Auction House: A Modest Proposal
Fri, 04/22/2011 - 09:26
Dear Knights-
I think we all agree that the game's economy is a royal pain in the butt. Selling, especially, is a nightmare. It can take hours--even days--to get your materials, recipes, and crafted goods into the right buyer's hands.
There's a lot of agreement among players that the game needs an auction house. The question is, what form would it take? I'd like to lay out a small proposal here. Feel free to chime in with agreements or disagreements. Maybe, possibly, the Forces That Be will take note...?
The way I see it, there are 3 criteria an auction house has to meet. First, it has to be easily accessible and well organized. Second, it has to bolster, not stunt, the in-game economy. Third--and this is a practical consideration--Three Rings has to get a cut somehow.
I propose that we have the opportunity to buy Auction Slots. That "Boost" character in the Bazaar should be the go to guy. Like his Trinket/Extra Weapon Slots, Auction Slots should expire after a fixed length of time--maybe 7 days--and they should get progressively more expensive. Say, your first one for 1K crowns, your second for 2.5K, etc. Each slot only holds one item (or stack of materials), but you can move items in and out, and adjust your asking price freely.
This system, by keeping the market from being flooded, will hopefully keep sales profits relatively high. Additionally, players can respond to fluctuations of supply/demand in real time. This is where a well-organized, easy-to-use interface is essential. The "Energy Depot Market" already has a reasonable, if limited, model that with minor adjustments could serve as an Auction House. For sellers, you would need an immediate comparison of the current range of prices, and a way of seeing, at a glance, what recipes/materials/crafted items are Not currently on the market. Buyers would need a hierarchical tree (similar to the one at http://wiki.spiralknights.com/List_of_alchemy_paths), a search function, and the ability to look at only UV crafted items, for starters.
It would make sense for the Auction House to be accessible only from Haven; or maybe Alchemy stands could become Alchemy/Market stands?
That's the sum of it. Of course, it wouldn't eliminate the need/use for hawking stuff on the street, as it were. But it would make everyone's life a lot easier--And give Three Rings a new way to skim the cream off the top.
What do you think?
-Numa
Fri, 04/22/2011 - 09:39
#2
Most modern MMOs do it by
Most modern MMOs do it by having a small tax on things you put up for sale.
An auction house is ideal in a free market environment because it forces competitive pricing rather than just people taking advantage of the fact that they're the only ones in trade chat at the moment.
Fri, 04/22/2011 - 10:00
#3
Yes, but,
What does competitive pricing mean? We're already seeing people willing to sell recipes At Cost--even below. What would happen if everyone could sell all their stuff all the time? If everyone put all their Miracloths up, and each undercut the one before it, what would they be worth? What I like about the system I've proposed is that it limits each player to just selling a few things at any given time. So maybe on a given day, No One will be selling something common like gel cores--and you can rush in to fill the vaccuum. Then, after a few hours, switch to a skelly shield recipe in the hopes of a wider profit margin.
Alkan, crowns Are in-game currency, and every additional crown people are likely to spend makes them more likely to drop another 10 bucks on CE, and then convert it. If Three Rings doesn't have an incentive to institute an Auction House why would they? I'll agree, though, that it makes sense to start with few slots off the bat. But these are just questions of fine-tuning.
Fri, 04/22/2011 - 10:08
#4
Unlikely.
Crowns are attainable in-game. What you need is a crown sink that makes it worthwhile to convert, yes. Making the auction house cost money to use, though, negates the whole purpose of letting people trade.
The only reason I want to sell mats is to get more money to buy something I want. If I have to PAY money to sell materials (which is what will be happening at lower levels, maybe not so much in tier 3/5*), I'm liable to just dungeon dive instead. At least that way, there's a measure of guaranteed profit, rather than paying $1k and finding out that nobody wants to buy my stuff/someone with too much time has undercut all my prices, costing me crowns for nothing.
I'm all in favor of taxing a successful sale, but not so much the slots idea. There are other ways of limiting the degree of fluctuation.
