[X] My Assistant

Of course, because if you look at the chart there on the "Bid Times" page, the amount of discounts is the same as the fees.

most likely because he said it himself and because there's a fair chance discounts and taxes will fluctuate between the various auctions. even if he came to earn, saying, 1M due to taxes tomorrow, he may have to sink 2M into discounts next week.

it's not like fees, which (for how little they can be) are credits earned. those from such a dynamic system like this are too volatile to be considered a "revenue". a bit of logic and one may easily understand where the credits to make up for an excess of discounts will come from.


not explicitly meant to you, just going to address those who think:

you changed the rule during the auction because it may make you deficit.

try to "snipe" an user that i AFK at aution end, all those system are ok and legit, cutting down some only cause some users don't like it is bad, objectively.

Super's rules are also ok and legit, cutting down on those rules because you don't like it is bad, objectively.
Yep, that logic doesn't work.

It is a starting bid, why an user have to pay 8% more? Nonsense.

If you realize you want an item (50k worth) after X days maybe you should have checked better the day the auction started?
What's the reason to wait?

Even more, an unsold equipment near the end of auction can get minimum bid by someone that think "ok, not really worth but i can use it as a stub"

Why didn't he bid earlier then (and get a free discout)?
More bids = more price raises so in the end the seller benefit greatly for bids made earlier.
And the winner pays less if he bidded earlier.
Win/win.

someone else can have time\connection only in the weekend and so bid only on Friday\Saturday

So we should care about that but AFK players during auction's end should be fucked over. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif)
I see no coherence in your critique, it seems like you decided that it's bad and tried to come up with a lot of reasons.
It makes understanding why you really think it's not a good idea difficult.

5) Extra Bonus: And the ones that look at 1000 High Grade Woods and place a starting bid of 50K?
The is nothing about it but maybe he still the winner until Friday when someone else put a 2M bid, still low but not a total scam for the seller and the first is still prized if win in the end? (And not punished for making a tentative scam?).

Apart from the fact that this will obviously never happen (everyone will bid their true value as early as possible to get the discount) were is the tentative scam?
If the seller accept 50k as a starting bid there is no scam at all (you can decide an higher starting bid if you so want).

giving penalitis also for the low-bid scammer

As explained above it makes no sense.
There is no low-bid scam possible.

In truth if for a seller the only thing iis get the more he can, any system that discourage higher bidder in the last moments of the auction (snipers) can damage the seller that will drift somewhere else.

Having higher bids early is actually very positive for the seller.
Case in point, morineko's peerless shield, if blackjac would have been online at the end of the auction or if morineko's bid would have been made earlier the seller would have gotten more.

This post has been edited by Sapo84: Oct 28 2017, 02:07

Ah, so a self sustining system, understood that.

[indent]

I'll add to all my previous dout a thing: in my opinion this is anly a way to mees with a long working system.

In auctions ther is a starting bid that can be changed (in this case 50K with the seller being able to ask more) but in no way a bidder is forced to chose on what time he have to bid.

An user don't like who after 3 days of auction "snipe" his offer at the last instant when not online?

There are only 2 thing to do:

1) Reduce auction time, 24 hours and stop, also maybe change the day of the week so sometime all have more chance to be online.

1) Be online at auction end or proxy bid, if you lose cause you are not online at that time is ONLY you're problem and it DON'T NEED TO BE SOLVED.

so the discount is capped at 4.9%?

1) Be online at auction end or proxy bid, if you lose cause you are not online at that time is ONLY you're problem and it DON'T NEED TO BE SOLVED.

That's like your opinion, it's not an objective truth.

As a seller it fucking sucks that someone can't raise a bid because:
- he is working and doesn't have a way to make a bid
- he is sleeping since it's 3AM where it lives
- his mother had a car accidents and he's in the hospital waiting for good news (I know that's stupid but when someone says "you weren't there, that's your problem" it must be said that there may be really important reasons why someone can't be there playing at the pc in a specific moment)

So if there is even a small possibility of making the unfortunate players that can't counter-snipe more likely to win an item it's all good and we should try to discuss and improve upon possible rules.
If nothing really works than Super will go back to the previous system.


