The formula for the perfect bid xD

[CoffeeDemon]

This could be too simplistic for some people but i was just thinking about fair bids for tradable items, that can also be bought on the market.

For example if a 6-player party kills a boss and loots an item that is worth 10 gold on the market, the team basically just earned 10 gold and each player earned 10g divided by 6 (1,66g) . Now the problem is that you cannot split this one item or turn it into cash and we can't just give it to one player, because then everyone else would give up on his fair share.

So we use bids to compensate. Allthough some players seem to hate bids, it's the best way, if done properly.

Depending on the market there always is one perfect bid. In my example this would be 10g - 10g/6 = 8g 33s 33c.
The guy who wins the bid will lose 8,33g and get an item worth 10g. 10g-8,33g=1,66g
Everyone else will also earn 1,66g (cash).

market price  -  market price/amount of players  = perfect bid

Why should you care?
Bidding higher than that is stupid, because then you could as well save the time it took to run the dungeon and just buy it on the market.
Bidding too low and letting others get the item means you are literally throwing your money at a random stranger. (actually bidding too high also is like throwing away money but you split the money equally among many strangers xD)

[Zedonia]

That's true. Of course, to make that work, you have to know the market price. But there is also another Problem: The person who wins the bid will have to pay market fees. I don't know how much are These for a single item but you have to calculate that otherwise it's a loss for that person compared with the others.

 

Anyway, most Groups don't bid anywhere near the market price. Mostly it's about half the price.

[CoffeeDemon]

13 minutes ago, Zedonia said:

 But there is also another Problem: The person who wins the bid will have to pay market fees.

 

I think wether or not the guy will sell the item on the market or trade it personally or just use it for himself is beyond the parties control.

At any rate i would not pay another players market fee, that's silly.^^

[Partholonian]

I think you can also adjust for fees by changing the formula to

(Market Price - Fees) * ((Party Size - 1)/Party Size)

 

i.e. 5/6 of net value in a 6-man or 3/4 in a 4-man (with other fractions for non-full parties).  This is the amount that, if you have a chance to bid below that amount, it will profit you to do it, but if you have to bid above that amount, you'll make less money than the rest of the party.  Equivalently, it's the amount that makes the bidder and the non-bidders all gain the same amount after the sale is finished.

 

However, this assumes that you know exactly what the market price *will be* (that it will actually sell for that price) and what the fees will be (both that it actually is going to be marketed, as CoffeeDemon points out, and that you won't have to post it multiple times).

 

So a person who actually bids based on this formula with their best guesses for price and fees does take some risk, but on the other hand they can also benefit if the price goes up above what the market price is assumed to be at bidding time.  Or if they skip the fees by using it themselves. 

 

IMO, in spite of these complications,  the formula is still a good starting point for players trying to figure out when they should stop bidding.

 

P.S. This also doesn't account for limited sell slots -- a player who is very short on sell slots may prefer to let an item go for less than the ideal price rather than have to take up a slot selling it himself, if the price difference isn't too large.

 

Concrete example: if the drop is worth 12 gold, in a 6-man party you should bid 10 gold, making a profit of 2 gold (each of the 5 other party members gains 2 gold when your bid goes through), but if the exact same thing drops in a 4-man you should bid only 9 gold, making a profit of 3 gold (while each of the 3 other party members gains 3 gold when your bid goes through).

[Els]

Bidding higher than the optimal 'perfect bid' as you call it, is like a gamble, if someone else outbid you, you'll win more !

[CoffeeDemon]

6 hours ago, Els said:

Bidding higher than the optimal 'perfect bid' as you call it, is like a gamble, if someone else outbid you, you'll win more !

Ofc you can try to make additional profit by bidding below, hoping that nobody will go higher or letting somebody else pay more.

You could even bid 100 gold while people are still bidding copper and leave if nobody bids higher. Idk why ncsoft doesnt fix this, it shouldn't be possible to withdraw so easily from a bid.

[7XVe]

Perfect bidding:

Honorary ornament: 11g

 

In a four man party, it would be 8.25 split evenly. Of course, that wouldn't count market fees and wasting a market slot. So you'd want to bid lower.

