Market pause annoyance

[SuperPlyx]

I imagine this had been discussed before but I had a question about it.

I have experienced where the market seems to pause on my bids. I will place bids on something and they are selling for that but I don't get any.

5 days ago I placed bids on 70 recipes and 700 converters, standard flipping nonsense. The recipes completed but I have not got a single converter.

I bid 70,000 per btw.

So I got to wondering is it because the toon in question is hardly ever logged in? Would keeping him logged in for awhile make a difference?

[Yomo Kimyata]

On the one hand, I (and presumably many others) have been buying very large quantities of converters recently at something slightly over 70k per converter.  So it is *possible* that nothing has made it down to 70k over the past five days.

 

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that I've seen a trade print at under 70k in the past few days, which should not be possible unless 1. it was a bogus print; 2. somehow your bids were invalidated (are you offering converters on the same alt?  that might mess up the queue.); 3.  something else.

 

On the other hand, I'm all out of hands.  More than some, probably fewer than others.

 

EDIT:  to answer your question, no, that should not have any effect.

 

Edited October 14, 2021 by Yomo Kimyata
answer the question Claire!

[SuperPlyx]

No I am only buying converters not selling. 

When I checked this morning and couple days ago the current list of completed transaction was for 70k. 

 

Oh well, thought I would ask about "time in game" having anything to do with it. Didn't think it did but I been wrong before.

 

Thanx!

[Yomo Kimyata]

Also, people like round numbers, and it is *possible* that other bids for 70k got filled but not yours because there may have been a whole lot of them.  Price is the first tie breaker (higher price should always transact before lower price), but after that it gets murky and apparently partly random.

[UltraAlt]

33 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

3.  something else.

 

Other people are bidding for the item at the same price.

[Ura Hero]

Apparently the original devs hated relational databases.  Which explains a lot of issues that CoH faces.  Ad Hoc databases are not great and they tend to fail at doing a lot of what they are supposed to do.  I'm not sure that the database handles FIFO (First In First Out) properly on a date basis.  I know I have had bids in at the same price on different toons and had them fill awkwardly with some bids that were very old not getting filled first.  Just conjecture, but anecdotal evidence along with what the current devs and others that have delved into the code have said about database issues seems to lend itself to this possibly being the case.

[iBot]

A few things come to mind:

1.  The last 5 bids displayed is extremely misleading and down right wrong some times.  Don't rely on it except for a very coarse guess at what something may sell/buy for.

2.  Converters are funny.  Prices goes up, prices goes down, prices goes round and round.  I've had runs where it is 65k to buy and upwards of 80k to buy.  I tend to list in the middle of those values which seems to take a day or so to sell.  Though the last 2 weekends even a list of higher sold in a matter of minutes.  So again converters are funny.

3.  The AH is in no way FIFO.  Our best info and from gathered brave souls that actually have seen the spaghetti and lived to tell the tale have determined that we know for certain highest bid goes to lowest seller.  In the case of a tie, it has something to do with the alignment of the planets and the whims of the great and powerful RNGesus.  Best advice, avoid the human tendencies towards 0 and 5.  You'll have better luck.

4.  Wait... ok 4 would be more than 3 and thus should not be used in this context.

 

🤑

[Ukase]

You want my theory? Too bad - you're getting it. 

I don't know the precise term, but in my head, I call it server lag. 

I will pull up accounts 1 and 3. 

Account 3 will list a level 50 Shield Wall 5% res(all) IO for 7m. 
Account 1 will try to buy a level 10 Shield Wall 5% res for 7m. (For earlier slotting)

In theory, this should work. And it does work. But sometimes it takes the server up to 40-45 seconds for it to work. As far as reasons for delays beyond that, I got nothing for ya. No idea. 
 

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 hour ago, Ukase said:

You want my theory? Too bad - you're getting it. 

I don't know the precise term, but in my head, I call it server lag. 

I will pull up accounts 1 and 3. 

Account 3 will list a level 50 Shield Wall 5% res(all) IO for 7m. 
Account 1 will try to buy a level 10 Shield Wall 5% res for 7m. (For earlier slotting)

In theory, this should work. And it does work. But sometimes it takes the server up to 40-45 seconds for it to work. As far as reasons for delays beyond that, I got nothing for ya. No idea. 
 

 

Huh, interesting!  I assume this is on two accounts logged in at the same time rather than listing on one alt, logging off, then logging on on a different alt?

[SmalltalkJava]

Has anyone done any actual analysis on the source code for the market?   I always wondered if it had to do with timestamp precision and live caches between the different servers to ensure the databases don't get a row or table lock.

Edited October 17, 2021 by SmalltalkJava

[iBot]

There is a post on the forum around here somewhere that has a pretty good picture of the source code for the market.  Let's see...

 

[iBot]

Joking aside.  It isn't pretty.

[Yomo Kimyata]

11 hours ago, SmalltalkJava said:

Has anyone done any actual analysis on the source code for the market?   I always wondered if it had to do with timestamp precision and live caches between the different servers to ensure the databases don't get a row or table lock.

 

@UberGuy (all hail UberGuy) has done a fair amount of work on this.  See this thread:

 

 

[Ukase]

On 10/16/2021 at 10:21 AM, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

Huh, interesting!  I assume this is on two accounts logged in at the same time rather than listing on one alt, logging off, then logging on on a different alt?

Correct assumption.