Quote Originally Posted by Wolfie View Post
FFXI's system placed everyone at a disadvantage. With no visible price and a history that spanned 10 transactions, item prices were extremely easy to manipulate and buyers got screwed. Sellers got screwed because all it took is for your item to be undercut by 1 gil, which you never saw, to ensure that your item never sold. Perfect examples of this are RR hairpins which doubled in prices during the weekends.

A "buyer system" and "seller system" are not mutually exclusive concepts; they're actually the same damn thing, because you can't have one without the other. If you make things hard to sell, then people will buy less. If you make items hard to buy, then it's no longer worth it to try to sell.




It didn't. There were undercut wars all the time. The only thing that slowed the process down in FFXI is the fact that it was an already established game, with more or less a constant playerbase, capped at level 75 for years. The rate at which (consumable) items entered and left the economy remained the same for a large part of FFXI's life span. But go take a look at some high end luxury items, like Igqira Weskit. Its price steadily crashed to the point where the only way you could make a profit on the synth was if you HQ'ed. That's because once a Weskit entered the market, there was no way to destroy it; they were simply recycled over and over again when people got sick of playing BLM.



The price wars happened until prices stabilized. People are still consistently crafting Expert Noble _____ Shoes because everyone likes shoes with movement speed on them, and people are always making alts that need those boots. These items are rare in the same way FFXI's HQ items are rare; you need to HQ your synth to make gold gear.

Go take a look at Balaur Hearts and Boiling Balaur Blood. Prices have remained almost the same through the year that Aion's been around and they're still very hot items on the trade broker. Again, all of this has NOTHING TO DO with the method by which the items are being traded, and everything to do with the supply and consumption of these items.





Fair enough, you're not experienced with this stuff. But trust me when I say that the most overwhelming factor in determining an item's price is its actual in-game worth, and not how it gets traded from one person to another.
you got some good points here, i might have experienced things a bit different, the blm body was very expensive a long time as far as i remember until blm got useless for most new added stuff and xp parties.

The soulbinding system is a very good way of keeping the markets from beeing flooded with the same items all over.
One should think about a way to implement this for several items perhaps.

And well for now... i just hope they replace the MW or give at least other options since its not just 1-2 min more then navigating through a proper AH system its like 20 times longer, selling, looking at prices, run back to the retainer etc. etc.
Its just not fun.