Mr. Chairman strikes again (in General)

http://www.carnageblender.com/gc/view-one.tcl?classified_ad_id=115200

I think this is a 4th or so post I have made about this. The auction system contains a minimum bid functionality and as such, if you put in a min bid, you are ok with it selling for that much.

Why does Mr. Chairman need to be involved in auctions that have that many bids/bidders?

Now there is not only one less ELB in the game, but a decent sized NW ELB at that. What a waste of my time, when I put in a bid and have no problem with another player outbidding me, but now the item is gone because of a stupid autobid on a friggin holiday.

LAME!

I know people will say that you should have put a bid higher then the one you did, however, I do agree this sucks.

would it help if the chairman spent BA? simple ways to avoid it... there is a maximum bid in place as well so that the buyer can offer whatever they want and pay the cheapest ammount under that...

same concept as:

an opponents MPR determines base rewards, why do we need a challenge bonus? Here I am, taking a penalty, on a holiday... now I have 2k less XP.

Well, maybe not... but at least remotely similar in that it is a game mechanic. One that we all know about. One that should be taken into consideration. Actions should be shifted accordingly ~_^

On second thought, the holiday thing actually is a good point, because banks are supposed to be closed today... =/

I think when the prices are lower or items are at base I don't particularly care either way. But when it's an named item of some decent NW I think it should be different. Sometimes the Mr Chairman bid is great for the person putting the item up for auction. I know I've managed to get a decent amount of cash thanks to this. But the difference between your bid and Mr Chairman's was hardly huge. The seller would still have had a good result if you'd won.

More people liked the idea initially than the number of people making these posts. I don't know what more to say, but good luck. :)

I'm all for free market, minimum prices suck. No for planned market!

I've had a problem with Mr. Chairman and his auto-bidding antics for some time now.

Terrible, terrible feature.

It is an outrage.

Monsieur Parenteau should be compensated for the 5 months+ there was remaining on the naming.

A large part of the travesty is the change to ELB being unforgeable now. Instead of getting a good deal, if I want another one, I will have to buy it for almost full price or BS it myself for full price.

Perhaps instead of trying to get a 'good deal', if you really wanted it, you should have bid a proper price for it.

Considering that it's unforgeable, it should easily sell for more than 9m at 15m NW + 5 months of naming.

Good hell man, I bid what the seller considered acceptable, what else is required from a reasonable standpoint?

If you had won that bid for 9m, you'd have got one hell of a deal. If you even bid 11m, you'd have still got a deal.

So many people have said this in the past and it still applies. Bid as much as you're willing to pay. If 9m was as much as you were willing to bid, then you shouldn't be upset. If you were willing to bid another 2m, why not do it?

I know everyone can't be online at the end of an auction, but don't you have 15 minutes or something to place another bid after CB?

My only problem with CB is that it's bids are very questionable. I lost a bid on a MenC a while ago, even though my max bid was MORE than what the past 4 auctions had sold for.

> don't you have 15 minutes or something to place another bid after CB?

who cares? just use the autobid feature.

"Perhaps instead of trying to get a 'good deal', if you really wanted it, you should have bid a proper price for it."

If the seller considered higher than 9 mill the "proper" price, he should have set a min bid higher than 9 mill and paid the auction fee.

"Bid as much as you're willing to pay. If 9m was as much as you were willing to bid, then you shouldn't be upset. If you were willing to bid another 2m, why not do it?"

If the community as a whole, as determined by the highest bidder, was willing to pay only 9 million for the weapon, then the community was only willing to pay 9 million. Having what amounts to a bot artificially inflating the price is unfair.

> If the seller considered higher than 9 mill the "proper" price, he should have set a min bid higher than 9 mill and paid the auction fee.

Auctions are, in part, a mechanism for determining prices more accurately than the seller can alone. So no, he should not.

> If the community as a whole, as determined by the highest bidder, was willing to pay only 9 million for the weapon, then the community was only willing to pay 9 million.

And Mr. Charmain was willing to bid more, so he should get it.

