Fixing the Markets. As much our problem as SE's .

[SpotOn]

You want the prices to remain steady? Do what others do, buy up the cheap goods and re list them at your price. This too also happens all the time irl.

This happens now, and is great imho. If I make a run of items during my grinding, I will undercut the price on the junk even if I'm losing money from the mats, I don't want the items, someone else will and they will buy mine cause its on top of the list which are in decent stack sizes and will earn them a profit. I will then be competitive with the HQ's. This alone has allowed me to have an extremely steady profit especially now that I'm dealing in fleece products.


I'm not here to have millions upon millions of gil. If I choose to lose money selling certain items at extremely low prices well that is my choice, I will continue to do so. As mentioned in Maddox's post, if you want market prices to be steady, then buy my items and sell them at the price you think they are worth, I will still be profiting, as will the people buying my items.

BTW, awesome post Nedhitis

[Haibel]

The game uses a "free market" system, like the majority of countries in real life use.

In a free market, everyone is free to sell anything they own for any price they want to.

If you, OP, would like to understand WHY the majority of humans PREFER to use this economic system, all you need do is research "supply and demand".

Also in a free market, everyone is free to not sell when their net profit falls to the point of net losses.
I'm talking about profit and loss.

[Sanctus]

[LIST]People cannot buy OR sell (from) a stack of items by units. This reality alone single-handedly KILLED the market for gatherers and material-crafters all over the game.

Sadly, this option was exactly how the markets worked in 1.0, and it was intentionally removed from the game for 2.0, as confirmed by the devs. I don't know why they thought it was a good idea to take this option away, but it is the single worst thing they could have done in regards to the markets. Heres to hoping they change their minds...

[Haibel]

You wrote a compendium about a problem everybody noticed, only to fail to pinpoint the actual problem on its root because you forgot to throw away your self-entitlement before posting... I am not saying the problems you mentioned are invalid or false, but they are far from being the core reason for the game's economy's downfall. In fact, those are the consequences of the real problem, not the problem itself.

Friend, no hard, personal feelings here, but, as a dedicated crafter myself, I can tell you that the current system is almost perfect, but that missing "almost" chunk is a flaw critical enough to break the economy, as we witnessed. Funny enough, though, this "chunk" needs to be described as several small problems recurring everyday, which, in turn, makes it look like the problem is big. But trust me: it really is a small flaw that could be hotfixed in a week or 2... I will get to that now.

Really, people, the main problems are simple and evident (and therefore, easy to fix for SE). Nonetheless, I will go over them in detail, for those who believe the main problem is people not having a Ph. D. in economics to use the MB appropiately like our friend here:

• People can sell items that they obtain from quests. This is a critical mistake done by SE; do notice how absolutely every weapon/tool awarded by quests is currently broken in the market, with even HQ versions being close to impossible to make a profit from, and weapons/tools are just the worst case, not the ONLY case. It seems they never thought about why other MMOs automatically made quest items bound to our characters, eh...? Well, now we know and, hopefully, SE will notice not long from now.
  
  Obvious solution: please make quest items instantly bound to players when obtained, for reasons already explained AND more, which are too obvious to mention, though I still welcome you to do so if you wish.

• People can sell items at a price lower than the "vendoring" price, or, better said, than the gil that NPCs give you when selling items to them. This is downright retarded... even worse than being able to sell Allagan Pieces on the Market Board (what was the big idea behind that, anyway...?). Combine this with problem number 1 and you have a perfect recipe for economical chaos.
  
  Obvious solution: make it code-wise impossible to sell items at a price lower than NPC selling price. If an item says "Sells for 30 gil", then 30 or 31 gil should be the minimum MB price, and no less.

