PlaneShift
Gameplay => Wish list => Topic started by: ages on February 09, 2004, 06:03:31 pm
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Why not have an auction house in each city?
I would see it working the following way:
I go to the auction house, and when I enter, a screen pops up. I can then choose one of my items, set a starting price for it, and set an amount of time in hours for the auction to last. The item then leaves my inventory and is held at the auction house.
People visiting the auction house could submit a bid on my item. When they submit a bid, the money is removed from their inventory, but as soon as someone out bids them they get their money back. The first bid has to be at least the starting price I set. After the preset number of hours has elapsed, the winning bidder has to visit the auction house and when they do so, they recieve their item. If the winning bidder doesn\'t collect the item within thirty days, it is lost forever, but the seller still keeps the money. The auction house would keep 5% of the winning bid, the rest of the bid would be given to me next time I visited the auction house.
If no bids are made on the item after the set number of hours, then the seller can return to the auction house to pick up their item.
The ideal user interface for it would be that when you enter the auction house a window pops up with two buttons, buy and sell. Clicking the buy button brings up a list of all the items currently up for auction. Idealy you would be able to search for a particular item, or items put up for sale by a particular person. It would also be nice to be able to sort the list of items by price, category, and amount of time left on auction. The row in the list for each item would show item name, category (weapon, armour etc), person who put it up for auction, current winning bid, amount of time left for auction and a comments field. If I selected an item, a box pops up asking me how much I want to bid. My bid must be greater than the current winning bid, but not more than the amount of money I am carrying.
If I click the sell button, then all the items in my inventory appear on screen. I can select one of them, which causes a screen to pop up where I can set the starting price, the auction length and some comments to appear next to the item.
Some more advanced features could possibly be auction multiple items in one lot, recieving a message when you are outbid, and automatic bidding, where you tell the auction house to bid for you up to a certain amount.
As you can see I let the auction house take a cut of anything you sell, so it will be more profitable to sell by a normal trade, but the auction house lets you sell things even when you are not online.
EDIT: Fixed a loophole
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hmm, nice system there. I don\'t know what the Dev\'s have planned, but this is good.
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I like this idea. Planeshift\'s own little ebay :D
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yeah, thats a good idea. Hope it will be in a later release of PS
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yes much better then the endless yelling when entering the city or (zone) as it might be called, more RP and not an inbalance at alll, i really like this idea
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*shudder* I hate the :
L0ngsw0rd + 100000o0 for s413!! Only 4298344 GOld!!!!1
Drives me insane. :D
*Woot, Emperor!!!!*
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I\'m not sure how far along \'/auction\' has been improved in CB; I\'ll have to ask the devs about that sometime...
Awhile ago when I started making a little website for my shop, I started writing in a little auction area where you could post your items for sale. However there are quite a few problems with it being offsite, mainly 1) people posting auctions with items they don\'t own, 2) people bidding more money than they have, 3) no automatic transaction; users still have to meet sometime ingame.
It\'ll likely get scrapped as soon as \'/auction\' is fully implemented in PS, but if it isn\'t in CB I might finish writing it and see if all goes well...
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Do you lot think its worth submitting this to the official feature request system?
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I would say yes. It would be great to see this, or at least something similar implemented into the game...
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But what if this happens.....
What if someone bids for an item and wins. But then before they can claim thier new fangled sword or whatever, their internet crashes. They arent able to get online. The auctioneer has the money and spends it (what he intended to do with it) and spends it on items. 30 days later the item and gold is supposed to be switched because the winning bidder hasnt been able to get onlne yet to claim it. He gets on after the thirty days are over. So what happens to the auctioneers money? He should get his sword he auctioned back but wht happens to the gold he got when he auctioned it? Its already spent on items, so do the items dissapear? or what?
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This wouldn\'t happen because the info is (or at least should be) kept server side - so theoretically you don\'t even have to be online when auctioning.
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but snowwolf, ages said that the auction house should hold the item untill you picked it up after you won the bidding.
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Sorry, I reread your post and it turns out I have no idea what you\'re trying to say. I\'m pretty sure my original arguement still stands, however, and if not it most likely reduces to simple problem of business ethics.
Sorry for the confusion :D
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As for the problem you have discovered:
The items could get transfered automatically without you having to visit the auction house, but I would have thought it more realistic if you had to.
The money could not be transfered to the seller until the item has been picked up, but this could be very frustrating for the seller.
