Do the developers even care about the market board, and its problems?

[Skivvy]

They could always just change the market board to the way FFXI's auction house was. You could only see the last price someone paid for the item rather than what people are actually selling it for. Never really saw undercutting in it or at least the undercutting wasn't nearly as aggressive as it is in this.

I would go back to an XI style auction house in a heartbeat. Price-fixing is the only main issue I can think of. I know that was a tactic of RMT. They would artificially lower the price on a particular item substantially, so then once the masses started selling at the lower number as well, they would buy them all up and then gouge the crap out of everyone. lol. So again, not bad, just playing the market....but perhaps that's what they were trying to avoid.

[therpgfanatic]

I would go back to an XI style auction house in a heartbeat. Price-fixing is the only main issue I can think of. I know that was a tactic of RMT. They would artificially lower the price on a particular item substantially, so then once the masses started selling at the lower number as well, they would buy them all up and then gouge the crap out of everyone. lol. So again, not bad, just playing the market....but perhaps that's what they were trying to avoid.

You can still do that right now with the current system. I can buy up all the bat wings from 1 gil on the market and relist them at 20-30 gil each, and people will buy them if it's super late at night and nobody else lists bat wings. I've done it several times. But the price inevitable drops down to 1 gil again within a few hours.

Price-fixing with listing fees is actually not a big issue because in order for it to work, the player needs to have a huge amount of money to constantly re-list their items, and be willing to take the risk of a big loss. Remember, there are listing fees. Even if they craft or gather the items, there is a time investment there, too.

It's entirely possible when the monopolizer to be list a bunch of items 50% below the market price and another player to buy those items up and then relist them at the actual going market price. Right now, people just relist their own item rather than buy the undercutters item and list it at a higher price, but if you just paid 5,000 gil to list an item and someone is now listing that item at 200 gil, it is cheaper to buy that item and relist it at a higher rate. It protects the investment you've already made with the listing fees. There is motivation from other players to stabilize the economy due to listing fees, that is why it works.

This means the monopolizer to be just lost money (he both paid a listing fee and sold the items well below market worth), and would need to regather / craft the items again in order to try his scheme.

It is much easier to do price-fixing when there isn't any listing fees. There is less financial risk. We see more of it right now because there is no listing fee.