target price, people will undersell you by pricing below your target price and above your snipe price.   THIS is why we pay auction fees.  
    Posted 91 days ago by WalruZ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • thank you for the correct WalruZ. I'm not a big AH user. Just cannot be bothered with it.
    Posted 91 days ago by jiva Subscriber! | Permalink
  • i thought the auction fees were all being donated for the elf burrito fund?

    this is what i was told on several occasions...
    Posted 91 days ago by ☣ elf ☣ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Also: you will run into problems once flask decides you're worth her time :)
    Posted 91 days ago by Miss Portinari Subscriber! | Permalink
  • You actually cant control AH prices. because people like me are always going to price lower than you. But have fun trying. Either way, you are actually going to lose money. Because someone will always price lower to sell faster.
    Posted 91 days ago by Serenity's Mommy Subscriber! | Permalink
  • you actually CAN control a great deal of auction pricing.

    you cannot prevent people from underselling you, so you have to be prepared to buy EVERYTHING under your price.

    likewise if you wish to keep a price low, you have to be prepared to dump tens of thousands of units on the market at once, and not just one time, but possibly several times a day.

    if you have THAT much money, THAT big a stockpile of materials, and THAT much time, you can do it.

    also be advised that controlling a price is not a profit making venture. you can do it, but you'd better have a robust source of income to pay for your hobby.
    Posted 91 days ago by flask Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It'd be a lot more possible to use a ton of money to undersell people constantly, drive the price down, buy a hoard cheap, let the price rise again, sell the hoard.
    Posted 91 days ago by Pixel Dirigible Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Sounds like a race to the bottom.  I'll be down here selling popcorn to the spectators, btw.
    Posted 91 days ago by Feldspar Gravity Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Are you not entertained?
    Posted 91 days ago by CrashTestPilot Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Golf clap.
    Posted 91 days ago by Pascale Subscriber! | Permalink
  • In short - what flask said!

    I've posted a long technical discussion of the matter, but unless you are really committed the large playerbase makes it hard to manipulate the market in either direction for any real length of time.
    Posted 91 days ago by Sturminator IX Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Actually, the playerbase seems too small for a competitive auction. When I got here, 'Your Papers' (100) went for 900-4k- for 2 weeks I've been posting @ 500 or less, and hope to go lower if/when people 'accept' that.
    Not that it'll 'stick'-- but all it takes is my time to guarantee that anyone trying to sell for higher should have no market. They can buy me out, but they'd just be making me money- the effort to get more is minimal, and I always keep extras on hand.
    Anyway, controlling UP is harder, more costly, and is only possible with rare items- but it can be done.
    Though it makes you a <insert foul name here>.
    Posted 91 days ago by Biofellis Subscriber! | Permalink
  • you will find that as soon as it becomes apparent that you are attempting to 'control' prices for something (and let's face it, you've declared your intention pretty clearly by posting here), you will be met by a concerted effort by others to break your system and you will end up losing out bigtime.

    To be honest, it's not worth it
    Posted 91 days ago by Arietty Subscriber! | Permalink
  • what arietty said is only partly true.

    once you announce intent, you WILL be met with opposition.

    if you are very, very determined and very, very able you can still do it.

    i've done it.

    i will stress that it is NOT a profitmaking venture.

    it's a lot like buying the knockoff yeti: it costs you a lot and does absolutely nothing except give you the satisfaction of having done it. if the idea still appeals to you, be prepared to spend millions of currents on the project.

    true story: a number of months ago i was manipulating a market for my own amusement and a few players got together to try to stop me. THEY seemed to assume that i was doing it for the profit, but since i was only doing it do play with the market, we were kind of at cross purposes.

    bear in mind that any market manipulation is good news for someone and bad news for someone else. the trick is to find how to put yourself on the fortunate side more often than not.
    Posted 91 days ago by flask Subscriber! | Permalink
  • If bot use in the auctions becomes game-breaking or disruptive, Tiny Speck will make it so the API can't be used to purchase auctions en masse any more.  I tried to prove the point that it messed up the economy by massive bulk-purchasing during Original Beta, but I think the tests were too spread out for it -- the auctions would all expire between tests, which disrupted the economy more than I could.

    Auction delays don't deter price-fixing, except in the uncommon circumstances of someone operating only within a very thin margin.  Even then, it actually helps the price fixer.  Here's how!

    Let's say I have 1,000 currants.  I use my 1,000 currants to buy all of the cheap Foos on the Auction House.  I get 10 of them for 100 currants each, and they sell to the vendor for 150 currants.  If the only remaining Foos are more expensive, that 10 minute wait forces me to let the market have time to recover, raising the odds that while I'm back in game and not watching auctions/sniping auctions, someone will undercut the current sellers and give me more to sell to the vendor.  (It can actually be much more lucrative to NOT use a bot, but it depends quite a lot on the market and the social responses to the market.  Complicated!)

    The real trick is that because this is not an economy of scarcity, the social responses are potentially far more vast than most people are used to.  You'd have to trade in very high end goods (read: not meat) to not have huge masses of people flooding you out, and the only guaranteed method would be to trade in low volumes of complicated skill-based items.  High volumes will encourage too much undercutting, and in many cases you can get a far greater return by actively making the stuff yourself.

    And all of that, of course, is discounting the ease of SDB sales, which you can not use a bot to price or purchase.  Using bots inside of the game itself will get your account sanctioned and probably banned as "You agree not to: ... engage in using macros, auto-looting or robot play or any other behavior that allows you (or any character you are controlling) to automatically function or effect any action to obtain significant or unfair advantage in the game with or without your presence" (from the ToS).  The key difference here is that the auctions take place outside of the actual game space.  So aside from being very patient, very sneaky, and/or extremely dedicated, automated price fixing is not a terribly viable game to play here.
    Posted 91 days ago by Magic Monkey Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Biofelis

    I think that in trying to get 'Your papers' down to 500 you're pushing at an open door.  My iformation is that 500 and lower has been a much more usual price for most of the game, and the higher prices you got were a short-term oddity.
    Posted 91 days ago by Elisabeth Sladen Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Elizabeth Sladen,

    I wish you were right. If you were I would have nothing to do there. As it is I post 2 at a time @ 500 whenever people post higher. If there is nothing (there was once) I post a few from 200-500. This has been 2 weeks, and I've been 'undercut' 3 times- which I applaud- but  usually there are prices from 900 to 2000 for me to undercut.
    So, maybe it'll 'normalize' I hope so.
    Posted 90 days ago by Biofellis Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Yes prices will fluctuate, in general its related to events in-game. Building materials went sky high when towers were introduced they have come down in price since then, but are still more than they were pre-towers. The same happened when furniture was introduced. Keep in mind part of why they remain somewhat  high is because both furniture and towers are made with a lot of the same materials. Items from holidays and similar events also go for higher values...when the particular holidays are a far way away. Yes the market fluctuates, but overall its quite steady. Also what you describe sounds like average fluctuations really. I also agree that  Papers being between 500-1000 each is the most common. Items such as building materials went from 25 currants to 3,000 or more over night. Mind you i did state why, and that they did come down over time, the economy here is pretty steady. I've seen in other games when it was NOT, but i've never really seen that being the case here. 
    Posted 90 days ago by Lyrical DejaVu Subscriber! | Permalink