Anyway, I'm still not convinced on the tax system for various reasons:
- It's difficult to explain
- Even worse, after a bid a tax is shown well before it is converted to a discout, this will greatly confuse the users
- "I like taxes" said no one ever, introducing taxes will always be unpopular, no matter how you spin it taxes are never seen as a positive thing
- I'm not sure that a small discount benefits the bidder more than a well done snipe at the last moment (so many probably won't ever agree with the rule)
- It's unfair against people that are interested in two similar items (example, two slaughter helmets, one with 50% ADB and one with 55%) but can obviously only bid for one, if they choose the 55% one and they get overbidden they may be forced to eat the tax if they switch to the 50% one.

I think the rule it's too ambitious.
Making sniping disappear is a pipe dream, what it may be feasible is to reduce it by giving small incentives.
Example: instead of the complicated tax/discount system just add a very small discount (even just a small 1%) for users bidding earlier for item worth >300k (just to prevent Super for losing money).
It's a small percentage but if I had to choose between paying 99 and 100 I would choose 99 all the time.
Also I agree with End Of All Hope's idea, increasing the bid increment when the auctions is ending makes prolonging the auction in the hope the other users can't stay at the pc more difficult. (also if someone bids at 13.59, then 14.14 it's easy to warn him to never do that again).

the discounts changed again. i hope i could get at lest 2%

@Sapo84: You mean "as a bidder", right?
For the seller it not change anything (with the previous system), the seller get the last bid, period.

If someone is working\sleeping\etc and cannot bid... he don't bid, other user will.
And we already have proxy bids, if someone fear someone will outbid him it can use this function.
To be more precise the seller don't give a fu*k on at what time the winner bid, the seller is more concerned in giving the more possibility to bid to everyone and that was already done with proxy bids.

This new system can even be harmful for seller cause "snipers" that can place a better bid in the last moments of the auction can decide against it due to the extra tax that will increase the price even more.

As an example, if you are a seller, you prefer to get a 20 M 0r 20.6M?
600K more are not a little thing but a "sniper" that post only in the last few minutes and get it need to pay 1648000 more affectively rising the minimum bid to 11% and thinking it too much it will let go.

Over a 100M a normal increase is 103M, a max tax increase is 111.24M, it seem little in a such big sum but it can wave away bidder that ultimately decide that "yes, i can go for it for this price".

This post has been edited by Maharid: Oct 28 2017, 04:50

- "I like taxes" said no one ever, introducing taxes will always be unpopular, no matter how you spin it taxes are never seen as a positive thing

I like taxes. They pay for roads to drive on, fire fighters to drive on those roads, and hospitals to care for the burned people.

If it seems like firefighters aren't getting paid enough, I am happy to raise taxes so they are better taken care of.

I was trying to hide from this chaos since I have no money anyway, but since everyone is making strange suggestions now, let me add one:

Just extend every item's end time by 1 day whenever someone makes a new high bid.

(Alternatively, let any user make a new high bid at any time as long as less than 1 day passed since their previous high bid).

Current system seems good though. Maybe Super will get complaints afterward from snipers who can't read english well. =)

This post has been edited by BlueWaterSplash: Oct 28 2017, 08:40

This new system can even be harmful for seller cause "snipers" that can place a better bid in the last moments of the auction can decide against it due to the extra tax that will increase the price even more.

As an example, if you are a seller, you prefer to get a 20 M 0r 20.6M?
600K more are not a little thing but a "sniper" that post only in the last few minutes and get it need to pay 1648000 more affectively rising the minimum bid to 11% and thinking it too much it will let go.

Nope , here you are not thinking it thoroughly,
This new tax process will never harm seller, but on the contrary it will benefit seller.
lets take your e.g.
sniper is waiting for the last moment to bid 20.6 because he wants to have item without paying more.He is hoping that other player will miss to participate in last minute bidding. and if other player was not using proxy bid , he will lose the bid even if he is willing to pay even 25m for that item.
But if sniper is forced to bid early then case will change.
as when sniper bid 20.6 , the other bidder was willing to pay 25m and raised it to 25m. Now seller will get 25m instead of 20.6m when snipering is done.and now if sniper wants it he will have to over bid 25m.
This is why sniper do it, to get item at cheapest price.

