Not being able to buy single items from a stack on the marketward.

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Originally Posted by Twiddle

... By that logic if you want a stack of item X it makes perfect sens to sell it to you for cheaper per unit, then if you want 1 or 10.
Really I am not adding gas to the fire...

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I'm not saying that there is something wrong with trying to make more money out of individually sold items.

You said your picked at stacks sold too slowly in comparison to whole stacks.

But then you added that you had raised the individual unit price of stacks that had been "picked at".

Raising the price would not have helped them sell any faster.

Hence the "fuel on the fire".


I do understand the points people have made in favour of the current system regarding the economy and preventing people from flooding the market with specific items.

As a player playing a game for fun though, I'd prefer the option to buy and sell individually from stacks.

I think the current system, as implemented, is fascinating. Let's throw out the discussion about the merits of either the 1.0 or ARR system for now and enjoy a quick allegory:

Abe sweats all day mining superareium ore in the hot desert sun. He wraps up a nice day's work by paying a visit to his retainer:

"Aesop! C'mere m'boy. Sell all of this ore for me. Quickly now! Bulk! None of that separate bull. Daddy needs some new Darklight!";

"But Abe...the crafters really just want to buy...";

"Aesop...";

"And at the price I'll have to charge no one will...";

"Stahp...";

"So if I were to just sell a single...";

'JUST DO IT AESOP.' and Aesop does...because he's an NPC. Abe doesn't have to worry about micromanaging his products and he can go back to happily mining confident in the fact that a pay day is just right around the corner; all he has to do is wait. So he thinks...

Meanwhile Betty checks the AH in search of some superareium ore for a beautiful neck piece she's making for Sally because Christine had one and everyone was talking about her and Christine always gets all of the attention and Sally just wants someone to notice her...just once :'(.

- ahem -

"Let's see, let's see. Dang. All of these stacks; don't those roughneckians know I only need one of these..."

Faced with this dilemma, Becky has two choices:

1. Level her mining up to a point that she can mine the one ore she needs (time consuming, boring if gathering's not what you want to be doing)
2. Acquire enough gil (legally this time Betty, jeesh) to drop on the stack and hope her capital is paid back after she takes what she needs and pawns off the leftovers (high initial cost, inherently risky, and potentially time consuming)

Enter Chris Christofferson. He saw Abe stupidly (or was it?) selling his entire stack on the market at a wholesale discount, but a heafty sum nevertheless. He witnessed Betty's quandary. What to do...

Eyeing his own coin purse and accounting for his rare loathing of doing anything in an MMO (except for EVE) that's actually...well MMO'y (except for EVE MMO'y), he makes his decision. See friends...Chris doesn't play Gladiator or Pugilist. Chris plays Retailer. He has a friend high up at Wal'than Mart'orzea and understands that he can buy Abe's goods at a huge per unit discount (Abe just wanted to sell sell sell) and repackage them to meet current market demand by offering single unit to low quantity unit listings at a per unit price higher than Abe, thus making himself a little money in the process. Does he care that it might take 19 of his 20 retainer slots? No. Because Chris' goods will fly (demand remember) off the shelves, freeing up room for more wheels and deals. That's how the Retailer class rolls.

TL;DR: Current system allows for a Wholesaler -> Retailer -> Consumer economy which I find fascinating, cool, and deep.

Why ask the devs to take time away from developing cool new content for us when simple player behavior changes will let everyone have their cake and craft it too? IMHO

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Originally Posted by XenoZaixeno

TL;DR: Current system allows for a Wholesaler -> Retailer -> Consumer economy which I find fascinating, cool, deep.

Why ask the devs to take time away from developing cool new content for us when simple player behavior changes will let everyone have their cake and craft it too? IMHO

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Cause history has shown...if you rely on player behaviour...it's a lost cause. Wait a few weeks...nobody will sell anything as single units...and all the people that need a single unit are screwed over.

Usually the only players buying whole stacks are the ones that need the material for craft grinding. If anyone needs a single unit...most of them won't buy the whole stack and "re-sell" the rest...cause that's how it works. Whenever there is "work" involved most people choose to skip it and just move on.