It could be that as soon as the auction finishes, the money is transfered to the seller, and if the buyer doesn\'t pick the item up then it simply dissapears, and the seller keeps the money. This would seem to be the best idea, but if you have any other suggestions please say because it would be nice to get problems like these ironed out before I officially submit it.
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i think that once your bid wins you get the weapon in your inventory automatically. that way there can be no confusion (like someone doesnt get online for 31 days for example)
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that could cause problems though...say if your inventory was full you might just drop it on the ground and be none the wiser...it should just be that if you win the auction you would get mail that says something like \'you had the highest bid on the xxxx on 2/10/2004. Come buy the auction house in xxxx to pick it up.\'
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that\'s an easy fix. the cash and item are kept in escrow for a specific length of time after the auction. and if the winner doesn\'t or cannot respond within that set time, the next in line gets to pick it up.
repeat as necessary.
:D
Originally posted by ages
As for the problem you have discovered:
The items could get transfered automatically without you having to visit the auction house, but I would have thought it more realistic if you had to.
The money could not be transfered to the seller until the item has been picked up, but this could be very frustrating for the seller.
It could be that as soon as the auction finishes, the money is transfered to the seller, and if the buyer doesn\'t pick the item up then it simply dissapears, and the seller keeps the money. This would seem to be the best idea, but if you have any other suggestions please say because it would be nice to get problems like these ironed out before I officially submit it.
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Props to this idea. It\'s a wonderful idea that allows for a lot of RP opportunities and offers a great option to the continual shouting and/or flat sellback rates in towns.
I do think this should be implemented in a future release of PS and I feel that any potential problems with claiming items would work themselves out nicely following ages final ideas. Claiming auction winnings should be done in person in order to preserve RP value and in order to deal with inventory questions. Money shold be transfered immediately upon completion of the sale, and pick-up is solely the responsibility of the buyer. If he/she is unable to pick up the item for whatever reason in the 30 days, tough luck. As in the rest of the world, the motto should be \"buyer beware.\"
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I\'ve edited the first post to say that if you dont pick up the item within 30 days the seller keeps the money, and the item disapears forever. Anyone else have any problems with it before I submit it?
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not here. Loooks like a GREAT system. I hope you can convince the devs to include it.
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Originally posted by ages
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I go to the auction house, and when I enter, a screen pops up.
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I can\'t believe noone has brought this up really - but that has got to be the worst idea for a role-playing game ever. I don\'t want just a box getting shoved in my face, I want to talk to the vendor and ask what\'s on offer. I want to walk round the showroom and see the auction exhibits in little glass boxes. Don\'t get me wrong, I love the idea of a proper auction house! Just don\'t forget that this is not \"ebay\", or SWG with computer console\'s with a long boring list of items. This is an opportunity for further role playing. Having said that, I suppose the process should be faily swift and not too long winded either. Still, a middle ground it not impossible by any means.
I also don\'t like the idea of funds being immediately removed upon making a bid. That doesn\'t happen in real life - only at the end, when the bidding is over, does money and goods swap hands. Possibly there could be a deposit put down on something that will be in your favour should another person match your bid, but then there are the problems of how to get that money back... ( Sorry this isn\'t really structured! :D Just pouring ideas and arguments out as they come ).
I\'m assuming there will be some sort of banking system implemented eventually? If so, then immediate transfer of funds could be done when the final hammer stikes. And I like the idea the buyer should have to go personally to the auction house to collect their new goods. But I would like a longer holding period just for those who might have difficulties ( as alreay discussed ) in getting to the auction house. How about, the first 5 days or so has free holding by the auctioneers. Then each further 5 days a small holding fee is charged to the same bank account. This would continue up to say a month ( or a given holding cost - possibly customisable when bidding? ), where by the item is then thrown out and lost,... or if your money runs out :) and the item is thrown out early. What do people think about that?
Really good idea though, this would be a great feature.
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Good ideas jonmack. I like what you\'ve added.
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\"I want to walk round the showroom and see the auction exhibits in little glass boxes.\"
Wouldn\'t this be a bit impratical if there are lots of items?
I agree that your suggestions do make it more of a roleplay, but you have to balance it with feasibility. I do like the idea of talking to an NPC, rather than clicking in a window though.
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why not make this work like a REAL auction house. not these ones you say are real. this is how a real auction house works. In the newpaper an auction house puts out an ad. \"level 30 longsword selling at 3 o\' clock at auction house on 35th street.\" Now people then show up at the auction house to bid on that item. the person with the winning bid wins the item and has to transfer the money from his bank account to the auction houses. if it is a small ammount of money then he can personally give it to the auction house right them. but if it is a large sum of money it must be transfered through an account for safety reasons.
