Forum Auctions

The current system for Forum Auctions has so many problems with it. For anyone who cares to look, an auction just ended that had most of the bids happen in the last half hour of the one week period, which was a really bad time of the morning for some time zones (ending just after 2 AM where I am, which could have easily removed any chances some other people in my time zone had of winning it). The auction started April 12, 2013, but it was started at 2:06 AM on BMG and 2:07 AM on PWN and pe2k. After minimal bids for about 167.5/168 hours, it was at $13,100. About half an hour later, when it ended, it was at $24,500. Now the other problem is that determing exactly when it ends is unclear. In a Happiny auction on BMG a few years ago, it came down to a similar situation of people bidding every minute right through the final minute of the auction. The winner was then unclear as it had started at 1:21 PM a week earlier, and there was a bid at 1:20 followed by one at 1:21 and another at 1:22. It was determined there by Pidge, among others, that the winner would be the post at 1:20 because it was the last post that could be guaranteed to be posted within a week of the auction. Now today, the opposite ruling was made and also went based off of the LATER of the post times of the auction start.

For anyone who will take it that way, I'm not still angry about the auction from two years ago. At this point I mostly hate the system itself (though I am a little annoyed about the inconsistency of rulings), ending EXACTLY a week after it starts basically says "bid in the last few minutes or don't expect to get it." That is a completely unfair system considering all the time zones we encompass as well as people's personal schedules. I propose that either in addition to or in place of the one week limit we add a certain amount of time from last bid. Eventually it would get to be high enough that either no one else who wants it can afford it or no one else wants it at that cost. EVEN BEFORE THIS AUCTION TODAY I WAS PLANNING TO POST THIS, MOSTLY JUST WAITING FOR A GOOD TIME TO POST IT. This system really needs to be changed so it doesn't doom people in certain time zones or with really busy schedules. Even if we keep this system, we need a CONSISTENT set of rules to determine winner.

Here's another situation that could happen: Two people post the same bid at the same minute on two different forums while neither of them held the high bid before that and neither them or anyone else posts a higher bid for the rest of the auction. Since both posted at the same minute and you can't see one post clearly being listed after the other by being on the same forum, it is impossible to tell which came first and therefore cannot fairly say that one or the other wins it. Does that mean that both win it and the one Pokémon auctioned becomes two?

That's my view on Forum Auctions, please post CONSTRUCTIVE (helpful to the discussion) views of Forum Auctions here and suggestions or opinions on how to fix them.

 

Nothing will be done about the auctions that have already ended, but I agree that the forum auction system sucks.

I have never really understood the point of ending an auction at a fixed date. I've always felt that they should continue until they get no more bids for a given time period, reflecting the traditional "Going once, going twice, gone" format. A minimum time for people to bid is fine, and if nobody bids then it doesn't get sold.

Having three forums is dumb, but that's just how it is.

 

Just make them blind with the one week period to send bids in. v_v

 

How about separate auctions for those three forums?

 

Problem with Pidge's solution, which is fully well reasoned, was that it wasn't implemented properly and put somewhere (i.e. first post of the auction thread, staff board) that people can refer to it. I was inactive during that time period, and frankly, there's a decent chance I might have missed it anywho.

To defend my own decision in this latest auction, I chose to impose the listed rules as fairly as I could. Pidge did the opposite thing, but I chose to go by the latest post since that way, nobody limited to any forum gets less than the one week. Obviously, the one minute in this case is basically irrelevant since people would've just started sniping in their final-minute bids a minute earlier, but that way if I forgot to post in one forum for, say, 30 minutes, people limited to that one forum still get the full one week.

At any rate, I'm okay with changing the auction system. Going once, going twice, gone works with me, like if somebody doesn't post a thing within 48 hours. That makes complete sense.

Separate auctions wouldn't work since it brings up the problem of managing the balance between auctions being too frequent across all three boards and/or not frequent enough on one board, in addition to a few other myriad of reasons. I'm not a fan of silent auctions for forums, but I don't really have any substantial criticism of it.

As for time zones, that will always be a problem and I don't get why you're bringing it up. Obviously, someone's always asleep somewhere in the world. There's very little we can do in regards to time zones in relation to scheduled events because of the Earth's orbit around the Sun in combination to its own rotation always leaving some part of the world in the dark. If, every time someone complained about time zones, we accommodated the event to suit them, then someone else gets shafted. With 'important' things like AIM auctions, we do our best to accommodate as many people as we can, but somewhere, someone is forced to like 3am anyway. Granted, you live in a heavily populated United States time zone, but you could argue that gives more reason for having an auction a little later than normal, for those other people. So, the argument for people in your time zone not being able to win this one auction seems a little absurd to me.

Of course, in regards to forum auctions, the logical going once-going twice curbs that problem. Full support for it yayaya

 

This was the standard after we expanded to BMG. I don't know why it was changed.

 

This would be a valid point if every single auction always started at the same time. However, that's not the case. Auctions can happen at any time, so there is always the possibility that they will end at a convenient time for a person. If the mon you want is auctioned at an inconvenient time, tough luck. That's the way the cookie crumbles.

