[Cards] Technical Issue and Loophole at end of Auction

[Vilita]

Found a flaw in the bidding for this card:

https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 2/season=1

I bid with about 10 seconds left and it told me that the bidding was extended, but then a few seconds later the page refreshed and said it was sold to the previous bidder. Then they turned around and put it right back up for sale at the ask price.

it was very shrewd work to take place in the matter of a minute but there was clearly some server disconnect because the timer showed it had extended for me and clearly showed me as the matched bidder at 10.01 before it then refreshed and showed it sold at the lower price instead.

It even clearly shows this order of operations in the history for the card

[Vilita]

Seeing other bids that have finished today I think there may also be a more-repeatable bug (or loophole) in this scenario in that bidding sometimes drives up at approximately half the rate of the amount bid when there is a low starting bid. There then exists a period of time after a matched auction ends where the winner of the card can immediately re-list a card at a price much higher than they paid for it just second prior and have that bid automatically matched and accepted by the system to one of the losing bidders of the just-completed match auction. A accounts seem to have used or attempted to use this tactic already to make quick bank at around double the profit. I have no problem with capitalism or profit seeking but I believe this is more likely an unintended side effect of the newly introduced matched auction system.

I would recommend a few different ideas that could help minimize this in the future:

1) Any bid placed during an auction period automatically expires at the end of an auction (or can be configured to auto-delete at auction end either in settings or with a check box upon placing the bid). After the 60+ minute Matched Auction session for a card ends, the only bids that remain will be the ones that existed before the first "Match" was made or were not set to expire at the end of the matched auction

2) After a matched auction for a card ends, a "blackout" period begins for a card whereby no matched auctions can begin for any amount greater than the most recent sale price for X minutes/hours

3) Users receive notification upon the end of any auction where they have placed a bid (not only the auctions which they have won). These could be configurable in settings.

[[violet]]

I bid with about 10 seconds left and it told me that the bidding was extended, but then a few seconds later the page refreshed and said it was sold to the previous bidder.

The Auction Log shows your bid being received at the same moment the auction ended (23/12/2018, 1:25:16 GMT). I'm not sure about the part where you say the page showed your new bid matching, but it otherwise seems explicable in that your bid juuuust missed the auction rather than just caught it.

There then exists a period of time after a matched auction ends where the winner of the card can immediately re-list a card at a price much higher than they paid for it [ ... ] I believe this is more likely an unintended side effect of the newly introduced matched auction system.

The auction deliberately allows exploitation of "strategic bidding," where one party is bidding or asking for prices they don't really mean. I tend to think this is an example of that, rather than a flaw in the system, if you're bidding prices you don't really want to pay. You are already vulnerable to someone else with a copy of the card deciding to drop it on you at your bid price, thereby forcing you to pay it.

[Fauzjhia]

Can you explain this to me

I recently sold this card. https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 4/season=1

I had little expaction but this guy came and right at the end, he asked for 20 and took down the offer, While I was forced to accept a much lower bid of 5.78.

Seem, he was trying to increase to price, so he could sell his own at the highest price to the highest bidder, How I'm supposed to fight against that

[Vilita]

There then exists a period of time after a matched auction ends where the winner of the card can immediately re-list a card at a price much higher than they paid for it [ ... ] I believe this is more likely an unintended side effect of the newly introduced matched auction system.

The auction deliberately allows exploitation of "strategic bidding," where one party is bidding or asking for prices they don't really mean. I tend to think this is an example of that, rather than a flaw in the system, if you're bidding prices you don't really want to pay. You are already vulnerable to someone else with a copy of the card deciding to drop it on you at your bid price, thereby forcing you to pay it.

I agree and if it's intentional then great I'll start taking advantage of this as well - but I can see this causing some issues in the future as its already being exploited by 'power users' to artificially increase bank. Yes, people shouldn't bid something they don't really want to pay - but since it shows the 'match' bid on the card its front and foremost in peoples minds that the price they are bidding isn't really the price they will be paying there are going to be some hard lessons learned by many 'casual' traders and they will all be at the expense of a handful of active card trawlers which generally isn't ideal in my opinion so I still think there is a place for some middle ground where parts of 1, 2 or 3 above could be implemented to give bidders a safety net. I have seen multiple auctions end without being extended by a minute at the end despite late bids on one side or the other so we're talking about a matter of seconds where exploitation could occur and I feel like it would be better if it wasn't so much up to chance that way.

