It would be nice if auction halls/mechanics got a reboot. Right now and frankly as far back as I can remember, the thing to do for auctions was to clump up in groups so you could titter about what was going up or who was bidding on what. Unfortunately, auction mechanics are not conducive to this in the slightest; it is frequently a pain due to trying to shuffle people around and grab people for the group after group mechanics are shut off in the main areas and trying to cram everyone in the same room. It's also presumably kind of a strain to have everyone pile into three rooms with each other.
I'd love to see auctions instead be set up to have many "booth" type areas, reminiscent of how things were set up at Droughtman's. Booths wouldn't need to be hushed, and you could still BID from them and WATCH a (hushed?) central room where the auction itself happens. This would create a bunch of nice little segregated roleplay-positive spaces that could be set to private where you need to invite people in or open where anyone can walk right in. It would hopefully alleviate a little bit of the strain of having everyone pile into the same area. It would eliminate the need to do the group shuffle if the game crashes or if someone gets dropped briefly or whatever other reason. It would reduce the scroll and let you actually interact with other people for the 2-3+ hours it takes to get through an auction. It would make it easier for NPCs to mingle if that's a thing. And so on.
I was just reminiscing on the Droughtman booths and this came to me. Maybe it would be too much of a pain to bother with but this is on my wishlist.
Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com
"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs
