[X] My Assistant

This is the thread for discussion of my auctions. For a while, most discussion had been going on in the Ask the Experts thread where I usually hang out, but I figured it was time to create a dedicated topic more suited to the purpose.

Feel free to make post suggestions, complaints, comments, or anything remotely related to auctions in general. The more feedback, the better - this is all for you guys, after all.

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Should the minimum bid increments be changed? Post #5+

Don't send trash that has no chance of getting bid on Post #60+

Limit of 3 proxy bids due to minimum increment advantage Post #94+

This post has been edited by Superlatanium: Nov 2 2016, 06:02

And if it is? (I would put high proxy bid in the last day only, better to keep a low price at first)

But anyway, why both you and LOL50015 have so little faith on the other HV users

It's the internet, a hive of scum and villainy.

Before going into detailed discussion on auction mechanics and the like, I'd actually like to take a step back and ask what started this whole thing. Have there been any complaints about the current system?

I think discussion came about because:

Went unsold.

3m isn't a whole lot for Radiant, but Surtr is unpopular and EDB is low. If the starting bid was default 50k, multiple people probably would have tried bidding on it, and likely would have continued to bid on it once the bid reached the millions because they don't want to lose an item they've already put effort into trying to win. But with a notably high starting bid, only users who are quite seriously interested at first may bid, which means less competition, or no competition at all.

A starting bid should ideally be at least somewhat lower than the order of magnitude an item is likely to sell for. Starting bids that are close to market price could well decrease a seller's profit, since it means the fighting over the item won't be lively at all.

I had two thoughts on that radiant surtr piece.

1. The EDB was far too low. So low that the 'radiant' effect was pretty much negated by the low EDB, and it would be a pretty expensive proposition to make the radiant effect shinier through forging. Might as well go for a cheap high EDB elemental equipment (which has some defensive benefits) or a charged mid-high EDB equipment that would at least have the charged benefit.

2. I think that 10% bid increments could deter that bidding effect. At some point, each increment becomes 5m, 10m, etc. That's gotta be enough to make the wealthiest hath barons pause for a bit. In real life, there was this auction when the bid was going at 3.5m and the auctioneer was asking... "do I hear 3.55m? don't let this go for 50k".

I think the 10% bid increments were useful in the past to make auction tracking manageable. But with auction tracking now largely automated, that reason no longer exists. It could also be the big reason to push bidders into placing proxy bids. IMO, the current scheme could even be reversed - 10% bid increments for items where the current bid is low, and 50k increments beyond the threshold.

That is, Superlatanium commented that a starting price that is close to market price will not have lively bidding. And my opinion was that the 10% bid increments deters this lively bidding too. Yes, it will ramp you up towards the final price quicker (which is a good thing), but it because very coarse grained at that point.

And this is obviously true if you think about an item with well established market prices, such as Energy Drinks. If it starts at market price, logic dictates that you might get the starting bid, and no futher bids. And if you start lower than market price, logic dictates that if someone places a bid 5% below market price, another user would not want to increment it by 10%, and pay ~5% over the market price.

For equipment, where the value depends on individual bidders, this isn't so clear cut. But I would submit that the process is the same.

I don't see any flaw in the actual system.

Don't want to raise ten times? Proxy bids.

Raises are too high? If you're interested you raise anyway, if you don't, just leave the item to the other person.

Starting bid is too high? Item unsold, and the problem is for the seller only.
I don't really get it

Yes, the current system doesn't have significant flaws. But, I don't see any problems with smaller increments too.

Also, with a small bid increment, players will be more able to prolong the item's auction time during the last 15 minutes, without significantly raising the current bid. Previously, the effectiveness of so-called "snipers" was a bit restricted because the bid amount would rise exponentially; their last-minute bid attempt would necessarily result in a notably higher required bid. With a low minimum bid increment, I would quite dislike it if someone comes out on top during a bid war in the first couple days of the auction, the item goes untouched, and then in the last 15 minutes someone else bids +50k and takes it.