So, I firmly says it.
Snipers harm seller and they are the cause of reducing the price. because they does not give more people time to participate and counter bid made by snipper.
So, snipers are crooks/evils/menace and they should pay tax for evil deeds

This post has been edited by ALL_MIGHT: Oct 28 2017, 08:44

I'm not very care about 8% tax(sorry it may be incompatible with your ideal).
If there is something really good I might bid at first and follow it all the way through,but for something less interest me I'll just take a look and leave,check it again at last 30 mins and decide whether i'd like to bid or not.

And one of the reasons I don't like proxy very much is that I can barely decide my final price.If I decided it at 10m and someone bid 11m I'll think "uh 12m is also acceptable for me" .At most time it can raised up to 150% of my first considered price,sometimes even 300% (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/huh.gif) but put proxy to 150% of my final price at first is too much (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/dry.gif) .

I understand. One of the main purposes of auctions is price discovery, and some people are unsure at the beginning how much they will be willing to pay by the end. But, you can still bid the value your initial thoughts tell you (100%), and come back some time later and bid more if you want (120%? ...). Just don't wait too long to decide; I don't think that's unreasonable.

You are pointing out a disadvantage of sorts. With this discount/tax system, bidders will have to think in advance some in order to perform well.

I have a question about Time-Based Price Multipliers.

If a person bid at the last minute on an item that has no bids (ie, starting price), will they pay 8% more?

It is a starting bid, why an user have to pay 8% more? Nonsense.

That's how it was. But I understand what you're getting at - if no one else has bid on something yet, a potential bidder isn't inconveniencing anyone no matter when they first bid on it. (btw, the winning strategy for potential bidders is still to bid early, to maximize their time should anyone else try for it)

You're completely right. Sorry for not realizing it myself. I have changed it so that the discount or tax is determined by the duration the item has been active, rather than by the duration of the entire auction. In other words, even if someone starts bidding on something near the end of the auction, they'll by default have been winning the item for 100% of the time (until someone else bids). This makes the calculations a bit more complicated, but the result is more fair. (sorry for this change in the middle of the auction, but the result is less taxes for everyone affected, which shouldn't be a cause for complaints)

Sapo84 covered most of this stuff (thanks):

1) The discount\tas is unbalanced, 2-3-4% tax need to be paired with a same 2-3-4% discount, 2-8 is bad, 8 in any direction is bad.

Making sure things are perfectly balanced is one of the big reasons why this is so complicated. And yes, it is balanced. On the bid times page, look at the Time-Based Price Multipliers graphic: the bar height on the left of 0% (the discounts) equals the bar height on the right of 0% (the taxes). The main reason why I went to the effort of making that graphic was to make the balance process transparent.

The 8% penalty isn't just arbitrary; it's meant to be noteworthy enough to deter bad behavior. If it's too small, the snipers will just continue what they've always done, creating headaches for the rest.

2) How is the discount\tax divided? The only sensible way is 1-2% loss or gain for both seller and Super cause if on a 100M seller have to lose 4% more (14% in total) it may get upset and item get 4% more and he don't se anything it will get even more upset (it a strong human trait, any human want to pay less and gain more).

Currently, if bidder gets taxed, the seller gets 100% of the tax revenue, and I get none of it. If bidder gets discount, the seller receives 100% of the listed price, and the discount gets paid by me. Is that what you were asking?

(in other words, for the foreseeable future I'm paying for all of this out of my own pocket. I'm not doing this for me, I'm trying to make the auction experience less irritating.)

3) The main point: The whole thing is not useless, in my opinion is harmful.
I don't see any point giving who bid immediatly a discount and who bid late a tax, the auction is a play and there are different way to play it.

I can offer little at the beginning and increasing in time if i get outbid, put immediatly a big bid like i say "i REALLY want this", i can put starting bid at the end of the auction to get somthing of little worth or try to "snipe" an user that i AFK at aution end, all those system are ok and legit, cutting down some only cause some users don't like it is bad, objectively.

Sniping behavior has always been a winning strategy, and it is quite impolite in this international forum. Yes, there are ways to play when sniping is an option, but I think it's better when the rules are set up to make sniping a worse option.

With the right setup, we don't have to keep playing the snipe-happy "game" we've always played. For the sake of trying to create a better game, why not try changing things to see if we can improve it?

