[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

I'll get around to reading this thread eventually because I am interested.

My tl;dr thoughts for min bid increments is 'min bid increment +5 or 10% up until 1m'.
So any item that gets higher than 10m has a min bid increment of 1m. Any item at 100m would still have a min bid increment of 1m.

Superlatanium, Just an example of this is the radiant heimdall piece you sold a couple weeks back.
In my mind, that piece was not worth more than 200m. I stopped bidding because the bid +10% would have been ~205m. However, I would have gone up to 200m... maybe the other bidder wouldn't have?

The point of a minimum bid increment is to not waste people's time with low bids, but +1m would never be considered a low bid.

(If this has already been suggested, ignore me)

Also, RE: materials...
In auctions, this should have as small an increment as possible, 1% maybe.

Superlatanium, the following is worth a read and will make you lots of HV$$.

I'd like to propose an alternate system of selling materials/items outside of an auction.
This method will require a 'seller' to install a script, but not require a 'buyer' to have a script.

People who want to sell have a generated key similar to the Bid Key for use when making requests to Super's server.

An HV script is used to parse a users Inventory on page load which posts configured materials/equipment they want to sell.
- i.e. I want to sell MGW, so I configure the script to sell xx MGW at some price
- The script caches and 'registers' my request by posting to Super's server.
- If the qty of MGW changes and the script is configured as such, a new request is auto-sent or the existing request is updated.
- The server puts my 'Sell MGW' request onto a stack to give fair use to other sellers.

People who want to buy 'MGW' send a moogle mail to Superlatanium with desired price.
- The server gets the MM request from Super's account
- Matches seller to buy request and sends a MM to the buyer 'your request is being processed'
- Finds no matches to seller and sends a MM to the buyer 'no results found'
- For items, this could be a unique item ID which is created when a seller registers an item.
- Sending to Super instead of using a web page ensures no spoofing of accounts.

On the seller side, the server returns a request on HV page load.
- A button on the seller's inventory/HV screen pops up with a notice 'click here to sell x MGW for x credits'
- A seller clicks the button and automatically sends a COD MM with the quantity

At the end of the week, a notice pops up requesting 10% of the total transaction fees for continued use of the product.
(preventing Super's account from directly collecting this fee or directly handling transactions)

After a period of time, the script scans the sellers moogle mails for 'stale' transactions.
Those that have not completed are returned to seller and not added to total transaction fee.
(The server assumes a transaction is complete when a Seller confirms until the 'stale' transaction is found.)

There is obviously room for exploit in this system on the Seller side to get around paying transaction fees.
This can be mitigated by having the server match requests and responses of actions as well as hiding the Buyers name until the Seller confirms the transaction.
If too many mismatched requests occur, ban the seller from the system.

Ideally, during the days in between. That way there's an actual point for auctions to last 3 days instead of just 15 minutes

More like 24h before the end of the auction since before that other users can bid to reveal your proxy bid (knowing your maximum) and then cancel it.
Sure, you can ban them if they do it over and over, but it would still be annoying.
I personally will proxy bid (at least with the real maximum) only in the last day, since there is nothing to be gained by proxy bidding earlier.

I'd like to propose an alternate system of selling materials/items outside of an auction.
This method will require a 'seller' to install a script, but not require a 'buyer' to have a script.

[cut]

Interesting idea.
If there was a page displaying all the materials quantity and price (like GP and hath exchange right panel, but without the names) it would be very useful.

10% up until 1m'.

Yea, my idea was same. Its very close to old system, because its same 10% and it works good in low range. But with time even single bid becomes very expensive and 1m limit for minimal bid d be much more flexible.

Found a small bug this morning in the proxy bid feature.



It said I had the max bid at the same time Astor12 had the max bid.

It looks like this could be a condition where a bidder bids the same as the proxy bid and the actual user isn't checked.

Found a small bug this morning in the proxy bid feature.



It said I had the max bid at the same time Astor12 had the max bid.

It looks like this could be a condition where a bidder bids the same as the proxy bid and the actual user isn't checked.

What happens when this bidding div comes up is, the item tables on the page are searched for a match to the item code, and the first match (which will necessarily have the current winning bid at the time of page load) will send the info in the table row to the bidding div.

The issue is that said page load might not have the most recent information if bids are coming in quickly. The item list page does update automatically, but not that quickly.

