Market Boards need to work like FFXI AH

[MistressAthena]

Note: Since this is a huge issue in FFXIV this will be a long explanation and in depth, so that SE may take it to heart. Therefore if your one of those tl;dr derps, dont bother wasting my time.

There's another thread out there that says the same thing, bless the OP's heart, but he didn't explain it very well for those who don't know.

Problem right now:

The problem right now is that its so easy to under cut, and the undercutting is happening when it really shouldn't be at all. Some crafts feel this far worse than others, but regardless of whether your ignorant to the problem or not, everyone is forced to deal with it.

The reason its happening is because the only real window you see is what everything is currently being sold at. The "History" window is something not many people use from what I've been able to tell. Coupled with the problem that people just throw stuff up "just to sell it". Then more and more people sell it at that price, because they have too, or it simply won't sell.

This is amplified 10x worse by the fact that the game jams equipment down your throat left and right by simple and easy quests even at lvl 50.

People who like to craft, and spend their time gathering and crafting deserve a system which doesn't punish them. They deserve to be able to sell their goods at a fair price, without having to be worried about getting undercut by 60% and or selling at extremely low and ridiculous prices.

The Fix:

The fix would be to create a market board that works like the AH in FFXI. This was a perfectly fine tuned and incredibly efficient way of making prices both solid, yet still fluctuate.

How it works.

Basically it shows the last 10 sold at prices. Nothing else.

Lets say for an example with made up prices, that your buying a Cobalt Cuirass.

You go to the market Board, look up the item, and the prices are as followed.

5,000 5,000 6,000 7,000 7,000 6,000 5,000 5,000

With 3 being sold currently. What you Don't know is that 3 being sold at are

7,000 8,000 1,000

So you bid at 5,000 since that's the lowest it seems to be sold for. You get the 1,000 item at 5,000. (not 1,000). The person who put it up for 1,000 gets 5,000 and you get the cobalt item. Your buying price of 5,000 gets tacked into the last bought prices.

Another person goes to buy one right after you, Bids again for 5,000, doesn't get anything. He bids again at 6,000, still doesn't get anything. So he thinks "is it worth going to 7,000 for?" Decides it is, and bids at 7,000 and gets the item selling at 7,000. In which case his new bought item price is tacked to the board.

The new prices are as shown for Cobalt Cuirass: Other prices Your price you bought it at The other persons price after you

7,000 5,000 5,000 5,000 6,000 7,000 7,000 6,000

So what does this do?

Going off of the "things are only worth what people will buy them for" is absolutely right, and should be exactly what it is. Right now its "Prices are only worth how few people are undercutting it by". Which isn't how it should be. You decided what its worth by bidding for it at 5,000. If too few people are buying it at a set amount its up to the seller to lower the price, where when they hit the level that people are bidding at it for, will start to sell them like hot cakes.

This keeps prices fair and stable. It allows both for the Sellers, AND buyers to decide how much items are worth. You decided when buying it that its worth 5,000 or you were WILLING to buy it at that price, and therefore you got it at the price. This makes it so crafters as well are not constantly hampered and under cut by people who get equipment for free through quests, or just to get rid of it. As even the person who put up the Cobalt Cuirass for 1,000 gil, still didn't under cut the market, and the crafters are still able to sell their items at 5,000.

Furthermore, when people go to sell items, they see what its being bought at. Not what others are selling it at. This makes it much easier for people to see items being sold consistently at 5,000 to put their items up for 5,000 knowing that it will sell at that price.


Conclusion:

The conclusion is that as the market stands at the moment, the undercutting is way out of control, with people undercutting for no reason, making crafting just about useless, except for materia melding. It's creating a chaotic market that is pinching crafters choices and forcing them to make only specific items that not many people are making to get a fair price.

The bottom line is crafters deserve to get a fair bid on their items, and they deserve to not be undercut 100x and forced to sell their items much less than what they are worth. Crafters also deserve a balanced market, where both sellers and buyers decide on a price, not how much its being undercut by.

[Fiosha_Maureiba]

One of the things I disliked about FFXI is this blind bidding system, especially on items without much history.

If you're looking for the folks that were undercutting, you also spent more time trying to go through the interface looking for the item. Or the reverse, where the average price is 5000, but people start marking up at 6000 and you start going up in increments to find that price.

In regards to the current situation, at level 50, I think crafters probably won't be able to interest players in a lot of goods.

With equipment rewarded from quests, job quest armor sufficing until folks can start running dungeons for Allaghan tomestones and getting those iLevel 60 gear and purchasing iLevel 70 or 90 gear with the tomestones, it leaves little appeal for crafted items from strangers.

[bwalker36]

Yeah, I was not a fan of blind bidding and I doubt it would really stop undercutters anway. They can still put it for 1g and I can just start really low and hope i get lucky. It's what I did in XI too.

Personally I like the guildwars 2 system the best. Its a standard AH interface but you can put in buy/sell orders. You can see the current buy/sell orders and decide what you want to pay/sell at.

[MistressAthena]

One of the things I disliked about FFXI is this blind bidding system, especially on items without much history.

If you're looking for the folks that were undercutting, you also spent more time tryingto go through the interface looking for the item. Or the reverse, where the average price is 5000, but people start marking up at 6000 and you start going up in increments to find that price.

