Rule adjustments

[sahearniitth]

I have been swamped recentlly with the start of the new semester so havent had time to post these for discussion.

Looking for thoughts and opinions on the following adjustments (and making them official)

Adjustments

1) Reducing the penalty of probation/negative lotting to bidded tiers. This doesnt come up alot but basically if someone is on probation (or negative) and an item is about to go freelot (ie no one wants to openlot it) then let them spend their points.


Making rules official (and yes I will rewrite rules soon as I have been promising for months)

1) Freelot is no longer tiered. We have been doing this for a while and doesnt seem to be causing problems.

2) New members are on probation for their first run. This is more to let me get their lotting information to avoid confusion mid run.

[Cleophie]

I'd like to suggest that we amend the matching rule to only allow matching of bids posted later than your own.

Run-time matching of a bid that was already up when your bid was posted has no legitimate purpose - it's only done to bid deceptively low in an effort to prevent competitive bidding, so the person can match at the run for as little as possible. I don't think we should encourage that kind of action, it wastes SH time and makes bidding and loot distribution more confusing. If someone is able to post a matched bid before the run but chooses not to, they should be held to that, rather than given a second chance to bid in a situation that hasn't changed.

I'll give an example, so it makes more sense as to how this is being used negatively:

Person A bids 5 points on Item X.
Person B bids 3 points on Item X after Person A bids.
Person A sees this bid and stops raising bids, because Person B could've bid 5 points if they were intending to be competitive.
Person B matches to 5 points at the run.

It's a simple change with no foreseeable negative side-effects, thoughts?

[sahearniitth]

In response to your posting I dont see it as having much effect in the long run. Using an example similiar to your own.

After run Sunday, forums are opened and Person A bids 5pt sublot70 bid
Early Monday morning Person B bids 5pts as well.
Person A sees this and raises bid to 10pts (which a quick look at person B's points would tell you that they can match).
Wednesday run comes along. Person B matches and our rule adjustment served no purpose. Person A proceedes to complain about how its unfair that person B didnt match in the 3 days prior to run but ets to match now.

Example 2 would be Person B posts 5pt bid 5-10 min before forums are supposed to be locked. This reduces chances of a raise (esp if person A is sleeping/at work) and effectivelly gives them a match.

Either of these could be seen as twisting the intent of bidding but nonethless they will (and already do happen). People need to simply accept that if they try to get items for a low value people will match them and so if they REALLY want an item they will have to resort to locking out. Any of the old BLMs (before we were blessed with blm hats in the past few months) can attest to this.

Those would be my reasons for questioning the necessity of adding this change in that I dont see it as being anything that will result in solving any of the underlying problems and it adds another layer of complexity (even if it is a rather simplistic change) to the bidding process. I still stand by my stance that people need to suck it up about the "cost" of items if they arnt going to lock people out and if they do that in the first place then matching isnt even a concern.

Having said all that, like you said in your post (and I echoed) its a fairlly simple change and I dont have a problem with adding it if other SH think its worth it.

Edit: The other "solution" to the problem of matching that was suggested previouslly was to set a cutoff time prior to which matches could not be made. IE only bids made in the last X hrs before a run could be matched. The problem with this (besides the extra work in figuring them out) is that it STILL comes down to if people want to make last minute bids before the forums are closed they can pretty much set the low point bid odds in their favor.

[sahearniitth]

While we are in the discussion of additional rule chnages we need to sit down and decide on a definate policy concerning people who skip runs. We have an arbitrary policy of giving no points to a person if they were late to a run because of camping elsewhere but have no clear formulaic policy on people who skip to camp stuff and then convinentlly log. In addition we are usually passive when the person skipping has generallly good attendence but again thats an arbitary line we draw ourselves.

In the past week I have seen members with good attendence skip to camp KA and also seen members with bad attendence skip to exp an alt job. I have SS taken of these but cant really polic all members of the shell (and so these people were unlucky enough that I was looking in said zones or for said people).

Thought/Suggestions?

[Aceris]

Lock em out for the next run they show up in. That'd be my idea of a good punishment. If you so conveniently log out after a long activity before dynamis or lvling an alt job seems more important for a run you don't need stuff in, then being on probation for a run when you return shouldn't be such a big deal.

As for the bidding rule change I've always sided with gimpo's idea that if people don't feel the need to lock someone out thats their problem if someone matches. If they want it bad enough they can lock as many people as they want out or at least cause their competitors to burn as many of their points as possible for said item. The system was made to have people secure the items they want when they want in as fair of a way as possible. Not sure if any rule amentment will cause it to be any more "fair"er then it already is curerntly if people don't use the system as its intended to be used.

[Cleophie]

If that's the consensus, then that's the consensus.

[Aceris]

I'm not saying the rule doesn't need changing. It might well be in need of an overhaul. I'm not on enough to figure out what impact this is really having in terms of RL applications. I just think that since its not hard to figure out who your competition is, people complaining about others "matching" at the last minute at the run really should just stop trying to be "cheap" with their points and instead actually USE some of em to lock out as many people as possible. When you bid for an item your interested in your suppose to be bidding based upon how many points you think the item is worth to you NOT how "cheap" or low you can go to get the item. While I don't want to encourage people to make use of the matching ability for a different/evil purpose then what its suppose to be used for aka "ninja bidding", I also don't feel it is SH's responsibility to babysit for things that can be solved easily if people don't try to hog points and bid low for shit they want in the first place.

[Deathrattle]

this is why i think we should stop asking people to match bids before or durring runs... if some one wants to match a bid it's there job to let us know ingame before a run starts, and if they forget it's their problem not ours...