Aug. 11th Secret Ship Auction Mishandled?
Should spamming the refresh button on the UWO Twitter page to get the google doc to show up so you can be the first person to fill it out and click submit have anything to do with winning a ship? If not, read on.
Questioning the method by which the 2nd Secret Ship Auction that took place this morning Aug. 11th @ 7:30am for the 2nd ship Pirate Maltese Galley was handled. For the logic behind rolling the dice and concept of “the 50 largest bidders” to work, there must be 50 unique amounts, or at the very least a distinction between bids. Right? If I’m correctly interpreting the rules and guidelines by which Papaya Play intended these auction to be conducted, 49 individual players who otherwise might have had a chance at winning this ship were excluded this morning.
The GM running the auction said there were 75 bids for 20 billion, raised the amount eligible in the roll from 50 to 75 and rolled a 75 sided dice to see which bid would win the ship. Except there was only 1 actual bid amount, 20 billion – 75 individual bids for 20 billion. And according to Papaya’s rules whoever bid that amount first would win. This distorts the event so much it becomes pointless to roll the dice since the winner is not determined by luck of the draw but how quickly a form was filled out and submitted.
List of the 75 Largest Bids
#1 – 20,000,000,000 <-- First person to submit their bid *Winner-winner chicken dinner*
#2 – 20,000,000,000
#3 – 20,000,000,000
#4 – 20,000,000,000
#5 – 20,000,000,000
#6 – 20,000,000,000
#7 – 20,000,000,000
#8 – 20,000,000,000
#9 – 20,000,000,000
#10 – 20,000,000,000
#11 – 20,000,000,000
#12 – 20,000,000,000
#...
#...
#...
#71 – 20,000,000,000
#72 – 20,000,000,000
#73 – 20,000,000,000
#74 – 20,000,000,000
#75 – 20,000,000,000 <-- You look so familiar, I swear I've seen you before.
The rules should have stated one bid amount per person with the first person to submit the bid locking it down. If 10 people bid 20 billion ducats that value goes to the first person to have bid, leaving 49 other bid values possible within the “50 largest bids”. This is the only way it makes sense and is fair for everyone. The way it was conducted earlier, 49 people who took the time and made it a point to participate lost out on an opportunity to win a pretty ship.
On that note Papaya did an excellent job selecting ships. They’re among some of the most highly sought after types. But if you’re going to set a 20 billion ducat bidding cap and except duplicate bid amounts on a ship that goes for 10x’s that much in-game it makes me question how in-tune they are with the game economy and pricing. It’s like putting a Ferrari up for auction with a $10,000 limit giving the top 50 bids a chance to win. You’re going to get a lot more than 50 bids for $10,000. And with the Pirate Neapolitan Galleass, 50+ bids of 20 billion will likely occur again on the 16th. In order to create a more comprehensible event I’d like to suggest revisiting the Auction guidelines at the next Papaya staff meeting.
Questions, Comments? I could've dreamt the whole thing up, in which case - my bad.
Comments
A thread I know a lot about. You're right The form format is lame and it makes auctioning hard like you said its based on who put their price first not auction bid amounts.
The Auction is best done live in game in merchant chat with a real person imo thats how I did it when I auctioned. This shows a natural progression of bids and its also way more entertaining and it plays out like a real auction. A player doing auctions is cool because they make a commission with the auction money but a GM has no use for the ducats. What the GM SHOULD do is take the winnings of the auction and play mini games with players to win that money. High low /dice games, musical chairs, odd even /dice game, or even a guess what number I'm thinking. That way the GM isnt sucking money out of the economy and is instead redistributing it among players and making even more cool entertaining events.
I'm glad the GM is doing this and I hope they take my advice I REALLY miss auctioning but 2 small kids , job and significant other makes it impossible for me right now but maybe the GM can recapture the magic or another player can
Yeah pretty bad show to new players tbh. Using a google doc to organize a bidding system and then making it first come first serve kind of tells me they have no ability to actually code a system via their website or game to handle it for them. Pretty big fail tbh, make a piece of software to do it for you or just find another career.
I agree in some ways the auction was a fast, but I do think it was as fair as it can be without seeing the list of who bid what to possibly see people bid twice etc.
I think as soon as i saw the PMG and PNG up in aution I said in world chat or at least in my mind if not that 20b would be the top to bottom top 50, or in the end top 75. Remember TOP bid does not automaticly win the ship, it is a dice game aswell. But when they changed the rules slightly to allow a Top 50 and a bottom 50 and allow the 2 side dice decide (1 was high top 50 and 2 was the low bottom 50) I actually did enjoy that one more personally because it did allow new players essentially bid 1 ducat lol. in the end I think it was a player that bid 2 million that had won that ship and another that I believe bidded around that for the other ship.
I do hope the GMs do the top 50 and bottom 50 in the auctions of the future (If any) as I do believe that enabled more participation.
Problem is, how do you sell 50b when char max is 20b?
nvm fields, i misread lol