Planet M.U.L.E.

Hey everyone. First of all i'd like to say i never played the original M.U.L.E. That aside here are my thoughts..

I really dislike the way that land is auctioned. It doesn't really work like a real auction. Here are my biggest problems:

1. There is no out-bidding. You can keep increasing the price no matter how long till you have the money. Real auctions dont work that way. If a player starts with 500. Then that same player cannot raise the bar to 600. First someone else has to outbid him. The way its currently made, enables for artificial price inflation and coupled with my number 2 grudge makes a very annoying tactic.
2. You can back out any time. This is also an incorrect aproach. In a real auction if a player bids 500 he cannot simply back , he must wait until he is outbid. In M.U.L.E. however you can back out at any time. This right now enables any person to inflate the price to 2000 and then at the last moment run back to the start line. Nothing happens to him, but the land is now off-limits to everyone else due to a very high price.

I eagerly await your thoughts on this subject.

The goal has never been to emulate a traditional auction. It's more like an abstract form of negotiation, and it was a central part of the original game.

That said, while these features did exist in the original game, the pace of the auction phase was slower and the prices weren't quite so fluid. You couldn't drive up the price thousands of dollars on a whim, because time would simply run out before you got that high. Also, while you still had the option of backing down, the slower movement meant that it took a good chunk of time to get back down from a high bid, so if you cut it too close it was very easy to end up getting stuck with a high bid that you didn't intend to pay.

I'm not sure the added pressure you can exert on the price in this version is altogether a bad thing though, simply because land is so. damn. valuable. In the first third of the game, those price tags of a couple thousand dollars may very well be cheap compared to what the land is actually worth.

I don't think the auction is broken - it plays like the original M.U.L.E.

However, the price bars do zip up and down way too quickly. It takes too light of a touch...

Man, what was better than forcing the price up in the original game and then backing out at the last moment, forcing an overinflated purchase? Great fun! It's all part of the charm! The howls of horror when you land your friend with something as punishment for them forcing you to put the price up in the first place!

Overall it's not just a land auction problem.

It's a problem with all of the auction phase.  It has to do with how fast you can move and how fast you can raise the price.

For example, a plot of land is for sale.  In the original game it would be very very hard to jack the price up to say over $1000 because of the time it takes to do so.  But in the current form you move so fast that you can hit the max caps far faster than you ever should be able to.

-Jara

I wouldn't mind seeing the speed dropped a little bit, but overall I very much appreciate the faster speed. It always bugged me in the original that if I had $2000 I couldn't even try to outbid the guy who had $1200. It's also nice that you can actually pay $400 for that unit of food/energy you desperately need (or make other players pay $400 for it), where in the old version the price may not even go up to $200 before time runs out...

You bring up some interesting points GabrielPope.  I think in many ways I might just be too used to the old one.  The slower speed kept prices down to be more reasonable.  Arguable that kept you from screwing yourself. 

On the flip side when I was low on food and need to purchase 4 units at very high prices... I ended up purchasing 5... so even the purchasing feels a little fast to me.

Here is my Auction phase wish list:

1) When purchasing goods from other players slow down the rate of transfer by a small amount.
2) Slow down movement/bidding speed at least some.

The speed wouldn't be a problem if the land price returned to its original asking when players run back down.
 
As it stands it's very easy to raise the price to the thousands and the base price will drop to a few hundred below what you went to when you quit buying.

Thank you Lucid!!!  After I posted and walked away this same thought hit me as well. 

In the current system while the upper end lets you drive the price up like crazy.  You are totally correct that it's impossible to decrease it.

Also it very easy for the person who drove the price up in the beginning to jump right back off the line and re-shoot the price back up.  It's all very much in favor of the grief-er -- which I dislike a ton.

Yes, this!  When the griefer drops back down, the price should drop as well.

There's a large part of me that wants the Land auction functionality to represent a real auction, so this type of griefing can't even happen. The land auction is an actual auction - the goods auction is more open trading.

My vote is to have the Land Auctions work in such a way that bids can't be retracted; that's not good business and gets you negative comments on E-Bay. ;)

One thing in auction functionality is annoying me... For example:

I own 15 food. And want to sell 11. For the best price i can get. Store buys at 15.
One other player need 4 food. He walk as buyer above, raises the price very high to 110.
Now i sell 4 items for a price of 110 to him.

I am not able to sell the rest of 7 items to the store. :( :( :(

Because if i walk down, the price never lowers to the price of 15 the store bought before. And i cannot sell the other items to the store anymore. :(
So i have to keep the 7 items and get a spoilage next turn. :(

I think if time is enough and after selling goods for high prices, a player should have the chance to sell the rest of the goods to the store at the buy price of the store.

This is how it worked originally - if the store was knocked off the buy screen, it would not be available for the rest of that particular auction.  This introduces many elements of strategy, including thinking about just how much you have vs. what you think you can get from the other players.  And if you think about it, what is better... 4 units for a grand total of 440 credits with some spoilage (and thus extra for you for next turn), or 11 units for only 165 credits without spoilage?

