Just a couple of problems with the Market Boards.

[ShinkuTachi]

Snip

If I had to choose one of those, I would just take the one from GW2. It definitely seems to add far less unnecessary complication than Eve's system. I mean, I can learn a system well enough to turn profits and make money; but you seem to be actually educated in economics as a social science. So I can see how you would see things differently. I'm in Lit and Philosophy.

Your last sentence there, I learned that very early on when I was younger and playing FFXI. If you weren't willing to go farm your own mats and stuff, you could easily drain all your savings in leveling a craft. As many times, the stuff you would craft cost more than the mats; if not that, you could barely break even depending on what you were crafting.

I hope you're right though, and I hope time is all we need to stabilize the market. I'm probably being impatient with this; at the same time, I've also taken to gathering and crafting much sooner than I did in FFXI for example, because I'm already at level cap on a battle class. In that game it took months to do what I accomplished in like 10 days in FFXI. xD

[Wazabi]

I'm only well verse on the technical side of the economy...but that doesn't makes me a good trader. A good trader on the other hand requires a different set of skills in order to make crazy profits from the market. Having these knowledge helps, but more often than not, these knowledge is more applicable to designing the market and conducting impact studies than making real gil/money.

With sufficient liquidity, market will stabalize. The reason it is not stabalizing now is that the supply and demand is in a state of flux due to player entry/leaving, and player progress. If you look at certain highly traded item, predominantly shards, the price doesn't moves that much on a day to day basis unless there is a supply shock (which happens in Malboro last week, hitting 60g-90g). If the market is less active, a shortage in supply will take days to recover, players start recognizing that it is profitable to mine shards (say it's 60g). When these players are done with their mining, you can expect multiple posting of larger stacks onto the market, still at a higher price. Eventually as the supply starts accumulating in the market, competition will force these sellers to undercut eachother until the price level is sufficiently low to increase the demand, consuming the excess supply, bringing the price back to the equilibrium level(say 30g). Now shards are not so profitable anymore, and these miners will mine or find other things to sell...then the supply and demand will tip over again, and the whole cycle starts all over.

In a sufficiently liquid market (particularly with a densely populated server), we can expect a constant supply into the market, and thus the fluctuation will be to a lesser magnitude.

That's why I also liked the GW2 style of cross server market...but it does means that it is harder to make abnormal profit.

[bwalker36]

[QUOTE=Wazabi;1480636]That's why I also liked the GW2 style of cross server market...but it does means that it is harder to make abnormal profit.[/QUOTE


That depends on how dedicated you were. If you wanted to cash in on those 7-10 copper spreads all day you could make a ton lol. I never had the patience for it though.

Wazabi you make a lot of great points and it brings back memories of my undergrad in economics. And you brought up the best point of all, undercutting is human nature you will never get rid of it, and you need to allow prices to stabilize on equilibrium level.

I don't think we will see any changes to the markets aside from UI QOL stuff.

[Wazabi]

Glad I could help put things into perspective. Much easier to explain them in a game context as its more relatable...wish my students were more inquisitive and critical about what I teach in class.

[Zigkid3]

Zigkid3 has repeatedly said that a presale listing fee would slow the drive to equilibrium.

Yes, which is a bad thing.

Price is the biggest factor for demand. Supply does not change demand directly...but it affects the price the item is being sold at, and thus affects demand.

Well supply would change where it intersects with demand to find the new price, hasn't actually changed demand just where it intersects.

There's also this thing called price elasticity where every item has different level of sesitivity to price changes. All these applies in the real world as much as in the game world. Players are faced with a choice then they open the market board to buy something. If its too high, they might choose to wait till the price drops or obtain it through other means. If it's very low, they might choose to buy up the item for consumptions later. If they urgently needs an item, they'll probably be willing to pay a higher price for it. That's why people are willing to pay more than 30g to buy hard leather when they are at Limsa or Girdania, but not in Uldah.

I tried explaining this to Kazamoto but I think he just ignored it.
He was complaining that people undercutting each other (assuming supply and demand stay the same) would change the price even though supply/demand hasn't changed. I tried telling him that while the quantity supplied/demanded may be unchanged, that the undercutting would cause a change in the slope of the curves. Hopefully mentioning elasticity and sensitivity makes it more clear to him.

