Alternate Argument for AH...

[Phenidate]

Perhaps this has been brought up in the past within previous comments, but for the purpose of bringing attention to it, consider what it would mean if player to player economy becomes much more attractive (even more so than it is with the present wards system)

Gil sinks. That is, the method for retiring currency to make room for new currency, as used in this and other games. The systems in place meant to emulate currency circulation. Printing and retiring of bills etc.

In WOW you may know this is the repair, auction house fees, and flight master costs... training fees, licenses, gizomos and toys.

In FFXIV its bazaar and ward taxes, darkmatter and repair npc costs, and soon we'll have Chocobo and maybe airship tickets.

What ever improved market system we get that makes these gil sinks more attractive will be for the better. Right now the repair gil sink looks to be working more or less fine, and there is no way to comment on transport costs just yet. The Market gil sink though, where we should be seeing the largest chunk of gil removed from the game... is a bit derp.

Right now it seems like other than commodities and a few high price items, there isn't much 'stuff' getting pushed around compared to the volume of sales you might see in games.

With a better, more convenient system for selling items through a middle man (retainers, auction house, consignment, bazaars, pick your poison it doesn't HAVE to be an auction house) we'll see a better flow of cash from who's hoarding it to people who need it, and enough leaving the system that there is reason to get MORE of it.

But right now? We're seeing gil moved into a server faster than it can be moved out. Players are hoarding it (in another thread this appears to be to the tune of high millions or low billions). This is money that isn't moving anywhere any time soon and is just sitting there waiting for SOMETHING to be spent, on that really doesn't come. Other than giving it to other players to hoard, there just isn't anything to do with it. We're getting TOO MUCH.

As far as what this better, shinier means to sell stuff to other players? Honestly what we end up getting and the form it takes really isn't important, as long as its convenient and easy to use, being quick would be a definite plus. These words don't exactly describe what methods for player to player sales we have right now.

Auction house? Improved Market Wards? Door to Door Retainer Sales? Call it what ever and do what ever, but it needs to be easier.

And yes, every server is a small enough playerbase that there isn't much reason for a AH or what ever. It's more convenient to just get in touch with someone and pay them directly, cutting out any tax and with it, any loss of gil. What needs to happen is to make it EVEN EASIER to sell stuff through the game. If anything putting in a good system now will bear fruits when the game hits re-release time.

We could just make one or two MASSIVE gil sinks sure; have an NPC sell 5 million gold plated undies and make it so every player would want it... but that would be a bit to blatant for how SE usually rolls.

I'm sure Scrooge McDuck and his money pool would definitely disagree though.

To sum up:
Improved player to middleman to player sale system would:

KEEP:
Taxes: A % of the sale is removed from the economy. 5-10% is what we're seeing in markets, and this is perfectly fine (it's the lack of volume that is the problem)

ADD:
Posting Fees: Every time an item is listed for the sale, a portion of the profit is put into fees.
Reason to Earn: With gil leaving the economy, there is more reason to go get more. The value of a gil will go up and down but with the right balance of sink to add, hopefully won't bloat to easily.

[DoctorMog]

I'll agree that selling items needs to be easier.

I will have to disagree that by making it easier and then taxing it more will fix the gil imbalance.

[Seif]

AH is needed to make the economy more alive because people need to buy and sell in a more convenient faster way.

Frequent buying and selling will bring the economy to a reasonable format in the long run as soon as SE manages to get people interested in using the economy as a tool in the game.

Biggest problem isn't the lack of taxes but the fact that SE is handing free money through leves that kills the motivation to craft for gil. Also the gear stats aren't finalized yet so buying expensive gear is not that necessary to proceed in the game. (Darkhold in bikinis anyone?)

[MariyaShidou]

The problem with adding too much tax into MW/AH is that people will deal high price commodity in black market a.k.a direct trade after player made AH website.

[Phenidate]

I never said add taxes. The taxes are already there...

What I did propose is a missing piece of the puzzle, listing fees.

Granted, it isn't NECESSARY, it was more just a thought.

Still totally need to make changes to/replace the game system with a proper middleman setup, streamline things making it easier to remove a portion of money from the game.

It won't fix EVERYTHING, but it's a important step in the right direction.

[Misteyes]

The problem with an AH as a gil-sink is that it only removes economy from the game at the surcharge fee, and hence caps the value of items by the surcharge fee rather than the list price.

