World-visit MB is causing more harm than good

[Plastics]

We all get the theory. In theory this is equivalent of having a shared MB on each datacenter, so things even out and there's a consistent experience everywhere.

It shouldn't be a shock that this isn't actually happening. Welcome to chaos theory. Expecting people to behave as if no impediments exist when they do is wishful thinking at best.

The demand/cost in certain markets isn't high enough for people to jump servers, so the price differentials for items that sell 100+ times a day can be 2-3x, yes 200-300% different from server to server, meanwhile all the materials and time gated things people need to make those items are perpetually exhausted already, and it's been a few weeks?

Supply/demand doesn't fix this. The markets are concentrating on the few servers where items are priced high enough to justify emptying every single MB on a DC despite the massive rise in the cost of these materials. The steady state of this is that all players wishing to do crafting must relocate to one of those servers, and if game theory tells us anything, it's likely only one of those will win out in the end, making the entire datacenter a farm for just one server.

Interestingly, this result is the exact opposite of what Square Enix had intended to accomplish with this system. The fix is conceptually quite simple, even if technically difficult: have the datacenter actually share a single MB. If that's too big of an ask, MB access should be disabled to wanderers, so markets will remain stable on each server.

[Elun]

Had to break this into two posts because it's a bit lengthy, but I promise not to go off track. Thanks in advance for reading.

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Even if it worked as intended, I think sharing MB access across servers is not good for the game.

I used to play WoW from Vanilla through WOD (and a little in Legion/BFA but I checked out by then.) Servers had a community and identity. You knew people, even if you didn't know them as a friend, you routinely saw the same faces. Sometimes you knew people who ran certain dungeons a lot, or people who crafted and sold things. Some were nice, some were jerkbutts, and some were so pants-on-head everyone just had fun laughing at them. People had a reputation. This server had roleplayers, that server had PVPers, this other server had hardcore raid guilds, etc.

Why is this relevant in discussion about the market? Because the market is an extension of the players. I remember a guild on my server whose mission was to sell as many Righteous Orbs as possible, and so they farmed, and flooded. Their actions had impact on the server economy. It was interesting. There was another very popular tailor that barked "Pixie Packs" all day every day, bags with her name. But everyone knew if they wanted bags they could buy them from her. It added flavor and life, because in a smaller market, what you personally do matters and is more impactful.

WoW eventually added cross realm zones. Players from different realms automatically shuffled up into different instances of different combined people. That person you always used to see dancing on the mailbox wasn't there anymore, because they were in a different instance, or you were. Some people were happy, because you could now group and play with your friends on other servers. It's like being excited that you can hang out with your distant friend from Chicago every day now ... but only because the entire population has moved from there into your small town. Nobody knows anyone else anymore, every face is a new face. But one thing they didn't do was merge server auction houses. And, strangely enough, that (and some high profile guild name recognition) are pretty much the last places that server / community identity remain in WoW.

FFXIV is attempting to take an opposite-ish approach. Instances of zones are not forced together with players on other servers (thank you SE, this is the right way to do it) but we still have the pleasure of being able to hop over and play with our friends (on the same data center, at least.) They even prevent you from gathering timed nodes elsewhere. Good foresight. However, combining market boards into one huge pile removes that aspect of identity and, as the initial poster talks about, combining market boards removes an element of market-related gameplay from a large amount of hands and puts it in a small amount of hands.

(continued below)

[Elun]

I think by preventing you from selling on other servers, the thought process was to make it too inconvenient to worry about for most things (I don't want to swap servers to buy cotton bolls for 3g cheaper) but open up rarer items that may not be available on small servers (nobody is selling Expanse Barding on my small server, so i'll go buy from another.) I understand the convenience appeal, for helping out smaller servers, but it's opening up to ruinous effect. Scarcity means it is all the more enticing a reason to level up your crafters and compete in the market for high return, selling your own goods. There are only a finite amount of item categories on the market board, and within each category, only a finite amount of sales. It is not difficult to have a strong control over whatever categories you want to, once you reach a certain point monetarily. And when you have several servers worth of people who are focused on making gil, suddenly bumping into each other, and divying up every buyer from every category of the combined servers, it's not difficult to see the resulting outcome.

You know all those documentaries about how x small town used to have a grocery store, dollar store, and a barber, and then a WalMart comes in and drives them out of business? It's like the video game equivalent of that. Profit margin is driven down slimmer and slimmer as competition increases until only those with the greatest volume (don't get me started on retainers) can meaningfully profit through player transactions.

I think a fair amount of damage has already been done, even in just this short time, but I think that if access to any MB that isn't your home server's is severed as soon as possible before Shadowbringers, we can still have individual market identity and keep market-related gameplay open to more people.

Just some of my thoughts on the matter.

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Disclaimer: I am writing this as a rich person on Coeurl server. Probably not the richest, but let's just say i've spent enough time to know what's going on. Would love to hear other thoughts and opinions from the unwashed masses lesser people some of the more casual gil-makers

[Fiuraa]

Market boards in the current system are giving me 1.0 flashbacks of having to transfer wards and find retainers to buy anything. Except now its spend 10 minutes swapping between every server checking whichever is cheapest if its a big ticket item. Also it makes selling items extremely clunky since you can only see your worlds sale history.

We really need all or nothing when it comes to cross server market boards this weird inbetween is just another clunky annoying system which are kind of starting to build up in XIV.

[DrWho2010]

are you really trying to NIMBY FFXIV?

and mogboard is back up too. so no need to go world hopping.

[Brightamethyst]

This also only really applies to big ticket items. Sure, shop around before dropping a million on a fancy glamour, but no one is server hopping on the off chance they'll save a few k on a random piece of gear or crafting mat.

[GenBroadaxe]

I don't think it'll be as bad as all that in the long run. The number of people hopping worlds while price shopping is likely a sliver of the over all population and like Brightamethyst said above, usually on big ticket items. I try to keep my own Market Board shopping to my local server because of time, but having the option to look around has been a godsend for my wallet. As an example, last night I needed to do my lvl 50 Carpenter quest which was making a Crab Bow with 1 Savage Aim III melded to it. On my world, the best price I could pay was over 100,000 for 52 of them in a stack. I don't have any interest in buying and flipping so I hopped over to another server just to see if I could get a better deal. First world I went to had a listing for 1 Savage Aim III for 3,000 which was reasonable for my needs.

The people who are going to be hunting for deals on every little things are likely the people who are looking to maximize their own profit. Most folks however are likely just fine shopping local. Never underestimate local convenience, as the large majority of people aren't going to obsessively shop around various worlds for everything.

[kidalutz]

Market boards in the current system are giving me 1.0 flashbacks of having to transfer wards and find retainers to buy anything. Except now its spend 10 minutes swapping between every server checking whichever is cheapest if its a big ticket item. Also it makes selling items extremely clunky since you can only see your worlds sale history.

We really need all or nothing when it comes to cross server market boards this weird inbetween is just another clunky annoying system which are kind of starting to build up in XIV.

Hrrm sounds like it works like the real world Drive to the store check the price of clothes you like go to another store and check so on so forth then buy at the cheapest place it's not clunky it just isnt something for lazy people that dont want to bother.

[Communion]

MBs should be shared across a datacenter. PERIOD. But Square and YoshiP don't listen to us -- nor do they care.