[IDEA] Extended Auctions

[Candlewhisper Archive]

It'd be nice if there was some way to have auctions last longer in some circumstances. I mention this as there are some cards (my own included) where bidding contests are taking place, but when someone comes to sell, they may find that potential higher bidders don't see the auction starting before it's already finished.

I'd love to see either:

A) Opt-in longer auctions
Maybe the seller could choose to have an auction last 24 hours.

B) Automatic longer auctions if enough interest
If there are, say, three or more nations bidding above trash value for a card, maybe the auction could automatically get bumped to 24 hours?
Likewise, maybe the system could spot those trades being made at way above market value, and stretch those auctions as well, to make the habit of artificially inflating a card's value more risky.

[9003]

The only issue I see is that I know I would just wait then towards the end of the 24 hours to bid on anything if it was bumped up and you still would miss it if your not on at that moment

As for opting in for longer auctions that's not fair to the other player point and case if you look at the current record for longest auction (around 4 days) several people that got stuck in the middle couldn't really play the card game for those days becuse their bank was tied up in bids on a clock that said 24+ hours

[Jasminlandia]

I like option A!

We could choose options from 1h to 24h, and if I think the card could interest more people; they would have 24 hours to join in.
Way better than 1 hour, where most likely many people will miss the business.

[Coffin-Breathe]

Strongly against.
A : If someone really is interested in a card, then he/she could easily set up a bid high enough.
B : Only would make all "card-farmers" (especially the big ones, which already place asks or bids multiple times for a certain card) to place multiple bids from their various accounts to prolonge every auction on every card they are interested to sell.
Both options would make the "open market system", wchich is already flawed enough even more flawed (in the interest of "card-farmers").
If one is interested in some cards and pays fair prices, then one only has to post his interests on the card-forum, and usually someone else (such as I am doing sometimes) who is present at the time of the auction might buy the card to sell it after offing it on the forum.

[Blab]

Extended auctions are better only for the power card players. The fact that most players are offline sometimes and that the auctions last for roughly an hour enables us tiny bank card owners to bid without getting smashed or sniped by certain players with multiple cards and huge banks.

[Verdant Haven]

There are a lot of problems with the system that I feel need to be addressed before this. Presently, a short auction is the only way most of us even get to play, because the top couple folks will ruin the game without hesitation for everyone else involved by exploiting the poorly made mechanics of the system to their benefit. Changes I would like to see first:

1) A player's maximum bid shouldn't be visible until it is outbid by somebody else, ie, eBay style bidding. Place a hidden max, and have it increment as other bids are placed. That will put an end to the idiotic penny-bidding system where any bid you place, somebody else immediately knows exactly to the penny what to bid to be above you.

2) Players should not be able to buy and sell the same card at the same time. This is used for no purpose but exploitation during live auctions, and generating arbitrage between them.

3) When a person is the top bidder on a card in a live auction, and a second copy of the card is placed for sale at a price higher than the one being contested, it shouldn't then match to the top bidder and force a higher price for them while suddenly freeing the lower-priced card for the lower bidder. The top bidder should remain matched to the lower price, and if the second place bidder meets the new higher price, they should match to that.

4) There should be a "watch" function that doesn't require placing stub quotes for insane asks or insulting bids, just to see when a given card is trading.

5) The "market value" calculation is absurdly exploitable and has no bearing on reality for many of the expensive cards. People manipulate it deliberately to pad their own stats, and it gets swung wildly by outlier cases where a meaningless card was used to transfer large sums. Do the stat calculation on scrap value, and leave the market history as just that - a history people can look at, but which doesn't claim a validity it doesn't have.

6) What you bid should be what you pay - not these bizarre half-values that can leave a winning bidder paying less than the bid of a losing bidder. With the changes above to bid visibility and sale matching, what you bid needs to be what you pay if you win.

7) Card capacity needs to be increased, or the limitations removed at some point. It is absurd that the space to retain even a moderate collection of cards costs more than the cards themselves, if you want to maintain game functionality with the account holding them.

Once the above is fixed and we have some semblance of a legitimate auction system, I would be far happier to entertain ideas related to longer auction terms and settings for increased visibility. Until then though, it would do nothing but play even further in to the hands of the few at the top.

