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Auction House...


ryleyra

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In the "remove ripping of ores from components" thread, the dev Rolo mentioned that they may be able to set up a roving NPC vendor outside of a station. Since the discussion then turned to auction houses in general, and a number of people have posted that to suggest an auction house, not noticing the dev post, I thought I would start a new thread. This can serve as a record that at least one dev IS considering the option, and as a place for us to post different suggestions for how this auction might work.

I thought I would start with my own suggestions, of course, which will include Rolo's. (Hopefully he will not mind if I flesh it out a little and suggest some ideas of my own for how it would work) But I do have a number of ideas, some of which I saw suggested on the boards back in the days when the game was live.

Note also that Rolo did not say that this could be implemented easily or quickly, likely it would not be implemented for a long time. I DO think that it would be best if such a system was available before the game goes "live", but let's cross that bridge when we come to it, eh? :)

1) A "Middleman" roving vendor

This vendor would be essentially an NPC that would buy items from the player, for a small fee, and then add the item to his inventory for sale, at a price set by the player. Since the player would set his price, it would not be fixed, but could include as much markup as the player felt he could get away with. Low prices could be bought up by speculators and "turned over" at a price closer to the established market price. So this would be a true auction house, with prices determined by supply and demand.

[url=https://forum.enb-emulator.com/index.php?/topic/5490-remove-ripping-of-ores-from-components/page__view__findpost__p__45061]Rolo's suggestion is here, if you'd like to see his original wording.[/url]

Personally, I would think that the player would have to have a limited number of slots that he can add to the NPC's inventory, say 5 or 10. This is to prevent one player from flooding the vendor with so many items that no one can find the useful items in the list. If the list uses the normal vendor interface, though, I would expect that it could be sorted by either name or price. While a limit of 20 might seem more reasonable, there will likely be multiple vendors, as below, so I think 5 EACH would be sufficient. The devs might be able to set the limit for a player globally, allowing him to post no more than 20 sales anywhere, but I am trying to make this as simple as possible.

When items sell, he will have to come back to the NPC to withdraw his money and free up the slot. If the item doesn't sell, he can withdraw it and either post another item, or repost that one at a lower price. Of course, an "item" can be a stack of items, as with ore, but I'm guessing that it would have to be a stack of the same item. (You couldn't put up a sale for multiple items, each would have to take up their own slot)

To prevent one vendor from becoming overcrowded with items, in addition to the limited slots, there would probably need to be several vendors, each specializing in his own types of items and level. In other words, like the station vendors, you would have separate "Middleman" vendors for ore, components, weapons, and ship systems (shields, reactors and engines) with a separate vendor for each level. These could all be scattered around Net-7, but more likely would be spread out among the various sectors. Net-7 could specialize in the first three levels, with the higher levels spread out into the higher level areas.

I honestly don't know why these can't be put in a station, but I'm not a dev, so I'll trust there is a reason. :) An NPC inside Net-7 could draw the player's attention to the wandering NPCs, though, and let him know to look for them. He could also point out where the higher level vendors are, so there wouldn't have to be NPCs in those stations.

It may also not be possible for the price to be set by the player. If necessary, a fixed price system would be better than nothing, but of course the players would have to go to the Market channel for non-fixed pricing. The Net-7 NPC could mention this, if necessary. Likely, a fixed price system would cut down the vendors to just ore, components and ammo, the components and ammo could be priced at 200%, with players having to go to the Market Channel for components or ammo that is rare or out of stock. Since each item would still be sold separately, not stacked with similar items, it would be up to the seller whether he would only vendor his low quality stuff and hold on to the 200% for sale to the Market.

2) Add an incrementing "Inventory" to the ore and component vendors (adding an ore vendor)

While this suggestion may not be possible given the way the game works, I thought I would add it as a potential solution that came up in live, when an ore vendor was added to buy and sell ores. While this allowed miners to get more money for the ores they sold, they no longer could set a markup higher than the fixed price, and so this was removed. However, the idea would have worked if the vendors kept an inventory of the ores they bought, and sold only that amount to the builders.

