Just a couple of problems with the Market Boards.

[Kazamoto]

What we have now is not SUPPLY based price adjustment only. The fact is that a lot of people are just not using it right. You should be looking at the cost to create and the average sales lately. That added to current prices should tell you if the current sell value is worth it.

This is exactly it, sellers are not marketing their wares in a sensible manner.

I say the price adjust is supply based because, when someone sees items up for 1000g they arent going to post theirs at 1000g, they are going to post at 999 or 900, and the next person will go further down.

Another point I do not agree with is your question regarding the mats being more then the crafted part. You used the pre relics which I cannot argue becuase they are usefull the deman is just not as high as some items since you only need one per classs. Some items are useless however and thus will cost less than the mats to buy since they have no real value, the value lies in crafting it and xp. The crafter got the value and is trying to get a bit extra from it.

...Gear sucks because like I said earlier its passed by quickly, not much demand, and crafters use it to level.

Any crafter trying to make money on white gear needs their head examined, dungeon pinks are almost always better.

I used the pre-relics in my example as that was one of the few bits of crafted gear I could think of that people had reason to buy.

Personally, I only make white gear once for the craft log and usually npc it. When crafting for profit I usually shoot for crafted mats, as the demand is usually there, and people accept a small convenience fee.

But when lumber costs the same as a single log, ore an ingot costs the same as a single ore, I just sell the base mats to make the money.

Thankfully I botany and mine my raw materials, but in this case, the refined good should be worth more than the raw.

I don't believe there is any true upside to introducing FXI system. A free market system is better in my opinion and XIV is close.

Buyers see supply
Sellers see demand
Buyers see offer price
Sellers see bid price (wait this doesn't exist , hopefully one day)

Old System is:
Demand is partially seen by history
Supply is not seen
Prices react much slower to change since information is withheld.

How is FFXI not a free market?

free market
noun
: an economic market or system in which prices are based on competition among private businesses and not controlled by a government

Supply is seen, you can easily tell how many of an item are listed for sale.
Demand can be seen by checking the history and noting the time between sales.
Prices change more slowly because sellers don't know what the competition will sell for.


If the history is 1000g, and there are 4 for sale, and they seem to sell 5/hour, I know that i could likely list mine for 900 to 1000 and still sell.

If the history is 1000g, and there are 0 for sale, and they seem to sell 5/hour, I know that i could likely list mine for 1000 to 1500 and still sell.

If the history is 1000g, and there are 100 for sale, and they seem to sell 5/hour, I know that i would likely have list mine for 500 to 700 to still sell in the same time frame.

But, I couldn't see the cheapest was 800, and sell mine for 700, while having all buyers know mine are cheapest. This means the other sellers still have a similar chance to sell, but rather than knowing mine would sell first, i would just have an advantage.


That is what it seems a blind AH does. We all know the cheapest will sell first, but it means that for the buyer in a rush, anyone's goods look the same.

[Wazabi]

I think what Bwaler meant was that ARR's market has more information available to the players than FF11. Asymetric information increases uncertainty, thus generally causes the price to fluctuate more, and decreases market activity. I won't go on to claim that there is a best market system...as it pretty much depends on the purpose of the market. Some player likes the blind auction element in FF11, but I don't think its suitable for facilitating mass market transaction, which is the reason it is not used in the real world stock market. However, government does use blind auction to award projects to minimize their cost...the mechanism behind it involves some complex statistical calculations and application of game theory, which is beyond the scope of this discussion.

[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.

[Kazamoto]

Half my point above was that both FFXI and FFXIV:ARR are free markets by their very definition.

Words have definitions and I listed the one for free market in my last post, especially when they are used to define economic concepts.

It's just alladeen to use words in such a alladeen. (Bonus points if you get the reference.)

Price fixing can still be done now, even worse as they can see the exact price of every listing below their target price and buy it out.

Last, I think this is the first case ever of someone complaining about being paid more for something than they expected.

[Whhambulance]

Didn't bother to read past 1st post, but would you go shopping if you had to guess at what the price was of the item at the store?