A couple other things I'd like to see before that as well, but which aren't fixes (just QoL stuff) would be a browsable and filterable listing of all current cards offered for sale, the ability to submit offers on cards people have in their possession (acceptable with the click of a button - basically gifting but the recipient pays), and the ability to set up or organize your card collection so that it appears on screen in ways other than the default.

[Jasminlandia]

1) A player's maximum bid shouldn't be visible until it is outbid by somebody else, ie, eBay style bidding. Place a hidden max, and have it increment as other bids are placed. That will put an end to the idiotic penny-bidding system where any bid you place, somebody else immediately knows exactly to the penny what to bid to be above you.

7) Card capacity needs to be increased, or the limitations removed at some point. It is absurd that the space to retain even a moderate collection of cards costs more than the cards themselves, if you want to maintain game functionality with the account holding them.

I like these two points. With 1), people would finally place bids on the base of how much they like the card/how much they want it, and not +0,01 of the current bid!

As 7), i just read the site admin's post about it; "it presents server load issues when nations have very large decks."
viewtopic.php?p=35077100#p35077100

But for 7) to reach; i'd gladly donate (or may set subscription for the game - 5-10 euros a month would be totally okay) to maintain more and/or bigger servers.

[Recuecn]

1) A player's maximum bid shouldn't be visible until it is outbid by somebody else, ie, eBay style bidding. Place a hidden max, and have it increment as other bids are placed. That will put an end to the idiotic penny-bidding system where any bid you place, somebody else immediately knows exactly to the penny what to bid to be above you.

-snip-

3) When a person is the top bidder on a card in a live auction, and a second copy of the card is placed for sale at a price higher than the one being contested, it shouldn't then match to the top bidder and force a higher price for them while suddenly freeing the lower-priced card for the lower bidder. The top bidder should remain matched to the lower price, and if the second place bidder meets the new higher price, they should match to that.

-snip-

6) What you bid should be what you pay - not these bizarre half-values that can leave a winning bidder paying less than the bid of a losing bidder. With the changes above to bid visibility and sale matching, what you bid needs to be what you pay if you win.

I disagree here. You already should only ever bid or ask what you're willing to pay--who knows what will happen during the auction, someone may match you at that price. If someone outbids you and you complain about penny-bidding while outbidding them in turn, that's self-contradictory--you already placed a bid worth less than you wanted to pay. You're wasting your own time.

My first reaction when I read these parts of your post Verdant Haven were strongly negative, but then I realized I was just being reactionary and kind of closed-minded. There's no reason an ebay-style system where you bid your maximum price and then pay your full winning bid wouldn't work. Maybe in that case the longer auction makes sense, I don't really know about that. But I think your suggestions would do a good job of getting people to stop whining about being outbid when the real problem is people not bidding what they actually want to pay in the first place.

On the other hand, this would get rid of the double-auction system, which might hurt sellers--it would make buying cards a lot more straight-forward, but would those selling cards still be able to offer more competitive prices? Being able to underask is probably as important as being able to outbid. I know Max's original reasoning for the double-auction was to stop people from just funneling cards to their main account, so maybe they considered this and thought that the double-auctions system is better. I also don't know how easy it would be to code, or how that would handle one person buying multiple copies of the same card.

Some of your other thoughts I like too--the watch function, as well as your suggestion for a list of current asks on the market. On the other hand I have no problem with Market Value. If it functions correctly as a rolling average of the last few trades (although I know it's bugged out before) that seems fair, even if people want to manipulate that. Anyone can look at the trades history and determine what the card is actually worth to them. And I'm not too worried about capacity either. You can already go over if you give up on receiving gifts.

[DaphnyMeyer]

And I'm not too worried about capacity either. You can already go over if you give up on receiving gifts.

And opening packs with your main... :'(

[Earthbound Immortal Squad]

It'd be nice if there was some way to have auctions last longer in some circumstances. I mention this as there are some cards (my own included) where bidding contests are taking place, but when someone comes to sell, they may find that potential higher bidders don't see the auction starting before it's already finished.

I'd love to see either:

A) Opt-in longer auctions
Maybe the seller could choose to have an auction last 24 hours.

