Questions about the Auctionhouse.

[Tyncale]

First of all, thank you for implementing this so soon. I am very exited, and having a lot of fun with it already! Have not played so much since the start of alpha.

My questions:

• Does every auctionhouse list *all* auctions that have been submitted globally? Sorry if this has been stated elsewhere already.
  Since Ryan stated that a toggle to show ony listed items will not be necessary since soon *every* item will have auctions going, I think the above must be true. If listings were local I do not expect every small town to have listings of every item that exists.

• If the above is true, does "Silver Shortsword +2 +1" mean that there is at least one of those swords for sale somewhere? I have seen both "Silver Shortsword +2" and "Silver Shortsword +2 +1" listed together so confused about that too.

• If so, will we be able to see in which town that sword is sold, in the future?

• Will we be able to see the name of the seller at some point?

• Is it true that the "minimum price" for a listing can be either lower or *higher* then the initial listingprice of an item? If so, what is the idea behind this?

• Will we be able to do Buy orders at some point?

• Currently my listings are keeping the same price: is the gradual decrease or increase of the price not implemented yet?

• Will we be able to use more advanced parameters for the search function, so that we only get to see items that both have +2 and the word "sword" in the description, but not necessarily in that order? That would go a long way to do specific searches. The tabs already help a lot but some lists are still very, very long. Also, with better search parameters you could avoid the tabs and go straight to what you are looking for.

(Disclaimer: I have tried searching for more info about the features of the AH but info is currently so spread out that I could not find much(2 forums, Ideascale comments, Wiki and a billion google-docs and pdf's spread across the web).)

Feel free to add any questions. :)

[Being]

Tyncale wrote:

•Does every auctionhouse list *all* auctions that have been submitted globally? Sorry if this has been stated elsewhere already.

Auction houses have been said to be local, not global

Tyncale wrote:

•If the above is true, does "Silver Shortsword +2 +1" mean that there is at least one of those swords for sale somewhere? I have seen both "Silver Shortsword +2" and "Silver Shortsword +2 +1" listed together so confused about that too.

I don't believe that is yet true, especially if you are referencing the 'display window' on the left that shows things like adamantine chainmail +4 and the like at 9999 platinum plus change. I think that is intended to be example pieces we can search for in the search window. If those are present and you select what you desire, then if there is an example it appears in the Market tab on the right with the asking price, and you can buy one if you have the moola. I haven't tried bidding a lower price that way, so I cannot say whether bidding actually works yet. Buying does.

Tyncale wrote:

•If so, will we be able to see in which town that sword is sold, in the future?

I do not know. Possibly when the item that is available appears in the market tab it could include which town it is in but I really don't think it will work globally like that, for reasons of database search efficiency. Nihimon probably has a better grasp of database efficiencies than I, so if he disagrees with me go with his expertise.

Tyncale wrote:

•Will we be able to see the name of the seller at some point?

Doubtful: I think all products will be displayed as type and the quantity available at a given price. If there are multiple items for different prices all of those will be displayed as different due to the pricing. But I don't think maker's marks will differentiate in the auction house. Possibly at a later date? You might want to suggest this in IdeaScale.

Tyncale wrote:

•Is it true that the "minimum price" for a listing can be either lower or *higher* then the initial listing price of an item? If so, what is the idea behind this?

Apparently the prices set in the sell order have an initial asking price and they decrement to the minimum asking price over time, I think 48 hours.

Tyncale wrote:

•Will we be able to do Buy orders at some point?

See ideascale to make a suggestion. Sound good to me.

Tyncale wrote:

•Currently my listings are keeping the same price: is the gradual decrease or increase of the price not implemented yet?

Unknown to me. There may have been a reset of the AH at some point.

Tyncale wrote:

•Will we be able to use more advanced parameters for the search function, so that we only get to see items that both have +2 and the word "sword" in the description, but not necessarily in that order? That would go a long way to do specific searches. The tabs already help a lot but some lists are still very, very long. Also, with better search parameters you could avoid the tabs and go straight to what you are looking for.

If there are search parameters then I don't know what they are. I've only tried 'steel sword' and the search function seemed only to pick up on 'sword'. Possibly there could be an ampersand (&) or comma to use multiple parameters, but advanced searches may be premature as yet. They may want to keep things simple for now.

[Stephen Cheney]

Tyncale wrote:

Does every auctionhouse list *all* auctions that have been submitted globally? Sorry if this has been stated elsewhere already.

They're local. But you get to see everything for the purposes of buy order and checking prices (once both buy orders and checking prices are in).