Now if he wins the bid and the money isnt in the account by a certain time (like 24 hours later) then the auction starts all over again. Auction houses have been working for 100s of years. Obviously they are doing something right because they have worked in the same way for this long. So why change it now. Lets keep these rules the same for auction houses in PS.
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ages
Yes I suppose when PS goes truley MMO it would get a bit full :D But I was just throwing ideas around. How about just a selection of the biggest and rarest items on display?
As for talking to the NPC, myabe it would just be as simple as asking to see the list of available auctions, with some options thrown in. For example you could ask to see only the items that are due to end today. That way it would still have some RP aspect, but not having to ask 1000 times \"how much is that?\" :) - becasue you can see the list ( enevitably it would still have to be some sort of GUI )
whemy
Yeah, you\'re right, they are like that really. Good ideas, but it\'s the same old problem: What if people can\'t make it at that time, this is an international game after all. Still, that would be awsome to have ads in newspapers etc! Again, how about a half-way solution - You can put items up for \"private\" auction, where anyone can put there name down, and after X days the auction is closed, but those who have an item which is very worthwhile/sought after could advertise a live auction, and really make some money when people have to start outbidding in real time :D That would be cool.
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The big problem with auctions at certain times is timezones. I am on GMT, and wouldn\'t want to have to get online at 2 in the morning to buy items from america.
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I think having an auction house in every city (or maybe in just main cities) is a great idea. It would make selling your goods and crafts much easier than wandering around looking for people to sell to. Scenario:
Merchant: It took me 3 days to get to this level but Im finally here! Would you like to see my magical wares?
Warrior: Uh, no. Im a warrior. Look around *points to people of surrounding area* we all are!
Merchant: But...but...but...
Warrior: Sorry kid, but your looking for a lower level, you must have missed it!
Merchant: You mean I... *faints*
THE END
Bad way to end, huh? Well, auction houses could solve that problem.
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To throw something into the mix, also for my first post, how about the concept known to all as the \"Bargain Bin\"? It seems that the \"throw the item away forever\" deal is a bit harsh to the people with problems with their internet and stuff like that, but it\'s a true shame so see a giant, evil sword or some deep navy blue armor ( ;) ) go the way of the misspelled word if they aren\'t picked up.
So: I propose the bargain bin. Items that haven\'t been picked up after their allotted pick-up time will be deposited in the bargain bin. The money to pay for the item won has already gone to the seller, so the item can be throw into the bargain bin at a tenth or a fifth of its sold price (or whatever the auction-house deems a good price if these are too much) and can be purchased by any and all who wish to purchase it. All money from the purchase goes to the auction house. Even the buyer or seller can buy it, so it\'s kind of like a little extra time to buy it (unless bargain hunters beat you there :P).
If the item isn\'t purchased after an allotted time (say, 15 days or so), the item will be thrown out. Either deleted entirely or thrown in some heap for someone to pick out of the garbage, it feels like a better way to do business. Tell me what you think, as I\'m open to criticism, just no flaming.
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Bargin Bin is a great idea that could use polishing, and trash cant be picked up as it is thrown down endless wells never to be seen again. And if youre stupid enough to jump after it then... no, just kiddin.
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So there\'s no way to do a trash heap? That\'s fine. I guess the items could be thrown on the ground then, or just deleted, depending on which way the balancing works out. Either way, I\'m glad I could help contribute to this effort! :]
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wow um heh I guess only someone who plays this game would know but this Auction House is a direct rip off of the system Final Fantasy 11 has and let me say it works amazingly well.
It is even called the AH aka. Auction House on the game ^^ There seems to be a few differences but it still is relatively the same.
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World of Warcraft has this same system, only my \"Bargain Bin\" idea could really change it for the better while still leaving a fantastic system pretty much intact.
Needless to say, auctions in general kick ass. :D
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Agreed, but its not a total rip off from FF... And if it is, I\'m sure the person who started this didnt know or do it on purpose.
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I\'v played mmorpgs that use the auction system, this makes for a very expecive economy.
Insane prices dominated buy hight lev players, i dont like it. Cash and items take longer to change hands this inturn slowes the economy down.
I have played mmorpgs that use personal stores, i think this workes better, prices are cheaper for all. It makes for more compition in prices. Items and cash changes hands faster and helps the economy.
u can look and get an idea of what prices should be.
I do hate the simply spamming of \"sword for sale sword for sale\" and only the trade system.
