Suggestion for Overbloated AH Prices

[Esperflame]

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.

[dengar]

Just look at the Marketplace segment of the boards. This is where people go to trade items, but also sell that above the 20 mil plat limit on items in the AH.

[ENGRAV0]

I had an idea for this that would not take away too much, though it still leaves a little room for improvement.

Here are the basics:

It is a two option function:

Option 1:
You place an opening bid which can be no more than 10 times it's base value and a buyout, the buyout (if you set it) can be no more than 50 time the base value.

Option 2:
You place an opening bid, but no buyout. This option allows it to run it's course of being bid on, and when the time runs out, whomever bid the hgihest gets to keep it. BUT, reduce the amount of time an item is allowed to be bid on. 48 hours is plenty.

What would this accomplish? Well, say I sell something at reasonable price, say 40,000 Plat for a +2 Tome, and it's base value is (and I don't remember what the ACTUAL" base value is, this is only an example) 1,000 Plat, the max that that item could be returned to the auction with a buyout would be only 50,000 Plat. Not a reasonable investment for a Plat farmer to risk. Now, he could go and leave the buyout blank, and see just how much he could get for it, but the biggest advantage is he could NOT set the opening bid at more than 10,000 Plat.

Again, the numbers are incorrect, but it is the idea that matters, not the numbers. The Dev's and Players could work "TOGETHER" on what is a reasonable benchmark for determining the calculations.

[Vormaerin]

The way you get 'reasonable' prices is not paying outrageous ones. Price caps will just move the high end items off the AH and back to the trading forums and LFMs.

[Mhykke]

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'm sorry, was this a suggestion on how to completely get rid of gold sellers or completely getting rid of the use for an AH?

[ENGRAV0]

But some items, that are rather powerful when combined with other items, are far more valuable than the stated price. For example, what value is a +2 Charisma Tome? What value is the Scourge Choker? The point is, the base value, the value of any given item honestly, is determined more than just by it's cost. A lot of consideration should go into what the item can do. Boots of the Innocence, Kardin's Eye, Eye of the Beholder, Ring of the Ancients just to name a few. BUT, if the items were restricted to what the max one could state they wanted said item bought for, in a matter of a short period they would begin to decline in the outrageous price ranges, or people would stop selling them all together and more people would have to go get their own.

Ever try to run the Litany of the dead for Tome pages? What is their base value? Bringing trades to the forums isn't a bad thing, and trade LFM's hurt no one, except the people who let them bother them. Play the game, enjoy. If prices were reduced, then we wouldn't need for the Dev's to have come up with Death Damage to gear. Getting 30% of the money someone pays for stuff out of the economy wouldn't be as big a deal if there was a way of limiting the rediculous amounts the farmers are charging anyways. And, there ARE ways of getting rid of the Trade LFMs anyways, at least they are more tracable than the /tells we get all the time. Ok, that "I" get all the time.

Example, if a Farmer puts up an LFm for an item, he has to stay online long enough to be tracked or until the "SALE" is done. If the /tell function for trial accounts had a way for each player to choose for himself/herself if they wanted to recieve them, then the only other option is return to spam mail, pretty much solved, or set up an lfm, which is easily tracked and requires the farmer to "HOPE" someone comes along before they are caught.

I see it as a win/win scenario for all players, save the ones who actualy buy Plat for real cash.

[Vormaerin]

Nothing valuable is going to be sold on the AH if you cap the price. That's what always happens.. in games and in real life... when you cap prices. Everything gets sold on the black or grey market instead (ie threads, bios, LFMs). Dunno if you played before the AH,but it was pretty annoying when 50% or more of the LFM messages were traders.

[Esperflame]

Nothing valuable is going to be sold on the AH if you cap the price. That's what always happens.. in games and in real life... when you cap prices. Everything gets sold on the black or grey market instead (ie threads, bios, LFMs). Dunno if you played before the AH,but it was pretty annoying when 50% or more of the LFM messages were traders.

