Auction house changes, yay or nah?

Community General Discussion
1511

I suspect they are trying to reduce server traffic without actually addressing WHY the traffic existed in the first place (my guess: cancel scans).

Maybe I’m hung up on cancel scans because being undercut every 30s by the same person at all hours of the day was just unfun as hell and that’s why I stopped doing anything profession-related, but there it is: I was a small-time AH user and I quit using it not because it was laggy, but because of cancel sniping.

1 Like
1512

if players aren’t seeing lag in their ah purchases, there’s no noticeable lag.

Blizzard might have numbers that say “oh hmm. this normally takes 10 ms but took 15 ms, it’s lagging” but who the hell feels that?

1513

didn’t they do the same thing about realm hopping saying it was causing the lag?

and then there was the “there’s no soft cap on legendaries” fiasco

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1514

I assure you, it’s very noticeable.

1515

I’m on all the time on zj, specially during primetime, and never once felt lag in the new ah. 8.0 though was a whole nother matter.

1516

I believe this “small minority of players” affects more than Blizzard considered. I only post once every 2 days. I don’t have 1000 transmogs, I don’t farm mats to sell (and only gather when convenient), I craft armor and weapons every couple weeks and only BFA current (uncanny) content, but when I tried to post a bag full of items I triggered the throttling. I couldn’t believe how painful the experience was. This is even more painful than the constant crafting and scrapping for Expolsum.

In the end, I believe the choice to make the AH a Last In First Out (LIFO) system created an incentive for people to repeatedly cancel and repost over and over again. To me the issue isn’t people simply posting…it’s rewarding players to become the most recent poster on the AH.

So instead of fixing the LIFO system (which was never used for 14 years) Blizzard decided to add throttling.

1 Like
1517

Yeah, that too…

1518

I guess the best way for us to provide feedback is to truly understand the root issue you are trying to solve. If it is too many requests being sent in due to TSM, Auctionator, Auctioneer, etc hitting the system constantly - that’s one thing. If it is ah overall behavioral change you want from the AH, then a continuation of the modifications made with this latest version need to happen.

Issue: Too Many Server Queries/Scans

  • Do what you just did with a timeout feature slowing people down.
  • Do a monetary penalty for posting too many auctions with in a set time period.
  • Block cancellations 1 hour after posting -or- allow cancellations but lose deposit and 25% of the auction’s posted buyout price.

Issue: Seller Behavior / Goblins / Cancel-Repost Activities / Flooding

  • You attempted to reduce undercutting, but it still happens. 1s at a time. Change the game. If you undercut by 1s and up to under 25% of the current lowest auction (not posted by you), your deposit is 25% of your starting bid/buyout price.
  • Move to First In, First Out and away from Last In, First Out. This currently drives the Cancel Scan/Repost behavior you see goldmakers doing on a daily/hourly basis.
  • Increase posting length on low traffic items. TSM tracks this pretty well on what items are selling and at what frequency - so I would expect Blizzard can figure this out much easier on a per-server basis having direct access to the DB. If there are items like pets, transmog, old materials, and so no that really don’t sell much with in 48 hours - increase the posting length on those to 7 or even 14 days. Basically you allow those that love farming old content to become vendors of those items by keeping them up on the player marketplace (AH) for a longer period of time. You also cut down dramatically the need for server queries for posting/cancelling/etc. This should go hand in had switching to FIFO and away from LIFO.
  • Worst case, you pull a SWTOR and you limit the max auctions per account to the AH. I would be against this, but if this is a solution is needs to be either by account or even by battle.net account.

These aren’t severely drastic in changes and to me go hand in hand with the changes achieved in the last major update to the AH.

3 Likes
1519

If they really want to make an effective change then they either need to impose a tangible penalty for canceling or make it so you can’t tell who’s post is last, or both.

1520

Cancel sniping has been a thing since AT LEAST WoD, long before the changes were implemented.

Actually, my memory is fuzzy, but I think cancel sniping has been a cancer on the AH ever since I learned how to use it to make gold back in Burning Crusade, I think. Just that back then, people had to repost at 1c less than the cheapest item.

FIFO, LIFO, it makes no difference if people can keep cycling the same few items forever. (Note that while this system is LIFO, you can essentially make it FIFO by undercutting by 1s)

1521

Clearly there is no lag at all for you apparently, btw congrats on that. This is clearly going nowhere since you don’t see the problem at all, because you know, there is no lag for you.

It’s been nice talking to you.

1522

I would like to put out that perhaps they DON’T need 5000 potions, but if they want to buy that many it should be their prerogative to do so. I agree that being able to mass cancel to undercut someone who undercut you by 1 copper is a problem, one I and many others have suggested fixes for. But to lay the blame on someone because they bought out a section of the market and reposted it is a bit ridiculous.

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1523

Let me spell it out for you, if the server AH is lagging, everyone would feel it.

1524

25 is just too low. Every few hours or as few as twice a day I may run a cancel scan to repost items and max I’m cancelling 60 ish items and reposting them. However there are toons there all day long probably every 15 minutes doing the same thing and that’s not fair to us that work for sure. So a 5 minute thing turns into 20 minutes that I could spend doing mythics etc.

Were not young adults anymore, we have careers and kids, and frankly tired of time sinks. Creating one after years of getting rid of them just seems counter to that.

1525

Not when building with Legos with my nephew, no.

1526

Buying 200+ stacks of a single item just to repost can’t be any better then constantly repost scanning though.

1527

So, for a TSM user like me, that would entail doing my cancels first, then reposting everything, and then going off on my merry way doing whatever it is else I had planned to do in-game for the day?

1528

It’s like 100 now, it was 25 only when the first started it and a few hours after.

1529

Everyone but you.

1530

Ok then, obviously you don’t understand the point, have a good day then.