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Suggestion: remove auction fees for items that dont sell.

I think the main point of the seller getting stuck with the auction fee is that if the fee was removed totally, you could flood the market with gouging prices with no penalty. I think the auction fee for high markup items is too high and not worth the risk, especially if the item has low sales history due to rarity and may not sell. For example, angel scales/light mail, or hansidian.
 
I agree, it'd be nice if Mindark would remove the fee. However, that ain't likely ever gonna happen because it makes Mindark and Planet Partners too much. It is the basis of what makes them money, even more so than decay fees.

from way back machine/blogged copy of the old affiliate program website (and yes there are still a few in our community that are in that program even though no one else can join it)



How does it work ?
So, how does an affiliate program look like on a game concept that’s basically free, with no download fee or monthly subscription fees ? How does the operator actually earn money ?
Each tool, weapon, clothes, basically everything a player can utilize has a specific basic value. This base decreases by a certain preset amount every time an object is used until it reaches almost zero value and has to be “repaired”.
The correlating amount of the in-game currency PED and therefor 10:1 US-Dollars of what the item decays gets distributed 50:50 between Mindark PE AB as operator of the Entropia Universe and the planet partner where the participant has the account registered and pursuing its activities, in our case First Planet Company and Planet Calypso.
Another source of income are fees and commissions attached to the in-game auction and player’s shops. Every sale on the auction and shops produces a sales commission that also gets shared 50:50 between Mindark and the Planet Partner.

Maybe My can schedule a relook at the old AMA questions that never got addressed...

Question for MY|Mindark

Hi My I hope you are settling in well. I have a question dating back to 2014 where the following was stated; https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/content.php?231-Galactic-Transport Developer Notes #10 - Galactic Transport In the upcoming Entropia Universe Version Update 15.1 (currently...
www.planetcalypsoforum.com www.planetcalypsoforum.com

Also, if they do remove the fee for auction, how about compensating those of us that invested heavily in Shops?!?!... p.s. if you want to set up a consignment deal in my shop I may look in to that sort of thing eventually. I did it way back many years ago when I had a shop on Omegaton. Never went too far for a variety of reasons but it might be worth looking back in to again now that I got 450 item slots on foma.
 
They at least need to lower the fees IMO especially for not selling an item. I find the ingame auction system and just selling in general in this game VERY ANNOYING. I wish i had many more items that i could sell on auction without running out of slots. I would prefer paying for a premium listing account that you could pay more for upfront as a monthly fee but could list hundreds if not thousands of items but with a lower per sales fee, especially if an item did not sell. To make up to it for actual storefront owners, for these folks i wish MA would build an ingame advertising platform that actually shows what items are inside of shops that way the advantage for owning a shop could be better advertising (the ingame advertising system now is garbage IMO). It would be nice if this was also available offline. I know some have put some work into building something like this on a website, but would be much better if MA could do it.

I do not mind that resellers gouge. It is a free market or should be. If an item can sell for a price, why not allow even resellers to potentially make that much? It is the buyers problem IMO. If they have a fat ped card and are willing to pay a gouged fee how is that any different than real world collectables that are extremely rare and you pay a gouged fee for? I think too many are rigid in their thought on prices. I guess the fact that resellers in this game can corner a market is a thing and i do find it annoying with certain things like tier comps although nice markup for hunters ;).. but QUIT selling to them and giving them the easy peds just because they have the fatest ped card and will contact you first. If the ingame auction system was streamlined a bit better and listing wasn't such a pain in the ass with limited inventory and fees, perhaps you would not need to sell to them. The way resellers work best is by being liquid and being able to find a schmuck that will pay more. They come with cash and offer you a little less and ask a little more just making the margin.

The 2 things this game needs most IMO are an auction system/store revamp and please for the love of god work on societies and society interaction.
 
infamousH4 said:
i think MA are making too much money from auction fees for having done absolutely nothing but ruin our market..
Click to expand...
Oh yeah, that $0.0057USD per failed auction is a real game changer to the company.
infamousH4 said:
for one, i find it very difficult to sell loot or anything for that matter
Click to expand...
So you fail at pricing your loot well, and you blame the auction fees?