If this sort of thing becomes the new rule, hopefully few would exploit it like that.

As a frequent auction sniper, I can almost guarantee that this will happen and become a problem.

If the goal is to deter auction sniping, I would like to propose the opposite idea: bid increments become higher as the end of the auction draws near. This encourages players to bid early and punishes players that snipe.

As a frequent auction sniper, I can almost guarantee that this will happen and become a problem.

If the goal is to deter auction sniping, I would like to propose the opposite idea: bid increments become higher as the end of the auction draws near. This encourages players to bid early and punishes players that snipe.

like +50k before extra time flag, +15% after? (or +12.3456789%, if they're going to snipe, make them bring the calculator up or pay more than the minimum bid increment to make sure the bid are accepted w)

like +50k before extra time flag, +15% after? (or +12.3456789%, if they're going to snipe, make them bring the calculator up or pay more than the minimum bid increment to make sure the bid are accepted w)

Yes, except I was thinking multiple time flags like this:
More than 24 hours remaining = the decreased minimum bid increments being proposed
Between 24 hours and 1 hour remaining = increased minimum bid increments
Between 1 hour and 15 minutes remaining = further increased minimum bid increments
Less than 15 minutes remaining = even further increased minimum bid increments

Although, having multiple time flags could be overly complicated and confusing so having a single time flag might be better.

And if it is? (I would put high proxy bid in the last day only, better to keep a low price at first)

But anyway, why both you and LOL50015 have so little faith on the other HV users

Don't worry, just give me a small donation of 1 million credits and consider my faith restored

As a frequent auction sniper, I can almost guarantee that this will happen and become a problem.

If the goal is to deter auction sniping, I would like to propose the opposite idea: bid increments become higher as the end of the auction draws near. This encourages players to bid early and punishes players that snipe.

But then there is the collateral damage to people who bid to defend against snipers and at any rate, its bound to get too complicated.

And why would you always snipe when you're already rich?

This post has been edited by LOL50015: Jun 14 2016, 13:56

current min bid increments are fine for me.
but i have another thing to discuss:

@Superlatanium, you are already done a great work, how about to do a some more? Im talking about fully automated online 24/7 auction.

*not a weekly auctions, but a single one.
*item adds to auction momentally and will be auctioned 7 days. (to prevent sniping additional time for bids in last day - +1 day)
*all possible searchings and sortings by name,stats,price, etc.

This post has been edited by VriskaSerket: Jun 14 2016, 15:50

And why would you always snipe when you're already rich?

well, for example: i want a item, and if my bid for it not enough high - it will be overbidded, most likely by snipers. so i need to stay online in last 10 min of auction. but if i anyway will be online in last 10 min - no sense to do bids at all before that - that just wasting of time. so im rich and im sniper


This post has been edited by VriskaSerket: Jun 14 2016, 16:01

current min bid increments are fine for me.
but i have another thing to discuss:

@Superlatanium, you are already done a great work, how about to do a some more? Im talking about fully automated online 24/7 auction.

*not a weekly auctions, but a single one.
*item adds to auction momentally and will be auctioned 7 days. (to prevent sniping additional time for bids in last day - +1 day)
*all possible searchings and sortings by name,stats,price, etc.

This will be too messy, lots of different end time, lots of different item everyday.

I'd rather super open a shop that provides automated proxy selling function.

well, for example: i want a item, and if my bid for it not enough high - it will be overbidded, most likely by snipers. so i need to stay online in last 10 min of auction. but if i anyway will be online in last 10 min - no sense to do bids at all before that - that just wasting of time. so im rich and im sniper

^^
I can't deny that you do have a point here but Proxy bids, so your argument is invalid.

What I was wondering: Should we remove the label that a bid was a proxy bid? I know this is a happy place where everybody loves each other but lets say someone wants to make you pay more and bid you up, it's very probably that your first proxy bid isn't your max.

