I don't think a 3 to 5 item limit would hurt. I mean, if it's being used for ultra-powerful weapons and rare and expensive pieces of art, how many are you going to need to be able to put up for auction at one time anyway?

Maybe also make a level limit to being able to put things up for auction, or someone who want to move a lot of merchandise can just sell it through novice alts.

finally, instead of a fixed time for the auction, maybe it ends something like two days after the last bid. That way it's not possible to just wait until the auction is about to end and make a bid 15 seconds before it does.

Also, the new bid should be at least 10% more than the previous one, or something to that effect, so you can't just keep on bidding 1 gold more.

Richter, for the record, I honestly think you wasted your money on a manse store. City stores, running at like 1/10th of the price, get more traffic in an hour than you could hope to in a year. You should be asking for them to be nerfed!

Point being, I guess, 10 is a good, sound limit. And, Tamaranis, That is one of the advantages of an auction. Waiting until the end, and getting in the last bid. Just have it say , instead of an hourly figure.

...those never sell well anyway. I've tried. In fact, I've tried selling them at silly low prices, over long periods of time.

What if you didn't get to keep the item in your inventory while it was being auctioned, but it disappeared into limbo. This makes sense if you consider that people in a real auction would be able to at least look at the items, if not examine them closely. And then if no one buys the item, instead of it magically returning to the owner it either

1) Was placed on the ground of the auction house. The main problem I see with this is everyone not bidding on an item, and just waiting for it to become free and then snatching it. It was reminds me of 'donation rooms' from other MUDs where people just throw their crap and forget about it, except in this case, you might be able to make money occasionally.

or 2) The item goes, somewhere. The stockroom of the city comm shop, or some other place where only a few city leaders have access to it. From there I guess they could sell it in a city shop, or just throw it at the nexus and let people take it. The only people who would benefit from not voting would be people who could get to the item afterwards. The only downside I could see from this would be spiteful people putting minor items (bales of hay, or chickens, for example) at the maximum amount allowed, in an attempt to flood the stock room.

I'm not sure if either of those are the best solutions -- although I favor #2 myself -- but it would cut down on the usefulness as a shop alternative, if there was a chance you would just lose the item.

And I expect people to say that then no one would use it, but although one can never tell until it plays out in a specific set of circumstances, I predict that any item of value would not stay long enough to go into the stockroom.

Edit:---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another idea to limiting them below shop usefulness: What if the 3-10 item limit was for the entire shop instead of each individual? Not only would this reduce the amount of memory consumed (although I'm not sure how much of an issue this is) it would, again, prevent people from throwing their crap into the 'donation room with a chance to make money.'

I have two more ideas about how this could be handled.

1) If you try to auction an item and the store was full, your item goes into a queue and waits its turn. The only real benefit of this is that your item isn't for sale at all times. However people would inevitably place a second, low-value item immediately behind it with the maximum auction length, to make sure their first item remains as long as possible.

2) When you try to auction an item and the store if full, you can't. The end. This is the real saver in terms of storage space capacity on the servers. It also encourages people to buy items already for sale in order to place their own items.

The total limit is probably a better solution than having old, unwanted items go into storage somewhere, and still maintains advantages to having a shop as far as I can tell. I know that was really long; I apologize for my verbosity. I really like this idea and would love to see it implemented in some way.

Wasted, no. Got screwed on a price? Yes.

And I'm the exception to the manse store sucking rule. Ever been to my city? Deepnight is a -high- traffic area, because it's linked to four places.

Jewels gets a lot of business I think as well, because they -always- have jewels.

The other ones get screwed though.

...hey, how'd we get ?

I believe we're thoroughly on topic - we're debating the effect auction houses would have on shop manses. And Deepnight does not have as high a traffic as you make it out to be, me thinks. But that's just me. Any shop in the Wilde or Celest or Glomdoring or Magnagora will have a higher rate of visitors - plain and simple. People just don't read the ads, the news posts, nothing. They just don't. It took me quite a while to find Jewels, and it was only after reading ADs a few times did I find it. I never check manse shops other than Jewels. And rarely will I even check shops beyond what's in WARES, unless I'm desperate.

Just because you realize your money was wasted (Yes, wasted) on a manse shop does not mean we should degrade anything else for your sake. Bring on the auction houses!

Well the thing about manse shops is if its Jewels and it has a huge selection of jewels and herbs at all times (things that people want) it will end up being high traffic once people realize they can go there to buy things that they want...

If you have five items in stock that no one give a crap about then yeah, no one is going to even enter the shop.

As it is, I'd rather just check Jewels than scour city-commune shops for ten minutes and discover the thing I'm looking for doesn't exist in any of them.

I'm not just talking about manse stores, I was stating a few posts ago that I thought the auction thing, unchecked, could override normal stores as well.

However, we all agree there would be a limit, should this kind of thing ever exist. So that point is moot.

Hey I love deepnight and jewels, only two places I shop, besides the shadow box and the occasional food.

This has the openings for a way to remove at least a -little- gold from the economy.

You could run it similar to how the World of Warcraft auction system works. You put down a deposit based on a percentage of the item's value, scaled by the selected auction length (WoW has options of something like 8, 12, or 24 hours) when you place an item up for auction, and the item disappears from inventory. If the auction is won, you receive deposit + (winning bid - a percentage). If the auction time limit is reached, you receive the item, and lose the deposit.

The auction fees (or part thereof) could go to the "auctioneer" i.e the great void. Instant money sink.

Actually, Deepnight is usually one of the first places I look for anything, aside from food, or empty vials.

Have to agree with Ixchilgal here. Deepnight is a very good store, and the owner of Jewels is my god. I'm waiting for Him to open up His order.

Meh *pout*

If you haven't already, check out Roark's thoughts here 9742 on how an auction system would have to work.

Edit: Me personally, I think its a great idea, but making it inferior to the incredibly expensive shop is a difficult task. If it were going to be fee-based, I would think that fee would have to be in the range of 30-50% of the sale price.

Alternatively (and my preference), have a smaller fee but work it as a secret auction - the seller chooses a secret base value of the item, then others can put a single undisclosed bid on it which wins if it is both largest and above the base value. The fee could be, say, a third of the the base value up front plus 10% of the difference in sale price. If no-one bids above the base value they get the item back but not their up front deposit. I think this situation is balanced enough between buyer/seller to keep most transactions at reasonable market price.

This would keep auctioning a good opportunity for selling valuable items at occasionallly above market price (and for grabbing occasional bargains), but make sure that shopkeeping remains a safer and more profitable venture.