This solution isn't fixing anything. It's making it worse, as far as I can tell.
I can't help but wonder if it might be a better solution to limit the number of stacks of each item you could post at a time. I don't mean a cap on the number of auctions per account per day (please don't do that, Blizzard), or a limit on stack size, I mean a cap on the number of stacks of each item.
For example, let's use Peacebloom: you could have as many auctions of as many items up as you want across your account. You can post in any stack size you want. But only 20 of those auctions can be Peacebloom. Whether you choose to use those 20 Peacebloom auctions as stacks of one, or stacks of 200, is entirely up to you, BUT you are still limited in how much of a certain item you can flood the AH with. Lower load on servers, fewer pages of the stack size you aren't interested in purchasing to wade through before you get to what you DO want, and less of an obnoxious player-made monopoly.
(I hope that made sense. It was a pain to try and spell out...)
This is the most single handed, dumbest idea that blizzard came up with. Instead of implementing changes, why don't you just over haul the Auction house. Makes more sense than applying patches and pissing off alot of people.
I'm fairly new to the AH, and it's a fun aspect of the game.
I had some expensive pets that i was trying to sell, until i realized i was losing a LOT of gold... and it's is because of this.
This patch doesn't really address the problem with the BFA mats... but it does destroy the transmog/pet/mount markets... or anything expensive and rare...
PLEASE BLIZZ!!! FIX THIS!
I had some expensive pets that i was trying to sell, until i realized i was losing a LOT of gold... and it's is because of this.
This patch doesn't really address the problem with the BFA mats... but it does destroy the transmog/pet/mount markets... or anything expensive and rare...
PLEASE BLIZZ!!! FIX THIS!
Well to be honest I was hesitant to list anything on the AH because of this as I re-roll on servers rather than transfer.
However, I found that AT LEVEL, i posted Iron ore in stacks of 5 (4 stacks to be exact) and it cost me a total of 2 silver and some copper for the full listing at 4.5gold per stack as it was the going rate. All of them sold and I made 18g for a deposit of less than 3 silver. I am not sure how this will keep all older mats off the AH? Maybe it increases at a higher level but so far on two toons at level the AH is not horrible.
However, I found that AT LEVEL, i posted Iron ore in stacks of 5 (4 stacks to be exact) and it cost me a total of 2 silver and some copper for the full listing at 4.5gold per stack as it was the going rate. All of them sold and I made 18g for a deposit of less than 3 silver. I am not sure how this will keep all older mats off the AH? Maybe it increases at a higher level but so far on two toons at level the AH is not horrible.
No addon makes it easier to post single stacks in bulk than the default UI. Posting singles in bulk is a built in feature of the default AH and you can post thousands of auctions with three clicks and a keyboard press, no addons needed. The problem isn't players posting large amounts of singles resulting in dozens of pages of singles for trade mats, the problem is that the default UI allows dozens of pages of singles posted by the same player to be displayed as separate entries when searching for an item. Single stacks themselves are not a problem, players don't always want 5, 20 or 200 of an item, they often just want the amount they need for their craft which is why singles are necessary and with this change the consumers (You) will suffer too because they will be forced to buy and spend more than they would otherwise.
I know its been stated by blizzard in the past that changing the AH UI is no small task but this is a much heavier handed solution than people realize. A 20% deposit that is only refundable if the item sells means that a given item only has to expire and be reposted 5 times before it is no longer profitable to sell at all. This means that items from older content with lower demand will in many cases be too risky to sell, which means there will be little to no incentive to farm certain older content, and so just by a simple change of deposit rates you've badly hurt the economy and given players that enjoy gold farming (and there are a lot of us) less to do.
This is especially punishing for lower population servers where it is much more likely for auctions to expire and it is flat out unfair to do this to them.
Band-aid measures, even if intended to be temporary while better solutions are being worked on, are not worth doing if they cause more harm than good.
I know its been stated by blizzard in the past that changing the AH UI is no small task but this is a much heavier handed solution than people realize. A 20% deposit that is only refundable if the item sells means that a given item only has to expire and be reposted 5 times before it is no longer profitable to sell at all. This means that items from older content with lower demand will in many cases be too risky to sell, which means there will be little to no incentive to farm certain older content, and so just by a simple change of deposit rates you've badly hurt the economy and given players that enjoy gold farming (and there are a lot of us) less to do.
This is especially punishing for lower population servers where it is much more likely for auctions to expire and it is flat out unfair to do this to them.
Band-aid measures, even if intended to be temporary while better solutions are being worked on, are not worth doing if they cause more harm than good.