The idea is that while the vendor would list all available ores of a given level, there would be a "counter" assigned to each, and as an ore or stack of ore was sold to the vendor the counter would increment. When a buyer bought an ore or stack of ores, the counter would decrement. If the counter ever reached zero, no more ore could be bought from that slot, it would have to be "refilled" by a miner. This would control the price of the item, if the counter on a given ore is very low, that ore is in high demand and may bring a higher price on the Market Channel. If it is zero, it will DEFINATELY bring a higher price on the Market Channel. If it is very high, then demand for that ore is low, and the miner can avoid mining it, while looking for ores for which the counter is low.

The vendor will offer at least 8.75 times the "vendor price" for that ore (7 times the base price, to speak a language the devs understand :D) and possibly as high as 10 times. This will be competitive with ripping ores from components, and allow common ores to be sold for much more than just vendoring them. The counter will have a maximum, however, say 1000, and after that the miners will be forced to vendor it. (Or the vendor will just pay the standard vendor price without incrementing the counter) Builders can pay either the 8.75 that the miners were paid, or perhaps a small markup to serve as a credit sink.

The advantage to this system is that miners will get their money for ores immediately, without having to put them up for sale and wait for a buyer. The disadvantage, of course, is that a player may sell to the vendor, seeing that there is a demand for it, without realizing he can get much more on the Market. However, speculators can keep an eye on the vendors, and buy up any "lowballs" for sale back to the Market. As with the Middleman suggestion, speculation is possible, although not quite as easy as with a true auction system.

The vendoring of components brings up a complication, as unlike the Middleman suggestion above, if we are to use the existing component vendors, they do not record quality. Quality will have to be either standardized (in the vendor only taking 200% components) or eliminated. (in that the vendor discards all quality difference) I have two suggestions:

The first is simply to have the vendor accept player crafted components (of the proper level, of course) and add two to the "counter", while paying the builder twice the component cost. So in essense the 200% component is split into 2 100% components. As with the suggestion above, it would be up to the seller to choose to use his "failures", which are not 200%, to "part out" to the vendor. He can then hold his 200% components for the Market, or just put them on the vendor if he wants to be altruistic, without effecting the Market. (200% components will still be worth as much, since bought components are always 100%)

My alternative is to have an option on the manufacturing terminal, like the Terminal Override. Perhaps it could simply be a checkbox on the interface. The result of this option would be that the terminal will force the component (or even a normal item) to be 100%. However, the manufacturing cost is severely reduced or eliminated. The Component vendors would then only take these 100% components.

My thought is actually to provide a Terminal Override that can be bought from the store. When you use it to create a component, it PAYS YOU BACK for the purchase, as well as a bonus to say, reimburse you for half the vendor cost of the component. (So it'll help cover your ore costs as well as manufacturing) If you use the Override to craft a weapon or other equipment, though, it doesn't give you any money back, but you then have an item you can give someone to analyze, without having to go through the upgrade/dismantle process. This could work with the checkbox, too, but I want it to cost a little extra so it's about the same risk. (Perhaps the 100% downgrade could work automatically on components, but have a chance of failure otherwise)

I forgot to mention, this would not eliminate the component vendors. If they are empty, they will simply generate a component, like always. But this will allow an inventory of components to be added by the players which could then be bought. The idea would be for some of the money that the builders put into buying components be reimbursed to the miners. The Terminal Override idea above could be an incentive to do that, or the builders could just build a component for the money they will get for putting it on the vendor. The point is that if something goes wrong and there is not enough ore to build a component, the system doesn't break down.

3) Full Auction System

Of course, this is unlikely to be possible with the way the game works, but I thought I would go ahead and post it since it would be a good idea to just keep in consideration. Or just for later discussion. There are essentially two types of auction houses in other MMOs, the first and most common simply lets a player put up a item for sale, at a listed price. The money is then immediately transferred at the moment of sale to the player when a buyer purchases the item. The seller is usually limited to a certain number of slots (usually because this requires some sort of database system) but he gets the money and the slot is freed the moment the item is bought. There is usually a posting fee, but this is sometimes often reimbursed at the time of sale, and a percentage sales fee is applied instead. In other words, if the item sells there is a sales fee and if it is posted and withdrawn, the fee is less. As long as many items are listed for sale, it is easy to set a competitive price that is either similar or lower than the majority of other asking prices.

