Auction portal

Olivierko · June 2015

Greetings,

I'm writing today to see if there would be any interest of an idea that struck my mind, the idea is based on previous MMO's that I've played.

I work as a developer by trade and currently I'm mostly working with web applications. I have made two add on contributions thus far to ESO TU which initially started as a curiosity to learn the LUA scripting language.

The main purpose of this post is to see if there would be any interest at all for the project in matter, I'm not quite certain whether it breaks any terms or not. There might even be a chance that there's someone else already working on a similar idea.

The idea which I want to present is quite simple, since this game lacks an auction house and basically forces people into trading guilds just for the simple reason to sell an item at a vendor.

What I purpose is a web portal that will act as a auction house, A platform which would allow users to trade, sell and exchange crafting services.

Upon submitting a new auction the user would be prompted to select platform (pc, xbox or ps) and server (eu or na) followed by selecting the item he or she wants to buy or sell.

Additional auction preferences:
- Length of auction
- Starting price
- Buyout price

Once a auction has completed its up to the two involved parties to finalise the trade by mail or a in game trade.

After a successful auction the auctioneer and the buyer would have the possibility of leaving a review of the actual transaction for everyone to see.

The platform itself could have various features such as viewing ongoing auctions sorted by time remaining, filter by category or item name etc.

It could work as a price checker as well with breakdown graphs.

Trading services would work in a similar way.

The requirements for this would be to have a consistent database with up to date items, it would also require some gatekeeping by admins in order to maintain a mature and trustful list of members.

This idea might or might not be appreciated, some prefer the fact that trading is a bit different in ESO whilst others might believe that the transactions of a external auction would include too much overhead.

If this project would violate any rules then I apologise for the post and understand that this thread needs to be closed.

If you approve or disapprove of this idea please cast your poll and if you happen to have any suggestions or remarks to share don't hesitate to comment.

Regards,

Raash · June 2015

Portal sounds meh, i rather beam up to a spaceship

Danikat · June 2015

Yes

Back when I played Guild Wars 1 regularly I used a very similar (virtually identical) site called GWAuctions and that worked very well.

The main downside was that GW1 is missing a lot of features which are now standard in MMOs, including mail. So after your auction ended you still had to arrange a time and place to meet up with a buyer which could be problematic. But I don't see that being an issue in ESO.

Other than that it was a very good solution for people who prefer to offer an item for auction and let buyers bid on it rather than selling for a fixed price.

JD2013 · June 2015

In Tamriel, Portals Oblivion you!

BigM · June 2015

No

LOL Talk about scamming people. Come on this very bad idea.

I know it was being worked on to get prices something like that but then it turned into Master merchant, great addon. Then Guild Sales Assistant 2.1.1 joined up with MM and now we have an offline way to look at prices. Got to love the PC.

But what you are asking for would be a good way to scam people and really ruin the economy. So NO!

Olivierko · June 2015

BigM wrote: »

LOL Talk about scamming people. Come on this very bad idea.

I know it was being worked on to get prices something like that but then it turned into Master merchant, great addon. Then Guild Sales Assistant 2.1.1 joined up with MM and now we have an offline way to look at prices. Got to love the PC.

But what you are asking for would be a good way to scam people and really ruin the economy. So NO!

By all means elaborate what you refer to by scamming, in the thread I wrote that it would require additional overseeing by so called gatekeepers.

There would be auctions that would fail but eventually the people who were posting fake bids would be filtered out, sign ups would be bound to your account name or gamer tag, with an initial overseeing of new members by invite only.

There are loads of different ways to prevent any sort of scam.

Master merchant and similar add ons are great sure, but the amount of issues that people are having just because it's using virtually all of the instanced memory is just laughable.

BigM · June 2015

No

If you can't see gatekeepers being corrupt you must think the FiFa people are all honest also.

Olivierko · June 2015

The gatekeepers soul purpose is to remove the users who isn't following certain guidelines. At start it would be a enclosed list of people, regardless, the comparison you make doesn't make sense. There's no profit involved at anyone's end, the actual trading would still be between the two parties (auctioneer and winner).

The only scenario where one might feel scammed would be when a trade fails to fall through on either part. All bids would be public and the procedure for each auction would be automated once in place, meaning no one would be able to alter the auctions.