My unsold listings sit around 6% of all my listings. If I couldn't swallow 3 ped of lost auction fees vs MU from sales, I failed.
 
Keep auction fees as they are, but make shops more accessible to players. They already fill much of the niche being described here.

MA/PPs already get the fees for some of these areas on Caly that aren’t owned by anyone too such as Emerald, Deer Mall, and others like Genesis HQ. They actually can get a cut of improving shops.
 
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JohnCapital said:
Oh yeah, that $0.0057USD per failed auction is a real game changer to the company.

So you fail at pricing your loot well, and you blame the auction fees?

My unsold listings sit around 6% of all my listings. If I couldn't swallow 3 ped of lost auction fees vs MU from sales, I failed.
Click to expand...
this says more about you, maybe all you sell is oils for 101% and pay that 57pec fee and dont think about it.
also you bring up a good point if that few pec means so little to a huge company so then why stress the players who already go through hell and back to save a few ped..
im pointing out that the massive consumption of the nanocubes has adverse effects on the economy because now there is no demand for common loots, and maybe auction fees need to be adjusted to fit everyone better.
thanks for your input
 
I know some ppl will hate me now...but i can only partly agree with the comments here...

1) Auction is a service provided which generates income for the company-> if there would be no auction fees even for stuff that wont sell....there would be several 100 dollars lesser per week(some K dollar for 1 month)--> would you accept then 5% lesser loot as compensation for it ???

2) as of today 17.6.2021 there are 800 pages in caly auc alone(dont count the other planets in now)
800 pages of 15 entries per page = 12000 entries (up to 1 week durance )
around 4 pages have an entry/start fee from 40-60 ped (event rings with 30k ped SB, weapons, etc ) = 4 pages*15 entries*50 ped average = 3000 ped (for 1 week max)
another 50 pages around have an entry fee of 2-10 ped = 50*15* 5 ped around = 3750 ped
another 200 pages are with a start fee of 1 ped around = 200 *15*1=3000 ped
remaining pages with like 0.54 ped fee are then around 546*15*0.54=4422ped
--> total of 14172 ped ( 1472 us dollar) ONLY for start fees for 1 WEEK !!! (5888 US Dollar for 4 weeks , good to hire 2 ppl in sweden ?)
( thats only a thumb calc..bec accurate cacling would take hours of checkin)

even when 20% arent sold thats around 600-1100 dollar per month as returning fee

--> so sry no ...i am against returning auc fees for stuff that didnt sell , bec the money has also to come from somewhere....and i want the lights lit for longer and no 5% lesser in my loot for a possible compensation if the fees would be returned

3) as the other ppl mentioned...this would be the paradise entry for scam start bids, rip off prices , a paradise for mu manipulating and other stuff

Eddie
 
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In this thread an ex-official stated that auction fees are cycled back to the lootpool, but it's very old and some mechanics may have changed since then. Assuming that's still valid, auction fees are actually a good thing, because it forces those that do not engage with the main professions at all (hunting, mining, crafting) to actually interract with the lootpool, sharing a tiny percentage of their auction trading profits with other players.

Also a large increase in item listings on Calypso may cause the auction to lag terribly, which it already does on occasion.
 
Auction fees are sensitive to Markup. while selling a 102% ore is just 50 pec (seems much but remember that its just 5 eurocent)
the real matter is if you sell as i did 1700 ped mentor claw.... i was asked 40 ped from AH and i decided to sell off market.
as an example that takes a "consensus price" off transparency
if the item goes unsold i loose 40, put again on ah, loose another 40 and so on
4 USD to present an item is really a big amount. and for a 17k imp2870 or a 6k zorra it is 2x or 4x that amount
game has many overhead of costs, like small taxes that screw ppl
1. some ped to have a delivery
2. 20 different aucitons (we need 1... centralized with all planets and free everywhere delivery)
3. we need NO fee for inserting an item, and jsut fees based on sales price with a fixed PERCENT of the slae price
4. we need 20x actual playerbase, due it is really a mess selling anything due to lack of demand :-(
 
Auction is a trading tool for bidding for an item. When this item is repeated 1k times (now), it is not an auction.
This mess is determining the prices at the moment.
This is used for market manipulation.
This trading system work only for resellers and market manipulators.

