Auction House system to complement existing Market Areas (Discussion) [dev1019]

edit: following the forum reorganization, I have restarted this thread here

Let me open this by acknowledging that there have been several (and some long) discussions regarding auction house vs. market wards. My purpose here is NOT to re-open this same debate, but to make a proposal for an auction house that would complement and supplement the existing market areas (acknowledging that improvements will likely be made).

Regarding the roles that an auction house and market areas would fill, I make the following general suggestion:

1) The market area system fulfills the role of selling commodity goods -- that is, goods that are sold in (relative) quantity, and for which prices are relatively well known.

2) An auction house system would fulfill the role of selling specialty, rare, and/or unique items -- that is, goods that appear rarely, and for which appropriate prices are difficult to determine.

I'm deliberately avoiding discussion of how market areas should be changed/modified (and hope that others will not hijack this thread to that end), and will instead focus upon possible features of such an auction house system, and my rationale for the features I am proposing.

Auction House features:
a) The auction house is for auctions only.
There is no option to list an item with a "buy it now" price. Since the auction house is for items whose price is difficult to determine, true auctions are the rule. If a price is known, the item can be sold via the current market ward system. Bidding is 'open', in that the current bid price is known to potential buyers. To mitigate sniping, upon a new bid being received, the auction duration is reset to end no less than one day after the new bid is placed. To allow the auction to close, and encourage bidding, the seller can choose to end the auction and accept the current bid.

b) Auction listing costs are high.
I propose something like a 100k gil listing fee, along with a 10% tax commission. This prevents the auction house from becoming a duplication of the market areas. Ideally the items listed via auction will be limited in number, and of high value. The high cost provides incentive for players to continue to use the existing market areas for the tax advantages, as well as avoiding the listing fee. In addition, the cost provides a gil sink associated with high end items.

c) Auctions are common across all three cities
The purpose of selling an item in the auction house is to achieve maximum visibility, so auction houses locations will exist in all available cities (and possibly hamlets), and all auctions will be visible in all auction house locations. This also provides a justification for the high cost of listing an auction.

d) Items won are retrieved from an auction house location
Since there is no current mail system, items won via auction will be retrievable from any auction house location. This is another way in which the high cost is justified. Once an in-game mail system is added, this could be re-examined.


I think that this auction house system would provide a mechanism that is lacking in the game currently, without creating a 'doubled system' in which the auction houses are competing against the market areas. I would envision that, as items become first available, they will command a premium and be sold via the auction house. As more items become available and prices stabilize, these items would then migrate to being sold via the market areas.

Note that since the listing fee is fixed, if an item were sold via auction for 80k, after the 10% fee the seller would only recover 72k of the original 100k listing fee, thus selling at a loss. This 'risk' mechanism will help limit the number of items available via the auction house.

The current market areas do not (in my opinion) adequately provide a mechanism for the buying / selling of rare and unusual items. The market areas provide limited visibility, and prices can be difficult to determine. The only remaining options are shouting in a city, or listing the item on a third party site, neither of which seem satisfactory. The auction house system described above would provide a venue for these high end items, while not replacing or detracting from the current market areas system.

The following are possible enhancements to such an auction house system.

Auction house accounts:
A character can create an auction house account by speaking to an NPC at the auction house and depositing gil into the new account. This yields the following benefits:

a) An Auction House NPC linkpearl is supplied to the character
b) Bids can be made via this linkpearl, but only using the gil funds currently on account
c) For a seller, current status of an auction can be checked via linkpearl, and the auction can be closed via linkpearl. The resulting gil is place in the character's account
d) Depositing/withdrawing gil must be done in person
e) Initiation an auction must be done in person, to supply the item
f) Retrieving an item won must be done in person

Alternative Listing Fees:
It has been pointed out that having a high listing fee would likely make the auction house system the exclusive province of 'end-game' players, and would not enhance the playing experience at all for low and mid-game players.

To address this, the following alternative fee listing system is proposed:

Listing fees are determined by item availability within the market areas.
When an item is listed within the auction house, a check of all market areas is performed. The initial listing fee is 5000 gil per item found within the markets, with a maximum fee of 100k. This system explicitly provides deconfliction of the the proposed auction house with the market areas, and provides for lower rank crafters and buyers to participate in the auction house.

Well, you know I'm all for an auction system that supplements but doesn't supplant the market system. :) And I especially like the thought of an auction house that is actually an auction house, rather than a front for what amounts to a garage sale. :) I'm curious to see what other people think.