08/31/2018 06:39 AMPosted by SpíraldáncerI'm going to put in a vote for the listing fee not being returned even if the item sells. The listing fee alone won't be an effective deterrent if it is returned on successful sales and doesn't affect profits.
Restacking, buying up low stack items and reselling them in larger stacks for profit, is a thing. This totally takes the bite out of the proposed changes.
The changes will be totally ineffective if they have no impact on the seller's profitability. Making the listing fee totally non refundable even with a successful sale will be more incentive for people to not flood the AH with single stacks, there will be less profit in doing so.
Are you joking? You know why this isnt helping? Cause the system punishes everyone, whether you post in stacks of 1 or stacks of 50. In fact, it discourages posting bigger stacks because smaller ones sell better, and if not selling is going to cause you to lose that much gold people will sell as small as possible.
And not giving the deposit back even if it would sell would just make people stop using the auction house all together. It would cost them too much gold.
The only solution to fix this is a ui update. But blizzard doesnt seem to have have time to do anything but taking lazy and stupid shortcuts that only worsen the problem. Also blizzard, blaming addons for this mess is laughable. You can post 200 stacks of 1 with your trash ui in seconds. Don't throw your failures off onto people that are actually picking up your slack and improving your game for you.
The way you've just stuck a 20% deposit on anything has now FORCED me to sell stacks of 1.
Any experienced gold maker knows it is quicker, easier and now there is less risk involved in selling small stacks of materials (E.g.: Deep Sea Satin) than stacks of 200.
When a crafter goes to the AH to purchase the items they need, more often than not, they only require a handful of said items, not a large stack.
So this change you've made will do nothing to deter stacks of 1 from being posted; you've actually made the problem worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqxYsXQGkSk
The above link goes into to further reasoning behind why the change you've implemented will be detrimental to smaller realms as well as the player population as a whole.
This was an well intentioned but horrible decision and it should be reverted.
Revert the change and work on updating the AH to 2018 standards. Stop trying to fix a flat tire with bubble gum and do the job right the first time!
Any experienced gold maker knows it is quicker, easier and now there is less risk involved in selling small stacks of materials (E.g.: Deep Sea Satin) than stacks of 200.
When a crafter goes to the AH to purchase the items they need, more often than not, they only require a handful of said items, not a large stack.
So this change you've made will do nothing to deter stacks of 1 from being posted; you've actually made the problem worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqxYsXQGkSk
The above link goes into to further reasoning behind why the change you've implemented will be detrimental to smaller realms as well as the player population as a whole.
This was an well intentioned but horrible decision and it should be reverted.
Revert the change and work on updating the AH to 2018 standards. Stop trying to fix a flat tire with bubble gum and do the job right the first time!
08/31/2018 05:46 PMPosted by StrykerI'm fairly new to the AH, and it's a fun aspect of the game.
I had some expensive pets that i was trying to sell, until i realized i was losing a LOT of gold... and it's is because of this.
This patch doesn't really address the problem with the BFA mats... but it does destroy the transmog/pet/mount markets... or anything expensive and rare...
PLEASE BLIZZ!!! FIX THIS!
Consider lowering your price and it'll sell, and then it'll sell and you'll get your deposit back. Let's say I'm looking to finish my Cutaclysm achievement after a few months of working every week, and I desperately need a certain battle pet for Throne of the 4 Winds that won't drop (I won't say which one, but it's very near and dear to my heart). If you're charging 5000 gold for it, I'm not buying. 1000 maybe; 500 certainly. Mind you, it's taken me two expansions to finally get the Guildbreaker (read: Ashes of A'lar), so I'm a patient man.
So, if you charge an opening bid of 500 gold, I'm in. If it goes to 600, I'm probably still in. 800... whatever; I can make that back. Once the bid hits 1500, though, I'm out. Sure, 1500 is a third of what you really want for it, but it sells and you get your deposit back, which means you're not eating 1000 gold for the deposit every time you auction it for an inflated price and it doesn't sell.
I think that we've gotten away from a central tenet of the concept of an Auction House, which is that it's an auction. You post what you're willing to accept (this would be the eBay "reserve price") and you post what you really want for it ("Buy It Now!"), and let the market do the work. And I will now quote a section of Jerry Maguire's Mission Statement:
The answer is fewer clients. Less dancing. More truth. We must crack open the tightly clenched fist of commerce and give a little back for the greater good. Eventually revenues will be the same, and that goodness will be infectious. We will have taken our number oneness and turned it into something greater. And eventually smaller will become bigger, in every way, and especially in our hearts.
Forget the dance.
Focus.
Understand your market, and you won't lose your shirt.
