MERGED: "Auc-blocking" / Minimum price doesn't return

[Ramerco]

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.

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.

[Tei]

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 :-)

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

[Stormdancer]

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.

[joncnunn]

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.

[GabrielPope]

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.

[Dave37]

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.

[Intergalactic Mole]

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.

[solsTiCe]

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"

[machinus]

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

[Intergalactic Mole]

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.

[solsTiCe]

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.

[Intergalactic Mole]

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.

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.

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

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.

and it's the richer player that can do this.

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. 

[solsTiCe]

yes. i agree

i just that i haven't yet  won a game 

[Intergalactic Mole]

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.

[Jaradakar]

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.

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.