Suggestion: Help Sellers and Buyers with 1 simple tweak.

How many times has this happened to you?

You go to do a Grand Company Supply/Provisioning quest, or a quest for the guildmaster, and you find yourself short one single item that can only be gotten in one specific place of the world (namely, somewhere miles from where you currently are)?

So you go to the Market Board, and you search and you find a few listings for the item you need, and...

They are all in stacks of 40-99.

You don't need 40. You need one.

Please consider allowing buyers to specify how many items out of a stack they wish to buy. This would help buyers a ton.

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How would this help sellers?

If I'm a seller and I go to sell, I don't know, Yew Branches on the Market then I have to sit there going "Hmm, how big of a stack size should I sell?"

I obviously don't want to sell anything higher than 10 -- nobody needs more than 10 yew branches for anything unless they're grinding craft XP on a recipe that takes them.

I could list singles, but that'd be time-consuming.

With this tweak, I could just throw all of them up and let the buyers buy as many as they want until they're gone.

The one-and-only con to this idea is that a seller might put a stack of 99 Iron Ore up and someone might buy 42 of them and they've got 57 left and maybe some buyers might actually want 99. But I don't really see this being all that big of a problem; and if they don't, he can always refill the stack and stick it back up.

I'd rather sell a partial stack than sell none at all because nobody needed the amount I listed.

Leave it up to each seller to have the option to either sell the entire stack as a whole or open it up to buyers to buy bits and pieces or the whole thing at once. Win/win/win I'd say.

Agree being able to buy from a stack would be great but there are a lot of people on here with a stick up their ass which oppose such thinking.

FWIW 1.0 had this feature and SE removed it and IMO its made the MW worse because of it.

I don't mind how the MB works atm, I treat much like everyday supermarkets i can buy a low quantity of items at higher price or i can bulk buy for cheaper individual prices.
scenario: I need 10 Fleece for my craft i can either buy the 10-20 stacks at a higher price or i can buy a stack of 99 for lower individual cost per item but higher overall cost.
Makes the market seem more like shopping after all everyone likes a bargain, but if everything was the same price for the quantity you wanted its takes the fun from the nice bargains you can sometimes get

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Originally Posted by Gelesto

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In my experiences, it usually works the opposite.

Scenario: Steel Scalemail is the GC Turn-in.

So I check the Market. No Steel Rings up. That's OK, I got Bomb Ash. I can make my own; just need 6 Iron Ore for 3 Steel Bars.

I see several stacks of 99 Iron Ore for 200gil per Ore, which is 19,800 gil for the whole stack. But yet... I don't want 99 ore. I only want 6.

I scroll down and I see 800 gil per ore, for a stack of ten is the next-best deal I can find. That's 8,000 gil. Almost half the price for a tenth of the ore. Uh... no.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

In my experiences, it usually works the opposite.

Scenario: Steel Scalemail is the GC Turn-in.

So I check the Market. No Steel Rings up. That's OK, I got Bomb Ash. I can make my own; just need 6 Iron Ore for 3 Steel Bars.

I see several stacks of 99 Iron Ore for 200gil per Ore, which is 19,800 gil for the whole stack. But yet... I don't want 99 ore. I only want 6.

I scroll down and I see 800 gil per ore, for a stack of ten is the next-best deal I can find. That's 8,000 gil. Almost half the price for a tenth of the ore. Uh... no.

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So what did u do finally? bought the 99 or 10 set or none of them?

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Originally Posted by ImDingDing

So what did u do finally? bought the 99 or 10 set or none of them?

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Trot my happy butt out to Horizon, equip my miner suit, and mine my own.

what i would have done is teleported to limsa and gone to bsm/arm guild supplier and brought them for 18 gil a piece.....

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Originally Posted by M60-Maniac

what i would have done is teleported to limsa and gone to bsm/arm guild supplier and brought them for 18 gil a piece.....

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^ this man right here, know your market before you buy or sell

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Originally Posted by JeniLinsky

Trot my happy butt out to Horizon, equip my miner suit, and mine my own.

