A Friendlier (And Fairer) Auction System

I am writing this after the aftermath of this week's auction. Though it was my first time competing seriously for items, particularly the MTAR-X I couldn't help but notice a few problems with the auction system now.

First off, why is the auctioneer, which is the administrator, allowed to bid in a second, alternative account? I understand that while the auctioneer might want some of the items being auctioned off, this is 1.) Being not responsible and aware as a Player Relation administrator who is hosting the auctions himself. 2.) Allowing himself at least a little leeway from being able to know exactly when the timer counts down. Though I understand even if timers were made public to everyone, it is still hard to win an item. However, an administrator being allowed that kind of activity is just plain abuse of power. I am pretty sure all of you who participated in this auction know who I am talking about, and how they were able to receive a $60k MTAR-X from it.

On a side note, if auctioneers have the power to control the amount of time on the timer itself, this is an even more serious abuse of power.

Second off, I can't help but notice that the same people are winning auctions over and over again. Now, whether it's dumb luck or not could be speculated, but when you hear names like Umbra, GamerGirl and more, you can't help but feel like they have an edge on you? I believe there is even a guild specifically made for auctions themselves. Perhaps it's because I am salty over not winning anything successfully, however, patterns are patterns and even the dumbest people can figure out when the same people are winning over and over again. It feels like to me that auctions items are awarded to those who spend massive amounts of money in this game.

An example: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=3&theater

What I am suggesting is an easier auction system. Instead of clicking bid, deleting the current bid, copy pasting your maximum money, click yes, and then yes again, all I am saying is we should just simply have the bid 'posters' as the direct bid button. In order to counter massive amounts of spamming, have a timer (how ironic) that prevents you from bidding for x amounts of seconds. It would have a similar mechanism to the posting limit system we have here on our forums.

With all these problems aside, auctions would be a somewhat pleasant event to attend. However, with that not being the case, it was very disappointing to see blatant abuse of power and the same people winning again and again.

The auctioner is not allowed to bid in their own auctions, the item that was won by that staff member was refunded from him.

A timer is something that is unlikely to be added. Whilst in my opinion it is a good idea and would make auctions fairer, it would result in less gralats being spent on auctions which is something Unixmad would not agree to have done.

Auctions rely on people spamming money in order to see their name for item prices to be so high, it's kind of funny in my opinion as if nobody bid for 50 seconds of the auction starting then the price to whoever wins it would be so much lower as auctions are always longer than a minute in order to give the items price time go higher.

Well, it is a relief that he didn't get to use his item.

If Unixmad is worried about falling revenues from auctions, why not just make it so that the bidding function is less clunky and more click-and-bid sort of system. I am debating whether or not making the people who won an auction item from auction not being able to bid on any auctions for x amounts of time before they can even bid on something, but I can already see people opposing that. Besides, it is probably just going to be a cycle of the same people winning anyway. I don't think Unixmad would actually oppose the timer system though. If we make it easier to bid, the timer would prevent you from bidding the same amount of time for intervals it would take for you to click bid, delete current price, copy paste the amount of money you have, and click enter. If anything, if we can adjust the time, it would provide more revenue for him if the times are properly set.

It is actually funny lol. If somehow we got everyone to cooperate, we could have 100 gralat auction items, even though coordinating that is easier said than done. Regardless of how this issue turns out bitz, even you can't deny that the same people are winning auctions again and again.

Say my brother was a PR and he was hosting auctions and told me the exact time the auction would end, would that be fair?

This is the sketchiest thing I have ever seen,

Attachment 28146

Trust me - I was extremely surprised when Ace had won twice, Mr. white once, and Junz once.

However I assure you nothing out of the ordinary was performed, as it was a coincidence.


My personal opinion on this is that I really am not a big fan of admins participating in the player events, yes they are players too, however you can't just take the shine off of the player base - especially when these auctions come in small quantities and large intervals of time.

I can vouch that Junz wasn't actually cheating for the auction. He was talking with me while he was bidding, and it was a one in a million coincidence that he won the Ghost Ripper.


But you were there Asi, you know who the who host was and you just mentioned how he won once. Now that we figured out that he wasn't able to retain his items.

As for you Zernov, I would say that the PR hiring system weeds out to "bad apple" so to speak for the most part. I mean no one might know at first, but I am pretty sure someone will catch on pretty soon. Besides, I am pretty sure there is software that checks to see who else that shares your ip address runs graal. A person I know was frame hacking on a different device and a different account and ended up getting jailed for both accounts.

It's not a perfect system but it certainly could use some work.

Oh yeah copper and flake always win, they must be wizards.

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Originally Posted by mrgadosh

Oh yeah copper and flake always win, they must be wizards.

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I don't need your sarcasm marg >.>

It just strikes me how interesting it is to see a supposedly random event and observe how it ends with a select few people winning. In the past, you could have made arguments that these people were given a higher probability of winning since they had more money to be eligible for bidding, but when now when I see 700 hour players running around with 1 million gralats makes me think that maybe that it isn't the case. Maybe auctions are legitimate, maybe they aren't.

Honestly gulf Arabs win the most...does having a huge amount of gralats give you more chances to win? It usually stops at 120k-250k but most winners still over 400k gralats after they win like pls stop I'm a gulf Arab and I never win y tho

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zernov

Say my brother was a PR and he was hosting auctions and told me the exact time the auction would end, would that be fair?

This is the sketchiest thing I have ever seen,

Attachment 28146

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It is possible for staff to give advantages to certain people, there is no exact timer that staff can see but they are given an estimate. It is something that is currently being looked into as there definitely does seem to be quite a coincidence in the repetition of winners and certain relations those people have had to some staff.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BiTzSam

It is possible for staff to give advantages to certain people, there is no exact timer that staff can see but they are given an estimate. It is something that is currently being looked into as there definitely does seem to be quite a coincidence in the repetition of winners and certain relations those people have had to some staff.

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Thanks for investigating :)
On a side note, the era item database is down.