Am I the only one who feels like the market board needs a revamp?

[KageTokage]

Between the markets being flooded by underpriced items gathered/crafted through questionable means and people constantly undercutting each other (Which is only going to get several magnitudes worse if the companion app allows this to be done at no cost), I feel like something needs to change.

I recall how some MMOs allow you to open a personal shop and if I'm not mistaken, 1.0's market system worked in this manner in that people could browse everything your retainers were selling, but in towns as opposed to only at your house.

I feel like it would be better if rather then searching for the exact item being sold with its price, searching would simply bring up all of the retainers selling a given item, leaving it up to the buyers to browse them and determine which of them has the best deal or simply cave and buy it at whatever price seems reasonable.

Making it more difficult to monitor the prices competitors are selling their items at would also make the undercutting less of a problem.

I also find the detailed sale history to be more detrimental to the economy then beneficial, as it sets a price line that people will often try to conform to when deciding on an initial sale price, which coupled with the tendency for people to undercut generally results in prices rapidly tanking as time passes and only increasing significantly as a result of a lack of stock (Which is often caused by someone buying everything out and trying to sell at a profit) or an increase in demand due to a new tier of gear being released or some such.


Those are just my (Likely flawed) thoughts on how the market is currently, how I think it could be improved, and wonder if others have any ideas.

And yes, this probably is more appropriate in the market/retainers section, but that place is dead as can be.

[Talraen]

I don't think making buying less convenient would be a desirable solution to undercutting, even if it achieves the goals you've set forth. The 1.0 market was terrible even at the end when it worked basically like you describe here.

If undercutting is a problem (and I'm not willing to declare that it is), the simple solution is to add a listing fee to items. Or perhaps a system where the tax on an item (and therefore its listed sale price) decreases over time the item remains listed at one price. Or a more eBay-like system where you specify the price to list at as well as the lowest price you're willing to sell for, and it automatically matches any undercutting until it reaches that price.

[Skivvy]

I think adding a listing fee would help quite a bit in reducing the undercutting wars that go on. I would also love to see a buy / sell orders added.

[Vaer]

I don't mind bazaars and the like, but the 1.2x system got old quick when you had to spend a couple minutes going somewhere to get one item then somewhere else to get another. If you needed to buy a lot of stuff it quickly became a drag.

People will probably figure out a way around it by having a third party site and/or data collection plugin that parses the information anyway and uploads it somewhere or a place where players can just put what they are selling and for what price so others can use the website's search to find things defeating the entire purpose of hiding the prices.

Don't underestimate the power of laziness.

[Remyogic]

Between the markets being flooded by underpriced items gathered/crafted through questionable means

I have no clue what you mean by this. How does a player gather or craft anything in the game outside of the normal means? Simply requesting clarification to hopefully understand your point here.

and people constantly undercutting each other (Which is only going to get several magnitudes worse if the companion app allows this to be done at no cost), I feel like something needs to change.

Honestly, undercutting doesn't effect things as much as people say. I adjust my prices once weekly on Monday night's and let everything sit. Only posting more up as things sell. If I get undercut on items, I may not get the sale on right away, but by Thursday the market has re-stabilized and my stuff sells. If you are in the MB to make some quick Gil, then the undercutting game is just something you have to deal with, because that is what undercutters are doing it for.

I recall how some MMOs allow you to open a personal shop and if I'm not mistaken, 1.0's market system worked in this manner in that people could browse everything your retainers were selling, but in towns as opposed to only at your house.

I feel like it would be better if rather then searching for the exact item being sold with its price, searching would simply bring up all of the retainers selling a given item, leaving it up to the buyers to browse them and determine which of them has the best deal or simply cave and buy it at whatever price seems reasonable.

Making it more difficult to monitor the prices competitors are selling their items at would also make the undercutting less of a problem.

