Auction thoughts

General Comments and Suggestions
1

Now the recent auction has finished I thought I’d mention what to me seems like a loop hole in the bidding process.

As it stands I think the auction set up is about 99% right as we all live in different parts of the world, times zones etc so the 18 hour count down from last bid is fair to all imho. The loop hole I feel is unfair to the current bid holder is everytime someone bids the clock restarts.

Example, the current bid on [color=blue]neddy x is $30,000 which I’m the highest bidder but my maximum bid on [color=blue]neddy x is $60,000. All it takes at the moment is someone to bid $500 above the $30,000 and the clock restarts  ??? for another 18 hours.

Wouldn’t it be fairer for all (and not to mention auctions quicker) if the clock only restarted if a new bidder went past my maximum bid so they became the new bid holder? Then I would have 18 hours to respond if I wanted to raise my bid on [color=blue]neddy x

It was very noticable during the last auction to log on a see a number of horses with timers all within 30 seconds or so of each other, someone had simply gone along and bumped all the timers to restart them again. This could have been strategic to delay other sales so they could manage or budget their own sales or it simply was someone being annoying  :astonished:

Interested in others thoughts?

2

Yah I’ve had the whole only increasing the bid by $500 happen to me a few times  >:D To me that’s not a serious bid and it’s pretty annoying. You’re obviously not very serious about the horse if you’re only willing to bid $500 more as that’s unlikely to win the horse. I’ve always thought it would make more sense to if the clock only restarted if you were outbid too.

3

Andy, I see where you are coming from, but there is something that you are missing. If the current bid on “Neddy” is currently 30k but your highest bid is 60k, the bid is only actually at 30k. The 60k is what your maximum is and until the bidding reaches 60k, that bid has not yet been made. If you go to a real life auction, you go there with a maximum spend. If the bidding doesn’t go tht high, then your lucky. The program is set up so that you don’t have to watch the auction every second of the day.

So if you bid 30k for a horse (and your maximum is set at 60k) and someone bids 35k, the program automatically bids 35.5k on your behalf. Hence a new bid as been lodged and the timer starts again.

I hope this explains it clearly. 

4

Steve,

I understand that and gave that some consideration before I posted initially.

My thoughts were the current set up was being abused - well used as the rules currently stand  :wink: but weren’t in the spirit of things?

Put it this way, if you decided to bid on [color=blue]neddy and bid to your maximum but were still unsuccessful do you think the current highest bidder should be penalised with another 18 hours?

5

I too have had that happen several times in the last auction.  I was down to less than an hr and someone came along and bid 500 or 1000 and the clock started over again. I was the eventual winner but it took an extra to get the horse because of it. Pretty aggravating >:D

It would be nice IF the clock only restarted IF there was a new winning bidder. Till that happens, the clock should keep counting down. 

It could be a coding nightmare to do that. 
And it could be on the list of things to do or maybe after enough people say something about, Shanti might work on it.

I actually like 12 hrs instead of 18 hrs. Everyone still has time to bid no matter of your time zone.

6

Let me put it this way Andy, if we were standing side by side at an auction and you inteneded to bid a maximum of 60k. You start the bidding with 30k, that’s 1 bid. I counter with 35k, bid number 2 and the 18 hour clock starts again. You bid back at 40 and the clock starts again. Just because you have a maximum of 60k doesn’t mean the clock shouldn’t start again. The time limit says 18 hours after the last bid. The last bid was 40k not 60K. Remember, the computer bids on your behalf up to your maximum. Everytime someone bids, you bid again (via the computer) so technically this is a new bid, hence the clock restarts. I don’t understand how you can say people are abusing the system when nobody, other than yourself, knows you maximum bid.

7

The trouble is Steve this isn’t a normal auction, even if it was I’m sure the auctioneer wouldn’t allow you 18 hours to decide if you intended to bid again  :wink:

My maximum bid had nothing to do with abusing the system, it was easy to watch when you logged on as someone had simply gone down the board bidding the minimum limit on a number of horses, always more than the maximum of 5 you were allowed to purchase. I witnessed this on at least 3 occasions as it happened one a horse I ended up purchasing, hence it came to my attention.

To be honest I’ve done it myself in the past, before the auction I go through and make a short list of what I’m interested in with what I consider values, after bidding (or holding a few bids) I keep an eye on others that were on my list, if I don’t want one to sell before I see how my others fair I throw in a $500 bid to reset the clock.

Allowed by the current rules, yes, in the spirit of the game, I doubt it.

8

I can see Andy’s gripe, and, if you are the person with the current high bid at the time, I agree that it can be annoying. It has happened to me too in the past when somebody has stepped in with a “minimum add-on” bid when I was less than 1 hour away from the end of the countdown and, while my proxy bid was still more than their bid and I’ve continued being the high bidder, it has reset the timer. In those cases, I too have thought that the timer shouldn’t be reset.

Regardless of the fact that changing the software to not reset the timer in these cases could be a bitch to do, there are other sides to the argument, which make this not as cut and dried as it would seem.