I have to second this.  The original may have done this, but it seems more of a logic limitation or oversight than a feature.  If the store has nothing, I should be able to sell to a price players want it and then move down.  It's not only the store that is affected, but other players who aren't willing to go up to the first grab price.  Once I sell off stuff to the high bidder, I'm limited in how I want to sell the remainder.  They may be another play willing to buy higher than what the store will, but with the price gauge moved so far up, they can't buy it.  This causes an artificial limitation of the market and just doesn't make any sense.  They're my goods, I should sell them how I will.  It also makes more sense to be able to sell them to the store rather than let them go to spoilage for the benefit of the colony and setting up an emergency stock.

I mean the AI doesn't even like this artificial limitation.

I think it's the most important bug of the game currently.
Every person I played with whines about this.

It can be exploited pretty easily too. You can pull the prices up as high as your balance permits and then go back to the BUY state so that no one can even attempt to buy it.

Please fix this

Thank you

Hmmm. I'm of two minds about this.  I can understand the idea of locking out store sales, to help ensure the balancing act like @Lomgren said.

And yet... it just annoys me that I can't drive the price down further.

How about a compromise?  If you're walking down the price, once you hit the bottom line, where the store would normally be, the price drops slower than it would normally?

Yeah, this is the one point in the whole auction-price-not-dropping-to-baseline complaint that is a real killer. If you have no intent of buying a plot, and yet want to make sure nobody else gets it either, just drive the price up to $1k or more... then drop back down again.

This may also be an artifact of the auction price moving much faster than it did in the original.

I don't see the balancing or strategic value in locking out the stores.  All it tends to do is create an artificial price bubble in a market without the consent of those involved.  I'm all for price gouging a necessity when the store happens to run out, but the problem with playing that game is it has great consequences when it goes wrong.  Crystite and Smithore don't have this problem, but Energy and Food does.  The fact that both Energy and Food spoils causes a situation where you are forced to horde against your wishes.  This then causes spoilage to leak valuable commodities from the economic system and give rise to a possible nasty shortage.

The only possible way to get around this right now is sellers to never allow buyers to go above the store's selling price.  This is very counter-intuitive and just seems like a silly glitch and lapse in reasoning design wise.  Sure, locking out stores would keep prices low on necessities, but this actually hampers gameplay and punishes players for playing the economy in a game about playing the economy.  In fact, temporary store shortages are one of the few ways to make any money off of Food and Energy without damaging the entire economic system.  I want to get my money's worth, but I don't want to hamper the economic system I'm reliant upon.

If the store has a fire and empties out of food, I'm going to take advantage of the buyers bidding for food.  This is especially true for when I have a limited surplus.  I'm going to let them out bid each other for first dibs on food.  But, if a really high bidder gets all the food they want and I still have enough left over, I want to sell it to someone or even the store before it spoils.  Just because one player thought food was valuable enough to pay out of the nose through it shouldn't exclude me from selling to a much lower price to someone else, particularly if they are the main producer of energy.

In summary, it's just an artificial limitation that only serves to limit the game for players on the illusion it does some fairness regulation in a system that already has such inherit in the system.

Totally agree with BubbaBrown and share his opinion about that.

This has been discussed int he suggestions threads. 

Forcing people to stay in the auction once they enter (for land only) would solve this.  In event of a tie at the bottom price, the last person to reach the bottom (after backing down from a higher price) would be forced to buy.

I exploit this in all games.   It make the resource "money" more interesting, since If you want to boycott other players forcing then to pay 800-1200 for his plot, you can abuse the feature to force a rise of price.  Again, If you are not interested on the plot, but don't want other dude to get it, you can raise it to the sky (2000) so no one will buy it.

A number of evil strategies are based on exploiting this feature.

Do people really dislike it? its based on how the game work on other areas (you can do exactly the same thing with food, energy, smithore, cristyte  ).  Is ok to me to "fix it" if other people dislike it.

Technically the other auctions function the same way, but with one difference: in the goods auctions, there are players who can set the selling price. In the land auction (at least, the ones offered by the Store, not by players), as long as someone meets the reserve (the price initially offered for the land), the price is set only by the potential buyers.

In the original game, when a player attempts to sell a plot of land, they themselves can constantly re-set the reserve bid by moving up and down on the track, much like how sellers during goods auctions can back away from their offered price, or come down to meet buyers. If the land-seller's reserve ever went above the highest buyer bid, it would shunt all of the buyers back to the bottom of the screen and force them to climb up again.

And I don't believe that a player should be able to block the sale of land simply by having lots of money, and not having to sacrifice anything to have that advantage.

My personal preference still stands - all other auctions are technically open markets where trading at various prices can and should occur, but the land auction should be a real auction, where bidders are held to their bids, and cannot back out.

I have to agree with Lomgren.  This was in the original game, and I think it's an important piece of strategy, that I often made use of - if, for example, I'm the only one with energy, I have to determine how much everyone else is willing to pay, and how many units they will buy, as well as what I can sell it to the store for, in determining whether it's worth it to let the store go off the bottom of the screen.  If I'm only going to sell 1 or 2 units, it may not be worth it.

It's something that could be put in as a variation, but I think that before changing how the game worked originally (and I do agree there are some tweaks that could be done), an effort should be made to bring the gameplay as close as possible to how the original one was. 

In my opinion, being capable of retreating during land auctions is a very fun and exciting part of the game.
I'd rather simply make it not possible to go back to the BUY position once you passed it: if you make a very high bid, you can retreat only at the lowest price, but never back to the $0 bid.
This means when someone makes a bid he IS going to "battle" for the possession of the land, but can't withdraw entirely from the "battle".