The other system is for a player to make a bid for items he would like to buy, and a seller provides it. If there is no buyer, the seller can post his item in hopes that someone will bid for it later. I've only seen this in City of Heroes, and it was implemented as a "double blind" system, where the buyer and seller had to guess at what the other would bid. Previous transactions were displayed to help them decide on this value, but it was a lot harder to determine what the competitive pricing was, and even harder to figure out what would be needed to buy an item immediately.

Usually, a system like this is implemented separately from the game, and transfers the items and money in and out of the game database. This could be written as a web application, which would be simple, but would also likely not be secure. It's also very likely that Earth and Beyond does not even implement an interface for transfer of items to and from an auction interface. I'm sure if it did, one would have been implemented by now.

4) Mail/Delayed Trade System

While this isn't really an auction system, I think I will mention it simply because it may be the only way to do this. One issue with the Market is that it does not allow players to trade who are not on at the same time. It also does not allow players to store items while they are waiting to transfer them from one player to another. It might be possible to expand the Trade interface so that a player can leave half of a Trade transaction for another player as a mail message. That player can then "answer" the message with an item or credits to trade in return. The original player can then "confirm" that message. This honestly would be more useful for alt trading, but players could either meet in the Market channel to arrange a trade, then the supplier could go gather or build the resources. When the supplies are ready, he can mail them to the buyer even if he has logged out. He can then answer the trade at his leisure, confirm it and get his money.

In a live game, clearly this would be an issue for several reasons. This first is the potential for trade between alts. The second is that it could allow players to bypass the restriction that players must be in the same place to trade. On the other hand, this COULD be a way of implementing the "Middleman" idea, the players could go to the Middleman and set up a Trade Window, which the buyer would then "complete" at a later time. This adds a fourth step to the process, though, as the seller must make sure the buyer is paying what he requested and confirm the order, at which time the buyer has to come back AGAIN and claim his purchased item. If the seller can somehow specify what the buyer must put in the credits field, he wouldn't have to confirm that it is correct. Edited by Dragoncove
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Would it be possible to just have the trade window function between two people regardless of the distance between them. But maybe add a delay on the items transfered actually being delivered into each persons inventory based on the distance, to simulate the shipping time.
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[quote name='Fallhammer' timestamp='1314395383' post='45269']
Would it be possible to just have the trade window function between two people regardless of the distance between them. But maybe add a delay on the items transfered actually being delivered into each persons inventory based on the distance, to simulate the shipping time.
[/quote]

Well, as I said in the other thread, I don't think it's the travel time that is the problem. You could let players trade from anywhere in the galaxy and I don't think it would change anything. And while it might be nice from a convenience standpoint, it's pretty much a standard in MMOs that if you want to trade, you have to go to the same location.

When you get down to it, the advantages that an auction house brings to an MMO are these:

1) You can trade with players even if they are not online at the same time as you.

2) You can trade with players even if they are not in the same area as you, although you both have to have been in the same area, or one of the areas in which there is an auction house, at some time. Just not at the same time.

3) Items put up for sale are stored in the auction house from the moment they are put up for sale until they are sold. This takes them out of your inventory, without requiring someone else to add it to their inventory before it is needed.

4) This additional inventory is shared among all players. All players can see what is in the auction house, even if it is not in their own Vault, or if they don't intend to buy it right away.

5) You can see all items up for sale by players listed in a central place, without having to ask them what they have.

6) You can (usually) see a record of either the prices of other items put up for sale, or a record of recent transactions, to help you decide what you should ask or pay for a given item.

7) You can buy items when you need them, without waiting for them to be gathered/built. The gathering of the resources can take place prior to you deciding you want them.

8) It is easier for low level and inexperienced players to contribute to the economy.

