Massive news: Patch 6 Commodities

[FizzyBubbly]

i could go on with a long post, but i'll just say that to see this implemented is a beautiful elegant solution.

Also you speak about "sell at market" and if they institute that then on the buying and selling end would they implement limit orders? for example the options may look like

Sell 200 scrap
--at market--
-- Limit--- amount 5g/scrap
order open for 24hours

this may be too advanced but just intellectually the next step

[Concupisco Quaestus]

I'm just happy to see that they are either paying attention to communal conversations or that they've got "thinkers" on their side handling this as well, I was getting a little concerned at one point as I saw the same thing Azzure did in regards to flooding markets... Either way, regardless of how it works in the final product I'm glad to see it will be something outside the "norm" and not just a carbon copy WoW AH. Big props to Blizzard and Staff.

[AngleWyrm]

I'm not quite understanding this selling "at market" thing. Is that the same thing as selling for lowest current price?

Because if so, I would sell a single scrap for 1gp just before buying a ton of scrap, and would that drag a huge ghost market of unspecified 'at market' people into a trap of selling me their scrap at 1gp/scrap?

Also, is there some preference to sell the declared 1gp scrap first, and then the at market people's scrap? What about any 2gp scrap currently on the market; does that also get sold before the at market people? When exactly would any of the at market scrap get sold?

[Concupisco Quaestus]

If you wanted to buy 5 scraps, 2 are currently listed for 5000, 2 listed for 10000 and 2 listed for 12000, your cost wouldn't be 5000 per scrap it would be the average right? You could list a scrap for 1g before you make your buy but you would only get your own scrap at that price, I think that "natural" buyer experience is what they are going to try and duplicate, only they are going to do it behind the scenes so instead of you seeing those listings and buying the 5 lowest priced items from an AH where the search results would be outdated before you get them, you punch in what you want to buy and they just sell you the 5 lowest being listed on that AH for the collective price.

[Azzure]

i could go on with a long post, but i'll just say that to see this implemented is a beautiful elegant solution.

Also you speak about "sell at market" and if they institute that then on the buying and selling end would they implement limit orders? for example the options may look like

Sell 200 scrap
--at market--
-- Limit--- amount 5g/scrap
order open for 24hours

this may be too advanced but just intellectually the next step

I agree totally with this. While an "at market" feature would solve the issue of people's listings potentially being undercut and not being able to do anything except relist, I think my suggestion would be too advanced for the average player, so they will not likely do this.

I'm not quite understanding this selling "at market" thing. Is that the same thing as selling for lowest current price?

Because if so, I would sell a single scrap for 1gp just before buying a ton of scrap, and would that drag a huge ghost market of unspecified 'at market' people into a trap of selling me their scrap at 1gp/scrap?

Also, is there some preference to sell the declared 1gp scrap first, and then the at market people's scrap? What about any 2gp scrap currently on the market; does that also get sold before the at market people? When exactly would any of the at market scrap get sold?

Selling at Market basically eliminates the notion of "lowest price" and replaces it with "last price". If you've ever traded shares or Forex, it is exactly how they trade. If not I'll try my best to explain it:

(One thing I forgot to mention is that when you sell "at market", there are very tight limits - if the current market value drops more than 5-10%, your sell order is automatically void or you are prompted to confirm.)

If you sell one of your scraps for 1g, all that would happen is some lucky guy will get a scrap for 1g. The market value would remain what it was, due to all the other BUY orders in the market.

It works kind of like a ratio of buyers vs sellers. Consider this scenario.

Scenario:
Common scraps market value is currently 50g each. Say there are 10,000 common scraps selling "in market" for market value. And there are 5,000 buy orders in the market. Of these 5000 buy orders, 3000 have a max buy price at 50g per scrap. Another 1000 have a buy order at 45g. Another 1000 have a buy order at 1g.

The system would do the following:
Execute the 3000 scraps @ 50g.
Execute the 1000 scraps @ 45g. CHANGE market value of the scraps to 45g.
Ignore the 1000 buy order @1g because it is too low

The fall in price happened because there is a bigger supply then the current buy orders, which caused the current supply and demand to push the price down. In a real Diablo 3 scenario, this would be change every second, and the amount of sellers to buyers ratio would change dynamically (more buyers @ lower prices, less buyers @ higher prices)

So here is what happens next in this scenario:

A few hundred people come across to the AH and notice that scraps are only 45. Suddenly, the demand for scraps @ 45g is much higher than it was @ 50g. There is now 20,000 buy orders for scraps @ 45-49g. There is only 5,000 scraps on sale:
System does the following:
Execute 5,000 scraps @ 49g
Adjust market value to 49g.

So what happens next? A guy comes along that really needs scraps ASAP, and there is quite a shortage due to the recent price drop. He is willing to pay 60g per scrap because he thinks its definitely worth it. He enters a buy price of 60g for 5,000 units. All scraps that are now listed at market will sell for 60g until this guys order is fulfilled, in which it will revert to the next highest. And so on.

So what does this example tell us? That while there will be constant value shifting in small range variations, one can't simply manipulate the market without controlling a huge % of the playerbase. (which no one can obviously do)

[Concupisco Quaestus]

The only problem I see with market pricing is that people will be kinda forced into selling their items at a semi-fixed price without any real option to set pricing themselves (aka sell low for quick sales) and as such why not just use a system with fixed pricing and save yourself a couple thousand lines of code?

[Azzure]

The only problem I see with market pricing is that people will be kinda forced into selling their items at a semi-fixed price without any real option to set pricing themselves (aka sell low for quick sales) and as such why not just use a system with fixed pricing and save yourself a couple thousand lines of code?

The "at Market" is just an option you can choose if you want to be lazy and let the system determine the price rather than running around looking for what the value is. Though I totally agree that we will not likely see this in the game due to the complexity in both creating it, and the average user not knowing what it means.

[AngleWyrm]

Thanks for describing this process; it's quite a bit different than picturing a bell curve of sale prices.

The system would do the following:
Execute the 3000 scraps @ 50g.
Execute the 1000 scraps @ 45g. CHANGE market value of the scraps to 45g.
Ignore the 1000 buy order @1g because it is too low

So the reason the final 1000 buy order @1g did not go through was because of a safety net feature, designed to prevent the market from crashing?

[Baalat]

Good question.

The answer is quite simple - if you were the first person buying those scraps, you would get the scraps in order of cheapest first, second cheapest second etc.

So in this case, lets pretend that these are the 3 cheapest listings for the scraps at the exact time you start browsing:
A has listed 200x scraps @ 1g ea
B has listed 73x scraps @13g ea
C has listed 73x scraps @ 20g ea

Your the first person who then puts a buy request for 273 scraps. You will recieve scraps A and B at their exact listed prices. So the first 200 scraps you will pay 1g each, and the next 73 you will pay 13g each. The next person comes along and wants 50 scraps. He will get 50 of the 73 of C listing scraps @ 20g each.

Nice feature.
But it looks like it needs something like a limit target
For example let's say in the previous example I want to buy 273 scraps but at a maximum price of 5g each. Then the system should fill a partial order with the 200 that are available for 1g, and leave an open order for the remaining 73 scraps ...

[sgeos]

Scenario:
Common scraps market value is currently 50g each. Say there are 10,000 common scraps selling "in market" for market value. And there are 5,000 buy orders in the market.

As I understand the D3 AH, there is no option to create open buy orders. You create open sell orders, and other people close them.