Don't Ruin the economy with an auction house! please![dev1019]

[ESAR]

I completely disagree, I don't think that an AH would ruin the economy.



Please elaborate on this a little. I get the feeling many people who do not want an AH use this as an excuse but don't really have any substantial reasoning behind it.




AH can and do exist in MMO's without sales history being included in the AH system. Though you shouldn't blame the AH for causing this problem, it's actually a result of basic economics (supply and demand).

The sales history defines the price of an item.
Since there is a history this defines the going rate for an item. In FFXI for me this caused me to need to be close to 100 to make money off my craft. This is BS, I do not want this same problem in this game and neither do you. It's going to happen with an AH / sale history, it's a bad idea. This is why the developers decided upon an alternate solution, the market wards.
Market wards are like rolanberry fields. It's a way to sell items without paying that fee to put them up. This works well for all types of weapons.

The bad economics are not caused by not having an auction house, it's caused because people have no way of telling what other people desire, therefore everyone including yourself is convinced we need an auction house. It's because a sales history is how we decided which items to sell or farm or make. Sales histories caused that vital flaw in the economy though and we do not need it or want it.

Rather we have the tools to decipher what people want, they're just not using it the way they could be. Retainers have the ability to sell. Restricting this to just items in our possession however is not helping us communicate to others what we need. If they gave us the abilities to get our retainers to search for what we need, all our commerce (trading of goods) problems would be solved.

I for one will start farming materials so crafters don't need to, but how the hell am I supposed to tell what to farm?

[Fieros]

I for one will start farming materials so crafters don't need to, but how the hell am I supposed to tell what to farm?

Check the AH, or sales history and see what's been selling.

[kukurumei]

The sales history defines the price of an item.
Since there is a history this defines the going rate for an item. In FFXI for me this caused me to need to be close to 100 to make money off my craft. This is BS, I do not want this same problem in this game and neither do you. It's going to happen with an AH / sale history, it's a bad idea. This is why the developers decided upon an alternate solution, the market wards.
Market wards are like rolanberry fields. It's a way to sell items without paying that fee to put them up. This works well for all types of weapons.

The bad economics are not caused by not having an auction house, it's caused because people have no way of telling what other people desire, therefore everyone including yourself is convinced we need an auction house. It's because a sales history is how we decided which items to sell or farm or make. Sales histories caused that vital flaw in the economy though and we do not need it or want it.

Rather we have the tools to decipher what people want, they're just not using it the way they could be. Retainers have the ability to sell. Restricting this to just items in our possession however is not helping us communicate to others what we need. If they gave us the abilities to get our retainers to search for what we need, all our commerce (trading of goods) problems would be solved.

I for one will start farming materials so crafters don't need to, but how the hell am I supposed to tell what to farm?

It's called competition. No way around it, ever. And FF14 could be potentially worse since everyone is forced to craft multiple jobs, and they get xp doing it.

Crafting would make no difference with or without AH, because realistically you could level crafting with levequest, and even worse, the system is reversed, with component at a higher craft level then armor.

Finally making money...when no one is selling? It's a worse economy then with AH. at least then you have stuff selling, just disproportionally.

[Killjoy]

The sales history defines the price of an item.
Since there is a history this defines the going rate for an item. In FFXI for me this caused me to need to be close to 100 to make money off my craft. This is BS, I do not want this same problem in this game and neither do you. It's going to happen with an AH / sale history, it's a bad idea. This is why the developers decided upon an alternate solution, the market wards.
Market wards are like rolanberry fields. It's a way to sell items without paying that fee to put them up. This works well for all types of weapons.

The bad economics are not caused by not having an auction house, it's caused because people have no way of telling what other people desire, therefore everyone including yourself is convinced we need an auction house. It's because a sales history is how we decided which items to sell or farm or make. Sales histories caused that vital flaw in the economy though and we do not need it or want it.