9) A transfer of money from high level to low level players is facilitated, to make levelling easier.
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i'm against the change at all to be fair. what's wrong with asking for the ores in market and offering a price and if someone wishes to fulfill your order they go and mine it? i honestly believe that the implementation of an auction house will ruin the game!

no-one "pays a sucbscription" here and most have a je to wh with! a je mines so this just seems like a reason to allow pleasure miners to make money and then get builds from everyone else for free as it is at the moment!

sales can be done in the market channel!
sorry but it's just my opinion!

p.s as far as using the auction house as storage - silly plan! if u can set ur own price then u set way higher than anyone will buy for and ppl can store stuff in there with no real chance of selling it! bad BAD idea!
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[quote name='BrixunMortar' timestamp='1314417315' post='45282']
i'm against the change at all to be fair. what's wrong with asking for the ores in market and offering a price and if someone wishes to fulfill your order they go and mine it? i honestly believe that the implementation of an auction house will ruin the game!

no-one "pays a sucbscription" here and most have a je to wh with! a je mines so this just seems like a reason to allow pleasure miners to make money and then get builds from everyone else for free as it is at the moment!

sales can be done in the market channel!
sorry but it's just my opinion![/quote]

Well, first of all, if everyone is "doing it for free" as you say, then there's no market. Besides, this is a stress test, and the main reason those who don't ask for money do that is because they know their character and their credits could be wiped at any time. On live it will be a totally different story. The same goes for players having alts that can mine or wh for them.

I suggest you actually go onto the market and ask for some players to mine for the ammo for some of your low level characters. See for yourself how open the other players are to that suggestion. There's nothing wrong with miners mining "for pleasure", but most of them would like to make a profit if they could.

[quote]p.s as far as using the auction house as storage - silly plan! if u can set ur own price then u set way higher than anyone will buy for and ppl can store stuff in there with no real chance of selling it! bad BAD idea!
[/quote]

That's why the auction house only allows a limited number of sales from the same person. If the person chooses to use his 20 slots to hold items, fine, but he's got far more space in the Vault. Besides, that is the way auction houses are used by some players in MMOs, and the only inconvenience is to the devs who have to provide that extra storage space. As I said, though, they already provide more than 20 storage slots to each player, so it can't put too much extra strain on the database.
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Ah is a baaad idea. The idea of an AH is a great idea. However the implementation, in almost every MMO, is just awful. It destroys community, jacks up prices for everyone, and allows users to 'game' the system.

Also nothing like this existed in the client. The problem that you are referencing is based on one thing alone: Lack of ores. With a decent supply of ores its not difficult to supply players with the ore they need to get the items built that they need. The whole point of e&b was to have users use each other to make the best gear possible in a cooperative manner. This currently exists in the EMU and I have no reason to want this to change but I can guarantee it would change with any sort of AH as it just destroys this idea.

NOTE: the net7 DB holds the data on who builds what item. If you are unable to get the ores then you need to wait for he devs to make them more plentiful or find a work-around like every other player (purchase or loot comps that can be ripped to make what you need made).
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[quote name='Crichton' timestamp='1314499805' post='45311']
NOTE: the net7 DB holds the data on who builds what item. If you are unable to get the ores then you need to wait for he devs to make them more plentiful or find a work-around like every other player (purchase or loot comps that can be ripped to make what you need made).
[/quote]

Did you not just say (in the component ripping thread) that making the players wait on a miner in the Market channel when none was around was bad? If an auction house made those ores available, you would not need to wait, you could pick them up immediately. You would also not need to rip comps in order to buy those ores.

I disagree that the ores are not available. Yes, rare, hard to find ores are not available. That's what makes them rare and hard to find. But common, conveniently easy to find ores are available, but they are vendored. Because that is all they are worth. They're available, and they're used in components, but they're not traded because it's not worth the hassle. Edited by Dragoncove
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[quote name='Prrekoorb' timestamp='1314658134' post='45363']
I have a real silly idea about ores . Cant get the ores you need ? hmmmmm build a miner :)
[/quote]

See the problem there is not everyone wants to have a miner.
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[quote name='Riz' timestamp='1314674959' post='45366']
See the problem there is not everyone wants to have a miner.
[/quote]

Also it kind of defeats the purpose of wanting to interact with other players.

All you need to do is come up with a way to automatically give yourself more money when your builder gives weapons to your warriors, and you won't need to deal with those pesky other people at all! :)
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My comments were for comparison to how it worked in live. Ore is not plentiful in any regard at the moment. Sure its better than ST3 but its nowhere close to live. A good comparison to how it was in live would be Glenn. The gas fields northwest of F7 are as plentiful as they were in live. It is almost impossible for a single toon to clear these fields (have done it with three high level players all mining them at once but it took some work). The ores however are not. There may be less than half the ores (l5-7) in Glenn now than were in live. Yes there are approximately 6 ore fields but each one has no more than 6 'roids. That means a single player can clear all of these ore fields in less than 15 minutes. Try clearing the gas fields in 15 minutes.