This experiment aside, I imagine if users were polled, most would prefer if there was less sniping, and very few would prefer situations where last-minute bidders usually come out on top. These rules are my attempt to partially rectify that. It may help, it may not; it may be worth it, it may not be. We will see. But I think trying in the hopes of possibly making things better is better than always sticking with the old system out of loyalty to tradition.

If you don't want to participate, that's your choice, but I'm not sure you understand that I'm doing all of this in as good faith as possible. If you have a better solution to deter the sniping behavior that many detest, I would be very interested in any ideas. I'm sorry the numbers are complicated, but I prefer fairness over simplicity when it's an option.

I could scrap everything and just turn it into something simpler like "+8% tax for bidders who start on Sat" or "50k tax for bidders who win less than 1/8th of the time" or "+40% minimum bid increment for late bidders" etc - but I'm pretty sure those either wouldn't be fair and balanced enough, or wouldn't address the problem. (more ideas welcome; I would prefer a simpler solution too, if one exists that addresses the problem)

EDIT: In truth if for a seller the only thing iis get the more he can, any system that discourage higher bidder in the last moments of the auction (snipers) can damage the seller that will drift somewhere else.

If someone is interested in an item, why would they simply ignore it and go away? I don't understand at all. Anyone who is serious will not not bid at all, but rather will bid earlier. The only time someone would simply ignore it would be if they already ignored the auction for the first 2.5 days and found the current bid + tax to be too much.

I think encouraging earlier bids will actually increase overall prices a little. This way, everyone will be showing their hand earlier, giving everyone else more time to think and consider if they want to try to keep fighting for it - which is the way things should be, I think. A high bidder is more likely to win uncontested if they swoop in at the last minute than if they're shown as winning for a few days prior. (Increased prices for the seller is not the point of this, it's just a likely result of more good-faith early bidding)

Even worse, after a bid a tax is shown well before it is converted to a discout, this will greatly confuse the users

Yeah, I think you're right. My attempt to make things transparent on the page everyone's certain to look at has resulted in a lot of extra text after each item (and I guess it's not intuitively clear that the listed bids are pre- discount/tax).

Maybe I should remove all of that and let people rely on the bidtimes page? Maybe I should include the times in the forum post only once everything's finished on Sat?

- I'm not sure that a small discount benefits the bidder more than a well done snipe at the last moment (so many probably won't ever agree with the rule)

Yeah, some might just eat the 8%, and the discount isn't much, the good-faith bidder won't really feel it - but it's still making things relatively better for the good-faith bidder and worse for the sniper compared to the past. So the question is, is that worth the difficulty in understanding the time system...

This post has been edited by Superlatanium: Oct 28 2017, 11:05

@Sapo84: You mean "as a bidder", right?
For the seller it not change anything (with the previous system), the seller get the last bid, period.

Yeah, sorry, I wrote late at night and didn't double-check after.

And I agree with ALL_MIGHT's reply.

I like taxes. They pay for roads to drive on, fire fighters to drive on those roads, and hospitals to care for the burned people.

If it seems like firefighters aren't getting paid enough, I am happy to raise taxes so they are better taken care of.

I agree, and I think taxes are a beautiful things, millions of people contributing to create a better country, each paying based on their wealth.
It's not a very popular opinion though, unfortunately everyone sees what he has to pay and not what he gains by paying.
I don't think calling something "tax" will ever make it well accepted.

This post has been edited by Sapo84: Oct 28 2017, 13:04

They would do well to assume that someone who went to the effort of winning for most of the auction is seriously interested in it, and will bid against them should they try, in which case the sniper will be noticeably disadvantaged given the 8% penalty (compared to the prompt bidder's 2%? discount). For the sniper, it's not "I can win the item if I just take an 8% penalty", it's "I can start to contest the other guy if I take an 8% penalty".

Yeah, 8% still isn't a whole lot (auctions before my time generally had 10% minimum bid increment), but I think it's a decent starting point for encouraging people to bid promptly, and I don't want the magnitude of change to be too much, especially when we're just starting out this experiment.

Let's ask a simple question: are the HV auctions a rational market? In a rational market, everyone understands the value of an object and bids accordingly. In a rational market, then, no one takes a 500k valued object and bids 1M on it at the last minute.

