Announced change to AH lacks teeth

[rda]

UPDATE: The change is live in the US. Posting items from addons is currently broken. This is going to get fixed. Let's see what happens to prices.

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From the first page:

To 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.

It is good that we have Blizzard listening and it is promising that they are talking about reworking the AH and the above being merely a temporary change to buy time for the real change.

However, the change above lacks teeth and won't work.

They increase the deposit, but they are returning it in full if the item sells - this already fails. Singles sell. But even if the deposit was never returned, all the increase would accomplish is bump the prices of singles and near-singles by the added percentage. Right now big stacks are priced higher than singles (frequently 2x higher), the change will merely bump up singles a little decreasing the price difference. The incentive to not post singles is insignificant and the AH load will just stay the same and the AH times will stay the same as well.

(Finally, the suggestion that the change will be "tested thoroughly" on the PTR is just bizarre. It won't be "tested thoroughly" on the PTR at all, it cannot be "tested thoroughly" there. This bizarre note looks like something added by a CM.)

Now, I understand why they are trying to play with deposit fees instead of attacking the issue directly and limiting the number of posts per account per day (per realm). They are afraid that a direct measure will have unforeseen effects. The increase of deposit fees feels more predictable to them. But, frankly, time is money. If you are going to make changes to the AH, you better make good changes, because if we are going to spend a month implementing the fake fix, then applying it, then seeing it not work, then deciding to implement something else, that's a month of time lost for the players and we are in a pretty hot period for the AH now: the most important time of the expansion = the first raid tier.

So, Blizzard, please reconsider and do something more direct. Either limit the number of posts per account per day or do something similar. What you are currently planning to do looks strange and toothless. It is understandable that you don't want to break things, but you are really risking spending effort only to irritate players for nothing.

And one other thing. Please don't let us discover a year from now that these talks about just doing something temporary now to buy time for real changes later are just talks with no real changes on the horizon once again. Don't drop the ball again. In the next major patch, whatever it is, either deliver the changes or at least say that they are coming right next, the changes are ten years overdue.

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ADDED: By the way, the problem might not be related to single stacks:

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post50018328

[GreenJesus]

Why should blizzard limit number of posts per account per day? Why are you so against the free market? Stop limiting freedom.

They should give discounts in deposits if you increase the stack count and enable people to buy as much as they want from that stack instead of having to buy the whole stack. That way you just post all that you have at a price and people can buy as much or little as they want.

[EzG]

I know nothing about coding so I have zero opinion or thought on how they could fix it, but limiting posts would only serve to piss off 99% of players not doing anything wrong.

[OreoLover]

Disagreed, because money talks.

Being undercut will sink those big deposits.

They should give discounts in deposits if you increase the stack count and enable people to buy as much as they want from that stack instead of having to buy the whole stack. That way you just post all that you have at a price and people can buy as much or little as they want.

In the long-term, more creative solutions can come along. First, spruce up the UI and functionality. Basic AH just can't compete.

[rda]

Why should blizzard limit number of posts per account per day? Why are you so against the free market? Stop limiting freedom.

The real fix is rewriting the AH to deal with the load (which is, frankly, not high at all, but their old code cannot deal with it), no limitations.

But the real fix takes time, so while they are implementing it, we need a quick fix to make the AH workable on big realms, it takes minutes to operate now. Limiting the number of transactions per day per account is this quick fix.

- - - Updated - - -

I know nothing about coding so I have zero opinion or thought on how they could fix it, but limiting posts would only serve to piss off 99% of players not doing anything wrong.

If the limit is 100 posts per day, nobody except hardcore posters / cancelers is going to hit it.

[schwarzkopf]

The problem is that the people that list items 1 at a time also tend to list them at the lowest price to make the most disruption.

That means - they will almost always sell, making the 'penalty' pointless.

What needs to happen is to take the search/index function out of trade skill stuff - I don't need to do a text search for Tidespray Linen.

I just need to buy 200 of them and know how much that will cost.

Removing the text searching/indexing functionality from the database back end for tradeskill stuff === HUGE improvement in performance.

A tradeskill DB with auctions indexed by item id and price alone would work wonders.

[Sundreamer]

creating an AH like gw2 has, might help with the problem...people can just dump all of their items in their and people can choose how many they want to buy, automatically buying the cheapest ones

[Kendros]

Its not about testing in the ptr its about letting addon authors mess with their addons to adjust to that change.

[noladrew]

They should just implement a market system like Wildstar had. People can create orders for you to fill or you can post your items for people to purchase at the current market price. If you don't want to sell it for market price, don't list it. The items moved quickly and it cut out a lot of hassle on both ends of buying and selling. If you wanted to buy 1000 herbs, you just put in your quantity and it told you how much it would be. It would accumulate 1000 herbs, even if all 1000 were from different sellers, and tell you how much the total would be and your average price per herb. Obviously has its flaws, but is better than the shit system wow has had for over a decade.

