Detailed Proposal for an Auction House System

Wow, lots of support on this and let me just say that i am a huge supporter. I spent so many weeks selling a single hammer and in the end i just just ended up salvaging it mod and then selling that for a much reduced price. That being said, i do think have my own opinion on how the auction house should be run (forgive me if its been addressed, i only read the first 3 pages)

1) Should be categorized into the main categories (weapons, armor, runes, materials, miscallaneous, etc...) and then subcategorized (by class preferably, or perhaps by attribute) and then further categorized until you get very specific items... like Fellblades, Chaos Axes, etc.

2) It should be an Ebay style of bidding. If you sell for less than what you wanted, too bad. Putting an item into the auction house is a risk... just as it is in life. BUT, you should have the oppurtunity to put the item in for a minimum price, so you have some control. Also, there should be the option to put a buyout price, so if someone needs the item fast, they can buyout and have the item instantly. If no one bids on the item you get it back. Regardless of if you buy or sell, you should be charged a small fee (perhaps depending on duration?) for using the auction house

3) I believe the houses should be linked together, otherwise, like someone else mentioned, everyone would either use a single auction house, or some houses would have certain items that others didnt so players would have to travel to up to 5 places to get an item

4) I personally would like to see an actual auction house that one can walk straight into, not just a collection of NPC's like the back system. This isnt really required, i just think it would be nice to have an physical house to go into.

Theres my two cents. This is Shane and i endorse this idea to the fullest.

signed, would love for this to happen

/signed

/signed
PLEASE

i think it would work well for things like dyes, weapons, and off hands. those items that are higher level/hard to use should be per city (so you cant buy a super high level weapon from ascalon city as a lvl 6) but things such as dye and materials should be tyria wide and ascessable from every city.

another possible idea for the weapons and such is that when you go to an auction house, you can browse the auctions, but only of cities that you have visited at their auction house (we can call it registering). like when you go to to sell your items to a merchant, you can choose what pouches it shows. if those pouches dont exist, they are greyed out. in the same fashion, it would be cities. so if you have been everywhere, you can browse everywhere. but if you havnt been to a place and registered, then you cant get anything from there.

still - dye and materials would not require this and they would get a seperate tab.

signed...

i always keep a bunch of stuff other ppl would really use, but im not willing to spend a day spamming it to sell it.... so more and more stuff goes to merchant or gets trashed (trashed is my term for salvaging a good gold/purple)

All I can say is that people have been talking about this for as long as GW has been out. It's not a bad idea... however, I'm wondering if anyone has given thought to how this might be effectively implemented.

A tool would be fine but an out of control ebay style enterprise is probably out of the question. I can imagine such a thing would grow to warrant a stand-alone server/site. There are a ton of things to work out.

Would it be up to Arena to categorize and organize the thing or do they cut it lose and let the chips fall where they may? How long do old ads stay in the auction or do they stay as long as the seller wants.. and what if they seller never sells his 3-5 dmg starter sword should it just stay in auction? Is it up to the buyer to contact the seller or does the house do that? do they limit the instances of selling the same tired stuff to 50, 100, 1000, 10000 different sellers selling the same thing? I can imagine that even with an auction house we will still have the spamming sellers in both the trade channel and the regular chat channels.. Should the auction house replace the trade channel? should buyers be able to post or append to an ad? Do they put a different auction house at every location or make it so all towns use the same auction house.. and if so does the auction house also work across updates? What would be the point of that if a buyer and a seller did not share the same update? what about a rating system? I suppose you could make a title based on use of the auction house and buyer ratings.. but should a rating be a required post on each ad? what about abuse? who monitors the ads? should there be a limit to how many simultaneous ads you can have running? should your ads clear when you leave the game for the day or stay in auction? or should there be an "online now" indicator on each ad? should posting cost anything? Should the house take it's cut of the sale? should there be a search engine attached the house? I'm sure there are many other concerns...

I can imagine implementations of an auction house that would eventually be just as useless as the drink from the hydrant we endure now in LA or Kaineng. I don't think Arena wants to implement a useless auction house. We're talking about a major enterprise here; they are probably just being very careful.

I'd like to hear some realistic ideas of how this should work. If Arena is working on this, they probably would have to dedicate a whole dev team away from a campaign upgrade project. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Dawn

Decent trading system FTW

Overtly Awesome Auctioning System FTW

/signed

/signed

I do not care whether it will be only available for Nightfall accounts or for all, but this is a "must have"-feature for a game like this.