Also making it MUCH more difficult to buy anything at a reasonable deal. This system severely punishes the buyer. Think of it in this context:

You want to craft some raid food and need to buy the ingredients, we'll say there are 5 ingredients and you want to only cross-check 5 retainers of each ingredient to get the best deal. You would need to:
A) Write down the name and location of 25 retainers.
B) Find each of those retainers in a virtual sea of retainers (even the least populated servers have ~4k "active" players)
C) Write down the prices and retainer for each ingredient
D) Make sure each of the retainers you picked has quantity enough for sale for what you want to craft. If not, start over at A.
E) Decide who to buy from and individually travel back and find each of those retainers
F) Spend way too much Gil on all the teleporting
G) Do this all just to then realize in the 2 hours it took you to do this, you could have gathered all the items, crafted your food, and been off doing something else for much cheaper.

I find it very difficult to imagine an scenario where this system isn't incredibly punishing to the buyer.

I also find the detailed sale history to be more detrimental to the economy then beneficial, as it sets a price line that people will often try to conform to when deciding on an initial sale price, which coupled with the tendency for people to undercut generally results in prices rapidly tanking as time passes and only increasing significantly as a result of a lack of stock (Which is often caused by someone buying everything out and trying to sell at a profit) or an increase in demand due to a new tier of gear being released or some such.

Just the opposite, this feature is integral to the stability of the market. Using this feature as a buyer allows me to determine if the item is appropriately priced or not.

For example:
If I see an item with 5 listings at 100k+, I can look at the history to determine if this item is normally 100K+ or if it just recently had a run on it and only the ridiculously priced lots are left. It also allows me to determine the general frequency with which this item is posted up for sale and whether or not the wait would be long to get the item at a better price.



TL;DR - Most of the time someone complains about being undercut, it is because they are trying to operate in an item with an overly conjested market and don't like the competition aspect of a free economy. (What I mean by this is don't operate in a 1mil gil item that sells 5 times a week and has 100 listings; you will make much more money in the long run operating in a 10k gil ite that sells 100 times a week and only has 5 listings.) However, it is the competition aspect which allows the economy to thrive in the first place. If you changed the Market in the manner you are suggesting, you would overall sell MUCH less than you do now while dealing with undercutting. There are very few players, even dedicated ones, who will go through all the trouble it would take to buy stuff in that type of marketplace.

A stated previously, a better solution would be to add a listing fee which would be prohibitive enough to prevent someone from wanting to constantly re-list at 1-2 gil cheaper than their previous listing.

[PotatoWafflez]

While I would love to have all my retainers setup in my little item shop themed house and have a reason for people to come visit and buy stuff, I would never want to get rid of the convenience of the market board.

The market board does need the ability to have multiple pages of listings though because its too easy to lock down a market if you have enough retainers to populate the listings and the fact that larger stacks get higher priority over smaller stacks at the same price doesn't help with mats and consumables.

Having the ability to filter to specific city states would be nice too.

[Skivvy]

I don't mind bazaars and the like, but the 1.2x system got old quick when you had to spend a couple minutes going somewhere to get one item then somewhere else to get another. If you needed to buy a lot of stuff it quickly became a drag.

People will probably figure out a way around it by having a third party site and/or data collection plugin that parses the information anyway and uploads it somewhere or a place where players can just put what they are selling and for what price so others can use the website's search to find things defeating the entire purpose of hiding the prices.

Don't underestimate the power of laziness.

I'm not sure if 1.0 ever developed an online search like that, but XI has ffxiah.com which is quite handy for checking AH and bazaar pricing. I wouldn't say the power of laziness pushed that website, but more that players were resourceful in fighting a clunky system.

As much as I love XI, I hope to never see personal bazaars become a thing again. It is a bit exciting when you find a really good deal, but it is still a hassle having to jump all over trying to find the correct sellers and items.

[Zojha]

Undercutting isn't a problem, tho'.

