Can we have changes to the market system?

[Arthem]

People are being forced to buy stacks of 99 just so they can get a few of what they need. That kind of market control can make someone quite a bit of gil.

First, nobody is forced to buy anything. You can level every class, be it tank, dps, healer, and even every single crafting and gathering class all on one character. Nothing is preventing anyone from procuring the materials they need via their own means.


Selling goods in stacks is by no means market control. Severely undercutting every other person competing with your wares to the point where not only is it not profitable to craft anymore, but the finished (HQ obviously) items sell for less than what the mats cost in total, and then keeping those niches in the market completely locked away from other suppliers by devoting 1 retainer's entire inventory for each item they're controlling and effectively removing sometimes vast portions of content for crafters and gatherers. That's controlling a market. I remember on Balmung with rakshasa gear, 2 characters controlled every single piece, all 78(?) unique rakshasa weapons, armor and accessories, always having 10-20 listed of each at any given time and well below what it cost to craft them, and that went on for months. I personally probably placed 6 or 7 GM calls on them because that directly affects every single other player that would have otherwise liked to craft all or some of those items for some profit, which is a crafter's core content in the game. That's controlling a market in a free market system.

Comparing people who sell stuff in stacks to something as destabilizing as the former is ridiculous. In the real world it's very common to "save more when you spend more!" with vendors selling bulk quantities for a discounted price on everything from soft drinks to illicit drugs and everything in between. Also, admittedly I've been there too, looking for a single item I needed yet having to buy a stack of 50 or something instead out of my own laziness for not wanting to gathering it myself. When you go those 50, or 98 extra items just to get that single 1 you needed, it's not like you don't have a whole stack left over, which, surprise, you can put back on the markets and even sell it in smaller stacks for a slightly higher price if you so choose. So you're not really losing anything and could potentially gain from it even.

Apologies for the long winded run-on sentence but this line of reasoning, in my opinion, is just absurd. This is how open markets work. If I spend an hour crafting a stack of food for example, I don't want to sell them 1 at a time and I think you'd be hard-pressed to find very many others that would want to either. You're also always free to hire a gatherer or crafters via PF or your friends list or FC or what have you to get you some mats or something and negotiating a price with them. Many are willing and happy to make some quick gil doing something they already like. You have access to everything in the game just the same as everyone else does, unless for some reason you don't have expansion installed. No one is forced to do anything but people can be forced out of doing something they enjoy when others actually control markets like those I mentioned. There's a huge difference.

/end rant

[Saix027]

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/end rant

I dare to say the problem is that people simply not want to "work" in a "game", they want to enjoy themself, those who need certain materials simply just want things done and leveled maybe? Nothing to do with lazy. Some of them simply not want more work additional to there real life job on top you know.

Free market or not, it is still a game and should work like one and not having to force me to be a salesmen or a expert at the tax market to just get something digital in a game done.
The problem is the ridilious amount of materials that exist to gather and needed for things, SE and Yoshida and his team gone way overboard to make something simple way to complicated, probably to sell more retainers i dare to say, even that i can understand them needing moeny since SE itself refuses to give them resources at all and they have to relay on extra subs adn mog station sales. Fire SE Managers and let people like Yoshida lead, not some greedy CEOs.

I mean i look at games like Guild Wars 2 and soemhow they mange to have every item able to sell always without loosing value with of course some exceptions, yet here people sell under trader price depstie you can sell right away at the retainer, i simply not get it.

[Angus]

I can farm and make anything I need. It is market control when the consumer is prevented from shopping elsewhere. Let's go back to the Soot Black Dye issue. On the Market Board, you may have over 450 items shown for sale, but you can only purchase from the first 100. So I go out, farm and make some dye, and try to sell off the remainer. The only way someone will ever see my sales is if I undercut all those sales of stacks of 99. Honestly, I don't care about the gil, I just think people should have the ability to see and buy any/all the items available.