Currently, most players generate (via leves) more gil than they spend. This isn't the same as getting money from another player though crafting, since it actually adds more money to the game. When the primary source of income for most players is printing money, inflation is rampant.

Adding an auction house would result in fewer items being sold to NPC vendors (reducing the amount of money generated) while also taking a cut of the sale price (removing money from the economy). This would control inflation, but only after the list fee is removing more money than is generated by leves.

If the AH cut is 5%, then the economy will only stabilize after things are being listed for 20x their worth in generated money - This means that proletariat players whose primary income is from levequests and other money generating activities will not be able to afford anything, and meaningful income will come only from player-to-player trades.

This is all very abstract and I'm not explaining myself well; I'll try an example. Suppose that an item - we'll say a "Fried Egg" - is "worth" 5,000 generated gil. This means that in the amount of time that a player could create a Fried Egg, they could just as easily create 5,000 gil (by a levequest, behest, or dumping loot to an NPC vendor). If a player then goes to buy a fried egg on the auction house, inflation will continue until the fried egg is priced at 100,000 gil, since 5,000 gil must be taken out of the economy for every 5,000 gil worth of product that is created.

Currently, this inflation is kept in check due to the inconvenience of selling and buying. Most buyers are purely operating on generated gil, so selling at that high a value cuts out a large portion of the market. An auction house would allow much easier selling, which would accelerate inflation dramatically.

In order to actually repair the economy, the game needs some big ticket items that can only be bought from NPCs. Chocobo and Airship passes are a start, if they cost gil. Allowing players to collect and remove large sums of money from the economy will stabilize it at a lower total volume.

[Phenidate]

The problem with an AH as a gil-sink is that it only removes economy from the game at the surcharge fee, and hence caps the value of items by the surcharge fee rather than the list price.

Currently, most players generate (via leves) more gil than they spend. This isn't the same as getting money from another player though crafting, since it actually adds more money to the game. When the primary source of income for most players is printing money, inflation is rampant.

Adding an auction house would result in fewer items being sold to NPC vendors (reducing the amount of money generated) while also taking a cut of the sale price (removing money from the economy). This would control inflation, but only after the list fee is removing more money than is generated by leves.

If the AH cut is 5%, then the economy will only stabilize after things are being listed for 20x their worth in generated money - This means that proletariat players whose primary income is from levequests and other money generating activities will not be able to afford anything, and meaningful income will come only from player-to-player trades.

This is all very abstract and I'm not explaining myself well; I'll try an example. Suppose that an item - we'll say a "Fried Egg" - is "worth" 5,000 generated gil. This means that in the amount of time that a player could create a Fried Egg, they could just as easily create 5,000 gil (by a levequest, behest, or dumping loot to an NPC vendor). If a player then goes to buy a fried egg on the auction house, inflation will continue until the fried egg is priced at 100,000 gil, since 5,000 gil must be taken out of the economy for every 5,000 gil worth of product that is created.

Currently, this inflation is kept in check due to the inconvenience of selling and buying. Most buyers are purely operating on generated gil, so selling at that high a value cuts out a large portion of the market. An auction house would allow much easier selling, which would accelerate inflation dramatically.

In order to actually repair the economy, the game needs some big ticket items that can only be bought from NPCs. Chocobo and Airship passes are a start, if they cost gil. Allowing players to collect and remove large sums of money from the economy will stabilize it at a lower total volume.

Very insightful, and it looks like you have a better grasp of it than I do.

I'm wondering if SE, while reworking things under the hood, might be able to include a way to track created and removed gil. Maybe simple as tracking the amount of GIL a player has at log out a quick report of gil 'made' by leves, NPC'ed items etc, and 'released' on purchase of tickets, materia, chocobos etc... and then tally the difference at a predetermined time (i.e. every 24 hours, saw entry total of 1.8trillion, exit of 1.7, excess of .1 trillion)

Add some crazy equations I don't even want to think about right now to reasonably adjust prices of NPC services/sales to adjust how much gil needs to be taken out... I suppose the end goal would be to try and keep X amount of gil in circulation for Y players seen in the past hour.

Hopefuly what will happen is; If total amount of money generated is to high over the intended gil removal rate, bump cost of transport and services slightly across the board (small enough increments that no one service spikes too suddenly, i.e. prime-time chocobo rentals in Jeuno) but the sum increase is still size able enough everyone is accessing at least some part of the system at increased cost.

