So WoW understands how to do crafting materials right.

In the upcoming 8.3 Patch for WoW, they are changing their AH system so that you can tell the AH how much of what crafting material you want to buy, and the AH system will go through the cheapest items and give you a price quote and you click Buy and voila. You get the items.

For example...

You want 150 Iron Ore.

There's Player A who has 50 of them listed for 1g each.
There's Player B who has 75 of them listed for 2g each.
There's player C who has 200 of them listed for 2.5g each.

You tell the AH system you want 150 Iron Ore.

1). It will grab 50 of them for 1g each: 50g
2). It will grab 75 of them for 2g each: 150g
3). It will grab 25 of them for 2.5g each: 62.5g.

And it will tell you that you must pay 262.5g for the 150 Iron Ore.

I'm rather excited about this system and I wish we could have something similar in FFXIV.

They could accomplish this easily enough by simply allowing us to purchase partial stacks. I can do the work to buy what quantity I’m looking for at the cheapest possible way once that’s done, I don’t need the game to do that much legwork for me.

I prefer this system, and I believe it would increase demand. Often I go to the AH to buy 1 or 2 items; however, no one is selling them in the quantity I want, so I generally don't buy.

I might be mistaken but selling partial stacks was an option for the seller in 1.0 wasn't it?
I still prefer what we have now.

I don't believe it was ever possible to buy partial stacks.

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Originally Posted by Darlantan

I prefer this system, and I believe it would increase demand. Often I go to the AH to buy 1 or 2 items; however, no one is selling them in the quantity I want, so I generally don't buy.

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^^
This, so much.

I want 1-2 of something, and everybody is listing 50-99 of them and I go "nope. I'll just do without."

Usually it's fish for a GC turn-in, and they always list 2-3 more than what the GC actually wants to force you to buy extra. It doesn't work. I'd rather skip it than waste money on stuff I don't need.

It's a system that punishes buyers in favor of rich sellers, and the main people who cry out against people buying partial stacks are in fact the rich sellers who want to force people to buy in bulk when they don't really want to.

A button to buy the requested amount for the cheapest price possible while buying the whole stacks listed by sellers - that would be nice.

One price per item would make the market part of the game more dull and boring.

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Originally Posted by Archaell

A button to buy the requested amount for the cheapest price possible while buying the whole stacks listed by sellers - that would be nice.

One price per item would make the market part of the game more dull and boring.

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That still doesn't fix the problem of being forced to buy way more items than you actually want, which is what buyers want. Buyers are tired of having to buy 2x, 3x the amount of items because sellers think we need 50-99 of everything. And screw those people who insist on listing stacks of 5 HQ fish knowing that FSH quests want 3 (and 4 for the spearfishing fish) fish at a time.

I'm convinced they do it on purpose to force people to buy extra and then charge you for the extra.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

I might be mistaken but selling partial stacks was an option for the seller in 1.0 wasn't it?
I still prefer what we have now.

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Yeah the seller had the choice when listing stacks of goods to allow the stacks to be broken or not.

The amount of money I'd spend on the market boards would be exponentially more if I could simply get what I needed without tons of extra stuff clogging up my inventory or sell slots.

So if you wanted to sell a bulk amount of ore you might list a stack of 99 at say 50k. But not allow the stack to be broken so the buyer must buy all 99 for the 50k price tag.

Or the seller could list the stack of 99 ores at 200k but allow people to just buy what they need at 2k per item.. or whatever unit price you set.

So someone wanting to buy large quantities would get better prices purchasing full stacks and people who just needed a specific number would be able to get exactly what they need in a single transaction.

I wish it still worked like this honestly was much better than what we have now.

Would likely increase demand for many items as well as I know many crafters will generally just go gather what they need to make the 3 nights instead of buying a stack of 25 or more off the markets. Where if they could easily purchase what they need they'd likely buy it and save time

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Originally Posted by Dzian

Would likely increase demand for many items as well as I know many crafters will generally just go gather what they need to make the 3 nights instead of buying a stack of 25 or more off the markets. Where if they could easily purchase what they need they'd likely buy it and save time

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This right here is the very reason why I gave up leveling crafts (at least until the Beast Tribe arrives).

