Auction change proposal

[Jorus]

I'd love to see something like:

"auc setbuyout item_nn value_pp" added. This information wouldn't need to be visible to bidders.

This could be useful for two things.

1) Sellers could end an auction that had reached a point that satisfied them but still had substantial time left if they needed the cash sooner, but setting the buyout lower than the current max bid.

2) It would let the seller pre-specify what is "enough" for them.

This is aside from my issues with other things like "sniping".

Personally, I think the auction needs "fungible" deadlines to make sniping much harder. A bid in the last day/week should add a random number of days to the auction, or the auction should always randomly end 1-5 days early or late.

I think the lack of measures to deal with sniping is due to the auction being a bit of a combination between ebay type auctions with long-term bidding, buyouts, and email notification of being outbid, and a "live" auction with short bidding times.

I guess I just think aspects that make the auction more "live" should be de-emphasized since the auction times are fairly long and players are on non-synchronized schedules.

Regards,
Sam