If the auction system were automated, in my eyes it's would become another way to take opportunities to RP away from the players, as well as opportunities for the PLAYERS to create their own businesses and events, to give themselves something to do other than the dreaded PL'ing. Please keep the ideas coming (I'm really at a loss as to how to make it work better myself, other than agreeing to the selectable chat tabs idea), but I have to say that for me, Neko's is not the way to go.
This is what I was thinking as the biggest flaw in my suggestion, but I've been doing some thinking and allow me to tweak my idea a bit and tell me what yeah all think. It would allow a nicer GUI approach, plus allow you, or anyone else to play the role of auctioneer.
First off, this again is a suggestion for term, but its always good to think ahead I say. Also, I won't bother everyone with repeating things that would change from my original suggestion as we all know how much people like to read long posts, so I'll keep it as short and complete as possible.
Rather than just have a button for auction that anyone can use anywhere, as I mentioned, it would first have to be limited to a specific area, say inside a grand building or something, as been suggested. This does have the problem then that unless you were this specific area, you'd have a useless button cluttering up your screen, so prehaps the button would only be visible on the client when the player is currently in the area designated for auctioning.
This will allow for better RP atmosphere since everyone biffing is in a centralised spot.
Once the player is inside the designated auctioning spot, they could click on the auction button to open the main auction window. Differences to this window over the other one: 1) It would still have a list of items up for auction, only this time any player wouldn't be able to actually put new items up for bid, only the person in charge of the auction house(spot/whatever you want to call it) could. More on that later. 2) upon double clicking the item, the client opens up a description box of the item, very much if not the same as the description box we have for items now. This could allow a player to see the item up for bid, similar to how there is a showing of items before a auction starts in RL. This would allow the player to see if they wish to bid on the item. To further imerse RP, this description for the item, could be set by person in charge of the auction house at that time. That way, it's a custom message, similar to what Bod was doing as he described the items through the auction channel during his auction. This would also help the player as at any time during the auction as they could simply double click the item in the auction window and read the description in case they forgot. Similar to people taking notes about items during the showing of items before an auction starts in RL. This would also help de-clutter the chat box since during a heavy auction; theres alreadty quite alot of chatter going back and forth and its sometimes hard to keep up on things as it is. 3) Rather than a third column that designates to the player if they had bid on an item, it would show the current order for the items when they will be up for bidding on. This would be controlled by the auctioneer, as they would be controlling what is up for bidding on, and when, and for how long. More on that when I describe the auctioneer's job.
Auctioneer and their role:
This person or group would be designated as follows. Similar to making a group in PS now, a person in the auction house could use something like a /auctionleader command or something to designate he would like to become auctioneer and run the show so to say. If there was someone already fulfilling this job, then the system would tell them so and they would have to wait until the current auctioneer is done using the house to sell goods. Since this is a big job to fill, the person that is auctioneer, could invite other to his group, in which case they would be able to have the ability to do what the auctioneer can, in order to ease thier role a bit. As auctioneer, that players main auction window would have extra buttons in it, allowing them to add/modify/delete items out of the current auction. They would also be able to put in the descriptions for the items and also designate the order they are going to auction the items off in. This will alllow the players doing the buying, sortof like a guide of what is up for auction, and when, etc.
To prevent abuse of this, as in one person constantly claim role of auctioneer, rather than making the GMs have more work than they already need, this can be done through code. As suggested by another (sorry forget the name right now) earlier in the thread, inside the auction house there could be a book or something that would allow people to sign up to use the auction house. They could enter in a start and end time (with a coded maxiumum amount of time they can have the auctioneer spot to be determined later) of when they would like to use the auction house. This could be a great way to incorporate the game's clock/calender into the game, since it could be based off of that. The easier solution though would be to base it off of RL time/dates. Also, to prevent people from abusing this, there could be a coded rule that wouldn't allow a person to set up more than one or two times to use the auction house at one time. Then, they would have to wait for their turn of using the auction house to be over before they could sign up again. Other people could read this book to see the upcomming auctions and plan ahead if they wish to particpate on the bidding as well, thus bringing the PUBS thread on the forums inside the game, further adding to the RP experience.
Once the auction begins, the auctioneer or member of his group could send a '/auction start' command. This would send a system message to everyone currently bidding what item is currently up for bid. Also, it could bold/change the color of the font of the item in the auction window, so people joiing late can see where the auction is and start in on the bidding quicker. Since the auctioneer had designated to the system what the order of their auction is going to be in, a simple command like '/auction next' would work to go on to the next item after the auctioneer decides to move on. When there were no more items to be bid on, then an '/auction end' could be sent to declare the current auction is over, or the 'auction next' command could do a check to see if there were any items, and if not, simply end it. Upon end a system message could be sent to all the bidders that the current auction is over. This is when the auctioneer could disband his auctioneer group and step down as auctioneer. There would also be a coded disband of the auctioneer group when they run out of their alloted time. If they get close to this time, then the system would send them a mesasge saying they only X amount of time left for them to finish up thier auction.
Dealing with bids would then be comepletly up to the auctioneer, as with anythign the auctioneer said, all bids would be through chat, which everyone else in the house would hear. It would be up to the auctioneer to deal with people that bid on items and then don't have the amount needed to pay up. I'm alos thinking that since theres going to be quite a deal of chatting oing on, the auctioneer and his group, when they say something, the text would show up in a different color than the other players to help make it stand out more.
Once the auction was over, everything put in the auction window would be wiped and it would be as a clean slate as it were for the next person to use. Which then, the next person would repeat the process of adding items to the auction window and descriptions for the items for their auction and so on and so forth.
It would be up to the auctioneer to collect the tria and exchange the items.
Basically, it would be all player driven, with a GUI to help the other players with what is going on, and to make it easier on the auctioneer. The GUI would be there to help keep the auction orderly and to help cut down on confusion and still allow the actual auction to be completely player driven, acheiving maximum RP immersion.
And I think that's it for now. I may have missed a few points since this was done over the course of a few hours since I'm at work, so please say any questions/comments you all may have.
EDIT: Seems UTM had a nice long post while I was typing up this one, quite a nice read actually, but since this post of mine is long enough as it is, I'll wait a bit to see other replies before I say anything.