You really are having trouble with this "auction" concept.

"who cares? just use the autobid feature."

Hypothetical situation:

Seller starts bid on [random item] for $1. (In my opinion a way to get around paying proper auction fees.)

Buyer 1 places bid of 1.5 million.
...then logs off for 24 hours.

Buyer 2 places bid for 1.49999... million.

Buyer 1 should win...

CB places bid of 1.65 million.

Seller reaps the rewards from having an automated "bot" give him a premium price without having to pay much in auction fees.

How in the world is this fair?

I'm really tired of every time some baby underbidding and losing to Mr. Chairman and whines about it in the forums.

It's really simple. Items spawning and never leaving the game would wreck the economy. Mr. Chairman is how rares get to leave the game. He's an important part of the economy and will not be removed.

Unless you'd really rather have a chance that every hundred thousand battles or so your weapon, armor, etc. would shatter.

And I know you well enough to say that the moans about Mr. Chairman would be *nothing* compared to *that* system.

"And Mr. Charmain was willing to bid more, so he should get it.
You really are having trouble with this "auction" concept."

I guess if "auction" == "way to set fixed prices on rare items," then yes, I am having trouble with this concept.

If auctions are not supposed to reflect the concept of a free market, than just say it and spell out the concept for us. As it stands, it seems too many people think it's a feature that exists to "gives sellers an advantage."

> Seller reaps the rewards from having an automated "bot" give him a premium price without having to pay much in auction fees.

Auction fee pricing is a completely separate issue. You're trying to muddy the waters to invoke emotional outrage but that is a straw man. Feel free to start a separate thread about it if you really want, but it has nothing to do with whether player A getting outbid by Mr. Chairman is "fair."

> If auctions are not supposed to reflect the concept of a free market, than just say it and spell out the concept for us.

I'm trying to reason with you but you keep resorting to straw men and hyperbole. Mr. Chairman placing a single bid at a known time is hardly the market distortion you're making it out to be.

"It's really simple. Items spawning and never leaving the game would wreck the economy. Mr. Chairman is how rares get to leave the game. He's an important part of the economy and will not be removed. "

I can understand this part, but I don't understand why the rare spawn rate isn't just drastically reduced.

As it is, this game is way too centered on "hurry up and get a rare!" to begin with. Why not let the current rares stay and nerf the rare spawn rate? There are way too many "useless" items, especially in weapons, and I think only the top players should have the ability to own such a large volume of rares.

For example, look at my character! I have a -ton- of rares that I probably shouldn't have for a 1.38 MPR character. Let rares be -rare-, and kill central bank.

Can you explain why CB would bid MORE than what previous auctions went for though? Back when I bid on my MenC, I put my max bid at 600k, past auctions hadn't even hit that amount, I figured I was sure to win at that amount, probably less, instead CB bids above that while I'm asleep.

"I'm trying to reason with you but you ..."

Actually, we're trading replies. I don't type that fast, so I'm not responding to your most recent post. Please give me a chance to catch up...

I had already looked at the thread, but I saw
"Mr. Chairman strikes again" with the last post by Jon and thought:

"Mr Chairman has refused to return to work until he receives better working conditions, higher wages and the communities understanding"

Jon: "I sat down with Mr Chairman and had a rather long discussion about what he wants changed and improved. In the end, we were close to an amicable agreement, but then I decided it would be easier to just change his programming. The new and improved Mr Chairman will be in operation effect of immediately."

Sorry for veering off topic. You may continue.

Jon,

That is like someone saying Ford Motors Stock should not be at $7 but should be $10. Then buying up its stock at 10 instead of what the normal people do at 7. But, someone with essentially infinite funds who then destroys the company.

Go to an auto auction. I have been to many. Cars are sold, as is, to the highest bidder. There are "reserve" auctions like on ebay and if the min is not met, the car is not sold. However, in CB we have a "reserve". It is called a minimum bid. Nobody there with infinite money bids higher to drive the price up. At least not legally.

