Greedy Goblin

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Sort by %

The welcoming of the arrow trick revealed something important: people with auctioneer does not sort the list page by market price %. If they would, they would find the trick hopeless or funny. They find it outrageous because they believe that with a piece of bad luck, they could also fall for that. If it's the case, the arrow trick is your smallest problem. Because the same thing exists with every item that stacks, without any "evil intent".

People simply post different stacks. Some for marketing reasons, some because he had that stack. I mean if one farmed 9 eternals, he may list a stack of 9. If you want the best buy, you definitely need the lowest price/item. WoW automatically sort by stack price, that's why 100 arrows for 9G are cheaper than 1000 for 10.

The solution is extremely simple. Please look at this Auctioneer screen:
The last column is the market price %. 100% means that the statistical formula of Auctioneer guesses that it's the market price. The main point here however is that by clicking the column header, you can sort by this value, just as I did. So the 1000 stacks will appear first, as they are 99% of the market price. Looking at this column it's obvious that my stacks are overpriced. You don't even have to look at the stack size, you just buy the cheapest available.

Please keep in mind that this option only sort the current page. If there are many pages of the item, simply click next, opening every page. Memorize the smallest % value and go back to it. If there was a 64% on the third page, don't buy the lowest (87%) on the first page! You can also make the server sort by item price, by clicking a lot on the price header, but I'd rather recommend walking over the pages and watching %.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

one thing that i do when buying Stacks of things, usually Netherweave for making bags.. i use an addon called Yani's Auction helper, i set my price for the individual item price, 30s a piece, then it scans and bids or buys all the Netherweave at that price point, by screen any ways so it will come up and ask me if i want to spend 330g on the stuff i say yes it buys it quick then keeps scanning, if some one posts a stack for 1g bid 1000g buyout it will bid on it and when it expires ill get the cloth, no risk of ever paying more then my 30s a piece for it and all the deals belong to me

Zeran said...

I have one even better. Autionator is available on curse, and it automatically sorts the items (all pages) by cheapest price per unit. This is better because it allows easy bulk buying. Last time I bought cloth to make bags I bought about 100 stacks, which took me about 12 clicks.
Furthermore, auctionator is much easier to use for one time sales, like the boe blues (slightly more valuable than the shards) I get from heroics.

Tal said...

I'm pretty sure Auctioneer's default is to sort by price/item and not per stack. In any case, you can set it to sort by price/item - no need to use the market price % (although it does give the same results)

Anonymous said...

"In any case, you can set it to sort by price/item - no need to use the market price %" -Tal

@Tal, Not completely true in no need to use market price %. If it is a one time purchase in which you don't care about the market shifts then you are right. But if you keep your scans current and are watching for changes in the market and opportunities to flip items then the % sorting can be really helpful. (granted this is not what todays post is about but it is one more reason to use this sorting method)

Anonymous said...

Continued from above @ Tal.

Sorry for double post, but i left out one thing that was necessary to make sense. I should have been more clear, I meant keeping an eye on market shifts while bottom-scanning for flipping(or whatever you want to call it since "bottom scanner" is no longer a separate auctioneer entity)

Anonymous said...

I suggest using AuctionLite. It groups search results in one screen and sorts by price/item. It also allows you to select and buy/cancel multiple auctions with one click.

SiderisAnon said...

You can also just check the little box in the bottom corner of the listing screen that lets you display prices per item instead of per stack. It's right there on the lower left of Auctioneer. You don't even have to go into configuration to find it.

Unknown said...

Gevlon, it must sting to feel the need to post hand-holding documentation on your blog. I know its not like you to teach people something brutally obvious, with no real discussion on method's possible.


All true, but not very 'greedy goblin'

Jedigoof said...

Hmmmmm, I have been sorting my auctions by price percentage for ages. I guess that is why I laugh so hard when I see the ridiculous high prices some people are paying in the AH for basic items.

Nielas said...

@Chris
I do not really see it as 'hand holding' when you give people information about a tool.

Not knowing something does not make you a M&S. It is not caring to know or knowing and not using that information that makes you an M&S.

Kobeathris said...

One other thing about auctioneer, if you sort by %, the lowest price per unit may not be on the first page because of how Bliz returns auction results. On my server for example, if I want infinite dust, there will ususally be some stacks of 1 or 2 at 75% on the first page, but I have to go to page 5 or so to find the 20 stacks at 60%

Wiggin said...

Ive been using auctioneer for about 6 months...and I only ever sorted by percentage. Once you get a few scans in (and continue to run full scans every day) your PCT will become more reliable (minus patches and otther changes to items of course)

The only reason to ever sort by price is to sort by bid, say in the case you want to find low bid/high buyout items and place a bid hoping it will expire in your favor. I usually did this with ores and other mats, low level greens to DE and weapons/armor before an 8 hour server shutdown.

But in the end, sorting by percentage is always the way to go :) just be thorough and scan every page.

Wildhorn said...

Are you saying that there is people who use auctioneer who doesnt sort by %?!

It is the main purpose why I have this addon. When I first downloaded it, it was because it was listing stuff by %, so I would not get tricked by "scammers".

Anonymous said...

Auctioneer's "100% price" is an average of all the ones you've seen when you click Scan or search for the items individually.

Yoco said...

Sorting by percentage doesn't always work as you think it does, due to the way it is implemented. Percentage sorting doesn't work as you think it does when there is more than one page to show.

There are two levels at which data is sorted before data is displayed: at the server and at your computer. The server sorting determines what things are in each page: if the server sorts data in increasing buyout, the first page will show the auctions with the cheapest total buyout, and the last page the items with the most expensive buyouts.

The second level is done by auctioneer itself and that determines the order in which the items of one single page are sorted.

The problem? "percentage sorting" only exists as a feature of auctioneer, the server doesn't know about that. So it only affects the sorting of items within one page. You can easily se this by searching for something that returns many pages, e.g. "all epic gems" or "all glyphs" (or for simply: "everything"). When percentage sorting, there will be some with a low percentage and some at a high percentage on every page.

So how do you affect the server sorting? First know there are only a few server sort orders available. Most of these can be controlled by changing the second-to-last column sort order in auctioneer - cycling through things like "buyout descending", "buyout ascending", etc. (I am not at my game computer so can't check right now).

For example, you can see a difference (in a multi-page search) when you first sort by "buyout descending", then back to "percentage" (and hit "search" again to restart the search) vs. doing the same but chose "buyout ascending" before switching back to "percentage".

Anonymous said...

Mostly I use to check % on a regular search, then use mass buyout addon like Auction Lite (as Nees also suggestes below), which lists all and let you spec what qty - always the cheapest first.

Strange that unmodified auction house frame sort % on current page, not all combined.

Anonymous said...

pretty sure it will sort over multiple pages not just the current one, it may take a refresh