It's a balancing act, definitely.  The easier you make communication and trade, the less rewarding it becomes.

I liked playing an Image Designer in SWG, simply because I liked talking to people and providing a service.  The most fun I had was when the customer only had a vague idea of what they wanted, and we'd work together to decide on something that satisfied them.  My least favorite were the ones that had already looked up what they wanted and just said "hairstyle #32 nose length -2 width +1".

The second group was much easier and quicker to serve, but without the human element there wasn't much satisfaction.

So, while I wouldn't want to go back to the days of WTB/WTS spam, I do think you lose something when you make everything automatic.

One possible compromise would be to have an auction house, but have it charge high market fees.  That way, you could choose the convenient option when you wanted to, but it would be worthwhile to find a regular supplier of the things you buy most often.

Originally posted by Impacatus

It's a balancing act, definitely.  The easier you make communication and trade, the less rewarding it becomes.

I liked playing an Image Designer in SWG, simply because I liked talking to people and providing a service.  The most fun I had was when the customer only had a vague idea of what they wanted, and we'd work together to decide on something that satisfied them.  My least favorite were the ones that had already looked up what they wanted and just said "hairstyle #32 nose length -2 width +1".

The second group was much easier and quicker to serve, but without the human element there wasn't much satisfaction.

So, while I wouldn't want to go back to the days of WTB/WTS spam, I do think you lose something when you make everything automatic.

One possible compromise would be to have an auction house, but have it charge high market fees.  That way, you could choose the convenient option when you wanted to, but it would be worthwhile to find a regular supplier of the things you buy most often.

swg had all the community elements, just needed a fun game to back it all up in my opinion. I think auction houses do hurt community. I don't believe it KILLS it, but it doesn't help it. Add in all the other community building anti devices like group finders and what not, and you will not have a community what so ever in my honest opinion. I'm afraid todays games are built for the majority of the player base, and the majority of that base is younger than those that would want a game without group finders, auction houses and what not.

Image designer lol, that brings back some memories. I actually hired an interior decorator in SWG to decorate my house for halloween lol. That game had the craziest community.

SWG actually carried me into trying SWTOR, and while the gameplay is pretty fun, and story was decent, I felt like I beat the game quickly and without all those things that communities did in older games, there was nothing left(other than getting black hole gear for all my commpanions lol).

Image designer! Where where you when I created a character and realized I was about 4 foot tall! I couldn't find an image designer anywhere! Damn nge/cu running everyone off. Do you know how hard it was to find an image designer, much less a "master" image designer lol.

Yep, those were some good times.  Funny thing is, as a male I would never have imagined I'd have so much fun being what was essentially a glorified hairstylist.  I just picked up novice entertainer on a whim, then I thought it was kind of cool that I could magically change things about people then charge them for it.  And yes, I made it to master. :P

Really, good crafting is rare enough in games, but I hardly ever see ANY games that include a service profession.

Like I said, I think at least some of the new generation would like sandbox, if they had the chance to experience it.

Originally posted by Impacatus

Yep, those were some good times.  Funny thing is, as a male I would never have imagined I'd have so much fun being what was essentially a glorified hairstylist.  I just picked up novice entertainer on a whim, then I thought it was kind of cool that I could magically change things about people then charge them for it.  And yes, I made it to master. :P

Really, good crafting is rare enough in games, but I hardly ever see ANY games that include a service profession.

Like I said, I think at least some of the new generation would like sandbox, if they had the chance to experience it.

Yeah that game encouraged alot of fun little oddities. I remember I discovered that I could harvest meat from animals I killed, so I did and sold it on my vendor and my mail box blew up with requests from cooks lol.  I made alot of friends(and got hooked up on buff foods!) from something as simple as hunting/fishing and even the dreaded milking sessions lol.

The Auction House is not the true beast that's at fault, it's merely a result of a style.  The true issue is static and generic loot based systems that allow for auction houses to flourish and basic coin systems to inflate.  Asheron's Call was an example of almost everything being randomized with the exception of monster trophies and certain materials of the kind and that money wasn't the only form of currency.  There was a large scale trading system where everything had value, some more so to certain people than others and it allowed for a large variety of not only social interaction but value to ALL items, theoretically.

I miss the days of "hunting" for loot, not knowing what I was going to get and finding a real gem.  Or specifically targeting trophy items because they were a static form of valued trade.  Or you could just loot for cash and sell it off to make money that way.  There was no auction house, it was purely trade interaction.  I wish that type of loot system was more prominent in today's games.

Yeah, I know what you mean.  I don't even know why random loot tables went away, I don't know anyone who complained about that aspect of gaming.