Auction are a mechanism for determining the price more accurately then the seller alone-agreed!. And those looking to buy said item are the best to determine its worth. So why do we still need an artificial person making bids. If people were only willing to pay 9M for that elb, why did Mr.C bid more? He was "willing" or programmed. Huge difference.

Mr. Chairman is an artificial person who does not play the game and has no concept of what item worth's are. If the people that play the game, and spend their BA/earned CB2 were only willing to pay 9M, why should some artificial thing pay more?

That is the point I and I think others still cannot grasp.

It's simply an economic mechanism to replicate the natural loss of items. Please don't encourage Jon to find a more creative way...

How about items on characters that have not logged in in over 6 months get deleted?

Jon,

Sry my reply was posted after 10 others made their way.

This statement basically should say it all:
"It's really simple. Items spawning and never leaving the game would wreck the economy. Mr. Chairman is how rares get to leave the game. He's an important part of the economy and will not be removed."

Fair enough.

However I do have a few questions:

1) How many rare items has Mr. C won auctions on the past 30 days?

2) How many rare items get left on character that get "abandoned", that is not played for 30 or more days?

3) In CB1, when there was no Mr. C bidding, was an overload of rares a problem?

4) Why not decrease the spawn rate of rares to match the answer of Q2? Then would not people be happier?

Thanks.

these are the only important questions

3) In CB1, when there was no Mr. C bidding, was an overload of rares a problem?

Yes.

4) Why not decrease the spawn rate of rares to match the answer of Q2? Then would not people be happier?

There's much more liquidity this way, which is particularly important in an economy this small.

> If the people that play the game, and spend their BA/earned CB2 were only willing to pay 9M, why should some artificial thing pay more?

I would have thought it's obvious that if Mr. Chairman never outbids anyone, he wouldn't be doing his job.

I'll point to Ranger's post and say "ditto." I think he describes the situation perfectly. CB does not reflect market value, but simply drives inflation up.

"I'm really tired of every time some baby underbidding and losing to Mr. Chairman.."

You'll note I'm not the one who lost a bid this time. I'm simply speaking as one who has an interest in the game's economy.

"Unless you'd really rather have a chance that every hundred thousand battles or so your weapon, armor, etc. would shatter.
And I know you well enough to say that the moans about Mr. Chairman would be *nothing* compared to *that* system."

You're right, that would be far worse. But you can do better. Fix the rare spawn rates.

"Auction fee pricing is a completely separate issue. You're trying to muddy the waters to invoke emotional outrage..."

Uh, no, I'm not. I'm pointing out a problem with the economy that I think needs to be fixed.

Rares are too common, and the excuse for that is to allow an automated bot to auto-inflate and sometimes price-snipe auctions that legitimate users would otherwise win. It's counter-productive to an otherwise free economy. Let -actual- market value determine the price of actioned rares, not an automated bot.

"Mr. Chairman placing a single bid at a known time is hardly the market distortion you're making it out to be."

Sure it is. If an item is about to sell for 9 million (or whatever) then that is the actual market value of the item, as implicitly agreed upon by the seller, who refused to set a higher min bid and pay the fee. If some automated thing comes in and inflates it, it is affecting the free market.

:) simple .... just look through central bank's logs....

> Can you explain why CB would bid MORE than what previous auctions went for though?

Simple: he does not necessarily cap his bid at what previous auctions go for. He has a slightly (only slightly) more sophisticated cap. No, I won't give the details, because if I did, someone would probably come up with a way to exploit it and that would mean more work for me devising a new one. :)

Thanks for the answers.

While I personally do not like the mechanism Mr. C uses, I can certainly see the usefulness of it.

I was unaware of the problems in CB1 from the overload of rares. Thanks for at least clearing that up.

>> "Mr. Chairman placing a single bid at a known time is hardly the market distortion you're making it out to be."

> Sure it is. If an item is about to sell for 9 million (or whatever) then that is the actual market value of the item, as implicitly agreed upon by the seller, who refused to set a higher min bid and pay the fee. If some automated thing comes in and inflates it, it is affecting the free market.