[OreoLover]

The real fix is rewriting the AH to deal with the load (which is, frankly, not high at all, but their old code cannot deal with it), no limitations.

Some computer's stutter just processing the AH addons data. Unrelated to the current server load. Unlimited AH bandwidth isn't a worthy solution to a messy, poorly displayed AH.

But the real fix takes time, so while they are implementing it, we need a quick fix to make the AH workable on big realms, it takes minutes to operate now. Limiting the number of transactions per day per account is this quick fix.

Limiting the use of addons would be a dreadful but similar "fix," stopping people from automating so many queries.

[munkeyinorbit]

The problem is that the people that list items 1 at a time also tend to list them at the lowest price to make the most disruption.

That means - they will almost always sell, making the 'penalty' pointless.

What needs to happen is to take the search/index function out of trade skill stuff - I don't need to do a text search for Tidespray Linen.

I just need to buy 200 of them and know how much that will cost.

Removing the text searching/indexing functionality from the database back end for tradeskill stuff === HUGE improvement in performance.

A tradeskill DB with auctions indexed by item id and price alone would work wonders.

The problem isn't the single stacks. If people didn't buy the single stacks then they wouldn't be posted. People against the single stacks need to remember that this is America and the free market rules. I always post single stacks and I probably post 400 AH a day. Almost everything gets sold every day. Don't blame the players, blame the game.

[OreoLover]

The problem is that the people that list items 1 at a time also tend to list them at the lowest price to make the most disruption.

That means - they will almost always sell, making the 'penalty' pointless.

...I feel like some of you haven't sold on the AH much.

Being undercut in these situations will bust your gold, Gold Goblin pros aside.

[Deleted]

So many games handle auction housing better than WoW, even an MMO from the 90s, Tibia handle it better wherein you have a slider option to indicate how much you want to buy, per seller and not per item on the AH.

The page system is silly and outdated for modern WoW.

[Hannya84]

A person who hasn't seen the change yet, already certain that it won't work.

Considering that the reason people post so many singles, despite it taking so much longer, and being much harder to sell, is that the deposit is smaller. Maybe you should wait until making posts denouncing everything.

It's not going to break the game if a small tweak doesn't do shit.

It's very annoying when people demand that Blizzard make changes that would piss off the playerbase. And then get pissed off when Blizzard makes those changes.

[OreoLover]

What needs to happen is to take the search/index function out of trade skill stuff - I don't need to do a text search for Tidespray Linen.

Removing the text searching/indexing functionality from the database back end for tradeskill stuff === HUGE improvement in performance.

A tradeskill DB with auctions indexed by item id and price alone would work wonders.

Addressing the UI/functionality is definitely the path forward, but all these years in... one can only hope they're on it, Soon.

[schwarzkopf]

...I feel like some of you haven't sold on the AH much.

Not sure who you are referring to ... but my comment was address to those BUYING on the AH much.

People will buy the cheapest.... the cheapest tend to be the singles.
Even if those people doing the buying are buying to resell to make money, the point remains that the singles will sell.

As the singles are selling - there is no penalty for their listing.

[Sarevokcz]

I know nothing about coding so I have zero opinion or thought on how they could fix it, but limiting posts would only serve to piss off 99% of players not doing anything wrong.

please..

limit the active posts per item, say, no more than 20 active posts of monelite ore with available slots replenished when item is sold or the auction is cancelled.
99,9% of people dont deal with 4k monelite, let alone at the same time, this wouldnt hurt anyone BUT those who post 1500 x1 items...

[LilSaihah]

They should do a complete rework of the materials and consumables AH to work like GW2's. It'd be a big project, but it'd be worth it. The main reason I don't interact with crafting or trading is because the system is way harder to use than GW2's.

[OreoLover]

People against the single stacks need to remember that this is America and the free market rules.

People need to remember the game is in Azeroth and Blizzard rules.

[rda]

They have the code ready for commodity trading with the WoW Token. They should remove trade goods from the AH and move them all on a separate trading house using commodity trading similar to how it works on many other games or how it worked on D3. The bulk of the issue is with trade goods after all. Ideally, offload it to separate hardware since it is region wide to take some load off the servers as well.

The bulk of the issue is with trade goods, yes, and it would be great to move to trading commodities differently from regular items, yes, but the token is absolutely a special case and you cannot just plug other items into the code that serves the token, this is not a good solution at all (you wouldn't want to, the code for the token has a lot of things specific to it; for one thing, performance is absolutely not a primary goal).