Topic

Notta big auctions fan anymore...

Not really sure why, but now to auction off stuff, we're charged a "listing fee" and a percentage of the sale price... Really?  How eBay-esque.  <sigh>

Think I'd rather sell my stuff to the vendors.

Personally, not a big fan of the new changes.  Just saying.

Posted 19 months ago by Chris P. Cream Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • I don't mind the listing fee, but I think the percentage is a bit much. Is the rationale behind it to encourage lower prices? If so, I think the market will regulate itself, especially as the game grows. 

    However I LOVE the search function, as well as the "lowest price" information while you're creating new auctions. All in all, I think it's a net gain.
    Posted 19 months ago by Tally Subscriber! | Permalink
  • well the auction is a service, why should a service be free? there is a listing fee for auctions in most online games, just like when you use an auction in real life you pay fee's (not just ebay) it is probably there to stop people using it for storage or placing silly prices.

    I personally dont see a problem with it as it is a very common game mechanic.

    as for selling to vendors, I do this anyway im not fussed on getting the biggest buck I can for items. quicker works best for me
    Posted 19 months ago by Hootaholic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Well, I don't mind listing fees and whatnot, because it is a very common thing in game auctions.. generally to help balance.

    The search feature is nice. :)
    Posted 19 months ago by Little Miss Giggles Subscriber! | Permalink
  • the search feature is nice, as is the ability to 'browse by type'.

    Waddap with the giant font sizes, though?
    Are auctions intended mostly for the visually impaired?
    Posted 19 months ago by Wrendolin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I like the auctions better now, in part because of the added fees. 

    I feel like there needs to be more ways to drain currants so there aren't so many super rich glitches running around buying people houses and donating tons of gnomes to basically buy levels to climb the leaderboards (not judging; I've done this). Right now currants feel useless at best and at worst, a way to cheat the game. I'm all for anything that makes you consider how much money you have in your wallet and make that money a bit more precious.

    It also might encourage player to player interaction as people decide to make trades and sell directly rather than cough up auction fees. 

    My only issue is the mega fonts :) I don't mind the bolding of the prices but they're BIG in addition to bold.
    Posted 19 months ago by leah Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I agree, money sinks like this help keep inflation in check. It also reduces the using of auctions as extra bag space (whether or not the bag space game is fun to play is a separate discussion) and provides a bit of a check on auction house gaming: Buying up entire categories of goods and re-listing them at extreme pricing.
    Posted 19 months ago by mutagen Subscriber! | Permalink
  • the new listing fees simply made me want to prop up my auction prices.  It's also a weird thing since the fees don't go anywhere, right?  It's not like IRL where eBay auction fees help support eBay itself.  It just goes into nowhere-ville.  i think they are supposed to be a deterrent to using auctions to stash things or whatever, but they certainly don't seem to act that way.

    the auctions have also just become a means for some to monopolize resources by buying up a given item cheap and then reselling them.. to get... rich (wow, what an ingenious goal)?  it does make me question the role of currants in the game.

    not that i think the devs would do this, but it may be a ***far*** more interesting game if the currants were done away with in favor of a sole barter system.  maybe to even buy a house, you'd need to file for a project with a permit and literally build it yourself or with friends.  ;-)
    Posted 19 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "but it may be a ***far*** more interesting game if the currants were done away with in favor of a sole barter system."

    That doesn't really offer much for the anti-social folk like me. I prefer doing stuff to accumulate currants in order to buy things. That's arguably still a little too easy right now, but the whole "forced collaboration" bit really isn't my thing - I still haven't ever done the peat bog quest, for example. I've nothing against bartering, but I'd really hate that to be the only (or even main) way to get things.

    I like the new-style auctions. The only thing I'd change (other than the font size) would be to reduce (or even remove) the final commission charge and increase the listing fees significantly. At the moment, the cost of listing is still paltry, so there's still little disincentive for people to post items at over-inflated prices - if they don't sell, then little is lost, whilst if they do, then they've still got the high price, so the final commission is irrelevant.
    Posted 19 months ago by dopiaza Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I would like to see a haggling feature implemented, so that non-currant items could be included in sales transactions, vs. full-on, all-bartering.

    Haggling is fun, plus it could be handled with fun offer and response messages, like "Too rich for my blood", and "You're killing me here..."
    Posted 19 months ago by Nanookie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Fees discourage just posting tons and tons of auctions.
    Balancing any urge to inflate your price is that fact that if there are numerous auctions for the same item, the lowest price per is listed first if you search.