This fixes the problem of abuses while preventing land auctions to be too boring.

Just because the original performed a particular way doesn't mean it should be repeated.  I say this because a lot of "features" and behaviors in older games were usually due to technical limitations and lack of large scale and varied perspective play-testing.  I love my old games, but they all are guilty of dirty tricks, dodging design bullets, and missing gameplay foul-ups to make a critical deadline.

I agree that if there's an obvious flaw or limitation, it should be fixed, but this doesn't feel like that to me.  I just did a three human game with some friends, and this definately came into play as strategy.  Of course we'll never know for sure, since the creator is no longer around, but this definitely feels like something that was playtested and approved, at least to me.  I think that people may have to agree to disagree on this one.

But I do stand by my statement that it's a good idea to recreate the original as a starting point.  It seems like I've seen several postings that say: "I've never played the original, but.." and then proceed to say how it should be changed.  It just seems like it's hard to really know what the best modifications are if not everyone is familiar with how the original plays, and of course, I like the idea of a "Classic" mode - just like the original, with no gameplay tweaks, but with updated graphics and sound. 

This seems like one of those games that could have an advanced page with a whole mess of tweaks and variations, and that could incorporate all these ideas, giving people the choice to use them or not.  I cerainly would like to see something like that.

Let's look at what would happen if people could sell to the Store even if the price hike drove it off the bottom of the screen:

1) People who had excess after the price gouge could sell it before it spoils.
2) As a result, the average price per unit sold would be dramatically less, de-valuing your goods.

So there's actually a situation in which someone wouldn't want to hold onto the excess of a good they charged out the pooper for, so they *wouldn't* gain the benefit in the scoring?

The only way I envision this is if people wanted to sell to the Store directly, and not to other players.

Even if Collusion was enabled, the game doesn't allow this. If there's a buyer at or above Store price, you have to sell to him first.

There are situations though when one player hikes the price beyond what others will pay or out of range of poor players.  After selling to the hiker player, one would be rendered unable to sell to those that were bumped out of the running by the hiker.  I suppose one could just head the hiker at the pass and take the loss of possible profit, but it still seems counter-intuitive.

As for selling to the store, there are situations early in the game where it makes sense to sell to the store.  For food, it makes more sense to sell the excess to the store until food production gets more stabilized.  Since, the food at the store doesn't spoil, it allows chance production not to be wasted and available in case of an emergency.  Anything spoils shrinks the economy and can (and probably will) work it's way to screw you over.

I like price gouging, but if it puts a player at a serious disadvantage... especially the one I've been buying energy from, I tend to take the loss on the sell than the greater loss from not having enough energy for production of food.

OK, here's an interesting problem with that.

Let's say 3 of our players get involved in the 'run the price up' game.  Or worse, three people bid... but then two run it way up to North Craziland.

Then they all run back down to the 'buy' line, including the poor sucker who stayed down there, as prices went way, way past their ability to buy.

... who buys it? At what price?

The person lowest in the rankings? What if they don't WANT it at this crazy price they couldn't control... and can't even afford it?

The person highest in the rankings? Sure would be easy for a lower-ranked person to force a sale at an insane price, that would screw everyone.

The person who was the last to come down?  What if one of the others got the 'jump' on them, on the way down?

The one with the highest bid, ever during the process?  I suppose that's the least prone to awful.

I use this as a strategy to prevent other players from buying energy/food that need it. If I have the cash and one other guy has the units to cover everyone I will force the price out of the range of the other 2 players so they can't afford it. giving me the edge :-)  I know it's dirty but I would like this 'feature' to stay.

If the seller could just come back down to $15 I would lose my edge :-)

The person last to come down.  If othe rplayers get the jump on you, you shouldn't have been up there in the first place.  There needs to be some risk in driving the price high.  Also, with this feature implemented, you will see far fewer price increases to unreasonable levels in land auctions.

The second option is also a good solution.  This leaves you with two scenarios.

a. In a tie scenario at any price above the min, the winner is the lower ranked player. 

b. In a tie scenario at the min price, the buyer is the player to bid highest during that land auction. 

One possible exploit, what happens when a player simply has more money than the others.  He could raise the price higher than any others, and then come down and be the defacto purchaser in case of a tie.  This seems unlikely, but it could happen. This could be remedied if the price still only comes down a certain amount below the highest bid and never all teh way to the starting bid.

If the other player know what he need, this strategy will not work. So is fair on my book.

The more I think about this, the more I realize two things.

Players move too quickly on the bidding screen.  Not a LOT, but some.

With commodities, I like the way it is now, where you cannot ever go back down to the store price.

This FORCES you to make a choice between
A) gouging the other players for high profit per item (and taking a potential loss on lots of unsold items, which may then decay)
B) Selling lower than you'd like, but with the potential to unload everything onto the store.

So... annoying as it is... I think it's good.

Note that this would be LESS of an issue if players moved slower, and time continued to pass (slowly) during buying/selling.  Seldom would you even have TIME for the price to get driven up, then all the way back down again.

I would agree with Lomgren and others on this.

If you don't only want to sell to the top bidder, sell before they raise the price over the screen of the other(s) you want to sell to drop below the screen including the store.