This was brought up as a huge inconvenience back during beta phase 3 by pretty much everyone, JP/NA/EU. I remember a dev post from then saying they would address it, but it was a little disappointing to see in phase 4 that we were still unable to buy what we wanted to buy. If stacks were small it probably wouldn't even be an issue, but they're not and most of the time in XIV you have what you need and generally only need to pick up a few mats when you do have to hit the markets. (Speaking as a Lv50 crafter.)

As I said in my previous post;
People are just too spoiled, they want their cake and eat it too.

If you get the exact amount of mats/items you need/want, you will just have to pay a little extra.

Sometimes people are in a hurry, or they just plain don't want to take their time to break their stacks, but they generally list the price slightly bellow average, to encourage the bulk sale.
On the other hand some other people will always take their time and break down their stacks for the convenience of the buyer, but once again, he will list the price of each individual item slightly higher, because his time, and the convenience he is providing is worth money.

Besides, are people really QQ'ing about this during beta though? Give it sometime for the market to stabilize, most people didn't even bother with the market.
I consider myself a TRUE MERCHANT at heart, and I know I didn't, I didn't bother at all, I just occasionally traded items between friends.

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Originally Posted by TirionCrey

Cause history has shown...if you rely on player behaviour...it's a lost cause. Wait a few weeks...nobody will sell anything as single units...and all the people that need a single unit are screwed over.

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Must suck to have no friends.

Give it a couple weeks. People are just upset because it's new and they aren't use to it. If there are real problems, SE will fix it.

As of now though, the only issues are:
- not enough people are using the markets/retainers (or on new servers even have access to them)
- not enough people understand the system
- not enough people have the mats/crafts to sell anyway
- we could only really be level 20/had level 20 content. Most everything you need pre level 20 the game hands you/can be bought cheaply from an NPC.

Or basically, growing pains.

Once people start to level, gather and craft full bore on each server, the markets will be much easier to use and they will offer different volumes of products.
This past weekend, was mostly about inventory management for Legacy Servers (selling old products to gain room for new) and just getting market/retainer access on New Characters/Servers.

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Originally Posted by Mishaela

Must suck to have no friends.

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Lol nice try.

they should give the seller the option to sell the full stack or individuals out of the full stack. IDT the buyer should be able to pick apart at someones stacks if they intended to sell it in bulk. Not sure if this has been proposed but I'm adding my approval.

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Originally Posted by FemDarcy

That's not an option in you think about it. If you allow to people sell/buy stacks as pack or a split of it when it's on the market, then people will only buy items from the lowest price/item in the market...

I think is fun how some people want the 1.0 without even waiting to see if this one turns out to be better. Restrictions are good...

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Never truly played 1.0, anyhow I don't see how undercutting the market in one big stack or gouging with a stack of individually selected amounts is any different from each other. Just because your market post is further down the list doesn't mean I wont look for it, it just means if I need 17 of "x" I probably wouldn't buy your bundle of 100 (but what would you do in that situation?). So having the option to peck at stacks (that you're able to peck at) is going to be a better thing down the road instead of returning 300 pages of items in stacks of 1s.

I have to agree with my former posters. Both sides have good arguments. These problems probably occure for Legacy Players/Servers. The new players don't have much crafting klasses levelled. Once they start up there will be much more single sold items.

It is just inconvienient because at the time of the beta you wanted to grind a level craft and couldn't do so, because there were only full stacks ;) Wait for the economy to grow properly and you will have enough options to choose from :)

Just my 2 cents

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Originally Posted by Ichi

they should give the seller the option to sell the full stack or individuals out of the full stack. IDT the buyer should be able to pick apart at someones stacks if they intended to sell it in bulk. Not sure if this has been proposed but I'm adding my approval.

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Yes, exactly. What Ichi describes is how it was before. Seller could post a stack, but set it individually priced for buyers who didn't want the whole bunch or sellers could also designate a full unit price which would designate the sale of the whole unit (stack). As a crafter and gatherer I used both methods when buying and selling because that was just how FFXIV worked. A few things went fast as a stack and most things just went faster piecemeal. Generally though, unless it was a super hot mat, you never wanted to sell it as a unit. What we have now is only half functional.

