Gm Elrindonar told Momo to post here on a market board issue

[RethDaron]

People will hate to hear this but a centralized market board is one of the big reasons for how easy it is to control the market. Most games with an auction house, market board, etc. have these problems. WoW gets away with it only because there's so many players. From my experience games without a central trading location (ESO, UO, Mabinogi) all have player economies that gives everyone a chance to sell. Those games have a bigger focus on crafted items too, XIV's economy is pretty poor in comparison. 1.0 had a much better base for a good economy but it was too complicated for most people (and people didn't use market wards right).

[Snow_Princess]

People will hate to hear this but a centralized market board is one of the big reasons for how easy it is to control the market. Most games with an auction house, market board, etc. have these problems. WoW gets away with it only because there's so many players. From my experience games without a central trading location (ESO, UO, Mabinogi) all have player economies that gives everyone a chance to sell. Those games have a bigger focus on crafted items too, XIV's economy is pretty poor in comparison. 1.0 had a much better base for a good economy but it was too complicated for most people (and people didn't use market wards right).

I agree, 1.0 had a healthier economy.It was not perfect by any means, but much better then 2.0+. For starters I like to see the repair NPC prices and melding prices to be much higher then now while bringing back player repair. My guess is people complained about not finding someone to meld their gear? ever think that came from players not finding it worth doing (looking for work in general) due to the lack of requests?


We need more gil sinks, gil needs to be worth something, not just buying minions and 1 million bunnies.

I don't really understand what the problem is.... if it's so "easy" to be a crafter and control the market... why not just do it yourself? Leveling crafters, gearing up etc takes a lot of time and effort - certainly more than I'm willing to put in - so why shouldn't crafters be free to charge what they like? Maybe it depends on your server, but the economics seem fine to me. The 250 stuff was expensive right after the patch, but it's already gone down by so much because more people are making it.

If, as you seem to be implying, only one person it making it... then yeah, they can charge whatever they like.

Since I need to speak though someone else, I had more to say about this but couldn't figure out how to put it. So you are basically saying the markets and selling things are restricted to those that play 24/7 and can run the market boards, and you wonder why not many make things to begin with, even on a populated server such as Balmung, most things are run by a select few.