Rather we have the tools to decipher what people want, they're just not using it the way they could be. Retainers have the ability to sell. Restricting this to just items in our possession however is not helping us communicate to others what we need. If they gave us the abilities to get our retainers to search for what we need, all our commerce (trading of goods) problems would be solved.

I for one will start farming materials so crafters don't need to, but how the hell am I supposed to tell what to farm?

I don't agree with you. Some server economies may have been different but that was the biggest part of my enjoyment from FFXI, the Auction House. I didn't have a single craft in the 90's and I loved making gil at each level range of my craft. I researched npc prices, AH prices from farmers, found the best deals, and leveled my craft with profit in mind. It was much more enjoyable than the current level-as-crafter system that FFXIV has since the market ward system is a complete joke.

The fundamental idea behind running a business is to have a good location where your items are easily available. After that you can work on reducing your production price or inventory cost and weeding out the other guys if necessary. For example: ever buy a roll of film, disposable camera, or batteries at a tourist spot? Expensive, right? Those products didn't necessarily cost more to make, but they were able to charge more because the products were available. That was always an option in FFXI if you couldn't compete on the AH. Also, there was no need to make the product yourself in the first place, you could make good money in XI simply buying discount items on the AH and selling them in Bazaar elsewhere. I did it all the time.

The problem with the Market Ward system is that it's basically as you say, an implementation of Rolanmart -- where people would Bazaar high priced items for one general reason: to avoid paying city tax. It was not about location. It was not about the thrill of looking at 100 player characters and checking what they had listed. Often times you checked the same person 2, 3, 10 times by luck of the Tab-draw. It was painful, but there was a benefit to doing it. You kept the money the game was designed to take out of the system.

There is no benefit to the Market Ward system now unless you create enough bad factors to highlight the benefits. Really, in essence, that requires making the ability to buy and sell goods from other players outside of the Wards a bad idea, or less beneficial. It has to. Less cost of taxes is really the only benefit you could put into the Wards to get people to use them, but even then that would require the external taxes to be high enough to warrant the pain of using the ward system in the first place. Which, at the end of the day, results in building several flaws into the game just so people are motivated to use a broken system based off a player-base reaction to perceived injustices of high taxation from a previous game. How is this possibly a good idea?

So this is the way I see the whole thing coming about: Game developers see large crowds of players start to accumulate outside one of the major towns to sell their goods. This is replicated across multiple servers. By unwritten rule, more players join in. Developers mistakenly translate this into a desire by players to have an open market system where they manually check bazaars. Developers implement new system into next title in the series and are then shocked when the majority of players do not approve. Developers try to fix broken system. Players who failed at making gil in XI defend broken system because they are afraid they still won't make money on an Auction House.

Seriously, I loved economics of FFXI, but I just don't have the time to wander through an endless sea of retainers. I guess I'm just getting old enough to realize that I have a lot better things to do with my time. An AH would allow me to spend less time looking for comparison pricing, materials, and listing finished products, and would give me more time to enjoy the game and find other places to park my character to provide convenience items at higher costs. As for now, I log in from time to time, but I always yearn for the better days of FFXI. I log out, I do something else, and I eventually come back to look. This has resulted in disappointment. I'm sure there are a lot more players out there just like me: watching, waiting, hoping...

You might say that the game doesn't need people like us, that it doesn't need an auction house or a fully functional economy. You might think you are happy with the system, but games like these don't last long if they remain free. And this game will remain free as long as it can if the players do not return, but eventually it will die. Then your broken system will be a disappointment simply because you'll no longer be able to enjoy it. In that respect, if you truly love the game, you should think about the things that can change that would bring the most people back. Truthfully, the auction house is one such change.

[Rentahamster]

I don't agree with you. Some server economies may have been different but that was the biggest part of my enjoyment from FFXI, the Auction House. I didn't have a single craft in the 90's and I loved making gil at each level range of my craft. I researched npc prices, AH prices from farmers, found the best deals, and leveled my craft with profit in mind. It was much more enjoyable than the current level-as-crafter system that FFXIV has since the market ward system is a complete joke. . . .

Well said.