I'm hoping this is what the situation was? Eg. you saw someone bid on it, tabbed back to the itemlist page that had been open for a while (and not necessarily up to date), and submitted a new bid? (If that wasn't the situation, then there is a more serious bug I need to look at)

I guess maybe I should reduce the recheck timeout from 15 minutes to 5 minutes or so...

More like 24h before the end of the auction since before that other users can bid to reveal your proxy bid (knowing your maximum) and then cancel it.
Sure, you can ban them if they do it over and over, but it would still be annoying.

I have absolutely zero tolerance for that, and even if I'm not online at the time, I'll see anyone who's tried that in the edit log.

But I have some faith in them. I don't think there are more than one or two who would be scummy enough to intentionally attempt such a thing.

What happens when this bidding div comes up is, the item tables on the page are searched for a match to the item code, and the first match (which will necessarily have the current winning bid at the time of page load) will send the info in the table row to the bidding div.

The issue is that said page load might not have the most recent information if bids are coming in quickly. The item list page does update automatically, but not that quickly.

I'm hoping this is what the situation was? Eg. you saw someone bid on it, tabbed back to the itemlist page that had been open for a while (and not necessarily up to date), and submitted a new bid? (If that wasn't the situation, then there is a more serious bug I need to look at)

I refreshed the item list page before raising my maximum bid.

It seems to be very minor, though.. It didn't block me from actually raising the max bid and the proxy bid was applied.

I refreshed the item list page before raising my maximum bid.

It seems to be very minor, though.. It didn't block me from actually raising the max bid and the proxy bid was applied.

Oh, I get it. It's nothing to do with page refreshing - is the issue that you have a listed proxy bid with a max of 1000k, but the other guy is winning the item with his 1000k bid (the same number), which is causing the confusion, right?

It's due to the minimum bid increment. The manual bidder bids first. (He bid 1000k) Then proxy bidders outbid manual bidders if they're able to, but if there's a manual bid of 1000k, a successful proxy bid after that needs to have a maximum of at least 1030k (+3% given current increment rules) or it'll fail. So any proxy bid under that (including 1000k, which just happens to be the same number as his bid) doesn't pass.

The fact that your max proxy bid amount displayed was the same as his manual bid amount was just coincidence (somewhat due to "most humans gravitate towards numbers with very few significant digits" in a previous post)

I'd like to propose an alternate system of selling materials/items outside of an auction.
This method will require a 'seller' to install a script, but not require a 'buyer' to have a script...

So basically, a system to match buyers up with sellers. Eg. "Mid-Grade Metals" exchange, and many others, just like the official Hath etc exchanges.

It would certainly look better and easier than the item shop bot, and on the surface is easier than WTS/WTB on the forums, but:

• Volume. For such a system to be successful, there would have to be a quite decent number of buyers and sellers active. But encouraging users to do anything outside of what they've always done is like pulling teeth, even if the other option would make things easier for them.
  
  See my Tag Check script. I love it, it automatically checks to see if downvoted tags still exist on galleries, and if they do, formats a forum post ready to post to the Tagging Abuse thread (eg. elgringo and Binglo frequently post lots and lots of lists of galleries with bad tags to kill at once).
  
  But near no one uses it, not even the vigilante mods (yes, I can see who uses it). They still all note down and re-check everything by hand. That's just an example - getting people to use a system that isn't official, when they can already accomplish the same thing themselves, is very difficult. (Then add the language barrier, which is even more of a problem on the HV side than on the vigilante side...)
• Any fee at all will depress volume. The difference between the highest WTB price and the lowest WTS price is often quite small. I think only those with large quantities of stuff they can't use would be OK with a 10% fee. (and if the fee is low, it wouldn't be worth my time coding it, especially given how few would be likely to use it anyway)
• Users can already very easily compare prices and find a buyer or seller with the best price with near no effort or fees... with SmartSearch. Sure, when using SmartSearch you have to make all the requests yourself manually, but I think it would still be a lot more trustworthy to use than this materials-exchange would be. (from a buyer's or seller's point of view)

The core of the idea is a good one - of making trading items and finding prices more automated and accomplishable in one click or two, rather than the current somewhat silly system that relies on browsing a forum to buy and sell. But I think there are too many barriers for it to be a worthwhile project for me and for sellers and buyers.

