Please implement a listing fee!

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Originally Posted by synaesthetic

There are no listing fees.

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We've discussed this idea on the forums to the ground already and here is the overall summary of it.

Listing fees deter RE-LISTING not INITIAL UNDERCUTTING.

There is a large difference between the two.

People will undercut you regardless. The fees deter people from relisting because it costs them gil.

This gives player with large commodities an ability to knock out competitors by undercutting and forcing you to sell at a loss. If you don't re-list you face total loss. If you re-list you face smaller losses. Because these players have huge commodities of goods they can sit at lower prices and still make gil.

We see this in world of warcraft all the time. One guy undercuts 10 seperate players until hes the lowest and now holds the market. Everyone above him either has to relist at a loss or totally leave the market in hopes that player leaves that market which rarely happens.

Listing fees also deter changing the price of an item dozens of times in a single day, preventing the price of an item crashing from 50k per to 10k per in a matter of hours.

As I stated, It deters RELISTING not INITIAL UNDERCUTTING.

People will undercut you regardless on the first listing. Meaning the price will continually be undercut until demand eats up the supply. Meaning you can still see 50k to 10k in a matter of hours. I see it all the time. Somebody whose initial undercut is by 50% or more. Its not even a re-listed item. Unless you can stop the initial undercutting, it makes no difference.

I'm sure those who have huge commodities would be more then willing to agree with you on having initial listing fees. Why? Cause you now give them the power to kick people out of their markets.

Let's say you've got 10 items up for 5000 gil each. Someone comes in and puts up another item for 4000 gil, undercutting the other 10 sellers. If the other 10 sellers want to undercut, they'll have to pay again to do so. Some probably will do it, but others may not because they'd be losing money in fees as well as the lower sale price. Let's say 3 people undercut the 4000 price to 3800. Then some buyers come along and snap up the 3800 items and the 4000 items. The remaining 7 listed items are all still 5000, and thus anyone else who puts something up will either put it up for 5000 to match the current price, or they'll undercut, but the rate at which they do is slowed.

In the current system what happens is that one person who lists for 4000, all 10 of their competitors come back and undercut because it doesn't cost them anything to do so. The average price falls to below 4000 and now anyone who lists anything will do so at the lower price, causing the average price to fall even more. Undercutting once upon initial listing is far less likely to crash the market than being able to freely undercut an infinite number of times.

Does this leave the market open to being cornered by people who have either lots of gil or lots of stock or both? Sure it does. But so does the current market. Free listing doesn't stop this from happening, because it happens all the time.

Will listing fees alone fix the economy? Of course not. People need items worth selling and right now everything is worthless. SE desperately needs to change things so that people have something of value to sell, but even if they do that, with no listing fees, the market is extremely vulnerable to being crashed intentionally by market flooding RMTs and botters. It'd be a far greater risk to try and crash the market by flooding it with massively undercut items if you were being charged every time you do it.

If we assume a market with 40 providers, and that the first providers puts his item to sell for 5000 gil, then the other 39 providers will have exactly one free opportunity of undercutting each other.
Without a listing fee, the other 39 providers have infinite opportunities to undercut each other, reagardless of wealth.

So as Synaesthetic is saying, a listing fee is better than no listing fee. Initial undercutting is happening now anyway (and I'd argue that it will always happen). Both systems have that disadvantage and, thus, you can't use it as an argument against either. It would be like comparing which one is better to transport goods, cars or trucks, and conclude that the good answer is "cars" because trucks can have their tires broken if you shoot them.

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Originally Posted by synaesthetic

Will listing fees alone fix the economy? Of course not. People need items worth selling and right now everything is worthless. SE desperately needs to change things so that people have something of value to sell, but even if they do that, with no listing fees, the market is extremely vulnerable to being crashed intentionally by market flooding RMTs and botters. It'd be a far greater risk to try and crash the market by flooding it with massively undercut items if you were being charged every time you do it.

