EMC feels quiet when many players are afk at farms. For new players, this can often make interacting with the community difficult. Groups and Empires are a fantastic way for players to interact. However, a new player who is yet to make these connections is unlikely to continue playing if nobody is active in chat. In the absense of an active chat, a new player is more like to quit. As many past suggestions have outlined, it is evident emc needs ways to retain new players. Auctions held within chat have benefits for new and existing players. For new players, easy access to materials and provides a more active chat thus making emc experience more exciting. For existing players, an active and easy way to sell materials. Without naming server-side plugins, there are plenty of third party 'auction house' examples that could be used as inspiration.
With the way things work currently if this was just added with the rest of EMC staying the same I don't see what incentive the auction host would ever have to use it. It's sorta the supporter auctions issue, they're useless because you're limiting your auctions to a handful of people who may or may not want it, excluding all the regular veterans with plenty of money. Would the in game auctions run for a week the way forums auctions do? If so it doesn't feel like that's of any benefit to a new joiner. If not nobody's going to run an auction if the chat is dead, because there's no one to bid. In which case the only time you'd run an in game auction is on a weekend or when the server is otherwise full, which isn't the time when you have a dead chat issue. While the forums auctions seem archaic I don't see much benefit to just throwing an auction house pluggin in without some major changes to the current system/culture
bluntly… I don’t think promoting in chat a sub-section of a crumbling economy will be the decisive factor on whether or not a player stays… Many auction plugins have been the source for plenty of dupes (considerable risk if something like this is employed) how do you envision your suggestion? Using a third party plugin? Custom made feature (what would make it unique (does EMC need any specific features)? In contrast to available tools) Zomberina used to host ‘in-person’ auctions which appear to have been successful. EMC is lacking proactive players interested in community engagement. There’s plenty of active players, but with the lack of a community manager, then engagement is left at the will of proactive players , may they be staff or regular. I believe in-game auctions would help with easing item/shop finding, as many +shops are inactive, so showcasing active sellers is a + , however auctions for the sake of cluttering chat to fake engagement is not ideal… specialized efforts for these two distinct issues would be better solutions imo
Many auction plugins, have become basically virtual shops. Not bidding wars, just quick accessible transactions. From my experience more than half of servers with an ‘auction plugin’ use it as a shop system, rather than real auctions. It could even be somewhat compared to a stock exchange. Given this context, many of them are listed for a few days, until they are out of stock.
Ahhhhh... yeah, okay, I could get behind something like that. I'm not sure if it's the best fit for EMC, but I could see it working where people list things for sale and the end result is a virtual shop made up of lots of different players' items. That takes away from the shop experience, but the majority of random +shop tps are dead/unhelpful anyway.
