Auctioning

[Len]

Hello everyone,

I have yet another suggestion. I see many people advertising their items and chats like "S> itemxyz". I understand that this is because the main currency is tokens and merchant-shops can't set up prices in tokens.

So I would love to see an NPC where everybody can sell items for tokens to other players.

Meaning that I could give the item to the NPC, including a price in tokens I want for that items and other player can browse through this list of items and buy them for tokens.

Would be pretty cool as players could have one station where they could check whether items they are looking for are currently being sold.

cheers,

Len

[Xtopher]

Auction house systems are a great way to organize trade in MMO's... The problem is that I don't know if it is possible in RO.. I feel like if it was possible then it would already be a part of the game. I don't know anything about coding NPCs but it seems like it would be really really difficult.

Plus, a lot of our players like to bargain.. You ask for 300 tokens and you go back and forth for like 10 measly tokens for 5 minutes before actually making a trade. You don't get to bargain with auction houses. People will generally put everything in for over priced prices leaving others to undercut them by slim margins (like 1-2 tokens).

Another problem is our token allocation. Most players don't have more than 500 tokens... They do trade based off of items + tokens. Tokens become a gap filler between item values in trade. Example: Purple emp +100 for balloon. With most players having such a short supply of tokens it would be difficult to actually make profit from an auction house. 5% of the players on this server have about 75% of the server's tangible tokens stockpiled (I'm not including all the old players who have thousands of tokens in their storage who quit ages ago). This 5% already have everything they need so they aren't likely to be buying from an auction house unless there's a big update with new items.

Lastly, if this ever got hacked/bug abused in some way after it was implemented and people found a way to get free tokens/items... All hell would break loose.

Therefore, I'll have to disagree.

Edited January 12, 2012 by Xtopher

[coffee break]

I also agree with Xtopher. All items are need to negotiate between the seller and the buyer. The items are not stable in their price because of the demands of each items. Players are not much abundant of tokens. So they usually trade. Its also hard to sell an items in pure tokens.

Well i love the idea, but i disagree too =D.

[Len]

First, I'd like to say that it is definitely possible to code. And not too hard either. :)

And then I want to say that the bargaining evolved from not having another possibility. When zeny would be the currency and you would face merchant-shops, where the player could be afk or even autrotrading, you couldn't bargain either.

But one could of course look who gave that item to the auctioner and PM him if he is online and ask whether he would also take less tokens. And it doesn't prevent you from dealing directly with other players.

People will generally put everything in for over priced prices leaving others to undercut them by slim margins (like 1-2 tokens).

That's a good point. This NPC has a lot room for improvement. In the future this NPC could hold lists with minimal, maximum, and average prices for each item to make it harder to scam new players.

There could also be some sort of bidding. It is just the basic idea which could, of course, be improvement beyond infinity.

Example: Purple emp +100 for balloon.

Then you would basically sell the purple emp for balloon - 100 and could just buy the balloon for tokens. :D

Lastly, if this ever got hacked/bug abused [...]

Again, that's an argument that kills every NPC proposal. :/ Bugs aren't avoidable, but lets assume the token trader would be bugged. Same problem here. But that doesn't make you want to remove that NPC. :)

EDIT: let me give you another example. If I would start giving expensive items away for Poring cards and many other players would do so too, then the currency would eventually become Poring cards (just an example). It's just a matter of adaption. And a more "primitive" form of a currency is directly trading items.

Edited January 12, 2012 by Len

[Xtopher]

Then you would basically sell the purple emp for balloon - 100 and could just buy the balloon for tokens. :D

Again, that's an argument that kills every NPC proposal. :/ Bugs aren't avoidable, but lets assume the token trader would be bugged. Same problem here. But that doesn't make you want to remove that NPC. :)

EDIT: let me give you another example. If I would start giving expensive items away for Poring cards and many other players would do so too, then the currency would eventually become Poring cards (just an example). It's just a matter of adaption. And a more "primitive" form of a currency is directly trading items.

My point with the balloon/emp example is that it's hard for people to make trades for pure tokens these days. Most people trade for for an item/token combo.

Bugs are dangerous, especially with something like this. People always look for ways to abuse things... I would rather not given them a channel through which to abuse if at all possible.

As for you poring card example... I'm sorry but that's wrong. If you start trading items for poring cards people will just think you're crazy. Even if you got a group of friends trading items for poring cards it would never become the currency.

