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

This was raised on the beta forums before they were locked and then later closed, so I would like to re-raise this point as I feel it is important to the economy in FFXIV.

As of phase 4 we were unable to buy single items from the MW if the seller had sold them as a stack.
In 1.0 it was possible to do this and in my opinion this is a step back in terms of functionality and ease of use.
A lot of people were complaining about this in /shout /say and /linkshell chat because it restricted their plans to level crafting classes and make items in general.

A response from the dev team would be appreciated as to why they took this approach and whether they have any plan to change it.

I agree. Please allow us to buy single items from stacks.

[QUOTE=Streetwind;1017301]I agree. Please allow us to buy single items from stacks.

I'm third on this, /agreed

Yes please do this, being able to buy one item instead of stack would be great!

100% agree ran into this issue as i was leveling cooking just wanted to buy one fish from the market and was only stacks of 10-20 and i was not about to dump 2k g on fish.

/signed

As a DoL and a DoH when i choose to sell a stack of item X it means i am selling you the stack. I often sell a stack for much less then if i was selling 1 at a time, as a bulk deal. Meaning i sell 1 of X for 500gil for example, or a stack of X for about 300gil each. So my profit here is selling you the full stack rather then 1 by 1. So no i do not agree to having people peck at a stack i am selling and taking it for no profit to me. You should be requesting people to sell single's of an item that's fine and i do that often. But asking for what you are, no thank you. I rather just sell it the the Npc for low profit then give it away!

EDIT: Last sentence

I agree with Twiddle, when I want to sell a stack I want to sell the whole stack at once. You don't go down to the market, open a bag of chips and try to buy just 1 chip because that's all you want, do you? No you have to buy the whole bag.

You do realise that by selling a stack as a "stack only" you are actually harming your sales, nobody wants to buy more than they need, in many cases people would sooner not bother and go gather the item themselves.

If you are selling 20 of something and I only want 5, even if they are cheaper per item in a stack of 20 I still don't want to buy 20 items if I only need 5.

Hence why I think it is detrimental to the economy.

Quote:

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Meaning i sell 1 of X for 500gil for example, or a stack of X for about 300gil each.

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Yea that's awesome and all if you are talking about 300 or 500 gil, but what happens when you are talking about 100k per item.

In phase 4 when I realised they had changed the way items were sold from 1.0, I had to unlist all my items and then put them in smaller stacks, it took a very long time, don't expect every seller to do this.

I think the analogy of a bag of chips is a terrible one as a bag of chips is classed as one product, a pack of soft drinks on the other hand would make more sense and even in that case I almost always have the option to buy a single can or 3 cans, the same can not be said about the Marketwards I don't always have the option to buy however many I need, bringing real life into it is silly anyway, this is a game.

As both a seller and a buyer I find this incredibly inconvenient.

If I want to make one item for my crafting journal I certainly do not want to buy 99 of a rare ingredient for 99,000 gil. Or even 30 or 10 of them.

On the flip-side, if I am selling items I don't want to have to list many many single items at the same price just to give buyers a reasonable way to get the number they want.

Currently it's lose-lose.

I found the 1.0 method both convenient and profitable as a buyer and seller.

If you are not getting the amount of gil you want per item, just raise the price. I made plenty of gil selling from stacks in the market wards.

If you force me to buy 98 extra of an item when I want 1, chances are you just lost a sale anyway...

Look at it this way, you would have been 1/99th closer to selling the lot... or 5/99ths or 98/99ths... depending on how many I needed.

A stack of items doesn't go off or spoil if someone takes one off the top.

see the issue is this:

If I am selling a stack, and many others are selling stacks, and you buy just 1 for w/e reason, then anyone looking for a stack will not buy my partial stack unless all of the other full stacks have been purchased first, and this kinda screws me over.

Now to be 100% honest, in the first few weeks the purchaser may have some issues of finding singles when it may not yet be clear to sellers what items some people may want just 1 or 5 of. As time goes on us gatherers and crafters will know what items people will commonly need 1 or a few of and we will list some singles (high price per item as normally when single vs stack to account for extra time spent to list many singles) for those who need it.

The first few weeks are also a great time for someone to catch on to the items that singles are needed from, and buy a stack and make some cash selling singles untill the normal sellers catch on (or even possibly provide a permanent market area for those willing to buy our stack and sell em off as singles allowing us gatherers/crafters to stay lazy with our posting just stacks).