Please Squeenix, implement blind bids on the markets...

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Originally Posted by ispano

You dislike how a normal free market works, ie what we have in game. So you want it altered to benefit you as a seller, you want to change the rules to benefit you. That's not what you do with a free market, you don't get to tweak it like that for your own benefit. That's why I said you would be the most likely troll.

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Everybody wants the game altered in some way, and usually to fix something that they consider a game flaw. I created my original post not only to give my opinion, but also to receive feedback because I admittedly am not an economic expert. Many of the replies have educated me in this regard and I am grateful for that - I now see that the underlying problem cannot be fixed with the simple implementation of a blind bidding system. So as far as I'm concerned, I'm happy with the outcome of this post. Call me a troll if you like, you're entitled to your opinion.

its a easy fix, copy the market style of Tera, u put a item in, it gives you average/cheapest reccomanded price of the day, and what its valued at, then if target is online aka player, the option to bid a custom amount of money and then its seller can accept or not.

You can thank the botters and RMT people (and their 1000s of customers) for the current MP problems.

Best AH I ever seen so far is GW2, it combines ALL worlds economies into a single place.

Supply and Demand, if you can drop something by say 20k and sell a bunch of them and still make a profit it makes sense to drop the price of an item.

who cares. Crafting is worthless, Darklight gear obtainable from philosophy is better than all crafted gear, and coil gear is better, and mythology gear is better, why did people even waste time on crafts when you dont need it, the gear is better everywhere else, even the pink low lvl items from dungeons are slightly better than HQ gear of the same lvl. So have fun with your crafting garbage, ill be in coil rockin gear way better than that junk

It's all just supply and demand, undercutting is fine.

Unfortunately the supply has gone insane, due to so many crafting.

I like the current system as it allows easy market manipulation due to stupid players trying to undercut each other by just looking at what the current lowest price is and going under it to sell quickly. As the saying goes Buy Low, Sell High.

Just to add when you sell something you should be setting a price you feel comfortable with not a price that is determined by what everyone else is selling at. If you would be happy making 10% on something then do that, if someone else thinks a 200% markup is what it's worth them let them do that as well. Let the buyers decide which item they will purchase.

Only thing I liked about blind bidding in FFXI was catching those idiots that put high dollar items up for 100 gil to avoid being hit by taxes so hard.

Mad about your items not selling for as much as they used to? Well, find something else to craft. If the new thing you craft starts selling for little, then move on. If all the items start selling for less then guess what? The only thing that hurts is your pride by not seeing a big number for your money count. As all items get cheaper, then you don't need more money because your wallet size will be relative to the market. In other words, don't sweat it.

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Originally Posted by Genesiser

Mad about your items not selling for as much as they used to? Well, find something else to craft. If the new thing you craft starts selling for little, then move on. If all the items start selling for less then guess what? The only thing that hurts is your pride by not seeing a big number for your money count. As all items get cheaper, then you don't need more money because your wallet size will be relative to the market. In other words, don't sweat it.

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Exactly no use crying about not being able to have a huge profit on your item once everyone else starts selling it too. Move on to something else or keep selling it at a lower profit. That's just how markets work I'm afraid.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

Supply and Demand, if you can drop something by say 20k and sell a bunch of them and still make a profit it makes sense to drop the price of an item.

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Originally Posted by scarebearz

It's all just supply and demand, undercutting is fine.

Unfortunately the supply has gone insane, due to so many crafting.

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For some items, Maybe, but definitely not for all of them. Supply and Demand only applies to some of the market board, but for most of the items, there's more to it than that. I can tell you for sure, Sanguine Sceptors or whatever sell consistently and often for 30k~ on Sarg, Yet even with steady demand and quick sales, people will still undercut by 5-10k Just to get theirs at the top of the list and sell it quick. I've had times where I see 6-8 Of them in stock, some HQ, Some NQ, for 31k~40k, I'll put mine up for 31k and wait, 2 hours later theres 3 more in stock... Generally for 29k, then 25k, then lower cause people want theirs to sell first. at 24k its no longer a profit due to material prices being greater than that. Unless they're Minning the Pebble themselves, then they're still losing gil cause they could have sold the pebble individually, likely faster. But to the point, Even after those sell, Mine for 31k will still likely sell within the next 24 hours, Marking clearly there is plenty of Demand and the undercutting was pointless.