Implementing an AH has a whole other set of problems due to the fact that there never was one and with so little ore at the moment whats to stop a player from controlling all the ore? Not that Magoo would but I am sure that if he wanted to own ever piece of grail water placed on the AH he could. The only counter to AH overpricing and complete economy controls is keeping the supply high enough that it is not worth while to monopolize it.

Now take Glenn as the standard and apply it to every other sector with ore. Zweinhander is a great example. A good quarter of the sector was covered with ore fields (l5-9).....right now.....nothing. Vendoring ore is fine and its a way for miners to make money but you are right in the fact that a user can either vendor or try to sell to builders but can't really do both due to lack of ore.

Selling ore to other players is great.....but only if miners have enough ore to sell. This keeps prices reasonable, keeps both builders and miners doing what they enjoy, and gets the emu one step closer to live. I mean even my miner isn't going to sell ore to other players if all I have are 20x of an item (I wish I had that amount). If a player has 40+ of an item then selling becomes not only an option but an actual way to make money at a better price or in addition to vendoring. At the moment this simply cannot be done unless a miner has gathered ore over months worth of time and sells to the 'uber builders' for high level comps. I think this prevents new miners from wanting to mine and makes them wonder why they would want to compete with the top 20 miners for a few dozen roids in a few sectors.

In live it was great to simply ask in market if you could buy 20, 50, 120 of any l2-l7 ore and actually have a few people respond. Try that now and see what you get. :)
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[quote name='Crichton' timestamp='1314828076' post='45434']
My comments were for comparison to how it worked in live. Ore is not plentiful in any regard at the moment. Sure its better than ST3 but its nowhere close to live.[/quote]

Well, that certainly isn't going to remain that way. Unless of course this never goes live. But if it ever does, we can assume there will not only be more resources available, but more players to actually mine them.

The idea is to put a process into place and test it BEFORE it is needed.

I agree that something needs to be done about high level fields. Even on live, the amounts available in high level fields were negligible compared to lower level fields. I believe I commented on that, at any rate, the issue is that low level miners could "lock" an asteroid and be keeping it locked while they took the time to cherry pick it. An alternative might be to increase the number of ores, but cause some "loss" if you try to mine above your Prospect level. Greater supply of resources is always preferred to having only one or two units available at any time.

[quote]Implementing an AH has a whole other set of problems due to the fact that there never was one and with so little ore at the moment whats to stop a player from controlling all the ore? [/quote]

The issue that there never was an auction house is more one of implementation. The interfaces may not be in place to make an auction house possible. Rolo suggested a possible workaround, but it is an extremely simple interface. It would hardly be as broad and complex as a modern auction house.

On the other hand, I don't think the fact that this game had no auction house is evidence that lack of an auction house works. This game lasted two years, when other games released around the same time lasted considerably longer and were considered a much greater success. Yes, you can ascribe a lot of that to EA, and you can ascribe a lot of that to the genre, but how much of that was truly the problem, and how much of that is personal opinion?

[quote]Now take Glenn as the standard and apply it to every other sector with ore. Zweinhander is a great example. A good quarter of the sector was covered with ore fields (l5-9).....right now.....nothing. Vendoring ore is fine and its a way for miners to make money but you are right in the fact that a user can either vendor or try to sell to builders but can't really do both due to lack of ore. [/quote]

The auction house provides an intermediate step between vendoring a resource, and selling it on the Market channel. Right now, vendoring a resource provides a very small profit to the player. It is actually much higher than it is was on live, if I'm right, refining an ore and vendoring it could net you as much as ten times what you used to get on live. Even so, if you start with that as a minimum, you can get at least that much, to possibly as much as 20 times for ammo ores, up to even more than that for refined ores needed for common components. Any player of the game would much prefer to have that much more money, which can then be used for much needed upgrades, making the player stronger, and his struggle to level less.