But the fact it that auctions are not rational markets and in fact a sales mechanism designed to be as irrational as possible. The object is not to price items fairly, but to the extreme. A guy just won a Nobel Prize (Richard Thaler) showing the very irrationality of "real" markets; expecting a small private market with wide disparities in income to behave rationally is perhaps to hope for too much.

Mu (.) (.) y

alright, people. i can understand your worries, but auction will finish within two hours.

now i'd like to ask to people to keep an eye on how it's going, since a fair amount of points has already been made clear.

@Superlatanium: I normally try to make a decent bid at the beginning, "decent" for my meager finance at least, if i get outbid i can immediatly bid again but if the new bid is much high than mine i don't really see any point on bidding on and on, i'll wait until the end of auction, see if him is the only user interested (or if few users are interested) and decide if i really want to go against him\them.
This system force me, and anyone that do the same, to play in another way cause someone decide arbitrarly on what time is better to bid, try it on a normal auction ad see what happen.

- I am pleased that you understand the point in changing the system at least for the first bid of an item.

- The division seem really good and seller will have nothing to say but i still think that if the system will be fully implemente it will be unfair for you (and i still prefer to get the 100% only and bid when i want in place of getting 108% and have limitations).

- In an auction two contendants may fight over an item only to see a third one make only the final offer and win the item.
Or someone can bid high, exit the room and when he came back find that someone else won the item.
The fault is not on the winner (sniper) side but on who don't want to go on or is not here to place a bid.
And this is fair, i was unable to be on at end of auction for items i wanted and i perfectly understand that it was my fault and not a problem of the system, who thinks different in my opinion is only whining cause he want to be favorited.

- Ppaying more only cause i get online in the last 15 minute of an auction, see the item i like, and placing the winning bid is shit.

I actually can ignore the auction completely until saturday, enter it on the last half hour and decide if there are items that are worth bidding on by the price placed at the moment that are more near the "final price".

This is perfectly fine, the fact the auction is on for near 3 day in my opinion is a way to give players a larger window to be online for make a bid, forcing them to bid high from the beginning or to be onine as soon as the auction start is bad.

Do you really don't like sniper and want to give users the same changes? Make the auction stay only 4 hours on Saturday, stop.
In those 4 hours an user can find time to be online, if not it will be for the next time.

@Sapo84: Yes, i think tax are really useful (if they are fair and used in the right way, not like here in Italy, trust ma that a big amount of our taxes are eaten by the system and another good amount is thrown away in insensate things... but hey, USA have the biggest and most expensive army in the worl that eat a huge chunck of the taxes leaving crumbs for "lees important thing" like instruction and healthcare).

But this is an auction, not a state, so the argument is simply invalid.

@Muddybug: Yes, fundamentally the people that go to an auction are more of two types, the first people that hope to get valuable things at a really little price and the second people that aim for a specified item and are willing to pay much more of it's "nominal value" cause for him it is worth more "subjectively".

This rend any things that mess with the offers a way to confuse and distance peoples.

....

Guess how many time i used italian->English traductors for tshi post.

Disliking tax isn't necessarily unthoughtful. It makes sense if you dislike or distrust either the government, or other people, or certain classes of other people, or disagree with the rules by which the taxes are applied.

I like how the auction system changed so that the bonus/penalty is based on fraction of duration an item is being won, rather than just the straight duration. This way someone can snipe unpopular items at the end of auction that have no bids, without penalty. Was the system always stated to be like this?

So, I firmly says it.
Snipers harm seller and they are the cause of reducing the price. because they does not give more people time to participate and counter bid made by snipper.
So, snipers are crooks/evils/menace and they should pay tax for evil deeds

LOL, I remember reading you once whine that item you wanted got sniped. Is this fury rooted from that? I want to look at that to see whether you bid on Super's auction and make use of proxy bid. Here's the possible situation:

1. The item is on Kedama's. No proxy bid service available. Verdict -> well, too bad. better luck next time. Or try get help from other people who will proxy bid for you.
2. The item is on Super's. You don't use proxy bid. Verdict -> your fault.
3. The item is on Super's. You used proxy bid but your bid is not reflect your desire so you can't accept your lose. Verdict -> your fault.