Now, If there were 20/40/60 In stock and none of them were moving due to no demand/too high, and people began lowering the price to accommodate the lack of demand or oversupply? That's supply and Demand. sh*t selling consistently then a horde of Derp-Faces undercut by 50% of the AH price just so they can sell theirs first, and in a lot of cases in turn causing others to undercut in frustration steadily crashing a market that was already rather stable to begin with? Not supply and demand. Just pure Grade A impatience and (Sorry for lack of better term) Ignorance/Stupidity on certain sellers part.

I can think of a good Market that crashed due to supply and Demand... Materia and most Farmable objects like materials. Most of the other crashing Markets, Like higher level Craftables, especially ones used in Relic Weapons, are due entirely to the "Lowest price on top, Better put my up for (X gil under the current lowest) So everyone sees and buys it first!" mentality which will inevitably create a cascading effect of lowering and lowering and lowering due entirely to frustrated sellers undercutting because they were undercut, so basically good ol' human impatience and frustration... Not their current Marketable value.

Recap: most markets are crashing from Stupidity, Not Supply and Demand. not even close to supply and demand lol. And for what its worth, not attacking either of you personally, Just simply that economics is not so simple as a blanket term that people seem to be equating it too. Some of market decreasing is S/D, Most of its not, and I support the OP's idea entirely.

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Originally Posted by Sylve

Its funny, have these people ever been out in the real world and seen how Shops operate?

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I can guarantee you no shops undercuts to the point theres no profit. That'll put you out of Business. You just posted this about the same time I did so you probably not had the chance to read my post. i ask you take the time to read my post as It might help you understand a bit what I mean.

Its funny, have these people ever been out in the real world and seen how Shops operate?

There's way too much supply and nowhere near enough demand. People have to undercut to sell anything at all.

I mean come on, what did you expect when people can get a gathering class 0-50 in 2-3 days on leves? Couple that with the facts that crafted gear are very largely worthless and spirit binding anything of value takes an extremely long time and yeah....people are desperate for anything to sell for anything at all.

people complaining about undercutting, when I see items that are sold by NPCs 2-3x their amount in the AH.....ha

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Originally Posted by BlaiseArath

For some items, Maybe, but definitely not for all of them. Supply and Demand only applies to some of the market board, but for most of the items, there's more to it than that. I can tell you for sure, Sanguine Sceptors or whatever sell consistently and often for 30k~ on Sarg, Yet even with steady demand and quick sales, people will still undercut by 5-10k Just to get theirs at the top of the list and sell it quick. I've had times where I see 6-8 Of them in stock, some HQ, Some NQ, for 31k~40k, I'll put mine up for 31k and wait, 2 hours later theres 3 more in stock... Generally for 29k, then 25k, then lower cause people want theirs to sell first. at 24k its no longer a profit due to material prices being greater than that. Unless they're Minning the Pebble themselves, then they're still losing gil cause they could have sold the pebble individually, likely faster. But to the point, Even after those sell, Mine for 31k will still likely sell within the next 24 hours, Marking clearly there is plenty of Demand and the undercutting was pointless.

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That too is an example of supply and demand, you had to wait until demand was higher than the supply in order to sell yours.

Supply and demand vary greatly, especially early on.

I don't mind the market board system in FFXIV, but I think its something that could be improved. The Auction house they used in FFXI was really fun, it would be great if ARR adopted it as well.

Undercutting happens so bad here because nothing is worth anything to an NPC. People have so much junk on them that npc's for 1 gil, they just throw it on the AH without taking time to individually price check them all.
Square needs to make items worth something to a vendor so people just npc all their junk instead of throwing it all on the ah for 1 to 100 gil...

This games system's for rmt combatting are just stupid. "Oh let's make everything NPC for 1 gil, that will show them RMT"... No Not really, what it does instead is make players go "WTF am I suppose to do with all this stuff I don't need, I need space, Oh Ill just throw it on the AH for 1 gil so someone else can use it".