Not entirely true. See the problem here is greed. Right now, the problem is because people can and do buy gold, there is a high inflation of value on everything in the auction house. People need massive amounts of gold to buy what they want. This in turn is driving up the prices of stuff they want to unload. But, if high end items are driven down in price, then the lower end items will in turn be driven down. Lower prices mean more people can afford whats being sold and therefore people won't need insane amounts of gold to buy the good items. This will then affect the gold sellers because people won't need their services to buy the things they want. It's a cycle that really helps everyone. Just because certain items make great combos doesn't mean someone should have to fork over billions in gold for them. Enforcing a price cap won't kill the AH either. Let's face it, if you get multiples of stuff, you want to get rid of the extra's you don't need and the AH is the easiest way to do it.

[Mhykke]

Seems right on track, actualy. But who is gonna give plat if they can find that item on the AH for 24k PP? And, the selling portions of the forums are there for a reason, so either way, you would be in the right then. Seems like it is working if it drives you to do that, at least to me.

Huh? The point is you wouldn't find that item on the AH. Or any kind of high value item. It would kill the AH for all but minor items.


*edit
Weird, ninja'd myself.

[Mhykke]

Not entirely true. See the problem here is greed. Right now, the problem is because people can and do buy gold, there is a high inflation of value on everything in the auction house. People need massive amounts of gold to buy what they want. This in turn is driving up the prices of stuff they want to unload. But, if high end items are driven down in price, then the lower end items will in turn be driven down. Lower prices mean more people can afford whats being sold and therefore people won't need insane amounts of gold to buy the good items. This will then affect the gold sellers because people won't need their services to buy the things they want. It's a cycle that really helps everyone. Just because certain items make great combos doesn't mean someone should have to fork over billions in gold for them. Enforcing a price cap won't kill the AH either. Let's face it, if you get multiples of stuff, you want to get rid of the extra's you don't need and the AH is the easiest way to do it.

You're ignoring the fact that:

1. People acquire millions and millions of platinum through legitimate means

2. High value items wouldn't be driven down in price, b/c people would simply refuse to post them on the AH. If I pull a wounding of puncturing shortsword (even if it is a multiple, my 10th one for example), am I really going to put it on the AH w/ a max cap of 24k plat buyout? Of course not. I'll go to the forums and trade for something that I want.

[ENGRAV0]

You're ignoring the fact that:

1. People acquire millions and millions of platinum through legitimate means

2. High value items wouldn't be driven down in price, b/c people would simply refuse to post them on the AH. If I pull a wounding of puncturing shortsword (even if it is a multiple, my 10th one for example), am I really going to put it on the AH w/ a max cap of 24k plat buyout? Of course not. I'll go to the forums and trade for something that I want.

Seems right on track, actualy. But who is gonna give plat if they can find that item on the AH for 24k PP? And, the selling portions of the forums are there for a reason, so either way, you would be in the right then. Seems like it is working if it drives you to do that, at least to me.

[Mhykke]

My ninja reply above.

[sirgog]

As posted above, this would utterly destroy the Auction House.

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.

(I'm not talking about items like Wounding//Puncturing shortswords being sold for two million plat - that's a price it may sell at. I'm talking about the +3 Vicious Kamas of Everbright, the +1 ghost touch shield of lesser sonic resist or the Depleted Shavarath Medium Energy Cell you see posted for 100k PP on the AH.)

My solution: Change the fee structure so that when you post an item, posting it costs you 5% of whichever is higher - your start price or your buyout price - and then the final value fee charged is 20-25% of the item price, not 30%.

That won't chase the quality items off the AH like the OPs suggestion, but will pretty quickly get rid of the vendor trash, making the AH more useful than it currently is.

