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

[Elasia]

For example, I remember for a 3 month period I was the monopoly on Wind Shards on my server. I made ~50mn gil this way, and the more girl i made, the more item markets I could dominate and make more in. It became very profitable but unfair to smaller buyers who has to buy at a higher price in smaller portions.

By making stacks unalterable, v2.0 will make this much more difficult to do with scale

...

I dont view this as such a large problem for myself.. not only am i a mega crafter but also a large vendor as well.. i'll end up filling my secondary accounts with vendor mules just to get more sell slots and gain a large competitive edge over most people, with creative naming you can even create false markets and rig pricing history to control price on the more prominent items that are worth controlling as well as the usual axe grinding.

Wow... stupid 1000 char limit lol

[catarina]

I dont view this as such a large problem for myself.. not only am i a mega crafter but also a large vendor as well.. i'll end up filling my secondary accounts with vendor mules just to get more sell slots and gain a large competitive edge over most people, with creative naming you can even create false markets and rig pricing history to control price on the more prominent items that are worth controlling as well as the usual axe grinding.

Wow... stupid 1000 char limit lol

Thanks for sharing, don't give away all your secrets I'm sure you can still trade and make gil just more troublesome now that they are effectively cutting the poor out of being able to buy from bigger stacks... you'll have to create many more smaller stacks for the more "dependable" trades. Otherwise, after you get to a certain amount of gil, the small spread you make on these becomes less worthy of your time.

Concur on the stupid 1000 char limit

[Jinko]

with creative naming you can even create false markets and rig pricing history to control price on the more prominent items

/sigh

Guys if you want to discuss your underhanded tactics of dominating the market make a new thread please :S

[Elasia]

after you get to a certain amount of gil, the small spread you make on these becomes less worthy of your time.

Your right about the spread.. its more about maintaining an over all price level and still being able to move volume, if price is controlled, crafting will return high margins.. for me its not the items particular resell spread but what value can i extract through the crafting process

I dont really mind talking about it.. its all out there if someone uses google.. whole communities have sprung up thanks to the wow ah. There is actually an opposite end to this as well and thats price suppression of raw materials, although once the chinese farmers get going this usually takes care of itself

Taking from stacks isnt really the issue here.. the smaller market limits on number of items per retainer is.. but its work around able thanks to the super fast xp rates, people will make a market out of singles and the world will be just fine.

[Mishaela]

Lol nice try.

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.

[-Aleth-]

Interesting point, I hadn't thought about how the materia system effectively makes armour into consumables. What a clever way to create an "item sink" in a game. In ffxi I'm sure any given server only needed so many brigandine armours or whatever to exist at any one time. This way various items continue to be marketable much further into the game's life-cycle.

Still pro-choice on this issue though just because it struck me as counter-intuitive the first time I tried to buy from the markets.

If there are no changes made I hope to corner the market as someone who sells individual items at the same unit price as people who put up whole stacks. If they discount their stacks, I will discount my singles even more until they give up trying to market that item. I will be the fisher the culnarians will love! Unless they are fishers too. :|

[BloodLotus]

At the beginning, I was all for being able to buy single items from stacks. At the time I needed felt and only needed one. Of course, like everyone else there were only large stacks of items that I didn't want to buy.

As a buyer I want to be able to buy a single item from a large stack if I like.

Now... as a seller I see the benefit of the current system. If they change it, great! If they don't, I know exactly what I'm going to do in the meantime to maximize my selling power by using (possibly abusing) the current system.

[Volsung]

I think all we really want is the options from 1.x

People can still sell their stacks as a stack if they want, and others can offer to sell a stack individually.

This. This. And this.

[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.

[Fear]

I to miss buying single items from the markets, during Beta4 I tried to make some newer items but when I wanted 2 items I was only offered the choice to buy 99, in the end I didn't bother.

How are the newer players with less gil going to be able to get started with crafting or making their own stuff when most people will be putting stacks of 99 up and not singles.