/signed

I think it would be better to use a categorizing system, like the one in the gwguru auctions. 3 drop down menus, 1st = Bow/Axe/Dye/Sword/Staff/Wand etc.

/signed
Very well done.

/signed

The very first post on this thread is a home run.... A year-anna-half (and 273 replies) later it STILL looks great.

Please! Make it happen.

/signed

I have much stuff to sell but i don't want to waste time to sell my items by spamming the whole day WTS WTS.

/signed

IMHO setting up an ebay-like auction system isn't practical. It's all too complicated for people that really don't care. Sure the LA traders and hardcore pve'ers will love it (the demographic of all the people that use guru), but the majority will just find it confusing and annoying. If any sort of centralized sales system is implemented, it needs to be simple and straightforward (ie set prices, people either buy it at your price, or go somewhere else). Also, from a buyer's standpoint, a bidding system would suck. If I want to buy a crippling string for my gvg in 5 minutes, I don't want the option of a buyout price, that's rediculous. Just name a price, and if I don't like it I'll go somewhere else.

let the flaming begin

/notsigned

GW devs are a torn of group from the WoW devs.
WoW has an auction house
Therefor i cannot see an AH being implemented into the game.
For this reason and this reason only.
This doesn't mean that there doesn't have to be done something soon.
Devs tried to solve it by making all relation to WTS/T/B autmatcally trigger the Trade channel.
Instead of using this? No... everyone else wanting to 'stick out' type a space or dots or whatnot.
It's more that something needs to be done about the mindless (pardon my french) tits that mess up the entire All channel.

I understand why an auctionhouse wouldn't be implemented or at least why they are hesitant. Posters not far above have been some of the many who have already pointed out these reasons and thus I won't repeat them.

However, as I, and many others, have stated in the past, I would like to see a trade town be setup where you can set yourself up as a shop, set your own prices, and allow people to see what you have and buy from you. In other words, it would be nice if you could "become" just like an NPC Merchent. This would allow for a much simpler solution in terms of development and implimentation as well as fit the needs of the players. If we wanted to take this idea even further it would be nice (if a bit harder to implement) if you could set up a something like a customized title to advertise what you were selling so people could see simply by mousing over your char. (ex: "Greens" or "Shields"). If this was implemented though, it would need to be restricted to only the trade towns so that people weren't creating their own titles in other parts of the game.

InvictusBlood, what you are suggesting is a system similar to www.conqueronline.com or www.silkroadonline.net, for example.

In Conquer there is a special market map with limited market spots where ppl can setup a shop and offer up to 20 items at a time. The drawbacks of this system are:
(1) the limited number of spots (which really isn't an issue if there are few ppl playing in that server - which is not the case of GW because players are not 'contained' in a specific server)
(2) The spots are at specific locations which means some are better located and so some ppl will sell stuff easier (and for more money) if they can grab a good spot.
(3) the need to be online to be able to sell - this means you'll have to be online a considerable amount of time to be able to sell anything, and that means leaving the game client open and go afk or try do something else at the same time (browse the net, write a text, read email, etc). This puts an extra load on the computer that will probably make it slower for doing other tasks. It also means a lot of ppl will be leaving computers on during the night which increases power usage and is not environmentally friendly. It would also put an extra load on the servers (a LOT extra) which in turn can create instability and lag - and nobody wants that.

In Silkroad you can setup a market stall almost anywhere (even outside towns, at areas without mobs - ppl sell arrows and scrolls there at 'convinient' prices). The drawbacks are:
(1) Since its possible to setup stalls anywhere ppl tend to spread out a lot (there isn't 'one' location to search for items) but also concentrate in more popular areas, which can be confusing (did I see this stall already?) and hard to reach certain NPCs
(2) Same as (3) above, online selling only. In Silkroad is particularly dramatic because servers are full most of the day and keep refusing new connections.

Either sytem is better than the spamming horror we have in GW (and both are FREE games), but I wouldn't support either to be implemented. I still prefer any kind of offline system (I think Everquest2 has one that doesn't work as auction), and auctions do have the advantage of helping everyone buy and sell at fair prices.

I also think that apart from developing a new campaign - which is obviously a priority - this trading issue should be the top most consern at the moment.