Lionxoft · June 2015

No

There was something like this near launch called EsoBid but the community got it shut down. It was essentially eBay with auctions for ESO items for gold and worked with a merit system similar to eBay "feedback". The auctions were automated with a bid system and from the short time it was up I found it was pretty solid. It would connect players like a trade forum does but in a bit more organized and fair fashion getting the seller the best deal possible while facilitating the communication. Sadly, the community wasn't able to handle it or it just wasn't worth the time. Regardless, it got just down.

In other words don't waste your time.

Olivierko · June 2015

Lionxoft wrote: »

There was something like this near launch called EsoBid but the community got it shut down. It was essentially eBay with auctions for ESO items and worked with a merit system similar to eBay "feedback". The auctions were automated with a bid system and from the short time it was up I found it was pretty solid. It would connect players like a trade forum does but in a bit more organized and fair fashion getting the seller the best deal possible while facilitating the communication. Sadly, the community wasn't able to handle it or it just wasn't worth the time. Regardless, it got just down.

In other words don't waste your time.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention, a similar project was made during the early 2000's for Ultima Online, it turned to be the most successful community driven site for an MMO that I've experienced.

I'm aware that it would require certain management, however it seems thus far that plenty of the people are satisfied with the current guild trading system which I despise for many reasons.

Would rather see the traders themselves as a gold sink that took certain percentage cuts depending on location rather than having guilds that bid for traders.

There's been a few successful vendor implementations in the past, this just isn't one of them.

Lionxoft · June 2015

No

Olivierko wrote: »

Lionxoft wrote: »

There was something like this near launch called EsoBid but the community got it shut down. It was essentially eBay with auctions for ESO items and worked with a merit system similar to eBay "feedback". The auctions were automated with a bid system and from the short time it was up I found it was pretty solid. It would connect players like a trade forum does but in a bit more organized and fair fashion getting the seller the best deal possible while facilitating the communication. Sadly, the community wasn't able to handle it or it just wasn't worth the time. Regardless, it got just down.

In other words don't waste your time.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention, a similar project was made during the early 2000's for Ultima Online, it turned to be the most successful community driven site for an MMO that I've experienced.

I'm aware that it would require certain management, however it seems thus far that plenty of the people are satisfied with the current guild trading system which I despise for many reasons.

Would rather see the traders themselves as a gold sink that took certain percentage cuts depending on location rather than having guilds that bid for traders.

There's been a few successful vendor implementations in the past, this just isn't one of them.

Simple math but 2000 (at the earliest) was 15 years ago and gaming has changed a lot since then. Especially after experiencing the ESO community in-game I don't think they would be able to handle something like this.

The best fix would be for ZOS to implement a global auction house in-game. The community shouldn't have to shore up where their game fails. You should especially not have to waste your time filling in the gap. I highly doubt something like this would be cost effective for the community developer especially since MMO titles released in the most recent years have had dramatic decreases in population after a few years.

Danikat · June 2015

Yes

Lionxoft wrote: »

There was something like this near launch called EsoBid but the community got it shut down. It was essentially eBay with auctions for ESO items for gold and worked with a merit system similar to eBay "feedback". The auctions were automated with a bid system and from the short time it was up I found it was pretty solid. It would connect players like a trade forum does but in a bit more organized and fair fashion getting the seller the best deal possible while facilitating the communication. Sadly, the community wasn't able to handle it or it just wasn't worth the time. Regardless, it got just down.

In other words don't waste your time.

What was the problem with it?

As I said earlier I used a very similar site for a different game for years and never encountered any problems. I'm surprised people would be so against it.

Lionxoft · June 2015

No

Danikat wrote: »

Lionxoft wrote: »

There was something like this near launch called EsoBid but the community got it shut down. It was essentially eBay with auctions for ESO items for gold and worked with a merit system similar to eBay "feedback". The auctions were automated with a bid system and from the short time it was up I found it was pretty solid. It would connect players like a trade forum does but in a bit more organized and fair fashion getting the seller the best deal possible while facilitating the communication. Sadly, the community wasn't able to handle it or it just wasn't worth the time. Regardless, it got just down.

In other words don't waste your time.

What was the problem with it?

As I said earlier I used a very similar site for a different game for years and never encountered any problems. I'm surprised people would be so against it.

The players and the community were the problem from what I experienced. Bad trades or people trying to rip others off. The site was pretty cool and for the day or two I used it I had no technical problems (I thought the merit/feedback system was pretty intelligent too) with the site but I did encounter problems from players either not responding to their completed/won auctions or trying to COD an amount higher than what was won.

The site even had a preview of the armor piece in the item description area so you could see how that particular piece would look from front and profile views for the fashion gurus. Even I thought that was pretty nice.

