FIX the AUCTION HOUSE!!!!

[Seif]

If you had to pay the tax when putting an item for sale then we'd have more stable economy.

The thing that might happen though is that all those cheap items wouldn't be worth selling anymore.

I'm sitting on 2mil I made off mb alone so for me the system is working just fine （＾＿＾）☆
The gil is almost useless though so I don't see a reason to be all up in arms about it either way.

[Alavastre]

I'm for a free market, but i think it should be good if you have to pay a 15% of the value of your item, if you remove or change the price of your auction, while your item price is not 30% above the lowest price on the market.
That should limit constant undercuting and fix the whole problem.

Then...you're not for a free market.

My suggestion is to put a vendor price next the mat price when putting it up on the AH. This might get people to say, whoa, what's the point of selling this so cheap. I can get more from the vendor. This would make it so there is less supply under the vendor value and therefore bring prices to a more stable point.

It is my belief that most people just want to clear inventory and don't care about the prices. If they found out they could sell it to the vendor for more, in a more convenient way, it would probably help stabilize prices.

[Beetle]

4 years later and still dont have a AH. Now thats saying something...

[Dhex]

I think the only reason undercutting is so rampant is you always see the cheapest item at the top of the list.

People undercut just so people will see their stuff first; and presumably buy it first because of that. They don't take into consideration the overall value of the item - they just want it gone.

[Palian]

Preventing to undercut (often) would only delay the process of the prices adapting to the current value of the item on the market, but not change the result. It would benefit incumbents and sellers, which, ironically like in real life, is often the reason for market regulations. Unlike in real life, there is even less need for market regulation, because you cannot form stable monopolies in the game.
What's wrong with a quick fluctuation in price? After the patch, the demand for low tier materia skyrocketed, prices rose accordingly then fell again as quickly as they rose, always perfectly reflecting the demand and current value of the items. On the other hand, prices for shards and other high volume goods are stable over long periods of time.

[Shai]

Shai mentioned having a static list price with a 5% undercut rate that changes the list price, all you are doing is slowing undercutters from crashing the market but it will eventually crash, due to nobody wanting to sell at list price. The base price will just lower and lower until it stays at 1gil a pop. Very small percentage of players are white knights and we cannot rely on them to bring marketboards back up.

You and I are basically talking about the same thing, though.
The system I propose will stop people with large capital investment from buying up those 1 gil items and reselling them all for 10,000.

If an item actually got down to 1 gil (which I find unlikely) it would truly indicate that the supply is much too great. At some point, people will stop making it because it won't be worth the time/money to make something and sell it for less than the sum of its parts. At that point, the price will either stabilize, or go back up.

The system isn't perfect, but it's certainly more stable than what we have and at no point do I want to -stop- undercutting.

[LineageRazor]

The argument for selling faster by drastically undercutting is valid, but only if you check your sales stock often enough that dramatic undercutting is worthwhile. If you check your auctions, say, once per real-life day, then it doesn't matter if your item sells immediately. If your item sells five minutes after you place it, but you don't check again for twenty-four hours, then it's no different than if the item took twenty-three hours to sell.

Price your goods to move in the timeframe that you check your listings. If you check your listings every hour, price your goods to move in under an hour. If you check your listings once per week, price your goods to move once per week. The auction history will tell you how fast goods sell, and what prices they typically sell at. If something sells ten per day at a price range of 15k to 20k, and you're not going to check your sales until tomorrow, sure you can sell it right away at 7k, but if you put it up for 15k you'll sell it anyway and have 8k more to show for it.

Just as with anything else in any MMO ever, the advantage goes to the player who plays the game more obsessively. A player who quits his job or drops out of school in order to devote himself to crafting and selling 24/7 is going to benefit the most from undercutting, as they can monitor their sales pretty nearly constantly. A more casual player who crafts for a couple hours per week in between adventuring will gain more by putting items up for the "standard" price, whatever that standard is at any given point in time.

[AmnesiaHaze]

if u dont care about gil then vendor it to a npc solve your problem and dont bother putting in the market is wasting ur time!

but i want real people to have my items , not npcs

[Yoohre_WildRiver]

Market boards, the real PVP in ffxiv!

[Murakamo]

There isn't a remedy to fix this.

It's the same in any game with an Auction House actually.

There are always a number of people with severe brain damage who think; "This is up for 50K...but wait IF I SELL MINE FOR 40K IT'LL SELL FASTER".*
These people actually exist, and somehow believe this, and there is no remedy.


As long as players are allowed to set whatever price they want, there is nothing anyone can do about it.




*If you are one of these people, consider the following;

Bob wants a 'Bronze Saw'.

Currently 20 listings are up for saws;


Now. Bob want his 'Bronze Saw', it doen't matter which one to him, he really needs it to get his Carpentry done.

Bob buys yours for 3,000g as it's the cheapest.However

Had you'd set yours to 4998g Bob would still have bought it.

You've now lost out on 1998g in total. And also left yourself open to be undercut further lowering the value of the item faster than people can actually purchase them.




This is how market crashes happen, where something that's worth 5,000g gets undercut by large chunks in a short period of time because, let's face it at ANY time someone could undercut your price. And by undercutting 1-2k gil you can be sure it won't be worth anything soon.

No. If bob only had 3000 gil, how could he buy it for 4998?

Your logic implies that if I saw a cashmere robe of casting for 2 million or so, I'd still buy it even if I had only 1.8 million. People look for the best price and buy if the price is right. The higher the price, the more thought people will put into it before they purchase. I think it is your brain that has brain damage.

I'm not saying that constantly undercutting is a good idea, though. But you honestly have no idea how marketing and economics work.