As I mentioned before, this implementation of an AH I wouldn't mind. Any system that keeps the market wards in place and fully functional while adding new functional is a win in my book. :)

I would support this type of Auction house. Buy it now does not belong on a true auction house. And it shouldn't be used to sell crystals.

The only things that need to be changed about FFXI's auction house are the number of items that may be sold, and the user interface/lag. maybe an upgraded UI for better sorting and searching.

I dont think i have anything that is valuable enough to actually sell in this style of auction house..

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Originally Posted by Nephera

I dont think i have anything that is valuable enough to actually sell in this style of auction house..

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That's the beauty of it, it would make your normally not valuable stuff important in the wards.

@Nephera, Awesome sig. <3

I like the idea of an auction house for valuable items. That is a good idea and a way to utilize that wasted space they say is an auction house in Limsa.

Now that being said I think they are going to do some amazing things with the current Market Wards given the time to implement it and the upcoming content. For all we know Companies could have a huge role in Market Wards and give more functionality to our retainers. You will notice retainers are all "Level 1" right now, and chocobos aren't even in the game. Who knows what they might add...maybe a retrieve function or delivery from retainers on the field etc(Not really a thought out idea just an example).

Yeah, these are the suggestions I like. No one should "axe" anything unless necessary, and the best option is to a) keep the existing feature as a part of your idea, and b) make it as easy to implement as possible.

I'm in favor of a limited AH to complement the Wards.

What I'd like to see is the Wards for each city turned into a single playmap instead of a pile of Instances of the same ugly hallway. With more stalls to rent. And some NPC's to provide crafting access at a basic level.

Get rid of the instancing, and add a new area to each city for the New Market.
Put a bunch of player rentable stalls, small up front fee but no taxes and anything sells.
Add a search NPC that will allow you to highlight anyone in the market area with an item, much like now but allowing for searches by name not just pre-selected items.
Then put an AH similar to what the parent described, with heavy taxes geared towards high-end specialty items only.

But don't stop there. Add more of these, but on smaller scales. Each with an NPC that will let you search all the items up for sale within that mini-market's radius. Put them in obvious places, like outside the Adventurer's Guilds, or other spots where a billion people crowd around selling stuff right now. Put them out in the field, near crystals and so forth.

Put some NPC's in some of the remote mini-market locations which allow for an indirect AH use. They way it would work is you park your retainer in the Market Ward. Then when you talk to that NPC, you can place bids or sell items using the cash and inventory space of the retainer you have parked. To make it interesting, put in some spots which have access to all three AH's, but the NPC's charge a use fee on top of the AH fees. That's just one idea, but all kinds of good fun could be had here.


I think the combination of better consolidation of the existing Wards space, plus the addition of min-market areas all over the world map, and finally the semi-limited AH would end up being really neat.


edit-
I also meant to mention- the player rentable stalls should offer more benefit than they do right now.
I would like the shops to have the ability to offer a third type of selling, in addition to per item or per stack: blind auction. Yup, that's right. When sellers search for the item in the market, they see "bid" for the price.

When Ami and I were chatting about her AH idea, I brought up the idea for a truly blind auction system. If you set up that sort of option you have two problems:

1.) The auction is blind, so a person bids. Their bid is not high enough, they are told the bid is not high enough. They rebid. They are still not high enough. They bid again. Eventually, they figure out what the sale price is, and still only bid marginally above the current winning bid. Effectively, the auction is not blind, unless you limit the number of bids a person can make.

2.) By limiting the number of bids a person makes, they bid, they don't win. People tend to bid low and work their way up. They get screwed out of winning an item they can actually afford. To top it off, if people bid low, the seller ends up loosing money. Because of the risk of loosing money, nobody puts items up on the auction house. This can be fixed by displaying the sale price of past auctions for that item, giving people a reference point from where to start. It would take a little bit for people to actually reach equilibrium, which is fine except...

3.) If you display a list of past prices, you have a system that is remarkably like the system in 11, except that instead of a buy it now option, the auction takes a couple days. It also provides duplicate features of the Market system, by displaying the prices of items.

The idea was to create a system that is unique to FF14, and hopefully MMOs in general, while at the same time complimenting the Market wards without replacing them.

This was already in the poll people voted for the Auction House. That's it. They promised to do it and they should anything halfway there would be a let down and a broken promise from the devs.

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Originally Posted by Seif

This was already in the poll people voted for the Auction House. That's it. They promised to do it and they should anything halfway there would be a let down and a broken promise from the devs.

