So WoW understands how to do crafting materials right.

[Maeka]

In the upcoming 8.3 Patch for WoW, they are changing their AH system so that you can tell the AH how much of what crafting material you want to buy, and the AH system will go through the cheapest items and give you a price quote and you click Buy and voila. You get the items.

For example...

You want 150 Iron Ore.

There's Player A who has 50 of them listed for 1g each.
There's Player B who has 75 of them listed for 2g each.
There's player C who has 200 of them listed for 2.5g each.

You tell the AH system you want 150 Iron Ore.

1). It will grab 50 of them for 1g each: 50g
2). It will grab 75 of them for 2g each: 150g
3). It will grab 25 of them for 2.5g each: 62.5g.

And it will tell you that you must pay 262.5g for the 150 Iron Ore.

I'm rather excited about this system and I wish we could have something similar in FFXIV.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

They could accomplish this easily enough by simply allowing us to purchase partial stacks. I can do the work to buy what quantity I’m looking for at the cheapest possible way once that’s done, I don’t need the game to do that much legwork for me.

[Darlantan]

I prefer this system, and I believe it would increase demand. Often I go to the AH to buy 1 or 2 items; however, no one is selling them in the quantity I want, so I generally don't buy.

[Canadane]

I might be mistaken but selling partial stacks was an option for the seller in 1.0 wasn't it?
I still prefer what we have now.

[Darlantan]

I don't believe it was ever possible to buy partial stacks.

[Maeka]

I prefer this system, and I believe it would increase demand. Often I go to the AH to buy 1 or 2 items; however, no one is selling them in the quantity I want, so I generally don't buy.

^^
This, so much.

I want 1-2 of something, and everybody is listing 50-99 of them and I go "nope. I'll just do without."

Usually it's fish for a GC turn-in, and they always list 2-3 more than what the GC actually wants to force you to buy extra. It doesn't work. I'd rather skip it than waste money on stuff I don't need.

It's a system that punishes buyers in favor of rich sellers, and the main people who cry out against people buying partial stacks are in fact the rich sellers who want to force people to buy in bulk when they don't really want to.

[Archaell]

A button to buy the requested amount for the cheapest price possible while buying the whole stacks listed by sellers - that would be nice.

One price per item would make the market part of the game more dull and boring.

[Maeka]

A button to buy the requested amount for the cheapest price possible while buying the whole stacks listed by sellers - that would be nice.

One price per item would make the market part of the game more dull and boring.

That still doesn't fix the problem of being forced to buy way more items than you actually want, which is what buyers want. Buyers are tired of having to buy 2x, 3x the amount of items because sellers think we need 50-99 of everything. And screw those people who insist on listing stacks of 5 HQ fish knowing that FSH quests want 3 (and 4 for the spearfishing fish) fish at a time.

I'm convinced they do it on purpose to force people to buy extra and then charge you for the extra.

[Dzian]

I might be mistaken but selling partial stacks was an option for the seller in 1.0 wasn't it?
I still prefer what we have now.

Yeah the seller had the choice when listing stacks of goods to allow the stacks to be broken or not.

The amount of money I'd spend on the market boards would be exponentially more if I could simply get what I needed without tons of extra stuff clogging up my inventory or sell slots.

So if you wanted to sell a bulk amount of ore you might list a stack of 99 at say 50k. But not allow the stack to be broken so the buyer must buy all 99 for the 50k price tag.

Or the seller could list the stack of 99 ores at 200k but allow people to just buy what they need at 2k per item.. or whatever unit price you set.

So someone wanting to buy large quantities would get better prices purchasing full stacks and people who just needed a specific number would be able to get exactly what they need in a single transaction.

I wish it still worked like this honestly was much better than what we have now.

Would likely increase demand for many items as well as I know many crafters will generally just go gather what they need to make the 3 nights instead of buying a stack of 25 or more off the markets. Where if they could easily purchase what they need they'd likely buy it and save time

[Maeka]

Would likely increase demand for many items as well as I know many crafters will generally just go gather what they need to make the 3 nights instead of buying a stack of 25 or more off the markets. Where if they could easily purchase what they need they'd likely buy it and save time

This right here is the very reason why I gave up leveling crafts (at least until the Beast Tribe arrives).

I wanna craft an item for GC to level DoH. So I open the list and see 30 different materials needed to make a sword. Okay, item #1 I need, say, 2 nuggets. Oh cute, the smallest stack on the MB is 20 and they want some 50,000 gil for that stack of nuggets. It wants 2 lumbers, check that... awesome. 30 lumbers for 40,000. Off to a great start. So okay it wants 1 glue. Well, look at that. Ten glues for 25,000 is the smallest stack.

So I could spend 115,000 gil to make that sword (that's only the first few materials) with the current system (and have a ton of crap left over and likely get undercut AND have to pay sales tax to sell the excess)..... or I could have instead spent 10,000 gil to buy JUST the materials I want/need.

And people wonder why buyers want to choose stack size!? You gotta be kidding me.