Market ideas, and how to fix it.

[Tommara]

#1. No, the fee is not what you think it is. It is a gil sink fee and removes gil from the market. In any mmo, the amount of gil that enters the market must also be removed from the market to keep the game healthy. If gil is not removed from the game you get a pile up of gil and inflation of prices. Anyone new and entering the game would never be able to afford anything in the game. We eliminate players into the community thus hurting the game. This scenario has been seen thousands of times over countless MMOs. This is why the term gold-sink came into existence.

At the same time, gil must enter the community at the same rate it is being destroyed or there will be no gil eventually over time. Adding a fee to any item sold is a great way to remove gil. If you've seen MMOs since the dawn of their time, you would know that listing fees of any type is a gil/gold sink feature. Like these FC houses which will be gigantic gil sinks.This should be common knowledge.

Gil sinks are required, but they don't have to be a surcharge for listing an item. It's not a "great way to remove gil". It's an awful barrier to entry. Google "barrier to entry" if you're not familiar with the term. I've played MMOs since the dawn of time, although my primary source of information derives from about 2 decades as a regulator of monopolies.

WoW's auction house majorly sucks, as have all of its AH clones, with its onerous barriers to entry compared to EQ, EQ2, Eve Online, and more recently, Anarchy Online (relatively recent improved access to market), etc. lack of market barriers. What makes their markets work is the fact that items sold are useful, sometimes not trivial to obtain, and there are few barriers to entry.

Gil sinks are necessary, but put them elsewhere, anywhere but barriers to entry to the game's market.

What's causing FF14's markets to fail is the fact that there are so many people uninterested (or filling time waiting for a group) in the level 50 combat game that they are now crafting and harvesting instead. I'm on a relatively new server, and am making a ton of gil from crafting, but I don't expect that to continue. Adding barriers to entry would only make the problem worse, creating a situation where high level characters have the means to eliminate competition.

Low prices derive from the fact that level 50's have nothing better to do, which creates too much competition and reduces their incentive to pay other people to provide things for them that they should be too busy to obtain for themselves.