I would like to drop a few ideas on how should a trade broker/auction house would work and why it's important.
-So i would like to propose the trade broker as it would solve a lot of problems and save time both from players and stuff members,so by saying trade broker i am talking about an npc that will allows you to store your pokemon in order to sell for example: instead of spamming the chat in order to sell your pokemons,you can store your pokemon in the trade broker with your desired price the pokemon stays into the npc for an amount of time lets say 5 days if none buys it it comes back to you in your mailbox if someone actually buys it you get sent your money to your mailbox where you can go and collect them.
now for this to work properlly and not by chaotic should be in this format:
-The name of the seller should be on display :
-in case someone wants to make a direct offer to the seller,then if the seller agrees he can take back the pokemon/item from the broker and sell it to this particullar buyer by trade.
-Display filters:
-Since the number of different pokemons is just too much and you can't really create a different display filter for every pokemon you can create a display filter for nature and also add a text search to make the searching easier,for example let's say i am looking to buy a bold clefable i can click the bold filter so i can only see bold pokemons and name search clefable,now the only thing left is to look for my new bold clefable.
-Items category:
-boosting items: like choise scarf,life orb, etc.
-costumes category.
-general: items like focus sash,rare candies,evolution stones power herb,etc.
-berries: pretty self explanatory.
-coin shop category: which would include membership or maybe pick axe, a coin capsule and stuff like that.
-Add a "sort by" and "split sale" option:
-lower price first:sort by accending price.
-highest price first (since good pokemons cost more):sort by deccending price.
-lower unit price first: thats pretty important because lets say someone is selling 100 rare candies -if someone goes for lower price first option- the 100 rare candies would be last since the total amount would be x100 the unit price but if you use the lower unit price first you can actually see lower price per item so even if he is selling 100 rare candies if he is selling for lower than everyone else it would still be first on the brokers page.
-split sale option: an option like that is important because our 100 rare candy seller wont be able to sell his rare candies as 100 all together that easy since 100rare candies cost about 800k so he will either put up his candies and have them returned after the trade brokers time allowed ends or he will flood the broker with packs of 10 not allowing other people to sell since he will cover a few pages in the rare candy search.
-Auction pokemons tab:
-in here only pokemons that are up for an auction will be displayed.
in order for auctions to work you will need:
-certain day that all auctions will end: since it has to be some type of order you need to make a certain day every week that all auctions will end, for example,sunday midnight all auctions end that is usefull to exist since having each seller to decide when to end the auction would make it chaotic,so basically by adding this makes the seller able to set an 1 hour auction to 7 days auction depending on when he decides to place his pokemon up for an auction.
-instant buy option: the seller,if he decides so,will be able to set the desired amount of instant buy price,however there should be a no instant buy option as well.
-starting price:the seller decides the starting price,for example when i first place my previously bought bold clefable up for an auction(i don't want it anymore i caught a better one) i can set the starting price as 50k,now all bids have to be more than 50k.
-bidding: the player should be able to type the exact amount of money he is bidding every time ( that could be done on a pop up window when he choses the option bid) and if the amount he chose to bid is higher than the already highest bid then his money would be taken from him and be reserved by the trade broker untill the auction ends or someone outbid him.
-getting outbidded: since the trade broker has your bid money taken away from you when someone makes a higher bid your money will be imideatelly be returned to you by mail.
This kind of an npc would be usefull because:
-For the players:
-you don't get to spam to the trade chat untill the end of times in order to sell your pokemon,that makes the game experiance way better.
-people wont have to ask for price check all the time since they can check their pokemons price on simmillar pokemons on the trade broker.
-issues on auctions like bidding and then not being able to pay (because they spent their money or whatever) will be avoided.
-For the stuff:
-since there will be an npc doing the "mid man" job they wont have to deal with issues like scamming,false bidding or any kind of reports caused by an in game transaction
Also note that the seller or the buyer should be able to link pokemons that are either up for selling or auction from the trade broker directly to the chat in order to either advertise them on trade chat or inform the other players that their pokemon is up for sale
About the trade chat: it should remain even after this npc gets created since people can link their pokemons there for the previously mentioned reasons or in case someone wants to make a flash sale and doesn't want to place their pokemon or item on the trade broker or in case the broker is "out" of a certain item or pokemon or in case the buyer thinks the remaining items of his desired pokemon or item is overpriced and want to buy directly from someone by trading.
-that's all my ideas about the Trade broker/auction house npc thank you for your time