Thats one of the reasons why I want a manual outbid

I would suggest lowering the minimum increment to 5% for the next auction and see how it goes.

Also I think manual bid still have a place, for example they can be used for bluffing (like directly putting the max bid when you think it can go higher in a bid war, in the hope of scaring away the other potential bidders).
It would be good to think of a system where both type of bidding can still be used.

Sure, it's just something I was imagining. Regardless, more people need to get used to proxy bidding first before I can count on it as something that a good number of bidders will use. So I think I won't change anything with regard to minimum bid increments for another couple weeks or so.

Proxy bids are only all that good for items that someone really cares about (and even then, one is free to bid manually if they want). It's not something that should be used all the time, it's just something that's a nice option to have in many cases.

Bid on something you don't want or have no money to pay for it...

I think everyone knows the trouble such a person will get into.

Before going into detailed discussion on auction mechanics and the like, I'd actually like to take a step back and ask what started this whole thing. Have there been any complaints about the current system?

No, it's just that it was past time for this topic to have its own thread - and there are quite a few important users who don't frequent Ask the Experts often enough to see the discussion and provide input.

As for the bid increment issue, could we maybe get some statistics on (final) bid distribution? Arguing over increments for >10m items might be quite the non-issue, if that only concers maybe less than 5% of all bids. On the other hand, I am assuming quite a number of items reach final prices around ~1m and the like, so this might be worth a closer look. But I'd still like to see some numbers here if possible, simply to shift the attention towards the right place.

The home page has links to all auction threads and bid logs that you can check out if you're interested. (Bid logs may be broken currently. I'm working on standardizing headers, and on redirecting each log to a single file instead of clogging up my /www/ with 40 different near-identical files)

I want a simple bid command to manually outbid on an item so I dont have to calc what is 10% more everytime
For example "One01 bid++" or "One01 +10%" something like that.

It's been mentioned before, but I'm not that keen because

• Users are not explicitly stating how much they are committing to. I don't want someone to reflexively post "Clo05 +10%" and then realize upon looking at the updated bid log "Wait, my previous bid was 22m, but this bid is 27.5m, which is so much more, do I really want to bid that much..." Maybe it would mean more impulsive bids and higher profits for the sellers, but I'm not sure it's in the bidders' best interest to have that option. (Sure, it would be just fine for bidders who are both conscientious and rich, but many aren't.) (For similar reasons, in a program or web interface, when making an important change or command that absolutely should be accurate, a few intelligently designed programs require that you type out "Yes" first to confirm, rather than having an "OK" button that less conscientious users would reflexively click.)
• The bid progression starting from Post #3 is re-calculated every time an update occurs. The bid log is built from scratch each time. Edited posts (which invalidate bids) and canceled bids already create issues, and I'm afraid a "+10%" would do the same. Currently, given an E-H auction thread, it would be pretty easy for someone to reconstruct the bid progression, and for each post, say "User X most certainly meant to bid exactly N on item A". But a thread completely full of "Bid +10%" or "Bid +minimum" (which probably wouldn't be unlikely, were such a command to become usable), as well as occasional edited posts and canceled bids, would be incredibly confusing for anything other than my automatic parser. Also, for the multiple people who bid "+minimum" on an item at Post #120, #175, #200, and #235, were a bid on that item in post #98 to be canceled, they would all be seeing in the bid logs bids different from what they intended before the cancel/edit. And the manual bidders would see themselves having bid, for example, 1.5m, when they were only required to have bid 1.3m previously to bid a valid higher bid. It could cause a cascade of problems.
• When bidding quickly, it's probably significantly easier to mistype a code when you're trying to type something like "code bid++", rather than when you look at an item and the code and figure out what increment you need to bid next, and then type "code ###k". Mistyped codes and +minimum bids that are later canceled can also result in revealed proxy bids, which is a very bad thing.

The command is not hard - I could probably add it in in 3 minutes - but I would have to be convinced.

(It's also nicer to use a proxy bid, as Sapo said)

I just want a manual way so I can bail out anytime I want while raising the price

If you know your secret max bid (or, at least, a conservative estimate of your max bid), then you'll automatically bid the minimum increment up until that point, and after that you'll "bail out" automatically.

What I was wondering: Should we remove the label that a bid was a proxy bid? I know this is a happy place where everybody loves each other but lets say someone wants to make you pay more and bid you up, it's very probably that your first proxy bid isn't your max.

One of the bigger reasons proxy bidding was introduced was to get people to submit their secret max bid, which will in turn reduce sniping, and provide more of a reason for auctions to last 3 days instead of just 20 minutes at the very end. If you proxy bid lower than your max bid, you'll just have to go bid again when/if you get outbid, when you really should've probably just proxy bid your max from the start. You are incentivized to proxy bid your true value, if you know it, at any time (possibly even days before the auction ends). If that value gets outbid, you pay nothing. If that value does not get outbid, you pay less. And either way, you don't have to go re-bid multiple times (which is not only annoying, but will also inform other users that you're re-bidding). The result is the same no matter when your max bid is submitted.

If I saw a nice Legendary Radiant something of something I was interested in, I would feel completely comfortable submitting a proxy bid for my true max of 36m (let's say) as soon as the auction starts. Given how the system works, others should feel similarly comfortable in doing such a thing.

That's if the person knows their max bid. If they don't, then they'll be re-bidding or re-proxy bidding anyway if they change their mind later.

But no one else knows whether a certain user's proxy bid is their true max or not until that user gets outbid.

(that's from an auction theory perspective. from a technical perspective, anyone who cares can see if a bid / proxy bid by a user is listed in the thread or not. if not, then its a proxy bid.)

As a frequent auction sniper, I can almost guarantee that this will happen and become a problem.

If the goal is to deter auction sniping, I would like to propose the opposite idea: bid increments become higher as the end of the auction draws near. This encourages players to bid early and punishes players that snipe.

As others said, this also creates a problem for the user who dutifully bid up to his highest bid in the days before (and does not understand proxy bidding for whatever reason) and currently has the highest bid. They are penalized as well.

It would also make the rules significantly more complicated.

@Superlatanium, you are already done a great work, how about to do a some more? Im talking about fully automated online 24/7 auction.

*not a weekly auctions, but a single one.
*item adds to auction momentally and will be auctioned 7 days. (to prevent sniping additional time for bids in last day - +1 day)
*all possible searchings and sortings by name,stats,price, etc.

It's not impossible, it's not like I haven't thought about it before, but it's a drastic change. There would be organizational issues (making independent verification of outcomes more difficult, especially for items whose time ended). It would have to be online 24/7 (next to no downtime), but I (currently) make changes to the auction site and the auction script pretty frequently and really like having a few days a week when I can feel comfortable making changes and debugging without causing any problems. (Such as right now. Things are broken) And it's also the sort of thing the boss probably wouldn't like. So it's not an option on the table.

well, for example: i want a item, and if my bid for it not enough high - it will be overbidded, most likely by snipers. so i need to stay online in last 10 min of auction. but if i anyway will be online in last 10 min - no sense to do bids at all before that - that just wasting of time. so im rich and im sniper

I can't deny that you do have a point here but Proxy bids, so your argument is invalid.

^

This post has been edited by Superlatanium: Jun 14 2016, 19:06

So after reading this thread again, checking on bid logs and auction threads, I'm not quite so sure anymore that any changes to bid increments will really have much of an impact.