In the case of energy [which is far more common for the store to run out of than food], your only dealing with a 25% spoilage rounded down anyway.

I would agree with Stormdancer that the move rate up and down seems slightly faster than the original. May either need to slow that movement down slightly or speed up the timer while moving a bit.

The movement speed is considerably faster; moreover, while moving the timer slows down considerably. In the NES port (the closest thing to the original versions that I'm familiar with) you'd only have time to go up about $200 tops in commodity auctions, or maybe $800 for land auctions (which use a $4 increment instead of $1.) Here it's easy to get into the four digits for commodities and you can probably get close to five digits on land auctions.

I do appreciate the faster speed--one of the things I hated about the original was when you'd have lots of money that you could never spend, because the auction speed was so slow you couldn't drive the bid up to what you actually wanted to bid--but I agree that this may be overkill.

I've played a couple games in which the following has happened and it made everyone except the griefer quite upset.

• Land auction starts.
• A player runs as high up as he can, then backs down below the auction line.
• The price of the land never goes back down again.
• No one wants to buy the land.

If the griefer has enough money, he can do this all throughout the game and ruin it for everyone else. None of the auctioned lands will be sold and the fun will be ruined.

My suggestion is that when he is running back down after driving the price up so high, he shouldn't be able to get back behind the line until he has brought the price back to what it was when the auction started.

The price in the original game did not go back down to what originally was.  If the players move up to the top of the line and keep going, just like in commodity auctions, the base price rises accordingly and never goes back down.

The way it works is how the original game worked.  However, I think the player movement to auction time ratio is a bit different from the original game, allowing someone raise the price significantly higher than would even be possible in the original game.  However, what you are describing was still able to be done in the original game if one player had significantly more money than the rest of the players.  This wouldn't normally happen early in the game... usually it will happen later.  I don't agree that "the fun will be ruined".  I think this opinion differs between old school and new school MULErs.  Try not to leave yourself with such a significant difference of money than others if you want to prevent them from doing this.  I don't think this should be changed.

yeah. at my second online tournament, i saw a player abuse that "land auction". >:(
it goes as high as possible and retreat. the price of the next land auction is still quite high. I made the bad choice to buy.

even later in the game, he killed my sell of a land the same way. as a newbie, i am quite puzzled and dismayed by such a behavior.

i think it should be changed!
either you can't retreat ! that's the way auction works in real-life, isn't it ?
either the player needs to go down to retreat back to the starting price. as Dave37 suggested

i don't know the original game. but i see this as a real prloblem. you can't stay close to the orignal game for such "flaw"

pushing land prices high is not cheating, often its a very strong defensive mechanic against richer players who would buy land for far less than its worth. i dont even think authenticity needs to be invoked here, i think this is a good mechanic on its own

The game has an element of cutthroat behavior.  Some players don't see this as being a "problem".  You'll just have to make sure you have enough money to complete for land.  I think you guys are just being sore about it, which is part of the fun believe it or not.  Remember that the person who "griefed" you isn't getting the plot either.  So it's not like anyone really gained an advantage over you.  You were just denied the opportunity to buy it.

well, i am ready to learn the game and accept some "cutthroat behavior". but this "problem" is just denying others to do anything. without consequences.

i am not saying it's cheating. i am saying it is an abuse of the rules.

and it's the richer player that can do this. because you can't buy something if you don't have the money, do you ?
it's the richer player that deny poorer to buy anything without even bying at last.

Incorrect. There is indeed consequence to this type of auction manipulation.  For starters, the griefer will not be gaining the plot, and so will not be gaining an advantage over the other players for having more land.  In addition, other players will have the opportunity to grab this plot for free on the next land grant.


That's your personal opinion and you are entitled to it.  My opinion is that the rule exists for a reason.  There is no way to abuse them, only to use them.  The same mechanics exist in all of the auctions in the game.  Not just the land sale auction.


That's a matter of perspective.  You may have less money in an auction because you are hoarding some other commodity, or "letting it ride" in hopes that you'll hit the jackpot in a future turn.  In the meantime, the person with more cash on hand is going to have the upper hand in the auctions. 

yes. i agree

i just that i haven't yet  won a game  :-[

What I would definitely agree with is that the price moves up and down too fast compared to the original game, making the price go too high too fast.  IMO that should be addressed.  But the original mechanics should remain the same.

While I like the idea of not being able to back down as it would prevent the bidding high to prevent a sales without any risk of actually having to buy it.

BUT... it does add a *new* type of auction to the game.  The question then is this exception worth adding?  Design usually works best when the rules are consistent as it makes the game easier to learn.  Once you know how one auction works, you know how they all work.

This change would make that untrue and I can imagine quite a few new players going up and then trying to go back down and either feel it's a bug or be shocked that they can't move downward.

How do you impress that this auction is different?  UI?  Sound? 

Again, I like the idea but I think there are a few issues that would need to be worked out.  It may also be that breaking the universal rule that all auctions work like X is not worth it.

Keep it as it is mule should be cut throat.It's nobodys fault if you don't have cash play better.My biggest fear is this game is more and more watered down for so called balance.There all ready no collusion/no cash penalty or advantage for diffrent speices because whiners would claim it unfair.I also notice next land for safe afther the 1st/2nd/3rd in any round does not start contine upwards from the first

Example:

1st plot let say sells for $900

2nd plot if theres 1 to sell would then start from $900

Just like the Atari version did not shure about the c64 version?