I love blind calculations too..
10k players who are active and lose 10 pecs per hour = $ 100
$100 * 24h = $2.4k per day
2.4k * 30 days = $72,000 month
I believe that even active sweater have more than 10 pek/1h loss.

This is the rough sum of all those waiting for the next wave, because 95% of MU's loot is TT food and most ppl prefer the shrapnels global than fake trading game.

This in itself indicates a broken Trading System.
The game needs a working trading system, not a patched auction.

Let's see the new user interface... I can't believe how 20-30 programmers with 20 years of experience make a user interface more than half a year... what they showed is a job for a junior programmer, for no more than a month... in the next version, a working game may be attached, to the user interface, which includes the most important part here - the Trade.
 
This is a bad idea tbh. It would cause things to be listed at unrealistic prices. If you’re forced to pay a fee you’re going to price the item to sell.
 
SoberPhil said:
In this thread an ex-official stated that auction fees are cycled back to the lootpool, but it's very old and some mechanics may have changed since then. Assuming that's still valid, auction fees are actually a good thing, because it forces those that do not engage with the main professions at all (hunting, mining, crafting) to actually interract with the lootpool, sharing a tiny percentage of their auction trading profits with other players.

Also a large increase in item listings on Calypso may cause the auction to lag terribly, which it already does on occasion.
Click to expand...

I don't think 100% of auction fees are 'cycled back to loot pool.' Instead I think only part of it might be, but most of it is not... or possibly none of it is.

The quote you are talking about is from Marco in 2005-2006 era by Marco.

Look here if ur loosing badly (Not Whiny)

Warning Long Rant that is maybe hard to understand not to mention badly speeled Guide to economy management in PE :wise: This is a work in progress feel free to comment as you see fit but no flaming please and if you dissagree please give valid points dont just call me a moron or start...
www.planetcalypsoforum.com www.planetcalypsoforum.com

Marco left Mindark a very long time ago.
Marco|SDS said:
MA makes money on decay on item usage. All other monies are transferred back into the Entropia economy.
Click to expand...

Back in 2006 it may very well have been true, but today I don't think it is.

The affiliate program info site, which is now defunct, but is still in internet archive is from 2010, contradicts what Marco was saying back in 2005-2006.... instead of it saying it goes back to the community it says the fees go to Mindark and Planet Partner to share.

How does it work ? | Planet Calypso Affiliate-Programm

web.archive.org web.archive.org


How does it work ?​


So, how does an affiliate program look like on a game concept that's basically free, with no download fee or monthly subscription fees ? How does the operator actually earn money ?
Each tool, weapon, clothes, basically everything a player can utilize has a specific basic value. This base decreases by a certain preset amount every time an object is used until it reaches almost zero value and has to be "repaired".
The correlating amount of the in-game currency PED and therefor 10:1 US-Dollars of what the item decays gets distributed 50:50 between Mindark PE AB as operator of the Entropia Universe and the planet partner where the participant has the account registered and pursuing its activities, in our case First Planet Company and Planet Calypso.
Another source of income are fees and commissions attached to the in-game auction and player's shops. Every sale on the auction and shops produces a sales commission that also gets shared 50:50 between Mindark and the Planet Partner.


The affiliate program never really took off, but there are 3, ok now 4 active affiliate links the community knows about, and it works exactly as the affiliate program site describes based on what I've read... so I'd trust 'official' info from 2010 a bit more than forum info provided in 2006....

I've been trying to get Mindark to clarify more since 2010 but they refuse to give more info. They did finally indicate in a support ticket that yes, taxes in places like Omegaton West Habitat that are not on an LA do go back to Planet Partner to divide with Mindark, but they never indicated that that is something that goes in to the CLD returns or anything.... so more than likely it does not, just as auction fees do not get returned to the community. Clarification would be nice, but so far Mindark hasn't really said anything official about it since the affiliate website as far as I know.... and it has been a subject that has been in several Ask Me Anythings and Ask Mindark threads after 2010 but Mindark is still silent on it and support tickets seem to not give any clarification on this either.