See?

Also, you should start to pressume that everybody act on his self interest.
- If there's incentive in sniping, then sniping it is. Is it rational to pass opportunity to pay less?
- If it is hurt to let the item pass through your grasp due to sniping, then people will act to protect it. Not taking action is foolish. Not taking action because the incentive of possibility paying less outweighed the chance it get taken away, then it is an informed decision; therefore losing should be natural and acceptable outcome.
- If incentive in bumping price outweighed the cost associated with it, then collusion is rational.

What do you call people who don't snipe when he see it has greater incentive than the cost, or people who don't protect the chance he deemed important (by proxy or by finding vpn so that he can open this site during work hour), or people who don't collude when the resentment may not arise from doing it or if resentment is the cost he is willing to bear? Mad. They're mad people. Snap out of your madness and start to see things the way it is.

No, don't put 'his mother is in hospital so he can't bid' argument. God dammit, his mother is more important than this game!! Being in his mother's side is incentive far outweigh an upgrade in a game! Get your priority right!!

finding vpn so that he can open this site during work hour

So he should risk getting fired to bid on an item?
I think people should get their priorities right if they think that a browser game is worth circumventing their workplace's policies.

Also you didn't reply to his argument, which is that sniping reduces the item final price because it tries to prevent competition.
I'm pretty sure that if you check Kedama's and Super's price for the same items you will see that often Super's are higher.
Unless there is something I really want I just don't bother with Kedama's auctions because an item I don't really need is not worth being there at auction's end.
Proxy bid by itself should have increased the average final price by a visible margin.
Reducing sniping should have a similar effect.

the discounts changed again. i hope i could get at lest 2%

See the bidtimes page. The fees are calculated from winning time, and then the peak discount is set such that the sum of the fees equals the sum of the discounts. It mostly depends on the number of late bidders on high-value items.

If someone is working\sleeping\etc and cannot bid... he don't bid, other user will.
And we already have proxy bids, if someone fear someone will outbid him it can use this function.
To be more precise the seller don't give a fu*k on at what time the winner bid, the seller is more concerned in giving the more possibility to bid to everyone and that was already done with proxy bids.

This new system can even be harmful for seller cause "snipers" that can place a better bid in the last moments of the auction can decide against it due to the extra tax that will increase the price even more.

As an example, if you are a seller, you prefer to get a 20 M 0r 20.6M?
600K more are not a little thing but a "sniper" that post only in the last few minutes and get it need to pay 1648000 more affectively rising the minimum bid to 11% and thinking it too much it will let go.

Over a 100M a normal increase is 103M, a max tax increase is 111.24M, it seem little in a such big sum but it can wave away bidder that ultimately decide that "yes, i can go for it for this price".

All Might is right. Like I said before, unless the potential sniper is just being dumb and wants to get taxed (or isn't interested in getting the item), their best method is to bid earlier, which they should understand. They're not going to not try for the item at all; they're going to try for the item earlier, avoid fees, and maybe even get a discount. (or they will try to snipe and simply eat the fee. but they won't just give up without trying in the first place)

Let's ask a simple question: are the HV auctions a rational market?

They're much less rational than they could be, but overall, they're not bad. When wallets are on the line, some people will make an effort to perform better, resulting in less bad behavior. It's not perfect, but incentivizing good behavior might be better than doing nothing.

I normally try to make a decent bid at the beginning, "decent" for my meager finance at least, if i get outbid i can immediatly bid again but if the new bid is much high than mine i don't really see any point on bidding on and on, i'll wait until the end of auction, see if him is the only user interested (or if few users are interested) and decide if i really want to go against him\them.
This system force me, and anyone that do the same, to play in another way cause someone decide arbitrarly on what time is better to bid, try it on a normal auction ad see what happen.

If the other bid is too high for you to bid again immediately, that's OK. You don't have to decide right then; you have up to ~54 hours from the beginning to figure out what you truly want and still get a discount. (users who wait too long to show that they want to try for the item are being inconsiderate by putting time pressure on the other interested bidders. Is a window of more than 2 days not enough?)

Encouraging bidders to show their intent before the last hours is encouraging courtesy and discouraging the sniping behavior that many detest; it's not arbitrary at all.

