Auction Snipe Guards

kittykatmangle • 26 July 2022 at 3:58 AM

Getting back into egg cave again, I'm faced with the same problem I had with auctions before. It constantly becomes increasingly annoying to be winning an auction, only to lose it to a last minute snipe bid. I don't think it would be difficult to code a one minute buffer with final bids just to give people a chance to really fight for creatures if they want to. I feel like we shouldn't have to sit on an auction page waiting to place a bid higher than you think others will go just to have a chance to win a creature you're really gunning for.

heatherm19 • 27 July 2022 at 8:30 PM

Can you explain what you mean by a one-minute buffer? And how exactly it would help with the snipping? Are you talking one minute 'lag' in actual auction-closing, or one-minute cooldown between bids, or what? If you could give more detail on what exactly you are envisioning that would be very helpful.

Personally, I "snipe" and I don't see anything wrong with it, that's kind of just how auctions in general are. Anyone can bid at any time. Anyone *should* be able to bid at any time before the auction closes. Bidding in the last few seconds isn't some mean/rude act, it's simply playing the game, and often it's *needed* in order to actually win an auction. (This isn't exclusively an EC thing, most online auctions in general are run this way.)

twilightshine • 31 July 2022 at 5:06 PM

Eh, I don't think it's a problem. Almost everyone snipes (including me). It's a great way to get creatures you simply CAN'T GET without them. For example, Nyankas. They're super expensive if you want to purchase them from someone. But a few days ago, there was one on the auction house. Someone sniped my bid, but honestly, I didn't care. Really. The auction house was always like this, and it probably always will 😊

Also, a one-minute 'buffer' (like a lag? You can't bid in the last minute? How would that help if people just bid before that?) would just make the auction house no different from the trade center. The auction house is used for people to get the creatures they want without paying an obscenely high price for them. I think any change to how the auction house is run right now would make the auction house basically the same as the trade center, and I don't really like that. As a new player, it was the only thing allowing me to actually get creatures I wanted. It would be sad to take that away from players.

hikanu • 31 July 2022 at 5:14 PM

If I had to guess, I think what kittykatmangle means is that whenever someone bids shortly before the auction ends a minute is added to the timer. In a sense dragging the auction out for as long as people are still bidding.

There are pros and cons for both, really.
"Sniping" wouldn't be a thing, but it would be a different kind of frustrating. ^^'

heatherm19 • 31 July 2022 at 5:43 PM

@hikanu
If that's what was meant I like it even less. It kind of defeats the entire purpose of specifying an exact auction-length if it just keeps getting extended. In that case there shouldn't even be hour/minute designations when you create a trade, since chances are the time you actually put isn't going to be when the auction ends. And as a bidder it would be extremely frustrating to plan to be there for the end of the auction (like I usually do) and then it just doesn't end and doesn't end... Yikes. That would make auctions so frustrating.

hikanu • 31 July 2022 at 5:53 PM

@heatherm19

Hence why I said a different kind of frustrating. 😊

But I agree and I do prefer it the way it is now. With a set time for the auction to end, then everyone knows what to expect. If someone bids more than you or you can't sit up at 6 in the morning to catch the end of an auction (because the time of this page is lacking 6 hours behind you), that's just how it is.

I have won a few auctions, but in all fairness I would have been fine had I not won them. It's just how auctions work.

sprite • 31 July 2022 at 9:14 PM

No. Every one has an equal chance to snipe. Don't assume the auction is yours being the last bidder before time runs out. Bid smarter.

kataclysm • 1 August 2022 at 4:39 AM

@kittykatmangle

I couldn't agree more; the auctions are busted. But, that's the nature of auctions - people are able to exploit them with absurd amounts of EC, blowing other people out of the water, and at the very last second. It's hugely frustrating, but because there's no fix that works for everyone, it's just the way that things are.

In my opinion, it's more of a matter of people needing to be more sportsmanlike and respect the integrity of the auction house, but god knows that isn't going to happen either. I'm sorry you're being frustrated by this, though.

mightyeglantine • 1 August 2022 at 4:55 AM

In my opinion there's not much that could be done to fix the auctions as even if a snipe buffer was added you'd still run the very real risk of the person who would've originally just sniped you instead bidding a ridiculous amount to win. I've seen it happen on other sites where bidding was buffered and instead of getting that last bid of a couple thousand, someone ups the bidding to a couple million effectively outbidding everyone else and overpaying for something. Only way to fare in the auctions is to play the same game and follow the same routine as everyone else.

heatherm19 • 2 August 2022 at 12:11 AM

I'm trying to think of what would need to be changed/done to truly 'fix' the auction house, if sniping and/or high bids are seen as a bad thing. Something to stop snipping, but what? I certainly don't think the answer there would be to just infinitely extend the auction time, that doesn't actually help anything and would just lead to even higher bids than we see now as people keep bidding endlessly. A 'cooldown' after a bid, so you could only bid once every minute or something (saw that suggested in another thread), would stop people from having the high bid, getting overbid, and then instantly bidding again, but that won't really stop sniping itself. On the 'high bids' issue, there could be a cap on how much over the current bid you could bid (maybe some multiple of the bid-increment amount), but that runs into it's own issues on the auctioneer's side with many auctions going for bare-minimum because no one is allowed to bid very high.

Personally, I don't see a way that all these issues *can* be addressed in a way that would help the people frustrated while not hurting others, and in a way that wouldn't just completely break the auction (moreso than it supposedly already is). We have Trades, which are a much more controlled atmosphere with a lot less uncertainty and frustration. Auctions are *supposed* to be different than that, people bidding high or bidding at the last minute, that's really just what auctions are. Not on EggCave, everywhere.