The truly high priced items, though, going on values based on rarity, could either be sold on the auction house, or the Market. If you're concerned about people buying up your Grail Water and doubling their cost, then just don't put them on the auction house. Advertise in the Market that they are available when someone comes asking why there isn't any up for sale. If the system really is as simple as it sounds like it's going to be, it's not going to be suitable for high level trade anyway.

(Also, a fixed price vendor, as in my second suggestion, would most certainly NOT be used for rare high level ores. That vendor "slot" would remain empty, as there wouldn't be enough supply to merit using it)

[quote]In live it was great to simply ask in market if you could buy 20, 50, 120 of any l2-l7 ore and actually have a few people respond. Try that now and see what you get. ;)
[/quote]

I honestly very rarely found any response to that. I'm sure the response is even rarer now. Then again, maybe just you and I were never in the channel at the same time. Or maybe we were the two that always responded. :) Edited by Dragoncove
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Let me be more precise:

The purpose of an auction house is not to sell the rare resources that are in short supply. Although if it is suitably well designed, and the population and supply are high enough, it CAN be used to sell such resources.

The primary purpose, though, is the exchange of common resources that are in abundant supply. The auction house facilitates the exchange of such resources, instead of encouraging them to be vendored in exchange for money. While the Market channel can handle such exchange, it chooses not to, because it is more valuable to exchange resources that are rare instead.

Thus, when you go onto the Market channel with a supply of common resources, you are told "vendor that, it's junk". And when you come to the Market channel asking for a supply of common resources, you are told "just buy that from the component vendor".
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One of the biggest ways to make money in live, selling ores, was by selling ammo ores. Since there is no ore needed for the majority of l9 weapons being used this has removed any market for them. I know I tried to use Longbows at level 6 but had so much difficulty mining titanium ore I gave up and used mortars.

One way to give the market a resurgence, at least to test ore selling and see if it works with the current number of players, would be to increase the level or 7-9 ammo ores in a particular spot that doesn't get much traffic (Swooping Eagle, Freya, Tarsis, etc). Load it up like Glenn and also increase the damage output on the ammo that is created from these items so it is equal or higher than tengu or RD weapons (Zet ML, Archo PL, Mortar PL, Type A ML, etc). If you want to use 100% comps to create ammo you get 200% ammo. If you use 200% ammo comps you get....what 250% damage ammo?

I have a few toons about ready to hit l9 weapons and atm there is no reason to spend time getting l9 weapons made that don't require tengu ammo. As such my miner is not actively mining any of these ores except when looking for ore to make items. I even stopped mining ore for mortar ammo as it was difficult to get a nice quantity of ore in an hour.This results in not much ammo ore in my stock. I am sure its like that for most miners. However if the Devs rreate a reason to mine it, and enough to make it worth while, I am betting users will start mining and selling quite a bit more.

BTW, back when archo's and zets were the top dog ammo ore sold like hot cakes. Unfortunately this was killed as the devs moved towards tengu, vrix, and bogeril weapons which didn't require/use ammo ores. This killed mining for anything other than ore that was used to make the rare weapons/reactors. I say open the ore market up by making more ore needed rather than everyone only needing grail water.
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Is the problem that the devs are breaking the ammo market by supplying weapons that don't take ammo? Or are the devs responding to complaints from the players that they can't get ammo on the Market because it's too difficult and time consuming, and the ores cannot be found? You said yourself that you couldn't even support your own use of Longbows. At level 6. It seems to me that level 9 would be even worse.

Of course, availability isn't a problem an auction house can fix, but it can help get the ore to the players once it is available. And yeah, there were lots of suggestions on live about how to increase the productivity of asteroids at higher level. It doesn't make sense to see L1 and L2 asteroids with stacks of 5 and 10 ores, and L9 asteroids with stacks of only one. And this cuts down on the amount of available XP as well.

This isn't a problem the lower level you go, though, because as I said, there is a lot more ore available. But even low level miners won't mine that ore, because it's valueless. Edited by Dragoncove
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[quote name='Crichton' timestamp='1314828076' post='45434']
Implementing an AH has a whole other set of problems due to the fact that there never was one and with so little ore at the moment whats to stop a player from controlling all the ore? Not that Magoo would but I am sure that if he wanted to own ever piece of grail water placed on the AH he could. The only counter to AH overpricing and complete economy controls is keeping the supply high enough that it is not worth while to monopolize it.
[/quote]
Possible way round this would be for each item to be sold only once, i.e. when an item gets sold it get tagged with an un-removable tag such that the 'AH' NPC would refuse to market it for the player. This would stop players hijacking all the high priced ore and ensure that people only bought for purpose.
I've no idea if this can be implemented in a reasonable fasion or even if it's worthwhile, just a thought from the top of my head.