The market will dictate what the sellers do. If they can't move a stack of X items, they will list them as singles. If people will buy a stack whole, then people will continue to sell it that way.

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Originally Posted by Amaretto08

Yes, exactly. What Ichi describes is how it was before. Seller could post a stack, but set it individually priced for buyers who didn't want the whole bunch or sellers could also designate a full unit price which would designate the sale of the whole unit (stack). As a crafter and gatherer I used both methods when buying and selling because that was just how FFXIV worked. A few things went fast as a stack and most things just went faster piecemeal. Generally though, unless it was a super hot mat, you never wanted to sell it as a unit. What we have now is only half functional.

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This is how I feel also, the simple fact is that trying to break things apart and sell individually is problematic because you can only post x amount and inventory space is indeed limited. Both singles and stacks should be able to be denoted for a single auction.

I am pretty sure Square Enix did this to ensure that no one can corner a market.

During v1.0, it was very easy to buy out smaller stack sellers, and then re-selling them in bulk at a higher price for which you are the only offer. This became easier as you make more gil and it became more profitable as item supply decreased (for example, shards/crystals consumed in crafting, not enough players spent time farming them, you keep buying them up, and one can sell at very high price)

In normal markets (and in real-life trading) this is called creating a floor/defending the price, usually its very hard (especially in real life) because you don't have enough money to create a monopoly. But in a declining player base environment, this was possible, and made easier as smaller buy orders have no way of competing with your large sell orders...

For example, I remember for a 3 month period I was the monopoly on Wind Shards on my server. I made ~50mn gil this way, and the more girl i made, the more item markets I could dominate and make more in. It became very profitable but unfair to smaller buyers who has to buy at a higher price in smaller portions.

By making stacks unalterable, v2.0 will make this much more difficult to do with scale, b/c now poorer players cannot buy from your bulk, and rich players will want to think twice before taking the risk of buying out large stacks (say, 9,999 crystals) because now they can only unload them slowly and thus take more price risk... or sell in large bulk to other rich players who are probably more sophisticated.

Good to know Square Enix figured this and now bastards like me have to make gil as it is meant to be made. I wish them the best in managing the economy better this time with ARR.

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Originally Posted by Wellz

As I said in my previous post;
People are just too spoiled, they want their cake and eat it too.

If you get the exact amount of mats/items you need/want, you will just have to pay a little extra.

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No I won't, I have all three gathering classes and all battle classes at 50, I am self sufficient, but I would still like the convenience to buy (AND SELL) single items from stacks like in 1.0.

Get over yourself, thinking you are all superior to the rest of us "so called lazy" players.

more selfish-note, those of you with tons of 9,999 stacks of shards / crystals, msg me if you are interested in selling for for 5 gil / 10 gil unit prices! You know you aren't gonna sell them easy now that there is this stack restriction :)

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Originally Posted by catarina

For example, I remember for a 3 month period I was the monopoly on Wind Shards on my server. I made ~50mn gil this way, and the more girl i made, the more item markets I could dominate and make more in. It became very profitable but unfair to smaller buyers who has to buy at a higher price in smaller portions.

By making stacks unalterable, v2.0 will make this much more difficult to do with scale

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I dont view this as such a large problem for myself.. not only am i a mega crafter but also a large vendor as well.. i'll end up filling my secondary accounts with vendor mules just to get more sell slots and gain a large competitive edge over most people, with creative naming you can even create false markets and rig pricing history to control price on the more prominent items that are worth controlling as well as the usual axe grinding.

Wow... stupid 1000 char limit lol

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Originally Posted by Elasia

I dont view this as such a large problem for myself.. not only am i a mega crafter but also a large vendor as well.. i'll end up filling my secondary accounts with vendor mules just to get more sell slots and gain a large competitive edge over most people, with creative naming you can even create false markets and rig pricing history to control price on the more prominent items that are worth controlling as well as the usual axe grinding.

