Do you think the AH needs a rework?

It is my personal view that the current auction system is one of the main culprits for restricting the economy, I never used to have a problem with it until I played a well known space mmo with a booming economy. Now I'm not saying that the system here in EU is bad but I am suggesting that it could be better.

The main floor is that it is clunky and expensive at the bottom end, the system isn't friendly to small time players looking to sell their stackables in what can be considered small stacks meaning they TT it getting a smaller return on their hunts and eventually running out of steam.

Any functioning eco system needs the full spectrum of life for it to truly thrive. It also requires the ability for tiny changes to adapt and evolve healthily, encouraging competition and reaping the benefits of it.

Now, my point is, although MA take a tidy profit from the 50pec fees and the % on top but if they were to adjust this system to a fixed % and allowed the buyout function to operate with pec aswell, allowing a much more accurate market and a clearer view of market value.

It might seem like an immediate cut in profits but it really would kickstart the market and in turn create much more trading volume than we currently see at the moment.

This is just my opinion and I would love to hear your views on it.

Problem is, historically there has been street traders for ore&enmatter. At least in Twin Peaks on Calypso.

Then the animal oils came, but as markup typically is around say 103%, it would tie up too much peds for the street traders to buy it. It's the same thing for enhancer crafting Components and the extractors - leading to that most hunters who runs out of peds and need more, but doesn't have enouth to warrant placing a stack in auction, send it to TT. Now with shrapnel it has become a bit less looted materials; for good and bad.

Another problem is "small planets" that doesn't have street traders.

I'm not sure what the best solution is. Improving the auction too much would kill street traders.



One thing that would be nice would be to be able to specify "pecs" in auction. Right it feels a bit silly to sell a stack of stackables; you see market value is 103% (for instance). You then put your stack, oups, it's 110%. Then you remove a few, and uh, markup would be 101%. after a few tries you manage to put the stack in auction at market price, leaving say 3 back in carried inventory. Then, it would be nice to immediately post your 102 stack in auction at 38.5 ped or whatever.

Theoretically, once thign that would be nice (I don't say it would be 100% good) would be the kind of "stock market", pretty much a pool, where you put what you want to sell and a minimum price (ie TT), buyers tell how much they want to buy (and a maximum price), and, uh, in some automagic way items gets distributed to the buyers.

An option at Selling in auction could also be, if an item doesn't get sold, automatically TT it (let others see this option). This can be handy if you have something in auction in Another planet. Other Changes, that in a way contradicts eachother but would make things more logical, if you have failed to sell something in auction return it to storage, and if you have bought something on Another planet, let auctioneer keep it rather than put it in storage there. At least the second option would be nice to have things to be more logical. Another option could be to have a new section in storage for deliveries.

I do agree. For many of us who don't have time to stand around trying to sell our stackables for 101% the auction house is the only option to quickly free up PED for the next hunt. Now as usually is the case you pop your 8Ped of stackables into auction and its immediately 108% rather than the 101% MV. so you pull it out and TT it.

I totally agree with the OP that adjusting the lower end fees would be much better for new players. They could create a scale of fees based on the TT value of the items being sold.

To be honest the whole interface needs updating and much more functionality and market statistics. Shit even an optional ticker at the bottom of the screen scrolling current MV of enmats and ores would be cool. A true players market.

I agree with the OP, there need to be some more development in AH.

One "excuse" they had when they implemented the fee was that AH was filled
with too many things that wasn't sold, since it could be used as a storage.
I always wished they could have a certain amount of slots per player in AH
that only use the percentage fee.

Another idea I had, but not necessarily a wish, was to split AH in two
trading systems.
One of the two (AH) is same as today (but with some more development in more features)
the other one is a tradinghouse (TH) with fixed MU, and a low fee.
AH should fit for items and TH is better for common resources and materials.

AH needs "Copy Item Link" function!!!

only thing i miss in au is search function to find more items from same seller.

Add a filter so when you are about to do something bone headed (like bidding your whole PED card), you have to manually put your PED card from your inventory to a slot next to your auction bid, once it reaches a certain threshold, say, 50 percent. Or make it so once reaches the threshold, the text turns bright red in a big bolded font. Reducing the bid will turn the font back to normal. Auction lots with no buyout could have a 1 minute delay timer before they get officially sent to the auction. It will be there for the bidder but no one else will be able to see it until the timer is up. During the delay, the bidder can retract their bid if they have one of those bone headed moments.

