Thank you for your answer, Jack, about auctions defaults. I am glad to hear that you are trying to make the system fair for all.
One question occurred to me as a result of your answer. You said:
Repeatedly defaulting on auctions, whether someone chooses to default or simply fails to claim land they have won, will result in that account losing the right to take part in future auctions. As stated on the Auction pages, defaulters are charged a fee for each parcel defaulted. The second highest bidder is then offered the land at their highest bid. If they decline, the land is taken back and auctioned once again.
I was wondering if the effect of the defaulting resident's bids was taken into account when operating the fall-back to the second highest bidder. Obviously someone who is winning an auction because of a default has the choice to take the land at their highest bid...or not. But it is also obvious that a defaulting bidder may have bid up the price artificially...is that taken into account?
It seems to me that if repeated defaults are tolerated, this can be gamed both ways. If the effect of the defaulting resident's bids are removed, and therefore it is the top bids made before they entered the auction which count, it would be easy for a person with many alts to bid against themselves, artificially raise the price to discourage other bidding, and then default. If there is a big discrepancy between the alt's highest bid and the winning price, this would win an auction at a bargain price.
If the defaulting avatar's effect on the auction is NOT removed, this would mean that they can artificially raise the prices for other residents, and the only penalty is the default fee.
The only way round this sort of gaming of the auctions is to have a strict rule that more than X number of defaults results in barring from the auctions, in my opinion....
Do you keep count of defaults? Is it an automatic bar?
Cali