In a game the prices when way down when they added
personal stores. An item that was once worth 1 mil gold is now worth 100 k for exg.
Auction system item=1 mil gold
Personal Store item=100K gold
If u want me to explain personal stores more i can.
ps i dont like losing items to DCs........
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Okay, I need more opinions...It also appears I\'m carrying this topic, but it\'s actually fun. :D I need more opinions on the auction house, because of SirTokesALot\'s post.... It\'s always seemed to me that auction\'s keep prices low; just look at eBay. Personal stores need more explaining, because, from what I visualize, they would be both impractical and inconvenient for adventurers to maintain. I want to take care of my buying and selling, without any middle-man-merchant. There is no reason to only use the auction house, as spamming is still effective, only much mroe annoying. The AH lowers the amount of spam by a good chunk. And what is this DC? Debt Collector? Dirty Camshaft? What is it? ?(
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Auction sounds like a great idea. Hard to get scammed using it.
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Well in Final Fantasy 11, there was a auction-like sytem where you could sell up to seven things, when you click on the item, it turns red and is seellable, and when you go back and if the items yellow, its sold, and you go to your house and go to your inbox to pick up your money. In almost every game the AH(Auction house) i flawless. Why? because you have to show, then sell the item. Not too many loopholes in this, AND it would be far from ebay.
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At school, this\'ll be quick:
I said eBay only in the style of auctions, plus it saved me $200 on RDRAM. So how could this idea not be a strong seller to the devs? :))
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Having a powerful weapon on sale at 10% if buyer didn\'t pick it up is sort of unbalancing. This allows some player to just camp by bargain bins and keep clicking refresh until something interesting shows up.
An idea is that after the designated time for the buyer to pick it up expires. The said item goes into the bargain bin at the price the buyer pays. And at a set time limit (one day in real life might be good, or four times in a real time day, depending on what the developers want). The price is reduced using a percentage.
Exampe...
An auctioned sword that was sold at 10,000 tria expired.
The \"unclaimed\" bin holds the item and sold it at 10,000 tria.
After a period of time, the price is by 1% of the original price.
So after one time period, it\'s 9,900, and 9,800, and 9,700 and so on.
After a certain time, let\'s say if the price is down to 50% the original and no one bought it, it disappears forever.
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NOTE: If auctions expire and there are no bidders, the item is returned to the seller and nothing is lost. However, if the item was bid on and is not picked up, then it will proceed to the bin, etc. etc.
I personally don\'t see many rediculously good weapons ending up the the bin unless by some weird circumstance. If people want to camp the bins, let them, \'cause that\'s a good way to get some good items. And BTW, nobody said any of the stuff I proposed is final, so don\'t take it like it is and say it\'s unbalanced, \'cause it\'s just a proposal. I guess 10% is a little low, but it was a proposal. And anyway, it would be kind of sad to see a good weapon get deleted if its ending price was too high. Oh well, we\'ll have to see how this works out, I guess.
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You make a good point nightmare. But I was also thinking on the side of the auction house.
Auction house has an owner, and said owned will always attempt to squeeze as much money from an item as possible. So it is only natural that an item not picked up will be on sale near its final bidding price.
As with camping by bargain bin, I won\'t mind if there\'s one and two. But I am afraid of situation where a horde of people just camp there and create an on sightly congestion (not to say people are stupid, but once we get a lot of players, stupid people will appear). This system also gives less incentive for bargain bin camping, since the stuff you buy is at its highest price.
Another suggestion for display case, the display case could display items that are near the end of its bidding period. It could be a sort of last minute bidding rush for players to see what good stuff is about to end its bidding period.
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In an auction system the prices will skyrocket.
Buyers will compeat to buy an item and the bidding can go insanely hight.
What about if I get my friend to bid on my items to drive the price up abit ? what then???that kinda cheating is hard to prove...
ebay usally has good prices but thats the real world where a company going out of bizz can liuqedate alot of stuff cheap or what ever else the reasons.
I\'v seen used items sell for more on ebay then it would cost to buy new fom a store.....
in a personal store system the sellers are compeating with each othere to sell for less. The prices cant go belowe what the npc would give you , and are usally fair. This give the Dev more control over the prices, they can stet npc price highter or lower to effect the market price of items.
You can Still get lots and lots cash for rare/high lev, or perf items.
a personal store could work much the same as an \"auction house\" except you set a fixed price on the items. First come first serve. Personal store are cheat proof in some othere games so i dont see the problem.
meaby there could be an \"opend market\" in stead of auction house.