• People cannot buy OR sell (from) a stack of items by units. This reality alone single-handedly KILLED the market for gatherers and material-crafters all over the game. In case you did not understand this point: say you want to sell 99 Silver Ores. With the system as it is now, you can either sell the whole stack or split it in smaller stacks, but this last option must be done manually EVERYTIME you want to sell smaller stacks. So, if you want to sell that stack of 99 by stacks of 3, good luck hitting buttons 33 times over to make it happen. Then, on the other side, you have the same effect from a buyer standpoint; say you found the item you want, at a fair price, but it is only sold by stacks of +60 (an all too common reality for me and many, so this example was easy to call upon) and you only want 5 or less. Well, tough luck: you cannot choose to buy less than the full stack. It is all or nothing. Hell, imagine if our everyday groceries had to be bought that way each passing day... Not a preety thought, I assure you. Unfortunately, that is precisely what is happening on this game.
  
  Not-so-obvious solution: I am not sure if other MMOs have done this, but I do know it is possible, plausible and, if I know crafters/gatherers well enough, welcome by everyone. It more or less goes like this:
  
  -> When a retainer is given a stack of an item to put up for sale, an option should be available; an option to allow customers to buy "units" from said stack. If, for some reason, the seller wants to control the amount of units sold per purchase, you could even allow it to choose the minimum number of units a customer can buy. Example: you put the same 99 Silver Ores for sale. You can just go and put the whole stack at once, but then the option appears (first as a "checkbox") to ask if you want to allow unitary purchases. By default, this should be checked (this is important), and you can uncheck it if you do not wish to sell any less than the full stack at once. If the option is checked, a "sub-menu" should be visible where you can adjust the minimum amount of units to be purchased, being half the stack its maximum possible value (for odd numbers like 99, round it up to the lesser number; that is, 49). The default value of units should be, of course, 1 (and also the minimum).
  
  *As a side-note: this could modify the tax rates for many items with a low selling price, more specifically, it may be rounded down or even not be present at all. But... this is not a problem now, is it...?

• Last, but not least, up until recently, there was no easy way to know the appropiate price for an NQ item that was also sold by vendors. You would normally think that the logic price is any price lower than the NPC price (perhaps a LITTLE more expensive for items that can be bought only in one specific city-state, that is acceptable too), but still more than its "vendoring" price, right...? Well, go to your nearest Market Board and see how long it takes you to find an item sold by NPCs that is more expensive than what the NPC sells it for by a LONG shot. If you take any longer than 3 minutes, you are not fast enough. And this happens precisely because people had no way to know an item's selling price without going to the vendor itself, which usually implies a long travel that is most certainly not worth the time and/or gil.
  
  We now have this "Eorzea Database" to make things easier. OK, all nice and neat, but... if I had to take a guess, I would say this is not going to help at all. Law of minimal effort, people. Nobody will minimize their game window (or turn a computer on for PS3 users, which is even worse), go to the database and query for an item's selling price EVRYTIME it is needed... It would quickly get tiresome. Do notice I did not mention people who will downright not use the database regardless of being active on the game's economy, which, if I dare say, will still be the vast majority.
  
  Semi-obvious solution: allow an easy way to know when an item is sold by vendors without having to travel to any vendor, and what its price is if it is sold. Maybe... something like a price chart accesible from the Retainer Window...? Or something like that, you get the idea.

And these are the problems that I have witnessed personally (as in, one single player's experience), and I have not even hit any class over 35 to date. Just imagine what will happen if things continue the way they are when endgame mats and items become mainstream in the economy. Oh, I certainly do not want to see that...

So, long story short: the critical problem I described here could be defined as "Impaired Supply and Demand Syndrome". You know how it goes, right...? If not, Wikipedia defines it well enough (this time):


Right now, these laws are either exaggerated to its worst expression, or completely absent. The effects mentioned therein do happen indeed, but the so called "equilibrium prices" are anything but equilibrated due to the end result of the problems I described plus anything I am missing and other players have seen. Stupidly low selling prices are as much of an accepted standard as stupidly high prices. Why...? Because we can. Really, because we can... Like I said, players are not economists; they just play a game. You cannot lay all the blame on players when the system on itself has so many evident flaws which, to be honest, I have no idea how they failed to foresee or at least consider.

...you know, perhaps I should make a thread out of this post, depending on what other players think. Who knows, we may get lucky and draw SE's attention. A lot of addressed issues started as threads made by some random player, after all. What say you...?

