Suggested

Transfer Market

Please, stop arguing among ourselves. Everyone has their own preferences and they must be respected! Digital Druid, you can't call everyone who thinks differently from you crybabies and lazy. Enough is enough. No one is insulting you here. Did you say your piece "1h + buy now"? Okay, stop. Most people (including managers who have been playing this game since it was born) think differently and prefer the 4 minutes like it was before? Okay, stop. Jack will make his decisions later.

If you want a different result, you need to try something different. That’s clearly what Jack is aiming for, evolving the game instead of keeping it frozen in the past.

Some managers will say "If it doesn’t go back to 4 minute auctions, I’ll quit." That kind of reaction feels more like a tantrum than constructive feedback. Games evolve, and not every change will suit everyone.

I think to be an evolution it has to be a fix for something that didn't work before; the auction system before worked, and the change is a regressive step to what it was like quite a while ago. Therefore, I can't consider it evolving the game.

I was watching the transfer market pretty closesly between 6pm and 7pm GMT, and there was a lot of activity and a good number of drivers being sold. What I couldn't help but notice was that the people who won a lot of the auctions turned up within the final 10 minutes of the hour, whereas people who had placed bids earlier on were simply inactive and lost out even if they had bid first. There was a single account I noticed that was consistently active through the hour in bidding as soon as they dropped away from the top - but requiring that level of dedication to get a driver is excessive in what is a game that should primarily be about developing the best car and turning up to live manage a race, executing it with the best strategy, and hopefully winning. Getting a driver off the market should be a simple formality, and if you lose you shouldn't have to wait another hour to try and win again.

I will have a try to have a look again this evening to see if the same thing happens again, but based on my observations thus far today - and on previous days - this system is really unfair and works way worse than before.

For a matter of fairness it would be interesting to have a "lock-off" system where if a driver only has one bid, the auction ends after half an hour instead, or if it has two bids then after half an hour only those two bidders can bid in the next half hour, and if it has 3+ then it gets to 50 minutes and then locks off bids from anyone yet to bid. It would require managers to have an active interest in the driver rather than just rolling up with 3 minutes to go and bidding up the price continually.

As I have said, I favour the previous auction house system, but am trying to provide as many alternative suggestions in case they garner some greater popularity than what worked perfectly before.

EDIT: Having watched the situation on auction for another couple of hours it is just the same thing; a few people bid early, then get usurpsed in the last 10 minutes by guys who hadn't bid until then. There is one poor guy who clearly only has 2 tokens because he is bidding 1 token on 2 different drivers at the start of every hour and missing out.

It's totally crazy to have to sit around for an hour of your life to just win 1 driver. To dedicate so much time to a bit of the game which is nothing to do with management is crazy. The transfer system had problems before, but Jack had made it perfect with 4 minute refreshes and no-buy now option to stop farmers. It's crazy what has been done now and really stupid to need to spend so much time on something like this. Clearly the players don't like it and want it fixed to how it was. Will Jack listen to the people who support his game? I hope so, because now it's crazy.

I am happy to see so much activity and support on this when I am not around.

To me it is clear what the players want. That is for things not to be changed for no reason when they work. Things worked before and people were happy and not complaining. Developers listening to feedback has become a lot better, so I am hopeful this will be fixed. At the moment it is totally broken, takes up too much time and you get "bosses" with loads of resources coming in at the last moment. This needs to be the next fix on the list.

I'm happy disagree as a new player. Others will come to the one hour auction or the 50 Tokens  BUY NOW button. I just hire all I needed. And if I need to click the 50 Tokens BUY NOW button (if have one), fine by me. Other newcomers will agree with me.

The fact that it is just the last minute before the hour that's important is a pretty good indication as to why this long auction system doesn't work. There is no point in making it that long if such a fraction of the time is actually relevant. Having to set an alarm to come back is also problematic and sometimes just not possible if you are actually busy. 

Starting an hour long auction every five minutes does mean that there is always one ending - but I don't see how this actually works in practice. Does the auction area just have a list of 10 or so auctions with "ending in: 5 mins, ending in: 10 mins"? And once again, if they start every five minutes and you only get to see the final five minutes, this is the same as having five minute auctions. And, as you said, if the most interesting one has just started then you have to wait around or set an alarm to come back in an hour.

The ability to set up an auto-bid seems nice, but if you went on and bid then the auto-bid just immediately beat your bid it would just ramp up prices which are already ridiculous and allow accounts with massive resources to just set a 200 token limit at the start of an hour and walk away knowing they would win the bid - it is anti-competition.

I agree on the buy now/farming point. The accounts doing it could easily afford a 50 token buy now. There's a reason it was removed.

I don't know if anyone has ever been to an actual auction, but they aren't long drawn out affairs like this. It is a quick process where a lot is brought in and bidding starts, and continues until no one wants to top the leading bid for a period of about 20 seconds. They are fast paced and don't rely on people waiting around for an hour only for a final minute to be relevant.

