Is it undercutting? 'Cause that already exists.
Is it undercutting? 'Cause that already exists.
This function did exist in 1.0, but that wasn't exactly what someone would have considered an Auction House (or 2.0 Market Board), nor would I consider the situation involving it to be something to use in favor of selective purchase lol. It's probably just because of a number of things involving the aspect of "as is" purchasing. The undercutting would be VERY real. Like... what we experience now wouldn't even be a fraction to the cutthroat nature of undercuts if that were to happen lol. If you've ever tried to sell very high cost goods against several others, especially if sales aren't at a high frequency, you'd have an idea of what to expect.
At least with 1.0, it was difficult to find stuff and by the time the search function was released, player population dropped significantly, which made it easier to make sales and prevent undercutting wars.
The problem isn't that we cant buy one item out of a stack. The problem is, the community doesn't list single items. Why? For a couple of reasons: We have a maximum of 20 listings per retainer. If I have 400 of an item to move, I'll be there for 6 months selling 1 at a time. Also, listing an item requires like 36 different menus. It would take me another 6 months just to simply list those items. I get undercut? Another 6 months to change the price on those.
I hate to bring it up....but WoW does it best.
Sell in stacks of:
Price per item :
I'd say remove the 20 posting limit, but. We all know how the servers are. If they add 5 more slots the game will break.
I have to agree... they really should simply add a "Price per Item" option to AH and allow you to choose the quantity purchased.
That's just how it works. The seller is the one in control. Just like in real life. If they only sell something as a bundle then you either buy the bundle or buy nothing.
I've made my entire fortune selling smartly packaged items. It's a great business! Men have made their livelihood pouring things from a big bottle into smaller bottles!
Exactly. The current system allows for sellers to price things intelligently for convenience. Need just one fleece? Well you're paying a markup for the convenience. Want a discount? Well there's a stack of 99. It also allows a small time seller to find a small niche, such as selling in stacks of 3s for some turn in item, or for a seller to take advantage of demand, like forcing players to buy more than they need by packaging items so that they're in a stack of let's say 12-20, when most people just need 10.
It allows a bit more thought to go into selling and buying things on the market. The buyer also has to think a bit too, they must weigh the tradeoff between the price and the convenience. It's kind of like a small minigame.
If we switch to the 1.0 system, we'd all just price it the same amount, and people will just buy the cheapest thing they see, more than we already do.
It's to make a "market" differentiate from small quantity sales from wholesale. yeah many times there's a small quantity seller that doesn't know better but the demand for differences is there. You can often find stacks of 99 of X item selling for 1k each, for a total of 99k upfront and a single of X item selling for 8k and if you view the sale history you see that both the 99k stack and the single 8k sell depending on the needs of the buyer.
Also while we are here, why don't we have the ability to make specific number of purchases from the GC/Allied Seals vendor? I've found myself sitting at either vendor clicking to buy items only available in single's or 3's for up to minutes on end when it should only take a few clicks then BAM bought half a stack with afew clicks.
I Disagree. My experience comes from real life Auctions.
People prefer buying in quantities. The game supports per-unit prices by allowing you to define a quantity (even '1'). If I need 8 X, I look for a seller selling 8 at once, not 2 sellers selling 99 at a lower price.
There is no desire to piece-meal a quantity out because instead of someone "needs 50 X for 99gil" it becomes "buy 1 X 50 times where X is 2gil or below"
When there is a fee per unit price, it adds up. It's often better to NPC items that sell below the NPC price than to waste a selling slot with it.
The reverse is also true, I can buy the stack of 99 if I can afford it, use the 8 items I need and then sell the remaining 91 at the price I purchased it at, but I'm doing that at a much greater loss if the next seller decides to undercut that price.
For that reason it's better to buy the quantity you need at once, even if the per unit price of that item is higher.
A smarter MB would have market-maker NPC's that represent the NPC's in the game, and actually adjust the NPC sell-to price based on MB demand. Thus, players who simply try to dump items, would have the items immediately bought by the MM NPC's and sold at the current best price.
In games that support per unit and per lot pricing, or auctions, it's often a super-frustrating experience to have "good deals" disappear within seconds due to people manipulating the game market.
Something something PS3 limitations something something please look forward to it.