If I had to break it down, I'd say there's 4 different categories of equipments:

• Items that don't get even a single bid: Either not worth even 50k or too high of a start bid
• Items that reach from 50k-200k: Basically better than what I have right now, but noth worth soulfusing type of gear. not good enough to justify a bid war, so these things naturally hit the cap after only a couple bids
• Items that range from 250k up to 2m or even 3m: Gear with some long-term value, but likely not your "final" equipment. Long-term use justifies spending some serious money here, and the final bid mostly depends on competition
• Items that reach bids of several millions: The really good stuff that one buys for long-term use. Soulfusing and forging are a given here, and prices are mostly capped by what funds one has available

Following these considerations, only the 3rd category I listed is noticeably influenced by bid increments. For cheap stuff, increments don't even matter because there's hardly any bids to begin with, and for the great stuff (like Power Slaughter, high-EDB Phase and such) it's more often down to what you actually can pay (excluding Hath-Barons).
So revisiting bid increments around the ~1m range might encourage buyers to place that one more bid, but I'm not so sure the final prices will be much different from what they are now.

On a more general note, I strongly sceond Super's don't fix what isn't broken approach. Any changes that might be implemented should happen after careful consideration and in a subtle manner.

I think the argument for a smaller increment the higher the price is very strong, especially for the cases of materials that people snipe for less than market price and higher value equipments.

The reason for this is that the higher the minimum increments of bids of items at a higher value, the further you'll likely be from the maximum price one person will bid. This can mean millions for high-end items.

I suggest that a smaller increment of 1% or so can be applied to items with a pre-existing market price such as materials and items that go over 1m.

I never understood the potential harm of snipers since there is a proxy bidding service and you don't even need to be present at the auction.

However, I think your time is better spent on making an automated shop to ensure that the items that don't meet the minimum requirement (or do and end up getting scalped in piyin's shop) are better allocated and result in more credits to the seller.

This post has been edited by cirrux: Jun 14 2016, 23:36

I never thought you can bid on an item and cancel to reveal other's proxy bid
Seems fun

Speaking from a lower-leveled player's perspective, lower quality, moderately okay gear gets mass-bid on at 50k by specific players for resale, and it's frustrating since 100k is usually too much to what is ultimately a transitory item.
I'm not committed enough to this place to try and instant-snipe things as soon as the auction goes up, and as a result am still wearing bazaar gear.

Priority on sub-400-ish items for similarly-leveled players would be nice (outbidding at same price). Smaller bid increments at low price points could work too, but could still result in poorer players just being outpriced by wealthy shop owners looking for profit.

Speaking from a lower-leveled player's perspective, lower quality, moderately okay gear gets mass-bid on at 50k by specific players for resale, and it's frustrating since 100k is usually too much to what is ultimately a transitory item.
I'm not committed enough to this place to try and instant-snipe things as soon as the auction goes up, and as a result am still wearing bazaar gear.

Priority on sub-400-ish items for similarly-leveled players would be nice (outbidding at same price). Smaller bid increments at low price points could work too, but could still result in poorer players just being outpriced by wealthy shop owners looking for profit.

Note that if other players are buying at 50k-100k for resale, that implies that they're reselling to players who want the gears (like you) for a higher price (150k-200k or more). So if you're not willing to pay more than 100k for something, although you may have been priced out of the item by the reseller bidder, the only reason the reseller bidder bid that amount in the first place is because they believe someone else like you is willing to pay even more. You're ultimately getting outpriced by other lower-leveled players who genuinely want to use the item for themselves.

It is true that a certain few players mass-bid 50k on lower level gears and then try to resell them at an unfairly large markup to other lower level players who don't know any better. "Warning for newbies: Watch out for xxxxx." But unlike those newbies, if you understand how to participate in auctions, you can attempt to compete with the reseller-bidder and have the chance of winning the item for less.

For items of that quality, I agree the +50k increment is definitely a problem for items that aren't likely to go over 150k anyway. It can just come down to who bids first. But that's bad, for the same reason that successful sniping is bad - the winner of an item should not depend on bid timing, it should only depend on how much their true secret max bid is.