Yes, it does need an update to correct a few bugs. But, considering all the other things that need updates, Im afraid this is set way down the list.

Problem you mention at the beginning is a pec/ped min bid problem.

If pec is the lowest bid increment, then high value items are in danger of having "pec war" bids

Item: Mod Merc
latest bids
+91000.54
+91000.55
+91000.56
+91000.57
+91000.58
+95000.00
+95000.01
+95000.02
+95000.03

Frustration for everyone. You can figure the next player actions when wanting to sell high value items.

But since ped is lowest bid value, now we go the other direction and low TT items like small stacks become very hard to sell on auction, especially after factoring in the min. auction fees.

There used to be a ton of street vendors who bought/sold. There are still a few but not nearly as many any more. It's not unusual anymore to go into Twin and find not a single ore/matter buyer. And buyers for hunting loot? Yeah right. (timezones depending)

So w/ pec value increments, we have pec bids, which honestly, folks don't want. With ped increments, we have other problems.

Pick your problems.

JohnCapital said:

Problem you mention at the beginning is a pec/ped min bid problem.

If pec is the lowest bid increment, then high value items are in danger of having "pec war" bids

Item: Mod Merc
latest bids
+91000.54
+91000.55
+91000.56
+91000.57
+91000.58
+95000.00
+95000.01
+95000.02
+95000.03

Frustration for everyone. You can figure the next player actions when wanting to sell high value items.

But since ped is lowest bid value, now we go the other direction and low TT items like small stacks become very hard to sell on auction, especially after factoring in the min. auction fees.

There used to be a ton of street vendors who bought/sold. There are still a few but not nearly as many any more. It's not unusual anymore to go into Twin and find not a single ore/matter buyer. And buyers for hunting loot? Yeah right. (timezones depending)

So w/ pec value increments, we have pec bids, which honestly, folks don't want. With ped increments, we have other problems.

Pick your problems.

Click to expand...

I think the part with Pec was for the buyout function.
Otherwise, I fully agree that if Pec could be used for bids, a mess like the one you mention
will be really annoying... maybe it could work for resources and materials thou', since bids
*maybe* will slow down when MU becomes to high.

fred5283 said:

Minimum bid increases can be percentage based

Click to expand...

Yeah.

It's a bit silly when there is a land area or something, and person A bids 73000 ped, and person B Waits 4½ minute and then bids 73001 ped.

An improvement I want to see at AH is an option selling directly to buy order.

Example:

Order is ore x for 110%, now click at the order and simply sell at 110% no matter how many ores of that kind you got.
Its very anoying to figure out how many ores you need to offer to hit relative exactly that markup the buyer wants to pay for it.

Another nice thing would be to remove auction fee for the seller if selling directly to an order (the one who placed the order already paid a fee, now the seller need to pay fee again to sell to that order, thats double payment for MA, and not really needed imho). This idea shurely only doable if we get the "sell to order button".

Definitivly needs an upgrade, personally I want an all option on planets, so I don't exclude every planet but Calypso. But generally, lots of things that can be greatly improved.

Seems like a lot of good points have been raised here, i just hope MA are paying attention... Part of me hopes some changes will be coming with the implementation of transport missions to give it a tidier interface but im sure there are bigger hurdles in the way of this at the current stage of development.

With regards to a few of the points made, i feel like street traders for the most part would be happy to have a system that allows them to buy and sell at the rates they currently do and paying a small % for the automation of it. Lets face it people are driven to street trading because of a flaw in the system, not because they enjoy spamming and street corners.

I also agree with the whole 1 pec incremental bid issue, 1 ped bids are a pain in the butt as it is, but the frame work is there to allow buy outs to be set in pec or items with % value to be dealt with in .1 or .01.

As for the filters and other features that could be welcomed, im not sure how difficult that would be to do from a programming side of things but i think there are many features missing and the functionality required for a world that prides itself on being an RCE.

I think the trading system would be alot more involved and higher volumes would be traded eventually as a bi product of making a few of these key changes, but i guess we will have to wait and see.

Perhaps usage of PECs should be limited to LISTING of items only - and not permitted for bidding. The buyout listing simply deducts the appropriate pecs.

That might resolve both issues?