Overhauling the Auction House system

[nugglets]

People will absolutely sell at a loss. Rolanberry Cheesecake is cheaper to buy on Balmung than the ingredients to make it. That's a bit silly but I guess alumen, which is a level 20 item, going for very high prices for its level is also silly.

That is not selling for a loss. The cost to farm the mats needed is based on your concept of what your time is worth. While there are certain things which are more profitable to sell the mats than the finished item, this does not constitute a loss unless you are dumb enough to actually pay more for the mats and still sell the finished product.

[subteraneanbird]

That is not selling for a loss. The cost to farm the mats needed is based on your concept of what your time is worth. While there are certain things which are more profitable to sell the mats than the finished item, this does not constitute a loss unless you are dumb enough to actually pay more for the mats and still sell the finished product.

And people do that. People on the whole range the entire gamut from shrew to clueless.

[The_Last_Dragoon]

Undercutting is the only thing that prevents hyper inflation in the market. Obviously, the items that are the easiest to obtain are elastic and may be 500 gil a piece one day and then turn out to be 112 gil the next, where as the extremely rare items like desynth swimsuits will probably never drop below 1 million gil a piece. It's all about supply and demand and realizing whether or not there's enough demand for the product to fit the current supply that's sitting on the market board. There will always be those who undercut like mad just so that their item is sold first, but I would bargain that the true winner is the player who puts their item up for a fair but higher price and gets it sold despite the undercutting.

Unfortunately, all of your ideas would just make the Market board worse since:

• Having a time limit + fee on items means that obscure items would be more vulnerable to trends.
• Having a lack of information in terms of what items are going for only leads to people abusing the system and newer players confused as to what is going on. Your model would probably cause players to create a Trade linkshell and shout out what they're selling instead of using the Market board.
• Bidding wars would happen instead of undercutting wars, and it's a lot more toxic to the community since it's not convenient to the consumer as well as being a way of muscling out players who don't spend hours in front of a summoning bell and don't have large amounts of gil to burn.

[Songi]

Even though I'm sitting on over 20mil at the moment, I still think the system of selling items in-game doesn't allow much flexibility. Also it doesn't really give players a good idea on how to properly price items and what consmers want. Them adding "wish list" was a good little touch but it doesn't really say how badly each individual wants said item. I'd like to see a proper auction system in place that allowed for timed bidding and min/max buyouts so selling to other players isn't such a hassle like it is now. Still give players a choice of using both systems to list and move inventory if they so desired. I want to see personal stores (Bazaar) come back as a way of advertising items for sale without having to resort to putting up an obnoxious party finder to let the area know what you're selling.

[nugglets]

And people do that. People on the whole range the entire gamut from shrew to clueless.

How do you know people do that? You're either assuming, or you know some stupid people.

Regardless, even if that is happening, it has nothing to do with the notion that the MB "needs" to be changed. It's totally fine, people just don't like the competition cutting into the profits they were used to.

[Kling-Klang]

For me the MB is fine as it is.

GW2's fee system works pretty good. You might want to add that their AH is cross-server (every single server sees the same items/prices). That's kind of a huge difference compared to FFXIV's server AH.

I hated gw2 auction house. Everything became worthles with such a huge auction house cross server. Farming and selling didnt bring any money anymore. And the fees were way too high...

[Ashkendor]

As the economy stands now,farming is worthless,crafting is worthless, and the games economic is bankrupt. The only thing of value right now is Matera. Cant have just one item type that has a high value while everything else is worthless this will destroy the economy wich is what we are seeing now. Implementing this idea would solve a lot of problems and allow the economy to stabilize and grow and everyone would win Except the gill sellers. Right now gill-sellers are loving what's going on right now because it is very easy to control the market by undercutting items and jacking up prices so that they can monopolise the AH 24/7, the economy will never recover at this rate. Players are going to get fed up with it eventually and mass subscriptions will be loss.

Erm, no. I've made several million in the past week through a combination of farming, crafting, and materia.

Overall, I've actually made more from farming and crafting than materia.

A realm Reborn held the recored at launch with its incredibly high numbers of subscribers, would be a shame to see the game spiral down the toilet because the games economy blows, because players will eventually get fed up and quite frankly some of them have already.

If people are gonna quit, they're gonna quit. Anyone that says the game's economy is terrible and it's hard to make money just hasn't really tried hard enough. There are plenty of things that are easy to farm that sell like crazy.

[subteraneanbird]

snip

1) I def know some people stupid enough to do it. 2) It is a fairly easy assumption to make, that in an MMO like this one where the only thing standing between people and these resources is time, that they are paying for convenience and as such will buy things at a "loss" for the convenience. Cheesecake was perhaps not the greatest example because by the time you need it you probably know better but the basic idea works.

And I agree. The system works fine. People get upset because the market moves much more quickly than anything they'd be used to in real life (imagine if the price of milk or gas doubled every weekend) but that's inherent to the game abstraction and not a problem.

[Nasibihc]

I do have something to say and it is that if you want to play using FFXI features, go play FFXI. Take this game for what it is right now, there's a long way to go so it may, or may not, change in the future.

I never said I wanted the system to be like it was in FFXI, but combine the elements of different systems to create a better one for this game.

Besides, why are you so negative & bent against creating something better that benefits everyone, even you? The system as it currently is, doesn't work for people who have little time to play each week for example. You put something up for sale, a minute after your price has been undercut and it won't sell until the next time the price goes up on par with yours again and that might not happen for the next week or month, leaving you unable to obtain money and advance with the game. On some occasions where the competition on selling certain items is so fierce, it forces people to stand by their retainer bell and alter the prices all the time if they want something sold without being able to enjoy the rest of the content in the game.

Of course people have their different opinions about if the system is good or not, but I see that it has problems that affect certain conditions. Also, I know that it's not an "auction house", I wrote that post at 4:30 a.m and I've always called the place where you can buy items off the listed charts an Auction House, no matter what the used method is plus I can't edit the topic anymore to make it say different. The point of the thread isn't the fact that it's a Market Board, but the point of this thread is just about creating ideas to make the current system _better_ and if you really don't have anything to contribute whether this system is good or bad, which is the point of this whole thread, then you don't have anything to say at all. Things won't change on their own, if we don't express our opinions on the game we play and everyone has their right to do that.

[Ashkendor]

Besides, why are you so negative & bent against creating something better that benefits everyone, even you? The system as it currently is, doesn't work for people who have little time to play each week for example.

Spoon-feeding people that don't have much time to play isn't the solution. The system as it is is fine - you get out of it what you put into it. If you put a lot of work and time into farming/crafting things to sell, you make money. Simple.

Most of what I hear in these threads is "I don't play much and I'm mad that I can't compete with players that do."

When the price on things tanks below what I'm willing to sell mine at, I either shrug and pull them down until the market corrects itself or I leave them listed at the price I was originally wanting to sell them at. Since I sell mostly items that are needed for many crafts, eventually the undercut ones sell and the price goes back up at least somewhat. The market is cyclical by nature. Learning to profit by the cycle is key. So is patience.