[Ikuryo]

Your solution would result in even fewer buyout prices being used. I've played in games where it cost more to post a buyout and people just stopped using them at all. If no one pays the buyout you just wasted the cost of the buyout price. You are also ignoring the fact that this would blow up the prices of posting low value items by a lot. Currently it costs almost nothing to post the cookies and such from Christmas and the other special rewards because their stated value is very low. The amount of value that other people place on them is much higher though, this results is a cheap to post item that has high sell value. With your pricing scheme these would also vanish off the AH.

[sirgog]

Your solution would result in even fewer buyout prices being used. I've played in games where it cost more to post a buyout and people just stopped using them at all. If no one pays the buyout you just wasted the cost of the buyout price. You are also ignoring the fact that this would blow up the prices of posting low value items by a lot. Currently it costs almost nothing to post the cookies and such from Christmas and the other special rewards because their stated value is very low. The amount of value that other people place on them is much higher though, this results is a cheap to post item that has high sell value. With your pricing scheme these would also vanish off the AH.

My solution isn't perfect on buyouts, I'll agree with you on that.

But the (virtually) free posting of items like Ingredients is the worst thing about the present AH. Currently there is no real disincentive to posting medium ingredients on the AH for ridiculous prices 100k PP each - someone may misread one and buy it by mistake, so you can gain (once in a blue moon) from it, it costs no meaningful amount, but this sort of spam makes the auction house far less useful. Look at dwarven axes for example - restricting the search to ML 10-16, you'll find about 5 pages at any given time on Khyber, of which about 70% are complete vendor trash, 15% are quality items at absurd prices (e.g. +5 dwarven axe of pure good, 500k PP), 10% are quality items at fair prices (e.g. +1 holy burst d. axe of pure good 25k PP), and 5% are exceptional items at high but not unreasonable prices (e.g. +5 holy silver d.axe of evil outsider bane, 1 million PP, or +3 vorpal d.axe, 500k PP)

My suggestions would quickly cut out 3/4 of the vendor trash and almost all of the absurdly priced items, leaving a higher proportion of the stuff players want to see - good and excellent items at prices that are not unreasonable.

As far as your comments about buyouts go, a better solution may be to charge listing fees of 5% of starting bids on items with no buyout, 4% of start + 1% of buyout for items with buyouts, then 20% of the sale figure for items that sell. People that use the Auction House to sell stuff at fair prices will pay about what they do now in fees (more on the stuff that doesn't sell, less on the stuff that does), but the AH spammers will be very rapidly squeezed out - which will in turn result in more players using the AH and a better AH overall.

It's worth noting that Ebay charges sellers fees for posting a buyout, whether it is used or not - this doesn't change the fact that a LOT of people post items with buyouts there, and that's real money not in-game currency.

[Pyromaniac]

The auction house is fine as is (though I admit it could use some more categories to subdivide things like collectables and ingredients, and there's a few bugs going on) - personally any major changes like this increase the chances of me not continuing playing.

The market determines the fair value - if it doesn't sell, it doesn't sell. Then the person has to pay to relist it again. I have no desire to go back to the trade boards and tons of buy/sell LFMs up all over the place.

For people unwilling to utilize the auction house and maximize the plat they own (legitimately) doing so, that's your choice. Don't make the rest of us suffer.

[FluffyCalico]

Easy fix 2 steps.

1) Everything must have a buyout price
2) 10% of the buy out price is charged for auction even if it doesn't sell.

Only issue I have with the AH is there is no real penalty for putting things up for 1000000 plat every 3 days for months.
I want to look at the ah and see whats selling. Not what people are asking because they intend to put it there for months until it sells as who cares about a couple gold when you are asking a million plat!
That way you won't list stuff at stupid prices that you know have a snowballs chance of ever selling for that.

[esoitl]

As posted above, this would utterly destroy the Auction House.

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.

(I'm not talking about items like Wounding//Puncturing shortswords being sold for two million plat - that's a price it may sell at. I'm talking about the +3 Vicious Kamas of Everbright, the +1 ghost touch shield of lesser sonic resist or the Depleted Shavarath Medium Energy Cell you see posted for 100k PP on the AH.)