    The new auctions are much better in my mind. (I also made a KILLING today finally selling off my project trophy pieces.)
    Posted 19 months ago by Lord Bacon-o Subscriber! | Permalink
  • How does the Auction / Bag Space game go?

    if you auction a bunch of stuff then later when they expire your inventory is already full, what happens the the stuff from the expired auction?
    Posted 19 months ago by IxÆoN Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It is held in escrow for you until space is made available.

    And, font issues are being fixed!
    Posted 19 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • and here the whole time i thought they were just being re-routed to /dev/null

    I personally am a fan of the auction changes.  I hope they will implement a "buy more of this item" feature.  I hate having to start @ All Auctions every time.
    Posted 19 months ago by IxÆoN Subscriber! | Permalink
  • This has probably been presented before but a "I Need...." feature might me interesting. On the auction page, make a posting of something you desire at the moment with the amount. Other people could go and click on it and it would immediately set up that auction. Just a thought.
    Posted 19 months ago by Lord Bacon-o Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 Lord Bacon-o on the "I need..." feature. I think that would solve some of the desire for private auctions as well.
    Posted 19 months ago by duien Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Take it one step further and set up a real market, with offers and bids...
    Posted 19 months ago by Taral Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Perhaps one of the reasons a listing fee and commissions are being charged is that some players used the auction as a way to store items while they moved or to clear space in their bags when they were too full.
    Posted 19 months ago by Gizmospooky Subscriber! | Permalink
  • In which case only the listing fee is relevant (the commission won't get charged if they don't sell).
    Posted 19 months ago by dopiaza Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I have to say that I liked the implementation of the fees for the auction.  I thought it was too easy in the past to just list things for no fee incurred, so people could list the same things over and over and over with no penalty (or as others have said, use the market as free storage space, which frankly, had crossed my mind when some of my items didn't sell last test period).  This will hopefully help some to think twice before posting an overly inflated price or listing gobs of stuff and flooding the market (because it really is a market, not an auction at this point).  The current fees are extremely reasonable at this point too, though I suspect they may still need to be adjusted a bit.

    And yes, I think it would be a great idea to have a market and an auction.  I personally like to just sell things (and get rid of them for a flat reasonable price) - so I like the market concept...I know some love to bid on things and the excitement of winning over other bidders. I hope for them, that some type of actual auction is implemented.  For me, auctions are too frustrating/stressful.
    Posted 19 months ago by b3achy Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The game needs more money sinks, and fees are a good start. From the little I've seen there have been barely any, not enough to keep from making currants useless once the game is open to everyone.
    Posted 19 months ago by Milx Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Hey! Don't knock the visually impaired... I have almost no vision in one eye.
    Posted 19 months ago by Leithwyn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I love the auction search...don't see the point of the listing fees and commissions at all though - what was behind that train of thought? The only thing I can think of is that you did that s a way of discouraging people who were using it as extra storage...that could have been solved a lot easier by leaving the item in your inventory until it actually sold - that way you don't gain extra space instantly. To stop you using the item by mistake you could either colour the item bright red so it  would be easily identifiable as an item currently on auction, or you could just disable it altogether. The new fees just discourage people from auctioning smaller items (which is a real shame) and bumps prices even higher. Boo!
    Posted 19 months ago by Morticia Addams Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Listing fees are common and I'm used to that. Commission I don't get. Why are there two charges on one item?
    Posted 19 months ago by Leithwyn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Listing fees to encourage people not to use auctions as storage; commission to remove some of the money from the game world. Without some money sinks, the game-world economy goes completely to pot in short order.
    Posted 19 months ago by Spong Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks for the quick reply Spong. I understand what you're saying, right now I have more money than I know what to do with. :/ I'm sure that won't be the case soon.
    Posted 19 months ago by Leithwyn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @zeeberk: "the new listing fees simply made me want to prop up my auction prices. "

    indeed.. i raised prices on everything. by like 10% to cover the fees. stuff still sorta selling.

    "It's also a weird thing since the fees don't go anywhere, right?"

    nah, money/gold/currant sinks are needed somewhere in this game.

    THE PROBLEM

    90% of the stuff I auction is bought from vendors -- be it convenient earthshakers or food for miners (with a markup by me) or buying supplies and relaying them to the people standing at a street project using the auction-as-delivery-service.

    In both of those cases there's already a HUGE currant sink at play. That markup above is just so I don't lose in the auction.