I didn't say it's not *a* distortion. Only (by implication) that its effects are small -- as well as benign, in the sense that CB would be worse off without them.

"While I personally do not like the mechanism Mr. C uses, I can certainly see the usefulness of it."

Believe me, I can see the -very slight- pros of having a Mr. C type feature in place (removing high NW rares and replacing them with base items). In my opinion, there are better solutions.

"I didn't say it's not *a* distortion. Only (by implication) that its effects are small -- as well as benign, in the sense that CB would be worse off without them."

At the end of the day, I simply disagree that the idea of Mr. Charmain sniping or inflating auctions fits the ideal of "player-centric design" that games should strive to achieve. If a -real- player wins an auction, and a programmed, automated feature within the game says "HA HA HA HA!!! NO YOU DIDN'T! HA HA HA HA!!!!" Then it's really, really frustrating to us players. Maybe not the sellers, who are exploiting the auction system (see also: 1$ min bid sellers who expect Mr. C to bail them out), but the buyers are left thinking "why bother?"

The entire point of the new e-bay style bidding is to get items at a lower price (AMAZING change, by the way). But with a bot auto-inflating/sniping auctions, the whole point is moot. We still have to over-bid anyway to avoid the system screwing us. It's not fun, and therefore not a good feature.

"Maybe not the sellers, who are exploiting the auction system (see also: 1$ min bid sellers..."

I should note, that I personally have benefited from a Mr. C price-snipe, so nobody can make the case that I'm arguing from the position of one who has only lost. When I -made- money from a Mr. C snipe, I still thought "ah, that's crap."

If you people would bid the amount you were willing to pay, you'd have no reason to complain.

It seems to me that people will bid less than they are willing to bid. Then CB will come in and snipe their auction! =O and then will get it for 100k more or whatever. If you were willing to pay 100k more then maybe you should have bid that much.

And anyone that would take an economics course would realize that this is completely necessary. If the supply keeps going up, what keeps prices up? Yes, the Carnage blender economy is somewhat inflationary (The amount of money is always increasing), but Central Bank still serves a purpose.

I'd like to put my opinion in and say, I don't really -care- that someone got overbid on an item by Mr. C, except until I realized it was an ELB, and probably one of the larger ones in the game.... o.o

BoB, Mr C. still only bids one increment above the current highest bid and still only bids once as far as I'm aware so if your max ebay bid is still high enough to make that extra increment then you win.
He hasn't sniped, he's just proving you haven't paid enough since very rarely does Mr C. pay his valuation of an item.

in all these Mr C threads i don't think i've ever once seen the seller complain, just the person who lost by the next highest bid increment.....

I'm curious about something:
At the beginning of this month, AoFs were selling for 11mil each. Now, they're worth around 3 mil, up to maybe 5 mil if they're well upgraded. If one goes into auction, will the Chairman bid 8 mil because he thinks that's fair market price? There are large-scale changes that can double of half an item's value overnight; how are these accounted for?

9 mil is a good deal for that no doubt, but it isn't a total underbid. In a FS/WTB thread, it would have gone for that much.

are you getting frustrated with Mr. Chairman's cunning and savoir-faire? please note that if some of you had your way the market would inflate and everything i have would be worthless

"in all these Mr C threads i don't think i've ever once seen the seller complain, just the person who lost by the next highest bid increment....."


You're right! That's weeeiiiiird. Personally, I've never had a problem with Mr C. Maybe I'm the only person who has understood the need for his particular services. It certainly appears to be the case sometimes.

Ok, I'm convinced. I prefer the current more fluent system over decreasing the spawn rate of rares.

"in all these Mr C threads i don't think i've ever once seen the seller complain, just the person who lost by the next highest bid increment....."