Rolo
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[quote name='rolo' timestamp='1314860865' post='45463']
Possible way round this would be for each item to be sold only once, i.e. when an item gets sold it get tagged with an un-removable tag such that the 'AH' NPC would refuse to market it for the player. This would stop players hijacking all the high priced ore and ensure that people only bought for purpose.
I've no idea if this can be implemented in a reasonable fasion or even if it's worthwhile, just a thought from the top of my head.
[/quote]

That wouldn't work -- player A buys goods from AH goods get tagged -- A sells goods to B through market channel and then B is restricted from selling the goods on the AH. Tagging still didn't prevent A buying all the goods and selling to B over market channel. In a proper economy without any laisser faire restrictions the goods are free to circulate around the economy.

Anyway, E&B worked fine in the old days without an auction house.

In the old days it was fun to directly deal with other players. If you wanted an auction you got everyone into a private channel and let bidding commence. And there probably aren't enough players right now or in the future to make an AH viable. A small population of players needs more reasons to get in touch with each other, not less.

Besides every AH I've ever seen has been flooded with over-priced crap that nobody wants, lol.
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[quote name='Lot' timestamp='1314868509' post='45468']
[...]
Besides every AH I've ever seen has been flooded with over-priced crap that nobody wants, lol.
[/quote]

Mostly true, In Horizons (Istaria) only Dragons use the trinkets, jewelry, gold urns ...that crap. They sell to the auction house and a dragon looking to build or add to a hoard can and do buy from there. Dragon's hoard is used for weapons and defense.

-------- Added ------------
What is cool about the auction house there is you can see what is for sale without being in game. Nice touch imo.

-------- more Added --------------

See for yourself very nice

[url="http://community.istaria.com/consigners/"]http://community.istaria.com/consigners/[/url]
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[quote name='rolo' timestamp='1314860865' post='45463']
Possible way round this would be for each item to be sold only once, i.e. when an item gets sold it get tagged with an un-removable tag such that the 'AH' NPC would refuse to market it for the player. This would stop players hijacking all the high priced ore and ensure that people only bought for purpose.
I've no idea if this can be implemented in a reasonable fasion or even if it's worthwhile, just a thought from the top of my head.

Rolo
[/quote]

Honestly, I think my initial suggestion is just fine, that if you don't want your rare resources to be bought by someone trying to corner the market, don't put them up on the Auction House. Sell them on the Market Channel. Although I do question why anyone would think this couldn't be done via the Market Channel either. A think a Guild could easily corner the market on a resource like Grail Water if they chose to.

This system isn't intended to replace the Market Channel, only supplement it. The Market Channel will still perform its primary purpose from live.
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[quote name='Lot' timestamp='1314868509' post='45468']
Anyway, E&B worked fine in the old days without an auction house.[/quote]

As I said, don't point to the "success" of E&B as evidence that an MMO works without an auction house. :lol:

Quite honestly, I fought this battle for two years, and heard exactly the same arguments. There is nothing new here.

[quote]In the old days it was fun to directly deal with other players. If you wanted an auction you got everyone into a private channel and let bidding commence. And there probably aren't enough players right now or in the future to make an AH viable. A small population of players needs more reasons to get in touch with each other, not less.[/quote]

As I said above, the point of this system, particularly if it is as simplistic as Rolo is suggesting, is to supplement the Market Channel, not replace it. Likely the exact same people on the Market Channel will be the ones using the auction house. If you are looking for rare ores or to have a high level item built, you would go to the Market Channel and sell it. Possibly, item building would be done face to face, at any level, just to keep the player interaction, and because there wouldn't be enough space on the auction house for lots of weapons and equipment to be sold that way.