The "not having to sacrifice anything" part is which makes me doubt this mechanism - even IF it was exactly this way in the original versions.

On the other hand...
... I don't think any exceptions should be added for the PlanetMULE version which tries to resemble the original version as closely as possible (and AFAIK the current development branch at V1.2 aims at doing so).

another thought:

currently, the colony announces how many lands it will auction in a round at the start.

This could lead to a knowingly advantage of the player with the most money:
He could shut out players from buying the first plot, then secure the second for himself.

If the colony would not reveal how many plots it is going to auction, would this be more of a gamble(?):
If the player with the most money does buy the first plot, the remaining players could buy the second plot cheaper, unless the first player buys it at a maximum price, because the next plot would start at least at what has been asked for the last plot, so still no other player could buy the second plot?

So would it be better for gameplay reasons make the entry price of a second plot auctioned in the same round the middle of the initial first plot entry price and highest bid?

Can someone confirm exactly how multiple land auctions in one round were handled in the original with regards to price and announcements?

Reading Kroah's doc, here's what it says:

• The probability of land auctions is different between the Standard and Tournament modes. Since we're playing Tournament games (with Crystite), the probabilities are: 0 auctions 31.126%, 1 auction 37.748%, 2 auctions 24.303%, 3 auctions 6.248%, 4 auctions 0.562%, 5 auctions 0.013%
• First land auction of the game has a reserve of $160
• First land auction of the round has a reserve equal to the average price paid for land in the previous round - $60
• If there are additional land auctions in a round, their reserve is equal to the price paid for the last auction - $60
• If a plot does not sell, its "price" for purposes of determining the next auction's reserve is the reserve of the current auction divided by 2, + $52.
• The land auctions end when all the land is sold or when a land isn't bought. I think 1.2 doesn't reflect this yet.

Also, Intergalactic Mole and other classic fans help me confirm this, but the game did not indicate how many auctions were to be held; it just showed "Land for Sale" at the top, but no indication of the number of plots.

This would also suggest the actual purpose of the auc-block, would be to prevent players behind on cash or land to catch up (but chances are the player who is low on cash is that way for a reason, related to smithore buyout or land grabbing)...something to think about.

Regarding the Land Auctions, this is clearly broken if you consider the intent behind the mechanism of not being able to get back to the original price. As you mentioned, since the speeds are a lot slower with the original game, this broken design was a non-issue. Here's why it's broken: as explained by others, the intent behind not being able to get back to the original price is that the seller, by not coming down, is sacrificing the possibility to sell to the store. This is a very good gameplay mechanism, but it DOES NOT apply to the land auctions, because there is no store! Now couple the high speed bidding, and the broken mechanism and you clearly have a problem.

You claim this is not abuse and it's rewarding player who has lots of cash. How does it possibly fit with a game design that (correctly) tries to prevent the player who is ahead from getting too far ahead and the player that's behind from falling too far behind? The only reason it wasn't fixed in the original game is because it wasn't easy to abuse with the original speeds and who knows, they probably didn't have enough memory left to implement an exception.

It is not clear to me that the design is broken, and the intent behind the mechanism of not being able to get back to the original price is not documented anywhere.  It is only speculated.  Therefore, it is only your  personal opinion, not a fact, that this is not working as intended.

You've both failed to understand the fact that the plot will then be given for free in the next land grant, which in and of itself is a sacrifice.  The person who griefed the auction could have purchased the plot but instead is giving everyone the opportunity to obtain it for $0.00 in the next land grant..

And Mr. Brown, you can confirm the existence of this mechanism in the original game, which can be downloaded from www.atarimule.com.

Fair enough, so let me state it in another way. Just because something isn't documented isn't an excuse to ignore logic and reason, so we should give it a whirl:

1-Clearly one restriction with the way auctions are presented is there is limited screen estate where the range of the maximum and minimum bid price is presented. Since you can shift the maximum price by moving up, then the minimum has to shift also. At the most basic level this is why the store price disappears.

2-This is is no problem with store auctions because of what I explained above: it fits within the gameplay dynamic. The seller can go down ANYTIME to stop the price increase. So it's the seller's choice/greed to let the buyer max out the price.

3-It is a problem with land auctions, because there is no seller so nobody can stop the price increase

4-The opportunity cost for letting the land go doesn't exist: the land is clearly not worth purchasing as no other player, even with almost as much cash, is interested in buying at the inflated price. You can't talk of an opportunity cost where there is no choice - for the exploiter, buying was never an option to begin with. All you have here is a mechanism for the richest player to remove the land auction from the play, as if it was never offered in the first place.

5-Again this problem did not exist in the original game to any appreciable extent, because the movement speeds are much slower.

I understand perfectly what you have been saying all along.  I simply disagree.  Do you really want to go tit for tat on every point you are trying to make?  In summary, think of the richest player of having somewhat of a corrupted political influence on the auctioneer.  Nothing unrealistic about it.  If I was Bill Gates and I told someone I dont want them auctioning off a piece of land, chances are they will listen, because I'm Bill Gates and they know I'd be good for returning the favor some time.  Think of it like corrupt politics.   Perhaps the developers had this in mind when they created the game.  The game has many cutthroat aspects to it, who is to say that this isn't one of them?

