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

[origamikitsune]

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

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.

[Amineri]

@ 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 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.

[Amineri]

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

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!

[Rhomagus]

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.

[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

[Celtodeno]

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

[kukurumei]

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

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.

[origamikitsune]

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

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?