The Market needs a listing fee or it'll never be a balanced and fair economy

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Originally Posted by MapleDeepDish

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I agree it would help smaller markets but joe lalafell wants to take on high comp markets lol, I like the direction the op wants to go but I can say for certain quite a few players on my server not only have a good amount of gil (between 1-5 mil on avg. with ballers probably over 10 mil and counting) but also have their respective markets on lock down, and with those markets being the most profitable normally you can always expect high competition on them unfortunately this idea will never help those markets and only serve to further push joe lalafell with 150k further from even being able to compete on high value markets.

its sad really, but I just don't see a viable way to give the little guys a better chance other than them finding a way to make gil on other markets and building until they can compete (which requires them to know the market as well as those player that have time to sit in front of the MB all day).

I myself juggle various markets and make hundreds of thousands daily throughout the week simply staying current with my market and jumping to others as prices change dropping my price when someone tries to flood me out and taking it back when they give up, and I have three kids, a wife and a full time job! as Rein said some ppl just don't put in the effort to make gil its really not as hard as it may seem.

this new patch will give everyone a chance to take advantage of some gil making item's early on! so get to crafting!

I think one of the biggest and most obvious problems that has been overlooked here is the basic supply and demand. Undercutting occurs because that's the way the market is set up and the habits of buyers encourage it. But when you have 60 crafters trying to sell the same item and everyone is jockeying for position to get the next sell, yet there really isn't a demand for the item, the result will be horribly low prices and an unreliable market.

Crafting is too easy in this game. Too many people have crafting levels at 50 because it was just something to do rather than something they really liked to do. This was most noticeable after the housing patch was released. Everyone scrambled to raise money for housing which sent a flood of crafters into a market where there wasn't enough buyers to support them all. Plus, when there are a lot of useless items that no one wants, it doesn't give many options to crafters when trying to make money. Everyone will only go to what sells.

Hopefully with this new patch there will be higher level items to reward the hardcore crafters while providing enough variety for the rest to make money with. The vanity system will surely help with providing purpose to otherwise pointless items. You have to balance the game before you can balance the market.

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Originally Posted by MapleDeepDish

I'd love to hear how changing the post sale tax on the seller to a pre-sale list fee of the same amount would not help balance things out a bit.

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In the current economy, rich and poor compete at the same level for every single item. I can not use my huge commodities to undercut you and then use listing fees as shield to block you out of my market for good. Every single item has to be competitively sold. In a listing fees system you are not on equal grounds with a rich player who has a huge commodity in this system. When they choose too, they can drop the price and lock you out with their huge commodity by having LISTING FEES ensuring that you will relist at a loss. This is NOT a balanced system.

Also initial fees do not deter the INITIAL undercut. It only deters RELISTING which means poorer players with small commodities will be the most affected by such systems.

The market looks stable in listing fee systems because its controlled by a handful or monopolized by some. Prices will seldom fluctuate when someone owns the majority of the market. The average player sees high prices and little price change because a few people are controlling the market using high commodities and the listing fee as their tools. When you control a market, the last thing you want to do is sell it at low low prices so its uncommon in listing fees to see low low prices.

It stabilizes the market to the wealthy and skilled merchant players. Less skilled merchant players and poorer players are their mercy in such systems. That is not a balanced system.

If your looking to balance the economy, listing fees is a no no.