[Vilita]

Can you explain this to me

I recently sold this card. https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 4/season=1

I had little expaction but this guy came and right at the end, he asked for 20 and took down the offer, While I was forced to accept a much lower bid of 5.78.

Seem, he was trying to increase to price, so he could sell his own at the highest price to the highest bidder, How I'm supposed to fight against that

You got 5.78 because you only asked for 1.25 and the price you get is the average between your asking price and the highest bid. Since there were two of the same card up for offer, the highest bid was paired with the highest ask. The second highest bid (10.30) was matched to the second highest asking price (1.25) which was yours. You received the average of those two amounts for 5.78. It seems its not a flaw but by design so you could have asked for more to start with but once you asked for 1.25 and it was matched you couldn't increase your asking price even as the bids went up

[[violet]]

Since there were two of the same card up for offer, the highest bid was paired with the highest ask.

Yep, this is the key.

It's a bit counter-intuitive, because when there's only one match, it's best to have the lowest ask or the highest bid. When there are multiple matches, though, they're paired as Vilita says.

[[violet]]

I have seen multiple auctions end without being extended by a minute at the end despite late bids on one side or the other

Auctions are only extended when a change is made to a matched bid/ask. You can't extend an auction forever by making continuous irrelevant 0.01 bids, for example.

[Fauzjhia]

I put my card to sell like 1 hours. Like I said, I did not much expectation, I just want some banks, and I did not really value it

Meanwhile Vilita was able to raise the prices, so that he could sell his own at a much higher then though. And it really suck that I was unable to increase my demands.. I'm not super happy about this move. Total lack of respect.

[Vilita]

Since you've mentioned me directly, I assure you that you are reading far too much into the scenario. I wanted to purchase the card from you directly because i felt you were listing it at a good price. I backed out as a buyer long, long before it got to high prices. The highest bid I ever placed on the card was at 9.10 and you sold it to a user who out bid me at 10.30. So any price driving that I was responsible for increased your ultimate sales price as well.

Once the bidding got above ~15 I got interested and joined as a seller instead of a buyer. I am not associated with any of the other users who were bidding on the card so I just want you to have a clear mind that In no way was I intending to 'drive up the price for myself'. I'm not in the business of selling cards, I am collecting them only. The only reason i even jumped in to sell was because it was just too good of a price to pass up and I realized I had two copies of that card already so could afford to 'lose one' and yet still have it in my collection. I think that fact has confused you a little that i appeared on both sides of the equation but the prices I was bidding at were well below even the price that the winning bidder of your card had offered so really that wouldn't have been a relevant factor.

[Fauzjhia]

I am not confused. I dislike what happened

My goal is simply to give my nations, a collections of my cards.
I have no legendaries, and there, I do not have any interest in Legendary.

its not like like I had the right to modify my demands.

[Vilita]

Ok. Well again, I think the key factor here is also that your asking price was only 1.25. In reality, in the old system once someone bid 1.25 that could have been it. You would have had 1.25 for your card and everything would have been done.

With this new system, however, it allowed users to bid up the price on your card so you ended up 'profiting more' than the price you were asking for in return for your card. So you ended up getting 4.5 Coin in the bank more than you asked for your card thanks to the auction system. Now I don't disagree with you that there are some potentially non-ideal scenarios a user can find themselves in compared to where they might 'think' for a time they will get a different outcome than they do; but from the responses above it seems that this is the system functioning as designed and once your bid is matched it can't be changed except to make it lower. So you have to think carefully on both sides selling and buying of what price you are willing to accept for your card (the lower you put, the faster you will trigger a match and the less you will get in the sale potentially), and how much you are possibly willing to pay on the buying side.

[[violet]]

I still think there is a place for some middle ground where parts of 1, 2 or 3 above could be implemented to give bidders a safety net. I have seen multiple auctions end without being extended by a minute at the end despite late bids on one side or the other so we're talking about a matter of seconds where exploitation could occur and I feel like it would be better if it wasn't so much up to chance that way.

This may be so, and I'll be keeping an eye on how it all evolves. I see what you mean about the potential gulf between what you pay a moment before the auction and what you pay a moment afterward, when the buyer re-lists it.

The reality of this system is that you do have to be prepared to pay (or accept) what you're offering, though. People can bid strategically, but there will be some risk involved in that, by design.

[Ballotonia]

Greetings,

And now to add a tiny morsel on how the actual stock market works, just for comparison.

There are professional trading houses which have deals with stock exchanges. They pay the stock exchange money and must offer Ask / Bid prices for all stocks traded there (and thus help set stock valuations and maintain an active trading floor), and in return they get to jump the bid queue. That last part is a key advantage. There are many such trading houses, and they compete with one another.
So imagine you're some average Joe who places a 'best offer' order (the cheapest way to place an order) to purchase some stocks. You even looked at the order queue, and liked what you saw. What happens in between is that the trading house's computers are pre-notified that your offer is about to be queued at the stock exchange. The trading house gets to buy the stock available at the lowest bid, and they also immediately offer it at just a higher price. As they get to jump in the queue ahead of you, they buy the stock at the value you thought you were buying, and you buy the stock at their slightly higher price. A price you could never have known about before you hit 'enter' on your computer, as it being there is triggered by you entering your bid. What limits their greed is the competition between these trading houses, both in terms of speed in responding (be the first to buy that lowest bid) and in terms of being the lowest 'higher price' to sell you your (now more expensive) stocks.

In comparison to the real world, the NS exchange mechanism is almost a hallmark of fairness. And so I recently bought a Legendary card at 15.00 bank (which I offered), but also did not appreciate someone (you know who you are, you bastard! ) jumping in with well-placed buy+ask offers to take up the spread between the initial bid and my ask. I paid the full price I offered, the seller got the substantially lower price they asked for, and that scoundrel walked away with the spread in bank. That's still not even remotely as bad as real life.

Ballotonia

[YoriZ]

Seconds ago: Colegia sold for 22.50.
Seconds ago: Vilita bought for 22.50.
Seconds ago: Vilita sold for 35.00.
Seconds ago: YoriZ bought for 35.00.
Seconds ago: Vilita asked for 35.00.
Seconds ago: Vilita bid 35.00.

Vilita lured me in a trap exploiting a faulty game mechanism together with Colegia. I feel ripped of for 12.50 ending up buying a card from Vilita for 35.00 which I was matched up for 22.50 to buy from Colegia. Vilita was bidding together with me on a Frisbeeteria card offerde for 10.00. In the last seconds before consolidating the match, Vilita was able to sneak in their own copy of the card for the asking price of 35.00 which I ended up buying for 35.00. In the mean time Vilita matched my bid for 35.00 and ended up being able to buy the original card of Colegia for the matching price of 22.50.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/BA1pM52My18oomRE8

In the end Vilita says it played a trick that I wantend to play a couple of minutes before on them with another bid on another care and that made them do this to me. So maybe fair enough, however I don’t like game mechanisms that lead to this kind of behaviour. It feels unfair and it spoils the game.

[Vilita]

Yes, as clarified via TG the user Colegia had nothing to do with our interaction. I simply sold a card to you for the price you offered for it.

You motivated me to proceed with the tactic when you tried to do the exact same thing to me (And the exact thing that I originally wrote about in this thread) on a different auction that ended moments prior.

12/24/2018, 4:42:21 AM EST: YoriZ asked for 17.75.
12/24/2018, 4:42:14 AM EST: Vilita withdrew a bid of 17.78.
12/24/2018, 4:42:11 AM EST: Vilita withdrew a bid of 17.78.
12/24/2018, 4:42:02 AM EST: Saunders sold for 10.15.
12/24/2018, 4:42:02 AM EST: YoriZ bought for 10.15.
12/24/2018, 4:41:54 AM EST: YoriZ bid 17.79.
12/24/2018, 4:41:54 AM EST: YoriZ withdrew a bid of 17.77.
12/24/2018, 4:40:30 AM EST: Vilita bid 17.78.

luckily for me i had gotten my bids removed before you were able to re-list the card you had just bought, but it certainly "set the tone" for our future interactions, particularly the scenario a few minutes later on that other card. "The gloves were off"

[YoriZ]

Re-listing a card to a losing bidder triggers a new auction if I’m not wrong.

In my case, I was winning an auction against another cardholder raising the price he didn’t want to pay as he already owned the card.

The cardholder that was bidding with me was able to enter a new card asking for my bidding price seconds before the end of the auction which I ended up buying for the bidding price. Seconds before that, he changed his own bid to match my bid, ending up buying the card we where bidding for at matching price.

1. In my memory, the new matching price between the new asking price of the cardholder and my original bidding price didn’t extend the time of the auction, the auction was consolidated instantly with a transaction of 2 cards;
2. How is it possible that 2 cards get traded in the same auction that started with 1 card up for auction; So those are the rules... If there are multiple matching prices on both sides—both asks and bids—there will be multiple matches, with higher matching bids paired with higher matching asks. When the countdown expires, multiple copies of the card will be traded at once.
3. It is a very elaborate strategy. If intended to work this way, it puts too much power in the hands of cardowners for manipulating auctions and driving up prices.
4. If referal to what happens in real world trading systems is an explanation for what happens during loopholes in auctions, then I wonder wether this new card trading system is best suited for a game like nationstates.
5. If these strategies that the so called lopehole make possible are intended and valid, I would like to see an explanation of the possibilities it offers to players and a warning in the explanation of the card-game. It is in the rules... So I suppose I have to stop whining over an auction that didn't end the way I wanted / expected...

[Aclion]

Yeah exploiting this feature is allowing some players who already own a card to take a cut of anyone else's attempt to sell it without risking their card or their bank by driving up the price at auction, paying a fraction of their buy offer, and then putting up a sell offer at the highest buy offer. I'd suggest preventing players from putting up a card they've bought at an auction until some time, like 5 mins after the auction has resolved, so there is a least a significant risk to counter the significant profit.

[[violet]]

I'd suggest preventing players from putting up a card they've bought at an auction until some time, like 5 mins after the auction has resolved, so there is a least a significant risk to counter the significant profit.

I have implemented a 3-minute relisting cooldown as you describe.

However, market players should be aware that the auction system is NOT designed to save you from your own offers -- quite the opposite. So this isn't support for letting people offer prices they don't really want to pay.

During April Fools, the issue we had with trading was that players with large puppet farms could easily move cards and bank around by:

(1) Selling a worthless card for a large sum, in order to transfer bank; and

(2) Buying a valuable card for 0.01, in order to transfer the card.

This rewarded puppet masters with a linear increase in card input based on how many nations they controlled. So the best way to succeed was simply to create more nations... which makes the whole thing a bit pointless.

The new auction system makes this more difficult because ridiculous offers can be exploited by other players. For example, if a puppet offers a valuable card for 0.01, someone else can outbid the puppet master and get the card. If a puppet tries to buy a worthless card for a lot, someone else can jump in by offering the same card for a little less.

So you can still have a lot of puppet nations, but you have to actually play them more like independent nations with their own decks, rather than slave states who exist only to funnel resources to their master.

It's fundamental to this system that everyone can be held to whatever price they offer, and no-one can lock down a particular match. That will always be the case. Players are welcome to try to bid/ask strategically -- i.e. make offers they don't really mean in order to try to finesse a particular result -- but this is a risky thing to do, by design.

[All-Dirt Oil Company]

The problem behind the design of the new mechanics is exactly this mentality of preventing card farming. Because by slowing down absolutely every process to obtain cards and maintaining the deck and bank status of everyone in this new update, you actually give an undue advantage to the worst of the puppet masters and other glitch abusers who really got to profit from the whole big flawed gameplay back in April.

Now, making puppets is even more relevant for the rest of the player base to compete with these players. But not only that, a whole lot of very underhanded tactics have come to appear as well out of this and they don't make the game more enjoyable, but irritating. It makes people annoyed and angry. Just ask one of your own game moderator, Frisbeeteria, who finds penny by penny bidding to be frustrating and he's right.