If the total amount of created gil starts to fall too much, it would go the opposite way, lowering cost of services.

[Verecund]

This game doesn't need fees and taxes as "gil sinks"... what it needs are some real long-term commitments / methods of character advancement that can be more quickly achieved in proportion to the amount of gil that is sunk into them. Item collection, item turn-ins, rep grinding items, item enhancement, etc. this game still either doesn't have these "commodities" or just isn't using them ...

[Phenidate]

This game doesn't need fees and taxes as "gil sinks"... what it needs are some real long-term commitments / methods of character advancement that can be more quickly achieved in proportion to the amount of gil that is sunk into them. Item collection, item turn-ins, rep grinding items, item enhancement, etc. this game still either doesn't have these "commodities" or just isn't using them ...

Not sure how I would go about convincing you that small spread out gil sinks are just important as large ones if not more so. About the best I can do is present the fact that just about every MMO has them. (excluding F2P titles which get all kinds of weird stuff with their model)

The issue is apparently important enough to address that it's got a term even (found this out when I was trying to find past mechanics that worked): MUDflation.

Apparently what I suggested in the previous post would be called a Dynamic Money Sink.

Also worth noting are the two examples given; which happen to be the most prominent titles presently, WOW for playerbase and EVE for its notable player driven economy. Both frequently make headlines...

World of Warcraft uses a repair system to act as a dynamic money sink. For a starting character, repair costs are very small. As the character progresses, repair costs get more expensive to counter the increased money gain. Another example of a dynamic money sink is the fee charged to use the auction house. A percentage of the sale price on all auction house purchases is taxed by the game, removing that money from the system. Because it is a percentage, in times of inflation more money will be removed from the system, helping to curb the inflation.

Eve Online has a player-driven economy with some NPC merchants who curb inflation by fixing the prices of many items. Basic blueprints and skill books bought from NPCs are inexpensive, even for new players; however advanced blueprints and skill books, such as those required for capital ship production and flight are thousands of times more expensive. These are generally only of interest to veteran players, reflecting the desire to remove money in proportion to each player's wealth.

The second half of the article is lacking any citation, but a lot of it makes sense.

As far as the examples you mentioned, most of them sound like what's already planned or has started to see some form of implementation in game.

Rep Grinding is analogous to Guild Marks and GC Marks. Possible trend of making other 'factions' offer rewards for collecting marks. (Friendly Beastmen tribes like the Goblins, or neutral nations like Ishgard seem likely)

Item Enhancement will be our Materia system. (Which coincidentally, also serves to remove equipment from the game)

Transport is of course, airships, chocobos...

Not sure what you mean by 'Item Collection' and 'Item Turn-ins' though. Can you elaborate on this?

Edit:
Also an interesting quote from the Virtual Economy article:

For a persistent world to maintain a stable economy, a balance must be struck between currency sources and sinks. Generally, games possess numerous sources of new currency for players to earn. However, some possess no effective "sinks", or methods of removing currency from circulation. If other factors remain constant, greater currency supply weakens the buying power of a given amount; a process known as inflation. In practice, this results in constantly rising prices for traded commodities. With the proper balance of growth in player base, currency sources, and sinks, a virtual economy could remain stable indefinitely.

As in the real world, actions by players can destabilize the economy. Gold farming creates currency within the game more rapidly than usual, exacerbating inflation. In extreme cases, a cracker may be able to exploit the system and create a large amount of money. This could result in hyperinflation.

In real world entire institutions are devoted to maintaining desired level of inflation. This difficult task is a serious issue for serious MMORPG's, that often have to cope with mudflation.

[SnowTiger]

All for an AH, but not for the gil sinks. I'd like it to stay retainer based so you could stock your retainers and have them act as your AH list.

WoW's AH blew ass, if you wanted to sell a stack of items with the option of selling one at a time, you had to list them one at a time... Then they'd expire and flood your mailbox... It was just a pain in the ass.

Granted, the wards still need tons of work, and I'd rather have an AH... But if they're gonna go and add an AH, I'd like it to be better than the WoW one at least. That AH was only even usable thanks to addons. At least the FFXI AH had a nice sorted list of items and how many were in stock... WoW was just a cluster**** of junk people threw on it, all listed individually... I guess they kind of had to with all the varying stat items those action mmo's get, but still.

As far as gil sinks go... Well, SE could take care of that easily if they added a golden saucer full of minigames and casinos. ^,~