What's wrong w/ Mr. Chairman? (in General)

Check this one out:

http://cb2.carnageblender.com/gc/view-one.tcl?classified_ad_id=72593

Morgul-Hammer of Might [84x615] (+61) NW $9,308,081
sold to chuck1234 for 2.5mil. The going bid was $2,333,333, Mr Chairman bid only $2,450,000, and chuck1234 picked it up for $2,572,500.

I'd say Mr. Chairman failed miserably at protecting the CB Economy in this case, there is no was that a high value MH should have gone for less than 1/4 NW.

I especially care since this was my 1st MH, and I paid the $5 to name it :)

CB only bids the next bid up and only once.

Are you sure you understand what Central Bank's function is?

Maybe that should be changed? Makes sniping far easier. Just wait for Central Bank to bid and BAM. Yours for only one small step forward.

It should keep the value steady, regardless of price. Bidding only once lets chuck know where the easy wins are. I understand the purpose of the Central Bank is to gaurd economy, but why not gaurd the player too? In this case, 2.5 million was FAR too little for a 9.3 million NW morg.

GW: if other people see you sniping, the BAM somebody else will bid higher than you... :)

CB's jobs is to guard the distribution of items. The Storekeeper has no clue, he just spawns. CB buys back whatever items there are obviously too much of, so we eventually end up with the right amount of each item.

Such as the ever declining supply of JKF, VB, MgS, AoI, RoE, TSA, and AoF supporter items that are out there...................................................................................

if there is not enough demand for them to keep CB from taking them then there are ipso facto too many

In a world where auctions got more exposure, sure. But with only ~400 active users, most of which (according to frappr) are concentrated within 6 horus of each other time-zone wise, auctions become a less effective filter for items where supply only decreases. An auction that expires when no one is around that still has bids on it is still a desired item.

$1,892,550 bid by Ancient Anubis (Macros the Black) on 5:11 AM EDT

for a 5 mil NW ELB...wow what a steal.

Then perhaps Central Bank should only bid on items that have been in Auctions for 24 hours or longer, in order to give all 400 users in the timezones a chance to look at it once. If they don't bid on it, they didn't want it.

Or maybe it already does this. *shrugs* I dunno.

"2.5 million was FAR too little for a 9.3 million NW morg."

if they wanted more than that they should have set the minimum bid at higher than that setting a low bid, IMO, means you want a low price

Edyits got it right

That's not how you get successful auctions. To be good at auctioning in ANY venue, you have to start the bidding low enough to entice people to start bidding. That is very often below what you are willing to pay (hence the concept of reserves)

For those hard of hearing, here's a replay.

Wow a camping and a central bank post, my lucky day.

In my opinion the central bank bidding systems fails for a couple of reasons. The first being the auction system is too simple, the second being its bidding process is too simple.

if there is not enough demand for them to keep CB from taking them then there are ipso facto too many

--Jonathan, October 25 2006 6:00 PM EDT

While the statement in itself is logically sound it falls down when put to the test within the CB system. Why? Because Central Bank snipes auctions when no one is online to counter it. It is that simple.

We all agree Central Bank snipes auctions. It waits until there is but 15 mins or less to place its one and only bid. It only places a bid at the next highest increment. That in my mind is the defintion of sniping an auction. Because it is a machine and part of the CB system itself, it does not care:

A) what time of day it is or what day it is
B) whether the network link to the server is up or down
C) how much money is needed to place a bid

These reasons makes Jon's statement in my opinion incorrect.

Demand for an item could be high but, the person might have a life outside of CB and be unable to either bid during the day because of work or school, or bid during the night because of sleep. Central Bank does not have this problem.

Demand for an item could be high, but the people who want the item may not have enough money to buy it, and unless you have a NUB or extra USD laying around, your fight rewards are too low to generate a surplus of cash for auction bidding. Central Bank does not have this problem.

Yes, I have heard the fairly lame counters, well get someone in another time zone to bid for you. Man THAT is a hassle. A) you transfer the money to someone to bid for you, that costs you money. B) you pay to have the item you bought sent to you in transfer fees, more of your money down the drain. Suddenly all the benefits of using the auction system are gone. Plus the person you might possibly find to do it for you might fail for any number of reasons, where as if you want the item badly, you yourself might try a lot harder than some random person living in Europe that offered to do it for you for either some cash or even as a favor. LAME. If this is what you rely on to justify the existence of the current CB bidding system, that is a cludge, a hack, and it is so inelegant, I cannot fathom how anyone with any computer programming knowledge would consider it a good system.