In regards to the current situation, at level 50, I think crafters probably won't be able to interest players in a lot of goods.

With equipment rewarded from quests, job quest armor sufficing until folks can start running dungeons for Allaghan tomestones and getting those iLevel 60 gear and purchasing iLevel 70 or 90 gear with the tomestones, it leaves little appeal for crafted items from strangers.

The interface can be fixed, and for the tomestone items, that really has no here or there on the subject directly.

Yeah, I was not a fan of blind bidding and I doubt it would really stop undercutters anway. They can still put it for 1g and I can just start really low and hope i get lucky. It's what I did in XI too.

Personally I like the guildwars 2 system the best. Its a standard AH interface but you can put in buy/sell orders. You can see the current buy/sell orders and decide what you want to pay/sell at.

It would stop undercutters, sure there may be a few people who put it up at 1g, but that wouldn't be happening often, and it stopped undercutting in FFXI for over 6 years. Its a system that's been proven to work extremely efficiently.

[NefGP]

Yeah I'm beyond fed up at this point of putting up expensive HQ items one day, and coming back the next day - sometimes even just a few hours later - and several people have undercut me by 50% or more.


I don't know if it's RMT, or just stupid people being complete jerks but it's not helping anyone in the long run to devalue stuff so dramatically. I am not a fan at all of being able to see what others are listing items for. I never thought I'd say this, but I miss FFXI's AH in that regard because you had a price history, but could not actively look up what people are selling their wares for and directly undercut them.

[bwalker36]

It would stop undercutters, sure there may be a few people who put it up at 1g, but that wouldn't be happening often, and it stopped undercutting in FFXI for over 6 years. Its a system that's been proven to work extremely efficiently.

Even if it did stop undercutters It's a far inferior system to a true bid/offer system. If they were to actually rehaul it, which I highly doubt they will I would hope they would change more like GW2 then FFXI.

The real problem on here is some stuff is inflated some stuff isn't, no one really knows. It will get better and you will start to see only a few people undercut by ridiculous amounts.

[MistressAthena]

Even if it did stop undercutters It's a far inferior system to a true bid/offer system. If they were to actually rehaul it, which I highly doubt they will I would hope they would change more like GW2 then FFXI.

The real problem on here is some stuff is inflated some stuff isn't, no one really knows. It will get better and you will start to see only a few people undercut by ridiculous amounts.

I really don't think it will fix itself, and neither should we "hope" it does. FFXI AH was a far superior system, because it was a true bid/offer system. You bid blindly on an item, exactly how bidding works. Someone puts up an offer blindly knowing about how much its selling for. But the Auction House works like the Auctioneer irl, where it won't let you buy it until you either over bid, or bid on the exact price. Though its not exactly how an Auctioneer works irl, but its ALOT closer than what it is currently.

As it stands right now, its not bid/offer system at all. It's a "put a price up" you buy it at that price. That's not a bid/offer system.

As for Inflated and not inflated. The only thing I see as over inflated is some materials. Everything else is absurdly under cut to the point of ridiculousness.

It also won't get better, as EVERYONE is undercutting, even if everyone undercuts by 1 gil, in 4 hrs you'll still see your item undercut by 50%.

Soooo to sum it all.. No... The current system does not work.

[NefGP]

I just about cried earlier when I saw HQ lanolin dropped from 8k to 1000...

-_-' damn undercutters.

[dspguy]

Part of the problem is simply supply and demand. Your items may be sitting up there due to a lack of interested parties looking to buy. Keep in mind that all of those gear-rewarding quests are only there once. Some players may be "smart" about it and leave some of the gear quests for another job. I bet many won't. I don't know about level 50 crafted gear, but I'm selling plenty of level 10-45ish gear.

I like the system the way it is. I was never a fan of the FFXI system. If there is one change I'd agree to, is to charge the retainer fee up front (or maybe charge half the retainer fee if you adjust price). That would technically help with undercutters. Sure, first time "listers" may undercut, and theirs might sell first, but you wouldn't have sellers leapfrogging over each other on the race to the bottom; if the penalty was enough.

[MistressAthena]

Part of the problem is simply supply and demand. Your items may be sitting up there due to a lack of interested parties looking to buy. Keep in mind that all of those gear-rewarding quests are only there once. Some players may be "smart" about it and leave some of the gear quests for another job. I bet many won't. I don't know about level 50 crafted gear, but I'm selling plenty of level 10-45ish gear.

I like the system the way it is. I was never a fan of the FFXI system. If there is one change I'd agree to, is to charge the retainer fee up front (or maybe charge half the retainer fee if you adjust price). That would technically help with undercutters. Sure, first time "listers" may undercut, and theirs might sell first, but you wouldn't have sellers leapfrogging over each other on the race to the bottom; if the penalty was enough.

The problem would still persist regardless. You'd get people who then split their stacks, sell part of it, if it gets under cut sell the next part cheaper, and so on and so forth. That also buys into the system of "whoever puts up their items first gets screwed" because everyone after him is selling theirs. That's no solid system.

I'm also selling gear fine at every level, but that is not what the problem is, you fail to understand the entire post. The problem is the undercutting, not the actual selling. I'm selling my stuff fine... but at 90% less than its worth... That's the problem.