[Kazamoto]

I'm indifferent towards tax at listing or tax at selling. You think that tax at listing will eliminate undercutting...but in reality, it only serves to hide undercutting. Supply and demand drives the price, tax...only a little.

What will happen is that players will be more cautious about their pricing, and will try to sell at a price that has the highest probability of clearing the market, which means lower price...so Zigkid3 is right that it will drive the price towards equilibrium quicker.

Zigkid3 has repeatedly said that a presale listing fee would slow the drive to equilibrium.

Yes, which is a bad thing.

Please use full quotes.

Elasticity is one thing, but how much should be considered normal? 10% of an Items cost? 20%? 50%? 75%?

Items get cut to 100g from 400g, then build back to 400g, only to be cut again.

400 -> 350 ? Sure, that could just be following a market trend, but when an item loses 75% of its value, either someone is doing something wrong, or there has been a massive increase in supply.
(looking at you bite size pudding!)

[bwalker36]

Please use full quotes.

Elasticity is one thing, but how much should be considered normal? 10% of an Items cost? 20%? 50%? 75%?

Items get cut to 100g from 400g, then build back to 400g, only to be cut again.

400 -> 350 ? Sure, that could just be following a market trend, but when an item loses 75% of its value, either someone is doing something wrong, or there has been a massive increase in supply.
(looking at you bite size pudding!)

Agreed, but there is third option and that could be that it was overvalued and the market is making a correction. Demand could have pushed something really high and for some reason it lingered even as demand fell and supply stayed the same. In that scenario you could see a big correction and quickly. More times than not its just someone looking for a quick sale and the masses not realizing it and just following suit with pricing.

[Zigkid3]

Please use full quotes.

Elasticity is one thing, but how much should be considered normal? 10% of an Items cost? 20%? 50%? 75%?

Items get cut to 100g from 400g, then build back to 400g, only to be cut again.

400 -> 350 ? Sure, that could just be following a market trend, but when an item loses 75% of its value, either someone is doing something wrong, or there has been a massive increase in supply.
(looking at you bite size pudding!)

Items that experience extreme fluctuations are those with few suppliers and few transactions.

Take a look at trading goods with a ton of sellers and buyers everyday, those relatively stay within a certain range.


As for the the bit about taxes, many people on the forum here who complain about undercutters such as yourself are trying to propose a taxation for every time an item price is adjusted, as well as listed (because people would otherwise take an item down and then relist it to avoid the adjusting price tax). In that case taxes would increase. As a result prices will increase as a response in an attempt of sellers trying to pass the tax burden onto the buyers. People will also be discouraged from selling so you'll have less suppliers as well. And it will increase the dead weight loss. my posts about changes in taxation are regarding this method.

What Wazabi was talking about is whether or not the tax which is the same amount and there's no penalty on adjustments, only difference being that the 5% once it's posted vs. after sale. Assuming you could post as many things as you want on the board, he's right in that it won't really make a difference technically speaking. With this method technically nothing really happened.
However my only problem with this is that there is a limit on how many items you are selling. If by chance for some reason you can not sell the item, even if you are trying your best by undercutting or w/e and theres just too many people or people arent buying it for w/e reason because no one wants it or w/e, then it's going to take up space. Because if you try to sell more stuff but reached you 40 item selling limit, the item that is not selling is taking up valuable space to sell other stuff, if you decide to take it down to sell something else instead to make room for something more profitable then once you take it off the boards then thats 5% tax for doing nothing not even a sale.

[ShinkuTachi]

Items that experience extreme fluctuations are those with few suppliers and few transactions.

Take a look at trading goods with a ton of sellers and buyers everyday, those relatively stay within a certain range.

I'm not going to say this is completely false, because your experience on your server may differ. However, the market on Hyperion is a true yo-yo, and that statement applied to this server is false in my experience.

[Zigkid3]

I'm not going to say this is completely false, because your experience on your server may differ. However, the market on Hyperion is a true yo-yo, and that statement applied to this server is false in my experience.

Generally speaking.
Take a look at certain trading goods that's traded with a multitude of suppliers and the transaction history is all from the current day. Then compare those price fluctuations with other items that may only have a dozen or so suppliers and people only buy it maybe a couple times a day.

As for my server, common trade goods & materia among some other things are pretty stable, I rarely see any huge and consistent price fluctuations that people seem to be talking about. Whether they're exaggerating or not who knows.