To do this bid ~10% lower [7.5g]. The extra profit will cover the market fees and anyone who bids higher will reach the normal price of 8.25 - they will earn less as they have to pay taxes. So at that point people won't bid - and if they do, you win either way.

 

Most people on the other hand, just bid a lot lower and hope every else is poor.

[CoffeeDemon]

25 minutes ago, 7XVe said:

Perfect bidding:

Honorary ornament: 11g

 

In a four man party, it would be 8.25 split evenly. Of course, that wouldn't count market fees and wasting a market slot. So you'd want to bid lower.

To do this bid ~10% lower [7.5g]. The extra profit will cover the market fees and anyone who bids higher will reach the normal price of 8.25 - they will earn less as they have to pay taxes. So at that point people won't bid - and if they do, you win either way.

 

Most people on the other hand, just bid a lot lower and hope every else is poor.

Like I already said, bidding is just about sharing the loot. Party members are not responsible for the further usage of an item. Selling something on the market is a completely diffrent process and it#s not even guaranteed to happen. You can also use items for yourself or trade personally.

[7XVe]

Bidding is always about earning money, not sharing the item. If you bid by your methods you are getting the worse end of the stick.

 

Also, most people will sell the item on the market. It doesn't even matter if they do or don't. Either way bidding the exact price is giving everyone the same amount - but you have the item and you will waste your money on market fees. If you were not going to put it in the market, why waste more money bidding higher when you can save some by bidding lower?

[Shuchin]

A big factor is also market sale slots. You cannot sell off as many valuable items per day as you are gaining from drops unless you have decent rank premium membership or unless you sell in big stacks (which usually get unfavourable prices compared to small stacks).

 

So your rule of thumb is an important orientation point but realistically there will always be a trend to bid slightly lower than that, which is just as well.

[CoffeeDemon]

4 hours ago, Shuchin said:

A big factor is also market sale slots. You cannot sell off as many valuable items per day as you are gaining from drops unless you have decent rank premium membership

 

Lets just take a small moment here to emphasize how shameless this marketing strategy of ncsoft is. They cripple the game to sell things ( that any mmorpg should have) as premium "benefit". 

It's almost impossible to not hit that 10 sales limit everyday. You have to constantly throw away items worth 10-20s (unless you didn't even loot them) because they would flood your inventory (that  is laso heavily limited ) and you would never be able to sell the stuff before getting even more.

The only way around that is to avoid doing a variety of activities and just farm the same thing over and over and again.

I don't even care anymore to even farm stuff. I am now making money by abusing daily price fluctuation for 1 type of item. I buy all the cheap stacks of a certain item up to a certain price limit and then i just sell everything in bigger stacks up to 150% more expensive. Like this i am easily earning 10-30 gold per day just by doing a few clicks that take 1-2 minutes. Each day there will come a shortage (mostly at night or after maintance) and all the ridiculous overpriced items are sold and then other players start to undercut each others  stacks of 1 or 2 items by 1-5 silver...and step by step the stuff is cheap again and ripe for the picking lol.

[Shuchin]

although the premium membership perks are very substantially influencing profit margins for crafters and for those playing the market, the good thing about the concept is that it allows F2P players to sell of valuable items that are in high demand and thus pricey, and it gives them unrestricted access to all the benefits of buying.

 

This is much better than how it was solved by Gameforge in Aion EU, where non-paying players were unable to even _buy_ things.

 

The B&S solution is pretty solid, giving premium members more economic flexibility and profits while still enriching and expanding the market by including the F2P players.

 

Personally I miss the days of subscription based MMOs, and decided to just pretend B&S was one. So I pay for premium membership but do not use NCoin for anything else. So far it works nicely - thanks to HMcoin I can still access almost all the things in the shop and treat them as special rewards, earned with (ridiculous amounts of) in-game gold. XD

[Tsuchiryu]

I'll just say I enjoy being able to win almost all bids for Moonwater Tears and Frozen Stingers lately with how much cheaper they've become. And nope, no plans of selling either of them anytime soon. I'll actually use them. Eventually. Crafting being padded so badly is discouraging and I'd rather do dungeons for now, but hey, at least I have the actual mats now. xD

 

Moonstones and STS are another story, but one mat at a time. :P