A currency is a note of value. It is a note that is promised value from the distributor of said currency. In real life we use things like USD because the US government actively attempts to regulate the supply in the market to keep the USD at a certain value (this fluctuates with large scale economic changes as people lose trust in the US Fed and dump US investments).

Similarly. we trust in the server administrators to keep a supply of tokens in the market. Because it is backed by the administrators it is given value over other items. No one can create duplicates or generate this currency other than the administrator... It is controlled.

Poring cards are regulated by no one really. They're readily available and easy to obtain. What you're saying is like if I tried to start trading stones for goods in real life.

I know what the barter system is. Trading goods and services for other goods and services without a currency. Our server predominately uses a combination of the barter and currency system. This system is actually patented in real life by Eduardo J. Belgrano... though it's not really used in real life because it's not practical.

All in all an auction house would be nice, but not worth the trouble of developing/coding/implementing because of how our trade system works.

Edited January 12, 2012 by Xtopher

[Len]

Well, I guess I couldn't get across what I wanted to with the Poring card example. Nevermind. Probably was a bad example. :)

But I can't understand that "we don't need it, because it works as is"-attitude. Most things work at the moment. So aren't they worth being improved?

Do you or don't you think that this is a good feature? If so, then it is up to the GMs to decide whether it is worth developing it or not. Besides the fact that it wouldn't be that much effort to implement it. I assume about 200 lines of code.

I understand what you wanted to show with the balloon example. And what I wanted to say is that it doesn't matter whether you trade a balloon, which is, let's say worth 500 tokens, plus 100 tokens to match the assumed value of 600 tokens for a purple emperium of just hand over the 600 itself (from which the player could then buy a balloon himself).

I still think that it wouldn't hurt to have such an NPC. It would be aequivalent to traditional merchant-shops. Plus you could get a general idea of how much an item is worth. A nice side-effect would be that maybe not that much chats would block NPCs in town ("S> xyz"). :D

[Aerynth]

But I can't understand that "we don't need it, because it works as is"-attitude. Most things work at the moment. So aren't they worth being improved?

I find this line very disturbing. You're assuming that we do not want things to be improved because it works? It's not a good thing to say, the community does not just disagree with suggestion, they agree with some suggestion too.

I generally like the idea, it would be off great help. When I was reading up of what Chris said, it does seem to have more Cons over Pros and I fully agree with him. It would be nice to have such NPC, if there is a better way to work it out of course.

Maybe putting the items that the sellers would want to auction off, with a minimal bid? and the highest bidder wins? I know this can be done with negotiating with players around but if this is done using an NPC, maybe this can be done even if the players are online at 2 separate/different time? I don't know whether this is possible or not, since I don't do coding, just giving out ideas.

If there is a bug like what happen to our voting system, this might be abused by players, even if the bug is there for a short period of time.

Bugs are dangerous, especially with something like this. People always look for ways to abuse things... I would rather not given them a channel through which to abuse if at all possible.

Edited January 12, 2012 by Aerynth

[Len]

I find this line very disturbing. You're assuming that we do not want things to be improved because it works?

At least that's how I interpreted this:

All in all an auction house would be nice, but not worth the trouble of developing/coding/implementing because of how our trade system works.

But after rereading it, he could also have meant something different.

I just found it disturbing that "developing/coding/implementing" seemed to be a criteria for Xtopher, what appeared kind of flimsy to me.

Although the suggestion-rules clearly state

Before posting, take into consideration how much work is required to do what you are suggesting and if it is actually worth the effort.

I think that it is nice and important to hear how other players think about this suggestion, but it is up to the GM-team how much effort they are willing to put into the development of new NPCs. Not a users choice.

But maybe he didn't mean it that way. My apologies in that case. :)

If there is a bug like what happen to our voting system, this might be abused by players, even the bug is there for a short period of time.

we trust in the server administrators to keep a supply of tokens in the market.

Than you could also have some trust in the abilities of your scriptGMs. I just don't think that rejecting every "critical" NPC is the right way. Let's assume an NPC that trades items for a headgear doesn't remove the quest items, because the scripter forgot to implement it. Than everyone would have thousands of headgears of that kind. But no one would ever consider that a good reason to refrain from adding new quest NPCs.

[Home123]

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=113290955451898&set=a.112561072191553.16486.100003129835960&type=1&theater

[Xtopher]

http://www.facebook....&type=1

Looks mad sketchy, not clicking.

[Home123]

Hhhaha