Auto-bid Feature for Auctions

astralrebel • 13 June 2023 at 6:27 PM

Hi all!

After spending some time in the auction house I noticed a feature, common among online auction platforms, was missing from EC: Auto-biding.

If you have ever placed a bid on a site such as Ebay you may have noticed that you enter your very best offer from the get go, and the site will bid for you. Here's an example:

Seller: Creates auction with a starting bid of $10 and minimum increments of $0.50
Bidder 1: Submits their top bid of $15.00, which increases the "current bid" (what is displayed on the listing) to $10.00 with one bid
Bidder 2: Submits a bid of $13.00, they are immediately out bid and the "current bid" is increased to $13.50, with Bidder 1 still winning
Bidder 3: Submits their best offer of $17.00 and the "current bid" is updated to $15.50, with Bidder 3 now winning.
This continues until time runs out and whatever the "current bid" is wins, even if it is below the top bid placed by the winner.

I think that this would be a positive improvement for a few reasons:
✦ Improved prices for sellers, and a better idea of what players are truly valuing certain creatures at
✦ Less of an issue with snipping, which is pretty easy to do as it's hard to keep a constant eye on auctions
✦ More of a chance for players in different time zones to have equal opportunity to win auctions
✦ Less back and forth over 1 EC changes (although this could also be avoided by making minimum increments have a floor of X% of the starting bid instead of 1EC)
✦ Players can still revisit an auction after being out bid and consider whether they would be willing to increase their top offer

Please let me know your thoughts, tho, as I'd love to collaborate on this idea 😊

daisycat • 13 June 2023 at 6:42 PM

I like the idea of auto-bidding; your first point really is a great one! Along with how this would also help negate sniping, which happens far too often. I support this. 😊

astralrebel • 13 June 2023 at 10:37 PM

@daisycat thanks Daisy! I know I feel bad sometimes when people posted something that gets a ton of activity but only goes for a couple ec over starting bid

kataclysm • 14 June 2023 at 6:03 AM

Yeah, I like the sound of this idea too! It'd be great to try and even the playing field in the auction house. I think we've aaall been stung by snipers before, after all.

vivian • 16 June 2023 at 7:32 AM

This is a pretty good idea! Snipers in auctions can kinda ruin the fun for me, so adding this could potentially make things a bit more fair but still giving everyone a chance at bidding! ♡

astralrebel • 16 June 2023 at 11:15 AM

@vivian @kataclysm Thank you both for the feedback! I'd love to make the auction house more fun, fair, and active ❤️

nut • 16 July 2023 at 10:30 AM

@astralrebel this is a great idea! 😊 I actually remember hating this feature on ebay because it does make last minute sniping much harder (outing myself as a sniper oops) if someone else set their max bid higher ahead of time. but it actually does make it fairer and I fully support!

osean • 28 July 2023 at 10:45 AM

I support this idea

pinkhanni • 28 July 2023 at 8:41 PM

omg YES PLEASE!! i was just thinking i wish something could be done with the auctions, mostly because of the time zone difference for me! i would totally have bid more for the auctions i lost but i couldn't because of time difference ☹️ this is an amazing idea and i LOVE it

dibabeebees • 12 August 2023 at 3:41 AM

I feel like auto-bidding would be a great idea! Kinda like the auto-accept people do in the trade stuff!