LIES... I've complained before as a seller =)

people do tend to forget that the game has been around in another incarnation and things were learned from that. often times people are suggesting ideas that have been tried before and didn't work or jon thought they could be "fixed better."

as for central bank, i teach a community ed class on ebay and i tell my students this and it tends to work very well:

when you see an item you want, before you bid and get emotionally attached, and possibly competive, decide what you would be willing to pay for the item. when you bid, bid that amount. if you are overbid, then it was more than you were willing to pay anyway so no loss. if you are bidding less than you were willing to pay and then you were overbid, that is only your fault.

the fact that it is mr. chairman bidding instead of a real world person makes no difference if you just bid what you are willing to pay.

Just imagine the uproar if something like this appeared on Ebay.

Ebay making a program to bid on items it thought was undervalued.

There would be such a crap storm of the highest proportions.

Just because it is in play, does not make it right.

Comparing CB to Ebay is a poor analogy as the scale of each system is markedly different. And the people of CB have an excellent idea on the "value" of the items they are bidding on.

While I understand the need for Mr. C bidding and why it does, that still does not make it right in my book.

Ranger, that argument is ridiculous.

You can't compare the CB auctions to ebay. You know what. HE WASN'T.

He was merely stating something that he says in relation to ebay that happens to fit here.

Saying one should bid what one is willing to pay is foolish.

One is trying to get the best deal possible. Relic put a bid that he knew would be the best for all the people that actually played CB. An artificial agent then bid more. This is nothing like ebay. The bidding system is, that is the only thing that is like ebay.

"Saying one should bid what one is willing to pay is foolish."

on the contrary, given the system we have, doing anything else is what is foolish especially given that the item goes poof otherwise!

"on the contrary, given the system we have, doing anything else is what is foolish especially given that the item goes poof otherwise!"

Certainly, since we have an artificial bidder. One that does not even play CB and has no real investment in getting or not getting said item.

Just because it is present in the game, does not make it fair to those that actually do play CB.

But in the end, you are correct. If you want an item, and are the top bidder, make sure your bid includes the next 2 higher bids as well to make sure you get the item. If you want it that badly.

With the autobidder, why shouldn't you bid the most you are willing to pay for? Sure you may have to use the money before the auction ends, or you are worried about the 1 increment that Central Bank bids.

Both are minor reasons not to bid, otherwise bid the most you are willing to pay for...

> Just because it is present in the game, does not make it fair to those that actually do play CB.

Let's clear one thing up: anything that applies to all players of CB equally is "fair." Central Bank is entirely fair by this definition, which is the only reasonable one.

Fine,

Change Fair to Right.

Then why not have Mr. Chairman bidding earlier on in the auction at a certain (random, between 50% and 80%) percentage of his "max willing to bid" bid first ?
Then and only then also have him make a "final sniping bid" near the end, if the price is still under his limit.

This would at least warn people that they would have to bid a little bit more, and increase liquidity (since people no longer have CB$ tied up in auctions they're obviously going to end up losing to a bot).

What is not right about having a stable game economy?

lol i <3 mr chairman, good job jon. what it really comes down to is that no one can get a cheap deal anymore in auctions when there is the game watching every sale. and i think that elb went to where it deserves, it never got the attention it needed when the user was trying to sell it so its only fair it didnt go to item hoarding renters. but just the same someone could of very well used it. S.O.L

Oh and for anyone who thinks 9 mil is the fair price to a 15 mil Elbow, remember that the Elbow is now UNFORGEABLE.

60% the Networth of an unforgeable item is an incredible steal.

Hmmm,

So your saying that 9M for a 15M set of leather armor is a great deal also?

If people do not want to pay, whatever they are willing is the fair market price.

I cannot see how people cannot accept this simple Econ 101 concept.

What people are willing to pay is the fair market value of an item.

who is making erroneous analogies now? you seem to think that the cb economy, with a handful of members and very limited methods of money creation as well as dilution, should be equal to the economy of a capitalist nation?

the way i see it is that since it is such a micro economy, there has to be some external controls that aren't needed in a larger economy. i would think that would be obvious as well.