I remember as a newbie I made what I thought was a fortune during a Halloween event by harvesting the parts needed to make costumes.

Originally posted by Aconsar

The Auction House is not the true beast that's at fault, it's merely a result of a style.  The true issue is static and generic loot based systems that allow for auction houses to flourish and basic coin systems to inflate.  Asheron's Call was an example of almost everything being randomized with the exception of monster trophies and certain materials of the kind and that money wasn't the only form of currency.  There was a large scale trading system where everything had value, some more so to certain people than others and it allowed for a large variety of not only social interaction but value to ALL items, theoretically.

 

I miss the days of "hunting" for loot, not knowing what I was going to get and finding a real gem.  Or specifically targeting trophy items because they were a static form of valued trade.  Or you could just loot for cash and sell it off to make money that way.  There was no auction house, it was purely trade interaction.  I wish that type of loot system was more prominent in today's games.

best loot system ever, I remember reading back in the day the odds of finding an identical high end item was like 1 in 25 billion

Originally posted by Impacatus

It's a balancing act, definitely.  The easier you make communication and trade, the less rewarding it becomes.

One possible compromise would be to have an auction house, but have it charge high market fees.  That way, you could choose the convenient option when you wanted to, but it would be worthwhile to find a regular supplier of the things you buy most often.

Why compromise? The whole point of a AH is to reduce transaction cost (in terms of time and search). It would be pointless to make it expensive to use.

"Less rewarding" only to those who want to social & chat. The easier you make communication & trade, the more efficient you can do it, and more buyers/sellers you can reach in the same amount of time, the chance of a better deal is higher, and more rewarding.

This "social community" thing is not desirable, to many, as you might think. There is little value in chatting with people in a GAME, when all you need to do is to open up FB, or SKYPE, or MSN to be social. Sure there are still those who wants a lot of social in their games, but i think "game" is becoming more and more important than "social", unless those who are playing social/FB games.

For me, this is one of the most important things i look for in an MMO. I could go ahead and write a long essae on the matter, but why bother when Raph Koster has already done this for me?

http://www.raphkoster.com/2012/03/20/do-auction-houses-suck/

It is a very good read that outlines the problem in a way that perhaps more users here will understand.

You know what I thought was cool about GW1 was just hawking your wares in trade chat.  It didn't have an auction house and you actually spent hours entertaining offers for what you were offering. 

I bet I spent the bulk of my time just trading minipets after i finished prophecies and it was really cool just building plat.  Along with all the hundreds of crafts items.

The whole point about the social aspect in a MMO is to meet people you do not know and sometimes interact in a roleplaying or immersive way. So Skype is not best for this, in game communication is.

Also the decline in the need to uses Auction houses shows how they have gone down the wrong path, this feeds in to mistakes about crafting and so on. I am not saying people are not using AH’s as much these days, I am saying they don’t even need to use them. We have gone from a situation where you needed to interact with people for purchases, to one where you needed to interact with a AH for purchases, to one where you don’t need the purchases at all.

So streamlining of game play, making it faster and supposedly better, has once again removed gameplay as that’s what it tends to do. You see that right across the gaming genre but particularly in MMO’s.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Impacatus

It's a balancing act, definitely.  The easier you make communication and trade, the less rewarding it becomes.

One possible compromise would be to have an auction house, but have it charge high market fees.  That way, you could choose the convenient option when you wanted to, but it would be worthwhile to find a regular supplier of the things you buy most often.

Why compromise? The whole point of a AH is to reduce transaction cost (in terms of time and search). It would be pointless to make it expensive to use.

"Less rewarding" only to those who want to social & chat. The easier you make communication & trade, the more efficient you can do it, and more buyers/sellers you can reach in the same amount of time, the chance of a better deal is higher, and more rewarding.

This "social community" thing is not desirable, to many, as you might think. There is little value in chatting with people in a GAME, when all you need to do is to open up FB, or SKYPE, or MSN to be social. Sure there are still those who wants a lot of social in their games, but i think "game" is becoming more and more important than "social", unless those who are playing social/FB games.

 

 

 

Social games actually aren't usually very social at all, but that's beside the point.

When I just want to play a game, I play a single player game.  Many of them have better story, better mechanics, more exciting gameplay, better pretty much everything than mmos.  If I play an mmorpg, it's because I want to interact with people.

I'm led to understand that in the outside world, people sometimes meet up with their friends for beer and poker.  I've never heard of anyone meeting up with their friends for beer and solitaire.  That would be daft.  They want to play with each other, not just next to each other.

If the goal of the auction house is what you say it is, it's not a very good way to achieve it.  It would be even more convinient to just have NPC vendors with unlimited inventory that buy and sell everything at a fixed price.

