The markets, stalls, price listing and undercutting. (A suggestion)

[RabidSquirrel]

Stalls: No one uses them anymore, they're just not necessary other than to provide us with an even more expensive way to sell our goods.
Our first idea was to limit price listings to those using stalls, or a fee to the price listing itself. An extra tax per se.

To stop stall camping, a cool down timer would be added, or a queue much like those on leves.

I always thought the stalls were interesting, and they should reward those who use them some sort of benefit.
I enjoy the Item search counter but the price listing is killing us.

Okay...so let me get this straight... You want to place a cooldown on something no one uses anymore. Um...what? The stalls are a flawed idea which I noticed very quickly. Back during the days of no item search, I always found myself never checking any stalls. Why? Because you literally are going a little out of your way, making an effort to target them specifically, only to find out they're selling exactly what everyone else is selling. Everyone else, who are all clustered together and easier to sift through. Now that there exists an item search, the stalls are made even more useless. Also, no amount of fair incentive will make the stalls work.

And another thing: Cooldowns are the poor man's way of solving balance issues. If balancing is too difficult without the addition of cooldowns, then more variables need to be added or variables need to be removed.

[darkstarpoet1]

i have no problems with people undercutting my prices. it's basic economics. as more people can make items the price is going to fall automatically. i have no problems selling my items. you have to learn to read the wards and if something gets cheaper than you can make an item then either move on or figure out how to produce the items cheaper. yes, your gil made does decrease, but anything is better than nothing.

to the people complaining about selling of out dated gear for cheap prices. if you buy a tv this year and decide to sell it when you get something nicer later do you try to get retail for it of just try to get it gone to get some of your money back? i personally throw it in the wards cheap and if it doesn't sell in a few weeks i npc it.

[Oscillate_Wildly]

Wow, God forbid anyone suggest something new in these forums that goes against the grain.
Why not try to salvage something we already have instead of dumping it in favour of a less popular system, hm?


People -had- been using the stalls until the markets crashed so often, dumping the retainers that it became a pain in the ass. Now that the problem is more or less solved for now why not give them a special purpose? Or sure, why not. Let's continue bashing crafters and cater the game towards the obnoxious minority that screams "Economics!" while also simultaneously declaring their blatant laziness and kindergarten antics of "He hit me first, so I hit him back."

So could we please get back onto the topic of thinking of new ways to make the market wards a more interesting experience?

[Mack]

"Undercutting" is a natural ebb and flow of a marketplace. It is frustrating, but it's not immoral.

Actually any basic economics class will tell you there are laws that limit undercutting otherwise its easy for someone to monopolize. Since this is a game, no such laws exist and since people value their time in game differently - i.e., someone wont care much about spending countless hours farming so they will not build that into the price of a finished item(s) they worked on, whereas someone else will account for everything. In real life, your time is of value, unlike a video game, so there has to be some measures taken to keep the market steady.

[Xenor]

i have no problems with people undercutting my prices. it's basic economics. as more people can make items the price is going to fall automatically. i have no problems selling my items. you have to learn to read the wards and if something gets cheaper than you can make an item then either move on or figure out how to produce the items cheaper. yes, your gil made does decrease, but anything is better than nothing.

Again, people don't undercut because of price. They undercut because they want their shit to sell first. I highly doubt the guy who just undercut my garnet rings by 1k cares about that 1k gil. 1k in this game is trash, it's like the 1p change you get at the shop in real life. He just wanted his to sell first. As a result I've had to drop mine by 2k. Not because I feel his are too expensive, but in retaliation for his childish game of "me me me please can i go first!1!". My mule will be sat by the wards waiting for him to do it again to respond quickly and efficiently.

[SuzakuCMX]

I'd rather all the wards converge in one, non-starter city, they get rid of retainers as sellers, and just have the stalls represent what the wards are right now -- an NPC auctioneer for each ward. You could tell your retainer to go put stuff up on the market for however much for a small fee (like 2% of the price you put up) on top of the market tax (just a bit of convenience charge).

It makes it more organized and gives you one less reason to stay in Ul'dah.

[Shai]

Actually any basic economics class will tell you there are laws that limit undercutting otherwise its easy for someone to monopolize. Since this is a game, no such laws exist and since people value their time in game differently - i.e., someone wont care much about spending countless hours farming so they will not build that into the price of a finished item(s) they worked on, whereas someone else will account for everything. In real life, your time is of value, unlike a video game, so there has to be some measures taken to keep the market steady.

Time spent in a video game is time spent in real life. You need look no further than what a booming industry RMT has become in the last decade. 1 WoW Gold coin was worth more than a Peso in 2006 (haven't read much about MMO economics since then, but its an interesting study). Since there's no minimum wage in an MMO, what your time is worth to you is determined by the individual. This system is frustrating, but it's working. There's nothing wrong with how the markets work - and yes it is easy for a monopoly to form (as I illustrated) for someone like RMT who work round the clock and produce more with cheap labor. (They are in effect the immigrants taking our jobs as Peregrine said wouldn't happen in an MMO).

The thing is you could do this as well. You could form a LS (or Company if you will) that is dedicated to producing and supplying arrows. The members of this Company include crafters, gatherers, and people (presumably all members) guard the Market place and make sure no one cuts in to their profits too much - or you bully them out of the marketplace by driving prices so low they aren't profitable (but you have the funds to do so) or buy them up and resell them higher.

All you'd need to do it is a collective bank and the man power.

Anyway my original point is that time in a video game is time in real life so they should have an equal value. The reason RMT works isn't because people are lazy (though that helps) but because farming individually for 1 hour will yield 100k gil (making up #s) but a RMT can afford to sell 1m gil for what you make at your job in 1 hour of real life work. This is a breaking point for individuals who don't care about the Terms of Service or think that they should "earn" as much gil in game as they could "in real life" in the same amount of time.

[Shai]

And it hasn't been said in this thread yet, but most of these posts are entirely crying about how people aren't making as much money as they want to make and totally ignoring the buyer.

Yes, some one who wants to sell fast has dropped the price of your arrows by 5k through a series of undercutting wars. Think about this from the Archer's point of view who doesn't craft and only makes his gil from questing, leves, selling drops to NPC or maybe the rare farming for rare items to sell in the wards. It's his lucky day that this process exists!

The system works well as long as RMT don't get involved and/or legit players don't organize an effort to control products. Even if they did, though, there's a breaking point for all buyers. If you control all silver arrows and raise the price by 20k, there's a fair chance that buyers won't put up with that and a more stable, reasonable price will be found - especially if you want to sell more than you're buying up as people undercut you all day.

This market transparency works quite a bit better than the blind auction of FFXI. I know there are several varieties of AH out there now, but the Wards is clearly a better working economy than the XI auction house (which was subject to all kinds of abuse because you couldn't really see much behind the scenes).

[darkstarpoet1]

Again, people don't undercut because of price. They undercut because they want their shit to sell first. I highly doubt the guy who just undercut my garnet rings by 1k cares about that 1k gil. 1k in this game is trash, it's like the 1p change you get at the shop in real life. He just wanted his to sell first. As a result I've had to drop mine by 2k. Not because I feel his are too expensive, but in retaliation for his childish game of "me me me please can i go first!1!". My mule will be sat by the wards waiting for him to do it again to respond quickly and efficiently.

isn't any market about moving your product as fast and efficiently as possible? it doesn't matter if one sell makes me 10k if by lowering the price i can sell 5x as many of that product and still make 10k profit. if i can gather and produce the item cheaper than it is being sold and make gil while skilling up you're right i am going to sell it for less.

[Xandre]

I can sum this up pretty easily.
Don't be greedy.