Detailed Proposal for an Auction House System

What you're proposing isn't an auction house in the traditional sense. It's more like the trading system used in commodity or stock exchanges. Your auctioneer NPCs are really brokers, bring together anonymous buyers and sellers. Given that items in GW really are commodites, I think such a system is appropriate.

I would tinker with your design a little:

* Instead of displaying all items in one window, assign the types of items to different traders. One would specialize in warrior armour, another in ranger bows, and so on.
* Place all the traders in a Traders' Guild Hall on an island somewhere.
* Make the act of selling symmetric with that of buying. When the "brokage house" cannot immediately fulfill a buy request (the item isn't available at the given price), it will log it as an outstanding buy order. When a seller posts something that meets the criteria, then the order is fulfilled.
* Both the buy and sell window should provide price quotes (the last price at which an item is sold). The buyer or the seller can then revise her offer from the current market price.
* Don't show the number of items available--it isn't useful information. All tradeable items should simply appear in the list.
* The brokage house should always get the best price for buyers.
* It should charge a substantial commission (35% ~50%) as well as a transaction fee. That leaves player-to-player trade pertinent, and more importantly, keeps inflation under control by removing gold from circulation.

Good points, Zubrowka. You've practically described Wall Street, complete with a pit of traders. Cool.

If it was really done that way, it would actually simplify things a great deal, as long as you don't actually add all the crazy things that Wall Street really does. =)

-JoDiamonds, selling short on Vampiric Axes of Fortitude

Zubrowka,

Hey, I like the idea of having a separate trading city on an island, rather than sticking one in every place. As long as they implement the trading center/town/island with many districts (but each still accessing the same system, with the same items & prices), then that'd be a great idea, as it would cut back on lag, etc.. and hopefully then, maybe bad trade spam would just be found in that city.

I agree, a transaction fee or listing fee of some sort - but I think 35-50% is a bit much to cut out?

Anyway, great ideas and I'm glad to see more contributions & suggestions to help develop this idea.

ANet, I hope you're listening.

I love the AH in FFXI when I used to play it. It had its share of inflation too.

An AH is a wonderfull idea, but is a little complex to make I belive.

A quicker fix until the AH is inplemented would be an upgraded weapons or weapons trader. Because everyone knows that sometimes you are looking for items that don't require any stats to use in the weapons slot and is very hard to come across it. Or sometimes you can be looking for an upgrade but can't find a seller.

Then the merchant would be used for when you don't whant to deal with the trader or to buy ID kits etc.

I believe that AH with a single institution should be implemented. As to getting rid of gold from the economy, as suggested, you should have to pay a set percentage fee to the amount you sold the item for. I guess like 10% to 20% depending on how high the price was.

An alternative...a broker. I go to broker, hand in my UberDeathSwordofDeath, and set a price for it. Then I check at my leisure if anyone has bought it for that fixed price. If not, I can adjust the price. Disadvantage of auction: by definition, if you win, you overpaid...

I'm just wondering why an auction system wasn't implemented before release.

Definitely needs to be a global system/single institution to keep prices stable throughout the continent.

Would there need to be a selling fee? Most definitely, or everyone would be selling every little piece of junk they pick up and we would spend too much time digging in the bargain bin.
Perhaps a % of items value.

Has anyone seen the auction system in Project Entropia? That was nice to use (when i played that mmorpg) and it had few faults in the system.

Can't wait. Hope it comes soon.

The auction wasn't implemented before release because they wanted us to see how it was without an auction house for a while.

I don't think they realized how crazy trade spam and prices would be. During the betas, it wasn't so bad, but as more and more people played (and found more items) it became this:

/// \\\ WTS SUPER UBER CRAZY OMG WOW 100K AND YOUR ARM AND LEG! /// \\\
/// \\\ WTS SUPER UBER CRAZY OMG WOW 100K AND YOUR ARM AND LEG! /// \\\.
/// \\\ WTS SUPER UBER CRAZY OMG WOW 100K AND YOUR ARM AND LEG! /// \\\..
/// \\\ WTS SUPER UBER CRAZY OMG WOW 100K AND YOUR ARM AND LEG! /// \\\...
/// \\\ WTS SUPER UBER CRAZY OMG WOW 100K AND YOUR ARM AND LEG! /// \\\..
/// \\\ WTS SUPER UBER CRAZY OMG WOW 100K AND YOUR ARM AND LEG! /// \\\.
/// \\\ WTS SUPER UBER CRAZY OMG WOW 100K AND YOUR ARM AND LEG! /// \\\..

lol.

