As has been posted in many areas in various topics in F.F. we are trying to “sort of” emulate real racing and everything that goes along with it. The question I have is… When was the last time “anyone” went to an auction of any kind that started at Midnight of any local time? Why do we do this? I for one haven’t.I find that all of the sales with dollar amount restrictions go against us who either do this from work or don’t want to stay up until 3 a.m. our time to get the max. bid on the one horse we want.
Just looking for clarification!!
I really don’t see a problem. We have players in Austrailia, New Zealand, Great Britian all over the U.S. we need an arbitrary start time. The 12 hour no bid rule and the bidding agent balance things out when you can’t be there.
In a “real” auction, it all happens in one place, I imagine. So, everyone would have to be on at the same time, giving bids in real time. Just really doesn’t work when you’ve got players in 3, 4, 5 different time zones, much less different continents. I agree with the 12 hour thing of no-bids evening out the lag time between time zones.
Plus, if you’re going to max out your bid (say the most you can spend is $100,000), if there are multiple bids of $100,000 then the script randomly selects one winner. That way, even if you’re not the first person to bid $100,000 you still have a lottery chance of getting the horse. I have to say that that’s damn fair, if you’re wanting to risk not being able to buy other horses instead of this one. I guess it’s one of those all-or-nothing risks.
If the person who bid before you has a max bid more than you’re willing to top, well, most likely you would have lost the horse anyway if they’re already willing to spend that amount on the horse to begin with and you are not. If that makes any sense.
Auctions are difficult to code so that everyone has a fair chance, because someone’s always going to feel gipped, somehow. Again, if you’ve got ideas on how to make it better–have at it.
The only thing that i think may help a little bit is to increase the no-bid time some. Like maybe 18 hours would work so that would cover the people who are only on at work and may not be at work till 5 or something. Other than that I don’t think the auctions could change at all to be any more fair.
Great answers!!! I did not know why and I do now and they make sense! The above quote was especially enlightening! In the above scenario when does the horse get placed? After the 18 hours (or 12 or whatever)? The losing bidders would then have time to bid on other horses if there was still auction time and horses left to bid on, right?
a horse is placed after the no bid time be it 12 hours or more… then if you still are able to bid on another horse (you haven’t maxed out number of horses or Money spent) you certainly can bid on other horses…
If the max bid for the auction was put in, the timer for the bid counter will count down from when the first max bid was put in. So you’ve got 12+ hours to get your max bid in as well. It shouldn’t reset if a 2nd max bid is recieved.
Also, I believe start time, time to sale, etc are fairly flexible when you create auctions. I don’t remember off the top of my head, but I know you can pick from 12, 18, and I think 24? hours with no bid for the sales time.
People are right though, it’s almost impossible to do a completely “fair” auction. Shanthi did live ones in the chat room for awhile, but that’s a pain b/c it’s impossible to plan out everyone’s schedule so they can make it and she’d end up with essentially max bids from 10 or so people for her to juggle. That said, if people have ideas on how to make the existing system better, please let us know. It might not get added immediately, but some stuff should be fairly easy to change (adding no-bid times, making start times more adjustable, etc).
Yeah, I imagine you’d be complaining a tad more if it was actually run like a real auction. The whole 12 hours minimum before a horse sells helps to combat people living in different timezones.