I 100% agree. I want to get some fantastic items for 12gil again

We need a listing fee. Badly.

Well gosh competitors selling the same product for a cheaper price, that's unusual. So we have a variable income that fluctuates with prices. Average prices arise over time which fluctuate with market, undercutting eventually levels out as the prices drop below a certain level and people give up selling, at which point they rise to the average again fairly rapidly. I saw it happen in 1.0 endless times. Short term undercutting flurries occur then the average price reasserts it's self.
I'm fine with it, as a seller I accept it, as a buyer I expect to be able to be able to see how much I'm being asked to pay for an item and not to have to piddle around playing guessing irritating games until I guess the right one.

The rate of undercutting is silly you only need 1 gil less to be at the top of the list and sell first. There is no reason to do a 50% undercut unless you love giving me extra profit as I buy it and relist it at my price and still have it instantly sell. There is no reason to cause a market to crash by listing stuff at such a huge undercut and start a bidding war.

What they need to do is make the lowest market price be the default price instead of using the vendor price when listing an item. That way they can see hmm this item is 8k maybe i should put it up for more than 2k. That or have the market histrory visible by default instead of having to click a small icon to check it out.

I support the OP.

My name is Conchobar and I am an undercutter.

I'm pretty good at playing auction houses, but this whole everybody sees the price thing forces you to undercut, because you want yours to be the first to sell. If you price it for the second or third to sell, you risk others undercutting and you being knocked further down the list.

It's silly.

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Originally Posted by Glyini

The rate of undercutting is silly you only need 1 gil less to be at the top of the list and sell first. There is no reason to do a 50% undercut unless you love giving me extra profit as I buy it and relist it at my price and still have it instantly sell. There is no reason to cause a market to crash by listing stuff at such a huge undercut and start a bidding war.

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You seriously do not understand how markets work. Everything is supply and demand. If I mine up 20 stacks of something, and I want them GONE, I'm not going to list them for the same price as everyone else. Undercutting by 1gil is douchebaggery at its finest, but all is fair in love and war. If the going price is 500gil per unit, and I am willing to let them go for 300gil, then I'll sell them for a price between 300gil and 500gil.

So along you come, and you somehow have it stuck in your head that "500gil" is the right price. You see my 300gil listings and you gobble them all up. Yay! You just lined my pockets. You re-list my items for 500gil and meanwhile, I dump another 5 stacks on the market for 300gil. Your stacks at 500gil will never sell as a result.

Sometimes people wish to take control of a market by obtaining obscene amounts of an item and flooding the market at a price that is so low that people no longer bother to gather that item. Once that happens, the person controlling that item's market can slowly creep up the price and sell their inventory until someone catches on and starts to compete... then the price crashes again to drive out competition.

It's called capitalism. Deal with it.

With enough gil and persistence, you don't even need to gather/farm. I listed my Grade 5 Carbonized matter leftover from v1.0 for 1000 gil per unit. The market price was 15k. The market crashed. People were still offloading their stacks from v1.0. Once the price was low enough, I started buying up everything. I ended up with 20 full stacks and have been slowly selling them off for 20k per piece. You do the math. There is a time and place for undercutting.

IMO the real problem here isn't the market board itself but the fact that when listing items on your retainer you have no immediate means of checking other current listings. A lot of the massive 50% undercutting is coming from lazy players who don't bother to actually check the prices before listing and so use a random figure in their head... this is also why you frequently see listings of crafted goods at less than their material cost, because some people don't bother to check.

The supply and demand concept requires market stability to function properly, and when you have random people pricing goods using arbitrary numbers that have no relation to their actual value you have zero stability.

Wait, so that means when I want to buy something, I can't see how much I'm going to pay for it?

Obviously not that. So that means I need to put out a blind offer and hope someone has it for sale at a price lower than that.

But that's just a huge inconvenience to buyers. When I want to buy a melded pre-relic, I have no idea what the going price is, and I'm afraid of paying too much for it, so I start with 1000gil. No go. 2000gil. No go. 5000gil. No. 6000gil. No. 7000, 7500, 7800, 8000, 8100, 8200,... you get the idea.

