Why is so hard to snipe this year compared to previous years

80% of the time, I cant even click on the card

Then if i do manage to click buy now, its like a 1/3 chance I actually get the auction

And i go really fast, use both thumbsticks, can click on a card to buy now in less than a second.

.

--Is it a lag on the auction house?  

--Hundreds of people sniping at a time?

--EA or programmers running snipe bots that are quicker than humans?

Most likely people using the app. It is definitely quicker. If not that, it's just that someone else saw the card a half second before you did and acted just as fast. In the time that you're refreshing to see a card, someone else could already be acting on it. It has definitely gotten tougher over the years.

My guess...one of the things leading to this is less people posting cards.  Folks used to buy packs and then post the cards...this allowed the NMS crowd to make coin on snipes or flips.  Now...I find many times where there is not even 100 cards on the auction block of many levels (80-81 for example).  Folks complain about "pay to win" in this game...and yes indeed...folks used to pay to win...but now...many are not doing that (odds on packs are bad, platinum packs are restricted to certain positions and...EA puts there thumb on the scale (thus God Squads are beatable now).  So...we kinda got what we wanted...folks on an undeclared pack strike...so...more people fighting (working the AH) for fewer cards.  Now keep in mind...this is just a WAG (Wild Axx Guess) on my part...I got zero data to support this idea.

jimshredder said:

80% of the time, I cant even click on the card

Then if i do manage to click buy now, its like a 1/3 chance I actually get the auction

And i go really fast, use both thumbsticks, can click on a card to buy now in less than a second.

.

--Is it a lag on the auction house?  

--Hundreds of people sniping at a time?

--EA or programmers running snipe bots that are quicker than humans?

As with almost everything in this game that we all want to love so badly, it's deliberate choices by Electronic Arts.  Splitting the auction houses by platform hurt tremendously.  Instead of one auction house, now we have what, five totally separate?  Price floors are TERRIBLE for the markets.

EA is trying to prop up their bullshit MUT economy, while also "limiting" (as they'll never actually prevent) coin sellers.  Last, but certainly not least, EA absolutely hates it when anyone makes profit, it has the potential to hurt their pack sales, which is the only thing they care about.

And to your original point, it's definitely not you -- all of these MUT menus are horrendously slow, in terms of performance.  The Frostbite game engine is sorely lacking, or ridiculously out of date.  It is seemingly a ridiculous boondoggle mess.  They put a fresh coat of paint on the menus, but did absolutely nothing to improve basic performance.  We press a button, it will often take 2-3 seconds to register.  Doesn't matter if we're on WiFi or hard-wired in directly with an ethernet cable.  Wireless is definitely worse, but the performance issues are an EA problem, not our modern generation PS5 consoles and Gbps fiber connections.

I've tried to use the mobile app, but that's not much better, it's brutal to try and navigate my way around and use the search feature.  Perhaps i just need to invest some time learning it.  If you're trying to snipe at peak hours (which is the best time), you will obviously have a bunch of competition.  So some combination of all the things you mentioned and more.

Sharks are waiting for anything

this is my first year actually trying to snipe cards, I thought I was just really slow lol. I've also noticed that there are many times where I find myself clicking on a potential snipe and going into it under the impression that I was already too slow lol.

Use the companion app

Do not use the companion app, it is 10x slower. 

People are using auction bots to snipe cards as soon they are listed. At first I thought bots was a myth but have seen people on FC24 admit to using a auction bot so I'm sure there is something similar in Madden.

I was having no issues getting cheap legends the first week or so.   I would wait 10 seconds or so and cards that could turn a profit would still sit there.   As soon as the app was released, that went away.   I have a hard time getting snipe-worthy cards now.

Von11 and Peatrick are exactly right: 1) there's fewer cards being posted on all AHs and 2) the price floors make sniping meaningless.  Even if AH Bots were active, what would they be sniping?  The answer is: cards posted at OVR-specific floors.  Even on PC (where I play), there are rarely times where there aren't numerous cards, recently released, posted at minimums.  Again, by definition, a "snipe" is a card won (usually at a Buy Now price) that's artificially low price for the current market.  Floors kill that dynamic, and floors also kill the motivation to buy packs that would yield cards that are usually unsellable at prices above the current floors.  Well done EA!

symbolikscar said:

Use the companion app

Doesn't that possibility get you banned?

stupid price floor

They added market floors. You can pretty much only snipe a select few cards

jimshredder said:

Doesn't that possibility get you banned?

With Ea technically anything can get you banned, people have been banned for flipping on console too