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I don't recall them saying they would promise to do it. Last I saw they were considering the viability. More to the point, that poll was taken before they added the ability to search the market wards. I wonder if the poll would turn out the same way now. Probably, but I doubt with such drastic revisions. And if the market wards offered the same functionality as the basic auction house in most MMOs? Then I doubt it.

Either way, can you link me to the dev letter or interview where they confirmed positively that we are going to get an auction house?

@ Amineri

Have one question concerning this system.

Lets say I put a bid on an Item. would there be a way (other then going to the auction NPC) to see if the current bid I placed has been out bid by another, as well the time remaining for the act of placing another bid to ensure my ownership of the item?

Kind of like the linkpearl for item you placed on the auction, just one for the person with bids in place.
Sorry if you covered this, was a question that surfaced while reading through the post, which seems like a pretty solid platform to build from. nice idea ^.^

I raised the same question, and the resulting discussion we came up with a couple of ideas, including the idea that Ami had for the "Accounts" idea, where you get a link pearl and are informed. We also batted around ideas like a system message to notify you when you have won an auction (either a standard system message, or an NPC sending you a tell) without the need for an additional pearl. Either idea is viable, certainly. :)

Hmmm an idea I can think of. much like the linkpearl one (actually uses this) in Forza 2 (Race game) you can select say the linkpearl, this would open up a kind of mini menu listing all the item you currently are bidding on as well the time left for each.

A way that could be used to help notify the player of activity on the items they have a bid on, have the pearl (much like with missions) light up a different color. or even same color.

This is just an idea I could think of, hopefully it serves some support to help build the auction system of the OP

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Originally Posted by BelgianRofl

The only things that need to be changed about FFXI's auction house are the number of items that may be sold, and the user interface/lag. maybe an upgraded UI for better sorting and searching.

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This is how I see it. Keep it like XI'S just make some tweaks.

LOL @ 100k listing fee. Yeah, let's implement a system no one will be using due to just the listing price alone.

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Originally Posted by BruceyBruceyBangBang

LOL @ 100k listing fee. Yeah, let's implement a system no one will be using due to just the listing price alone.

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I sell an item in the market wards for 10,000,000. It costs me 100k @ 10% tax rate. Yes, it is high, but that is the point. Ultimately the fee would have to be adjusted to a level where it is higher than a market fee for selling the same item in a bazaar. The pay off is that you get the potential of making a lot more money than you can in a bazaar sale, and you can sell it to people across the world. Keeping the cost high limits the items being sold to high-value items. You won't sell a 100g shard with a listing price of 100k. Maybe at this exact moment 100k might be to high, but I think its as good a guess as any come PS3 release.

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Originally Posted by Shadowskill

@ Amineri

Have one question concerning this system.

Lets say I put a bid on an Item. would there be a way (other then going to the auction NPC) to see if the current bid I placed has been out bid by another, as well the time remaining for the act of placing another bid to ensure my ownership of the item?

Kind of like the linkpearl for item you placed on the auction, just one for the person with bids in place.
Sorry if you covered this, was a question that surfaced while reading through the post, which seems like a pretty solid platform to build from. nice idea ^.^

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I had this concern also, that the basic system would favor those who can do nothing but stand around the auction house and bid (e.g. RMT accounts and other players with extra accounts), while penalizing players who play with only one account. Even if a system notice is sent, if your character is required to travel again to the auction house to re-bid, it would still pose a major headache for the majority of the players, without adding much positive to the system.

This is why I've added as a secondary suggestion letting players create accounts and getting an NPC linkpearl. There is still something to limit overuse of the linkpearl, in that (a) gil must be added in person (b) items must be picked up in person (c) auctions must be started in person. It's just you talking to your broker.

I see this form of auction house is being a premium service, as opposed to the market areas where you hire a girl/guy and hang out your shingle.

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Originally Posted by BruceyBruceyBangBang

LOL @ 100k listing fee. Yeah, let's implement a system no one will be using due to just the listing price alone.

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Well, the 100k listing fee is notional, but (I'm sorry to say) your negative reaction is to a certain degree something I expected.

Part of what I struggled with was the relationship between such an auction house and the current market areas. I understand that many people advocate completely dropping the current markets and and replacing them with a more traditional unified auction house-style interface. This may or may not happen, and I thought I would offer forth a proposal on how an auction house might be introduced that could co-exist with the markets, and add functionality that they do not provide.

I believe that while the markets provide MOST of the functionality of a unified auction house, there is at least this niche that is missing -- true bidding, global view for rare/unusual items. This view casts the auction house as a premium institution, while the market areas are the common method of selling.