I wanna craft an item for GC to level DoH. So I open the list and see 30 different materials needed to make a sword. Okay, item #1 I need, say, 2 nuggets. Oh cute, the smallest stack on the MB is 20 and they want some 50,000 gil for that stack of nuggets. It wants 2 lumbers, check that... awesome. 30 lumbers for 40,000. Off to a great start. So okay it wants 1 glue. Well, look at that. Ten glues for 25,000 is the smallest stack.

So I could spend 115,000 gil to make that sword (that's only the first few materials) with the current system (and have a ton of crap left over and likely get undercut AND have to pay sales tax to sell the excess)..... or I could have instead spent 10,000 gil to buy JUST the materials I want/need.

And people wonder why buyers want to choose stack size!? You gotta be kidding me.

I'm hit and miss with this, mainly because I exploit the market by selling lower quantities for slightly higher prices knowing full well people want smaller stacks and would pay more per item if it meant a saving overall without excess materials

I guess in reality, there should indeed be more player convenience, and this feature would do that.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

This right here is the very reason why I gave up leveling crafts (at least until the Beast Tribe arrives).

I wanna craft an item for GC to level DoH. So I open the list and see 30 different materials needed to make a sword. Okay, item #1 I need, say, 2 nuggets. Oh cute, the smallest stack on the MB is 20 and they want some 50,000 gil for that stack of nuggets. It wants 2 lumbers, check that... awesome. 30 lumbers for 40,000. Off to a great start. So okay it wants 1 glue. Well, look at that. Ten glues for 25,000 is the smallest stack.

So I could spend 115,000 gil to make that sword (that's only the first few materials) with the current system (and have a ton of crap left over and likely get undercut AND have to pay sales tax to sell the excess)..... or I could have instead spent 10,000 gil to buy JUST the materials I want/need.

And people wonder why buyers want to choose stack size!? You gotta be kidding me.

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I suppose one of the good (and bad) things about this game, is that many of the materials you'd over-buy, could be used to sell not just the sword, but the axe and greatsword too

But what if I out-level the recipes, and now the GC wants new recipes?

What if I don't want enough materials to make 10 weapons?

What if I don't want to blow 200,000 gil to make 10 weapons right now?

The point is... I should have a choice, but the system (and the sellers) don't give me this choice. It's either that, or blow an hour+ per item farming up the materials.

I choose the third option of just waiting until beast tribes. But that means a lot of lost sales that these sellers could have made if I could have chosen to buy 1 or 2 items at a time.

The primary issue I see with this economy is there's not enough demand for items in general. Part of that is due to the competition of crafted items vs. PvE items, which are typical in a theme park MMO, but the other part is the way the AH is currently setup. If I want x quantity of materials to produce a sword that I KNOW is 10x over price and I can sell it for much cheaper, the issue is the materials available are not available in the quantity I want. Therefore, I either gather the mats if I feel like it or forego making the item all-together. Otherwise, had I produced the item, I would have probably increased the demand level now that the price point is much lower.

I'd definitely like to see this. Though, I'd also love to see a "Piece-wise sale" option, whereby sellers could allow amounts smaller than the whole stack to be sold, rather than needing to split their stacks and inevitably still forcing some buyers to buy more than they need.

This would reduce the reward for stack-splitting, which some market-idlers (and bots -- mostly bots) may dislike, but... I feel like the advantages for the many more than outweigh the exploitation options lost to frequent sellers.

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Originally Posted by Darlantan

The primary issue I see with this economy is there's not enough demand for items in general. Part of that is due to the competition of crafted items vs. PvE items, which are typical in a theme park MMO, but the other part is the way the AH is currently setup. .

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The demand would be there if the player market provided a consistent and reasonably priced supply for needed items.

The player market doesn't provide that consistent, reasonably priced supply because we've got a hard limit on how many items we can list at a time. We're not going to list a 5k profit ring when we've got a 150k profit housing item to sell. The ring might sell faster but it's doubtful we'd sell 30 of them in the same time it would take to sell the housing item when we only have enough listing space to sell one at a time.

Try to make up the lost profit by increasing the price of the ring to recover the profit difference and you've priced it too far above the usefulness it has to the player.

When the player can't find the item they need when they need it or it's consistently priced higher than its usefulness, demand for the item is going to disappear. Start providing the items they want at a price that is reasonable for the usefulness and the demand comes back.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

The demand would be there if the player market provided a consistent and reasonably priced supply for needed items.

