Botting on the marketboard. Impossible to sell anything.

[Liam_Harper]

What annoys me lately is how even regular players have addons that can search out market niches or automatically undercut all their listed items by 1 gil. I've come across players on discords discussing how it's a thing and not even uncommon either.

It feels a bit annoying to play legitimately, manually repricing every item one by one, then someone comes along 10 minutes later and undercuts the entire lot at a click while sending out their Quick Ventures. It's a punishment for following the ToS.

[Kaliesto]

I'm curious what kind of players are actually controlling the market prices for everything in this game? You can tell there is a fixed range to everything you buy, and very rarely can be not the case.

[Jojoya]

I'm curious what kind of players are actually controlling the market prices for everything in this game? You can tell there is a fixed range to everything you buy, and very rarely can be not the case.

No player is going to have that sort of control over everything in the game. A few players may be able to monopolize a certain few item on their home world/data center but most pricing is still going to be mainly influenced by supply and demand. If your seeing items being sold for roughly the same amount on multiple worlds, you're seeing the effects of world visit and data center travel on the marketboard.

If that's not what you're referring to, you should give a specific example of what you're talking about.

[Prrringles]

What annoys me lately is how even regular players have addons that can search out market niches or automatically undercut all their listed items by 1 gil. I've come across players on discords discussing how it's a thing and not even uncommon either.

It feels a bit annoying to play legitimately, manually repricing every item one by one, then someone comes along 10 minutes later and undercuts the entire lot at a click while sending out their Quick Ventures. It's a punishment for following the ToS.

Yeah this is what you get for going mainstream. People in general are scummy so players in this game should be no exception. Like you said - It's a punishment for following the ToS.

[UkcsAlias]

Yeah this is what you get for going mainstream.

That isnt just mainstream, such things happen in any game with an economy. Any economy will get players to automate things to optimize their money generating.

The only way to counter this is either by using a tax mechanism (editing prices costs gil), or by having improved detection. As detection is usualy more difficult, tax would be the solution.
But for taxing, there is the issue it also punishes the legit players. But at least there is a way: each retainer can only relist 10 items for free per day. If its sold, a new item is not considered relisted. When exceeding this value, each price change now costs some gil. This value also scales up doubling each time. For gracefulness we can exclude items under a certain value (items/stacks below 10k in total), or even make that cost tiered (<1k is free, <10k 100gil, >10k is scaled values).
Optionaly you could even make these 'relists' a resource that you can stack (for example you get 10 per retainer per day, but they can stack up to 100 - making the occasional trader unaffected).

And ff is still far from mainstream. WoW is mainstream, and ff is still a niche (but probably also the reason why its a lot more fun). Every time an MMO is mentioned in the news (even if its about gaming in general), WoW is usualy mentioned as an example, but FF isnt (at least not in my country).

[Prrringles]

That isnt just mainstream, such things happen in any game with an economy. Any economy will get players to automate things to optimize their money generating.

I don't agree but ok. This whole botting/RMT crap wasn't as big of a problem as it was pre stormblood. The "addon problem" was almost non-existent pre shadowbringers. Shadowbringers and especially Endwalker brought in all the WoW folks (amongst others). I see a correlation there. Just my opinion.

[Jojoya]

I don't agree but ok. This whole botting/RMT crap wasn't as big of a problem as it was pre stormblood. The "addon problem" was almost non-existent pre shadowbringers. Shadowbringers and especially Endwalker brought in all the WoW folks (amongst others). I see a correlation there. Just my opinion.

Lowering the barrier to entry probably played a bigger role in the spike. More participants in general not just from population increase but also because it was much easier to level crafting would come with an increase in the number using third party tools to simplify part of the sales process.

[Gserpent]

What annoys me lately is how even regular players have addons that can search out market niches or automatically undercut all their listed items by 1 gil. I've come across players on discords discussing how it's a thing and not even uncommon either.