In the end of the day I am wondering why only battle stuff is the focus of fixing when the market board problem existed since 2.0

~~~Momo

[DarkkenMoneybags]

I have to say that I sometimes tend to think some of the Endgame Free Companies are controlling the Central Market Board with a second toon. 1.0 was a decent market system if everyone knew how to use it. I do agree more gil sinks need to be put in place but it also seems they won't do any good with the current ones programmed into the system. Its like they fix it then it somehow goes back in favor to the controller of the MB's. I can only hope for a new and improve system in 4.0 and the ways to get in getting players to see the issue by getting speaking on here and if a GM/Rep comes in the discussion from time to time to keep people from steering the problem away. I feel this is the best logical way of getting heard on here and in-game if you know a way of shouting to get players who also care about the issue.

[Airget]

Apparently a different gm felt it was in the wrong section. What are the feelings on how easy it is for one person to control the markets?

"easy" is a bit light. I don't do it but what you are calling easy is, having 2 other alts, going through the 2.0-3.0 story and potentially more later on if they want to use them in 4.0. Then gearing up all 3 characters with the proper gear to craft while obtaining blue scrips for all 3 of the books they need on top of farming the weekly red scrips needed to obtain the gear they need to have enough craft/control to craft what they want all while they have a specialist in everything.


If someone spends their time playing the game to do that, it's their time, it's wrong to punish a player who took that time all because you feel they control the market heavily.While they might have more flexibility over the market they did put the time to get to that point it's not as if they used an exploit to cheat and get their gear blue/red scrips etc. They had to go through a lot of story, lving a DOW/DOM to get to 60 to reach the point of being able to arrive at the content of their choice and then on top of that most likely lv a majority of DOH to 60 to have the cross-class abilities they needed.

[basketofseals]

People will hate to hear this but a centralized market board is one of the big reasons for how easy it is to control the market. Most games with an auction house, market board, etc. have these problems. WoW gets away with it only because there's so many players. From my experience games without a central trading location (ESO, UO, Mabinogi) all have player economies that gives everyone a chance to sell. Those games have a bigger focus on crafted items too, XIV's economy is pretty poor in comparison. 1.0 had a much better base for a good economy but it was too complicated for most people (and people didn't use market wards right).

Too complicated? It was AWFUL. Let's talk like having a centralized market boar has no upsides. It's extremely convenient.

[RethDaron]

Too complicated? It was AWFUL. Let's talk like having a centralized market boar has no upsides. It's extremely convenient.

But it stopped the undercutting that people are complaining about. It's convenient, yes. IMO it comes to what your priorities are - a more healthy economy or convenience. I think 1.0 had the former (and not just the lack of a central board, but how crafts are multi-tiered and depended on other crafts more often than not to complete items). I guess that's why I'm still playing XI and only check in with XIV casually after 2.0.

One is no better than the other. XI and the new post 2.0 XIV has two very different audiences for most systems.

[basketofseals]

But it stopped the undercutting that people are complaining about. It's convenient, yes. IMO it comes to what your priorities are - a more healthy economy or convenience. I think 1.0 had the former (and not just the lack of a central board, but how crafts are multi-tiered and depended on other crafts more often than not to complete items). I guess that's why I'm still playing XI and only check in with XIV casually after 2.0.

One is no better than the other. XI and the new post 2.0 XIV has two very different audiences for most systems.

I can tell you the vast majority of people who were playing at the time did not like it. If you were looking for something like shards or potions it was fine, but if you wanted to buy or sell rare/niche glamour pieces, you were SOL. If we had the old market system a large majority of stuff would just become vendor trash because the effort of finding it in the marketplace would be more than the effort of just getting it yourself.

People complain about undercutting everywhere, everytime. It's not a real problem. People just don't like it when their profits visibly go down, but you know what, that's how an economy works.

[LineageRazor]

If you are on Balmung, what you are witnessing is NOT someone "controlling the market". Balmung is one of the most densely populated servers there is, and has a crafting population to match. The only way anyone could control a market for any length of time is if they are the ONLY wealthy crafter of that item. While I could MAYBE see that happening on a low-population server, it simply will not be the case on Balmung; even the most niche items will have dozens upon dozens of people making it, and anyone who tries to crash the market will run out of cash eventually - and then those dozens of other crafters can easily move back in. It's frankly impossible to scare someone away from a market in this game, because there's simply no threat of bankruptcy involved. If a market gets bad, leave, wait for it to stabilize, then come back. It's not like you have to pay business start-up costs, or have debts or loans to pay off.

Since a GM directed you here, my guess is that you contacted the GMs to complain about undercutting, or to accuse a player of trying to control the market. I can tell you now that no GM will do anything about that; they are completely hands-off when it comes to the economy, and thank God. GMs are not economists (note, neither are most players, which is why you see so many bone-headed market moves in the first place), and trying to "fix" things could only make them worse. They will enforce deals that a player attempts to welch on, but that's another thing entirely. If you are trying to sell an item, and it appears that a player is attempting to control the price of that item, simply leave that market. Keep an eye on it, wait until the player tries to raise the price again, and then sell. Meanwhile, continue to profit on other products instead.

There's also players who mistake the natural decrease in prices of an item as being some player conspiracy. In the case of ilvl 250 gear, it's perfectly normal for the first couple units to sell for a mint, and then for the price to drop considerably over time as more and more crafters try to cash in. The same will happen for the ingredients used to make those items. Before throwing around accusations of market manipulation, best to make sure that the market isn't actually just behaving normally!

[RethDaron]

I can tell you the vast majority of people who were playing at the time did not like it. If you were looking for something like shards or potions it was fine, but if you wanted to buy or sell rare/niche glamour pieces, you were SOL. If we had the old market system a large majority of stuff would just become vendor trash because the effort of finding it in the marketplace would be more than the effort of just getting it yourself.

People complain about undercutting everywhere, everytime. It's not a real problem. People just don't like it when their profits visibly go down, but you know what, that's how an economy works.

I'm not here to argue which people liked better, just that they were made for two different audiences. And yes, I referenced people not using the market wards right. They put some heavy taxes if you placed items in the wrong ward later on but it was too late by then. The market wards in 1.0 are like ESO's guild stores now and that game has a great economy. Much better than 2.0.

Even if they were to reintroduce wards it'd be for nothing by now though - the item market/economy/crafting in 1.0 is completely different than 2.0+.

[Chalbee]

OP, the market is not that hard to get a piece of. Find an item, invest, sell. If someone else moves on your market, it only takes a few hours to determine whether or not you can float enough cash to call their bluff. From another angle, many common consumables (e.g. silver ingots, walnut lumber) are price-fixed by default. Only a handful of people are selling it, and we all seem to consistently list at about the same price (this is the case on my server at least). If you're talking about big-ticket items, the problem isn't a cornering of the market, the problem is many of them require some pretty outrageous minimum stats, so of course only a few people are making/selling them. The i250 crafted gear needs min. 995 crafting or something crazy like that. How many people are running around your server with those numbers?

Alternative advice: Sell furniture. People will pay unconscionable sums of gil for a couch.