I'd be pretty annoyed if I put up stacks of things and only a small portion of it sold >.>
This is something I particularly enjoy about the Commodities Exchange in WildStar. A player can list a sell order of however many of an item they want (there's a little box where you type in the number), and it tells you the current price though you can change it if you want. A player can place a buy order that a potential seller can use to "sell now", if they want (can be used by buyers to try and get things a bit cheaper - seller gets guaranteed money right away). And if you're browsing the sell orders, you just specify out much of an item you want and at what price, and purchase. If there aren't enough of that item up at that price, the game will tell you, and you can adjust. There are some flaws in the CX user interface, but it works very well for all the items people like to sell in bulk but generally buy in individualized amounts.
Indeed, I really would like to have the option to buy just as many as I want, not however many the seller put up. If I need just 3 something, I'm not gonna buy a stack of 99 or 50 or 20 or even 10 of it and massively overpay - because that's what that boils down to, huge prices for too big amount of things one doesn't need. And if someone does go ahead with buying the stack, they are gonna relist the leftover, usually not for more than they purchased it for, so even if not actual undercutting, it's more competition there (and THAT certainly brings faster undercutting).
Consider it this way too though: when do you have more money? If you shift maybe a fewer number of things than you wanted to, not for the money your whole supply would have made - or if you sit on your whole supply only hoping for the sale which never happens? I'd say the first option wins. And it doesn't even make more competition by making the buyers immediately relist the amount they don't need. Heck, I wouldn't even mind if there were separate prices for single item vs whole stack (something that'd probably get shot down by "ps3/hardware/network limitations", but still), but yeah, the market has definitely been missing this option since ARR launched.
My experience with WildStar's system back at launch was this:
I want a full stack of, say, Titanium. Titanium is currently listed at 50 Credits a piece.
Buy 99. "That many aren't available at this price."
Buy 50. "That many aren't available at this price."
Gah, buy 5! "Bought."
Buy 5. "That many aren't available at this price."
WildStar's attempt at making sellers anonymous was TERRIBLE, because buyers ended up sitting there trying desperately to figure out how much was actually for sale at the shown price, with NO IDEA what the next price jump would be. Had someone listed at 51? 60? 500? Would you be able to buy as many as you actually needed?
I would much rather scroll through the Market Board here and look for a listing with a number of items close to what I'm after.
In general, it probably relates to RMT and SE trying to cut down on their taking advantage of things to produce their gil.
I like it this way. I make a fortune selling things in small stacks at a slight markup. :3
The WoW auction house is almost exactly the same as FF MB, the only difference, you can list 200 items a day instead of 20 per retainer. The problem with that, is weeding through the 30+ pages of mat items in stack of 1 just to get to a full stack, at least they have a sort by option, but other than that, there is no difference between the two types of auctions.
I vote against being able to buy part of a stack.
Lots of people only need 1 or 2 of any given item. Others need large stacks. Some only need small stacks for s specific task.
When making a purchase, i choose the one that is closest to my needs, not necessarily the cheapest option for a single purchase.
If i could just buy one item out of the 99 stack, I'd only ever choose the cheapest possible option, which would just drive the price down harshly for that item for ANY seller.
Right now, I can carve a niche in the market by selling small stacks in the same way others can have a niche by selling massive stacks.
Its a good system and believe it or not, it promotes a healthy economy.
Yes, and that sounds fine to me, because I just sold 99 items in one go. If you really wanted only two items, you could make them yourself or have someone else do it, or wait until someone posted a smaller stack on the marketboard; if you can't or won't do any of those things, then you're stuck paying the convenience tax, which in that case was 97 extra items.
That's just how business works, and I'm not sure why these posts keep cropping up, as if we suppliers should feel bad for trying to make a profit. I suppose they could make it an option for the SELLER to allow people to buy what they wanted out of a stack, but if they made it compulsory, I'd be very angry, and I'm sure a lot of others would be as well.
So, everyone that wants this must be able to walk into their local grocery and buy one bun out of the package of 12, open the box and get a cup of corn flakes, etc.
The seller decides what he is selling. The buyer can choose to buy or not.
At least you can buy a stack and then resell what you don't use. Try that with the rest of the box of corn flakes!