By far the best auction system is quick fire refreshes and it is evident that players want that. There will always be competition because the system is now game-wide and not limited to level, it just won't be favouring those with excessive time and resources on their hands who can make sure they are there at the end of the hour.

The very fact that you stated "it's just the last minute before the hour that's important" is a pretty clear indication that the auctions should be quick rolling processes, not long and drawn out. If only 1 minute is important, why waste an hour? And then you have to waste another hour when you lose to someone with more free time and more money and tokens on their hands.

Jack has been extremely good recently at taking manager's feedback onboard regarding the implementation of atrophy; league boosting; and has held votes on changes to sprint races, push levels, DRS, pit crew impact. This is something that was changed without consultation and it is evident that the managers prefer what came before. If he wants to put it to a second official poll like he did with everything else then I would support that, but the change was definitely not what players want.

If everyone quickly ends up with maxed 5 star drivers and staff, what’s the point of management anymore?
The fun is in the search and the challenge, like a treasure hunt to find great talent. If everything becomes easy and instant, everyone will just have the same optimal team. At that point, we might as well start the game with level 40 teams, perfect drivers, staff, and HQ. Where’s the fun in that? A management game should reward patience and smart decisions, not just make everything convenient and effortless.

I'm peoposing that:
1)Difficulty and scarcity are part of the fun.
2)The game needs progression and a sense of achievement.
3)Finding good drivers should be rare and rewarding.

If everything is easy, everyone will end up with the same team.
That kills the strategic side of management. (If the game is still management style)

From a game design perspective it touches on something important: meta homogenization. When everyone can easily obtain the best resources, the differences between players disappear.

I take your point that real auctions have that announcing and display period, but that is because the stuff being sold is usually highly rare or desireable; not like iGP where drivers are just drivers. You don't need an announcing and display phase, just the fast bidding.

I think there are four questions to ask here:

1. Did the system before work well? Yes. It was fast paced, the market was well populated and you had an equal chance of doing well regardless of level, resources or availability to spend time on the game. If there was nothing on good on the market you could wait a few minutes for it to refresh. Now there are whole hours of this - it's like being back with the really broken 3 hour auction system of several years ago - though not quite as bad.

2. Was anyone complaining about the system? No. There are always players who care a lot raising issues on the forum, but none of the main or popular complaints in the last 3-6 months were about the transfer market. It worked about people were happy.

3. Do managers prefer the new system? No. Often things can be changed without managers complaining, and they prefer the result. This is clearly not one of them.

4. Is the new system better or fairer? No. It screws over anyone who isn't active at the end of the hour, and massively advantages better resourced account because all the prices are being driven up from a reasonable 4 or 5 tokens to usually 10-15, though I have seen above 30 on the new system.

I cannot see any rationality for this change when it comes to the enjoyment or playability of the game. Is there a middle ground of ten minute refreshes or thirty minute refreshes? Possibly. But this new system is not one that managers like or are happy with, and the previous one was such. Why make a change to bring yourself under fire and make the game worse?

OK. Case closed to me. 
PEACE.

Yeah let's not beat about the bush the change is intentional to allow the game to continue being invested in.

An auction just finished for a TD with the Design Legendary special ability. It was great to see so many people bidding. I’m pretty sure that if the auction had only lasted four minutes, almost no one would have noticed it. In the end, the TD was hired for 89 tokens, which is quite good compared to the 200 tokens it costs to develop that ability yourself.

I saw a 4 minute auction for a TD with common ability 2 weeks ago end up at 15 tokens. So that's just patently false.

Oh well, I guess it's pay to win now and you have to buy tokens.

Someone will always complain.

People will only complain when something is wrong. Hence why no one was complaining about the auction house before it was changed last week. As the poll shows, it isn't what most managers in the sample favour.

Just to provide an example of how absurd the new system is, I race on this account once per week - I am aware that is a choice, but there are many players like that. This means I will get 156 tokens per year from racing; this is the same amount that someone who races every day will get in 52 days, meaning that they are at an astronomical resource advantage now. As I enjoy the game, I also have an account that races every day - outside of my primary league. Because it races every day and is level 38, it is extremely well resourced. Now that all auctions end on the hour, every hour. I know for a fact that I can log into that account at the end of any hour and with 100% certainty win anything on the auction market. Previously, because auctions ended and started frequently, you could not really operate on a policy like that. However, now anyone with an account that has a lot of resources just knows that they can turn up and shaft any manager who was patiently waiting to try and win something. The ability to get a good deal is gone. Prices are being artificially driven up by a false decrease in supply and it exclusively favours those with massive resources or forces people to spend money on tokens. I genuinely cannot comprehend the mindset of someone who thinks this is in any way fair or a positive thing unless they have a vested interest in the finances of iGP Games Limited.

I’ll leave it here and let you have the last word. Otherwise this could go on forever and I believe my point is already clear.
PEACE.