Undercutting is competition, price competition to be precise, it's the very point of having free markets. It's the mechanism that's supposed to drive people to become ever more productive/efficient in their production processes and thus lead to increasing social benefits.
Undercutting can only ever have negative effects in one very specific case: When competitors have to permanently give up their ability to compete - Like a competitor going bankrupt. And the reason why that is negative is solely because the Undercutter permanently loses competition and can thus raise the prices to an oligopoly or monopoly level afterwards, which is allocatively inefficient.

That's not applicable in this game, because you can't make other people bankrupt and prevent them from joining the market again when prices rise back to their previous level. Undercutting therefore cannot be nor become an issue, ever. At least not from a health perspective. What IS a bit issue from a health perspective is incomplete information - that always leads to an inefficient allocation. Removing transparency from the market is asking for a less efficient and thus, less socially desirable market.

If we'd want to analyze what's wrong with the marketboard, the bar to measure it by is a perfectly competitive market, because those are ideal, i.e. efficient markets as per theory. And let me tell you: The issues are not what you think they are.

[Liam_Harper]

Undercutting isn't really an "issue". If the items are made/gathered by legitimate means and there are undercut wars with few sales, supply simply outweigh's demand. For example on my realm, right now I see about 5-6 people warring over Nightsteel weapons, but maybe 2-3 sold in the last few days. An undercut war is quite natural, 6 people can't all sell their item to 2 buyers.

If someone is no-lifeing and sitting on a market undercutting every 10 minutes, that can suck but you're better off packing up and moving to a different market (say, materials that person is buying often). From experience the hardcore undercutters often burn out within a few weeks and you get your market back, in the meantime there are hundreds of other profitable items.

To be honest, it seems your real issue is botters and non-legitimate sellers. Those can exist, for example the seller who can spam 1000 potions an hour and completely control a market. Or players using a constant under-cut bot (these do exist, I've heard shady sites advertise them). In this case I'd agree that Enix should investigate these occurances (not to difficult to monitor a client for 3rd party programs) and take action if necessary. But this is an entirely different issue to general undercuts.

[MOZZYSTAR]

Disclaimer: I won't say that I have good marketing management and what I say might be iffy/bogus, but it's worked for me so far. XD Markets will always have iups and downs. Markets for something will always crash, and then it'll eventually work its way up again. When the market for X plummets, find the next trend that is doable for you. Be proactive, keep an eye on things. You can also take control of a market for a little while when things aren't going your way. Like, I had control of a market for about a week. I sold large quantity at the lowest price X was going for. Everytime my stack sold, I'd put up another stack, keeping an eye where things were at, and within another few minutes to an hour, or overnight, et cetera, my stack sold again, etc. I made 1 million in two days as a non-crafter/non-gatherer who wasn't on all the time, et ctera,and then I made another million, and so on and so forth. When this went on for too long, one of the other sellers I noticed tried to monopolise the market by selling their stacks in tens at a slightly lower price, and spammed these stacks across their retainers, so there were like... 10-20 of these small, lower-priced stacks, at the top of the listings. Then others jumped in etc. Eventually it crashed the market. Crashing the market can be profitable. It may just take some time to build it back up.

Edit: if you don't mind a slower-pace money making method (that will also crash when people catch on), try selling in smaller quantities for much higher price. Sometimes, I'll see stacks of 1,000 something at 99 gil (so it comes out to 99k+ tax). Well, not everyone can afford a much more affordable bulk (like newer players). So, I may sell 25-150 of X, but at like... 400 or so gil (10k approx.). The price is extortionate in comparison to the bulk, but it's total pricing is less daunting than the bulk. Convenience stores basically do this as well, in that they jack up the prices of individual items out of "convenience," while you can buy the same thing in bulk at Walmart or wherever for cheaper.

P.S. If it's just one person undercutting you keeps undercutting you, let them undercut you. Someone will buy them out, and the next in line may be you.

As it is, I think the market board is fine and really convenient. Out of all the markets I've played with, FFXIV's is the most convenient imo.

As much as I love XI, I hope to never see personal bazaars become a thing again.

Same, I could never properly load bazaars because of how condensed they were. orz But yeah, bazaars really weren't that convenient.