Auction Safe auto-renew totally broken

Smoot

this is a pretty huge issue, can we get a dev response?  @Mesanna @Kyronix @Misk .  When you put an item on auction safe, set to auto-renew when the auction expires it doesnt restart again.  and if you try to start it again manually, you get the timer that starts over and over again.

with a 5 min timer, its not even realistic to set items to 1 week.  with 100 safes it would take a full 8 hour day every week just to keep auctions going.  this is pretty game breaking as nothing can be sold off safes consistently so please fix ASAP and please let the players know its a top priority for peace of mind. 

Smoot

also noticed one safe is auto-renewing, but every 10 mins.  which isnt an option to choose.

and, if the 5 min timer was implemented to prevent the bug where gold was being lost if auctions ended at the same time, then that only gives 12 slots set to 60min auction.  with more than 12, theres still the chance auctions would end at the exact same time.  So is this even preventing the bug where gold was being lost?

Smoot

confirmed.  checked multiple houses with over 12 auction safes.  looks like only 12 auctions can be active at one time on 60min auctions.  this is a pretty big blow to traders.  there has to be a better option please fix this situation.

MinocMiner

Sounds like this wouldn't be an issue if you used 7d timers and set BIN prices instead of exploiting 60m auctions on hundreds of safes to avoid paying BIN fees.

Smoot

MinocMiner said:

Sounds like this wouldn't be an issue if you used 7d timers and set BIN prices instead of exploiting 60m auctions on hundreds of safes to avoid paying BIN fees.

thats not really the point, this wasnt announced anywhere and is a pretty big shock to players. 

and yes, you do a 60min auction to save the buyer some gold.  more than 60min they only have the option to do the buyout price or wait at least 24hours for a very expensive item which isnt ideal for the buyer either.  plus its not even an auction if theres just a buyout price. safes were designed to function this way, its not exploiting at all.  if the devs want a percentage fee for a bid, then they could make one and sellers will just list the item higher for buyout price only.  or have not had made a 60 min timer option. 

but as is they have created another auction safe bug by trying to fix a bug with a 5 min internal timer, which was also not as described.   from the description most would assume the timer was between physically starting auctions.  and then wonder why half or more of their safes are broken when auto renew isnt working as it always has.

MinocMiner

It saves the seller gold, not the buyer. Fees are paid by the seller.

You can do an auction with a buyout price. If someone doesn't want to wait the full duration of the auction, they can buy it out. That's exactly how auctions work everywhere else.

I doubt the original design of auction safes was to load up 100 safes with 60 minute repeating timers to avoid paying any kind of seller fee, but nice try. Even if you do a short duration auction on ebay, you are paying seller fees.

Anyways, sounds like there is a perfectly valid workaround in place until they decide to address this or not. Just set longer timers for now.

Smoot

again, your missing the point.  the change wasnt announced anywhere so most will just think their broken.  and means an 5.25 percent increase passed on to the buyer.  so an already costly rare or armor piece will just cost more.

MinocMiner

Why are you passing on the fee to the buyer? lol. That's your personal decision. Sellers are supposed to eat the fees, not buyers. Sounds like a greed issue to me.

JenniferMarie

MinocMiner said:

Why are you passing on the fee to the buyer? lol. That's your personal decision. Sellers are supposed to eat the fees, not buyers. Sounds like a greed issue to me.

... um ... do you live in the real world? That's called CAPITALISM. Sellers/Businesses/Corporations pass on their fees to the Consumer so they don't have to eat the costs. Why would you expect the economy in UO or any other video game to be any different than the Real World model of greed?

MinocMiner

JenniferMarie said:

MinocMiner said:

Why are you passing on the fee to the buyer? lol. That's your personal decision. Sellers are supposed to eat the fees, not buyers. Sounds like a greed issue to me.

... um ... do you live in the real world? That's called CAPITALISM. Sellers/Businesses/Corporations pass on their fees to the Consumer so they don't have to eat the costs. Why would you expect the economy in UO or any other video game to be any different than the Real World model of greed?

So you admit it's an issue with greedy players 

JenniferMarie

I have never denied that a vast majority of the Rares Community is greedy. I'm realistic about it all - including that it's not the Rares Community causing the issues with UO bleeding its player base.

Changing major parts of the game - like auction safes and how they can be used - without any communication whatsoever ... that's one of the causes.

Grimbeard

Grabs popcorn to watch yet another developer train wreck in action..

Pawain

Grimbeard said:

Grabs popcorn to watch yet another developer train wreck in action..

Sounds like they fixed an exploit that players were using to not have to pay fees.  But they are allowing players to do it on 10 safes.

