Please fix the Marketboards...

Can we go to a double blind kind of system like XI had or what? Seeing what everyone elses item is posted for encourages people to camp the summoning bell. The ability to see past purchases only and then to enter a bid on an item would be a nice fix in that at least they'd have to wait for a sale to see what the latest price was before re-undercutting.

The market boards as they currently are are killing the economy. How am I supposed to both sell things in a timely fashion and adventure when I need to constantly camp the MB to adjust pricing? That's before even trying to compete with people who have nothing better to do than camp town shouting about 100% 2star melds for tips and any item for under MB price, no mats required, which you can see anyway. Why would someone even buy @ MB?

My fellow all crafts will probably hate me for saying this too, but it needs to be said. Crafting is too fricking easy. If you can HQ 100% 2star, your crafting system is broken. Please also fix this.

How would blind bidding work? I've played FFXI, I know the concept. But let's say the current listing is:
1 item @ 50 gil
20 items @ 400 gil
99 items @ 2000 gil

I bid 400. What do I get? 20 items or 1?

If they do blind bidding like in XI, I would think they would have to get rid of custom stack sizes and only allow items to be sold in the quantity of 1 at a time, or 99. Otherwise a situation like dspguy asked about would come up. This way you would always know how many you are getting, and it's also a lot easier on the math.

Sadly, this means that someone who is buying only 20 or so of an item instead of a full stack of 99 would spent a lot more time bidding on 20 individual items. A plus side to this is they can try to minimum bid as many as possible until they run out of items listed below market rates. The biggest downside is that it would take a lot longer to buy up 20 items. Imagine if you wanted a half stack? 50 confirmation dialog boxes = NO THANKS.

I like how it is right now, it's simple and fast.

My only suggestion would have to be to add in a relisting fee. That way it should discourage folks undercutting by 1 gil every few minutes. it can be a flat rates (100g per relisting) or a percentage of the new price you set.

How about you still see what's listed and the stack size... then you can bid on that... So this system as is but drop the price shown and have it be biddable. That way you see what's on offer, what stack size and then you can check the history and bid.

I would like the OP idea to be implemented. As for the stacks it would not be such a great issue.

You could bid the amount of gil that you want and enter how many items you want to buy. If there is enough of said item available for that price you would buy them and they would get taken away from the stock on sale.

lets say:

seller 1: sells a stack of 25 Animal Hides for 300G each;
seller 2: sells a stack of 10 Animal Hides for 350G each;
seller 3: sells a stack of 40 Animal Hides for 380G each;
buyer 1: bids 360G for Animal Hide and asks for 30;
buyer 2: bids (after buyer 1) 370G for Animal Hides and asks for 10.

seller 1: will have his whole stack sold;
seller 2: will sell 5 Animal Hides to buyer 1 and 5 to buyer 2;
seller 3: won't sell any Hides;
buyer 1: will spend 30*360G for his Hides;
buyer 2: will spend 5*370G for his Hides and get a system message saying "No more Animal Hides available for your bidding price".

I do agree something needs to be done. The markets that didn't immediately crash after 2.1 have steadily been dwindling week after week.

Glamours might cause a spike, but it will be temporary.

LoL no you would not need to limit it to 1 or 99, you do like GW2, Diablo 3, or EO do and allow for stacks to be broken. You list how many you want to sell at X price and people buy at cheapest possible.

You take average current price and charge that when purchasing. If you end up saving some due to the ones that are cheaper the extra gill is returned upon delivery via in game mail system.