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And this is why this system is stupid. It doesn't encourage crafting, it discourages people from buying crafted gear and encourages them to instead just make their own or get a friend to make something.

Which is all well and good, but there are things to buy in this game that require money, and only a limited number of ways to make said money. People craft to make money to buy the things in the game that cost money. It's infinitely more difficult to make money when the structure of the market system itself makes it harder to actually make considerable sales. Allowing players the option to buy only as many as they want naturally leads to more sales, which leads to more money actually being spent through the market, which is better for the economy.

Exactly, I know what sells from most npc's and where, people who buy ore on the boards are just lazy

No no no. Bad idea. It would homogenize the market. A seller puts up 99 at a cheaper price than a single for the reason of "bulk discount." We only have so many retainer spaces. For each item we sell, that takes up a slot. There is an opportunity cost of selling 1 item at a higher price. Buyers need to see it is a convenience fee.

If buyers could specify how many they want to buy, prices would all settle to the same price... even lower than the current price of a stack of 99. This really wouldn't help anybody. Even "buyers" are ultimately sellers eventually.

No change is needed. It allows for a niche market for people that don't have 20 or 50 or 99 of an item to sell 2-3 of an item singly and turn a handsome, if not overall smaller, profit.

This is why I sell mid-market and sell in small stacks. I sell in 10- or 25-piece stacks at a good market price, and the ores and lumber and such I put up, pretty much sell like funnel cakes at a State Fair.

It's easy catering to the up-and-coming crafters this way. People who don't have piles and piles of gil, but need to make just one Iron Cross Pein Hammer, and one Thunderstorm Axe, to fill out their crafting logs...

This is the "make gil slowly" method :)

I like the idea of personal bazaars, like in FFXI (a merchant class might be fun). That way everyone could have their "sell single" option, without bothering the bulk sellers on the Market Board. Sellers would just have to find the right location to provide their wares. I always wondered how well it might work if sellers could make themselves available in locations without the Market Board (Dragonhead, Mor Dhona, etc).

A custom Quest board would be nice too, where players could set up their own quests and rewards. Fun times :)

Most likely the quantity is fixed because it affects tax calculation and sellers' overhead.
Moreover, since sellers can adjust the listing price but not the quantity for any listing item,
it seems that in the system every listing item is considered as an single unit which is not splitable.

IMO most sellers may not satisfy OP's suggestion bcoz they want item sold but not partly sold.

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Originally Posted by DarkDedede

I like the idea of personal bazaars, like in FFXI (a merchant class might be fun). That way everyone could have their "sell single" option, without bothering the bulk sellers on the Market Board. Sellers would just have to find the right location to provide their wares. I always wondered how well it might work if sellers could make themselves available in locations without the Market Board (Dragonhead, Mor Dhona, etc).

A custom Quest board would be nice too, where players could set up their own quests and rewards. Fun times :)

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I think this one is good and of course, buyers can adjust quantity.
Was there any bazaars function in 1.0?
Before 2.2 we even would be kicked for 15min idle, apparently server load could be the reason that bazaar is not available.
I read some players suggested let them selling at their house, in fact barzaar can fulfill that, too.

This is exactly what Guild Wars 2 does. Frankly the FF14 devs could learn a lot from that game.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

It would homogenize the market. A seller puts up 99 at a cheaper price than a single for the reason of "bulk discount." We only have so many retainer spaces. For each item we sell, that takes up a slot. There is an opportunity cost of selling 1 item at a higher price. Buyers need to see it is a convenience fee.

If buyers could specify how many they want to buy, prices would all settle to the same price.. even lower than the current price of a stack of 99. This really wouldn't help anybody. Even "buyers" are ultimately sellers eventually.

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This is exactly why I would oppose. I believe the market would plummet after everyone undercuts with huge stacks on items that only sell few at a time. I slowly make Gil by providing that 1 item people need among the bulk and sell them at a premium. They can't undercut me cause theirs is already lower and this slows the decline of prices a lot. I just have to be diligent in replacing after it's sold with another 1.

