The situation you are describing has a lot more to do with crafted items being commonly brought back by retainers or dropped from maps. If getting an item literally costs "no effort" it will logically be pretty worthless on the marketboard.
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I understand that, but if something is worthless it stays worthless is all I'm getting at. Everything is just racing to the bottom. Nothing has any inherent value outside of extreme primal mats or map mats and even then people race them to the bottom as well. It's just really difficult to even want to begin to deal with the market board. Hell gil in general is largely useless.
There is a behavior set where sometimes people don't register that the price they put for an item is actually a relative loss to their gain from it. This is why I simply vendor certain items below a certain profit. I am still confused why certain items are present on the marketboard at all. But it is what it is. It's just un-ideal behavior of mass markets but you can earn money elsewhere, because this implies there's way too much supply for the item vs its demand.
Wouldn't be against buy orders, though, since it can inform what people actually want.
Don't craft items that are cheap on the MB if you're crafting them for the purpose of making a profit (as opposed to fun, achievements, convenience, whatever). I mean, that's obvious, of course, but if it needs to be mentioned.
There seems a decent amount of items that can be sold effectively for 50-100k gil, I don't feel that the market is broken at all, and I am just a sprout baby who scratched the surface and is barely paying attention.
On one hand, the FFXI method would address undercutting. It is blind bidding. Sellers don't know what other sellers are selling for. Buyers only have the buy history (which we already have). Some of the limitations are stacks. I suppose the WoW method of bidding for 50 items at a certain price would just give you the lowest 50? Seems like it would require some overhaul of the MB system. How does the MB figure out those 50 purchases if someone else is doing a purchase of any one of those 50 items.
Like clear demimateria below vendor value listed on the MB that has no use anyway? :)
The small issue is some retainers magically relist 1 gil below you really quickly, often below a minute. Even if an item sells 10-20 a day at 100k those instant undercuts pretty much lock the market for others.
Right now WoW has listings at player defined prices. You can either list at your price or select existing one. When you select existing one (like the lowest one) you items are placed in an order - newest listed are on the end, and oldest are on the front (FIFO - first in first out). When someone buys whatever quantity available they buy starting from the oldest. As for concurrency of transactions this is done via locks - one transaction will lock selected items and parallel transaction trying to lock same item would encounter and exception and would have to repeat the process of looking and locking items for the transaction or returning an error to the user if items sold out. Same thing happens already on the marketboard when you sometime want to buy but you get an error message and the listing is gone after you refresh the list.
I really like how GW2 deals with this (in some ways):
this way if you want to sell something fast you don't have to undercut (then the market is free for people that wants profit).Quote:
Players can select the quantity and price per unit for items being bought or sold.
Buying items
Place Order — match other current buyers or place a custom buy order. Coins will be held until a seller is found or the transaction is canceled.
Buy Instantly — purchase from current sell orders based on available volume.
Selling items
Sell Instantly — sell to current buy orders based on available demand.
List This Item — match other current sellers or place a custom listing. Items will be held until a buyer is found or the transaction is canceled.
I do that a lot when I'm leveling a crafter and want to free my bag (just sell everything I have, I want some money back, not looking for profit.. my profit was the EXP), I do 3 or 4 extra HQ items for each mission and sell those too (and there I Always find profit)