Now, if something that did that was some sort of official system authorized by the boss and integrated with HV, that would be an interesting project to work on. I've vaguely wondered about such a system a few times before (connected to the Item Shop Bot), it seems like it wouldn't be that hard at all. But something that does that much that isn't official would be very difficult to get rolling, especially in a community as small and as international as this one.

Regarding minimum bid increments: I was thinking about a way to get people to make fewer errors while giving them more freedom in how much they want to increase the bid. Aiming for even increments like +50k, +200k, +1m, etc, I was playing around with the numbers trying to figure out how to keep the increment low (<~6%) while also not creating too many bid divisions (eg. bid < 500k, 500k <= bid < 3m, 3m <= bid < 15m, bid > 15m) but it doesn't really work out. Either there are way too many divisions, or the increment is very high below a critical point (like 10%) and very low right after.

I wonder if people sometimes have trouble with the +10% not so much because they'd have to bust out a calculator to find the smallest next bid (even though that's part of it), but because +10% is sometimes a lot that they don't want to pay if they don't have to, so when a bid is already a substantial increase, a human can be tempted to err in their own favor rather than verify the calculation. But, anyone who actually cares about an item should be proxy bidding anyway, in which case figuring out the increment isn't an issue at all.

Right now, I'm heavily leaning towards a uniform bid increment of +3%, like [Mat]s are currently. (well, +15k up to 500k, +3% above 500k.) It's a lot smaller than 10%, but (1) the system can take it, (2) it's more compatible with proxy bidding than the 10% rule, (3) it gives bidders a lot more freedom to choose how much they really want to increase the bid by, instead of a significant +10% always, (4) it will encourage proxy bidding (and more proxy bidding makes things more convenient for everyone if the proxy bids are honest).

But encouraging users to do anything outside of what they've always done is like pulling teeth, even if the other option would make things easier for them.

Its true, it took me 500 levels before I try mage

Its true, it took me 500 levels before I try mage

Funny story. I know a guy who always uses scrolls as melee, not because he needs them (he doesn't) or because he has many spare funds (he doesn't), but just because he's never cast buffs and always uses scrolls, like he's always done.

(He PMd me while in the middle of a DwD asking what he should do because his Scroll of the Gods stock ran out mid-battle and he didn't want to die from an unlucky SP attack. I told him he should cast Spark now that scroll isn't an option. He didn't know how to do that, or how to cast any of the other buffs he relied on with scrolls.

This guy is near level 400. I'm completely serious.)

I remember spending insane amount of credits on doggiebags back in the day before realizing buying GP makes it so much cheaper. I wonder if the credits I used to download gets passed onto the uploader.

but it doesn't really work out. Either there are way too many divisions, or the increment is very high below a critical point (like 10%) and very low right after.

I dont think there is something wrong with ordinary 10% in low segment. Except bindings/materials. I mean daily full pf arenas give 300-400k+ for any player who can clear it. So its not like many players in 2-5m range ll be strict about small difference. 2,5m-->2,75-2,8m is ok. 2,5m-->2,6m is simply too small and in most cases its excessively. But 26m and 28m already becomes much higher difference, because its already almost week of all arenas.

See my Tag Check script. I love it, it automatically checks to see if downvoted tags still exist on galleries, and if they do, formats a forum post ready to post to the Tagging Abuse thread (eg. elgringo and Binglo frequently post lots and lots of lists of galleries with bad tags to kill at once).

But near no one uses it, not even the vigilante mods (yes, I can see who uses it). They still all note down and re-check everything by hand. That's just an example - getting people to use a system that isn't official, when they can already accomplish the same thing themselves, is very difficult. (Then add the language barrier, which is even more of a problem on the HV side than on the vigilante side...)

i don't do tagging so i don't use it.
but i like the rename helper a lot. that really helps.

Regarding minimum bid increments: I was thinking about a way to get people to make fewer errors while giving them more freedom in how much they want to increase the bid. Aiming for even increments like +50k, +200k, +1m, etc, I was playing around with the numbers trying to figure out how to keep the increment low (<~6%) while also not creating too many bid divisions (eg. bid < 500k, 500k <= bid < 3m, 3m <= bid < 15m, bid > 15m) but it doesn't really work out. Either there are way too many divisions, or the increment is very high below a critical point (like 10%) and very low right after.

I wonder if people sometimes have trouble with the +10% not so much because they'd have to bust out a calculator to find the smallest next bid (even though that's part of it), but because +10% is sometimes a lot that they don't want to pay if they don't have to, so when a bid is already a substantial increase, a human can be tempted to err in their own favor rather than verify the calculation. But, anyone who actually cares about an item should be proxy bidding anyway, in which case figuring out the increment isn't an issue at all.

Right now, I'm heavily leaning towards a uniform bid increment of +3%, like [Mat]s are currently. (well, +15k up to 500k, +3% above 500k.) It's a lot smaller than 10%, but (1) the system can take it, (2) it's more compatible with proxy bidding than the 10% rule, (3) it gives bidders a lot more freedom to choose how much they really want to increase the bid by, instead of a significant +10% always, (4) it will encourage proxy bidding (and more proxy bidding makes things more convenient for everyone if the proxy bids are honest).

3% seems decent. maybe worth a test

I was reading the warning log of the current auction (#14) and saw this:

#13 djackallstar bid on Clo17 for 895k but last bid by sssky #11 was 1000k and next minimum bid is 1030k

and immediately thought: "the next minimum bid shouldn't be 1050k?". Then I went to the rules and saw that the +3% increment starts at 1000k, making the system correct, but that feels really strange... You are making +50k increments then suddenly the increments become +30k again... I know that doesn't make any difference, it's just awkward to me.

Doing some simple math (50/0,03) I discovered that an increment of 50k doing +3% starts at 1666.66k (1700k +3% = 51k increment), so imho you could raise the minimum bid to start getting +3% increments to something like 2000k.

I also feel uneasy with the +30k increment, because starting at 50k, and assuming everybody bids the minimum you would get to 290k after 8 bids, not 300k, and with the +50k after the 320k one you would never fix it.

(yes, I have problems)

I'd do 50k start, +30k if bid<200k, +50k if 200k<=bid<2m, +3% for everything else.

Doing some simple math (50/0,03) I discovered that an increment of 50k doing +3% starts at 1666.66k (1700k +3% = 51k increment), so imho you could raise the minimum bid to start getting +3% increments to something like 2000k.

I'd do 50k start, +30k if bid<200k, +50k if 200k<=bid<2m, +3% for everything else.

It's not a continuous function. I know, it's annoying to me too.

I wanted to make as few rules as possible so it would be pretty easy to remember. I think 3 sections is OK (50k-300k, 300k-1m, 1m+), and that more might be too much.

It's not the discontinuousness that's an issue, but that +50k and +3% is small (nearly not worth fighting over) when over a few hundred thousand and under a handful of millions. The minimum bid increment shouldn't be going down to under 50k like that, it was only at 30k in the beginning to make the increment from 50k-300k more reasonable. You're right, extending the +50k range would make more sense than what's in place currently, and would reduce unnecessarily trivial bids.

Still, most of that is just a benefit for those who aren't using the automatic bid system, which most should be using in most cases (except if they're just bidding once or twice very close to their secret true maximum bid).

I need to encourage its use more. Sometime soon I may start a special so that those who win items with an automatic proxy bid only have to pay 85% of the sell price.

I also feel uneasy with the +30k increment, because starting at 50k, and assuming everybody bids the minimum you would get to 290k after 8 bids, not 300k, and with the +50k after the 320k one you would never fix it.

Sure you would, on Bid #43, of 1800k. That's a nice even number, right?

Unimportant side note: I made a change so that proxy bidders always have only a 1k minimum bid increment. This way, if possible, they'll always bid their maximum first before folding to someone else bidding slightly lower.

Sometime soon I may start a special so that those who win items with an automatic proxy bid only have to pay 85% of the sell price.

Don't take me wrong: I really like the proxy bid system. It's easy and leads to no errors and with the bid page you made it only makes it better. But I also like seeing the battles of the millions at the end of an auction... And with the auto update of the main page (auto, but manual - that should make no sense, but it does here ), along with the warning log, I don't see too much problems with the normal bids...

Sure you would, on Bid #43, of 1800k. That's a nice even number, right?

Yes, it's a nice even number

Unimportant side note: I made a change so that proxy bidders always have only a 1k minimum bid increment. This way, if possible, they'll always bid their maximum first before folding to someone else bidding slightly lower.

That's a really nice improvement. I like it. (but I just realized that it breaks the nice chain of bids before the percent increment... well, nothing is perfect...)