My solution: Change the fee structure so that when you post an item, posting it costs you 5% of whichever is higher - your start price or your buyout price - and then the final value fee charged is 20-25% of the item price, not 30%.

That won't chase the quality items off the AH like the OPs suggestion, but will pretty quickly get rid of the vendor trash, making the AH more useful than it currently is.

this is a very smart thing
i believe they charge a percentage of the items base value now which doesn't really work as it really allows too much freedom for pricing
charging a percentage of the posted value would limit the ridiculous posts while making average items still sellable

it would push the majority of big sales to the forums or LFM's which can be a slight problem but most of the top trades exist here anyways
it would definately reduce the plat you can earn off the AH and even start to take some money out of the economy, which isn't a bad thing as you'd probably see some of the AH prices going down because of the lesser ammounts of plat and the percentage taken out

[sirgog]

this is a very smart thing
i believe they charge a percentage of the items base value now which doesn't really work as it really allows too much freedom for pricing
charging a percentage of the posted value would limit the ridiculous posts while making average items still sellable

it would push the majority of big sales to the forums or LFM's which can be a slight problem but most of the top trades exist here anyways
it would definately reduce the plat you can earn off the AH and even start to take some money out of the economy, which isn't a bad thing as you'd probably see some of the AH prices going down because of the lesser ammounts of plat and the percentage taken out

I think my suggestion would actually increase the number of high-end items traded on the AH. Here I'm not talking about W/P rapiers, but other items that are worth between 250kPP and 2MPP such as W/P shortswords, +4 vorpals, etc. Players would IMO prefer to pay 100k PP to list a W/P shortsword at 2MPP and 400k PP in sale fees, than pay 600k PP in sale fees as they do now, as it's pretty likely to sell at that price. Likewise for +5 mith FP (at 500k PP not 2M), Bloodstone (at 1M PP), etc.

Lower fees on things that sell, much higher on things that dont - that's my proposal to make the AH usable again.

[Xaxx]

Not entirely true. See the problem here is greed. Right now, the problem is because people can and do buy gold, there is a high inflation of value on everything in the auction house. People need massive amounts of gold to buy what they want. This in turn is driving up the prices of stuff they want to unload. But, if high end items are driven down in price, then the lower end items will in turn be driven down. Lower prices mean more people can afford whats being sold and therefore people won't need insane amounts of gold to buy the good items. This will then affect the gold sellers because people won't need their services to buy the things they want. It's a cycle that really helps everyone. Just because certain items make great combos doesn't mean someone should have to fork over billions in gold for them. Enforcing a price cap won't kill the AH either. Let's face it, if you get multiples of stuff, you want to get rid of the extra's you don't need and the AH is the easiest way to do it.

you have one MAJOR flaw in your logic

you seem to think that EVERYONE who buys things at high prices on the ah buys gold from gold farmers..... heres some startling info for ya... most dont

if you've just not had loot luck well thats you, not everyone only has 50k plat to their name

Putting up a 2x or a 10x base value on the ah will kill it, nothing high end will ever show up on there, no ifs ands or buts... if i can get 500k plat for a tome on the forums, or 20k gold for it on the ah.. hmmmm... wonder where i'll go.

Also if th eres a +1 adamantite holy bastard sword on the ah for 100k plat, please REMEMBER something, just because something is on the ah for a certain price doesnt mean it will sell.. i can put a +1 shortsword on there for 2 mil plat, does that mean it will sell for that or that its worth that.. no... it just means im a smart*** or an idiot for putting it up there.

If you've not had luck finding high end items, or just cant afford them in the ah... well not everyone elses problem simply yours. The farmers spam is annoying but the ah isnt the solution, and tbh if you did this, it would simply drive prices up further and then the farmers could simply selll things via lfms at 3 times the current price of high end items.

So all your trying to do is drive the players who play more or are lucky out of the game....... real smart.