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

[Jinko]

What we currently have is basically an AH anyway as others have said.

I say do away with the market wards all together, move retainers to player housing (assuming we are getting that), add mail boxes and give us proper AH's.

I would suggest that if SE does add AH to keep them in the 3 major cities and not Ishguard otherwise people will have little reason to go back to the 3 major cities.

AH's should be linked between cities.

[ESAR]

What we currently have is basically an AH anyway as others have said.

I say do away with the market wards all together, move retainers to player housing (assuming we are getting that), add mail boxes and give us proper AH's.

I would suggest that if SE does add AH to keep them in the 3 major cities and not Ishguard otherwise people will have little reason to go back to the 3 major cities.

AH's should be linked between cities.

Market wards are going to be better then an auction house, that's why they created them. Honestly it's just taking a long time to get it to where it needs to be.

Auction houses have problems, paying money to put items up means that gil is coming outta your pocket even if the item doesn't sell. (market wards solve this)

Sales history defines the price of items.

The real problem is that no one understands what others desire. Yes, this could be solved with an auction houses sales history. But at the cost of defining every items. If we take that history out, what's the point? hasent solved anything.

What I suggest is adding a better retainer search. This gives players a way to communicate what they desire (by having your retainer search for the items) without the need to ruin economy with a sales history or needing to pay money to put stuff up on AH.

Piecing all that together it's my educated guess that with this one (much simpler) addition. We would have what we're missing from an auction house, the ability to tell what others need. (and much easier then we could with an AH)

[Jinko]

Market wards are going to be better then an auction house, that's why they created them. Honestly it's just taking a long time to get it to where it needs to be.

I don't think they are going to be "better", as an AH isn't one defined idea.

Auction houses have problems, paying money to put items up means that gil is coming outta your pocket even if the item doesn't sell. (market wards solve this)

An AH can take a percentage of the sold items purchase price just as the market wards currently do, it really comes down to how you configure it.

Sales history defines the price of items.

http://ffxiv.yg.com/ already gives us a sales history, as does the market ward when you search for an item and can compare what others are selling similar items for.

The real problem is that no one understands what others desire. Yes, this could be solved with an auction houses sales history. But at the cost of defining every items. If we take that history out, what's the point? hasent solved anything.

And you just mentioned the market wards biggest down fall, in that still after 6 months there is no stability in the market because nobody knows what anything is worth unless they go online and look it up, god help anyone new to the game.

What I suggest is adding a better retainer search. This gives players a way to communicate what they desire (by having your retainer search for the items) without the need to ruin economy with a sales history or needing to pay money to put stuff up on AH.

We asked for this back in beta and got ignored.

Piecing all that together it's my educated guess that with this one (much simpler) addition. We would have what we're missing from an auction house, the ability to tell what others need. (and much easier then we could with an AH)

And how exactly did you come to that conclusion, without any way of telling what an item is worth the market will always be a mess, you think supermarkets in the real world price things based on their own whim ?

In fact supermarkets go around to the competition and do price checks so they can undercut them, which is just what a sales history would be used for.

[Demacia]

I honestly can't tell whether you guys defending market wards are trolling or really that deluded.

[Souljacker]

I honestly can't tell whether you guys defending market wards are trolling or really that deluded.

It's interesting, isn't it? Those who are against the AH are incredibly vocal. I'm firmly in the camp of "we need a better trade system and that system is an AH". When I read the title of the thread, my immediate thought was "what economy?"

It's crippled, and will only get worse the longer this is ignored.

[Mack]

Auction houses have problems, paying money to put items up means that gil is coming outta your pocket even if the item doesn't sell. (market wards solve this)

Do you think there's an auction house committee that makes this part mandatory? defend the crap that is the market wards all you want but come up with something less half assed.

[Crios_Vandalus]

Obviously not a lot of people who studied economics in here. First off, anyone who says that adding a sales history is going to mess up the economy doesn't understand the concept of supply and demand. The reason prices rise is there is higher demand than supply and the reason prices fall is because there is higher supply than demand. It has absolutely jack to do with sales history. Also there are already ways to figure out average and median prices (YG) and also you can see all the prices posted using the search feature in the wards.

As for the fees, SE has to take money out of the economy somehow in order to combat inflation. The money that you get from leves, missions, quests w/e comes basically out of the void. If there are no fees, like those for choco rental, AH post fees, ward taxes, then eventually the prices in demand items will inflate drastically. Items which like gil, come out of the void commonly will be more immune to the inflation, but items that are more rare (like the Kraken Club in 11 which at one point was going for 900 million gil on Remora) will skyrocket in price.

[AngryNixon]

Obviously not a lot of people who studied economics in here. First off, anyone who says that adding a sales history is going to mess up the economy doesn't understand the concept of supply and demand. The reason prices rise is there is higher demand than supply and the reason prices fall is because there is higher supply than demand. It has absolutely jack to do with sales history. Also there are already ways to figure out average and median prices (YG) and also you can see all the prices posted using the search feature in the wards.

As for the fees, SE has to take money out of the economy somehow in order to combat inflation. The money that you get from leves, missions, quests w/e comes basically out of the void. If there are no fees, like those for choco rental, AH post fees, ward taxes, then eventually the prices in demand items will inflate drastically. Items which like gil, come out of the void commonly will be more immune to the inflation, but items that are more rare (like the Kraken Club in 11 which at one point was going for 900 million gil on Remora) will skyrocket in price.

+1 to you my friend, +1.

Just to elaborate on the price history bit. You are perfectly correct that those basic forces drive prices up and down, especially in a simplistic video game economy without the annoyances of real world concerns forcing shifts in prices. Assuming there is no YG because it's a voluntary system and the prices there reflect only the prices listed by those who participate in it (and while it is definitely a good number of people it's not the majority of the people who play the game that use it religiously), an in game price history helps to smooth out the price trends of items.

If we assume the old garbage system found in FFXI with all its problems completely unchanged, at the very least a price history helps avoid the spikes in prices from lack of awareness of what, historically, an item has been sold for. Hence the 'smoothing out' effect. Note that this does not speak to the tendency of the price to trend upwards or downwards but only to normalizing it at some level and allowing it to shift, either up or down, at an incremental rate instead of in massive blind spikes.

The hope is that in a proper AH system where both buy orders and sell orders are reflected there are two price trends showing those two separate trends (ie. what an item has been bought for, and sold for). This allows for the first thing I mentioned before (smoothing out the price) and for the two histories to meet at an equilibrium price dictated by both those selling the item and those seeking the item, instead of the traditional FFXI model which leaves the buyer with the only recourse of voicing their concerns over the price of an item through silent protest (ie. not buying it). That is somewhat insufficient in helping to shape the price trends of an item because not buying an item doesn't say anything at all to the sellers of the item. There is no appreciable difference between "you're charging too much" and "I don't need what you're selling" in a system like the FFXI model.

I won't waste time on the issue of fees. They are what they are, work around them and let them serve their gil sink function in peace.

TL;DR: Price history good, Crios smart, include buy orders in the AH system.