market fees should help boost player driven economy

[Maduro]

I have read through a lot of these posts and have found there is a general consensus that people hate it when prices fall on the market boards based on undercutting. While I agree that it's a pain in the behind, that's just how any economy operates based on supply and demand. That being said, here is a change that SE could make that I think would help. First thing I would do is show an average sale price based on the last (5,10,20, whatever) sales which we can call the base price. To get people to hold or raise their prices you just adjust the fee schedule. If you sell at exactly the base price you get charged fee x, if you sell below the base price you get charged an additional % on top of the regular fee, and if you sell above the base price you get a discount on fees. Thoughts?

[Alphadeus]

Or we could just leave it the way it is, and let the community decide the value of items based on how many are up, and how many people want/need. I don't understand why they would need to complicate things just because some people can't understand that ultimately the value of these items are based on supply and demand. People are just being greedy, as far as I'm concerned.

EDIT: Look at the increase in price of all the materia because of the new materia 5 -> 1 thing. Before that, people were selling their materia for around npc price (for tier I and most elemental tiers), because there were too many, and honestly you don't really need tier I materia unless you're maybe trying to spiritbond something faster.

Then you got the crafters that make HQ items. There's a bit of demand based on my observation, but there are also a lot of crafters looking to make money. You got your craft-only person that buys all their materials (and tries to do all sorts of pointless math to determine some sort of profit margin or whatever-btw this is just a game). You also have the craft/gatherers like myself, that go out and get every item. Me personally, I don't take into consideration any of the individual values, and costs (teleportation, etc). There's no reason for all that nonsense. At the risk of sounding like a jerk, people need to get over themselves and maybe enjoy the game, instead of pulling out their abacus and trying to force others to play their way.

[ruskie]

Just ad a real proper tutorial before you actually try and sell something. It took me 'uite a while before I figured out that there's a current market prices and market history on there. I think if more people know that they would have a better idea of prices.

[Hocchi]

One of my favorite pass times is finding an item with some value, making hundreds, and then putting them on the market board to make them worthless.
It's a lot more fun.

[PenutButter]

If it weren't the hackers and botters, I like the current purely capitalistic system. Without the competition and undercutting, people can sell their crap for almost anything. When the game first came out, I was almost the only one selling 2 star on my server and I could sell them for ridiculous prices and people still buy. Once competition came though, I could never bring the prices back up again because people will hesitate due to the price history. I've also had other crafters asking me to join their "crafter's guild" so they could form a trust and control the prices. Being too greedy to share my profits though, I refused.

Unless you're pure seller (which I don't think any legit player is, not even me) then the current system benefit everyone. Sure, you're selling for less but you're also buying for less. I'm sure I'm overlooking some aspects and the system certainly isn't perfect but undercutting due to competition in general is not a bad thing.

[Kabooa]

A player driven economy doesn't have a majority of its relevance tied to loot drops.

[Souljacker]

I'm of the mind that there are already enough "fees". Seller fees, buyer fees, there's enough fees already. What we need is just simple programming to limit the amount people can undercut. Listing your item for a couple gil less to get it at the front of the board isn't the problem; the problem is the tools who drop a price anywhere from 2-10k (and sometimes more, I saw a couple items undercut by upwards of 50k, just ridiculous). Lock undercutting to not be more than a certain percentage and that will slow down some of the falling prices. Of course, there would be no limit on pricing things upward.

[omfgwtf]

A player driven economy doesn't have a majority of its relevance tied to loot drops.

yes it does.. craft mats come from somewhere..

[omfgwtf]

if they went back to an auction house... this complaint would never happen.. the only thing you could see is what the last item sold for.. you couldn't see what others were selling for... or a history.. which made it all the more fun.. making a portion of the best gear in game synth / drop you could easily turn the market around again. but lets be honest.. when crafters can only make gear 20 lvls under max gear... there is 0 point in doing it.. especially when you have dropped loot in dungeons... aka aetherial gear. if they took out all dropped gear from dungeons.. excluding coil and made them drop mats for making said gear.. the economy would turn around relatively fast.

[Kabooa]

yes it does.. craft mats come from somewhere..

Think about that for a moment.

A -player driven- economy. An economy where the value is dictated by the players going out, getting stuff, coming back, crafting it, and hawking wares.

You know the problem with that? The problem is that you're doing this in an economic system that was designed to -prevent that-. The demand is still set by the players, but the supply is set by the game.


Rare resources? Set by a timer.
Special crafting mats? Loot drops / NPC vendors
Super special crafting mats? Loot drops / tome locked.
Most high end items require something dictated by the above.
Tiered resources. You'll never have to use iron again after level 15 or whatever outside niche 'components' that ultimately have no bearing on the end product.
On top of that, player crafting is in direct competition with, rather than supplemented by, loot of the end-product, equivalent or better.


Crafted gear? You get a minor benefit of using crafted gear over dropped gear due to the mass amount of secondaries, but YMMV based on how much you have to spend.
Potions? Constant potion drops devalue anything that isn't high quality. And High Quality potions ain't exactly stellar to begin with.
Food is essentially the only thing the crafter provides that a dungeon doesn't, and it's completely unnecessary.

So no. It's not a player driven economy. The -game- dictates what you can get, when you can get it, and whether or not its valuable based on what else is in the game.

EVE is a player driven economy.
Old style SWG was a player driven economy.
Warcraft is more of a player driven economy than this game.