If the listing fees are very low, I believe that this would create a parallel and competing structure with the market areas. Quantities of low cost material would tend to flood on to the auction house, instead of being sold in the market areas. While this may be to the liking of those who advocate replacing the markets, it was not my goal in this discussion here.

My rationale for choosing 100k as the listing fee? A somewhat arbitrary benchmark that items that may sell for 1M gil and up would be the target for the auction house. At a sell price of 1M gil, the fees are 200k, netting 800k for the seller. This high cost would, ideally, be justified because the seller would ultimately get a higher price and/or sell much faster than attempting to sell the same item via the market area. With a rare item, it can be difficult to determine a reasonable price -- too low, and you've lost opportunity, too high, and the item doesn't move. This bidding-style auction house give a clean in-game mechanism to quickly assess the market and converge to the highest price that someone would pay for the item.

At the same time, I tried to set a price that is high enough to make selling of common items via auction house unprofitable. Puk wings, logs, ores -- all of these things simply do not sell for enough, and so the market area remain viable for the majority of materials and items. When a person accesses the auction house, they would expect to see very high quality items being offered, not millions of "junk" items.

However, I understand the concern that this makes the proposed system unusable for lower ranked players / crafters, or people of otherwise modest means. This is why I (in the second post) proposed an alternative listing fee method, that allows for lower fees (and hence lower cost items to be listed), but based upon the availability of the items within the market areas (short version - listing fee of 5k per item available in the markets, max 100k).

I think that ultimately there is an inherently fuzzy separation between the markets and this proposed version of an auction house. Any attempt to strictly enforce a separation would likely feel overly forced and stifling.

Thank you very much for posting your feedback. I won't claim to have thought of every repercussion for this, so more the more pokes and prods the better!

I like this idea.

It's actually an auction house and doesn't step on the toes of the market wards.

XI doesn't have any auction house.

It would be fun to have a cut scene that is held at one of the auction houses like they had in Treno from Final Fantasy IX.

ok I'll say it one more time, they should use eq2's broker system, instead of in house msg boards we have retainers, basiclly work the same way, all retainers are located in the MW's, brokers are placed around the city and have a search function for all retainers in the world, the broker can both tell the player exactly where to find the retainer, Grid:crystal market etc. or for a small fee the player can buy the item directly from the broker and the broker just pulls it from the retainers inventory, this would appease the folks wanting an ah and those who like the inconvience of a mw

This is the first idea i've seen on the forums that I would put money on SE actually implementing. good job!

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Originally Posted by Kimowar

ok I'll say it one more time, they should use eq2's broker system, instead of in house msg boards we have retainers, basiclly work the same way, all retainers are located in the MW's, brokers are placed around the city and have a search function for all retainers in the world, the broker can both tell the player exactly where to find the retainer, Grid:crystal market etc. or for a small fee the player can buy the item directly from the broker and the broker just pulls it from the retainers inventory, this would appease the folks wanting an ah and those who like the inconvience of a mw

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It still wouldn't work well because you are still going to overload the retainer/market ward system.

The retainer/market ward system scales very very badly and is incredibly slow and buggy. It still takes a load of time to actually buy and sell things, and in wards that are overcrowded, and prone to crashing.

A broker system wouldn't work because the foundation would crash and burn too often and can't keep up with the expected volume.

It's like running the NYSE on your dell laptop with windows on it. It just won't work the moment people actually buy and sell.

The retainer/market ward system is pure BS. It's built around the idea of small scale trading. No matter the bandaid, it'll buckle mightily fast the moment it gets into the big times.

Ironically with the subscription base of current FF14 on its last legs, we may never need to see the big picture.

The better idea would be to have both at the same time, a global AH with high tax rates, and a market ward with low tax rates or something to that effect.

Trying to mix retainers/market wards is a step into the destruction path, because it's graphically, physically, and server-wize highly demanding.

If an efficient age of trading like WoW that is so keen on efficiency it's even able to program custom filter, you would have thousands of trades an hour.

You'll get a stock market crash every time the wards crash, or someone recalls a retainer to do some inventorying.

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Originally Posted by kukurumei

Trying to mix retainers/market wards is a step into the destruction path, because it's graphically, physically, and server-wize highly demanding.

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And people standing around the Juno or Whitegate AH during peak time wasn't? They already had to separate the city zones into two servers because of lag. What do you think will happen if everyone starts congregating at the same spot to do all their sales/purchases? Give the market wards the right functionality, and it essentially becomes an AH. Fix the market wards instead of scrapping them because, frankly, there's isn't much difference between the two and if they can't fix the wards, what makes you think they can make an AH work without crashing?