Shiny Substitute

Hypothetical scenario: someone with a lot of keys/metal/items on hand decides to "buy up" the entirety of a bot's inventory. This someone is also an escrow account. Due to how escrow works, neither this person nor the bot have these items on hand, thus rendering the bot useless for trading due to having an insufficient inventory. This person can then cancel the trades and reinstate them whenever they wish, and keep the bot out of commission until someone intervenes. This is not, to my knowledge, the official reason why Scrap.TF refuses to trade with escrow accounts, however it's a pretty good deterrent to allowing escrow accounts to trade with the bots. It's too ripe to abuse, and all it takes is one asshole ruining it for everyone else.

Obligatory Geisha Mann drop. Just imagine there's Scorching Flames on there.

This is what happens when you have two currencies, with one that's more easily obtained than the other. The one that's more plentiful has a tendency to devalue compared to the other. It's almost like governments get into a snit when this happens in real life! They tried that with the "Save the Keys 2.33" movement or somesuch thing like that. Didn't work out too well.

Would Old School RuneScape count? I mean, they've drifted away from the point and click formula a tad in the current game, but if I remember correctly OSRuneScape is still very much point and click oriented. Bonus points for also being an MMO.

So at first I was going to make a raffle poking fun at Auction adverts, but as I kept writing out my points, I realized that Auctions, as a whole, are very, very flawed. Here's why I feel this way, and I hope we can have a serious discussion about this. ((EDIT 03/07/17: The way I phrased some of this made it imply that all auctions are like this, when they really aren't. A good number of people are behaving adequately when it comes to auctions, but there is still the problematic sector. This is talking about the latter of these people. Also, apologies if some phrasing is otherwise confusing, it was written at the end of the day, possibly only an hour before I fell asleep. Just poke me with whatever's confusing and I'll try to edit it.)) We have a rampant advertising problem, in which people are getting cheap, practically free advertising by annoying other users. This is the original point of the raffle that never got made, and I feel it should be my first point. People are abusing raffles for the sake of advertising. What do they give in return? Cheapskate raffles. I've seen, on more than one occasion, someone raffle something like a Winter Noisemaker while in the same breath advertising an Unusual most users can't even afford. This might be a personal problem, because I try to make raffles that are fun, or at the very least make a point. To see my raffles lumped up with what can be chalked up to penny advertisements is very discouraging. Then again, it might not be a personal problem. Jesse already made a poll about this, and while the majority thought it wasn't a problem, quite a few people disagreed. A sizable portion of the user base does not like auction adverts. And it's easy to see why, because it's a huge loophole. Auction adverts are rules lawyer-ing the site rules. Remember: it's against the rules to advertise a trade outside of the site. That means sites like TF2Outpost, Backpack.tf, bazaar.tf, can't be linked to for the purpose of selling your items. If you put your items into an auction; set it at, oh, 95% of its value; and let it run for a week though? That's fine. What happens here is that someone can advertise an "auction", when its not really an auction at all! Auctions are being used as a "standard" trading platform instead of an auction. There is no rule that says that auctions have to have a minimum or maximum value, so as I said before; put items into an auction, set the minimum bid at 95% of its bp.tf value, let it run until someone places a bid. This is admittedly my biggest problem with Auctions right now; I see way too many people using it to "sell" stuff instead of "auction" stuff. Of course, if people want to pay that much for an item, that's one thing, but I see too much of this as opposed to this. Of course, why would you even want to use Auctions, when... Auctions are essentially a worse version of standard trading. There is one benefit to automated auctions, and that is automation. Everything's done for you, to an extent. That's nice, right? Well, the problem is, there's not a real incentive to use them outside of that. You have a time limit; if you forget to pay, you get banned; you have to do a confusing site inventory setup; all sorts of minor problems that makes the whole thing seem like it's not worth it. To be frank, unless I wanted to get rid of an item quickly, I would just, y'know... put up a couple of listings on TF2Outpost and Backpack.tf. I wouldn't face an auction ban, and I also get to pick and choose offers based on my preferences. There's a lot of other, smaller problems facing Auctions, but these are pretty much my main gripes. I want to know your thoughts on the matter, whether its your own problems with auctions, your proposed solutions (remember, this is not the suggestion forum), whatever.

I'd offer to help via S.O.S. chaining, but I don't think you can catch them in the wild in Sun. :x

No. 1. That sounds painful 2. I already have enough going against me medically 3. I get queasy around blood You would receive a million dollars, but to receive it, you have to send your grandmother the contents of your porn folder. Alternatively, if you lack a porn folder, your browsing history.

Soneone on TF2 Outpost showed it to me when I was trying to hunt for Level 42 stuff.

Naked pussy times two. Shh, don't tell the mods. Yes I'm trying to clean it up, I need to clean IRL stuff first.

I expect this to be locked for some reason at 87 comments.

Probably for deleting my own post in an RP thread, when said post was written while I was under a lot of stress and thus the quality of which was below par. Because that's a totally legitimate reason to ban someone, and it's the only time I've ever been banned from any site without deliberately trying to get myself banned, and I'm not at all bitter because of it. Honestly, if I were banned, it'd probably be in direct retaliation to something stupid that the staff did. I... honestly thought about making a number of troll raffles during the whole "tip" thing to highlight how inane the feature was, but my better judgement kicked me in the groin before I did so. I'm still not happy about it, but at least I didn't decide to be an ass over it.