I also find it laughable to bring personal schedules into this. If you've been given a week's notice about an auction's end point, it's up to you to put that into your schedule. Imagine "KidBeano wants this mon but can't get here until half an hour after the deadline, so we'll extend it for an hour to give him a chance". If you're not available for an auction, again, that's not unfair, it's just life.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the bidding system itself. eBay, for example, functions very similarly to the URPG Auction Room. A lot of the time, it does end up in a last-minute bidding war. That's just the nature of auctions, people will leave it to see how high it can get, and then swoop in for the kill near the end point. Short of changing it to a blind auction as Emma said, nothing will change that fact. The only thing I agree needs changing is when it starts to get technical. I think one auction split over three sites is just a car crash waiting to happen, personally. Maybe take it in turns to host the auctions on each forum? The only "problem" I can see with that is banned members, but to be brutally honest, they're the ones that got themselves banned in the first place. They can still participate in the auctions on the two other sites, but they'll just have to miss out any on the site they're banned on.

I think it's probably because the whole "home site" thing became irrelevant. Didn't it use to be the site your stats were on (or I suppose, the one you requested your starter on, if your stats were off-site) was considered your "home site" and events/auctions/logs/etc... had to correspond to your home site?

 

What if we link to a countdown timer every time we have a forum auction? That way there is no human interpretation of when the week ends. When the timer hits 0, the week is over.

 

Let me first just say that when I posted this thread I already realized that even if the result was changed to last bid at 2:05 or 2:06, Sky Lark or EmBreon would win it, not me.

I was expecting it to end at 2:05 and did some of my bidding based on that, fyi.

These two are kind of similar, so I'll answer them together. I brought up time zones and personal schedules not because I'm saying we should eliminate time zones, that's not possible for us. What I was suggesting is that we need to make it so that bids go on until a certain amount of time with no bids, so that if someone can't be on at a certain time, they still can bid before then and have another chance later if they're outbid but still want to bid higher. I'd suggest 12 or 24 hours with no bid, possibly a minimum of a few days. This makes it so it's not just who happens to be the one posting last on a certain unspecified minute. If time zones didn't exist, we could make it something like a 1-4 hour period with the 7 day minimum instead of 12/24 hours, but with time zones that's extremely unfair as it means that if someone bids while you're sleeping or in school/work (at least if you don't/can't get online there) because it's a good time of day for them.

As for the auction system of separate auctions for each forum that we used to have, I think part of the problem is activity. If there's only a few active members who are allowed to bid on a particular forum while most of the member base is from another forum, that's not fair. I WOULD SAY HOWEVER IF WE OPEN A NEW BRANCH IT SHOULD HAVE QUARANTINED AUCTIONS FROM THE CURRENT THREE, AT LEAST FOR A WHILE.

That could solve part of the problem, but imo we still need to change the system so it's not just a flat 7 days.

 

The problem with that is there could be a discrepancy over whether someone's post was within the timer or not.

It's not unfair, because while the time is inconvenient for that person that time, there will be an auction at some point with a time convenient for them and not for others. It's just the nature of auctions.

I honestly wouldn't care if the system switched, I'm just saying there's nothing wrong with the current one.

[Was just about to click new post and thought of this: What if the system was changed to something like:

"Auctions will last for at least 7 days - however, if the most recent bid is within an hour prior to the end point, the auction will end after a bid stands uncountered for an hour."

So, an auction is supposed to end at 7:00pm, and someone bids at 6:30pm, the auction will then end at 7:30pm unless another bid is placed, in which case it's an hour from that time, etc.... To minimise discrepancy, it can literally just be read from the forum post - if a bid is placed at 6:30pm, and then one is placed at 7:30pm, the 6:30pm wins because the 7:30pm cannot be guaranteed to have been within the hour. That way, there's the possibility of it being extended into what was previously an inconvenient timezone, if people are seriously desperate enough for it.]

I was suggesting everyone could participate in every auction. Basically, I was just saying "don't hold one auction split over three forums, because that's where the problems start to arise" - the only reason I suggested to host them on each one in a cycle was because of banned members - if all auctions were on BMG, for example, Ted wouldn't be able to participate in any of them. However, if they cycled then he could participate in the PE2K and PWN ones.

 

Wheeee late post. I need to check the Trainer's Court board more often lol (not that much ever goes on here, despite the surge of activity in this particular section).

I never take part in Auctions b/c I'm far too cheap and stingy to spend money on a Mon I can write for XD. Still, I know plenty of people make enough money to drop several thousand...whatever we call our currency...on a Drilbur or whatever lol. I don't see why we can't say "Auctions are open until 48 hours after the last post, judged to the minute prior to the last reply's posted time". So say an Auction starts on Monday 9th @ 5:03pm and runs 3 days. The last post on the 12th is @ 3:14am. If no one posts before 3:13am on the 14th, the person who placed the bid @ 3:14am on the 12th wins. The reason we'd go the minute before the last reply's posted time would be to ensure the person posted within that 48 hour time frame. In all honesty, though, are we really going to split hairs over how many seconds passed? Because if not just make it 48 hours to the last person's post. In the above example, someone would have until 3:14am on the 14th to post a new bid instead of having to hit it @ 3:13am or earlier.

