Actively waiting to bid on an item... and it's less than a minute and you have the item under wraps as the top bidder... with the final bid then some try hard sits with a stop watch timing when to hit the bid button just before you can reclaim your spot is frustrating. (Especially coupling it with the game's lag regardless of constant page refreshing) - Bids in the last minute of the auction should add time to the auction. (Just like in qbids) - shorten the amount of time everyone has to wait and let bids add time to the clock. These last second snipers are B.S.

its always been like that. Just dont bid til the end. Watch a bid you want for a minute and constantly hit one of the 3 buttons on top to refresh it. When that timer ticks down a minute, make a note of what your clock says (down to the second).

Now, just come back when theres less than a minute left, make the appropriate bid, and submit it at 3 seconds left. 2 seconds left is risky since it doesnt go through fast enough half the time. It isnt hard to do, and it saves you Cr.

I do this all the time and it doesnt take much patience, skill or effort to do it. 1 minute spent to watch in the beginning, and 1 minute to watch at the end. 2 minutes of your day to appropriately snipe a GTC auction. You dont need to watch the whole thing like a hawk.

Ghznl's strategy only works if you are just looking to pick up one shipment, and if there are only 2 interested bidders. once there are 3 or more ...

me, i usually have all 7 buy slots filled ... and every time i am outbid ... i re.up until the price goes higher than i want. then i go down the list to the next item on my wantlist. i just look for deals and pick up stuff as i go .. very energy intensive and sometimes i get nothing for days.

as for the OP's suggestion, there were quite a few threads around when the GTC first came out and Dan did not accept any of those suggestions.

for me, i see no point in a 24-hour bid, at least for common artis. the default auction time should be 60 minutes, with a 'short' timer being 20 minutes, and a 'long' timer being 3 hours. any bid in the final minute extends the 'auction' by another minute. the sellers get the best price, at the expense of not knowing when exactly the sale will clear. buyers will waste less energy on speculative bids, and spend more energy on chasing items of true value to them by bidding up in the final minute(s), without worrying that another bidder will snipe them at the last second.

Eh, I usually make a string of bids to follow, generally the interesting stuff is more than 15 minutes apart (rare times its 2 in 15, sometimes even 3 in 15). I never bought more slots, so Im stuck at two. Sometimes I miss out because of this.
But usually when Im NPCing, Ill just check back whenever I bid I want is under 1 minute left. It works well to me. I ignore the other bidders, my snipe bid is usually 40% of what the artis are actually worth. This usually wins me the auction.

If when I check at the last minute the price is too high, well I just give up on that auction and wait til next one comes around to under 1 minute left. Then again, the only stuff I buy on GTC are things like DP, Cages, TMs, Restorers, Nanos, Nanites, Beacons, Shield Sentries and ACFs.

It's the same thing on E-Bay, so...

It's not like you lose any of your credits. Five minutes of energy regeneration isn't sufficient reason to change anything.

I think that instead of adding to the timer there should be, perhaps, just a straight up "Buy for X" option.

the GTC is billed as an 'auction' house. when the auction is failing at 2 major requirements, namely getting the best price for the seller, and ensuring that bidders have enough chance to bid, then it is failing at its purpose. the current structure also enables warehousing without enabling pawnshopping ... a bias that also discourages those who want to sell / buy something quickly.

the idea of a buyout price is nice, but that would be a different kind of trading center (which i would not be opposed to). if Dan goes that route, folks should be able to offer up trades of arti / ctp / EM. but that would involve a whole different coding regime. the timers would not be as much of an issue then. the seller could offer up something, with a set time for bidders to express interest. first bid (matching the seller's minimum price) is free, but every change in bid costs energy. at the end time, the seller checks the offers on the table and accepts one ... if the bidders are displayed, the seller can even make a preferential decision between equal bids which would bring in actual gameplay elements to the sale. if they do not like any of the offers, they can cancel the sale at any time for the cost of the 5 energy per bidder.

EDIT: oh, and if there's anyplace for an in.game water cooler ... the GTC would be the ideal place for it ...

I usually just up the bid by a couple bids worth with less than 20 seconds left and I usually snag what I want
I got like 400 tms yesterday doing this