This post has been edited by Jack Tekila: Jun 23 2016, 13:42

Don't take me wrong: I really like the proxy bid system. It's easy and leads to no errors and with the bid page you made it only makes it better. But I also like seeing the battles of the millions at the end of an auction... And with the auto update of the main page (auto, but manual - that should make no sense, but it does here ), along with the warning log, I don't see too much problems with the normal bids...

There are a few big problems with ordinary bids.

• Bidders frequently waste each others' time by bidding and re-bidding and re-bidding, and after that still be nowhere close to either player's maximum bid on a high value item, so they have to repeat and repeat and repeat some more. It's tedious for them. I, as an automatic auctionner, shouldn't particularly care because it's their loss, not mine, but as someone with an engineering mindset, it really annoys me when I see people repeatedly doing things inefficiently.
• Sniping. With normal bids, players know that other players' bids are almost always not their true maximum bid. So, in an attempt to keep the other player off-guard and to win the item for less, even if player A sees player B currently winning an amazing item for 200k, A may well wait until the last 15 minutes to bid, in the hope that B is careless and misses re-bidding. It's quite scummy, but it's also done because of:
• Counter-sniping. A player might also wait until the last 15 minutes just so they can make sure they're online at the end, so they can't be sniped themselves.

If a player places an honest proxy bid sometime before the end, they don't have to re-bid, they don't have to counter-snipe to win the item at the lowest possible bid (min increment above the next bidder), and they also won't be sniping others.

Note that a great many online auctions on other sites/systems/games only offer proxy bidding, in part because of these issues with manual bidding. HV has generally used manual bidding not because it's a good system (it's not, it's quite a bad system), but because the auctioneers in the past did everything manually, so there was no other choice. That's what people are used to, and I hope to change that.

The fact that HV auctions have virtually required users from all over the world (with incredibly different schedules and sleep times) to come online at a set hour has annoyed me for a very long time. But with the advent of automatic proxy bidding, that shouldn't be an issue anymore, if enough people start using it. Users can submit their secret max bid (or a number close to their secret max bid) whenever they want in the days leading up the end of the auction, and whether they win or not will not depend on when they submit it (which is the case for manual bidding, and for auctions hosted by others), but instead, solely on the maximum they're willing to bid, which is the way an ideal auction should be.

Bidders are used to always sniping and counter-sniping because that has been the dominant strategy, so that has been what they've always done. But if enough people start using proxy bids, it will no longer be a dominant strategy, and everyone will be able to happily submit proxy bids whenever, without worrying about absurd things like "Uh oh, I hope I wake up or get off work by XX:50 tomorrow in order to bid on this item in the auction."

It's true that all of that is not my problem, since the system works anyway - but like I said earlier, it really annoys me when people make things more troublesome for themselves than it has to be. So, I'm hoping to somehow convince people that manual bidding is usually a terrible idea. Humans often don't like adapting to new systems though... unfortunately. Hopefully I can get over the language barrier too...

Recent discussion: Manual bidding is usually a terrible idea compared to automatic proxy bidding

Error 404: Discussion not found

Can we put a rules about expunging recurrent submissions?

Auction #10
[Hea33] Magnificent Zircon Power Gauntlets of Warding (364) (seller: ppp82p)

no bid

Auction #11
[Hea19] Magnificent Zircon Power Gauntlets of Warding (364, ADB 34%) (seller: ppp82p)

no bid

Auction #12
[Hea28] Magnificent Zircon Power Gauntlets of Warding (364, ADB 34%) (seller: ppp82p)

no bid

Auction #13
[Hea42] Magnificent Zircon Power Gauntlets of Warding (364, ADB 34%) (seller: ppp82p)

no bid

Auction #14
[Hea37] Magnificent Zircon Power Gauntlets of Warding (364, ADB 34%) (seller: ppp82p)

no bid

Auction #15
[Hea24] Magnificent Zircon Power Gauntlets of Warding (364, ADB 34%) (seller: ppp82p)

incredibly still no bid.

I mean, WTF, auctions are not shops (the no fee means Super is working for free giving increased visibility gaining nothing in return, basically better than proxy shops) and reading a lot of useless entries that should not qualify for minimum bid is a pain in the ass.

I suggest either a limit of re-submission (I would say 1 unless minimum bid is changed) or applying a fee (10%) on resubmitted item with same bid.

-----------------------------------

Another solution would be to have another auction with lower minimum bid where equips that are not really worth 50k could actually be sold after the first try, but that's another story entirely.

This post has been edited by Sapo84: Jul 2 2016, 22:47