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

[Stormdancer]

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?

[Stormdancer]

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.

[BubbaBrown]

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.

[Robbie]

Totally agree with BubbaBrown and share his opinion about that.

[Ramerco]

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.

[Tei]

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.

[Big Head Zach]

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.

[slube]

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. 

[Soldier Ant]

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.

[BubbaBrown]

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.

[slube]

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.

[Big Head Zach]

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.

[BubbaBrown]

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.

[Stormdancer]

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".

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.

[mikman]

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 :-)