BigM · June 2015

No

Gatekeepers, LOL really this is a joke right? So who are the Gatekeepers? Players picked by who? Are the Gatekeepers playing the game also, in guilds? Like I said so many ways for this to be corrupt, so glad ZoS would never go for it!

Olivierko · June 2015

BigM wrote: »

Gatekeepers, LOL really this is a joke right? So who are the Gatekeepers? Players picked by who? Are the Gatekeepers playing the game also, in guilds? Like I said so many ways for this to be corrupt, so glad ZoS would never go for it!

Picked by the one creating it of course.

I have failed explaining the basics to you it seems. I'll leave you to figure it out yourself one day, this was a community creation suggestion, not a request for ZoS.

Olivierko · June 2015

Lionxoft wrote: »

The players and the community were the problem from what I experienced.

Judging by reading the comments i should've known better, at least now I know that it has been tested.

I doubt that the majority even reads anything but the topic before they start commenting, quite unfortunate but it seems harder to handle a community today compared to ten years ago indeed.

Lionxoft · June 2015

No

Olivierko wrote: »

Lionxoft wrote: »

The players and the community were the problem from what I experienced.

Judging by reading the comments i should've known better, at least now I know that it has been tested.

I doubt that the majority even reads anything but the topic before they start commenting, quite unfortunate but it seems harder to handle a community today compared to ten years ago indeed.

I think it's because there are more devices that can access the internet than there were years back. Anyone can have an internet connection despite having guar dung for brains these days and it's a lot easier and more accessible than it was then too.

KanedaSyndrome · June 2015

As a developer you probably already know that outside ideas very rarely get considered when a team already has an agenda laid out, either by themselves or their investors.

Olivierko · June 2015

KanedaSyndrome wrote: »

As a developer you probably already know that outside ideas very rarely get considered when a team already has an agenda laid out, either by themselves or their investors.

Which is why I made this poll to see whether nor not I should bother with such a project on my own.

BigM · June 2015

No

Olivierko wrote: »

KanedaSyndrome wrote: »

As a developer you probably already know that outside ideas very rarely get considered when a team already has an agenda laid out, either by themselves or their investors.

Which is why I made this poll to see whether nor not I should bother with such a project on my own.

So we can clearly put it to bed?

Frawr · June 2015

The game itself is, in my opinion, quite limited compared to Ultima Online. More of a massive single-player game with optional coop. I suspect that it doesn't attract the same sort of community as Ultima .

Global auction house 'forum' also worked very well in Star Wars Galaxies, however, that game had varying quality of resources and components and, as a result, there was a lot of variety in goods. This game has a really very basic crafting and loot system with no variation in items.

By all means try it. It could be cool if it worked.

This forum isn't the best place for mass sensible opinion though.

We already have Master Merchant which is like a tool that gives everyone an immediate idea of value (x sales in last ## days at average price of ...). I suspect that your idea will either Take off or Die a death very quickly. Take off due to people finally having a way to trade or die because people can't be bothered to go out of the game to trade.

Psychobunni · June 2015

This poll lacks an ambivalent option. It sounds neat, but I personally wouldn't use it. Addons for the fails are bad enough, going to whole other sites is just too much work for *me* .....but if it helped other players, by all means then.

Olivierko · June 2015

Frawr wrote: »

This forum isn't the best place for mass sensible opinion though.

Unfortunately I don't know where I would go with the idea, the only place I could think of is ESOUI, and that would be to ask other devs.

The whole idea is however based on the comminuty in question, which leaves me to this forum.

BigM wrote: »

Olivierko wrote: »

So we can clearly put it to bed?

Yes, you've made it clear multiple times that you haven't read the post nor have you left any constructive feedback so it's safe to say that we can put it to bed.

Psychobunni wrote: »

but I personally wouldn't use it.

That's the feedback I was looking for, the average trader whom understand the concept but can't picture themselves using such a service. I'm aware of the fact that you can't force or get everyone on your side for a community of this size, nor is it required, however I would need a majority that could imagine themselves using a external site for trading in order to make this project happen.

cyx54tc · July 2015

Yes

so did you decide to go on with the project?

Olivierko · July 2015

cyx54tc wrote: »

so did you decide to go on with the project?

No, there barely was any feedback for this idea so I decided to not waste any time on it.

Unfortunately I don't experience this community mature enough for any similar idea, especially after finding out that there already was an external auction portal which not enough people used.

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