It feels a bit annoying to play legitimately, manually repricing every item one by one, then someone comes along 10 minutes later and undercuts the entire lot at a click while sending out their Quick Ventures. It's a punishment for following the ToS.

It shouldn't be the players' fault that Square-Enix's designs are like 20 fucking years old at this point. Literally, the unmodified, stock Wrath of the Lich King auction house interface and functionality in WoW Classic is orders of magnitude better than the XIV Market Board, and that game is *fourteen years old* at this point.

There are still a handful of things left in this game that are absurdly dated, even by the time ARR released, and Square-Enix really needs to be catching hell from players for letting it sit like this for so long. There's just no damn reason that market boards and selling items should be so primitive and cumbersome. The only potential positive is that Square-Enix has been seemingly forced by the existence of plugins to adapt and integrate some of the more popular/desired features into the base game. Adding "collected/not collected" to item tooltips and the recent change to more clearly display damage typing were two extremely popular plugins, for example.

Maybe they'll get around to doing something about the deplorable state of the market board in 7.0?

[Aneshda]

No player is going to have that sort of control over everything in the game. A few players may be able to monopolize a certain few item on their home world/data center but most pricing is still going to be mainly influenced by supply and demand. If your seeing items being sold for roughly the same amount on multiple worlds, you're seeing the effects of world visit and data center travel on the marketboard.

If that's not what you're referring to, you should give a specific example of what you're talking about.

No, You are wrong.
Check every single Light Server for all Frontier, Varsity, Calfskin Rider's, Summer Indigo Items, Spring Dress, Urban Coat + Boots, Rebel Coat + Boots and anything else that sells well.
There is one Player on all Servers who controls the entire Market for all of these Items.
You will easily recognize that one Player by his Prices : 100,001 Gil or 140,001 Gil and so on.
This Player always sells 10-20 of each individual Item.
As an example, I'll take Frontier Pumps and Frontier Dress.
Each Frontier Cloth costs between 89,000 - 100,000 Gil per Cloth on every Light and Chaos Server.
There are also Auction fees.
I know that this Player buys all the Cloth on all Servers at the above Prices.
On Twintania, this Player is selling Frontier Pumps for 100,001 Gil.
That's under 10,000 Gil gain per Item.
And he doesn't allow other Players to sell their Items for a higher sum.
As soon as someone buys something from that Player, he simply restocks his Retainers.
It's been like this for 2 years.
That single Player controls the whole Market for all those above mentioned Items on every single Light Server.
And SE is just doing nothing.

[Jojoya]

No, You are wrong.
Check every single Light Server for all Frontier, Varsity, Calfskin Rider's, Summer Indigo Items, Spring Dress, Urban Coat + Boots, Rebel Coat + Boots and anything else that sells well.
(snip the rest)

How does that contradict what I said? You've got someone monopolizing a certain few items about of the tens of thousands that can be listed.

What did I say?

No player is going to have that sort of control over everything in the game. A few players may be able to monopolize a certain few item on their home world/data center

That's what I said.

Either your market on your world is much brisker than what we have on Coeurl, or we've got very different definitions of what "sells well" is. I look at sales history on those items you mentions and they stretch back anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months. That means an item might be selling one a day or one every 4-5 days.

Then I look at the profit margins on those items compared to cost to craft. Look at the Urban Coat as an example. It's selling for 1.6 million on Coeurl. Then I look at the price of the Shell Leather. that's 550k each. Since the Urban Coat requires 3 of those to craft (not to mention the other crafting mats, though their cost is trivial in comparison), I'd be selling the coat at a loss. I'm better off selling the Shell Leather (assuming I got it directly from maps in the first place - more fool me if I was buying it off the marketboard).

Not all of those items you list are selling at a loss but in most cases the profit margin is pretty thin for something that is going to take a couple of days to sell.

Why would I bother when I can turn to other items that might have lower market prices but as high or higher profit margins and sell considerably faster? I'm more than happy to let that player have their monopoly if selling at cost makes them happy.

SE does nothing because there is no reason to do anything. It's a player engaging in free market activity.