Fri, 04/22/2011 - 10:21
#5
No one is going to sell
No one is going to sell anything below cost unless they're desperate to get rid of it. People can and still will gouge for more rare items on an AH. They just won't be able to do it as much once they become more common. Trust me, in a free market, prices are never going to get "too low" because people want to make money, period.
Look at the auction house system in any other MMO. Seems to work just fine. It lets you search for items easily and sell your own items while you're busy sleeping or working instead of sitting in trade chat for hours instead of actually playing the game.
I mean, Ragnarok Online came out over 10 years ago, and even it had a player shop system set up so people can sell while they're AFK.
Having to do things purely through chat and trust-based trades is like taking it all the way back to the Diablo 2 era of player-run economies.
As for the costing money part of the AH. It's usually a very low amount. DFO charges you a small % of the profit, and I remember it being a very low amount on WoW as well.
Spiral Knights could make using the auction house cost a % based on the price of the item you put up. That way, you're not losing like 100 or 200 crowns on a 500 crown item.
Fri, 04/22/2011 - 10:17
#6
I'd say 5-10%, scaling with
I'd say 5-10%, scaling with price of item and tier of item.
Fri, 04/22/2011 - 10:22
#7
... Where is the eating
... Where is the eating babies joke?
Entire thread is babies. >:C
Fri, 04/22/2011 - 10:31
#8
That would probably be fine.
That would probably be fine. You have to keep it balanced so players actually want to use the AH instead of defaulting to trade chat out of greed again.
But, then again, the convenience that the AH offers would probably draw most players to use it instead anyway.
If Spiral Knights is supposed to be a casual game, then you can't expect players to spend hours a day in trade trying to get rid of their excess mats. An AH both balances out the game economy in terms of pricing, and also makes it so you have to sink less (or really no) time into selling/buying items. Not to mention the convenience of being able to search for items.
A crafting-based game like this is very dependent on players selling/buying mats from each other. Especially since some of the stuff you need to make the tier 2 sets are mainly found in depth 2 areas.
Fri, 04/22/2011 - 10:32
#9
Magnus:
I know, I kept expecting someone to make that joke.
Fri, 04/22/2011 - 10:50
#10
Putting a limit on auction house seems counter productive
i dun see y only the rich can sell more stuff
To be Honest your proposed model seems complicated,
and complicated stuff are not likely going to work well
got to buy this to sell that and buy smthing else to sell more.. wad??? meh~~
I do not think Three Rings would need to get a cut out of it
AH should just follow the KISS model
Post my stuff, set a price,
it would be nice to be able to ask for either crown or energy or both,
Then forget about it and go play the game.
return, and hopefully collect some profit.
But i agree on your proposed search model, and that it can only be accessed from certain areas.
Fri, 04/22/2011 - 11:26
#11
AH should just follow the
AH should just follow the KISS model
Post my stuff, set a price,
it would be nice to be able to ask for either crown or energy or both,
Then forget about it and go play the game.
return, and hopefully collect some profit.
iawtp.
Fri, 04/22/2011 - 11:51
#12
heh
are people still under the impression that crowns and ce are two different currencies?
Three Rings having to get a cut. Are they getting a cut of crowns here? If so, what are they actually getting out of it? If it costs energy to trade, it doesn't solve the trading problem at all. If, on the other hand, it costs crowns, Three Rings isn't getting anything out of it, even if they DO skim off the top.
Are slots going to be equal between materials (50,000 of those) and recipes (maybe 50-100)? Would players start with a slot, or do they have to pay money to sell things to potentially make money?
If you want to make the AH a partial crown sink, I think there are better ways of doing it (e.g. a tax). The slots idea makes some degree of sense, but I think it should be more akin to weapon/trinket slots, in that you start with X and can buy Y for some monetary amount Z. Wouldn't make sense to start with 0 or 1 (yay, I can sell one material today. Which will it be? Hmm...).