This system is primarily for the trade of ores and components. Which rarely takes place in the Market Channel anyway. If any traders ever do trade ores, which normally they don't, they rip them from components, they either have alts to mine them or deal with the same friends or guildmates. When they are forced to resort to the Market Channel it's usually only for the very rarest ores, which means it is less frequent than build requests.

[quote]Besides every AH I've ever seen has been flooded with over-priced crap that nobody wants, lol.
[/quote]

Well, that's kind of the point. :lol: While overpricing is a problem, the fact that it hasn't sold can give new players a clue that they should price their sale much lower. It's a way of determining the market value, without having to be an "insider". And "crap nobody wants" depends a lot on how much it is going for. More resources might be used if they could be priced more competitively with alternatives like component ripping and alts. While you wouldn't want to spend a lot of time and effort selling such ores, it would be nice to make more of a profit from them than just vendoring them, which you'd have to do anyway unless you just spaced them.

For the most part, though, the tendency of players to just put items up at a ridiculously overpriced value and leave them can be countered by simply limiting the number of items you can put up. A limit of 20 would reduce the number of items left on the market unsold. The players would have to withdraw those items to sell more. And that could be reduced further by putting a timeout on the sale, which again, is very common. After a time, the auction house can remove the item from the listing, but retain it in inventory so the seller can come back and reclaim it.

Yes, this could be used by players to store items, but again, with only 20 slots to your name, it wouldn't be much storage. You have more than that in your vault. Edited by Dragoncove
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[quote name='Dragoncove' timestamp='1314894951' post='45501']
Honestly, I think my initial suggestion is just fine, that if you don't want your rare resources to be bought by someone trying to corner the market, don't put them up on the Auction House. Sell them on the Market Channel. Although I do question why anyone would think this couldn't be done via the Market Channel either. A think a Guild could easily corner the market on a resource like Grail Water if they chose to.

This system isn't intended to replace the Market Channel, only supplement it. The Market Channel will still perform its primary purpose from live.
[/quote]

/agree
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  • 4 weeks later...
I'm opposed to the AH concept in this game. We're all fairly isolated from each other as it is most of the time, and the only time we ever get pixel to pixel contact is builds and sales. I think it's different in a ground-based MMO where you are constantly in visual contact with other people; but even in them the AH tends to lower social interaction.

Just my two cents, though :)
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[quote name='Sleepwalker' timestamp='1317137800' post='46747']
I'm opposed to the AH concept in this game. We're all fairly isolated from each other as it is most of the time, and the only time we ever get pixel to pixel contact is builds and sales. I think it's different in a ground-based MMO where you are constantly in visual contact with other people; but even in them the AH tends to lower social interaction.

Just my two cents, though :)
[/quote]

Well, unless you're talking about building components and sales of ore, that's not really going to change, not if this system ends up implemented and used like I think it will. And IMHO very few people are meeting for that anyway. If you want someone to BUILD something for you, as in you have the components, or a system that you want to rebuild or upgrade, you will HAVE to meet someone in person. You could buy something and put your old system up for sale, but there's no guarantee you'll get as good a deal.

If we attempted to implement a full Auction House I might agree with you, but it's unlikely such a thing could be retrofitted into the game at this point. We are still stuck dealing with the defined UI and trade interfaces, which we cannot change.

To be honest, that you would still likely meet for trade AT ALL would still distinguish this game from any other MMO. Which MMO even has other players meet for trade? Certainly not EVE, and not any ground based MMO I can think of either. Usually, player interaction is connected to either teaming or PvP. Edited by Dragoncove
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  • 2 weeks later...
As a purely fan-based MMO, this game has much, much fewer people on it than a "live" game. Not to mention the time-zone differences for some players. Personally, I would like *some* kind of AH. With current and possibly all future AH's being an NPC vendor that roams or something, that is fine by me. My schedule for my timezone is quite contradictory to those hours played by even the most active in my TZ, thus, I have a difficult time getting ammo, parts, weapons, devices, etc. If there *is* some way to make a "roving" vendor that pauses movement while you browse and make purchases or even an NPC at a station that updates goods every "X"-number of minutes that is fine by me. I guess that the whole argument is almost timezone-based. When I had a regular job like everyone else, I was online when they were and finding things to buy was not a problem. But, late at night/ early in the morning there is a great deficit in available builders/crafters/etc.
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