I think it might work better if you reward large stacks in gratifying ways such as an AH achievement like wolf of wallstreet for so many thousand full stacks of a comodity, type title and recieving gold from 'postmaster' for large stacks rather than withholding for small stacks anonymously. #Nudge, Cass Sunstein.
Consider lowering your price and it'll sell, and then it'll sell and you'll get your deposit back. Let's say I'm looking to finish my Cutaclysm achievement after a few months of working every week, and I desperately need a certain battle pet for Throne of the 4 Winds that won't drop (I won't say which one, but it's very near and dear to my heart). If you're charging 5000 gold for it, I'm not buying. 1000 maybe; 500 certainly. Mind you, it's taken me two expansions to finally get the Guildbreaker (read: Ashes of A'lar), so I'm a patient man.
So, if you charge an opening bid of 500 gold, I'm in. If it goes to 600, I'm probably still in. 800... whatever; I can make that back. Once the bid hits 1500, though, I'm out. Sure, 1500 is a third of what you really want for it, but it sells and you get your deposit back, which means you're not eating 1000 gold for the deposit every time you auction it for an inflated price and it doesn't sell.
I think that we've gotten away from a central tenet of the concept of an Auction House, which is that it's an auction. You post what you're willing to accept (this would be the eBay "reserve price") and you post what you really want for it ("Buy It Now!"), and let the market do the work.
That's great and all, but your solution doesnt take into account that there is an entire server of people burying your auction under theirs by undercutting.
08/22/2018 09:49 AMPosted by YthisensTo address some issues related to the Auction House, we’re reconsidering how deposits—the refundable fees you pay to list your auctions—are calculated. This fee is based on the item’s vendor price, and for profession materials in particular, vendors offer very low prices, so these mats have a low deposit cost. Deposits are substantial on items such as BoE uncommon gear, gems, and so forth, but not trade skill materials (trade goods such as cloth, ore, leather, etc.).
One thing we’ve identified as particularly troublesome is a large volume of trade skill materials being auctioned off in stacks of 1. Some addons make posting quantities of this size trivial to do, resulting in dozens, if not hundreds, of pages of auctions for a single item. As we looked at ways to change this behavior and improve the overall Auction House experience, we found that we prefer to avoid inflexible solutions such as caps on the number of listings a player can make, or increased minimum stack counts, which might interfere with many players' common gameplay habits.
Our current plan is to increase the deposit cost of some profession materials on a per-stack basis, which should provide incentive for players to post items in larger stacks.
Here's an example:
• Let’s say that a player is trying to sell 200 Tidespray Linen for 10g (gold) each. Today, each item has the normal deposit cost of 1c (copper), with a 1s (silver) minimum deposit, so 1 auction of 200 linen requires a deposit of 1s, and 200 auctions of 1 linen each adds up to a total deposit of 2g.
• Now imagine an additional 20% deposit added to the listing fee per auction. With an asking price of 10g each, that raises the deposit by 2g per stack. In the case of 1 stack of 200 linen, the total buyout price is 2000g, and the new deposit is 2g1s. In the case of 200 individual stacks, the new deposit of an additional 2g per stack brings the total deposit up to 402g.
In either case, the deposit is returned to the seller if the item sells. Successful auctions aren’t affected by this change.
Our goal is to give players some forewarning on this change, and to gather feedback. We’re putting together a list of the items that would be affected by this deposit change, which we expect to be limited to high-quantity trade goods. Furthermore, we’re deploying the change to the PTR first, so that addon authors can work through the change while we test it thoroughly.
This change will likely be a temporary measure, as we’re also working to broadly improve the default Auction House in the future. It’s clear to us that many players use addons because they find the default Auction House interface inadequate. A temporary change to deposit fees will help with this in the short term, and we’ll continue to work on overall improvements to the Auction House for a future patch.
I think any time someone chooses to post 200 singles instead of one stack it should be a substantial personal loss for them such as extending the grind for a valuable title, achievement and/or cash from the a contrite beaten post-man. "Dear %t it seems we once again find ourselves over the proverbial auction house fee barrel once again, since we still can't figure out how you cheated here's all our gold..goblins have to feed their kids to you know".
08/31/2018 11:16 PMPosted by Sapphera
That's great and all, but your solution doesnt take into account that there is an entire server of people burying your auction under theirs by undercutting.
You say that like undercutting is a bad thing. Let's say you're a retailer: You buy an item from a wholesaler for $5.00, your overhead is 10 percent, and you retail it for $10.00. The lowest you should accept is ... say, between a break-even cost of $5.50 and a minimal profit of $6.00. You shouldn't be mad if the store across town puts the item on sale for $7.00. That's retail life. You are not guaranteed a sale. You know who gets the sale? The one with the lowest price (with some affordance for things like location or convenience of shopping).