A simple way to reduce trade spam is to banish trading to an island somewhere. It'd be more convinient for everyone. Sellers will sell quicker when the buyers all are in one place and vice versa.

Yeah - we'd still need districts though, to cut back on lag.. but at least, all the trade spam would be in a trade city/island, rather than in Lion's Arch & Ascalon. Great idea!

Heres my little revision.

Forgive the horrible photoshopping, I really dont care enough to make it do anything but show what I think should be including.



Now, I think you should have to pay to put an item in the auction house, this would stop people from auctioning shitty items.

Also it would stop people from setting a ridiculous price because if it doesnt sell, the money you paid to put it on would be lost.

50g for a 3 hour auction

100g for an 8 hour

300g for a day

700g for a week.


Those are probably too high but whatever.

I also think a small percent (2-7?) Should be kept as a commission. This would be sort of a gold sink (Pay 50g to put an item on for auction, it sells for 1plat, pay 50g commission)

Also, make the action only say ROUGHLY how long until the auction is up, because that would cause people to spam a 1g higher bid, in the final seconds of the auction.

pretty much go by the rate (under 1 hour left, under 3, 5, 8, 15, day, 3 days, week)

And make it only for weapons.

Dyes, materials, runes, all have their own NPC.

This would be purely for weapons, offhands, and upgrades. And Possibly collectors Items.


Thats my 2 cents.

similar to Final Fantasy FFXI, i like the idea m8, just curious, have u or did u used to play ffxi?

i would love to see this in the game.

Mike BMT:
Yay, more eye candy for the forum!
I like the 'hovering over the items' idea to see the extra details (such as the mods, etc.), that's awesome.

I totally agree with all the suggestions of a Listing Fee to place items on sale. This would prevent people from selling single wood planks, for example. However, the auction house would still be a good place to sell large stacks of materials (such as the stacks of 250).

Personally, I would like to see a standard, set listing fee - and keep the items in for no more, no less than 7 days (of course, unless the item was bought).

I don't like the idea of the current offer being shown, or that when time runs out, the current bidder has won the item. That's how eBay runs, and everyone knows eBay is to get the best deals that you can, buying cheaper than you could get anywhere else, usually. In your example, the Buyout Price is 100 platinum -- but what if after the seven days, the current offer remains at say, 20 platinum. The seller will still earn a profit, yes, but an undesirable one. Plus, with this system, I'm not sure how prices will stabilize because some people will want things strongly, while some will only want them 'if they can buy them cheap'.

By setting your buyout price when you place your item on auction, it should just remain shown, along with a list of maybe the past 7 bidders on the same/similar items. Anyone who bids lower than the reserve price you listed will see a message "You did not win the auction, your price was too low." and the first person to bid above the reserve price (even if with 1 gold over) will win the auction and the item automatically. The list of winning bids should be pretty similar, with fluctuations of at most maybe 1-2 platinum (because of stats on weapons, etc.).. and with items that are exactly the same, such as stacks of crafting materials, the prices should be roughly the same, with minor differences only in a couple gold.

If the item doesn't sell after seven days, then that sucks, it doesn't sell. You do not get your listing fee back, and you will be given the option to re-auction your item for another 7 days (for another listing fee, of course, nothing is free).

After having the Traders implemented for a while, I think you're right, the Auction House should probably not carry Dyes, Single Common Materials, and Single Rare Materials. Personally, I still hate the Rune Trader - almost everything is worth 25 gold to him, Minor, Major, or Superior. And Minor Vigor, the Trader refuses to accept from me. Is the Rune Trader destroying gold? Sure, I think so, but I feel like the runes I find could go to actual use sometimes, and I'd hate to just have them put into the trader for 25 gold when I could sell it for even an extra 25 gold to someone else who could use it.

Collector's Items should definitely be located in the Auction House (items like bleached shells, etc.), but maybe not the Collector's Weapons/Offhand items.

