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

[ESAR]

An auction house is going to do more harm then good.

If you implement one we're going to run into all those same problems as we hand in FFXI.

I for one do not want to have to wait until getting a craft near max before I can make any money off it. That's going to happend if you implement something with a sales history.

What you need to do is inject some life into commerce.

You can do this with a retainer search.

Once people have a way of expressing what they desire (by having retainers search for items for them), Items will start moving and the economy will finially be born.

Auction house comes at too great a risk, if anything and it's the actual market ward system (the crashes and such) that are causing you to reconsider have it all automated. Have like an auction house interface, but through this you can buy and sell off retainers.

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[Steggun]

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

If you implement one we're going to run into all those same problems as we hand in FFXI.

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.

I for one do not want to have to wait until getting a craft near max before I can make any money off it. That's going to happend if you implement something with a sales history.

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).

[Chione]

I don't think it could harm the economy either. If nothing else, an AH linked to every city will help crafters who don't spend their time in the economic center of their server. On Besaid it's Ul'dah. Ul'dah wards are packed to overcrowding, whereas Gridania wards are pretty much deserted and Limsa is somewhere in between.

Still, though most gear and some odds and ends for crafting are a huge pain to find because of this, I'm pretty much on the fence as to whether they actually need to add an AH right now. If they do, it can only help, as far as I'm concerned.

[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.

[Dyvid]

Honestly we have a pseudo AH right now, just local and more leg work. Perhaps an AH like FFXI is bad but that doesn't mean one still can't work. Instead of displaying item history just show the seller and the price.

[kukurumei]

Honestly we have a pseudo AH right now, just local and more leg work. Perhaps an AH like FFXI is bad but that doesn't mean one still can't work. Instead of displaying item history just show the seller and the price.

WoW's Ebay AH works pretty much like that, and it still has pseudo history. Nothing is going to make people stop keeping track of market trends.

History serves a purpose. Saying people will be manipulated like leading a sheep to slaughter, isn't from AH, it's from people being sheep being led to slaughter. You can do that even without a price history. There will always be people legitimately scammed.

[Chione]

Sales history did not decide the price of the item. The number of items available did. I can name at least a hundred times I've been the lucky soul who came across the last item available in FFXI, and even if the history was a solid 10k for every past entry, I'd have to end up bidding upwards of 15k or 20k or who knows how much to get it. And it works in reverse when there's a lot more up there. That's supply and demand -As Steggun pointed out. It has nothing to do with the AH itself.

And it happens even now. The only difference is there's extra steps to locating the items you want to buy if you're not in a city with a healthy market ward. My canvas cloth won't sell for 1200 gil if there's someone selling it for 500 in the same city until that person runs out. By your reasoning, it seems the item search feature of the wards has already done the damage you claim the AH will do, unless I misunderstood something somewhere.

[Wolfie]

You had to level a craft to near-max in FFXI not because of the Auction House, but because of how stupid the market was set up. Items you synthed to level up your crafts were near-worthless and could not be used for anything, and you either vendored them or tossed them out.

Then when you got to high level, NQ items were worthless as well, because everyone and his grandmother was doing the same "profit" recipe, and the market became oversaturated with NQ items. HQ became the only profit.

If you want a healthy economy, you have to make sure the items people create leave the economy at about the same rate that they make them.