Detailed Proposal for an Auction House System

/Signed

Sick and tired of waitin ages to try and sell somethin to the point when you just merchant it where otherwise its worth a good bit more or at least a small handfull of k. It puts me off sellin seein:

"WTS blah blah blah 1"
"WTS blah blah blah 2"
"WTS blah blah blah 3"

It's also a problem when buyin to have to scroll up all the time when you think you've seen what you're lookin for cos your WTB message gets obliterated by people who spam like this. Come on ANet, pull your finger out!

/Signed

I cannot tell you how annoying it is to go into any city where any trade actually takes place and try to sell something. I can't stand in a city for 3 hours spamming "WTS Siege Turtle 25k!!" I get bored and frustrated at 30 mins. An Auction House is great because not only does it make things easier to sell, it would lessen the spam in our chat. Sure there would be people saying "WTS xxx for yyy, last call before I AH it!" or something like that, but those would be minimal.

I played WoW for about two months and I LOVED their Auction House. Rarely did any of the items I put in there fail to sell, and this was on a fairly new server. Of course, that was the only thing I loved about WoW ;P

Back on topic, the trade channel is, to be blunt, a pathetic excuse for a trade advertisement system. The chat scrolls far too fast for anyone to read. In Kaineng Center I saw 40+ straight local messages about trade and the trade channel showed a message for about 1 second before it disappeared thanks to all the chat in both trade and local. This is an inefficient system that needs to be changed. Anything that allows for an item to be put on sale while the player isn't there would be welcome. An Auction House, of course, is the best idea.

/Signed
Now buying and selling is really hard. Want it to improve.

/mostcertainlysigned

i'd like to say one thing before i shut up and go back to my business. In creating an auction house, you'll have maybe 2 shots to get it right. maybe. i know that copying other games isnt the smartest/most original way to go about this, but i would like to reccoment to A-Net/ (if they read this), you guys, to take a look at the AH systems in both WoW and FFXI. They were well developed, worked well for both buyers and sellers, eliminated the need for price checks, and were well organized for convienience. this is the FIRST time i have ever suggested taking a leaf from the book of another MMO in looking at furthering GW, but when someone does something THAT right, its worth a look.
I, as a seller AND buyer, know how hard it is to find what you're looking for at a reasonable price without several hours investment/multiple people attempting to rip you off. an AH is a much needed and much wanted feature of GW that i hope to see in the near future.

/signed

Guild Wars desperately needs a new trade system of some sort and for it to be automated somewhat.

Today in Kaineng dist 3 there were 5 people spammin the junk they wanted to sell/buy. It gets dementing pretty quick. You could just say "well turn your trade and all channels off" but I'd like to be able to see if there's anythin I'd maybe want to buy without seeing the same message from the same guy appearing 18,643 times in rapid succession .

/signed

This would give the Local chat channel a lot cleaner content for sure.

This is one of those suggestions that we know they can't look past, and we have a pretty good idea that they'll impliment this at sometime. I just hope its sooner than later. I think it would be an awesome christmas gift, and maybe we have to go through a series of quests/missions to obtain access to it or something. ~hmm.. maybe not~ but... just hopin' and waitin'

/signed

/signed like hell


the problem with this thread is that it has been up for over 1 year, and still nothing is happening :S

/signed

I think this is an excellent idea which would make everyones life much easier. Idea A should be implemented asap!!!

So agreed! /signed-sealed-delivered...

/signed... and then some.

/signed

/signed

we desperately need an auction house. Me and my guild are sick to death of spammers everywhere. Constant spam of WTS, WTB. Maybe we should spam Anet with a request for an auction. Maybe they will get sick of the spam aswell.

Love it.

1. Put Them in the Guild Halls. Auction House Agent NPC's available for purchase in Guild Halls, all linked to the main Auction House. Cost of 300k-500k per NPC(talk about a gold dump). One for Weapons, Offhands, Bulk Materials, Upgrades and one for Misc. items such as candy canes, minipets etc.

2. Taxes & Fees. These Multiple Agents can act like Faction Transfer NPC's and Require a minimum GP amount (1000g) to be auctioned and automatically taking 10% as a fee. For example, That 7-10 sword that you would like another player to use, will cost you 100g (minimum fee) to post, you can sell it at a loss for the same 20g offered by the merchant but you will have a clear conscience knowing it went to serve another player.

My Thoughts: NO price controls! Free Market, let the supply/demand set the market price of commodities. Want prices to come down? Have ANET stop monsters from dropping gold. With your only source of gold from other players or from merchants, the prices would drop dramatically, commodity sales at merchants would soar. It would be a shock to the current system to actually have supply and demand but it would correct itself quickly and finally bring some stability to the market.

Put Agent NPC's in Guild Halls and I'm
/signed

/Signed(x1000)
Yeah, an auction house would be awesome, but, with all the new games coming out for Guild Wars (Prophecies, factions already, nightfall soon, 4th one alrdy under way), it would be too complicated putting one in every city...but we have this nice little island that everyone can visit with the Temple of Balthazar right in it.....where an auction house can be put. It would also be a nice cover for the fact that none of the continents have an auction house..."The Zaishen brought their exclusive technology for us all to use which lets everyone auction their items".

Great idea, but I think it would be easier to get it implemented if was a little simpler. We could start by using an ebay like system. Deposit the item into your bank. When accessing the storage have the option to put an item up for auction(costing 5-10% of min/max selling value to post an auction) Let money be directly deposited into your account. Have, in the options menu, an auction icon letting you search by types(weps, crafting items, mods, etc..), cost and the like.

1)alieviate wtb wts in towns
2)help players quickly know the current value of items
3)help anet see how the economy is
4)help spot bots, who always has a bunch of items up for auction

/signed

Great idea.

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.