Don't Ruin the economy with an auction house! please![dev1019]

[Skeeter]

They should put in a dislike button. I'd prefer an auction house.

[Mack]

Auction houses have problems, paying money to put items up means that gil is coming outta your pocket even if the item doesn't sell. (market wards solve this)

Do you think there's an auction house committee that makes this part mandatory? defend the crap that is the market wards all you want but come up with something less half assed.

[Crios_Vandalus]

Obviously not a lot of people who studied economics in here. First off, anyone who says that adding a sales history is going to mess up the economy doesn't understand the concept of supply and demand. The reason prices rise is there is higher demand than supply and the reason prices fall is because there is higher supply than demand. It has absolutely jack to do with sales history. Also there are already ways to figure out average and median prices (YG) and also you can see all the prices posted using the search feature in the wards.

As for the fees, SE has to take money out of the economy somehow in order to combat inflation. The money that you get from leves, missions, quests w/e comes basically out of the void. If there are no fees, like those for choco rental, AH post fees, ward taxes, then eventually the prices in demand items will inflate drastically. Items which like gil, come out of the void commonly will be more immune to the inflation, but items that are more rare (like the Kraken Club in 11 which at one point was going for 900 million gil on Remora) will skyrocket in price.

[AngryNixon]

Obviously not a lot of people who studied economics in here. First off, anyone who says that adding a sales history is going to mess up the economy doesn't understand the concept of supply and demand. The reason prices rise is there is higher demand than supply and the reason prices fall is because there is higher supply than demand. It has absolutely jack to do with sales history. Also there are already ways to figure out average and median prices (YG) and also you can see all the prices posted using the search feature in the wards.

As for the fees, SE has to take money out of the economy somehow in order to combat inflation. The money that you get from leves, missions, quests w/e comes basically out of the void. If there are no fees, like those for choco rental, AH post fees, ward taxes, then eventually the prices in demand items will inflate drastically. Items which like gil, come out of the void commonly will be more immune to the inflation, but items that are more rare (like the Kraken Club in 11 which at one point was going for 900 million gil on Remora) will skyrocket in price.

+1 to you my friend, +1.

Just to elaborate on the price history bit. You are perfectly correct that those basic forces drive prices up and down, especially in a simplistic video game economy without the annoyances of real world concerns forcing shifts in prices. Assuming there is no YG because it's a voluntary system and the prices there reflect only the prices listed by those who participate in it (and while it is definitely a good number of people it's not the majority of the people who play the game that use it religiously), an in game price history helps to smooth out the price trends of items.

If we assume the old garbage system found in FFXI with all its problems completely unchanged, at the very least a price history helps avoid the spikes in prices from lack of awareness of what, historically, an item has been sold for. Hence the 'smoothing out' effect. Note that this does not speak to the tendency of the price to trend upwards or downwards but only to normalizing it at some level and allowing it to shift, either up or down, at an incremental rate instead of in massive blind spikes.

The hope is that in a proper AH system where both buy orders and sell orders are reflected there are two price trends showing those two separate trends (ie. what an item has been bought for, and sold for). This allows for the first thing I mentioned before (smoothing out the price) and for the two histories to meet at an equilibrium price dictated by both those selling the item and those seeking the item, instead of the traditional FFXI model which leaves the buyer with the only recourse of voicing their concerns over the price of an item through silent protest (ie. not buying it). That is somewhat insufficient in helping to shape the price trends of an item because not buying an item doesn't say anything at all to the sellers of the item. There is no appreciable difference between "you're charging too much" and "I don't need what you're selling" in a system like the FFXI model.

I won't waste time on the issue of fees. They are what they are, work around them and let them serve their gil sink function in peace.

TL;DR: Price history good, Crios smart, include buy orders in the AH system.

[ManekiKanji]

Out of any of suggestions i do feel linking each of the citys wards in someway or another would be a great thing to do ,im sure alot of people kind of feel obligated to stay in ul'dah to keep they're retainers up in whats proberly deemed the most busy area for marketing across most if not all servers following the same trend for that. I know one of the reasons i almost never travel outide of ul'dah towards areas like Limsa is greatly down to this reason alone with the markets resetting so frequently.

I choose Limsa Because i love the atmosphere of the place but alas my retainer cant use his or her own two feet to set themselfs up in the ward of my choosing without me babysitting them to the market of choice, something the anima attributes to saving as many points as i can so many of us keep it simple and stay in one place,de-valueing other citys somewhat into Ghost towns.

Mabey not compeltly to the main vein of the Op post but my two pence.

[Zkieve]

what economy.

[origamikitsune]

what economy.

Seriously? I have had no problem with the economy in terms of finding stuff to sell and/or buy. I made half a mill just selling random stuff in my inventory that I only had a bit of. Stack of one here, stack of three there. Freed up my inventory space no problem while I was sleeping. Granted, I started in Ul'dah and have stayed there since collectors edition pre-release, and the economies in Limsa and Grid especially are nearly non-existant.

Yes, its not perfect in its current state, but for the amount of gil generation : gil sinks, it is usable.

[Burn]

Don't have a price history then, an MMO won't be able to function long term without an AH.

The reason why the market was so screwed on FFXI was because the release dates were so different between the Japanese release vs North American release, it was almost a year and a half before North America got the game. Many people already had max crafts when an entire new playerbase came in, the market had been set for awhile and cornered by a few people on each server.

There is no reason to omit and AH, i'm sorry, the wards are nothing more but a stop-gap solution but if this is the long term solution we're in deeper trouble than I thought. I know people who refuse to play this game just based on the fact alone that there isn't an AH.

[GreyWolf]

Something tells me this game will probably die before an AH is implemented >.>; I hope they do put one in though

[Dreamer]

Seriously? I have had no problem with the economy in terms of finding stuff to sell and/or buy. I made half a mill just selling random stuff in my inventory that I only had a bit of. Stack of one here, stack of three there. Freed up my inventory space no problem while I was sleeping. Granted, I started in Ul'dah and have stayed there since collectors edition pre-release, and the economies in Limsa and Grid especially are nearly non-existant.

Yes, its not perfect in its current state, but for the amount of gil generation : gil sinks, it is usable.

I've actually had a surprising amount of luck selling and getting repairs in the Gridania market. It's mostly a ghost town, but it would seem that people are still checking it frequently.