Quote Originally Posted by Wolfie View Post
But that happened all the time in FFXI too. It has less to do with how items are transfered from player to player and more to do with the supply and demand of a given item.
Not really. The big moment when you say things like that was during inflation and deflation, when massive amount of money where entering and leaving the economy. Other than that, you had no idea what other people where listing their items for. You could assume the dropped the price of something by a few gil to get a sale before other people, but all you had was the list of the last 10 sold, so you would base what you put your item up for on that. If you saw 10k,10k,10k,10k,10k,10k,etc chances are, youll but it up for a few gil under 10k. In XIV you can see exactly how much everyone else is putting things up for. You dont have to guess if you should undercut a few gil to get first sael, you know straight up that if the lowest up is 10k, you can put it up for 9k, and people will buy it first.

And then everyone else knows that as well. And then you see the last 20 items sold ranging from 100k to 10k in the past few days, along with prices all over the place being sold.

Blind bidding is just better. Some people cant hold it in their pants and drop it one gil over whos up first, they think by dropping it 10% they will get a sale faster, or something. Blind bidding can help with that, because unless the buyer wants to spend time to save a few gil, they generally will just bid its current price. It exploits the laziness of people. With this...well they can just see they can save 10%, rather than trying to guess it.

This hurts sellers. If you farm a someone common item that everyone will every now and then get a stack off, that will hurt your business. People who randomly cross items like that will undercut, because its just a bonus to them. Crafters who are spamming crafts to level, will undercut because they want their money back ASAP to keep crafting. People who dont use that item to make money (almost everyone selling it) ruin things for people who do.

This is why blind bidding is the best way to handle an AH.