Erace:
Yeah, I played FFXI for a few months and the Auction House was my favorite thing about that game, next to the TaruTaru /panic.

hahahahaha
have to agree with u on that.
Funnily enough i was going to suggest an auction house but probably not in as much detail, i thought ppl would think it was a bad idea, but i am proven wrong.

I think the idea is shot down a lot because:
1) it's been suggested a LOT and
2) no one can agree on a single way to actually house it.

Some want player-shops, some want eBay style, some like my idea ^_-, some want traders for everything.

I would just like to see something implemented to make trading a lot easier, less stressful, and less time consuming than the current spam trade system, where it is nearly impossible to buy or sell unless you get lucky or have hours to spend in Lion's Arch District 1 squinting your eyes and scrolling.

im all for the Auction House idea, it works so well on ffxi, and i hate trying to sell stuff in Trade, my messages are always drowned out by the spammers who post their message every 2 seconds.

the way they could get round the trade spam would be to limit your posts to say once every X secs no matter how u change it in the trade channel & if people decide to use the 'all' channel they can just add a function where you can report a player by right clicking their name, if enough people do it (say 5 people need to report them) then they are banned from using that channel for a period of time, you could also use it to report scammers, abusive people, people advertising bots etc. This could be a short term solution till the auction house/ebay is implemented.

As for the AH/EB ideas

You need to have the current offer so that you can see how much you have to bid and whether you want to or not, otherwise people will just bid in 1g increments till they find the minimum amount as for the displaying the time as only roughly it would have to be a random change over as well because otherwise for the really good stuff people would sit there till the clock changed to "under 3 hours" and then they would know exactly when, also someone would make a sniping program for GW and that can sit there for hours get the timings and then bidding in the last second or whatever.

I also think 7 days is to long for an auction, 7 days in GW is a long time, have it over a day as there are more than enough items out there. You could do it internationally (as there is no need to have direct contact between the buyer & seller) this would help stabilise prices a lot quicker. Also have a running average: the last one hundred 'fiery dragon swords' X dmg were sold on average for 2p300. Items that have a higher turnover have a larger running average & if it was world wide it would stabilise all three economies much quicker

As I see it, the Auction House would have two quite different goals:

1. Make selling and purchasing items from the playerbase easier
2. Reduce the amount of trade spam in all channels

The first has been discussed a lot in this thread, whereas the second still remains somewhat obscure - That is, the auction system, however it is implemented must be easier and more attractive to use than to spam the channels, hoping for a buyer.

Incentives of use:
* Wide scope - If the auction house is reachable for all players across the world at the same time, thus providing a much wider market for the sellers.
* Reduced workload - If the seller does no longer need to divert attention to the selling process, and can go about his/her (farming) business as usual.
* High usage - An auction house that is widely used by many players will be an attractive market to sell at.

Deterrants of use:
* Fees and comissions - If a fee is taken, low priced items will be unattractive to sell via the auction house.
* Small scope - If the auction house is segmented into the three regions/various cities/individual instances.
* Low usage - An auction house that only attract buyers of extremely expensive and/or rare items are unlikely to attract the majority of sellers.

In any case, I am strongly for the adoption of an auction house in GuildWars. It would provide a wide market and drive the prices down considerably of a great many items. On the other hand, ultra-rare items would likely have very large prices, as even excessive farmers seldom see this kind of thing. But that is all good and well - Auctions are actually an excellent way to determine the reasonable price of an item, the ideal supply/demand situation if you will.

For people wishing for a quick resolution of the auction, perhaps a Dutch auction model would be nice? See the Wikipedia entry if you don't know about it Naturally, the reserved price should be secret...

"players may decide to sell items like superior runes only in droknar's forge auction houses, making it nearly impossible to attain one until after ascension"

Why can't you make all the aution houses be linked up? Personally i don't like the idea of having to going to each of the major cities to find out which prices is the cheapest. I mean the traders are linked up (i think - since the price of a dye i wanted was the same in ascalon, forge and lions arch).

Of course if you plan to put one in Pre-searing, then duh thats unlinked then (said that so that no smartass asks it).