The Store is wanting to know if you'll be bailing them out financially after the last time they took a bath on Smithore. :)

Sorry IM, but the idea that you possess "influence" over the Store and somehow owe them a favor is way beyond the functional idea of the land auction, in my opinion. If we went along with what you just implied, I expect the game to take a chunk of your money for the ability to auc-block (the "favor" that you owe). I tend to side with the people who are stating the speed of price changes is what is primarily to blame for the current notion that one can auc-block. If that were to change, we'd see that less often. Also, 1.3 needs to enforce the rule that once land auction goes unclaimed, there are no more auctions that turn, no matter what.

However, to satisfy morbid curiosity, I'd love a feature which tracks how much money flows into and out of the Store as the game progresses. Do certain events in the game put the Store woefully in debt, and is that (from a Federation perspective) in the best interests of the colony?

I do understand, but it depends on the situation in the game. If the griefer knows that the plot will most likely be taken by the last ranked player, he can stop the second/third ranked player from getting that plot *without* any sacrifice, assuming he doesn't want that plot himself. Of course there might be other situations where not getting the plot actually *is* a real sacrifice.

Concerning land auctions, I am really torn apart between sticking with the original version 100% (which I'd usually prefer) or interpreting this behaviour as a bug or as a design oversight.

Scroll back up Zach and you'll see that I am the one that suggested that the speed is the problem. And I agree, if that were to change back to the original speed, we would see it less often because the price wouldn't be so inflated and the richest person would usually just buy the plot.  My ONLY argument here is that the game mechanic itself is not broken, just the speed at which it works in Planet MULE. 

Take a step back and think about this a little harder; in the original game, players with less money and who didn't even have any intentions of buying the plot would jack up the price for the rich player who wants it.  Do you consider that unfair?  Technically this is what is still happening, except its going beyond a reasonable price for the richest player and so he decides just to back out.  If the poor players want a chance at the plot, they shouldnt be jacking up the price so high.  So this screwing each other over is not just limited to the richest player here.  It takes 2 to tango.

I understand the complaints and arguments everyone has made.  I just simply disagree and think the original game works fine.

I have to say that the speed is most of the issue.  Just from the few training games I played while testing, it seems to move something like 3-4 times faster than the original in auctions.  If the auction march speed (but not the timer itself) were slowed down to 1/4 its current speed, I think at least a few of the problems we are seeing today would disappear.  And that goes for all auctions, not just land auctions.

so maybe start a topic which only focusses on "Slow Down Auction Movement?"

I think the biggest issue is sometimes, one player will have several unused plots (starved for food) but I'll have lots of money. I had that situation yesterday. So it was in my best interest to ruin land auctions for everyone else, since I wouldn't be able to use the land, even if I purchased it at a competitive price. There were three land auctions in a row, so I scrolled them all the way to the top (which takes a long time... it feels like about 1 or 2 minutes) Even if the other players agree that the mechanic is fair, this is very boring to watch.

I mean yesterday at the third land auction I finally got bored and only raised the third land auction to $2000 because I felt bad taking up everyone's time. But then someone bought it at $2000 and I was like - well damn, yeah that's not a bad price, I should have wasted more time scrolling all the way to the top.

Maybe we can have a poll, either amongst the general public or just a handful of seasoned veterans as to what they think would make the game better, sounds like there's a few reasonable options

1. leave it as is, "griefers" can spike land auctions to $12000 or whatever (see the next few options)
1a. increase movement speed for land auctions, "griefers" continue to spike them as high as they want (but it takes less time to do so)
2. change it, "griefers" cannot spike land auctions; or cannot spike them as high (see the next few options)
2a. reduce movement speed for land auctions, "griefers" can spike them to $4000 or $2000 or something more "reasonable"
2b. "griefer" can't get back behind the buy line until he's lowered the price back down to where it started at

i mean it sounds like it's option 2a to me, anything else deviates from the original game fundamentally. although i'd like to see 2b as an option, that way we can still see realistic land prices early on (~$1,500) but prevent players from feeling strategically obligated to ruin auctions late game.

1a would at least address the time issue, so that players can continue to ruin land auctions - but can at least reach the top faster ::) i mean, if you're going to recognize "ruin the land auction" as an option, it should at least be easier to do

I like option 2b for a future version of the game. However, for the existing one, in which the goal is to make the game as close to the original as possible, the speed just needs to be slowed down.

I'd like to propose, or support if already mentioned, a fix.  

If someone is raising land auction price to an absurd level to prevent other buyers, that player should be required to buy it at its lowest available inflated price if no others are interested.  In all other auctions, winner is the highest bidder and does not allow backing out.  This should be the way the highest bidder is decided in these situations where one is attempting blocking.

Stormdancer responded to that idea on page 2, there are some complications resulting from that approach. But, it's another option.

I also disagree with forcing the bidder to buy.

I will however second (third? fourth?) the belief that, much as the price will increase when a player scrolls to the top of the auction, the price should decrease when no players are within the trading space, reducing the price towards the original price for that round.  This addresses the "bad-faith" auction price exploit (yes, I know it is a core rule, but that doesn't diminish its silliness in my mind) as well as allowing players to continue selling commodities to the colony when a player has increased the price beyond colony-sellable range and then withdrawn.