Smoot

Pawain said:

Grimbeard said:

Grabs popcorn to watch yet another developer train wreck in action..

Sounds like they fixed an exploit that players were using to not have to pay fees.  But they are allowing players to do it on 10 safes.

if that was the intention, the 60 min timer should have been removed entirely. or added a fee to bids. i doubt it was. it apprears to be an unintened bug on the number of auctions that can be active in a specificif amount of time.  im sure the 7 day fuctions as same as the 60min.  so is still an issue, just with an increased amount of safes.  appears to be a bug from any average player.

JenniferMarie

If the Dev Team had an issue with the fee structure of auction safes, they wouldn't do anything with the auto-renew feature. Something was done that messed up auction safes - in a couple of different ways. The auto-renew feature is just the newest one to pop up. (I sold something on a safe on my shard over the weekend and still cannot start a new auction on it.)

Bottom line: communication. No one in charge communicates anything, in any way - however effectively or ineffectively - and when they make a mistake and mess something up, no one addresses it with appropriate levels of urgency.

Grimbeard

With cheating I'm fine with these commando fixes catch them off guard but this ??? Please what if just one rares collector lost many many plats due to this type of thing and I despise rares collectors it's almost like they wake up saying what part of the player base can we alienate today 

JenniferMarie

I am no big fan of the Rares Community at large, either, but it's not cheating to use auction safes.

There is a 60 minute auction timer option - I use that, so that people who want to bid don't have to wait a bajillion days. My Buy It Now price is high enough to cover the 5% fee, so if people want it right away they can pay the extra gold. (Example: 200m bid, 210m buy out)

That's not cheating - that's using the auction safes as they were intended.

I know people who sell EM items they earn at events and high end gear they earn at Roof - they have 20 auction safes in one house and half right now show "Auction Ended" for no reason at all. It's ridiculous.

Grimbeard

Honestly we don't even really know what is going on 
We have safes broken or changed
A 6 post poster saying it's about time they fixed it 
Crickets from the developers 

Yoshi

“Why you made a second thread?”

Pawain

So if you are doing a 60 minute auction, if someone bids why does it not let them have the item instead of resetting. Or do they have to hit a minimum bid to win.

Auctions with reserves should not be allowed to circumvent fees. Imo. I always use buy it now because I am only on Atlantic for a short time.

JenniferMarie

There are no reserves on an auction safe, Pawain. The Bid price is the lowest price anyone can offer for what's on the safe.

In theory, "Bid" should ALWAYS be lower than "Buy Now". The longer the bid period (60 minutes; 1 day; 7 days, etc) the more likely the bidder won't get the item for their bid price. "Buy Now" exists for people who want an item and don't want to risk being outbid, which means they'll many times be willing to pay more than the "Bid" price for that guarantee.

It's literally self explanatory if you know anything about auctions in any form.

Pawain

JenniferMarie said:

There are no reserves on an auction safe, Pawain. The Bid price is the lowest price anyone can offer for what's on the safe.

In theory, "Bid" should ALWAYS be lower than "Buy Now". The longer the bid period (60 minutes; 1 day; 7 days, etc) the more likely the bidder won't get the item for their bid price. "Buy Now" exists for people who want an item and don't want to risk being outbid, which means they'll many times be willing to pay more than the "Bid" price for that guarantee.

It's literally self explanatory if you know anything about auctions in any form.

So Bid price is the minimum you can offer.  That is a reserve in an auction.  IMO you should have to at least pay the minimum bid, which you call bid, worth of fees.  If someone has the highest bid, then they get the item in that time.  And a fee should be taken.

Pawain

Commission vendors get charged even if the item sells in 5 minutes. Kinda odd that the more expensive item sales do not act as a gold sink.

Maybe the devs noticed that, we shall see when it is working again. 

JenniferMarie

“Buy Now” has a 5% fee, but the fee structure on auction safes isn’t the point here and trying to deflect, redirect, or gaslight isn’t going to change the fact that someone screwed something up or changed something on purpose without any communication to paying players.

JenniferMarie

Also, you misunderstand what a reserve is in an auction.

”Reserve” is the minimum an item can go for, and is usually much higher than a starting bid. If there is a reserve of 500m and bids only go up to 450m, it’s considered a no sale.

Auction safes don’t have reserves.

if someone bids the bid price and no one else bids, that person gets the item. If there are multiple bidders, highest bid gets it. Whoever pays the buy it now price before any bids are placed gets the item.

there is no reserve.

Pawain

So I could be the high bidder on an auction safe and wait around until it is over and still not win because I did not meet the hidden reserve.  Glad I just use the buy it now if I want an item.

Thanks for the info.