Cut your prices, you'll sell more.
These changes seem like the devs don’t know how the AH works and how people use it. It’s just empowered players with millions of gold to dominate the market completely by STILL putting items in singles and just absorbing any losses. Being listed ahead of everyone else is a huge advantage. Furthermore, being forced to sell in stacks gives lower profit, so casuals without the gold to risk putting in singles (thus losing their listing being seen on the first pages) never make enough profit to make it worthwhile.
This has just slowed the economy down because most players aren’t putting on the AH anymore but just waiting for people offering to buy in /trade and it’s killed the market for old mats. this is a TERRIBLE change.
This has just slowed the economy down because most players aren’t putting on the AH anymore but just waiting for people offering to buy in /trade and it’s killed the market for old mats. this is a TERRIBLE change.
09/01/2018 12:32 AMPosted by Drafty08/31/2018 11:16 PMPosted by Sapphera
That's great and all, but your solution doesnt take into account that there is an entire server of people burying your auction under theirs by undercutting.
You say that like undercutting is a bad thing. Let's say you're a retailer: You buy an item from a wholesaler for $5.00, your overhead is 10 percent, and you retail it for $10.00. The lowest you should accept is ... say, between a break-even cost of $5.50 and a minimal profit of $6.00. You shouldn't be mad if the store across town puts the item on sale for $7.00. That's retail life. You are not guaranteed a sale. You know who gets the sale? The one with the lowest price (with some affordance for things like location or convenience of shopping).
Cut your prices, you'll sell more.
Sure. But if you get undercut and fail to sell, the new deposit rates mean you stand to lose so much more. In one week, it’s become untenable to play the AH casually because it’s 1) disadvantageous to list in stacks (further down in listing and lower profit margins), and 2) undercutting is more vicious because having an auction expire is a huge loss. In fact, players are trying to go around this by having no more buyouts, putting their listing first, and slowing down the economy.
THIS CHANGE IS AWFUL.
THIS IS CRAZY. in rl online auctions. you are charged when your item sells. and if your item doesnt sell your deposit is refunded to you. 20% is way too steep of a deposit too. I believe this to be a ploy to stop players who buy low and sell high. It's already affecting the game tremendously.. less and less players are posting items. I will not be posting anything in the auction house, until something else is implemented. and I may just quit playing completely...
This idea is so idiotic. Welp there went the old mats market, blizzard killed a huge part of the wow economy just to avoid changing their auction house from the !@#$ show it is now.
another thing they can do is. limiting the number of items that can be posted. lets treat this like a normal auction.. 10% fee is stardard, fee is not charged unless the item is sold. and up to 50 items can be listed at a time... cmon blizzard investigate and see how an auction really operates. Ill be implementing trade chat, and advertising my items on general chat just to avoid outrageous fees...
09/01/2018 12:32 AMPosted by Drafty08/31/2018 11:16 PMPosted by Sapphera
That's great and all, but your solution doesnt take into account that there is an entire server of people burying your auction under theirs by undercutting.
You say that like undercutting is a bad thing. Let's say you're a retailer: You buy an item from a wholesaler for $5.00, your overhead is 10 percent, and you retail it for $10.00. The lowest you should accept is ... say, between a break-even cost of $5.50 and a minimal profit of $6.00. You shouldn't be mad if the store across town puts the item on sale for $7.00. That's retail life. You are not guaranteed a sale. You know who gets the sale? The one with the lowest price (with some affordance for things like location or convenience of shopping).
Cut your prices, you'll sell more.
I say that like it's a "just how things are" thing. I'm not calling it good or bad. That's just how markets work. The point is nothing will ever be a guarentee sell. And cutting your prices to diet cheap may cause you to sell more, but it also tanks the market and bring the overall price down dramatically. If everyone takes a huge chunk out of the price hoping it will sell easy cause it is so cheap prices on everything will plummet.
People spend a lot of time farming this stuff to sell. It needs to be able to at least be worth their time and effort in profit or people will just stop.
The market naturally balances itself between what people will pay and what profit people will accept. People will undercut each other and that's fine cause you won't dramatically lose gold because of it needing to be reposted. When the undercut price gets too low people start buying it up til it resets the price. That's how a healthy economy works.
Orders being added would fix this and a lot of other AH problems.
Like, practically all of them.
But you know that already. Whatever man. Do your tax thing and have it blow up in your face.
Like, practically all of them.
But you know that already. Whatever man. Do your tax thing and have it blow up in your face.