The rate of this decrease is certainly debatable (Should it decrease at the same speed as the increase rate?  Reset back to the original price immediately?) but the mechanic itself would make for a much more robust game, I believe.

I think we can design around that.  If the price is overdriven, throughout the auction we keep track of the $HIGHERBID that a player bid compared everyone else.  If everyone attempts to withdraw, that player remains committed to that (minimal) price. If players initially push it up, then withdraw, a player will be stuck at the bid line.  It's a real bid.  Like ebay's autobid feature where you set the max you will pay, but actually it's just one step more than everyone else.  Nothing stops a player from paying more then the $HIGHERBID if they move it up to prevent a last minute drive from someone else. It still allows players to jockey about like they do in early auctions.  I think the AI tends to underbid, but I like the jockeying that they do and we must retain that (and the emotional part of bidding).  If the price is not overdriven, $HIGHERBID is not necessary.

I also really think this should be fixed.

In a REAL LIFE auction, it is not so easy to back out.  The auction deisgn of mule is not realistic in the first place.  Therefore, by forcing someone to buy something, it completely changes the dynamics of the game.

If you are constantly driving the price up, it is not easy to back out in a market auction either. It's only easy in a land auction.

Your not "FORCING" someone to buy it, they raised it themselves.  If you don't want to buy something for that high of a price - don't escellate it that way.  To me, it's not about just being "realisitic" it's about balanced gameplay.  Right now the RICHEST person can stop anyone with less money from buying land - even tho they likely need it most, by using this tactic.  The entire game is made to help the person in last, and hinder the person in first - while maintaining as much of a level playing field as possible.   If someone has the money to run the score up - they should be forced to have a consequence of it.

In the land auctions, I am very much in favor that once the minimum bid is raised, at least 1 person should be forced to remain on the bid section.  Thus if you are the one RAISING the bid, you risk everyone else backing out and forcing you to buy it.  Heck, your the one raising it.  And your not even forced to buy it at the HIGHEST level, but at the MINIMUM bid if you are on the screen alone.   It is very much in the spirit of the game and fair play.

By the way, in your last games, how much land have you seen sold in auction? If you want my rough estimate, then zero. Cost raising and abandoning is highly abused. Hell, I'm doing that, too ;)

Personally, since the goal is to replicate MULE, you should keep it as is. But a more realistic "auction" may be nice as a side-option.

I support the current system where you can raise the bid as much as you want without having to buy the plot.
If players would be forced to do that in plot auctions, would it apply to goods auctions? You dont want player A to get any food, and he's short on cash. Player B has 3 surplus. Player C has sufficent units and is low on cash. You (player D) run the starting bid to 150$, so that A has no funds to buy any food. Why should you be "punished" (150/unit) because player A hasn't invested in food and you on the other hand have funds to buy him out?

all of above makes no sense, but I'm trying to say: If you dont have enough resources, improve your game or just blaim bad luck.
The current system allowing some players to raise the starting bid to thousands, means that no one will get the plot (in most cases). So whats the problem? You dont get the plot, but neither does the raiser.
I hate ragequitters and cheaters as much as the next guy, but you cant compare this to cheating or anything like it. It's just a part of the game.

you cant stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. maybe i should get my head out of my ass.

I strongly disagree with your position.

You are preventing other players from participating in a free market *without any cost to yourself*. That is not playing; that is sabotage. Obviously exploiting a bug in the original game.

If you want to prevent other players from acting, it should come at a cost, e.g. buying+outfitting a mule and releasing it.

I think the only logical solution is: If you run up a bid, you better run (all the way) down to un-bid before the timer runs out. This still allows you to use your financial muscles to prevent other players from gaining a plot (or goods in a regular action), but it comes at a cost.

Heretic! ;)

I have cursed this "feature" many times, but on the other hand I have exploited it too. As long as we know it is there we can prepare for it. And I don't care if somebody raises the price to 2500 at early rounds, if I have the cash I buy it (and very often win the game). And I know many other people that also buy the land.

I still would be interested to test the suggested "solution"...

just had an idea, instead of being able to move off the board they move their bid down to the starting baseline before they come off the board and into the "buy" section, so if they go to a thousand when the baseline is 250, they have to walk all the way back down to 250 to come of the board. however other players retain where their maximum bid is on the board, but if their bid is less than what's on the eh board axis then they stay at the very bottom of the board just above the "buy" area, they can still move down (on the spot basically with only their bid value changing) as above but wont come off the board and into the buy area until their bid is below the baseline.

this would pretty much solve the problem I think, no speed changes and if you come down other people are able to compete again at the bid value that they went off the board.

There is indeed both cost and consequence.  Someone will have the ability to obtain the plot for free in the next land grant.  It probably won't be the person who drove the price up.  As a result, you are actually helping your fellow players more than you are hurting them.


There are many elements of sabotage in this game.  If you don't like sabotage, you don't have to play.


In your opinion, it's a bug.   In my opinion, it's not.  I think the balance is in favor of it not being a bug, however, since it cannot be proven that it is (i.e. confirmation from the game author or game release notes, manual revision, etc). 


That is an interesting idea to add to the list.  I would support trying this in a future version of MULE, but not the classic one.

The fundamental sin here is that the other acts of sabotage don't slow the game down nearly as much as the auction exploit tends to.