Doing it this way gives people plenty of time to hop back to the Auction and see if the prize has gone up or not. It gives people time to continue bidding if they wish to. Some might argue it gives people time to SPAM a few battles to be able to keep bidding, but eventually the time will run out and the Auction will end (and anyways, who's going to complain if Auctions increase activity [which won't happen to any considerable or regular degree but we can dream]). This also prevents last-minute ninjas from swooping in to claim the Mon, because if you come in and post @ 3:13am and the Auction was going to end @ 3:14, you've just extended that 48-hour period. Try to wait until 3:14am to post and you risk your post coming up @ 3:15 (thereby losing to whoever posted before you) or accidentally posting too soon, thus again extending the time the Auction has to run.

As far as Auctions across the forums, make them each their own. Same Mon on all three forums and you can only bid @ 1 forum, but the winner is based on the last post within the "time limit" on that certain forum. The ending period might be 2:19pm on the 19th for one forum but be a completely different time and/or date for another, if we implement the above suggestion. It doesn't seem like it should be too awfully much to keep track of, but then again I've never hosted a forum Auction so idk.

Also if all this sounds terribly rambly and makes no sense, I apologize. I'm tired and I meant to go to bed like 45 mins ago, but I got distracted by posts lol.

 

I disagree with the 3 separate auctions thing. That's 3 times as many Pokemon being given out with a third the competition. Possibly less if everyone bids on one forum and only one person bids on another. Win for $1000.

 

I personally think Auctions should just be online on messengers > forums. I know some people cannot get onto AIM and such. But we need to advance forward and not backwards. Perhaps an announcement or regular day of the month. I mean Underground is a 1 month thing, why shouldn't Auctions. We normally throw big ones in the Summer/Spring/Winter

"Announcement: Auction on the 15th May at these timezones; (obviously a weekend where everybody could make it) That way it removes the forum ones.

 

Reviving this thread because nothing has been done about it in the nine months since this was posted and it came up again.

I still say the best solution is 24/48 hours with no bids. If you had 1/2 days to bid and knew that doing so would mean that the exact minute didn't matter, you really shouldn't have an issue of "does this minute count or only the one before it?" It also means that you don't have to try and deal with an auction that ends at 3 AM your time or during an exam or something. It also doesn't really matter how long it goes because of how infrequent auctions already are.

There has been a fair amount of discussion on this in both auction threads over the past week or however long since that last auction ended.

 

Ya I think that proposed solution is definitely better than the current one, and should be implemented soon.

Maybe one thing to consider would also be lowering the minimum bet. I'm afraid that the proposed solution will lead to essentially endless auctions since people can just +.1k each other for months. Perhaps increase the minimum bid to just 1000. Or if someone can come up with a good dynamic system (as in the minimum bid increases as the bid increases). I think this would be ideal because if you consider adding 1k to a 10k bid adds a lot more to the value %wise than adding 1k to a 50k bid, it makes sense that minimum bids should increase (at least to me). (One solution would maybe be 10% of bid rounded up to nearest 10k)

Anyway, good idea from Mr. Ketchum that should be implemented.

 

I think the maximum increase should be removed so that if someone wants to raise it a ton before people get money to counterbid, they can. At some point it will get high enough that most likely even if people have the money, it won't be worth it because a story/art/park deal would be cheaper and it's unlikely everyone will continue bidding much higher.

 

I think the way auctions are now aren't as bad as you think. One little adjustment and they'd be better. That is a personal opinion that I just wanted to say.

For me, I always like having things end in a timely period. Sure, you could say that auctions don't occur often enough, but I think they should end in a week and should not needlessly go on over that. From what I've seen in the auction threads, most people here always increase the bid .5 - 1k making more pointless posts and just wasting time. The one thing that I think works the best is having no limit. Being able to bid whatever amount off the back is the way to go. It just makes everything much easier and saves time.

Honestly, if there is no limit then the bids shouldn't take too long and a week should be enough time. If you have the money for it then you'll probably win.

Auction starts January 18th, 2014 at 1:24 PM auction ends January 25th, 2014 1:23:59 PM. If you have the money for a Pokemon and are willing to spend some money on it, then you can start off high and not really worry about someone outbidding you.

 

That still leaves the problem of the last hour bidding though. Even if the max increase is taken away, that doesn't stop the January 25th 2014 1:23:59 PM bid which is where the really flaw in the system is.

 

I don't see where the flaw is. If they post anytime before January 25th 2014 1:23:59 PM (or I guess I should say anytime before 1:24:00 for the people who like to get technical) then it's a valid bid. Anything after wouldn't be. With no limit to what you can bid there shouldn't be any problem.

 

The flaw is the January 25th 2014 1:23:59 PM. The last minute bid of some chump coming along and upping you by 1K and giving you 0 chances to respond. The scheduled AIM auctions are last bid after X amount of time has passed, why can't forums follow the same format?