    SUGGESTION / WISH

    I would strongly consider removing the 8% fee until we at least have some in game delivery system that players can use to bypass the auction for direct transactions from distances. Perhaps also only charge a fee when the price is over the baseline vendor price for the item (40 for 10 honey, etc).
    Posted 19 months ago by Another Chris Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Leithwyn, @Spong: See my comments about where the auctionable items come from / currnant sink. I'm regurlarly buying 400 olive oils, 50 earthshakers, 100 simple BBQ, etc from in game vendors and immediately putting them on the auction for one reason or another. that is quite a lot of a sink already. When I wasn't marking things up (to help street projects) that's a 100% sink. now it makes it a 108%-110% sink (when you include fee and commission)

    I think the game needs sinks, but not via the auction house. The things in the auction house took energy to bring into the world (resources) or direct purchase already, or in a few rare cases a lot of both (gems/street trophy parts).

    The game needs sinks in the form of more things worth buying from vendors, not nickle and diming the auction house for
    Posted 19 months ago by Another Chris Subscriber! | Permalink
  • At the risk of getting stoned by the rest of you ..

    I think the charges on the auctions are quite sensible. There's always a cost for a service, in this case it's brokering a trade that can be done across distance/time/people being logged in. It also pushes auctions into being more genuine. In my mind there should be an element of scarcity around high value objects that get auctioned. Buying 100 items from a vendor and putting them on auction sounds ludicrous as there's no real value the auctioneer is adding to the transaction.

    Which brings me onto another pet peeve: Using auctions as a transport mechanism so that street building projects can be completed in under 5 seconds is certainly against the spirit of what I believe the street building projects were intended for.

    The one thing I find confusing: why are they called auctions if there's no element of competitive bidding in them?

    (caveat: in RL I've built an auction plugin for WordPress, so maybe I'm a bit over-sensitive over auctions)
    Posted 19 months ago by Ugh!! Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 to Chris' ideas. 

    Currant sinks are a good thing, else what would you do all those currants?  But I think they can be handled better, and Chris' ideas seem like a good start.
    Posted 19 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink
  • And God delivered a plague of frogs upon ye!
    Posted 19 months ago by Nanookie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I don't mind the fees for the auction...but making me wait and then having to drop everything I'm doing in order to get my stuff from the (adorable!!) frog is not my idea of fun. 
    I buy stuff from the auctions to keep from having to drop everything and run to the vendors...especially for the things that only have a 10 stack size. They seem to be the things that get used the most in a recipe and cannot be made at home, so they constantly run out and it's very irritating.
    Normally I use the auction while I'm cooking/bartending and can have it dropped into my inventory be there instantly. Not the case with the frog.
    Too much focusing on nixing the auctions, which in turn, cramps my game play and what will there be left for those like me to do? Unless you want to put a grocery vendor and a meal vendor on every corner?
    And, now it seems, that if you buy from the auction while the game is down, you have to wait until the game is back up to get your goods that have already been paid for? 
    Posted 19 months ago by sgjo Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Yeah, not sure I'm a fan of the delayed delivery either. I didn't really get a feel for a consistent delivery time, either...so I don't know what a normal wait will be.

    How about adding an express delivery option for an additional fee paid by the buyer? For 'when it absolutely, positively has to be there' immediately. Give a few frogs jetpacks instead of rotors, or Teleportation skills.
    Posted 19 months ago by Joe Blow Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I've not really checked it out properly this time round...although I was expecting a listing fee to come into play some time soon as this is usually the case within most game play..but I dont think I much like the sound of a percentage of the sale price, that sounds horrible ..yuk..

    Vendors here I come with my junk, be warned it wont be pretty lol.
    Posted 19 months ago by Cryztal Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I would love to see a direct transaction type of system. Not a trade/barter but direct purchase functionality between players.

    Because my level and skills have been low, I spend time on the new street builds collecting things for the other players who can actually do the building. My prices had been at or just barely above what I paid for the items. Now I'm charging more but not getting more.
    Posted 19 months ago by g33kgurrl Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Question on the delivery frog...if you purchase two separate things, does that mean you have to wait on two separate deliveries or do they both come with the same frog...If I went on a shopping spree, it seems like multiple frog deliveries would get really old after a while.  Could they provide a service that that would bundle deliveries if there was a delivery pending and another purchase was made before the delivery occurred?
    Posted 19 months ago by b3achy Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @ b3achy...everything I purchased, even back-to-back, came separately. And, altho the frog is cute, he's not that cute to make me want to have him showing up constantly.
    Posted 19 months ago by sgjo Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm not so zen with the frog idea. Is there another point to having them deliver stuff that I am missing or is it just to slow things down and be cute/funny.
    Posted 19 months ago by Holly Waterfall Subscriber! | Permalink
  • What happens if I make, lets say 10 or 20 auction purchases while offline (like now). When the game is back on and I log in for the first time, what should I expect to happen?