All great points and thanks for adding.... the area I blued I find of particular interest.
This was the system we had in 1.0 and I far prefer it over what we have now. I'm talking about profit and loss within the current system and
while my topic would still apply to the 1.0 system as well, it was a far friendlier system.. I was really hoping they would have expanded the
buying system we had in 1.0 were we could have our retainers buy items for us. It would have made for a really nice circular economy. All that
said I really liked your post. Thanks for the incite.

[Nedhitis]

Sadly, this option was exactly how the markets worked in 1.0, and it was intentionally removed from the game for 2.0, as confirmed by the devs. I don't know why they thought it was a good idea to take this option away, but it is the single worst thing they could have done in regards to the markets. Heres to hoping they change their minds...

Hm, I did not know that...

Well, optionally, they can at least allow automatic stack splitting...? You know, like that WoW addon where you select an amount to de-stack for and the item automatically splits itself on the selected amount all over your inventory. It may even be done by Retainers themselves at the moment of putting an item for sale so as to not require a hellish amount of inventory space. Code-wise, it is certainly possible.

...whatever the case, you are right: they would be fools to not reconsider that choice. If it somehow helped the game, they will need to tell us how, because, at plain sight, I saw no benefit from taking such a useful feature away.

[Ruminate]

Sadly, this option was exactly how the markets worked in 1.0, and it was intentionally removed from the game for 2.0, as confirmed by the devs. I don't know why they thought it was a good idea to take this option away, but it is the single worst thing they could have done in regards to the markets. Heres to hoping they change their minds...

Because the change simulates something that occurs in real world economics: logistics

[Maddox]

Right because SE should limit the amount of something we're aloud to have ... no stupid, the problem is too many people are trying to make a quick buck on the AH and it's being overloaded. I don't think SE should have to monitor the economy, it's part of the fantasy world. If you don't like it, use your tiny little pea-brain and come up with a real in game solution.

Hey now, no need to call names. So far this has been a legitimate discussion, which is very rare on these forums, and I'd like it to stay that way.

[MeowyWowie]

Right because SE should limit the amount of something we're aloud to have ... no stupid, the problem is too many people are trying to make a quick buck on the AH and it's being overloaded. I don't think SE should have to monitor the economy, it's part of the fantasy world. If you don't like it, use your tiny little pea-brain and come up with a real in game solution.

No, the problem is there's hardly any demand. Why didn't this problem exist in 1.0? Because gear broke when you failed at forbidden melds. Because for some slots, crafted gear was BiS. Because quests didn't shove gear down your throat every step of the way. Because it wasn't possible to craft HQ items with NQ mats 100% of the time unless you were way over-leveled for the recipe. There was a constant demand for crafted gear, the mats used to make them and materia.

Where did you get the idea that I was implying that they need to limit anything? And you call me stupid.

[Nullie]

no stupid,

I think you misunderstand. No need to name call. Just discredits you. In the current game all people have to do is level one class and while doing the story and quests most of the stuff needed is handed to them during them. Then it moves to fate grinding. Company seals gets you armor and weapons. You level so fast you don't really need armor or weapons all that often during those. At 45 you do your af quests and 50 full af and you realize that anything over 45 body equip wise is pointless.

Once 50 you do your castrums and amdapor keeps. Get the gear from keep and then get your darklight. Oh then you do your quest to get the best weapon in the game. People realize there is no reason to continue buying stuff off the market and then we have a surplus of items that aren't needed by a vast majority of people because everything else is better. Who put this system into place? Was it you? Me? No. Sure there will be those people who are interested in leveling crafting and trying to make the gil, but for a lot of people most of the stuff is pointless. That was the point. Not sure where you came to that conclusion from.

[Nedhitis]

Because the change simulates something that occurs in real world economics: logistics

Well... It clearly failed to do so, then. It cannot be called a "controlled flow of resources" when resources are not flowing at all due to overpricing/big stack selling. I still laugh from seeing Diremite Webs, Dew Threads, Undyed Velveteens and, worst of all, food items getting slowly cramped on the market due to these logistics. Even funnier: people seem to think that the items will flow if they sell them on even bigger stacks at even bigger prices. Videogame logic.