This is completely stupid...

First off, if the item is far out of the way, and in order to just get even a few you have to pay more money than it would be to teleport and mine/gather it yourself, then why the hell are you complaining? Is it because you are lazy? Then fine, be lazy, but don't expect to be able to get exactly what you want because you are too lazy to get it yourself.

Is it frustrating seeing things in stacks at 10k+ gil when you want a few? Yes... of course, but that's the whole reason why you WOULD sell it like that. The market is full of things like this, that's how people make gil... from people like you who want only a few items, so you charge them for more per item with only a few in the stack knowing they will buy yours because the overall cost is less.

Also... here's a tip... if you want only 6 out of a stack, then take the 6 out and sell the rest of it back yourself!

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Originally Posted by AlyssaFhey

This is exactly what Guild Wars 2 does. Frankly the FF14 devs could learn a lot from that game.

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As this comes up often I made separate thread about it: [QoL] what's FFXIV can lear from GW2

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Originally Posted by Maeka

In my experiences, it usually works the opposite.

Scenario: Steel Scalemail is the GC Turn-in.

So I check the Market. No Steel Rings up. That's OK, I got Bomb Ash. I can make my own; just need 6 Iron Ore for 3 Steel Bars.

I see several stacks of 99 Iron Ore for 200gil per Ore, which is 19,800 gil for the whole stack. But yet... I don't want 99 ore. I only want 6.

I scroll down and I see 800 gil per ore, for a stack of ten is the next-best deal I can find. That's 8,000 gil. Almost half the price for a tenth of the ore. Uh... no.

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You should have broken it up into stacks of 10 and sold them for 4-5k per stack and walked away with a 16.2-25.2k profit. 19,800 for the ore, you use 6 which leaves you 93 ore left. 9 stacks of 10? Sounds like you had an opportunity to make money but decided against it and your ore would have been free.

SE needs to copy Atlantica Online's Market.
It's the best out there, you can even search for craft recipes and it gives you the amount you will spend (by giving you the math for all items) at that time with current items posted.

Also, lots of items have 'npc' stock price so people normally post the price below the npc one to make sure it would sell.

And also, you buy the amount you want, independently of how many the seller added (up to the amount that specific seller has, of course).

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Originally Posted by Mandudez

Leave it up to each seller to have the option to either sell the entire stack as a whole or open it up to buyers to buy bits and pieces or the whole thing at once. Win/win/win I'd say.

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This is how it was in 1.0
IDK why it changed.

You dont go to Costco and try to buy one can of soda. It is packaged that way for a reason. If you dont want/need it all you can split the stack and sell the rest.

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Originally Posted by Mrbojangals

You dont go to Costco and try to buy one can of soda. It is packaged that way for a reason. If you dont want/need it all you can split the stack and sell the rest.

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Actually, that's a really dumb analogy because stores sell single beverages by the truckload.

As is, the market system encourages price hiking. People put huge stacks of things on the marketboard, they're insanely expensive. All the people putting smaller stacks up raise their prices up sky high because they think people will buy those. The thing is, if the market system were more open to people actually being able to spend less on individual convenience purchases, they would be far more likely to buy more often from the marketboard instead of getting their supplies elsewhere.

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Originally Posted by Penguinmayhem

Actually, that's a really dumb analogy because stores sell single beverages by the truckload.

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Yes, because the seller chooses to sell it that way. You don't walk into Walmart and take a single can out of a case. You go to the cooler where the singles are.

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Originally Posted by Penguinmayhem

As is, the market system encourages price hiking. People put huge stacks of things on the marketboard, they're insanely expensive. All the people putting smaller stacks up raise their prices up sky high because they think people will buy those. The thing is, if the market system were more open to people actually being able to spend less on individual convenience purchases, they would be far more likely to buy more often from the marketboard instead of getting their supplies elsewhere.

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The price hike is for the convenience of buying the smaller stack. Buy a case of soda and you pay less per soda than you would if you buy an individual one.