The player market doesn't provide that consistent, reasonably priced supply because we've got a hard limit on how many items we can list at a time. We're not going to list a 5k profit ring when we've got a 150k profit housing item to sell. The ring might sell faster but it's doubtful we'd sell 30 of them in the same time it would take to sell the housing item when we only have enough listing space to sell one at a time.

Try to make up the lost profit by increasing the price of the ring to recover the profit difference and you've priced it too far above the usefulness it has to the player.

When the player can't find the item they need when they need it or it's consistently priced higher than its usefulness, demand for the item is going to disappear. Start providing the items they want at a price that is reasonable for the usefulness and the demand comes back.

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The problem tends to be that people, especially those with a lot of money, tend to vastly over-estimate how much their time is worth. Some people have way too much ego and personal pride, and these are the types of people you see demanding 500k gil to give a healer Q for a dungeon (that they already benefit from) back during the initial ShB release when healers were hard to find.

So they spend 5 minutes making something that is easy to make and they think you should pay millions of gil for it and a lot of us who don't have that kind of money go "get the flip out of here with that" and refuse to buy it.

I'd rather stick with what we have now. Free market is goooooooooood.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

The problem tends to be that people, especially those with a lot of money, tend to vastly over-estimate how much their time is worth. Some people have way too much ego and personal pride, and these are the types of people you see demanding 500k gil to give a healer Q for a dungeon (that they already benefit from) back during the initial ShB release when healers were hard to find.

So they spend 5 minutes making something that is easy to make and they think you should pay millions of gil for it and a lot of us who don't have that kind of money go "get the flip out of here with that" and refuse to buy it.

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Have you tried getting a job like the other players? For example selling the quick healer queues? (I do that for fun, and it's worse than gathering elm logs) Gathering? (Gathering can start making you gil quite quickly even from scratch) Crafting low level items? Buying big stacks and reselling at double price small stacks? Basically any action that trades time for gil? In few hours of grinding, and with data center wide MB shopping, you can buy almost anything.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

But what if I out-level the recipes, and now the GC wants new recipes?

What if I don't want enough materials to make 10 weapons?

What if I don't want to blow 200,000 gil to make 10 weapons right now?

The point is... I should have a choice, but the system (and the sellers) don't give me this choice. It's either that, or blow an hour+ per item farming up the materials.

I choose the third option of just waiting until beast tribes. But that means a lot of lost sales that these sellers could have made if I could have chosen to buy 1 or 2 items at a time.

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You absolutely have a choice. You just dont like the options. Think of buying the excess materials as a convenience fee. Don't wanna pay it? Go gather the materials yourself. Takes maybe ten minutes assuming you dont need a timed node's materials.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

The demand would be there if the player market provided a consistent and reasonably priced supply for needed items.

The player market doesn't provide that consistent, reasonably priced supply because we've got a hard limit on how many items we can list at a time. We're not going to list a 5k profit ring when we've got a 150k profit housing item to sell. The ring might sell faster, but it's doubtful we'd sell 30 of them in the same time it would take to sell the housing item when we only have enough listing space to sell one at a time.

Try to make up the lost profit by increasing the price of the ring to recover the profit difference and you've priced it too far above the usefulness it has to the player.

When the player can't find the item they need when they need it, or it's consistently priced higher than its usefulness, demand for the item is going to disappear. Start providing the items they want at a price that is reasonable for the usefulness and the demand comes back.

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I am not sure if this is the primary driver, I would agree to an extent, however, with just two retainers, you can still list 40 items at a time. I don't usually have that many items up at a given time. However, considering that the number of materials and items has increased substantially, I can agree with this argument to a small degree. But if what you're saying is true, then the name of the game would be to sell items ASAP and not overprice them 2x-10x they're worth (basing off the material costs), in which they could take days to sell.

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Originally Posted by Mavrias

You absolutely have a choice. You just dont like the options. Think of buying the excess materials as a convenience fee. Don't wanna pay it? Go gather the materials yourself. Takes maybe ten minutes assuming you dont need a timed node's materials.

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This is a strawman argument as the topic is about the AH not about choice, and the OP example was just the example of why the AH is inefficient. Also buying excess materials is an INCONVENIENCE fee. When you go to the store to purchase one item of something but they only sell them in packs of six when you don't need or want six it's an inconvenience. Most of the time if the item is really cheap you're not going to care about purchasing an excess of something but when they're not cheap you're likely to not buy the item(s) at all.