    One big shipment from the frog (poor guy)?
    Several shipments?
    What would the delay be between shipments?
    How backlogged can auction purchases become this way?

    I'm going to have to try that just to see. ;)
    Posted 19 months ago by en Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @ en...playing in the auctions is what I do when the game is down and so I have been buying things since about an hour after closing.
     I have yet to have anything I've purchased show up in my inventory...very frustrating coz, this way, I don't know how much room I have left and what I don't.
    And am I suppose to remember everything I've bought? 
    What if, when the game comes back up, I don't receive everything I've already (coz it is deducted from your currants at time of confirming your purchase) paid for - Kinda hard to remember all of this when the game is down for so long.
    I already spend quite a bit a time when first going into game just having to clear all of the little black boxes telling me that this expired or that was bought...am I going to have the frog deliveries piled up on all of those too? UGH!!!
    Posted 19 months ago by sgjo Subscriber! | Permalink
  • granny - this is strictly speculation on my part but I do believe that the Froggies are ultimately going to be used primarily as an in game delivery system in lew of a static totem/mailbox type of thing, if this is the case one has to admit that it is waaaaay cooler than some ole' box, even if it's shaped like a monkeyhead. 

    On the auctions, whatever they are doing is temporary, as there are BIG changes in the works they probably determined that this was the best way to go while they are working on it rather than us and them getting in the way of each of other constantly and hence receiving the licorice of death screen. There is a possibility that temporary means til launch, but I'm leaning towards not.

    On Froggy deliveries - I seriously doubt that if you buy 17 different things from the auction (or receive 17 gifts from friends) that you will receive 17 concurant or worse simultaneous Froggies. Much more likely that a single Frog will contain all 17 of your packages. 

    On the delay caused by Froggy deliveries - I am doubtful that the frogs will ultimately be linked to the auction at all because of this, unless it is something they are purposely putting in because it has some counteracting positive effect such as the street projects not filling up in 5 min. Can't say 6 or 7 is much better though ... and as of yet I have to agree this could be problematic such as if you are starving and need food now, who wants to see their Froggy in Hell it is much cuter in color.  Anyway, they quite possibly have something of more benefit up their sleeves which even I haven't thought of yet and all in all while I think the Froggy is just about the coolest thing I have ever seen in pixelated form I do agree perhaps the auction isn't the place for him to be and probably was just a test and won't be anyway. 
    Posted 19 months ago by Divine~ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • That may be true...but as of closing, each item I bought came with it's own frog delivery...even when the items were bought back-to-back. And, as of this moment, I still have not received anything in auction that I've purchased since the game closed.

    If the frogs become a special delivery/message courier only and not anything to do with the normal auctions...then I'm cool with that. But to have to drop everything and talk to the frog every time, just to get the items that I've already bought and paid for is not, imo, worth the hassle.

    If all of this is to "deter" high pricing and/or stop so many peeps from using the auctions for storage or what have you, then I'm totally confused. 
    The price charges and listing fees are bass-aackwards and the waiting game that we are now having to play to receive our already purchased items is totally ridiculous. 
    It accomplishes nothing but irritation and frustration...one of those "cute the first couple of times" moments and then the "OMG!! Can I just be allowed to play my game!!" moments afterwards, at least for me.

    They made a huge improvement setting up the auctions they way they have them now (minus the frog and, imo, it needs to show what the encyclopedia's pricing along with the "cheapest price per item listed' that they have now) - so what's next...a little miner's cart pulling up to your door to deliver all the rocks you just mined - one rock and gem at a time? Would be about as much fun. 
    Posted 19 months ago by sgjo Subscriber! | Permalink
  • GOD has spoken - Just found this on the Briar Bitches thread 


    The delay in delivery time is very much intentional — as was the introduction of listing fees and commissions ... and the new view-all-auctions-for-a-given-type-of-auctions ... and the sorting by cheapest first: the auctions' role in the game economy needs to change to support upcoming changes in bartering/player-to-player trading and vendors.

    While the removal of the ability to instantly transport goods from one side of the game world to the other without any economic friction will be a PITA at first, in the long run it will allow more interesting dynamics to emerge.

    Or, it won't and we'll change it ;)Posted 27 hr ago by stoot barfield  Permalink
    Posted 19 months ago by Divine~ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Yep...saw that and it's what started my little ranting about all of this, lol...hoping the "Or, it won't and we'll change it" part comes sooner than later - like the next test :P
    Posted 19 months ago by sgjo Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Maybe this will encourage people to trade in person more often. :)
    Posted 19 months ago by Tofu Casserole Subscriber! | Permalink