Would u like being lev 70 using lev 50 items because the prices are so insanly hight? I know there no levs in ps but still.
Any thoughts anyone??
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Sir: if you aren\'t in a rush to post, could you take a little time to make them a bit more readable? I\'m not dissing your posts, just saying they aren\'t quite what the could be ;) And I need more explanation. I\'m really not getting the personal store concept.
And as for PlaneWalker, I like where you\'re coming from. I see now what you\'re saying about camping, as that may become a real problem. Hmmmm. Well, we\'ll have to work that out now, too. Maybe set a limit of how much time you can spend per 24 hour period or even just per hour inside the auction house. It would stop people from just sitting in the AH all day, and maybe ease the congestion. And we could make it really big inside. :D And as for the display case idea, that could really work. And it could give the poor people a glimpse of things they\'ll never have. :D
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OK I tried to ignore this thread but I gotta speak up since I have a big mouth :P
An auction house is usually completly usless to me except the part that it keeps
S> UBER DAGGER +597398 +EX OPT people off the streets. You\'re trying to solve problems that dont exist yet. However, I like the trade system.
And ill say it once again: You\'re trying to solve problems that dont exist yet.
:) <-- thaats my no hard feelings sign
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Actually the idea would be (from what I remeber from the forum so far) is yes, there will be a place to merely trade items. The auction house is designed for the purpose of selling rare items. As for having a friend bidding high... there\'s no need or no incentive since you can just set the starting price that high. As for it being exorbantly expensive, well then no one will bid on it, period.
Thanks Nightmare for the kind reply. I like the idea of restricting the amount of time one could stay in the auction house, but there doesn\'t seems to be any reason for an auction house to toss a potential customer out...
One of the way could be to \"move\" the bargain bin else where. Or just replace bargain bin with a store or stores (don\'t know what it should be called) where all the unclaimed items go. That way we restrict crowding to just those stores. And if that\'s not enough, the time restriction you suggest can apply.
Maybe the item can be put up for reauctioning instead of having being move to a bargain bin, thereby eliminating the need for it.
Glad you like the display case idea.
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Bam on the first paragraph there, I couldn\'t have said it better myself.
The time limit was an idea I cooked up to stop people from leaving their comps to idle in the AH all day, as stop people from sitting there all day waiting for a good item to pop up.
A reauction might work, but if the price never comes down enough, an item would become trapped in this cycle unless you set a limit to reauctions.
And bam on the display cases. I\'m done for the night.
:]
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Hm... a revised version of the reauctioning would be to reauction them at half the price. An item would be reauctioned up to two time, if it still fails to be auctioned off, it disappears.
An alternative to the auctioning scheme was to allow up to 72 hours for the first bid. And after that 48 hours for every bid after that. Just something to think about.
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Very good idea. Actually, it would be kind of cool to be able to pick where your item goes if it is not picked up when you create the auction, whether it be \"The Bin\" or re-auctioning. Either way, items still get a second chance. :D
P.S.: Now I\'m done for the night. :D
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Hm... here some idea... borrowed a bit from PristonTale
Each player could have a sort of item storage bank (like their storage shack). So the stuff they bought in auction could be sent there. So basically here\'s what happens.
1. Attempt to send items to player\'s storage.
2. When that fails, attempt to reauction at half the price (once).
3. When reauctioning fails, it\'s placed on sale in bargain store (not bin) for 30 days. With the price reduced by 2% every day from the last auctioned price (highest of the two auction).
4. If no one bought it by then, the item is lost forever.
Now, assuming auctions takes a week to bid. Then an item will only \"survive\" for about 1.5 month.
Another alternative for step 4 is to let valuable items becomes a reward for some quest.
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Haha, all right. But at least call the store a bin, it\'ll make me feel less useless ;( (plus my reworked bargain bin functions the same as your \"store\" ;) ). But still, this could work too.
On a side note, if we were to have the unclaimed/sold items become quest rewards, the quests (and their rewards) would have to be really specific, deal with a specific class, or have a pop-up menu with \"select your reward.\"
Mmm?
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You know, the auction house in FFXI is where someone sells they\'re item for a specific amount of Gil, and whoever buys it first gets it. That\'s about it.
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To Geghlesh - No offense... but the \"auction\" house you speak of isn\'t an auction house.
Auction by definition is where people are the one setting the price. And the seller determines how high the starting price should be.
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PlaneWalker, you seem to have great experience in MMORPGs. How do you know so much? ?(