Suggestion for Overbloated AH Prices

[Vallin]

As a free market capitalist, I thumb my nose at all of you who want governmental controls put on the AH!

If you don't like the system then don't use the AH.

I make millions of pp, completely legitimately, on the AH. And most of it goes to heal the noobs of Khyber - including my guildies

It is all part of the game. Plat farmers are an unfortunate by-product of any MMORPG economy. I am all for limiting the accounts of spammers and known farmers - to the degree that it is possible to reasonably control it. Other than that, please leave the AH alone. Learn to play within it, or just choose not to play.

Vallin

( aka Gerkar "Gates")

[Angelus_dead]

There is, however, a genuine problem with ridiculous prices on the Auction House that makes using the AH unpleasant - items that are posted at prices at which they will never, ever sell, and thus clogging up the AH and making it take 5 times as long to look through it.

The better fix for this is to go ahead and allow people to post junk at impossible prices, but to give the auction buyers better sorting/filtering tools so they can get 95% of the waste off their screens.

The obvious first step would be to let the buyer type in the maximum price he's willing to see. Any item above that price won't show up in the search.

The second step would be to let him search for text in the item name, and text in the item description.

With those changes in place, I could search for ingredients or weapons without being overwhelmed by silly results. And I could later remove the plat limit from my search and change the text to "wound OR punct OR transmuting OR silver", which would have a chance to catch items that are mega-valuable and worth paying a huge number for.

[Ceryk]

One way you could completely get rid of gold sellers and keep prices resonable would be to put some sort of cap on the prices of items being sold. Now for most MMO's this suggestion wouldn't work as items in most MMO's don't really have a listed market price. But for this game it would be very easy to implement. Just set cap of 2x the actual market price of the item. Gold would no longer need to be bought from gold sellers as prices would finally be reasonable and you would no longer see insane high prices on weapons that are effectively +3 or higher. There's really no reason anyone should have to pay 100k on a freaking +1 Holy Keen Adamantine weapon when it's market value is only around 9k.

The only people who would really complain about such a bold move would be the Gold Seller's as no one would need them anymore. Give gold back it's value and stop the recession.

I disagree. It would work in all games. I'm very anti-free market in games because I think players are too **** greedy. I've played games where I couldn't afford the basic crafted equipment without a higher level character buying things for my lower level characters. I'm not even talking about looted and magical equipment. Just plain old stuff. Which is ridiculous. By the time I could have bought the equipment on my own, I'd have out leveled it. Then people have to buy money because things get more expencive, then prices go up because of greed, and people have to buy more money, etc.. It continually escalates. Down with the greed market in games I say. Devs in all online games should set caps on prices within reasonable limits according to what kind of money a character can make at the level of which they can use the item.

[sirgog]

The better fix for this is to go ahead and allow people to post junk at impossible prices, but to give the auction buyers better sorting/filtering tools so they can get 95% of the waste off their screens.

The obvious first step would be to let the buyer type in the maximum price he's willing to see. Any item above that price won't show up in the search.

The second step would be to let him search for text in the item name, and text in the item description.

With those changes in place, I could search for ingredients or weapons without being overwhelmed by silly results. And I could later remove the plat limit from my search and change the text to "wound OR punct OR transmuting OR silver", which would have a chance to catch items that are mega-valuable and worth paying a huge number for.

That would work, and would be better than my solutions, but might cost a LOT of development time that could be better spent making new high-level quests. Being able to search for uber items would solve the big problem caused by the very low listing fees - the vendor trash that gets spammed all over the AH.

[GlassCannon]

Minimum Bid Posted: 10% fee.
Buyout Posted: 10% fee.

Fees stack.

[sirgog]

Minimum Bid Posted: 10% fee.
Buyout Posted: 10% fee.

Fees stack.

That's verging on making the AH useless, however, unless there is no fee on an item being sold. The fees would be too high under that breakdown.

