Thread: Things to address in 2.0: Open Descending Price Auction will not work

Originally Posted by Roaran

If there were hidden prices, you would not know your competitor's prices right away. But you will eventually, and you will eventually know if they are undercutting you and by how much. Rather than obtaining this information from your competitors themselves, you gain it through the price history.

Thank you Roaran I agree with the whole post except this bit.

Let's keep the average speed of sales at 2.1 days as you suggested (which is rather quick given how dead the market is right now).

Under the current system, Crafter A puts an item on sale for 10,000g. Few hours later crafter B puts the same item on sale for 95,000g. If Crafter A is diligent and keeps checking his sales, he will naturally undercut Crafter B. This will most likely happen at least ONCE a day if both crafters are active players. Therefore, the exchange of undercuts will also happen at least once a day. [Result: Frequency of undercuts could exceed speed of sales]

What happens if prices are hidden? Crafter A and Crafter B will both put item on sale, prices unknown to each other. They will only find out after 2.1 days when the next sale is made. The winner is happy, and will most probably STICK WITH the same winning price, while the loser will adjust his price to his own accord, he could then choose to undercut by 1g, or 10g or 100g how ever much he sees fit. In this case, the exchange of jabs will ONLY happen every 2.1 days on average, no matter how active the two crafters are. This example is bascially FFXI's auction house in action. [Result: Frequency of undercut can ONLY happen as fast as the speed of sales]

Yes you could say that the undercutter could still freely choose how much to undercut by, whether it be 10g or irrationally, 2000g, but that goes both ways regardless of which system is in place. You also have to realize that the winner who made the last sale would probably stick with the old winning price, would you undercut yourself after you made a successful sale? Very unlikely, unless suddenly 20 new suppliers pour in and you start to smell trouble, right?

Back in XI, people would bid starting low, yes it would waste some time, but usually one would quit doing that after 3-4 tries (1-2 mins tops), because if the bid still fails, you will decide that the item is not worth your money. No one is asking you to bid 20 times from 100k to 2mil.