The most info on the affiliates that are still existing was dug up by Mccormick a while ago...
www.entropiaplanets.com

The official affiliate program by MindArk (2009-20xx) and the german XARXA GmbH

Update : (27.4.2020) The devloper of the official affiliate program is : Stefan Krüger = Avatar "Zefram ZC Cochrane" from "Project-Asylum Corp."...
www.entropiaplanets.com www.entropiaplanets.com

A real affiliate program for the full community instead of a select few would be nice, and clarification on where the fees go since there is contradictory info that has been given out over the years would be nice as described here, but we'll see if My or anyone else at Mindark will clarify things someday....
 
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Aloisius said:
I vote for a revamp of the auction system.
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Yes, I think it would be really good if regular stuff like animal oil, reside, ingots, enmatters and a few other things where traded via buy and sell orders.
And in that case I think you should only pay for actual transactions. Think more like stocks on a real life exchange.

The 50 PEC minimum cost and the fact that you can only set the price in whole PEDs really limit low to medium cycle players to use the AH.
 
JohnCapital said:
Oh yeah, that $0.0057USD per failed auction is a real game changer to the company.

So you fail at pricing your loot well, and you blame the auction fees?

My unsold listings sit around 6% of all my listings. If I couldn't swallow 3 ped of lost auction fees vs MU from sales, I failed.
Click to expand...
the same could be said about ur request...ur complaining about ur words "$0.0057USD per failed auction". Though I agree fees should be lower I dont think they should be removed simply so, ppl didnt abuse the AH...
 
infamousH4 said:
maybe all you sell is oils for 101% and pay that 57pec fee and dont think about it.
Click to expand...
It's possible. The real question is, why are you having trouble selling your loot?
infamousH4 said:
also you bring up a good point if that few pec means so little to a huge company so then why stress the players who already go through hell and back to save a few ped..
Click to expand...

FireFist said:
the same could be said about ur request...ur complaining about ur words "$0.0057USD per failed auction".
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You guys are so, so close. Just take that extra step.
You're acting as if the auction fee is only there as some evil get rich scheme for MA. But then, when pointed out, you agree it's tiny.
So if auction fees are so small in terms of RL money, there MUST be another reason for them.

Honestly answer these questions:
Why do you think MA implements the auction fee?
Why are items only auctionable for 7 days max?
Why is it structured so bids are only in full ped increments?
Why is it structured so higher MU pays less %?
Why is there no fees for shops, shopkeepers, etc?
Why is there no limit to how long an item can be in shops, shopkeepers, etc?

And finally:
Why is it structured so starting fees are part of the final fees if it sells, but aren't retuned if it doesn't sell?
 
They will never remove the auction fees. Mindark will never remove their own income, even if its from a broken system.
 
ProActive Mango said:
They will never remove the auction fees. Mindark will never remove their own income, even if its from a broken system.
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they did remove planetary entry fee, armor decay fee, apartment rental fee, shop rental fee... so yes, they can make changes, but it takes them a long while.

I suspect the removal of clothing decay will happen far before the removal of auction fees for sales that didn't happen due to no bids.
 
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ZippO said:
I would prefer paying for a premium listing account that you could pay more for upfront as a monthly fee but could list hundreds if not thousands of items
Click to expand...

then everything would have little to no MU at all...
 
ProActive Mango said:
They will never remove the auction fees. Mindark will never remove their own income, even if its from a broken system.
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That's what I thought before they fixed the ammo depletion when you shot away from a target. It's still like that in PVP though.

Whatever you do don't dry fire your animal brush.
 
If AH has no fee charged for unsold items then whether or not people post overly hopeful buyouts is not the only issue.
All shop-owners would be at an immediate disadvantage, shop values would fall, and many could simply die.