[Alaeacus]

I wish selling items wasn't tied to Retainers. I also think having Retainer location creating a "sales tax" on people buying from a separate location is pointless, and just a scummy way to deplete your gil in a minor way. It adds nothing and there is no point to it.

I don't feel too passionately about it though so I just live with the current iteration.

[Jojoya]

yet here people sell under trader price depstie you can sell right away at the retainer, i simply not get it.

That's because they're not paying attention to the sell to vendor price when they go to list. They're just trying to undercut what's already listed.

The fun part is that when listing an item for sale on a retainer, the default price is the sell to vendor price yet players will still change it to be lower.

It's an opportunity for other players to make a small profit (especially useful for new characters with only a few thousand gil). Certain materia used to be a gold mine for this before SE dropped all the sell to vendor prices. Think it was Materia V that used to vendor for 990 gil and I'd be able to find a fair amount listed for under 500. Would take a little running back between a MB and the closest vendor but I could start with 2000 gil on a new character and be up to 15-20 thousand in a few minutes.

[Jojoya]

Please, no! Then the market will be filled with the same retainers selling one piece per buy. The current market system is a lot of fun and I don't think there's anything that needs to be changed. What would be fun is to make it possible to control how many markets you want to sell to, either by forcing all players to choose only one market city (which would make sense for having 2 retainers so you could cover more market) OR give an option to sell on 1, 2 or 3 market cities. It would be fun to try to figure out which place buys more dyes, or which city would be more profitable to sell to and such - at first I thought that's how the market works but then I realized that the only thing that changes when you switch retainer's home place is the tax.

This is a MMORPG, not a capitalism/marketing game. The purpose of the marketboards is to give players a place to buy/sell items with each other to help progress their other in-game goals. It's not to see which player can be the richest or shut out competition, even if some players attempt to use the marketboards that way.

SE isn't going to spend the time and resources developing a complicated, cut throat marketing system when that will negatively impact their ability to develop the content for what the game is intended to be, and drive players away from the game who don't want to be at the mercy of the financial tyrants while playing a MMORPG. If you want a competitive wealth accumulation/commodities market focused game, you'd be better off searching steam and other game sites for one designed to be that.

[Saix027]

That's because they're not paying attention to the sell to vendor price when they go to list. They're just trying to undercut what's already listed.

The fun part is that when listing an item for sale on a retainer, the default price is the sell to vendor price yet players will still change it to be lower.

It's an opportunity for other players to make a small profit (especially useful for new characters with only a few thousand gil). Certain materia used to be a gold mine for this before SE dropped all the sell to vendor prices. Think it was Materia V that used to vendor for 990 gil and I'd be able to find a fair amount listed for under 500. Would take a little running back between a MB and the closest vendor but I could start with 2000 gil on a new character and be up to 15-20 thousand in a few minutes.

The easiest they should do atleast without interfeering with the market is not able to sell under trader price, almost every MMO i know has that as standard for auction houses. Because in my eyes it is no suprise with the flood on gold sellers we have then aswell, regardless if SE sees them as being "customers" aswell paying subs but life could be overall easier i guess.

[Jojoya]

The easiest they should do atleast without interfeering with the market is not able to sell under trader price, almost every MMO i know has that as standard for auction houses. Because in my eyes it is no suprise with the flood on gold sellers we have then aswell, regardless if SE sees them as being "customers" aswell paying subs but life could be overall easier i guess.

What's the harm in another player wanting to sell to other players below the trader price, especially when they can produce the item for less than trader price? Take something like the Glade Bench, commonly used in housing. The trader/vendor price is 5000 gil. I can buy the materials to make it from a Material Supplier for 296 gil and farm up the 2 shards needed at no cost if I don't already have them. Why should the player not be allowed to sell it for less than 5000 when there's still plenty of room to profit? If they can't sell for less than 5000, there's no point in making the items since a buyer can buy it directly from a Manservant/Hokonin in their housing without having to run to a marketboard.

Not sure which MMOs you've been playing but I've never seen one set the trader/vendor price as a required minimum floor for player transactions. They usually have some sort of default suggested sell price that's a fraction of the vendor price (1.5% here, 35% in WoW). In all cases players are free to list below that price as long as it's not the lowest possible currency value.

