I'm gonna preface this by saying I have no idea how this would work, programming-wise, or if it's even feasible. But the idea came to me while I was hand-pricing stuff in my shop, and I think it might be attractive to users, so I'm gonna share it!

So, I often see in the Advertising forums people having sales in their shops. Generally, I see sellers link to their shop and tell people in the thread to take an additional percentage off the price listed in-store. Otherwise, the shop prices generally match the shop search somewhat. And it makes sense that users run sales with this method rather than just lowering their shop prices. If they just lowered the items' prices in-store, anyone using the autopricer who also has that item would automatically match their price, removing the incentive to buy from the first seller.

What if users could run sales within their shops, and it didn't affect the autopricer?

I'm envisioning a feature that would separate items into "sale" items, so they would still pop up at the top of the shop search as the cheapest items, but not affect the autopricer for other users. The feature could even be somewhat automated, so users could automatically run a sale where everything in their shop is 25% off. Or, users could exclude items from going on sale by categorizing them, and excluding those categories.

Sales are events, so users would be limited to a certain number per month, or something like that. I also think there should be a time limit--as short as a few hours, or a couple days at most. After the time limit is up, the prices on those items automatically change back to what they originally were.

Like I said, this might be RIDICULOUSLY complicated to make happen, but it could still be a nice perk for GA users who sell a lot of items.

No support. Sorry.

I understand what you're going for and I agree in principle it would definitely have some advantages.

I see some potential abuse though. Lets say John has a big shop with stacks of items. He sets all his prices for 1 sP lower than shop price and calls it a "sale" so no one autopricing can match him. Now he's top of the stack indefinitely (or however long the sale limit is). Then everyone else who has the same items in shop get to languish forever not selling their items. Then once people start to figure out what going on, they all get on the "sale" bandwagon and prices start getting really messed up.

Having the sales forum based works because its just hard enough to implement that only a few people will participate, so that doesn't provide an unfair advantage - you actually have to work to get the benefit. Anyone can do it, but most choose not to. That's fair. When you make it too easy though, people can manipulate the system. We already have people manipulating the autopricer, I wouldn't want to see it get worse.

Fair enough--I hadn't considered the possibility of people selling massive stacks of items, since they seem to be an outlier (based on my shop searches while questing). Thank you for bringing that playstyle up!

I think this is a bad idea.

I get what you are going for but I dont think it would work out well? thanks for sharing though!