If nothing else, I think I'll be making proxy bidders immune to the minimum bid increment (except when the proxy bid has just been submitted). It's something I'd been considering about how to implement for a while, even before this whole discussion got started.

Yea, this was the reason I suggested inverting the current bid increments, ie. to make it +10% below a certain threshold, and make it +50k above the threshold.

But if you have some other idea to help the low-level players like thraycount, go ahead!

"Warning for newbies: Watch out for xxxxx."

@newbies, Note the number of characters in xxxxx. It's not accidentally 5 characters long.

This post has been edited by mozilla browser: Jun 16 2016, 09:04

I think lowering incremental bid is reasonable, but also think no lowest limit is not a good idea. If it is fixed to 50k-for exapmle, than we will see [clo23 12.145m] [sta09 9.425m] etc...it'll be annoying, especially in higher bidding. Just simple scaling like Rhydin mentioned would be nice. No long demicals.

Reason I don't like auctions right now is that the end times for IS/Super's auctions end up being at 6AM/7AM for me, so I have to wake up absurdly early to be able to participate in the "last 10 minutes scramble".

For a system based on secret max bids, my thought was to make the winner pay what the 2nd place person bidded + minimal amount. I think ebay used that system.

Reason I don't like auctions right now is that the end times for IS/Super's auctions end up being at 6AM/7AM for me, so I have to wake up absurdly early to be able to participate in the "last 10 minutes scramble".

One of the biggest reasons for everything I've done is so people can feel free to proxy bid their max anytime they want - whether that's at the beginning of the auction, in the last 15 minutes, or during the days between. (Ideally, during the days in between. That way there's an actual point for auctions to last 3 days instead of just 15 minutes) Especially in an international forum like this one, the winner of an item should not depend on when a person goes to sleep and wakes up; it should only depend on how much they're willing to bid, which they can now do secretly, whenever they want.

For others' auctions, wake-up time is indeed a problem for some, but it shouldn't be a restriction for anyone who understands the mechanism of proxy bidding and is willing to use it.

For a system based on secret max bids, my thought was to make the winner pay what the 2nd place person bidded + minimal amount. I think ebay used that system.

[en.wikipedia.org] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_aucti...t_price_auction

The outcome is effectively the same. Bidders have an incentive to proxy bid their maximum, or how much they truly value the item. If they win the item, then they do not pay their maximum, but instead pay only the second highest bidder's bid + minimum increment.

Even in standard E-H auctions without proxy bidding, this still happens, except that in others, there's the incredibly annoying requirement that bidders have to be around in the last 15 minutes. In those other auctions, once an item comes close to the maximum people are willing to bid on it, successive bids are almost always only the +10% minimum. So when the last two people are bidding, once B drops out, the winner A pays (B's max) + minimum bid increment. (A does not pay A's true maximum bid)

I think lowering incremental bid is reasonable, but also think no lowest limit is not a good idea. If it is fixed to 50k-for exapmle, than we will see [clo23 12.145m] [sta09 9.425m] etc...it'll be annoying, especially in higher bidding. Just simple scaling like Rhydin mentioned would be nice. No long demicals.

Personally, I have nothing against decimals.

Something I noticed in other proxy-auction systems was that those who proxy bid uneven amounts are somewhat more likely to win an item than those who bid even amounts. In auctions, bidders generally care about the order of magnitude of a bid rather than the actual number. Someone who thinks their secret maximum bid on an item is 10m would likely be just as happy paying 10.005m. But most humans gravitate towards numbers with very few significant digits, such as "9m" "9.5m" "10m". In a proxy bidding system, those who anticipate this and proxy bid a tiny bit more than those sorts of even numbers will have a slight advantage over those who don't (even though the order of magnitude is virtually the same, and either bidder would be happy with either the smaller even price of the larger uneven price). If bidders want to compete that way, I don't have an objection.