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Originally Posted by Penguinmayhem

Actually, that's a really dumb analogy because stores sell single beverages by the truckload.

As is, the market system encourages price hiking. People put huge stacks of things on the marketboard, they're insanely expensive. All the people putting smaller stacks up raise their prices up sky high because they think people will buy those. The thing is, if the market system were more open to people actually being able to spend less on individual convenience purchases, they would be far more likely to buy more often from the marketboard instead of getting their supplies elsewhere.

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You must not have a job or buy anything from anywhere IRL. Actually that is a perfect analogy because it is exactly the same thing. I dare you to try to spit the case at costco or walmart. It is called a free market. If you dont want the whole case dont buy it. Buy the small more expensive pack. If it doesnt sell then the price will drop.

I wish they would bring this feature back. Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 had this feature, but for some reason they removed it. You had the option of selling a whole stack at a set price, or you could set it to sell the stack individually. Only need one of something no problem, because you could buy on or all out of a stack of 99. If I remember correctly it wasn't always there at the start. I think it was added by request from the Legacy community. So I was stun to see it removed in ARR.

I think it's a great idea, bring it back from 1.0. The seller can choose to sell it as a group of items, or the group of items be sold individually, the buyer can choose the number of items. What it does is save a lot of space on you items list, and removes the need to guess how many to sell at once. In 1.0, most people choose to sell a stack of items one at a time.

Ehh. I can see both sides of this. Would it be awfully convenient? Absolutely. Would it remove a huge part of the strategy in our pricing system? Same answer. Personally, I just sell things in small stacks (anything from HQ ingots to lumber to carbonized matter) and just restock frequently as things sell. It's a pretty time-intensive way to make money but I turn a pretty good profit selling things in small amounts.

Maeka, While I agree as a person always searching the market and running across "buy 99 or none", The only issue would be profit. I would love to do Stack of 10, Stack of 10,.... however I can only sell 20 items per retainer. Ill never make money, unless I up the price for splitting it up.

Im on the fence with this, maybe if there were a bulk market (BJ's) and and convenience market (7-Eleven).

It's a hard topic..

This would be terrible for sellers. Everyone would craft in bulk and compete (undercut) for the lowest price until the market folds under itself. The market in this game is already incredibly buyer-friendly. This is the buyer wanting the best of both worlds, small quantities for bulk prices. It would be great for me if I could go to costco and buy single items for that price, but then costco would go out of business.

The soda analogy was a good example used in the wrong way. A single bottle of soda usually cost 4-5x what it would cost if bought in bulk. The reason sellers in this game sell mostly in bulk is they have very limited "shelf space" of 40 slots to sell. If sellers had unlimited selling slots everything would be sold in small stack for a higher price. I like that we have many choices on how to buy in the market.

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Originally Posted by Mandudez

Leave it up to each seller to have the option to either sell the entire stack as a whole or open it up to buyers to buy bits and pieces or the whole thing at once. Win/win/win I'd say.

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Absolutely. This is a great idea and I would always use it. I always try to sell in small stacks for the convenience of buyers, but this makes MY job harder because I only have x amount of slots. This would allow me to move more product and allow buyers better selection from seller.

Excellent idea and SE should implement it.

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Originally Posted by Mandudez

Leave it up to each seller to have the option to either sell the entire stack as a whole or open it up to buyers to buy bits and pieces or the whole thing at once. Win/win/win I'd say.

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First of all. Its not a win/win/win situation.

By allowing people to buy bits and pieces from large commodities you produce the same problem GW2 ran in to, that is, RMT's dominating the market/currency.

RMT's own the largest commodities of goods at all times and they also have the best prices. Just look at the shard market on FF14 and now imagine people having the option to buy from them the specific quantities they want. This gave RMT's a huge stock pile of currency because they took nearly all the business, allowing RMT's to sell currency at such good prices that buying currency became more efficient than earning it in game and at the same time, all that currency flowed right back in to their hands because they owned the largest commodities of goods and the best prices.

Everyone suffers from a RMT dominated market/currency. We all become losers/losers/losers.