That tactic is aimed at annoying the other bidder and make him give up out of frustration. It's a very cheap tactic, but it's almost mandatory, along with other more direct strategies which are just as cheap, to compete for cards at this point.

I think if you wanted to prevent abuse, it's too late for that. The damage is done and now the game is even more unbalanced and frustrating to play. I read through this entire thread and seeing how each time someone brought up an issue, you told them it was by design. Well, I could only think again that you either sacrificed too much fun for this so called balance or you don't know what fun means.

If you really want to make this card game balanced, you either change it back to how it was so that everyone may have a chance to catch up or you reset the bank and decks of everyone. The dilemma here is that both are terrible options. What you'd need is a sort of compromise between the two because neither are fun options. Well, at least the first version was fun on the short term. But the second version is just a big mistake.

Please forgive my harsh words, I would like you to know that I am not angry at the people who made the system or anyone who has the task of maintaining it afterwards. I think the card game was a great idea and I'm really looking forward to how it develops. Good luck!

Edit: Most importantly, the real problem that got us into this mess needs to be addressed directly; puppets shouldn't be allowed to be created anymore.

[Aclion]

I'd suggest preventing players from putting up a card they've bought at an auction until some time, like 5 mins after the auction has resolved, so there is a least a significant risk to counter the significant profit.

I have implemented a 3-minute relisting cooldown as you describe.

Gah! Just as I started abusing it! Thank you.❤️

[Strike]

Edit: Most importantly, the real problem that got us into this mess needs to be addressed directly; puppets shouldn't be allowed to be created anymore.

Well thats a pretty broad statement. There are many reasons for puppets to be created. The only thing I don't like personally about puppets particularly for things like the game events is when people don't put any effort into them.

Some folks have large hoardes of puppets where each puppet has a unique name, its own flag - an identity

Then there are the... "Lazy puppets" - and those really affect gameplay in my opinion from a realism / fun perspective. I'm talking about the ones where they just are called "Nationname-1" "Nationname-2" "nationname-3"...."nationname-347" and all have the default flag and no thought put to them other than farming. If you're going to make puppets and use them it would be nice to give them an identity of their own and not be so blatantly lazy and purposeful about it!

[Aclion]

Edit: Most importantly, the real problem that got us into this mess needs to be addressed directly; puppets shouldn't be allowed to be created anymore.

Well thats a pretty broad statement. There are many reasons for puppets to be created. The only thing I don't like personally about puppets particularly for things like the game events is when people don't put any effort into them.

Some folks have large hoardes of puppets where each puppet has a unique name, its own flag - an identity

https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/collection=1151

[All-Dirt Oil Company]

Well thats a pretty broad statement. There are many reasons for puppets to be created.

You are right and I didn't really mean it in that way and it's completely my fault for using the wrong wording. What I intended to actually write that puppets shouldn't be allowed to farm cards. A bit like how you only get to have one WA account, well you should only be allowed to have one account for cards. This would directly deal with puppet farming.

The only thing I don't like personally about puppets particularly for things like the game events is when people don't put any effort into them.

Some folks have large hoardes of puppets where each puppet has a unique name, its own flag - an identity

Then there are the... "Lazy puppets" - and those really affect gameplay in my opinion from a realism / fun perspective. I'm talking about the ones where they just are called "Nationname-1" "Nationname-2" "nationname-3"...."nationname-347" and all have the default flag and no thought put to them other than farming. If you're going to make puppets and use them it would be nice to give them an identity of their own and not be so blatantly lazy and purposeful about it!

I completely agree with you on this. I actually spent a lot of time thinking each "puppet" name and I spent a lot of time making their flags. Each have their own personality so to speak, but I admit my newer batch of puppets meant for actually grinding creative are less creative and thought out.

In fact, this whole aspect of the game where people are lazy about their new nations made me make this one.

[Chun Nan]

This card was literally in my hands, and this guy shows up and bids at the last second with a credit higher than mines and it just gives it to him without resetting the timer. Please explain?