After watching your precious costume / attachment from very long to very short, there is always that ONE guy who outbids you with some extreme bid at the end.
This knights, if why you don't AH stalk.
It works rarely, but if you want something GOOD, I wish you good luck.
After watching 54 Divine Stars with very short time left almost about to buy for 7cr, boom a guy bids 250k.
MY LUCK, WHY?
Ever got extremely outbidded? Post here.
I've been outbidded many many times. There are those times when there is about 1 min left on the item, and some random person raises it even more!
In fact, it's happened so often to me, that I suspect there's some trickery underfoot. The person you are bidding against is none other than the original seller him/herself. They log onto their alts to jack up their own prices so some desperate fool would pay more than what he/she intended to. Whoops, looks like I've said too much. Black Marketing Secrets revealed to the world! Quick, hide the evidence!
It's called "Shill Bidding" and it's actually illegal in real life. But I doubt it. There are hundreds of people looking at the Auction house at the same time you do. Chances are a few of them will have an interest in the same item you want, and if you're unlucky, they'll have deeper pockets than you.
When bidding on anything with a value of 300k+,i find that the price only increases drastically during the Very Short time span.
I've watched auctions where items jump from 150kcr to 500kcr in less than 2 minutes.
Many people have the featured auctions timed, hence I don't bother with those :p
I've had bidding wars last over 45 minutes under Very Short. It's very tiring, but very rewarding.
The only thing I hate is when the people think they can outlast you by waiting until one minute is left before placing their bid and hoping you've left, looks like this:
You're holding highest bid
5:00 - 5 minutes
5:01 - 4 minutes
5:02 - 3 minutes
5:03 - 2 minutes
5:04 - 1 minutes, they bid (+1 minute)
5:04 - 2 minutes, you bid (+1 minute)
5:04 - 3 minutes
5:05 - 2 minutes
5:06 - 1 minutes, they bid (+1 minute)
5:06 - 2 minutes, you bid (+1 minute)
5:06 - 3 minutes
5:07 - 2 minutes
5:08 - 1 minutes, they bid (+1 minute)
5:08 - 2 minutes, you bid (+1 minute)
5:08 - 3 minutes
And so on. Biggest waste of time, EVER.
Tonight i watched an auction go from short to very short and well see for yourself HOW AH STALKING can be a good thing.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=173859449
It's called SNIPING... ever been in an auction before?
I do this all the time... and I know a lot of people who does it too, wait for it to go into VS, time the 5 minutes with an actual clock not your brain, estimate with the new bids the timelaps, bid at the last minute when the bidder thought he "secured" it and went LD or in Arcade run...
Got Prisma wolver tail at 1.7m cr that way...
It's all about timing, knowing the AH mechanics and making the last bid to snipe it....
And obviously when something is way underprice, people will bid on it, making it go higher and higher... until someone bails... that's how Auction works... I just can't put the blame on pre-existing mechanics that worked well for centuries...
I saw 3 blue gaslamp (short I believe) that went from 100k cr to 300k cr in very short... it was and still was underpriced at the end...
But when people really want something, they don't leave the auction house until the auction ends, even if it does have only a minute to go.
That's why repeated bid sniping on the same item is so stupid, because some think that they can still "bid snipe" when its very clear that the other person who's bidding is not going anywhere.
And that's why I always choose the "buy" option.
I won my very first bid war by AH stalking, actually. I grinding up 230K+ from FSC, bidded on a Sultry Eyes, it had no buy option on it, kept checking back, it was very short, hit bid, 30 secs later, I won it for 112K. I honestly take it all as first-timer's luck, and don't plan to enter any bid wars any time soon. I'll be... Holding onto it for 2 more months... 'Tis a secret.
So you're complaining about wasting time on the AH @ Very Short when YOU WANT to score a good deal.
If time is that important to you, just put the maximum you're willing to pay, and leave it as that.
Why yes, I got tired of losing ecto drops so sometimes i go from 10cr to 200.
I once bid 10 crowns on a prismatic halo.
Got outbid by hundreds of thousands.