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If the above is true, does "Silver Shortsword +2 +1" mean that there is at least one of those swords for sale somewhere? I have seen both "Silver Shortsword +2" and "Silver Shortsword +2 +1" listed together so confused about that too.

There are still some problems with the display of upgrade values for certain things. Next build, we should be fixing that T1 only shows +0 and +1, T2 only shows +2 and +3, and T3 only shows +4 and +5. But the double plus is new to me, so please bug examples you see like that.

Quote:

If so, will we be able to see in which town that sword is sold, in the future?

We're hoping to have a system to show you at least abstracted global pricing data, since otherwise it'd just wind up on a third party site somewhere, but I don't think we have that scoped well enough to have an ETA.

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Will we be able to see the name of the seller at some point?

The plan is to treat most things like commodities. Showing seller name may introduce favoritism into the flow of the market.

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Is it true that the "minimum price" for a listing can be either lower or *higher* then the initial listingprice of an item? If so, what is the idea behind this?

I think if you set it higher it just defaults to 1. You can also attempt to sell things for letter values and negative numbers, but at least those error out. We probably need to get the input box to be more diligent in enforcing what the server's actually looking for.

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Will we be able to do Buy orders at some point?

Yep.

Quote:

Currently my listings are keeping the same price: is the gradual decrease or increase of the price not implemented yet?

It decreases from max listing to min listing over the course of 48 hours, and rechecks whether the price should diminish once every approximately two and a half minutes. If you had a small difference in your start and end price, it may take a while before you notice it going down. (The 48 hours will eventually be adjustable.)

Quote:

Will we be able to use more advanced parameters for the search function, so that we only get to see items that both have +2 and the word "sword" in the description, but not necessarily in that order? That would go a long way to do specific searches. The tabs already help a lot but some lists are still very, very long. Also, with better search parameters you could avoid the tabs and go straight to what you are looking for.

Yeah, the search algorithm is very much an MVP choice. We'll improve it over time.

[Tyncale]

Thanks a lot for the answers, Stephen. Also very happy where this is going, liking the answers a lot.

If the listings are pure local(which I like a lot), then I do not share Ryans idea that soon each item will have auctions going anyway so that filtering for items that are actually for sale is a moot point.

Since the AH lists every single item that is currently in the game (from simple raw resource to finished +5 Vorpal Sword), I think people browsing an Auctionhouse in a small low level settlement with only partial crafting/refining facilities would still benefit immensely from such a filter, since I do not expect such a settlement to have +5 Vorpal Swords for sale(and a whole lot more).

Unless Ryan means that even though the settlement itself may not be able to produce them, their auctionhouse could still have them for sale, since they were transported there........that is a possibility. I still do not think that small settlements will be able to fully seed their AH's with every item though.

In any case, exiting!

[KarlBob]

I strongly agree that better search and filtering functions would be useful. Hopefully they can be introduced soon. I think that buy orders and bids could probably wait a little while, if that's needed to get the search and filter tools in place sooner.

I've also noticed the double bonus items. I'll bug a few of them today.

[Ryan Dancey]

I mean that there will be a small number of Auction Houses due to Settlement choices, and that there will be auctions for every item in every Auction House. There will be crafting/trading Settlements who will specialize in putting something of every type up for sale in every available market so they can centralize their data and look for arbitrage opportunities.

Seeing what is selling, at what price, will also give them actionable intel on what his happening in the local regions around the market hub.

Relatively quickly there's not going to be a significant number of things that have no active auctions.

[Nightdrifter]

It's gotta be said:

The double plus is ungood.

[Tyncale]

Ryan Dancey wrote:

I mean that there will be a small number of Auction Houses due to Settlement choices, and that there will be auctions for every item in every Auction House. There will be crafting/trading Settlements who will specialize in putting something of every type up for sale in every available market so they can centralize their data and look for arbitrage opportunities.

Seeing what is selling, at what price, will also give them actionable intel on what his happening in the local regions around the market hub.

Relatively quickly there's not going to be a significant number of things that have no active auctions.

Thanks Ryan, I see what you mean. I really like the picture you are painting and it strengthens my belief that Economy, Trade and last but certainly not least, Transport, are going to play such a huge role in a this game.

With Local Auctionhouses now being in, I have a feeling that players soon will be asking for Transport features to be crowdforged next, I would certainly be one of them. :) I was standing in front of the Ossian AH with a lot of starter equipment(armors mostly) and hesitated to put it up in Ossian Crossing, where few players are, or hoof it to Thornkeep, and put them up there, where a lot more people are browsing.

Can't wait for Caravans and Fast travel(scripted ponyrides). And SAD and Bandits off course....

[Being]

Yes, let's set those bandits far off course! ;)