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Your trying to justify that listing fees is the lesser of the two evils, the current market and the listing fee market, but I'm telling you, listing fees is a greater evil then the current one.

In the current one you have an opportunity to battle high commodity players on the same turf all the way to the cost price of producing goods because their isn't a penalty. While in listing fees, you get knocked out instantly, you don't even get a chance. The difference is, atleast you can make your money back, while in listing fees, they will push you to a guaranteed loss.

Trying to say listing fees can slowly lower the rate of undercutting appears logical but it isn't. If people see the market looks it is going to be flooded, the first thing a person will do is drop his prices instantly to the minimum profit margin. They aren't going to play 1 gil undercuts with you because the first person to lock in at the minimum profit margin wins, cause everyone else is guaranteed a loss if they relist. People look at this market and see a 1 gil profit margin and leave. Many argue that these people are stupid but they aren't. They have huge commodity behind them. They can sit in this market for a long time. Even though they make a 1 gil profit only, its still covers the cost to make the item and 1 gil on top. While a person who has sold nothing makes nothing to cover the cost of making the item and therefore cannot stay in the market, eventually, making you leave the market. The player then raises his prices back up and continues on and will rinse and repeat as needed to kick people out.

Your trying to argue that these type of people are going to sit here and undercut you slowly when they know if they bring it to the point where you take a loss, you won't undercut because you face losses. At this point you are forced out of the market. These people do not follow the lets undercut by 1 gil or undercut reasonably because they have listing fees as a tool on their belt, that allows them to kick people out of markets, specifically players with small commodities.

I am not joking when I say if we implement listing fees, we give these players one crazy tool to use and abuse.

Your hoping people nicely undercut or slowly deter undercutting but because players know they can force people out of the market with listing fees, they aren't even going to slowly undercut you, they get straight to the point because first person there wins.

The market boards are a battle ground for merchants. This is why some of us enjoy sitting on the market boards. Its our style of endgame content. Some end-game merchants won't tolerate your intrusion on their market and if they had listing fees to back them up, your pretty much out of the market the instant you decided to enter his market. On top of the fact, you even lose gil for just coming on board, "thanks listing fee"~

While in the current market, these players do not have a way to corner you in the markets or kick you out. The best they can do is slowly undercut you to make sure they get the maximum amount of gil.

You have to keep in mind. The people undercutting you now, weren't thinking about your losses and gain when they undercut you. What makes you think they are going to play nice when we give them listing fees and the ability to totally remove all their competition?

We can have 100's of nice players, but it only takes 1 to lock an entire market.

The main issues of the economic are the changes made by SE and the game design itself.
More and more players have serveral DoH/DoL and more and more players have already geared up with myth/CT and do not have a plan to play an Alt job.
Most players do not need philo tomes any more and they can easily get 400+ for playing 90min a day.
Not enough new players and gears once made never broke.
ilv45 gears can be SB to tier4 materias and the quest reward give them too.
PvP is not that popluar and you can only craft the beginner level gears.
2.1 is designed to make everyone poor in gil.
This does not need to be a bad thing for most players who have little interests to grind a huge amount of gil. The only thing cost a lot of gil is FC house (they plan to lower the price too) and furture personal house. Everything else (ilv70 HQ gears, materias, iLv90 gears, DoH/DoL levels, etc...) can be grinded out by just playing the content.

The biggest issues with the market that I see is that people don't know how to undercut. Instead of just reducing the price a few percent they are reducing the price in huge chunks from 25-50% off for no reason other then to appear to get a quick sale.

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Originally Posted by Cerulean79

The biggest issues with the market that I see is that people don't know how to undercut. Instead of just reducing the price a few percent they are reducing the price in huge chunks from 25-50% off for no reason other then to appear to get a quick sale.

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Quick sale IS a good reason for people who has a lot of time to be active in MB. It gives them better gil/playing hour.

I kinda wish the market board was like FFXIs AH. You can see the sale history price but not how much people have the item listed for.