So WoW understands how to do crafting materials right.

[JowyAtreides]

I'm hit and miss with this, mainly because I exploit the market by selling lower quantities for slightly higher prices knowing full well people want smaller stacks and would pay more per item if it meant a saving overall without excess materials

I guess in reality, there should indeed be more player convenience, and this feature would do that.

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.

I suppose one of the good (and bad) things about this game, is that many of the materials you'd over-buy, could be used to sell not just the sword, but the axe and greatsword too

[Maeka]

But what if I out-level the recipes, and now the GC wants new recipes?

What if I don't want enough materials to make 10 weapons?

What if I don't want to blow 200,000 gil to make 10 weapons right now?

The point is... I should have a choice, but the system (and the sellers) don't give me this choice. It's either that, or blow an hour+ per item farming up the materials.

I choose the third option of just waiting until beast tribes. But that means a lot of lost sales that these sellers could have made if I could have chosen to buy 1 or 2 items at a time.

[Darlantan]

The primary issue I see with this economy is there's not enough demand for items in general. Part of that is due to the competition of crafted items vs. PvE items, which are typical in a theme park MMO, but the other part is the way the AH is currently setup. If I want x quantity of materials to produce a sword that I KNOW is 10x over price and I can sell it for much cheaper, the issue is the materials available are not available in the quantity I want. Therefore, I either gather the mats if I feel like it or forego making the item all-together. Otherwise, had I produced the item, I would have probably increased the demand level now that the price point is much lower.

[Shurrikhan]

I'd definitely like to see this. Though, I'd also love to see a "Piece-wise sale" option, whereby sellers could allow amounts smaller than the whole stack to be sold, rather than needing to split their stacks and inevitably still forcing some buyers to buy more than they need.

This would reduce the reward for stack-splitting, which some market-idlers (and bots -- mostly bots) may dislike, but... I feel like the advantages for the many more than outweigh the exploitation options lost to frequent sellers.

[Jojoya]

The primary issue I see with this economy is there's not enough demand for items in general. Part of that is due to the competition of crafted items vs. PvE items, which are typical in a theme park MMO, but the other part is the way the AH is currently setup. .

The demand would be there if the player market provided a consistent and reasonably priced supply for needed items.

The player market doesn't provide that consistent, reasonably priced supply because we've got a hard limit on how many items we can list at a time. We're not going to list a 5k profit ring when we've got a 150k profit housing item to sell. The ring might sell faster but it's doubtful we'd sell 30 of them in the same time it would take to sell the housing item when we only have enough listing space to sell one at a time.

Try to make up the lost profit by increasing the price of the ring to recover the profit difference and you've priced it too far above the usefulness it has to the player.

When the player can't find the item they need when they need it or it's consistently priced higher than its usefulness, demand for the item is going to disappear. Start providing the items they want at a price that is reasonable for the usefulness and the demand comes back.

[Maeka]

The demand would be there if the player market provided a consistent and reasonably priced supply for needed items.

The player market doesn't provide that consistent, reasonably priced supply because we've got a hard limit on how many items we can list at a time. We're not going to list a 5k profit ring when we've got a 150k profit housing item to sell. The ring might sell faster but it's doubtful we'd sell 30 of them in the same time it would take to sell the housing item when we only have enough listing space to sell one at a time.

Try to make up the lost profit by increasing the price of the ring to recover the profit difference and you've priced it too far above the usefulness it has to the player.

When the player can't find the item they need when they need it or it's consistently priced higher than its usefulness, demand for the item is going to disappear. Start providing the items they want at a price that is reasonable for the usefulness and the demand comes back.

The problem tends to be that people, especially those with a lot of money, tend to vastly over-estimate how much their time is worth. Some people have way too much ego and personal pride, and these are the types of people you see demanding 500k gil to give a healer Q for a dungeon (that they already benefit from) back during the initial ShB release when healers were hard to find.

So they spend 5 minutes making something that is easy to make and they think you should pay millions of gil for it and a lot of us who don't have that kind of money go "get the flip out of here with that" and refuse to buy it.

[Zarabeth]

I'd rather stick with what we have now. Free market is goooooooooood.

[Archaell]

The problem tends to be that people, especially those with a lot of money, tend to vastly over-estimate how much their time is worth. Some people have way too much ego and personal pride, and these are the types of people you see demanding 500k gil to give a healer Q for a dungeon (that they already benefit from) back during the initial ShB release when healers were hard to find.

So they spend 5 minutes making something that is easy to make and they think you should pay millions of gil for it and a lot of us who don't have that kind of money go "get the flip out of here with that" and refuse to buy it.

Have you tried getting a job like the other players? For example selling the quick healer queues? (I do that for fun, and it's worse than gathering elm logs) Gathering? (Gathering can start making you gil quite quickly even from scratch) Crafting low level items? Buying big stacks and reselling at double price small stacks? Basically any action that trades time for gil? In few hours of grinding, and with data center wide MB shopping, you can buy almost anything.

[Mavrias]

But what if I out-level the recipes, and now the GC wants new recipes?

What if I don't want enough materials to make 10 weapons?

What if I don't want to blow 200,000 gil to make 10 weapons right now?

The point is... I should have a choice, but the system (and the sellers) don't give me this choice. It's either that, or blow an hour+ per item farming up the materials.

I choose the third option of just waiting until beast tribes. But that means a lot of lost sales that these sellers could have made if I could have chosen to buy 1 or 2 items at a time.

You absolutely have a choice. You just dont like the options. Think of buying the excess materials as a convenience fee. Don't wanna pay it? Go gather the materials yourself. Takes maybe ten minutes assuming you dont need a timed node's materials.

[Darlantan]

The demand would be there if the player market provided a consistent and reasonably priced supply for needed items.

The player market doesn't provide that consistent, reasonably priced supply because we've got a hard limit on how many items we can list at a time. We're not going to list a 5k profit ring when we've got a 150k profit housing item to sell. The ring might sell faster, but it's doubtful we'd sell 30 of them in the same time it would take to sell the housing item when we only have enough listing space to sell one at a time.

Try to make up the lost profit by increasing the price of the ring to recover the profit difference and you've priced it too far above the usefulness it has to the player.

When the player can't find the item they need when they need it, or it's consistently priced higher than its usefulness, demand for the item is going to disappear. Start providing the items they want at a price that is reasonable for the usefulness and the demand comes back.

I am not sure if this is the primary driver, I would agree to an extent, however, with just two retainers, you can still list 40 items at a time. I don't usually have that many items up at a given time. However, considering that the number of materials and items has increased substantially, I can agree with this argument to a small degree. But if what you're saying is true, then the name of the game would be to sell items ASAP and not overprice them 2x-10x they're worth (basing off the material costs), in which they could take days to sell.