Just a couple of problems with the Market Boards.

[ShinkuTachi]

...Who are these people who take the time to list something on the market, and then "simply click through" the price instead of just vending it? They have a fetish for paying sales tax or something?

It seems that way. I've seen a number of items posted being sold @ NPC price or even below NPC price. I mean, if they want to effectively loose money via taxation that's fine. However, I say the default price should be set at '0' and have the item not be able to be sold unless it is manually set to 1 gil.

Exactly. There is no reason not to show the current price. Even if you could not look it up and you can see the history people will still undercut. Its a simple fact of life. If I see the history going for an average of 5k but I really need money I'm going to undercut to sell faster.

Yes, there will be undercutting, but not so much on the massive scale that we are seeing undercutting now.
As it is now, I've seen items go from 5k for example to less than 500, because people can see the items showing and the lowest price sits at the top of the list. People are seeing each others prices and constantly undercutting each other down to keep themselves at the top.

If we had blind auctions for example, and the average is 5k-ish, most people would be undercutting by a few gil to maybe just a few hundred. Sure, there will be some people who undercut by more, but you wouldn't be seeing items drop from 5k to below 500 in just a matter of a few hours; even if the supply is somewhat high. At least, this has been my experience with games that have used this feature.

*Even though you both disagree with me though; I very much appreciate you both respectfully doing so. Thank you for your input.

[Nova_Dresden]

I've seen a number of items posted being sold @ NPC price or even below NPC price. I mean, if they want to effectively loose money via taxation that's fine. However, I say the default price should be set at '0' and have the item not be able to be sold unless it is manually set to 1 gil.

I'd rather it be set similar to Guild Wars 2. The AH in that game makes it a physical impossibility to sell below the NPC price.

How is FFXI not a free market?

Because it's a blind auction and the lowest priced item sells first 100% of the time but never for the listing price. If the price history is hovering ~100k I can list something for 1k and if someone bids 100k my item sells first, but not for what I listed the item at. The AH in that game was also set so that you can only see the supply quantity and a few recent transactions. Using mules or friends you can artificially generate demand and raise prices on items because no one can really see the true history without using third-party information from www.FFXIAH.com. Gil sellers were perpetually using an army of mules to slowly buy out all Archer's Rings (or similarly demanded items) on the servers then artificially ramp up the prices and flood the market to make gil and catch people trying to flood the markets with their supply. Then they'd begin to artificially lower the price via the same method and buy out the supply of everyone else and restart the cycle.