When 3 plots of land are auctioned, and the same player runs down the clock driving all three up to $5000 just to make sure no one gets any, that tedium is inflicted upon every other player who would just like to get on the with the game, thank you very much.

If you call them on it, they generally just giggle and say that's how the game is played.  Well, okay,  but it isn't doing the game any favours.

Having the top bidder have to walk their bid back down to the starting price before leaving the field really makes the most sense and will improve the game experience dramatically.  What we've got now is tedious, and makes me cringe whenever a land auction comes up, because I know chances are good the round will take twice as long and no one is likely to get anything out of it anyway.

FYI making the player drive the price back down does not make the auction take less time ............ but I understand your point.  And while I would support your suggestion in a future version of Planet MULE, the goal of the current version is to mimic the original game.  As such, the only thing that needs to be done right now is to reduce the speed in which the player is able to drive the price up and down and make it as close to the original game as possible.  Keep in mind we are in the Feedback and Suggestions forum, not the Gameplay Ideas forum, which is where you should go to suggest different methods of land auction for the future version of Planet MULE.  (Refer to this sticky post for details: http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=450.0)

Well, if we want to streamline the process, and wish to accept that sabotaging an auction to prevent it from working is a legitimate aspect of the game, we could just add a "filibuster" button. When the option to filibuster thus opens, the player can simply elect to declare procedural filibuster, and we can resolve the outcome of such immediately and get on with the next thing.

So either the ability to auctionblock is not a legitimate aspect of the game and should be removed, even though this is not faithful to the original game, or measures can be taken to streamline it as a legitimate element of the game, so that the original gameplay is maintained without the need to go through the lengthy motions, parallel to the development of the modern procedural filibuster, where actual speechifying is no longer required.

Of course, some would argue that filibustering should not be a legitimate tactic, but it's there, and we're used to it, so...

True.  On that note, though; if that player doesn't escape the auction before the time runs out, then they are stuck paying for the plot (for presumably more then they would have paid otherwise) leaving them with less money to try the same trick on subsequent auctions.

Likewise, even if they are wasting time pulling the auction back, once it enters reasonable territory again serious bidders can re-enter the auction.  When the tactic no longer guarantees success in denying others the plot, its use will correspondingly drop off.

The auctions then, while not a perfect mechanical match to the original game, are much truer to what I believe to be the original intentions and purpose of the auction.  But that is obviously a bit of subjective hair-splitting, as your next point mentions:


Sorry, I hadn't noticed the distinction within the sticky: most of us no doubt thought that our Feedback on the Auction issue and Suggestions on how to address it would fit in this category.   :P

Regardless, I shall henceforth abide the will-of-MOD.  :)

Like I said, I understand your point. It was not really necessary to repeat it in different words.


Indeed, subjective, speculative, whatever you want to call it. Since the author is no longer with us, there is no way to verify it. And as it was never clarified in any manual revision or updated version of the game, even though the author was alive for many years following the games release, one can justifiably assume it was intended to be the way it is anyway.  It's all heresay at this point.

Auc blocking was not nearly as much of an issue in the original games becaue of slow movement speed.

Auc blocking hurts the colony, because is 1 2 or even 3 plots that will not get developed that turn.

Here's how i think it should go

either
1) lower speed back to normal levels. This makes it harder to auc block, and harder to pull out at the last second.

or

2) if you raise the price above what everyone else can afford, make the auction stop and immediately award you the plot.  This still allows price jacking, then pulling away and trying to stick other people with the plot. But if You actually go above everyone elses cash reserves at the time, you buy it that instant. Yu can still auc block by raisign it above what people are WILLING to pay,t hen back out. but if you actualyl force them out, the auction shoudl instantly end at that point.

Exactly. The original game was great with regards to land auctions. Being able to backdown at anytime makes the gameplay that much better.

This is a case of where attempting to make things more realistic would make the gameplay worse IMO. The way land auctions worked in classic MULE was central to the gameplay. I've played many games where people would back down at the last minute, leaving you stuck with a land that you didn't have money to develop at the time.


However, now that the wampus is easier to catch, the strategy of leaving people with a land they can't afford to develop is less effective. In the classic Commodore/Atari version you really were lucky to catch the wampus, and having that money to develop the land was crucial. Heck, you couldn't catch the wampus after he left the mountain in the classic version. Now you can catch him even after he leaves the mountain. Basically the black speck that is the wampus had to be on the mountain at the time you went over the mountain, this is not the case in the current version of the game.

Not being able to sell 7 units to the store is the opportunity cost you pay for demanding more for your goods elsewhere. This was one of the most important gameplay features. Good gameplay forces you to make choices betwee the opportunity cost of driving a hard bargain with another player and selling the rest to the store.

It amy not be completely realistic but it made for some damn good gameplay.

I am bumping this to point out that most people in this thread seem to agree the movement rate is the primary problem.  You just couldn't change the price by more than ~800$ in a round (with all four guys running too).

I admit there are a lot more of these moon pie types crying for more realism and various other excuses to soften this aspect of the game's play... but the fact remains the original works this way, the other auctions work this way, it simply creates more strategy and its damn good fun to be an ass sometimes.   If you were to temper the rate of change of the values you would find that this is rarely a problem... plots have to hit 4 - 6k late in game to really be too expensive.

You were also selling too many plots last time I played a few months ago now... imo.