- In an auction two contendants may fight over an item only to see a third one make only the final offer and win the item.
Or someone can bid high, exit the room and when he came back find that someone else won the item.
The fault is not on the winner (sniper) side but on who don't want to go on or is not here to place a bid.
And this is fair, i was unable to be on at end of auction for items i wanted and i perfectly understand that it was my fault and not a problem of the system, who thinks different in my opinion is only whining cause he want to be favorited.
- Ppaying more only cause i get online in the last 15 minute of an auction, see the item i like, and placing the winning bid is shit.
I actually can ignore the auction completely until saturday, enter it on the last half hour and decide if there are items that are worth bidding on by the price placed at the moment that are more near the "final price".

See:

it fucking sucks that someone can't raise a bid because:
- he is working and doesn't have a way to make a bid
- he is sleeping since it's 3AM where it lives
- his mother had a car accidents and he's in the hospital waiting for good news (I know that's stupid but when someone says "you weren't there, that's your problem" it must be said that there may be really important reasons why someone can't be there playing at the pc in a specific moment)

This is a very international forum. People are from Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia, and more. Time zones can prevent someone from being online at 14:00. A job can prevent someone from being online at 14:00. A knock at your door or an important phone call can force your attention away. There are many possibilities

And this is fair, i was unable to be on at end of auction for items i wanted and i perfectly understand that it was my fault and not a problem of the system

No, none of those things are remotely a bidder's fault! Some are unable to be online at 14:00 every Saturday due to factors completely out of their control. (and as a result, the snipers gain the advantage - which is unfair - which means the system is slightly unfair)

Someone who waits until the last hours to show their intent to win an item is denying some others from counter-bidding due to timing, due to no fault of their own. (issary is right: until you get outbid, it can be hard to decide whether you want to continue raising or not. proxy bids help a lot, but they're not perfect, and only some people use them)

This is perfectly fine, the fact the auction is on for near 3 day in my opinion is a way to give players a larger window to be online for make a bid, forcing them to bid high from the beginning or to be onine as soon as the auction start is bad.

You don't need to win from the start; potential bidders can delay more than 50 hours and still get a discount. That's a long time; I don't think it's unreasonable to compel them to bid sometime during that period, as opposed to during the last hours.

There is a saying, "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." Similarly, users generally have the freedom to bid whenever they feel like it and get discounts, but once they start inconveniencing others, that freedom ends.

Do you really don't like sniper and want to give users the same changes? Make the auction stay only 4 hours on Saturday, stop.
In those 4 hours an user can find time to be online, if not it will be for the next time.

That only makes everyone who can participate a sniper. All users who have jobs during that time, or are in a different time zone asleep will be forever screwed if they want something. It's not their fault, so they shouldn't be penalized.

So he should risk getting fired to bid on an item?
I think people should get their priorities right if they think that a browser game is worth circumventing their workplace's policies.

Ha, I deliberately bring up this equally ridiculous as your 'mother's accident' example to show that priority should be put right (It's a trap within my argument, which absolutely cannot be used in formal hearing, if you haven't realized now). If you can't risk getting fired then you set up proxy bid WHEN you are not working! Do most important things at your at times you're given. If more important things demand your attention, then you should not lament the inability to do lesser things. It's your priority after all.

Yes, sniping is an attempt to get item at lower price. Is this attempt has high rate of success? Your observation say it is. If it is has high rate of success, why would people pass up this opportunity? Yes, my argument does not go against snipers. This whole wall of text is stressing that people would go for as much benefit as the cost he can bear. But if people hate sniping so much, have they make use the tool that counter it? Have people bear the pain by putting as high as possible ceiling when they set up their proxy bid? Snipers bear the pain of keeping their schedule open during the moment of truth (there doesn't seems that much pain for some, I know), but the point is, the opposing side should also be prepared to bear as much pain.

Seeing few grumbles, penalty seems to force snipers to recalculate the benefit and cost in sniping. Congrats Super, you can gauge it until you get desired effect (and I might have to say goodbye to this late saturday entertainment *sniff*). And thanks for the discount.


PS: I put another trap here. Just a heads up.
PS2: I allowed myself to get heated up. Hope this debate does not be taken as personal. I risk resentment for an exercise in tearing apart and building more convincing argument.