Wow... stupid 1000 char limit lol

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Thanks for sharing, don't give away all your secrets ;) I'm sure you can still trade and make gil just more troublesome now that they are effectively cutting the poor out of being able to buy from bigger stacks... you'll have to create many more smaller stacks for the more "dependable" trades. Otherwise, after you get to a certain amount of gil, the small spread you make on these becomes less worthy of your time.

Concur on the stupid 1000 char limit

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with creative naming you can even create false markets and rig pricing history to control price on the more prominent items

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/sigh

Guys if you want to discuss your underhanded tactics of dominating the market make a new thread please :S

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Originally Posted by catarina

after you get to a certain amount of gil, the small spread you make on these becomes less worthy of your time.

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Your right about the spread.. its more about maintaining an over all price level and still being able to move volume, if price is controlled, crafting will return high margins.. for me its not the items particular resell spread but what value can i extract through the crafting process

I dont really mind talking about it.. its all out there if someone uses google.. whole communities have sprung up thanks to the wow ah. There is actually an opposite end to this as well and thats price suppression of raw materials, although once the chinese farmers get going this usually takes care of itself

Taking from stacks isnt really the issue here.. the smaller market limits on number of items per retainer is.. but its work around able thanks to the super fast xp rates, people will make a market out of singles and the world will be just fine.

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Originally Posted by TirionCrey

Lol nice try.

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I'm being serious, in a general sense (not specific to you, per se). In this theoretical situation you keep describing where you just need 1 of some item for something and for whatever reason you don't have any, the first thing I do is ask friends if I can have/borrow/buy one before I go to the market. This gets me what I need 9 times out of 10 at a fair price, or sometimes free, and I do the same for my friends in return. If history has shown anything, it's that are multiple functional MMOs economies where you cannot cherry-pick from stacks of items listed on the market/AH/broker so there is no reason to be overreacting to the fact that ARR is like this now, too.

And here's another thing to consider. In ARR, just like in 1.x before it, equipment is consumable goods. At level 50 in particular, even if you only need 1 of those pieces of cloth right now to get some piece of gear made from your crafting buddy who doesn't have the mats on hand, chances are pretty good you're going to need more of those material later as soon as you turn your gear into materia, so you might as well buy a few of them to have them on hand for when you or a friend needs them.

Interesting point, I hadn't thought about how the materia system effectively makes armour into consumables. What a clever way to create an "item sink" in a game. In ffxi I'm sure any given server only needed so many brigandine armours or whatever to exist at any one time. This way various items continue to be marketable much further into the game's life-cycle.

Still pro-choice on this issue though just because it struck me as counter-intuitive the first time I tried to buy from the markets.

If there are no changes made I hope to corner the market as someone who sells individual items at the same unit price as people who put up whole stacks. If they discount their stacks, I will discount my singles even more until they give up trying to market that item. I will be the fisher the culnarians will love! Unless they are fishers too. :|

At the beginning, I was all for being able to buy single items from stacks. At the time I needed felt and only needed one. Of course, like everyone else there were only large stacks of items that I didn't want to buy.

As a buyer I want to be able to buy a single item from a large stack if I like.

Now... as a seller I see the benefit of the current system. If they change it, great! If they don't, I know exactly what I'm going to do in the meantime to maximize my selling power by using (possibly abusing) the current system.

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Originally Posted by Chubu

I think all we really want is the options from 1.x

People can still sell their stacks as a stack if they want, and others can offer to sell a stack individually.

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This. This. And this.

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Originally Posted by Mishaela

I'm being serious, in a general sense (not specific to you, per se). In this theoretical situation you keep describing where you just need 1 of some item for something and for whatever reason you don't have any, the first thing I do is ask friends if I can have/borrow/buy one before I go to the market. This gets me what I need 9 times out of 10 at a fair price, or sometimes free, and I do the same for my friends in return. If history has shown anything, it's that are multiple functional MMOs economies where you cannot cherry-pick from stacks of items listed on the market/AH/broker so there is no reason to be overreacting to the fact that ARR is like this now, too.

And here's another thing to consider. In ARR, just like in 1.x before it, equipment is consumable goods. At level 50 in particular, even if you only need 1 of those pieces of cloth right now to get some piece of gear made from your crafting buddy who doesn't have the mats on hand, chances are pretty good you're going to need more of those material later as soon as you turn your gear into materia, so you might as well buy a few of them to have them on hand for when you or a friend needs them.

