jambon
Stalker
- Joined
- Dec 14, 2006
- Posts
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- Ottawa
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- Shaolin
- Avatar Name
- James Jambon Zidane
Here's a few auction change suggestions in a single place that I'd like to see in the Unreal update....
- Make auction universal. We need to drop the whole unique auction for each planet thing. It's a nice idea but let's be real, you don't have the player base to actually support this. I get the idea of variable economies for each planet but this simply can't work with how things are setup currently and the small playerbase.
- Only charge an auction fee on sales. So many things in this game have practically no markup and the risk of loss if it doesn't sell the first time it's listed is enough to prevent people from even trying. The result is a lot of lower markup items that never get listed and instead get fired into the TT leaving only high markup items to be purchased. For example there's lots of looted L guns that can be great ArMatrix alternatives but they get chucked because the markup is only 108%, so instead we're all left having to pay the 135% of ArMatrix guns.
- Get rid of the timer extension. This game of attrition needs to end, it's not fun. There's no reason why almost every auction need to end with a multi-hour game of +1 ped tag. The auction should end when the time says - no exceptions. We shouldn't have to spend so much time glued to auction - more time spent bidding is less time spent shooting. This +1 ped issue could easily be solved with the next point.
- Allow auto-bidding. The auction should behave more like eBay where you set the max price you're willing to bid and the system will auto-bid for you up to that value as other people bid their max price. There's no reason we should have to either pay our max price right out the gate or set an alarm to wake up at 3:47am to sit and watch an auction to place a bid at the last minute for the following 2 hours till one person gets bored or has to walk away or you finally exceed their max price.
- Allow unlimited auctions or significantly more. I get you don't want people listing 100,000 auctions each with 1 lyst as it's a burden on the server. But 2 pages (with no option for expansion) is simply not even close to enough. I would say at least 5 pages is reasonable. There's also other options for offerings to expand this amount that could be added. (part of a monthly premium Entropian subscription perhaps?)
- Allow bidding to the pec. Once we do away with the timer extensions allowing bidding to the pec makes a lot more sense for small value items. New players with small bankrolls often get screwed out of being able to utilize auction for their loots because the values are so small. This results in them needing to turn to resellers who offer even lower markups and in the end leads to these players running out of money (and losing interest with the game) much faster.
- Change resource auctions to an exchange. It makes sense that resources are handled like the Entropia Exchange rather than having a ton of listings. Much easier to just list all you've got for a price and let people buy as much as they need.
- Parse out the [ and ] of item links in the search. I can't be the only person that often copies item links and pastes into the auction search and finds it annoying that I have to manually delete those off the query to actually get results.
- Show more stats / filters for items. Most people don't realize there are alternatives to the items they want and can't be bothered to take the time to hunt around of EntropiaWiki (when it's actually up and running). Showing a DPS in the columns that can be sorted or filter options to define item stats can be a great way for people to discover alternatives when what they are looking for isn't there. This could lead to more auction sales and more fees collected for MA.
- Claim TT value now option. You know the biggest problem with auctions? The fact that you've got to wait for your stuff to sell before you have any access to the funds from them. What would be nice is if you had the option to get a front of the TT value of listed items at the time of listing (for a small fee). When the items sells the fronted peds go back to MA, if the item doesn't sell and you want to take it out of auction you're required to repay the peds - after X days of not being listed or claimed the item would just be auto TT'd to return money to MA. This would kind of merge the idea of the bank with the auction. Imagine you have an item with 150 peds TT and a markup of 108%. You list the item and get 149.50 of the value when you list which you can use right away. If The item sells, you get the extra markup that was paid and MA keeps the TT value. If the item doesn't sell you can relist, buy it back for TT value or just have it auto-TT'd. Faster access to cash means more spending. This would allow more items to be listed for markup than just fired into the TT while still giving you access to the funds right away.