Call me weird but I like this system we have now... Mostly. As a seller it encourages me to consider more than just how often it sells and for how much. I also need to consider how much people will buy at once. As an example, if it's a HQ food item for a culinarian quest it would be ideal to sell in the exact quantity that quest needs. If it's a basic low level crafting material then selling it in a stack of 99 might not be such a good idea

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Originally Posted by Darlantan

This is a strawman argument as the topic is about the AH not about choice, and the OP example was just the example of why the AH is inefficient. Also buying excess materials is an INCONVENIENCE fee. When you go to the store to purchase one item of something but they only sell them in packs of six when you don't need or want six it's an inconvenience. Most of the time if the item is really cheap you're not going to care about purchasing an excess of something but when they're not cheap you're likely to not buy the item(s) at all.

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The post i was replying to mentioned choices and thats what i decided to touch on. Not a strawman if i wasnt talking about the OP as a whole, and instead a small part of it.
The convenience is going to the market board to just buy your mats instead of going out to gather them yourself. A convenience fee is an excess charge applied to a purchase in exchange for ease of access or payment (usually applied in cases of credit/ debit card transactions.)

Your options are buying a big stack (where you can just resell the excess), buy a smaller amount but at an increased price (tons of people, including myself put small or even single stacks of a material on the market board at double or more the price of larger stacks), or gather them yourself for free.

While i wouldnt complain if there was a change that would allow a buyer to buy portions of stacks, i know the general prices would increase to account for the change.

Haha, I love the people who think it takes 10 minutes to gather the materials to make anything in HW+.

So you can go out and get 20, 30 different materials (because you know it wants several nuggets, ingots, wood, glue, cloth, leather pretty much the whole shebang) in 10 minutes. lol. Yeah right. I tried making a Lv60 SCH book once, and I timed it. It took ~28 minutes to get all the materials involved in the book, and that's without farming the leather as I already had some, and that's with me having flying unlocked, and Lv70 DoH, that it was easy to HQ. No timed nodes involved.

As for money, oh, I have money but I don't want to waste it on people who want too much for their stuff. As for selling healer runs, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to stoop that low to make a buck. If I did that, then I'd be no better than the other people who do that crap that I rather dislike and disagree with.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

Haha, I love the people who think it takes 10 minutes to gather the materials to make anything in HW+.

So you can go out and get 20, 30 different materials (because you know it wants several nuggets, ingots, wood, glue, cloth, leather pretty much the whole shebang) in 10 minutes. lol. Yeah right. I tried making a Lv60 SCH book once, and I timed it. It took ~28 minutes to get all the materials involved in the book, and that's without farming the leather as I already had some, and that's with me having flying unlocked, and Lv70 DoH, that it was easy to HQ. No timed nodes involved.

As for money, oh, I have money but I don't want to waste it on people who want too much for their stuff. As for selling healer runs, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to stoop that low to make a buck. If I did that, then I'd be no better than the other people who do that crap that I rather dislike and disagree with.

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If I were making a craft such as a full set of HQ lvl 74 crafting gear, I would simply know where to go to get the materials I need and not spend 20 minutes flying around looking for stuff. Like RIP to ya'll but I'm different.

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Originally Posted by Darlantan

Also buying excess materials is an INCONVENIENCE fee.

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A convenience fee is a fee given in exchange for something's convenience, just as we are taxed for luxury, not by luxury. No one's going to charge you a luxury tax by buying you a McLaran and offering you a penthouse suite -- that would hardly be taxing.

On topic:

Allowing the seller to sell items piece-wise doubly empowers the seller, even if the buyer may benefit as well down the line. The only real change is that sellers can put up stacks of 99 at the same inflated price as they'd normally charge for individual items or a handful without spending a sales slot for each of those previously separate entries, essentially increasing available (fine-amount) supply without necessarily decreasing price.

...That being said, as it becomes less costly for sellers to offer fine-amount purchases, it's quite likely that the inflated value will eventually decrease. Only then will such a change actually benefit the buyer.

In the same vein, QoL conveniences for the buyer, such as WoW's "price of all relevant materials" function, also ultimately benefit the sellers most, because quicker purchases shrink (seemingly) static supply and similarly increases sale output -- at least where relevant to, in this case, crafting materials.