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And this is a response I'm willing to respond to in a polite manner ;)
What you refer to is generally true. Whenever I miss something material-wise I usually have someone in my FC that can give me said material (for free, cause it's policy in our FC). We support each other, that's the point of a LS/FC IMO, so I know what you mean. But going with past experience in all MMORPGs I ever played, that's something you can't rely on in the open economy, that people will actually sell "specific" amounts of items, for the sake of the players who only need that "specific" amount. That's what I meant with relying on player behaviour. Most people don't give a damn about stuff like that. They got 99 of an item, they will try to sell it as 99. Of course exceptions prove the rule, but it never worked out "smoothly" in any MMORPGs I ever played. I'm not saying that it won't work in FFXIV as a fact...but I'm definetely concerned that being restricted to either sell one unit or whatever amount is put up on the market wards...there is a good chance there won't be any single units most of the time. And from a community perspective I think that's a bad thing.

I to miss buying single items from the markets, during Beta4 I tried to make some newer items but when I wanted 2 items I was only offered the choice to buy 99, in the end I didn't bother.

How are the newer players with less gil going to be able to get started with crafting or making their own stuff when most people will be putting stacks of 99 up and not singles.

Some very good points being made but there is a prevalent point of view I'd like to address

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Originally Posted by FemDarcy

It's not a technical thing. It's for the same reason you don't play poker with 8 jokers in the deck, you would be changing the game completely.

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Pehapes I'm too dense, but quite frankly I don't understand how your analogy relates to the point that I made, which in case if you forgot, is to allow seller the option to choose whether to sell a stack as bulk or individual items.

The first point you made that "people will only buy items from the lowest price/item in the market." is irrelevant because even if sellers are allow to sell each items in a stack individually, the ones being sold in bulk will still have a discount because seller will set different prices just as they would when you have to put each item up one by one.

I believe yours and many others' issue is with HOW MANY single item a seller is allowed to put on the market, which is what giving seller the check box without adding additional limitation would result in changing. While a person selling 40 individual items will have to use up 40 retainer slots to put his inventory on the market with the current system, he will only have to use 1 slot to put those same 40 items on the market if you give him the ability to sell a stack as individual items.

Also, I'd like to point out that just like Elasia described, the current system does nothing to stop RMT from making a tons of alt and undercutting others by making a million mules to get the job done. In fact, I'd think the situation would be worse because a player would have to scroll through 8 pages of cheaply farmed material that an RMT can put up on the market board with a script or bot program, while legitimate player would have to do the whole process by hand.

However, I believe that same limit the current system enforces can easily be achieved WITHOUT making the UI clunky and horrbily inefficient to use. Under the current system, the seller will have to click on an item, set the price and the size of the stack one by one until he does the whole process 40 times just to put his inventory on the market and the buyer will also have to click on 40 individual items and buy them one at a time if he wants 40 and not 99 items. On the other hand, if you give seller the check box to sell a stack as individual items, you can STILL make each item he has in that stack take up one retainer slot while selling a whole stack in bulk will also take up one retainer slot, this way, the artificial limit SE places on the seller will remain unchanged, but the usability of the market board will be significantly improved.

To make my very own analogy. Angry Retailer, my Roegadyn retainer, owns a stall on Saphire Avenue Exchange that has 40 shelve spaces. He has an inventory of 99 fairy apples to sell. However, Yoshida, the almighty god of Eorzea, has decreed that you may only put ONE apple on each shelve space if you'd like to sell them individually, further more, you are only allowed to carry out one apple at a time from the storeroom two blocks away and must also label each one individually; alternatively you may magically shrink a sealed barrel of 99 apples to fit on one shelve space instead. Because this is such a pain in the ass to do, Angry Retailer decided to ask his fellow merchant to rise up together to protest this decision. What they propose instead is to either sell the magically shrunken barrel of 99 apples taking up only one shelve space, or to sell a normal unsealed box of apples that would take up as many shelve spaces as there are apples in the box. And this, my fellow merchant, is what I believe can be done to maintain the same limit of how many individual items a player can sell at a time without sacrificing usability and making everyone's life miserable.