If you say that these are far apart and that they are in different cities - well this is a virtual world - how does our storage get transfered from Ring of Fire to Ascalon or Lion's Arch (when the White Mantle wants to kill us).

Thats my suggestion.

jsmp01:
So long as that limit on chat only applied to the Trade Channel, then it's a good start. And I definitely agree, it's only a short term solution. I'm sure some people will still manage to find a way around it.. and it wouldn't make finding items or selling items any easier.

And the current offer on the exact item doesn't necessarily need to show. Rather than the current offer, a list of the 5 previous winning bids on the same/similar item should show, so others can see the winning bids. Let's say there was a standard, clean white Chaos Axe being sold in the AH. A few are in stock, and the previous 5 winning bids were: [1k, 1k, 1.1k, 980g, 1k]. We can see now that the going price is 1k on a standard chaos axe. Buyers will bid 1k, unless they're stingy and bid something like 900gold in an attempt to get it slightly cheaper. Sellers will post theres for 1K exact, or 999g to get theirs to sell first perhaps. Then of course there will be the greedier sellers who post theirs for 1.5K, or even 2K, in a hope that someone will overbid.. but most likely theirs will never sell unless all the Chaos Axes run out, and theirs is the last one left.

Prices will fluctuate according to supply and demand. When demand is high and supply is low, price increases (so the axe went up to 2K).. then as soon as more supply comes in, the price should drop back down to 1K.

The 'running average' is also a really good idea, as prices wouldn't fluctuate too much, and all players would see what the going price is.

7 days is a bit long, you're right, since there's so many items in the game. Maybe 3-4 days is better. And internationally sounds good.

-----------
Xanthar:

Yep, those incentives hit the nail on the head. The AH should be accessible from Day 1 in Post-Seared Ascalon. The workload is definitely cut back, since you no would no longer have to stay online for x amount of hours spamming and trying to sell. Players would also no longer need to worry about storing items until they actually have a time when they CAN do that (some people would rather do something productive with their time in or out of the game, then hope someone will meet their buyout price or exceed the c/o).

As for the deterrants:
Fees & commissions: If the percentage is small, then it won't completely turn away sellers from using the system. I'm sure we won't see single wood planks in the AH for example, because 1) they're cheap, 2) they're super common and 3) there's a material trader for that. However, I could definitely see "Stack of 250 Wood Planks" in the Auction House, as it makes more sense to purchase these things in bulk.

The AH still should only be accessible in main places, either in a Trading Center that everyone can access via Map (like the Guild Hall is accessible, even if you just finished the Academy).. or in main cities (Ascalon, Amnoon, Droknar's, Lion's Arch, Denravi). Either way, players will always have access. It's not that hard to Map Travel (most people map travel to Ascalon or LA Districts 1-3 to do all their trading anyway).. and new players will have access the moment they enter Post-Seared Ascalon.

As for usage.. I have confidence that, if it were implemented, it would definitely be put into use by the majority of the GW community. Most other games that have some sort of AH system are always put to use, and surprisingly, even with fees, low-cost items are available for purchase, simply because some find that it's better to make the items available to other players than to have it destroyed at an NPC.

Additionally, items needed for collectors, salvaging materials, etc.. will find their way into the AH. Sometimes, I find myself spamming "WTB" for the most absurd sounding things (as opposed to weapons, upgrades, and runes), like Frosted Griffon Wings, because I need them for a collector's item.. but either my build can't farm them, or I've been killing them for so long and can't collect the amount I need, or I'm just too lazy to even bother that I'd rather spend gold. Heh. I'm sure these items aren't going to be priced at 10K a piece and will go for a more reasonable price.. like I don't know, 100-150g.

I agree, while it will be impossible to drive the cost down of EVERYTHING (like a Gold Max Damage Chaos Axe with insanely perfect mods, dyed red, lol), it'll at least be nice to see what the going price on items like that SHOULD be. It's possible too, players will still sell these items in Trade Spam.. but if players do research in the AH and see a similar/same item went for (hypothetically) 70K, then they'll know now to spend more than that with this seller.

You sure are putting a lot of thought into this. I hope they eventually get around to doing this.

I'd be happy to have all auction brokers link to one big auction house, but I'm not SO worried about it.

