Buying less than 99

[Irenae]

I think that if a stack of 99 is available on the market board and we like the per unit price, but only want to buy say 5 then we should be able to buy 5 from a stack of 99 leaving 94 available to sell. Very beneficial your products sell faster and more reliably while buyers can get what they want. This also helps crafters as they can leave a stack of 99 and know that some of it will sell as opposed to the status quo, which oftentimes leaves people selling a stack of 99 not being able to sell at all, unless we use separate low quantity stacks, and when you only have 40 spaces to sell that is a big hurt on you for not being able to put your products up on the board for sale. Being able to buy X ingots at a time from a stack of 99 would save everyone a large headache.

[Darkwerk]

No, as a seller you have limited amount of space to list items in, thus Items listed in bulk often can be priced cheaper, but knowing that many buyers only wanted smaller lots sellers often will mark up the unit price to offer a smaller lot service, the cost for this is passed to the buyer of course.

[Wazabi]

If you know that people usually needs only 5 of that item, why are you selling it in a 99/stack? And if you are able to buy loose pieces, do you think other people who's trying to get rid of their stacks of 99 is just gonna sit there while you undercut them?

Doing so kills of a dimension of the game where aside from pricing your goods, you can also decide to break bulk and sell it at a premium. So no.

[Wulfies]

If you know that people usually needs only 5 of that item, why are you selling it in a 99/stack? And if you are able to buy loose pieces, do you think other people who's trying to get rid of their stacks of 99 is just gonna sit there while you undercut them?

Doing so kills of a dimension of the game where aside from pricing your goods, you can also decide to break bulk and sell it at a premium. So no.

If this is the "new sub-game" to play, then why are they hand tieing us with only 40 retainer spots? Err more to the point, the ability to sell 40 things at a time.

[RhazeCain]

This idea would clearly benefit the buyer. However, think of it from the seller's side:

- Buying only part of the stack doesn't clear spot in the 40 items I'm allowed to sell at once.
- Buying only part of the stack doesn't put as much gil in my pocket as if you were to buy the whole stack.

Think of real life: Why are there often bulk or wholesale discounts?

If such a feature were implemented, sellers would have to take it into account. There would not be any bulk discounts offered.

[Wazabi]

If this is the "new sub-game" to play, then why are they hand tieing us with only 40 retainer spots? Err more to the point, the ability to sell 40 things at a time.

Think a little deeper...if they don't hand tie us, then this "sub-game" wouldn't be there.

[XenabelleS]

Other players aren't NPCs.

Doing this would destroy sellers as noone would ever pay for anything above the minimum price.

I've bought and sold things in stacks and I think the system is fine the way it is

[Ishmachiah]

I think that if a stack of 99 is available on the market board and we like the per unit price, but only want to buy say 5 then we should be able to buy 5 from a stack of 99 leaving 94 available to sell. Very beneficial your products sell faster and more reliably while buyers can get what they want.

I disagree with this. The only reason why the per unit price is so low is because I am attempting to sell 99 of them. If I were selling one or five, rest assured the per unit price would be significantly higher.

[Wulfies]

If this is the "new sub-game" to play, then why are they hand tieing us with only 40 retainer spots? Err more to the point, the ability to sell 40 things at a time.

Think a little deeper...if they don't hand tie us, then this "sub-game" wouldn't be there.

I am all-about the hand-tieing to make it hard but think this is a bit extrememe. For example, when I sell my HQ Electrum Ore, I know to sell 'em in multiples of 4 (4 ores = 1 ingot in this case.) I make no allusions on how peoples minds work but given the price of HQ ore on the market I really doube people are willing to buy more than 20 at a go. As a seller i wish they bought them like that (more space to put other crap materials/gear ) but that doesnt seem feasible. So i have 2 options:

1) use 3 or 4 retainer spots with small 4-12 stacks and recheck daily and re-supply as needed or
2) use all my retainer spots and with small stacks and hope that people buy them.

Personally, I do the former rather than the latter to reduce the overstock of supply.

But there in lies an underlying problem said suscintly in another post:

Buying from Stacks

Since I didn't read 50 pages of this I am just going to point out until they effectively remove afk botters from the game and allow actual player supply to be the only supply. This would not work as the botters being able to effectively gather large amounts of materials much much faster could easily undercut all the actual player straight out of the market.

Till this is done I think however much we advocate our position on the topic, our arguments are kind of moot don't you think?

[Wazabi]

I am all-about the hand-tieing to make it hard but think this is a bit extrememe. For example, when I sell my HQ Electrum Ore...

Ah...I see the problem now. The underlying problem is not retainer space, but more on your choice on what to sell.

Electrum ingot is a lv40+ craft if I remember correctly...the HQ ore doesn't sells well. People at their 40s will generally push it to 50 quickly, which then they would be able to HQ an ingot without the needs of HQ ore. Those that use HQ ore are only Goldsmith, crafting it into HQ ingots to sell it to other classes...however by this time HQ electrum ingot market would had been dominated by level 50 crafters who can easily craft them from NQ ore. Thus the motivation to craft HQ electrum ingot is less than the lower level ingots, which directly results in a lower demand of electrum ore. Even when a goldsmith is using it at level 40 to HQ some of his equipments, he's gonna be needing way more than 4 of them...so I would say you're in the wrong market to break bulk, and you're breaking them wrong.

You might think that increasing retainer space will allow you to sell more...but that's misguided. It only allows you to list more....along with all the other players. Increasing retainer slots by 50% would increase the number of items being sold in the market by 50%. That's 50% more competition than what you are looking at now, 50% more items will be listed in minimum quantity. Do you think your item will still sell? This would allow the minority of dedicated farmer who had perfected their technique (or bots, but that's another separate issue by itself) to move more of their efficiently obtained materials.