I like ogopogo idea, but I would take it one step further, instead of having 40 slots why not have a limited number of items slots ? (I believe WoW does this)

This means whether you sell in solid stacks or (lets call them loose) stacks both types of players are only allowed to sell a specific amount of items.

I am sure some people in here would grumble at that but I see this as evening the playing field and also stopping RMT from posting up multiples of 1's and knocking everyone else off the sellers list.

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Originally Posted by TirionCrey

Last time I checked out WoW (5.1 MoP) I was able to put up so many Items, I never reached a cap xD

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Yea the cap is massive.

I remember back in Cata I put up a load of enchanting mats in 1s and I got an error I couldn't add any more items lol. (auctioneer is the best ;))

Last time I checked out WoW (5.1 MoP) I was able to put up so many Items, I never reached a cap xD

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Originally Posted by ogopogo

Also, I'd like to point out that just like Elasia described, the current system does nothing to stop RMT from making a tons of alt and undercutting others by making a million mules to get the job done. In fact, I'd think the situation would be worse because a player would have to scroll through 8 pages of cheaply farmed material that an RMT can put up on the market board with a script or bot program, while legitimate player would have to do the whole process by hand.

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Yeah RMT can be a real thorn to actual miners/botanists, for the most part they usually have always seemed to stick around lower level materials and not a lot of work with finished goods which has always kinda baffled me myself.. sadly i've learned a good bit of mandarin just from the sheer volume of materials i end up consuming.., also considering rmt can power level fast through botting i have no doubt they will end up making tons of mules to get their wares out there.. only thing to really slow them down is the forced main quest with the dungeon crawls to get retainers

Also I've had up to a few thousand items in dealing with mostly cut jewels on the wow ah.. as far as ore with miners posting it up.. i've seen a variety of people posting from singles to half stacks to full stacks.. but the thing with wow is the powerful addon system... you tell it to buy it all out and it will suck out all of it as long as its at or under a certain price per piece regardless of stack size.

I really hope they listen and add this feature. Basically make it like GW2. You put X number of items for Y gil each, and people can buy as little or as many as they want. Throw in Buy Orders and accessing the Market Board without Retainers and I'd be pretty happy.

This is my biggest complaint right now. It's an obvious setback for buyers because I don't want to spend 100k on a stack when I only want 1 of an item. As for the seller, idk why I would defend being able to only sell items as a stack. When I put items up for sale I always base the price on how much I want per item. If I have 50 items in a stack up for sale I would be more than happy if people picked at the stack, the money is still going in my pocket. It quickens the economy, allowing a constant buying and selling of items. There will always be undercutting but if I am able to sell 20 items out of my stack of 50 before having to lower the price of the rest to stay competitive, that's still more money in my pocket than if I had to undercut my entire stack. If you really feel like you can dominate the market and make more money selling items in a stack then okay, whatever works for you, but I think adding the option like in 1.0 is something that is necessary from a buyer's perspective.

They should present the option to the seller to either sell the whole stack or allow others to buy individuals from it. It only makes sense if you think about it.

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Originally Posted by Ex-SOLDIER

They should present the option to the seller to either sell the whole stack or allow others to buy individuals from it. It only makes sense if you think about it.

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Also that's what 1.0 did. Don't change what don't need fixin'.

There is no instance where it benefits anyone to restrict players from buying individual items from stacks.

Remember, one of the many issues people had with 1.0 was the unintuitive interface.

On the markets buy screen there are these little yellow triangles next to listings that look very much like buttons that control how many items you wish to purchase from a stack.

If you did a heat-map of where first time-market users click, I bet these get quite a few clicks even though they do nothing. I found it frustrating to see things that looked like the control I was looking for (to buy a number of items from a stack) only for it to do nothing useful. My initial reaction was that it was a bug or broken.

Perhaps for this reason, should there be no change to the way stacks are sold, the triangles should be removed as they are misleading, frustrating and made me think the game client was broken.

Edit: I don't have early access so let me know if they have gone since p4.