A shop- owner has the advantage of no tax paid to MA until item sells.. but at a price.
To get the luxury of no sale - no fee they first have to invest the price of a shop, fixtures, fittings and lighting, advertising etc They also generally have to hold far more stock then the average AH seller.
This small advantage in fees allows many owners to slightly undercut the AH prices.. which tbh is very necessary, otherwise people would not waste time wandering the Malls and shops in hope of finding the item they seek, they would simply use the AH.

So in my very biased opinion (owner of shops) no auction fee for unsold items would impoverish not only shop owners, but the game as a whole would lose out. By losing shops, we lose the pleasure of shopping ( and no it is not just a female thing), the fun of exploring and seeing what the owners have done to attract and entice you.

SOS - save our shops
Please MA keep the AH fees as they are, and support your local shops with some browsing and preferably buying :) next time you are bored and wondering what to do.
 
Pi- said:
I do not like the effects this type of change would have on the value of shops etc
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They could make it better for shops... potentially... list everything in the shop in auction. No fee above the regular shop fee for if it sells (taxes). Allow the same delivery options as with auctions but make it so if you are on planet you have to at least visit the shop terminal instead of the auctioneer so shop gets some level of foot traffic from time to time..... leave the auction fee for regular non-shop owners for auctions that do actually sell.

Shop directory was something at least one current Mindark employee suggested in these forums many years ago. Never been implemented since he gained employment there... maybe someday he'll push the bigwigs in to listening and make it happen already.
 
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If you auto list all items shown in a shop onto the Ah, it would make the AH ridiculously huge, which knowing MAs track record would make it slow to load, hard to search and more prone to bugs.

More importantly how would MA handle a price change in the shop ?
Shop owners (at least the better ones) regularly review their prices and adjust them to stay competitive, or sometimes to give a 'special offer' to clear some stock
We are also as likely to make a mistake when tired as the next person, I have looked a day or 2 later at a price I set when tired and am thinking wtf did I do that for?
Would having it listed on AH fix that price? Not to mention show everyone my daft price and discourage them from even visiting what they would now consider an over-priced shop.
To list all sale items in game on AH, will lead to a 'race to the bottom' as everyone feels the pressure of so many other items like theirs on the list and tries to undercut to get a sale.

A shop has on average far more items in them than the max number an avatar can list on AH, so does the system list everything ? if so how will that be fair to the smaller (numerically) AH seller.
Would that in turn lead to a rush to buy a shop to gain that advantage ? Giving a resultant hike in shop prices, putting it all in the hands of a very few, rich players.

With a system that lists everything in a shop on AH also, we lose the flavour of local shopping and the interest to explore for visitors to planet. We risk a buy up of shops by wealthy players and consortiums that wish to strangle any competition.

It can also lead to a huge increase in shop sales, which sounds good. or does it. ?
To in effect increase footfall in such a massive way would overwhelm many shop owners, as they could simply have no time to source or make new stock to take up the slack. There is a huge difference in workload for the manager of the the corner store and the management of Walmart, yet suddenly we would all be in effect part of a huge sales chain we have little or no control over.
Next we would see burn out and more empty shops.

Seriously guys be careful what you wish for.
I am sorry but I really think this is a poor idea, and the consequences not thought through and frankly deleterious to the game as a whole
 
I think the auction fee's are OK.

To have my item presented, to every player within entropia, for 7 days straight... 50 pec isn't much.


If you add a large MU item, well.. that's fair. Have it displayed for 7 days and potentially finding a buyer is worth that cost. If you want to rather spam the chat, do so.. but imo the fees are fine
 
This is not a trading system, but rather resembles the Phoenician culture, but the difference is that each item is acquired as a result of loss, and taxes and fees are imposed for each thing.

Which of the 10 thousand players will buy the new 6 stores in Cyrene? I bet their new owners will have stores on other planets.

Once you stick to this unfair trade, let it be fairer and for every item in your stores to be taxed as in the auction... for a week... you will still keep the lead for selling more than 40 items!

You take current things for granted, but they can easily acquire a normal commercial atmosphere.
 
Deemer, I see that you use English words, but as much as I try, you just don't make any sense to me in pretty much all of your posts. Sorry. It may be a translation thing, or my lack of IQ, I dunno. I tried.
 
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