The person only bidding $500 above the latest bid may be making what, for them is a legitimate bid, because, based on their budget and possibly the auction max, that’s all they can afford. They may be bidding on the off-chance that the bid has reached the current high bidder’s maximum and they might get lucky and win the auction.

I have to admit that there has been the odd Auction when I have had a list of horses I am interested in, but, because of Auction maximum limits, I can’t bid on all of them at once. In these cases, I rank the horses in order of preference, and bid on the first batch (say 5, if that is the limit). If the bidding for a horse that I am strongly interested in but which just falls outside the first batch (e.g. my 6th ranked horse) is timed to end before one of the horses I am currently “winning”, I will place a minimum bid (current bid + $500) on the 6th ranked horse just to keep their bid going, in case I lose one of my first five. In the case when some or all of the bids for my top ranked horses have ended (or their max bid was higher than what I was willing to spend on them) and I hadn’t reached the auction maximum limits, I have come back and actively participated in the bid for my #6 ranked horse. I think I’ve only done this 2 or 3 times in all the auctions I’ve taken part in, and I know I’ve won at least one of them.

I, for one, would never “add $500 to the current bid” just to reset the timer even though I had no interest in actually winning the horse (with my luck, my “current bid + $500” would end up winning the auction and I’d be stuck with a horse I didn’t want)!!! From “talking” to many of the other people in FF over the past year, I can’t picture any of you doing that, either.

We can’t compare these auctions to real life, because, in real life auctions, there wouldn’t be more than one horse being auctioned off at any one time. If we were to do it that way (assuming that it could be programmed in), imagine how long some of these Auctions would last in order to give everyone a fair chance to bid on their picks, especially one like the current 2012 Mixed Auction, which had 150 horses (a year, maybe?!?!?).

As annoying as this may be, I think that this is the best way to run these auctions, although I do agree with Brenda that 18 (or 24 hours) is too long and all auctions should be 12 hours.

9

I agree it’s annoying, but I don’t really mind.  The only instance where I can see it being a problem is when you’ve got this perfect race picked out and you’re hoping to own the horse by Thurs to enter it for Sat or whatever.  The auctions only last a week, so at most you’ve got 7 days to wait to own the horse.

Also, yes, with 18 hours everyone has a chance to check the website at some reasonable time for them, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who’s playing and interested in the auction has a chance to check it every 18 hours.  Shanthi tries to take into account that everyone lives to live and can’t be on the game every minute. :slight_smile:

If you’re holding an auction, I don’t believe there’s actually anything to prevent you from holding a “live” auction (either via the forum or the chat room) for your horses and you can sell them however you’d like then.  But for FF auctions, I think the current system is pretty fair.

10

I think the current system is fine. I accept the fact that if an auto-bid is placed for me the timer has to reset because at the end of the day, I am making a new legitimate bid.

11

While I liked the 12-hour timer, and agree that it is frustrating to have an auction delayed by a last-minute bidder, I don’t see a need to change the system. There is always the possibility that someone will place random bids just to be obnoxious, but I think that’s far outweighed by the players who, as Starfish pointed out, use last-minute bidding as a strategy on a horse that they are indeed interested in. (Also, the 5 horse/$100k limit should help keep any obnoxiousness in check, anyway.) I know that I’ve done the same thing a couple of times, so turnabout is fair play I guess. :wink:

12

I set all of the FF-run auctions to be 18+ hours, so that everyone has the maximum chance to bid.  Yes, it’s annoying, but given that we’ve got members from pretty much every time zone on the planet, having to wait is the lesser evil.  (Especially during the summer in the US, since people are likely to be on vacation/away from their computer.)  For your own auctions, you can set it as low as 6 hours.

I think the reasoning for the bid time resetting has been sufficiently explained above (thanks guys).

What I would consider doing (if desired), is set another “clock” for your personal bidding.  So, let’s say, you can only bid once per hour (on different horses).  You could still bid every 5min in a mad bidding war (if you were mouse click happy) on Horse A, but wouldn’t be able to do what has been mentioned in this thread, of going down the list and just bidding on everything you see to reset all their bid times.

Would that be an OK solution?  Obviously I like the current system, since I haven’t changed it, and overall, the feedback has been positive (even the negative feedback here is “I want my horse now, dagnabit!” which is not a huge problem, IMO).  So it seems to be working overall, I think.

[Lewis, I did consider some way to have all the horses sell in a row, so that only one horse was being bid on at a time, but that would be a logistical nightmare, even if you could “pre-bid” (i.e. put down a 50k max bid on Horse 54 on day 1, even if he wouldn’t actually be sold until day 5.]

13

I find that it is pretty fair the way it is set up , yes ive lost horses i have wanted in the past but that happens, if you really really want one in particular do as some of us and just put all your money on the one horse, i did that got the horse entered him in a race the following race date and he won his maiden. I was impressed, anyhow to get back to the subject, we will be moving to germany and the BIG time dif will be a thing that will be hard enough to adjust to (again) so i think the 18 hours is fine , i personally have never had a problem with it, i even bid when i was away on vacation like Shanthi said, using a friends/fam members pc. And once im overseas again, im sure it will definately be a plus!!!