I also agree that some kind of Auction House (doesn't need to be called that per-say) is definitely needed

An AH would allow players to sell things without needing to stay online for hours on end attempting to get someone somewhere to want their stuff. Adding an AH will allow us to just get back into the dungeons and enjoy the game rather than stand around wishing that someone would want our crappy Mats.

+1 Vote.

Those who are against this idea because it would "wreck the economy" need to take some basic econ classes. An AH, by itself, is not going to make items cheaper on the whole, or more expensive on the whole, than they already are.

It's just as likely that the price of [X item] goes down because so many people are now having an easy time selling, as it is that the price of [X item] goes up because so many people are having an easy time finding and buying it.

The only thing an auction house will reveal is WHICH items are actually more common or less common than we perceive them to be right now, and by how much. For every item, there exists an equilibrium price at the crossroads of supply and demand. However, when we're limited to the Trade Channel, that price isn't different - it's just tougher to find. It's a question mark, or a general range if you're lucky. Regardless, you're still going to feel the effects of the economic forces; sell too high and you're going to be selling for longer. Advertise a low price and you'll waste less time but also get less money. You can't get around it, no matter how savvy a salesman you think you are, or how many noobs you think you can dupe. The difference is that without an AH, you'll never really know whether the 3 hours you spent advertising an item without any buyers is a result of you overpricing it, or you just not being online at the right time.

BTW, from the developers perspective, I think they'd prefer to keep the noob-duping to a minimum in order to keep new members, so that whole argument against the AH is just bull.

Here's the thing, even though not knowing the right price for things is inconvenient, frustrating, and wasteful for us players - it's actually a much bigger problem for the developers. An AH allows them to collect proper metrics about which items are more common/cheap or rare/expensive than they planned. This allows them to react to overflows and shortages by either adjusting drop rates, or creating new recipes that call for more/less of [Material X]. Without that knowledge, they're flying blind in terms of item balance, and just eyeballing everything, while the lag and erraticness of our current market masks the mistakes and imbalances that are happening before their eyes.

http://introvert.net/temp/sk/sk.cgi
is the current attempt of a community auction house (really its just listing your stuff up for a price, but that it enough for now), i saw it posted on the bazaar and thought of this tread

...yes, but you can turn off /2 now, if you don't want to hear the trade stuff. You should have gotten a mail from the devs with the patch notes.

Patch notes were just updates it didn't exactly say how to do turn them off, unless I missed that part. Frankly, I'm a merchant so turning that off would be detrimental to my business.

I'm not reading through all of these pages of comments, it's clear the overwhelming majority is for this because they're right.

If it happens, could you make it so (or at least give the option) the bidding time grows just slightly every time someone bids? Even if it's only like 1 or 5 minutes. None of that Ebay, "everyone rush it at the last second till someone random ends up with it" crap. extending the time makes it so the seller gets the most for what they're selling and the person who is willing to pay the most gets the item they clearly deserve.

Also I was thinking - and this is JUST BRAINSTORMING, I'm not attached to the idea - but if OOO wanted to make this worth their while, they could have it so only Guilds could post items in an Auction House through the guild area. I've never been there myself so I don't know what it's like. But basically everyone else can see and purchase items outside. This is a basic idea, but there could be guild bonuses, and it might help create a more tight-knit community. I actually don't think it would be fair to everyone, so as-is it's a bad idea. But it could be altered into something, maybe.

I didn't read all the replies, but I'll throw my 2 cents in based on the original post (my fault if it's been said).

I agree to an in-game auction house....but please please PLEASE make it similar to Eve:Online if you do. There are problems with WoW-like auction houses that I do not like (although I made millions in them, it made the system unbalanced toward the rich). An EO-like AH is similar to what you use for your crown-energy market anyway, and shows the ability for items to reach a better midpoint, rather than a "dangling demand" like WoW (without having prior knowledge to the items in a system, you can only judge a "value" of an item based on what's in front of you....if you are seeing only sales, and no purchases, than the prices can be anything and you'd believe them).

So basically the idea is that each item could be searched for, and a list of buy/sell orders can be viewed. When you "sell" an item, it will automatically sell to the highest buyer, and when you "buy", it will take from the lowest seller. If you do not like the buy/sell prices, you can set up an order for yourself (maybe even limit it to 5 orders per account, but you can "purchase" extra order queues, similar to how you do weapon slots with energy).

Setting up a buy order: Select how many of the item you wish to purchase, and the price you are willing to pay. Upon completion, the amount is deducted from you. If you cancel an order, you lose X% for broker fees.
Setting up a sell order: Select how many of the item you wish to sell, and the price you want to sell it for. Upon completion, the items are deducted from your inventory. If you cancel an order, the items will be sent back to you through the mail system in Y hour(s).

All transactions that occur are deducted X% for broker fees on the gain of crowns. X% and Y hour(s) are placeholders for actual values obviously, I was thinking 1% to 2% and 1 hour for the values, but it's just a suggestion. The reason for the fees/time is because an AH would have to be another server altogether (in order to handle a player workload and not cause hassle on the main server), which would cost 3R money and we don't want people to bog down that server by constantly putting things on/off the orders list freely.

One flaw to this system is "unique altered" items (those that got a random stat boost during creation). There's no possible way to effectively keep a list of EVERY item based on their stats, so just the base name should bring up all of those items regardless of effects given to them. Special items could be given unique highlights in the list, to allow players to quickly scan to see which of the items have boosts and opt to pay the extra amount for them.

Another idea is to have a completely player controlled economy similar to EO....that would drive the crown-energy pricing as well.

Bump

Didn't read the thread, but is this thread really necessary. I'm pretty sure it's been made obvious to the devs that we need an Auction House (and why), and now they're either just ignoring these suggestions or being silent to troll us lol.

bumping for the good of the community.

Now that they implemented IMO a bad decision, a global channel instead of trade instances, we need an Auction House more then ever.

http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/5352

they're making an auction house. its confirmed. thread over.

Where and when did they confirm?

I agree.. SK needs some form of a auction house system.

Not sure which is worse. Trade chat or Ragnarok merchants setting up shops near the teleports lagging up the town :P