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Originally Posted by Steeled

I'm pretty good at playing auction houses, but this whole everybody sees the price ...It's silly.

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What auction house doesn't show a price? I'm genuinely curious.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

Supply and Demand, if you can drop something by say 20k and sell a bunch of them and still make a profit it makes sense to drop the price of an item.

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The problem when you do that there is usually another 4-5 people that will undercut you even more. So something that might have went for 100k before, you dropped to 80k, and those other undercutters fighting to sell theirs first will drive it down to 10k before long. You just have to hope there is enough demand for an item to counteract that.

Something else one needs to keep in mind is some items have huge demand spikes. So just because an item is not needed on Tuesday, should not necessarily start undercutting the price drastically because it has not sold on Thursday when on Friday the demand spikes drastically. Most places don't mess with their prices because of a slow day or two.

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Originally Posted by Alberel

IMO the real problem here isn't the market board itself but the fact that when listing items on your retainer you have no immediate means of checking other current listings. A lot of the massive 50% undercutting is coming from lazy players who don't bother to actually check the prices before listing and so use a random figure in their head... this is also why you frequently see listings of crafted goods at less than their material cost, because some people don't bother to check.

The supply and demand concept requires market stability to function properly, and when you have random people pricing goods using arbitrary numbers that have no relation to their actual value you have zero stability.

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You actually can check the current listing prices for the items from your retainer as you are setting the price.

Has any of you taken into account the number of bots in this game?

All they are in it for is the fastest way to get Gil to resell on there RMT sites if this means undercutting they will do it because all they want is Gil.
They can then just go farm for another 24 hours and do it all over again.

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Originally Posted by Alberel

IMO the real problem here isn't the market board itself but the fact that when listing items on your retainer you have no immediate means of checking other current listings. A lot of the massive 50% undercutting is coming from lazy players who don't bother to actually check the prices before listing and so use a random figure in their head... this is also why you frequently see listings of crafted goods at less than their material cost, because some people don't bother to check.

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Wrong on both counts. When I undercut by 50%, I know exactly what I am doing. I'm selling my shit for a price that I consider to be worthwhile.

How is a blind bid auction house system going to fix this? How is it going to determine which item sells. Let us assume that 2 HQ Whatchamacallits are on the market, one at 50K and one at 75K. The history shows 80K as the average price. A player bids 79K and wins an item. Which one sold? Do you prioritize based on lowest price? If so, my 50K item just sold and your 75K listing collects dust. If someone decides to start bidding at 40K and increasing at 500gil per bid, they'll STILL end up buying my 50K item before your 75K listing.

The "right price" is the price at which the item will sell while still meeting the demands of the seller. Period. When was the last time you walked into a store to buy something and got pissed off because the price was too low? Exactly...

Well one for the idea to hide stuff is never the idea. But there should be a fee to start for putting something up on the AH. Add a timer to how long an item will stay up for sale. If they choose to cancel their AH item for sale then charge a hefty fee to cancel it. If they want 1k for an item charge 25% fee of what they were asking. If they don't want to cancel it they can simply waiting the 3 or 5 days for the auction to end.

In what system could they make it so you couldn't check prices before selling your wares. People have to be able to check prices before purchasing an item. Even if you couldn't check the price while posting sales, the retainers are mere steps away from the market boards. People will still undercut. Adding a step or two between won't do much imo.

This real issue right now is server population, and the markets getting flooded with product. Crafting is still the only real way to obtain gil.

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Originally Posted by Syamic

Has any of you taken into account the number of bots in this game?

All they are in it for is the fastest way to get Gil to resell on there RMT sites if this means undercutting they will do it because all they want is Gil.
They can then just go farm for another 24 hours and do it all over again.

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DING DING DING! Nail, meet hammer. They don't have to be RMT to want gil. The whole point of selling is to get gil. If your item cannot sell because everyone and their mom is selling for the same price, then the price is too high for the given supply and demand. End of story.

Cry some more. I have no value in certain items, I got them for free, or for crafting my crafting classes. If I feel that 1000gil for an item selling 2000 currently is a decent price for my effort in obtaining said item, that is my call. Welcome to the free market.

