Not being able to buy single items from a stack on the marketward.

[TirionCrey]

I'm being serious, in a general sense (not specific to you, per se). In this theoretical situation you keep describing where you just need 1 of some item for something and for whatever reason you don't have any, the first thing I do is ask friends if I can have/borrow/buy one before I go to the market. This gets me what I need 9 times out of 10 at a fair price, or sometimes free, and I do the same for my friends in return. If history has shown anything, it's that are multiple functional MMOs economies where you cannot cherry-pick from stacks of items listed on the market/AH/broker so there is no reason to be overreacting to the fact that ARR is like this now, too.

And here's another thing to consider. In ARR, just like in 1.x before it, equipment is consumable goods. At level 50 in particular, even if you only need 1 of those pieces of cloth right now to get some piece of gear made from your crafting buddy who doesn't have the mats on hand, chances are pretty good you're going to need more of those material later as soon as you turn your gear into materia, so you might as well buy a few of them to have them on hand for when you or a friend needs them.

And this is a response I'm willing to respond to in a polite manner
What you refer to is generally true. Whenever I miss something material-wise I usually have someone in my FC that can give me said material (for free, cause it's policy in our FC). We support each other, that's the point of a LS/FC IMO, so I know what you mean. But going with past experience in all MMORPGs I ever played, that's something you can't rely on in the open economy, that people will actually sell "specific" amounts of items, for the sake of the players who only need that "specific" amount. That's what I meant with relying on player behaviour. Most people don't give a damn about stuff like that. They got 99 of an item, they will try to sell it as 99. Of course exceptions prove the rule, but it never worked out "smoothly" in any MMORPGs I ever played. I'm not saying that it won't work in FFXIV as a fact...but I'm definetely concerned that being restricted to either sell one unit or whatever amount is put up on the market wards...there is a good chance there won't be any single units most of the time. And from a community perspective I think that's a bad thing.