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Originally Posted by Darlantan

How is buying an excess material that is equally-priced a convenience fee? That's not a convenience fee. A convenience fee would be if ten ores were worth 100 Gil, but someone sold them for 110 Gil with the extra 10 Gil being the convenience fee. Buying 15 materials when you want 10 isn't a convenience fee, it's just an inconvenience. At least for me, not worth the price unless the price is very cheap, but even then it's still an inconvenience as it just takes up more space in my inventory/retainer.

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Look at the original basis of the comment. Buying excess goods is the convenience fee charged by using the market.

I obviously don't think that fee warrants strong protection, but neither do I think its interplay should be fully removed from the game. I think, however, sellers should have the added convenience of being able to allow for fine purchases without having to give up their 20 sale slots just to sell 20 smaller selections. And I do think allowing such could eventually trickle into effects beneficial for the market as a whole. That's it.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

A convenience fee is a fee given in exchange for something's convenience, just as we are taxed for luxury, not by luxury. No one's going to charge you a luxury tax by buying you a McLaran and offering you a penthouse suite -- that would hardly be taxing.

On topic:

Allowing the seller to sell items piece-wise doubly empowers the seller, even if the buyer may benefit as well down the line. The only real change is that sellers can put up stacks of 99 at the same inflated price as they'd normally charge for individual items or a handful without spending a sales slot for each of those previously separate entries, essentially increasing available (fine-amount) supply without necessarily decreasing price.

...That being said, as it becomes less costly for sellers to offer fine-amount purchases, it's quite likely that the inflated value will eventually decrease. Only then will such a change actually benefit the buyer.

In the same vein, QoL conveniences for the buyer, such as WoW's "price of all relevant materials" function, also ultimately benefit the sellers most, because quicker purchases shrink (seemingly) static supply and similarly increases sale output -- at least where relevant to, in this case, crafting materials.

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How is buying an excess material that is equally-priced a convenience fee? That's not a convenience fee. A convenience fee would be if ten ores were worth 100 Gil, but someone sold them for 110 Gil with the extra 10 Gil being the convenience fee. Buying 15 materials when you want 10 isn't a convenience fee, it's just an inconvenience. At least for me, not worth the price unless the price is very cheap, but even then it's still an inconvenience as it just takes up more space in my inventory/retainer.

The convenience: you dont have to gather/ craft intermediary mats yourself.

The fee: you're paying more gil because youre getting extra product. Or alternatively, you pay more gil for less product at a mark up.

It doesnt have to take up extra inventory space. You could easily just sell your extras on the market.

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Originally Posted by Mavrias

The convenience: you dont have to gather/ craft intermediary mats yourself.

The fee: you're paying more gil because youre getting extra product. Or alternatively, you pay more gil for less product at a mark up.

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The lattter part of that would be fine if it allowed players to get what they need. many many players have said they'd happily pay more for the specific quantity they need..

this is exactly why people have suggested time and time again to allow stacks to be breakable for a higher unit price...

sure you can list 99 ingots at a unit price of say 1k and sell the entrie stack for 99k as a bulk lot only..
or you could list those 99 ingots at 2.5k per unit and let people buy 1 2 4 6 7 exactly the quantity they need. even with a 150% markup for the convenience.. people would rather cough up 10k for the 4 ingots they need than 99k for a full stack they don't..

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Originally Posted by Mavrias

The convenience: you dont have to gather/ craft intermediary mats yourself.

The fee: you're paying more gil because youre getting extra product. Or alternatively, you pay more gil for less product at a mark up.

It doesnt have to take up extra inventory space. You could easily just sell your extras on the market.

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Having to resell the extras takes up up one of your limited MB listings that could be used to sell something else. It turns you into a competitor of the person you purchased from if they are selling more of that item.

It also potentially means one fewer listing on the MB of other items that might be more in demand but are not getting supplied because players want to sell their higher profit items first even if that means listing multiple stacks of the same item.

If players could list a full stack instead of having to break that stack down into smaller quantities that people are willing to buy, it would open up more listings that could be used to sell other things that are in demand but not getting supplied because the profit is considered too low compared to the profit from other items. Buyers will have a larger selection of items to buy from, filling in some under-serviced areas of the market.

You could also list that stack at the preferred higher price instead of having to reduce the price hoping to find someone willing to buy the larger stack at a lower per item cost (which doesn't work unless the demand is much greater than the supply). If the item is in high enough demand, all of it will sell at your higher price increasing your profits. The buyer is happy because they were able to buy only what they needed and had gil left to make another purchase immediately (which could always be something else you're selling) instead of having to wait for the excess to sell before they can buy more items.