B) Automatic longer auctions if enough interest
If there are, say, three or more nations bidding above trash value for a card, maybe the auction could automatically get bumped to 24 hours?
Likewise, maybe the system could spot those trades being made at way above market value, and stretch those auctions as well, to make the habit of artificially inflating a card's value more risky.

A bit of a detour from your idea but I would be interested to see a system where if in the last few minutes there have been so many bids then the auction locks so only those people can place new bids.

[Lone survivers]

I´d like to add, that there has to be a limit for placing bids (at least .01 above junk value).
Those bids lower than junk value are annoying and somewhat disgraceful to the card owner(s). I do understand the practice of keeping track on some cards this way (I do the same sometimes), but if someone is really willing to buy a card, said player would have to cough up this money eventually (in a real life auction as well as in a shop you have to pay on the spot) and in this way the interest at least is somehow guaranteed.

[Blab]

I´d like to add, that there has to be a limit for placing bids (at least .01 above junk value).
Those bids lower than junk value are annoying and somewhat disgraceful to the card owner(s). I do understand the practice of keeping track on some cards this way (I do the same sometimes), but if someone is really willing to buy a card, said player would have to cough up this money eventually (in a real life auction as well as in a shop you have to pay on the spot) and in this way the interest at least is somehow guaranteed.

I haven't looked at the banks of players placing low bids but I have to defend the practice for those who are just beginning the card game and don't have much bank. Names of cards generally don't match flags so it's hard to find them again without putting in a bid. If you don't have much bank (especially if you didn't understand the game and one of the first things that happened to you was that players with huge banks robbed you of your tiny 6 bank because of a stupid move on your part) you use a low bid to be able to find the card when you finally have sufficient bank to bid for it.

[Frisbeeteria]

I have to defend the practice for those who are just beginning the card game and don't have much bank.

Sorry, but you're missing the point. It's not about not being the highest bid, it's about bidding below junk value. Anyone can get junk value for cards by simply junking them. Why anyone would sell for less confounds me. I think the only people who match those bids have a fundamental misunderstanding of how junking cards works.

Either that, or they just like throwing a wrench into the gears to see what breaks. There's no other reason to post a penny Ask for a Legendary card.

[Blab]

I have to defend the practice for those who are just beginning the card game and don't have much bank.

Sorry, but you're missing the point. It's not about not being the highest bid, it's about bidding below junk value. Anyone can get junk value for cards by simply junking them. Why anyone would sell for less confounds me. I think the only people who match those bids have a fundamental misunderstanding of how junking cards works.

Either that, or they just like throwing a wrench into the gears to see what breaks. There's no other reason to post a penny Ask for a Legendary card.

OK, so help me out here because I admit I'm a card n00B. It's not OK to do this on legendaries but it's OK to do it on epics like this one?

[SherpDaWerp]

You're confusing Bids and Asks. Fris went on a bit of a tangent about selling cards, not buying them. Placing bids for 0.01 is a perfectly fine and reasonable tactic to keep track of cards you want to buy in the future. But what Fris was saying is that the real "disregard for the player" comes when someone actually sells the card for less than junk price.

The point they were making is that there's 0 point whatsoever in selling a card for less than junk because you could get more bank just by junking the card, which is different to your point that bidding less than junk is valid. Your example is proving your point that it's fine to place bids less than junk value, but what Fris is talking about is if I owned that card and sold it for that price, not if I offered to bid for that price.

[Blab]

You're confusing Bids and Asks. Fris went on a bit of a tangent about selling cards, not buying them. Placing bids for 0.01 is a perfectly fine and reasonable tactic to keep track of cards you want to buy in the future. But what Fris was saying is that the real "disregard for the player" comes when someone actually sells the card for less than junk price.

The point they were making is that there's 0 point whatsoever in selling a card for less than junk because you could get more bank just by junking the card, which is different to your point that bidding less than junk is valid. Your example is proving your point that it's fine to place bids less than junk value, but what Fris is talking about is if I owned that card and sold it for that price, not if I offered to bid for that price.

He quoted Lone Survivors who used the term, bid. Further, since I was responding to Lone Survivors I was also talking about placing bids. I have never understood why players ask for less than junk but my approach to that is to each his own.