It's players who are ultimately responsible for the gil sellers, not SE. And it's not the below sell to vendor prices on the MB that are forcing players to turn to the gil sellers. It's the insanely high prices that players set.

If lazy players didn't decide to buy from the gil sellers so they could afford what greedy players are selling at ridiculously high prices, gil sellers would be out of business.

[Rufalus]

Would be cool to have a reverse marketboard where each item has listings of quantity requested and price they are willing to pay. You submit the requested amount of items and are immediately paid the gil amount from the buyer's retainer.

Could make a game out of just browsing those boards and fulfilling buy orders to increase your wealth. The people placing buy orders would of course need their retainer to be holding a gil amount equal or greater to the amount they agreed to pay for market listings and that gil cannot be withdrawn unless cancelling those orders.

[Saix027]

What's the harm in another player wanting to sell to other players below the trader price, especially when they can produce the item for less than trader price? Take something like the Glade Bench, commonly used in housing. The trader/vendor price is 5000 gil. I can buy the materials to make it from a Material Supplier for 296 gil and farm up the 2 shards needed at no cost if I don't already have them. Why should the player not be allowed to sell it for less than 5000 when there's still plenty of room to profit? If they can't sell for less than 5000, there's no point in making the items since a buyer can buy it directly from a Manservant/Hokonin in their housing without having to run to a marketboard.

Not sure which MMOs you've been playing but I've never seen one set the trader/vendor price as a required minimum floor for player transactions. They usually have some sort of default suggested sell price that's a fraction of the vendor price (1.5% here, 35% in WoW). In all cases players are free to list below that price as long as it's not the lowest possible currency value.

It's players who are ultimately responsible for the gil sellers, not SE. And it's not the below sell to vendor prices on the MB that are forcing players to turn to the gil sellers. It's the insanely high prices that players set.

If lazy players didn't decide to buy from the gil sellers so they could afford what greedy players are selling at ridiculously high prices, gil sellers would be out of business.

It hurts the market simply, those who hoard gil never able to spend it on things while others depstie having millions of gil it feels like oyu barely have money for anything, increaseing gold sellers and hurting the game.

A lot people leave the game because they are sick of the PM's and Zone messages from Gold Sellers, lowering the subs, making the game harder to provide to evolve again.

I simply see the whole picture in this and over time with more and more pointless resources added on top from SE's part, the market will crumble under it, look at thigns like the ARR filler quests between ARR and Heavensward, it is basically the same issue, people will get tired and annoyed at it, if they can't even use the market properly it might feel pointless for them since everything feels dragged out that way, people exist who focus on crafting and trading in such games and those pay subs for it and help the game.

The thing is what i not understand, how is good to sell under trader price? Yes for others its nice to get but, the item description tells you it is avilable on a trader, something to explore and see which trader sells what, if people are getting lazy like this how about we just let all the items sell automaticly then? Trash items, desync items you can only have once automaticly? This is lazy and why then play the game at all. Because this is the logic i hear out of this, defending SE at all cost as always for a simple fix i ask for, because people get more and more lazy.

Games should be fun and i not want it turn into work but you need to show some effort aswell if you want something out of it, not get everything served on a plate, if i wanted that i play games with "time savers" to skip most things, which is basically Gold Sellers in a nutshell aswell, skip for real money and buy expensive gear from the market as example. SE does themself simply no favor if they not start changing things.

My main change i want is stop clustering the game with to many to complicated crafting and items, we not need every new addon 300 new resources to gather, it is way to much simply, use old resorces more often in newer recepts, make everything somewhat valuable simply, stop making one time items like i think one of the Obsidian it was in game only used for ONE item in the wohle game. If you also want button bloat to stop you should also stop item bloat, but then again they sell retaienrs that way which, as much i love this game, is the biggest scam ever in a monthly subbed game, not even F2P games not do that, except maybe The Old Republic.