Yoshi

"how you set a reserve sorry?"

JenniferMarie

Pawain said:

So I could be the high bidder on an auction safe and wait around until it is over and still not win because I did not meet the hidden reserve.  Glad I just use the buy it now if I want an item.

Thanks for the info.

... you seriously need help with your reading comprehension ... or a good therapist to help you deal with your need to be a troll ...

either way, you're just showing your own inadequacies here.

Grimbeard

JenniferMarie said:

Pawain said:

So I could be the high bidder on an auction safe and wait around until it is over and still not win because I did not meet the hidden reserve.  Glad I just use the buy it now if I want an item.

Thanks for the info.

... you seriously need help with your reading comprehension ... or a good therapist to help you deal with your need to be a troll ...

either way, you're just showing your own inadequacies here.

But his pom poms are cute

MinocMiner

JenniferMarie said:

“Buy Now” has a 5% fee, but the fee structure on auction safes isn’t the point here and trying to deflect, redirect, or gaslight isn’t going to change the fact that someone screwed something up or changed something on purpose without any communication to paying players.

JenniferMarie said:

Pawain said:

So I could be the high bidder on an auction safe and wait around until it is over and still not win because I did not meet the hidden reserve.  Glad I just use the buy it now if I want an item.

Thanks for the info.

... you seriously need help with your reading comprehension ... or a good therapist to help you deal with your need to be a troll ...

either way, you're just showing your own inadequacies here.

 It's in the patch notes.

Who needs help with reading comprehension? 

https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/publish-notes/publish-115/



Sure it's doesn't specifically state auto-renews, but since an auto-renew is starting an auction it's not that difficult to grasp when you take 2 seconds to think about it. Maybe math is too hard though.

5 minutes per auction times 12 auction safes = 60 minutes. Hardly a critical "needs fixing ASAP stop the presses OMG someone screwed up!" issue. Extend your auction safe timers, problem solved.

Sorry, not losing any sleep over tears being cried from rares sellers and EM multiboxers that price fix items with their friends and then turn around and sell the plat for money. I think you guys can afford the 5% hit on your bottom line by extending to 7d. Oh wait, you will just increase the price to cover actually having to pay any kind of fee, lol.

Man, I'm doing ebay IRL totally wrong. I should list an item for $100 and then when the buyer is paying, I tell him "no wait, it's actually $120 because I don't want to pay ebay fees!". Brilliant. 

Smoot

MinocMiner said:

JenniferMarie said:

“Buy Now” has a 5% fee, but the fee structure on auction safes isn’t the point here and trying to deflect, redirect, or gaslight isn’t going to change the fact that someone screwed something up or changed something on purpose without any communication to paying players.

JenniferMarie said:

Pawain said:

So I could be the high bidder on an auction safe and wait around until it is over and still not win because I did not meet the hidden reserve.  Glad I just use the buy it now if I want an item.

Thanks for the info.

... you seriously need help with your reading comprehension ... or a good therapist to help you deal with your need to be a troll ...

either way, you're just showing your own inadequacies here.

 It's in the patch notes.

Who needs help with reading comprehension? 

https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/publish-notes/publish-115/



Sure it's doesn't specifically state auto-renews, but since an auto-renew is starting an auction it's not that difficult to grasp when you take 2 seconds to think about it. Maybe math is too hard though.

5 minutes per auction times 12 auction safes = 60 minutes. Hardly a critical "needs fixing ASAP stop the presses OMG someone screwed up!" issue. Extend your auction safe timers, problem solved.

Sorry, not losing any sleep over tears being cried from rares sellers and EM multiboxers that price fix items with their friends and then turn around and sell the plat for money. I think you guys can afford the 5% hit on your bottom line by extending to 7d. Oh wait, you will just increase the price to cover actually having to pay any kind of fee, lol.

Man, I'm doing ebay IRL totally wrong. I should list an item for $100 and then when the buyer is paying, I tell him "no wait, it's actually $120 because I don't want to pay ebay fees!". Brilliant. 

its a terrible description.  i highly doubt the devs even realized this "fix" would cause so many problems.   try placing 60 mins auctions, its basically impossible even with less than 12.  should it say "this will break the majority of your 60min auctions"?  obviously a bug / side effect they hadnt thought of.  im just changing everything to 3 day and raising prices.  a plus for sellers:  half the rares that were for sale are no longer active.  and will probably take the average player months to even realize.  i imagine GMs will get pages about this for months to come.  very poor game design, imagine someone buying auction safes for the first time, taking hours to set say 20 auctions, then realizing their all screwed up.  obvious next step would be page a GM.  only for the GM to tell you they just work that way.  not a good look at all for a in game item / feature.