The idea is to increase sales and to make it user friendly. The market board is for quick exchange of currency for goods, not a time sink where you "attempt" to buy goods all day guessing at prices.

I know id love to sit at the register of a walmart handing money to the cashier waiting for her to tell me its enough. 1$ , 5$ , 10$ , 20$... oh awesome its enough (cashier puts 5$ in her pocket) It just don't work out right for the buyer it only helps the seller.

And if you look on the large scale of all the savings to the buyer it makes, should result in more sales of items.

[Roaran]

Next time you go to the grocery store, go up to the counter and try to pay for everything at last week's price. See how well that works, and then when they tell you to gtfo, give them a link to this thread and see how well it goes.

[ShinkuTachi]

Sorry, I fail to see how real world economics works in a game where the player base fails to take into account the difficulty to obtain items, the levels at which items are obtained, and etc. The player base can't get any sort of value set to stuff, and people just want their items to sell fast. If real world businesses followed the economics of this game, they would be running themselves into bankruptcy; however they don't, because real world businesses aren't undercutting each other into oblivion the moment they see a competitor adjust their price or undercut them.

Please, tell me about the time you went to a store or a resturant and you saw prices bouncing like a yo-yo from full price to 90% off, by the minute.

Until this starts operating like a 'real world' market, I believe we can cut the 'real life' example bs.

[Kazamoto]

Until this starts operating like a 'real world' market, I believe we can cut the 'real life' example bs.

The fact that the economy is not functioning as it should, is the reason for the 'real life' examples. Our points all along, is people are focusing 120% on the fast sale and not their profits.

True Facts?
Friday, I noticed Aldgoat hides were ~100g, and aldgoat leather was ~270-300g.
I mine my own crystals and alumen.

So, I bought a stock pile of hides at and below 100g. Crafted a stack that sold almost instantly at 290g each.
Did a bunch of dungeons and crafted in off times in between.
Sunday rolls around, I go to post up the few more stacks I have made, and now the average price is 99g each for the leather.
A few sellers, selling 5+ full stacks, for 99g, 98g, and 97g.
Price of the hides? 110g

So, now I'm going to sit on my stock of leathers until the price goes back up, but seriously, this crap is dumb.

[Errant]

Sorry, I fail to see how real world economics works in a game where the player base fails to take into account the difficulty to obtain items, the levels at which items are obtained, and etc. The player base can't get any sort of value set to stuff, and people just want their items to sell fast.

Then the said item is not as valuable or as difficult to obtain than you think. People will undercut as long as they are making a profit out of it, whether it's undercutting by 1 gil or 50k gil is totally up to them. It happens in real life as well. There are some product/service focused on providing low margin, high volume sales and vice versa. If someone is willing to take almost zero profits to reduce their inventory, they're entitled to do so.

[Wazabi]

In game economy in a way still obeys real world economic rules...just that some people sees it, some don't, and some just choose to deny its existence. The differences are just the mechanics, constraint, complexity, and the size of the market.

When you are constantly selling something at 1000g, you will think that is the 'fair' price. But for me, I might be gathering/crafting these items myself, or that I think my time is worth less, so I price mine at 500 and make a smaller profit, but increases the number that I sell comparing to the price of 1000...I might even end up with a higher total profit though the margin is smaller. Still, there are also economic reasons to sell items at below the cost...I could had made a mistake and want to liquidate my holdings, or I could be crafting those to level up my crafter, in which case I'm willing to take those losses to gain crafting xp. Or,it could be part of my pricing strategy to corner a market and kick out competitors. I do not deny that there are undercutters who doesn't know what they are doing...and frankly, I don't care. People undercut for a lot of reasons. It is you who are not able to figure it out and use undercutting to your advantage. Heck, if I'm a buyer, I would love undercutters to make price affordable.

Hiding the current sell price just increases the cost of buying items (by soending more time) and decreases the liquidity of the market. How do you know you are not being undercut in that system? Just because you don't see or understand something doesn't means it's not real.