Not being able to buy partial stacks in a market where we're very limited on how many listings we can have at one time works against both buyer and seller.

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If players could list a full stack instead of having to break that stack down into smaller quantities that people are willing to buy, it would open up more listings that could be used to sell other things that are in demand but not getting supplied because the profit is considered too low compared to the profit from other items.

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Pretty much this.

I would be really happy if I could list full stacks of jute, cloudsbreath, ect for the price I want to sell them for and let people buy a few at a time than have to use alts to store stuff and split them into stacks of 2-4 and relist as needed. I have to either not make and sell things or I have to not sell accumulated stuff, because I'd need 15 retainers to even come close.

With selling space capped at 20x retainers (I really hate this system), you're locked out of doing a lot of practical things you want to do.

That's just GW2 system. Tho GW2 also has it cross-server. Sure, it's easy to use for both sides but tbh I like current FFXIV more. Finding balance between price, stack size and retainer spots adds some fun to trading and allows to play it more - like selling smaller sizes for higher prices instead of undercutting those 99 stacks by 1 gil.

The issue is that (outside of paying for more retainers) you're locked at 40 sale slots. That is way lower than other games (last time I WoW'd, think it was 400, but it may have changed since?). So the market works differently due to having to be selective about what you list.

If I fill up all 40 slots with 99-stack items, and folk part-buy them, I still have 40 slots held captive by the 1 or 2 remaining items, which have probably been undercut. Also, I can list 10-stack items at a higher price than the sea of 99-stacks other listed and get a sale faster and for more gil. Same from the buyer side: choosing between paying a higher price per item to get the smaller stacks or getting spares that you then have to find space for in storage or within your slots is an integral part of how the market works. Part-buying would wreck that, and instead of people trying to play the market smart, you'd get constant undercutting (like happens in WoW, EvE, any other game where the market allows it), which means you need to babysit your sales to change the price (while all your competition is doing the same) as only the lowest will get sold, no matter what. That also leads to greater market instability, with prices crashing, getting bought out, prices rising again, etc. and again in all the games where that happens, you wind up with crafted items selling for less than the material cost, because one guy is haunting the MB for when prices crash and buying out the lot to craft on the cheap, so crafting becomes a waste of time and gil while gathering is unreliable at best and it'll take days for those slots to open up for you to list more stuff.

Yeah, it annoys me when I need a single piece of ore and cannot be bothered going to get it myself, but everyone has listed 99-stacks only. But at least in this game crafting can be profitable and the market stays relatively stable both for selling and buying. Being honest, I'll always complain about the 99-stackers, but I believe it'd be a mistake to change it.

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Originally Posted by GojuSuzi

The issue is that (outside of paying for more retainers) you're locked at 40 sale slots. That is way lower than other games (last time I WoW'd, think it was 400, but it may have changed since?). So the market works differently due to having to be selective about what you list.

If I fill up all 40 slots with 99-stack items, and folk part-buy them, I still have 40 slots held captive by the 1 or 2 remaining items, which have probably been undercut. Also, I can list 10-stack items at a higher price than the sea of 99-stacks other listed and get a sale faster and for more gil. Same from the buyer side: choosing between paying a higher price per item to get the smaller stacks or getting spares that you then have to find space for in storage or within your slots is an integral part of how the market works. Part-buying would wreck that, and instead of people trying to play the market smart, you'd get constant undercutting (like happens in WoW, EvE, any other game where the market allows it), which means you need to babysit your sales to change the price (while all your competition is doing the same) as only the lowest will get sold, no matter what. That also leads to greater market instability, with prices crashing, getting bought out, prices rising again, etc. and again in all the games where that happens, you wind up with crafted items selling for less than the material cost, because one guy is haunting the MB for when prices crash and buying out the lot to craft on the cheap, so crafting becomes a waste of time and gil while gathering is unreliable at best and it'll take days for those slots to open up for you to list more stuff.

Yeah, it annoys me when I need a single piece of ore and cannot be bothered going to get it myself, but everyone has listed 99-stacks only. But at least in this game crafting can be profitable and the market stays relatively stable both for selling and buying. Being honest, I'll always complain about the 99-stackers, but I believe it'd be a mistake to change it.

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You have to babysit items right now unless you're willing to wait hours or days. Also with the system suggested it'll more than likely create more demand, causing items to sell faster, offsetting the retainer limit somewhat.