I doubt high-value items would ever be listed on the AH if the fees got that high, so people would stop trading there, and then we'd have the pre-AH problems again of all trading of decent items being done in one of two places - the forums (which is a very cumbersome way to trade) or in-game through LFM posts (which gets annoying if there are more than about 6 of them up at any given time)

I still stand by my suggestion of a fee of 4% of the minimum bid plus 1% of the buyout (5% min bid if no buyout), plus a 20% fee on the item selling. It keeps top-level items on the AH (except the few truly uber ones that noone would ever part with for 2m PP), makes spamming the AH with trash unviable, so the Vicious Quarterstaves of Weighted 3% go to the vendors where they belong, and will help people who want to find quality items within their toon's price range do so easily.

The only better suggestion so far is to allow text-based database searches so you can search for Holy+Silver or Transmuting+Outsider or Banishing+Rapier or Smiting+Keen or whatever floats your goat.

[Tanka]

Too many fees and the AH goes down in usefulness -- period. People will come to the forums to auction rare/expensive gear (where there's no timer, no fee, etc).

If you don't like it, too bad. Cap a character and start running Vale quests constantly. Assuming you don't pick up a bad PUG, you'll start making cash hand over fist.

[Ustice]

There is a simple solution here. First, give us the ability to see history of sales of times like that. If we can see say the past 20 sales with items that match that description then we can really see what we should price the item at. Right now, all we can do is look at the prices listed, but if no one buys it, then that number is just inflated. The market pressures will help with this. I would like to actually see this data in graphical form as well.

Secondly get rid of the Buyout option, and replace the bidding system with something closer to eBay where you can just set your maximum bid, and let it automatically bid for you. It allows the casual players to participate without having to pay ridiculous buyout prices, and without having to be online at the end of the biding time so that we can get into bidding wars with other players.

Personally, I don't even use the AH any more. It is too expensive and too much of a hassle.

[branmakmuffin]

Best solution: get rid of it. All it does is encourage plat buying. Oh, the irony!

[Arlith]

I do not see what the problem is. You all have the absolute best filter there is for the AH. Your brain. If you see an item on the AH for 2M plat and it is worth that to you, buy it. If it isn't don't.

The base value for items is based on limited factors. It does not take into account the rarity of the item, or the utility of the item. That make sit totally useless. The game says it has this bonus worth this much, this effect worth this much and this effect worth this much. It does not consider whether those combinations work well together or not (longsword of oozebane for example, or the loved by all vicious). Just because the game says a +3 Cha tome is worth XX plat does not mean it is actually worth only XX plat. For some it would be worth a whole lot less, for others a whole lot more. To be upset at items selling for much more than base value is being upset at nothing, because base value is, well, nothing.

Most of the changes mentioned above would drive trading to the forums, or the userchannels. There may be a change that would make the AH better, but I have not heard it yet.

Use your head, decide for yourself. If it is worth the asking price to you, buy it. If it isn't, don't. Simple.

[Tanka]

Best solution: get rid of it. All it does is encourage plat buying. Oh, the irony!

Oh, yeah, totally. I haven't made thousands of plat legitimately by using the AH, nor have I bought any items using my own hard-earned plat.

Nope, not at all.

[branmakmuffin]

Oh, yeah, totally. I haven't made thousands of plat legitimately by using the AH, nor have I bought any items using my own hard-earned plat.

Nope, not at all.

And of course since you and I don't buy plat, no one does. Gotcha.

Yeah, hard-earned plat. What kind of sweat you break sitting in your chair all day long? I can make the argument that bought plat is more hard-earned because the buyer has to pay not only the monthly DDO fee, but the fee for the plat he bought, too, all with real, hard-earned money. You and I only pay the monthly DDO fee.

[Tanka]

And of course since you and I don't buy plat, no one does. Gotcha.