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Originally Posted by zenmetsu

Wrong on both counts. When I undercut by 50%, I know exactly what I am doing. I'm selling my shit for a price that I consider to be worthwhile.

The "right price" is the price at which the item will sell while still meeting the demands of the seller. Period. When was the last time you walked into a store to buy something and got pissed off because the price was too low? Exactly...

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And is that 50% undercut the minimum price you would want for the item? Also why would you drop it by 50% when you could often achieve better results by trying 85% first? While you may see it as worthwhile, you also give yourself no wiggle room to account for people that further undercut you. Stores do the same thing, it is actually rather rare that they are not making a profit off of even their sale items, and when they do loose profit on an item on sale, they are trying to get you into their store to buy more than just that one item. When was the last time you found drastic price differences on an item for sale by businesses in the real world outside of sales?

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Originally Posted by Starplayer

FFXI, but this system was really good! It allowed for me to place my items up for sale and not worry about it, since I couldn't see what others were selling their stuff for.

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Price history in FFXI allowed you to see what people were paying for the item. but yea, the undercutting is ridiculous.

I really hate complaining, but I have to agree with this. It's very disheartening to spend time on an item and see the profit margin bottom out.

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Originally Posted by Hawklaser

And is that 50% undercut the minimum price you would want for the item? Also why would you drop it by 50% when you could often achieve better results by trying 85% first? While you may see it as worthwhile, you also give yourself no wiggle room to account for people that further undercut you. Stores do the same thing, it is actually rather rare that they are not making a profit off of even their sale items, and when they do loose profit on an item on sale, they are trying to get you into their store to buy more than just that one item. When was the last time you found drastic price differences on an item for sale by businesses in the real world outside of sales?

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Time lost waiting for an item to sell at a higher price is TIME LOST.

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Originally Posted by zenmetsu

DING DING DING! Nail, meet hammer. They don't have to be RMT to want gil. The whole point of selling is to get gil. If your item cannot sell because everyone and their mom is selling for the same price, then the price is too high for the given supply and demand. End of story.

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Apparently getting 2 gil for all your work unless you're lvl 50 is acceptable?

My, Its still a wonder why people don't try out gathering...

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Originally Posted by Hawklaser

The problem when you do that there is usually another 4-5 people that will undercut you even more. So something that might of went for 100k before, you dropped to 80k, and those other undercutters fighting to sell theirs first will drive it down to 10k before long. You just have to hope there is enough demand for an item to counteract that.

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might have... seriously, this is why contractions should be banned.

anyhoo... if someone is willing to farm or craft an item day in and day out and sell it for 10K, then that is their decision. As long as someone is willing to provide the market with that product for 10K, any asking price that is higher is going to be rejected by the consumers until the supplier is no longer able to meet the demand.

People complain about undercutting but also forget to consider the fact that many, MANY itens are ridiculously overpriced. I can't say much about the high level market because I'm not actively working on it, but at least for level 30< items there's a lot of stuff that costs 200-500 gil in mats and the finished item is on sale for like 3k.

Sorry, if I make something that cost me X, I'm not selling it for X*10 just because everyone else does. Guess I'm one of the "undercutting" guys, then.

Not to mention that under cutting isnt killing the market, its gil buying that inflating it.

That 40k item isnt worth 40k just cause thats what gil buyers pay.

It cost me maybe 100k to level all (ALL, every single one, including level 50 quests) crafters to 50 (minus 45 cul). Aside from 50* and 50** items, almost nothing from 1-50 was worth more then 1-2k.

The exceptions being:
1) Anything that needs fishing (red coral, shark oil etc)
2) Anything mob droped that is currently bot farmed (fleece, diremite web)
3) anything that only drops from leve mobs (pudding flesh)

I can mine, and make a cobalt sword from raw materials for less than 1k, why would I charge 20k for something that is barely worth 2k for time/effort?

Here is a hint, if your selling an item, and i find it on xivdb for half your asking price FROM A VENDOR....your over asking.

We dont need blind bid, and even ffxi it wasnt truely blind cause you could see the history of how much an item went for.