In all reality, everyone would just use Ascalon's auction house anyway, to get the maximum number of possible buyers. Having separate auction houses just plain wouldn't work; only one would get used.

There is also the more fundamental question of whether you want to promote trade by making it easier. On one hand I would like to have a easy way to buy rarer things. On the other I wonder if perhaps I don't know what I'm asking for. GW is an adventure game after all. Being a merchant cum farmer just isn't adventurous or fun. The RPG aspect of the game suffers too when there's excessive commerce.

You could also have the "buy now" function so you get it right then... the price would be hight but then you for sure have the item you wanted. Or is that what the "buyout" function is on mikes idea?
EDIT> Oh right, buyout means when it reaches that price its sold.

Not so true. If you happen to be in an area with an Auctioneer NPC, you'd just sell there. I go straight to Lion's Arch District 1 to do all my selling, and Ascalon is usually my second choice. Droknar's used to feel empty, but now people have more access to the city, so I think an auctioneer NPC there would get used, too.

Right now, we've got a group of traders in every main city, and I always see a nice crowd of people at each location.. I don't see why an Auctioneer NPC would receive any different attention.

He may be right though, if each auction house is seprate, the one in Lions Arch or Ascalon would be used the most because they aare the 2 most thriving cities in Guild Wars. And as you said "but now people have more access to the city, so I think an auctioneer NPC there would get used, too." this would give everyone and anyone acess to all cities as soon as they are out of the Pre-Searing? This then would give the access to all armor and missions without doing anthing, throwing the game entirely out of balance. I think 1 big auction house would be the best plan.

First, you have done an amazing job with the thought process behind this system (love the graphic)
Second, You take the time to respond to the ppl who are reading your thread, thats nice.
Finally, /SIGNED
I like system (a) better in the long run.
I think it should just be a one time membership fee. Kinda like the storage box. Then the listing fee.

elthrain:
I'm not saying that everyone will have access to the main cities upon entering post-searing. I'm just stating that having a single system, but with multiple NPC's in various locations, would work well.. since that's the current system we have, with rune traders, etc.

yellow_lid:
thanks i care strongly about this idea lol, and i'd like to see something that could benefit all the players of gw, as well!

Out of the two ideas you have, I would pick the first one.

Wow, if your ideas are implemented, I know I'd be one of the first to stock up the auction house with all the wares I've been collecting and hoarding on a couple characters. This is an excellent thread, with an excellent idea, I hope this is on Ane'ts list ti add in the future, because not only would it be a fun way to make a little money, but it will make life easier for everyone. It will actually be enjoyable getting rare drops, because you know it isn't gonna be sitting around useless in your storage (assumnig none of your current characters can use the weapon), or you will salvage or sell it for pennies.

Da Outlaw:

Yeah! I hang onto a lot of stuff sometimes that I don't even need (like weapons, runes), but I don't sell them off to the trader/merchant because:
1) there's no profit
2) I'd feel bummed out knowing that there's someone out there who could use it, but I don't want to have it completely destroyed.

I think an 'auction house' has been briefly mentioned once in one of the Fansite Friday's, but I don't know where it stands on their list of priorities, and nor do any of us know what kind of system it will be like.. which is why I made this thread in the first place, because I was curious to see what kind of system would be the most useful. I really do hope we see one implemented in a nearby future update; it would with trading tremendously.

i think the membership fee is a gr8 idea but what level do you set it at? If it is 2 high then people who want to sell to new players in ascalon will still spam the channel but 2 low and then everyone would join. It also has the potential to be a massive money sink as it is something everyone wud join. What if it was only available after you did a certain early mission maybe in Lions Arch and then you could pay for your membership?

Personally, I'd rather have an auction house that everyone could use the moment that they enter post-searing. Perhaps a one-time character fee, like the storage, but otherwise.. I don't see why people should NOT have access to it.

It should be available in Ascalon, as you can already trade with super high level players in Ascalon. The auction house wouldn't be providing anything that players can't already get; just a more convienent means of getting those things.

Good idea. I'd like to see all the auction houses linked if possible.

/signed

Just another /signed .

ANET WE NEED A AUCTION SYSTEM. GIVE YOUR MEMBERS WHAT THEY WANT!

/signed

/signed