Yeah, hard-earned plat. What kind of sweat you break sitting in your chair all day long? I can make the argument that bought plat is more hard-earned because the buyer has to pay not only the monthly DDO fee, but the fee for the plat he bought, too, all with real, hard-earned money. You and I only pay the monthly DDO fee.

So you'd like to punish the honest players for the few players who buy plat?

Yup. Real bright.

[branmakmuffin]

So you'd like to punish the honest players for the few players who buy plat?

Yup. Real bright.

Punish? Punish? Did you buy DDO in a game store? I'm betting you did.

You like the AH. I'm guessing you do because it allows you to twink out your characters to the hilt for a lot less dough than you would have to spend in the old broker-only days. I don't like it because it encourages plat farming. I have used it, but if it went away, I'd be happier.

[Angelus_dead]

You like the AH. I'm guessing you do because it allows you to twink out your characters to the hilt for a lot less dough than you would have to spend in the old broker-only days.

Bzzt wrong. There was never a "broker-only" period in DDO.

Try again.

[branmakmuffin]

Bzzt wrong. There was never a "broker-only" period in DDO.

Try again.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about the way you could always buy items sold to vendors by other players.

I know you don't mean ad hoc player-to-player trading.

[Pyromaniac]

Just set cap of 2x the actual market price of the item.

/Not signed.

It would be back to the trade boards and the AH would be not reflective of true market values for items. It would hurt powergamers and those who focus on the end game, and only benefit those who are unwilling to earn their gear. Take out the gear/plat grind, and lose subscribers as there's nothing to do.

[Treerat]

Ironic - those of us who actually played games with an AH system knew that bringing it to DDO would just increase the already rampant inflation. Did anyone listen to us? Oh no - you were all too **** busy living in your "rosy scenario" to look around and see where the problems were going. Now you complain about the plat farmers and about people not caring to pay prices orders of magnitude greater than what they were 18 months ago. Guess what - you wanted an unregulated system, now you get to live with all its consequences.

Oh and for you arm-chair economists - no MMO comes close to a real economy so all your "free markets always work" bullcrap can just take a hike. Real economies have governments controlling the supply of money (limits on new printing & destroying old currency), taxes and costs for storage of goods and materials, and a lot of other rules and regs that give companies lots of incentive to not wait for someone to come along and meet an insane asking price. Maybe when a game sets meaningful fees for items people sit on waiting to get everything they think can instead of selling at the first actually reasonable offer we'll start seeing the basics of actual economics take over. Until then - bring on the regulation. I trust a book of rules more than the judgment of 80% of the MMO community. Rules don't change on a whim - people do.

[Zaodon]

My idea on this issue (because we all have one, right?)

Restrict the Minimum Bid and Buyouts as follows:

For items with a Value:
- Minimum Bid cannot exceed the Value
- Buyout cannot exceed twice the Value

For items without a Value (such as ingredients, collectibles, etc.):
- Minimum Bid cannot exceed 10,000 gold
- Buyout cannot exceed 20,000 gold

NOTE: Players can still post an item with a Minimum Bid and *no* buyout, to "let the market decide the price they are willing to pay", thus potentially still earning 20,000,000 gold for a sale.

You might ask, "if the item can still sell for ridiculous amounts, why bother with this idea? What will it accomplish?"
Good question.

Ask yourself this question: If an really good item is sitting at 12,585 gold, are you going to bid just enough to get "high bidder" or are you going to drop a huge bid down, like 10,000,000 ? Yeah, you might bid a bit more than the minimum to get "high bidder" but you are unlikely to drop 10 mill on it.

Most items that are driving up our inflated prices have a "Minimum Bid" and/or "Buyout" that is too high. By restricting the Minimum and Buyouts, you force the item thru a longer, bid-oriented process if huge payouts are to be gained. If you want "fast cash", your profit margin is limited and the economy drops accordingly, without removing the option of that big payday if you really have a nice item to sell.

[Yshkabibble]

If it's an overbloated price don't pay it. Done.