I have always thought the current Central Bank bidding system sucked, and after several months of it, my opinion has not changed one iota.

Central Bank? Don't you mean Comrade Central Bank?

1) Looks like that bug was fixed... the one preventing the display of your full username :)

2) In your list, A and C would be greatly reduced in effect with a larger user base. ~400 isn't enough to create enough dispersion in the community.

Buyers: if you see an item for sale at the auction you want, bid on it *right now* and don't bid the next increment, but go for whatever you think is going to be the end price.

Sellers: putting a too high Buy Now will not make you rich. Put a Buy Now that's just a little over the normal value of the item. Aim for the impatient buyer, not the clueless buyer.

Buyers and sellers only need to adjust their behavior a little and they have nothing to fear of either Central Bank and snipers.

Why can't Central Bank, when it deems the bid to be too low, extend the sale for another lets say 12 hours, instead of sniping it out when there is likely no one on to counter-bid?

Why extend an auction, if no one has even bothered to bid anything decent up till then?

Do you ever use Ebay Bart? Do you follow your own advice for us here on CB when you bid on Ebay? If so let me know what you are looking for and I will put them on Ebay for you to bid right away on it, for what you think the end price will be, not what kind of bargain you can create for yourself.

eBay works different.

In what way does it work differently such that you cannot make a correlation between an incremental bid on Ebay and an incremental bid on CB?

proxy bidding, to name just one.

Is that not just like what most people who defend CB bidding at 4am CST on an item expect you to do to counter it? Proxy bid it? Maybe I do not understand the defintion. To me a Proxy bid would be to have something other than yourself place a bid, be it software, hardware, or another human being.

So, to counter a late night or even mid afternoon auction end time, where you know Central Bank will bid on it but you will not be available to counter, what am I to do besides a proxy bid or as you suggest just go ahead and bid so high the Central Bank will not outbid you.

Again, if you practice that on Ebay, I have some items to sell to you.

The whole system of central bank is just wrong.

I have seen examples that it failed completely for instance a AoM selling for 300k which CB didn't even bid on.

And don't come with "why don't you bid buy it now".
That's just stupid, you know well enough that everyone in this world wants his goods as cheaply as possible.
Lowering Buy it nows only reduces the market price. What stops central bank not bidding buy it now if the bids are still under market valua? No that won't work at all.

I said it before and i will say it again. Let central bank bid earlier on the item. Not 2 hours like jon suggested, for "stabilizing prices", which is of course ludicrous, in a real economy no price ever stabilizes. Just like at the price of gas.

Two options:

fist option: have like a reserve bid, for instance an item is not sold, even if it has bids on, if the bids are still below the reserve bid. ( this can only work if the auctions are auctioned by the auctioneer) Of course there must a way to see if the reserve bid is met.

second option. Let central bank bid earlier, like an hour or so. and let it bid higher then just one step, let it bid the actual market price.

Shouldn't be that hard to program???????

Someone please help me understand. This is a game and I realize that but why is the "auction" system not like ebay? Jon has said he would take an economy over camping any day, so why not make the auction system fair? Why would having a reserve be a bad thing?

Um....my solution to this particular problem of 'reserve bid' has been to pay the 5k fine to create/update a FS/WTB thread. If the bids don't reach the price I'm expecting, I update saying that it didn't reach and has been put in Auctions for the price I was looking for (this way, people have been bidding up to it and have it in mind, and may purchase it at that price if they wish.)

Seriously though - IMO, FS/WTB has always been better for selling large items because it accepts PayPal, loans, payment plans, and other negotiated deals. Considering that most people don't have large quantities of cash sitting on their characters, there is no reason to be surprised when something with a large NW doesn't sell easily in Auctions or for a "reasonable" (this word is absolutely subjective to the reader's opinion, not any 'norm' of any sort) price.

In short, there's a FS/WTB forum and Auctions. If you don't sell your big item in Auctions because you didn't set a low price, maybe you should've put it in FS/WTB instead. There *are* alternatives, regardless of how much you may like/dislike them.

*shrugs* I honestly think Central Bank is doing its job. Not perfectly, of course, but has anyone REALLY suggested a perfect manner in which it should perform? Everyone will not be satisfied no matter what course is taken.

FS/WTB is 2k.

FYI central bank is now bidding with more time left on the clock.tonight it was with 28 minutes to go :)