Nope,

My micro econ course did have a week or so on external factors, but nothing was brought up seriously about such a beast as Mr.C.

well i think here we are little more micro than even the microeconomics in college was geared towards, that would likely explain the omission of mr. chairman! ; )

Um, Ranger, you do realize the USA is very, very far from laissez faire (sp?) capitalism at this point, yes? There are MYRIAD controls in place to affect prices, inflation, usury rates, growth, etc. etc. etc.

Mr. C is FAR less onerous than what we are currently running today in the real world of the United States of America...

One more point -- we are also talking about Auctions...not the true, open market. Even auction houses have rules and regulations guiding what they can and cannot do. The only way do something COMPLETELY off the radar is to do it out of sight of the regulators, the money system, and the government. In CB-land, that would equate to using PayPal/USD on a FS/WTB thread. That would be completely out of Jonathan's control, other than transfer fees.

What if we just renamed it from "Auctions" to "Trading Post" or "Flea Market"?

No more "this is how an auction works" posts..........


What I am trying to illustrate is that most people see the word "Auction" and think, "I know what that is, and I have expectations for how it should work."

The reality, however, is that an auction on CB *will* be different than an auction anywhere else, and the only thing that you should expect it to have in common is the name and the act of exchanging money for goods. The "rules" of the auction are just part of the game, like transfer fees, the angry forge dwarf, and the cost of upgrading rare items.

That's a great idea.

Central Bank is needed because items do not break. The game would otherwise continue to produce items or have already produced items that are far below the value that one would like it for the game.

It is true that economies run better without price controls, but this is a game. For the game to have challenge and it's sort of fun to it's powerful items need to cost money. The way to do that is having some sort of limit to supply or demand.

What central bank does is create a sort of artificial unlimited demand at it's calculated price floor. Yes, the economy would function without this, but it is necessary if you want to keep prices at the same levels. In fact the economy would function better without this in the sense that more people would get what they wanted. But in terms of a game's economy it would fail. I'm sure you've seen some other games where they have an overly abundant powerful weapon. The problem with that is everyone ends up using the same weapons. The idea is to side step "over production" by the server by creating this artificial demand.

Other games will have this sort of "quest item" and everyone will do the quest for some other reason experience or some such. So the quest items ends up being the best you can get for a dirt cheap price.

If I wanted a 15 mil HLA the alternative would to be paying a forger some pct to get my 15 mil Hard leather armor. Thus, the cost to product it myself would be less than 15 mil.
Forge times for a Hard leather armor
Durability: [70, 17] (Uses 20 BA / cycle)

The way I'm determining value is the cost to get there myself. The cost to create a current 15 mil NW Elbow is 15 mil + the base price of the elbow. Basically, what is happening now is that since the server determines the price based on the cost to produce, and by increasing the cost to produce by making it unforgeable. Elbows were "over produced" in terms of the new cost to forge them; thus this is how the server corrects them.

This is so simple. So, so simple. Bid. More.


IF you want a "bargain" do FS/WTB. Otherwise, prepare to bid what's needed. This comes up every few months because someone loses an item. I have -zero- idea why we have to go through this. BID MORE. BID. MORE.

I cannot make this clear enough. You follow the rules of the game you play or you lose.

the other problem with not having mr. chairman to do his little price fixing, is what we had in the original cb. we basically had two prices for every item. one price was the base price or price that was paid for base or near-base level items.

the second price encompassed everything else; item naming, moderate upgrades and extreme upgrades. as time went on the second price moved closer to the first price. the only exception was the strongest weapon and uniques such as the highest mcm and such. it did get to a point with certain items that the difference in price between the base items and a majorly upgraded one was less than a million cb.

i for one am very glad that there is an option, now two with disenchanting of items, for players to get more of their money back when changing strategies or starting a new team. we are not all item hoarders and usd spenders here, some of us actually have no items on alts and actually sell items to buy others when changing our setups.

this is how i recollect the economy in cb, as i have stated before though i am old and my memory is getting more faulty all of the time. i do think we have a much more user-friendly economy now than we did then. as usual, your mileage may vary.

very nice