Please allow us to buy 'X' Quantity of an item on Market Board

[Knahli]

This threw me off at first way back in the beginning but I later learned that it was a good thing. I get that it can be inconvenient at times, especially when there are only a few listings, but look on the bright side; if there are really nothing other than 99 stacks then you have an opportunity to buy one of those stacks, take what you need and then re-sell the remainder that you don't need in smaller quantities at higher prices. That way, people like you who only want a few items and are willing to pay a premium for the smaller stack will skip right to yours, and then, not only did you get what you wanted, you spun a profit from it too.

[Remyogic]

This threw me off at first way back in the beginning but I later learned that it was a good thing. I get that it can be inconvenient at times, especially when there are only a few listings, but look on the bright side; if there are really nothing other than 99 stacks then you have an opportunity to buy one of those stacks, take what you need and then re-sell the remainder that you don't need in smaller quantities at higher prices. That way, people like you who only want a few items and are willing to pay a premium for the smaller stack will skip right to yours, and then, not only did you get what you wanted, you spun a profit from it too.

This person understands how to make money off FFXIV economics.

[CainCrimson]

This threw me off at first way back in the beginning but I later learned that it was a good thing. I get that it can be inconvenient at times, especially when there are only a few listings, but look on the bright side; if there are really nothing other than 99 stacks then you have an opportunity to buy one of those stacks, take what you need and then re-sell the remainder that you don't need in smaller quantities at higher prices. That way, people like you who only want a few items and are willing to pay a premium for the smaller stack will skip right to yours, and then, not only did you get what you wanted, you spun a profit from it too.

exactly.

...not that i've been able to sell anything the last 2 weeks. But this exactly what i been saying.

[TattersailNightwish]

I thought it was irritating as first (I'm a "new" player, playing only since May).
When you don't have a lot of money, it 's very frustrating especially as a crafter. Leveling my Weaver I couldn't afford the Flax on the board at all. Not in the stacks of 50, 99 that people were selling.
So it motivated me to get a botanist going, up to the point where I could gather flax. I figured that as a Weaver, this would only get worse as I leveled, so I kept leveling the Botanist.

SO. Now that I have some money, I'll buy the larger stacks if I have to, and if it isn't something I know I really use a lot, I'll use what I need then throw the rest right back on the board, pretty much for what I bought it for (maybe a tad higher), knowing that it will sell.

I think the most simple practical argument against the smaller lots is the number of items per sale on a retainer. If they lifted that can you imagine how bogged down the MB would get?

[Yui_Tenshi]

If this happens, most of my profits will diminish since I sell single pieces for a premium when most sales are just small quantities. When sales favor stacks, then I sell stacks but at the cheapest price possible.

[BoazJochin]

I treat selling like the commercial economist. I sell cheaper in large batches and I will raise the low batches to cost the same as a stack of what I sell. so either way I make the same. Supply and demand. So take your pick on what you want. I am more than happy to raise my prices for lower quantity if that is what you would like. or you can buy the stack and resell what you don't need.

[MrMagic]

No to this. If I'm selling a stack I want to monitor and modify the price of that one stack. If people could just take a small amount, I may need to change the price more often to get rid of the entire slot from my inventory. Take what you need and resell if that is what you want to do but I want my stack sold in one transaction.

[Nanami_Naniwa]

As someone who played WoW for years I can't see how anyone would think WoW AH is better than FF MB.

As someone who focuses on crafting, gathering and selling on the MB (instead of buying from the MB) I wouldn't fancy such a change. As some others said it is not laziness why we sell high stacks. They sell. We make money. And we save retainer slots for other items we are selling. I have retainers for everything. One is selling equiment only. Other is selling crafting materials. Third one is selling minions, orchestrion rolls or housing items.

So basically when I got lots of free space (because lots of items sold) I DO make smaller stacks. I actually bought a stack of 20 fish today because I needed two of them for my aquarium (and I hate fishing myself). The fish sold for 1k each (so 20k in total). But there weren't any other smaller stacks or cheaper stacks. At the moment I'm selling the other 18 fish I don't need in stacks of 6 for 2k each. And they sell. I only got one stack left.

So maybe - but just maybe - it is not us, who are lazy to make small stacks for you. But maaaybe - just maybe - it is you, who is too lazy to bother with reselling the items.

[GoofballRat]

I read pretty much the whole topic, and as a person who both buys and sells all kinds of things, I would be in the middle, if it wasn't for one fact on my server at least: the already low prices. Because of that I'm against what OP suggests, we already have so low MB prices on some items that you can sell the extra to vendor and not lose a single gil. When you have that low prices, you just can't be in favor of these kinda things.

Besides, now it's actually challenging to sell stuff, directing profit to the wise. It gives me joy when I sell in this kinda system because I know I earned it. Not so much in games like WoW where MB was a necessary evil, a drag, something you do even though you get no joy from it, because there's no effort except to undercut as much as you can.

And neither in WoW nor FFXIV I undercut everyone always: in at least 50% of my sales I list the items higher price than the 2-3 current cheapest sellers, and I still sell them most of the time. A lot of players don't seem to have internalized that yet.

[OcieKo]

I'm firmly in favor of the EQ2 system, but I only heavily used the board on PVP servers where the value of being a crafter alone was sky high. An item is an item regardless, and bulk buyers benefit by being able to simply take out all the cheapest options, if people who don't spend 10 hours a day gathering put up a ton of small stacks, bulk buyer simply eliminates 5-10 listings in a few seconds. And when people talk about the listing order competition, the current system makes that WAY worse, say someone is selling 5 full stacks of the same thing at the same price... that's 5 slots taking up space, 5 things that need their price updated if anything goes under it, and 4 less things that can show up at a time.

For those about supply and demand... imagine if fabric stores required you to buy the whole 100yd roll or nothing. They'd pretty much have no reason to sell to people, only clothiers. Even for bulk orders not being able to choose how much you need can be detrimental, imagine wood only being sold by the ton, building a house need 2.25 tons of wood have to buy 3 tons. Your solution, don't worry about the other .75 tons you just need to get into the business of selling wood on top of being a builder. Argument comes up, well unlike IRL shipping costs, building costs, and advertising costs don't exist, but storage space is limited, oh hey you wanted to buy mats and sell what you made... sorry you need 30 slots to sell off worthless mats because you had to buy an extra 5-20 of each.
So player is down to:
A. Sell Less of What They Want, and lose customers when they don't replenish their supply in real time.
B. Use also limited storage space to hold it indefinitely til next use, storage space is already a real issue with glamour alone.
C. take a huge loss on the vendor sale of items just to not screw yourself over since buying enough mats for everything you needed wasn't an option.

Hell if it was an option in this game, I'd probably spend more time order-made crafting in this game than fighting mobs like I did in EQ2.

Also in my experience from EQ2, people who sold in bulk tended to sell higher than people who sold in small quantities. So if now is 1k bulk, 5k individual, after would be more 3k bulk, 2k individual, but you'd have less than half the listings. Also market price adjustment gets easier to do for people who specialize in brokering. Individual sales usually got eaten up by bulk sellers for more popular items, and large quantity stacks are harder to use for market price adjustments, given the current item cap is vastly larger than the current sale stack, actually makes one person ridiculously affecting prices easier given that each chunk has to be sold for less.