Market Wards, enough is enough

[Amineri]

You do not get it :P which is ok. no harm no foul.

Even with an Auction house players whom are first to sell something are the first to set a price. And they tend to go for greed vs anything else. Everytime a new item an item was added to the AH it always had a 50K-1mil price tag. Even with an AH system players are setting the price. SE doesn't tell players what price is good.

Ha ha! Either I don't get it, or I do get it, but you don't get that I get it

In either an Auction House (with actual auctions, meaning bidding) or a marketplace of some kind, sellers don't set the price. The may ATTEMPT to set the price, but buyers have just as much power in determining the final sale price as the buyers.

I could try and sell my Darksteel Ore for 1million gil per piece, because no one else is selling. But no one would buy it. That means that I haven't set the price.

When I look at the item search function for the current market wards, I don't think "Item X is selling for price Y", I think "Someone is trying to sell item X for price Y". There is a world of difference.

Sellers always try and maximize the amount that they can sell an item for. Buyers always try and minimize the price they buy something for. Nothing will change that. The goal of a market system or auction system is to quickly and efficiently allow buyers and sellers to reach a compromise price that they will both agree on.

Currently, the system is ineffective and sluggish because sellers can only guess at prices, and if an item doesn't sell, re-list it at a lower price. Buyers are not represented, because the 'item seek' function is broken (in oh-so-many ways).

In the end transactions only happen because the buyer and seller value the item and gil differently. If the seller values 10k gil more than a pinch of bomb ash, and the buyer values the pinch of bomb ash more than the 10k gil, then a transaction occurs. The current market system fails to find these pairings efficiently.

Slapping an menu-interface on the current system, and allowing instant delivery of the item to the player will hardly accomplish anything. More tools to aid buying / selling are needed.

These could include:

• Fixing the 'seek item' system to allow it to be searched, sought items to take only one bazaar slot, purchasing of smaller increments than the total number requested, and not requiring the player to already have the items to be sought. This fix has nothing to do with auction house vs market wards.
  
• Allowing buy orders, where a retainer is given the order to go out and search for items at or under a given price. The retainer seeks through the market wards, looking for the item, returning it if found. If not, the buy order can remain in effect, until someone lists such an item. Again, nothing to do with auction house vs market ward.

This is what Bayohne said. There are deeper issues that are keeping buyer and seller from finding each other to exchange goods. I hope that the dev team is coming up with some good solutions ... but I'm not holding my breath.