From the developer's point of view, players interacting and forming attachments is a good thing, because it leads to longer retention.

@Yohanu Koster is awesome.  Thanks for the link.

yeah, I don't like Auction Houses. I much prefer individual shops and bartering with players.

but I suppose that's just me and a few others.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

That is only because there is no AH.

If there is an AH, the attribute of the item will be displayed. So while a good crafter and make better items and charge higher prices, the buyers don't have to care who he is.

If only you can make a +5 sword, and all swords are +4. On the AH, i can see your +5 sword. But i don't care about you or who you are .. i only care the "+5". The identify of the crafter is MOOT on a AH.

There was AH in SWG (Market Terminals).

But people prefer to shop because the quality of the stuff that are sold on private vendors are superior.

You are basing AH on the modern day MMO's mentality - where crafting is not a unique process and everything is of certain sets of quality. Back in the day (like in SWG) crafted items quality are dynamic and depended on a variety of factors (not just 3 different levels like rare, epic, legendary, etc).

You haven't seen enough mmos and your judgement is based on limited experience, I'm sorry to say.

I think auction houses are great additions simply for the fact when a games population gets so high searching through individual shops becomes a headache. I remeber searching playing 2Moons (Dekaron) where setting up shops was your characters livelyhood. It wasn't optional you had to sell in the open market if you wanted to ge anywhere money wise. It had it's nice touches where it really felt like shopping and finding deals was nice, but it also took hours away from playinng the actual game and prices could get out of control at times. With a million voices all saying a different thing it became hard to zero in on items you truely needed. Also monoplies were easy to form and hard to break. I myself have setup monopolies on certain weapons and upgrade material called argates. There were various tricks to be abused in the open market system with little fear of having opposing merchants stop me when I'm one open market in a sea of many. Good for me. but bad for them as having that kind of control over the market made prices iffy to say the least with peoples only option to try and undercut the seller. this leads into extensive investigation of who's doing what to tip the market in such a way.

Auction houses allow you to get what you want in somewhat decent fashion in usually an hour of searching without the headache of constantly navigating stores, haggling, and constant zoning. In dekaron and other games with simliar player run shops I've played  to make out good you would have to shop around 2-3 hours. If you were lucky you found what you wanted you had enough coin before the guy closed shop(being as most shops don't even stay open if the player is offline unlike the AH), and hopefully you weren't ripped off although you have no real idea unless you searched the hundreds of shops 1 by 1 before you made your decision.

Is the auction house 100% neccessary? No problly not, but it's a convenience I would hope is here to stay. My eyes grow weary of searching enless bars of chat log and opening coutnless player shops for hours on end becuase I really need a guantlet upgrade or my weapons could use more gems etc.

I would like auction houses alot more, if every kid who got on it

didnt undercut  prices so bad that it makes u just want to npc everything.

Nothing i find more frustraiting to see auction house history and see

20 different ppl undercut you but 50%+ to the point the items may

aswell be sold to the shop.

I Think one of the few games who had a decent auction was FFXI and even had sellers

names after you bought an item, if you wanted to contact them. However this was

well before the goldseller fiasco and the hated abyssea expansion. IMO the best game

at its prime hands down.

Oren

Not to keep pushing the game but there are no Auction Houses in Project Gorgon

http://www.eldergame.com/2012/09/the-case-against-auction-houses/

For the reasons identified by the OP and in this thread on the devidary above.

Originally posted by aRtFuLThinG

Originally posted by nariusseldon

That is only because there is no AH.

If there is an AH, the attribute of the item will be displayed. So while a good crafter and make better items and charge higher prices, the buyers don't have to care who he is.

If only you can make a +5 sword, and all swords are +4. On the AH, i can see your +5 sword. But i don't care about you or who you are .. i only care the "+5". The identify of the crafter is MOOT on a AH.

There was AH in SWG (Market Terminals).

 

But people prefer to shop because the quality of the stuff that are sold on private vendors are superior.

 

You are basing AH on the modern day MMO's mentality - where crafting is not a unique process and everything is of certain sets of quality. Back in the day (like in SWG) crafted items quality are dynamic and depended on a variety of factors (not just 3 different levels like rare, epic, legendary, etc).

 

You haven't seen enough mmos and your judgement is based on limited experience, I'm sorry to say.

I don't think you understand the point.  Those private vendors should put their wares on the AH, because it reaches more customers.

And there is nothign special about dyanmic item qualities. That is so in D3. Every crafted item, or any looted item has random attributes. In fact, a AH is a perfect place to buy/sell these items because it is much easier to search for what you need.

Crafting has NOTHIGN to do with how it is traded. Bartering is just inefficient. Moving around to multiple ventors is just inefficient.