Can we get changes to the Market Board?

[Enkidoh]

The Market Board is not an auction house, it's just a list of player-run (read: retainers) stores - think of it more like Amazon.com than ebay.

As for why SE has made it like this, it goes back to FFXI and how players absued the bazaar and Auction House systems there, to the point hyperinflation was rampant and out of control. And because players were using alt characters as bazaars, leaving them logged in while away from their computer/console (such as while sleeping or working), SE decided when FFXIV 1.0 was in development to actually remove the bazaar function from the player's own character, and placing that responsibility into a npc who will remain logged into the game even when the player's character is logged out.

Accordingly, in 1.0 there was a special Market Ward zone where retainers were placed, but the actual result was far less ideal (it was an absolute lag fest as well as being a nightmare to find anything). Hence when ARR was designed retainer stores were further streamlined into no longer physically appearing in an actual zone,so the Market Ward zones were abolished, but instead retainer shops were arranged in a list that could be easily searched - thus the Market Board was born.

I agree it can be further tweaked, but given the fact it's working reasonably well, I doubt we'll see an actual FFXI style Auction House added as it would just be superfluous.

[Xanikk999]

snip

I disagree with your reasoning. Inflation was out of control in FFXI for mainly the lack of two effective gold sinks. The first gold sink would be the necessity of repairing your gear for gold which FFXI did not have. The second was most gear was not bound on use (not sure if this was ever changed). You could use it and resell it at the current value and this lead to most gear changing hands without a reduction in price. There was not much incentive to craft new gear to cash out since the materials for higher level stuff dropped from lengthy rare spawns (NM).This lead to items getting into the millions of gil even for things like basic gear. This was the case of affairs when I quit during chains of promathia.