Auction House; You May Agree.

Ok, I'm not entirley sure if this has been discussed about before, if so I'm sorry.

Has anyone played RS RuneScape in the past year, an seen they're update? Its awesome, every item on the game has a high and low to the price, and the more it gets bought the higher it gets. But has a max price.
So say this was on FFXI, an I will use the Hagun for ex:
Max:2,500,000
Low:1,900,000
Over time, the more its boughten, the percentage of price does eventually raise. I know its the same concept now, but lower items wouldnt be so hard to buy, because the price range would be alot closer. So everything will always have a permanent price. Instead of having to buy a Crow top for 40k, when it should be 25k.

This stopped, RMTS, mearching etc..
Anyone actually agree this should be moved to FFXI? Or maybe a wish for 14?

nah i like the way the AH is on FFXI because everything just kinda works itself out if gear and such go up items farmed for gil and such go up

Yeah, true, but does it work itself out for newer players?

What are new players?

I like the way the system is now, it could also not be implemented this late in the game, would be too much work for them. I hope they don't have fixed prices for things in 14, wouldn't be a real auction house then.

A lot of new players find the prices of the AH daunting I'm sure, but very few players are expected to have the best of the best for gear their first time around either. Prices are set by market demand and everything is interconnected. Farmers sell drops, crafters buy them and sell their crafters, farmers buy the crafts and the cycle repeats itself.

Making gil in FFXI isn't hard, its only time consuming.

NM drops for the win.

That places a pretty heavy constraint on player-driven market systems... not sure I like it.

Problem is a system like this doesn't take into account supply and demand issues.

Lets say a new craftable item comes out in the next update that requires something cheap like rock salt. Everyone wants this new craftable item so it has a high price. All the crafters rush to the AH to buy rock salt and start driving up the price. If there were a price limit that price would stay pretty low. At first the crafters would say "oh thats nice, a cheap raw material and high resale." However, if the price never went up no one would be inclined to go out and farm rock salt to meet the demand. Lastly, a black market would form for rock salt where as people would bazaar/trade at a price that is more inline with market demand.

Using rock salt isn't the best example since you can purchase it from a npc vendor.

As for your supply and demand issue, you pointed out the demand problem, but you completely left out the fact that supply will go up because of many more suppliers now.

One downfall I could see with this is that server population does effect the economy, so the less populated servers could have a hard time with that idea.

"As for your supply and demand issue, you pointed out the demand problem, but you completely left out the fact that supply will go up because of many more suppliers now."

Actually, I did address that issue. If the price never went up because of a limit imposed, then no one would go farm it as it would be a waste of time.

And yes using rock salt might not have been the best example but you get the idea.

what SE really wants is for people to team up and get the item desired by "x,y,z, ect" players and give it to 1 of them and do it again. SE made ffxi very team dependent at the start because they felt that players wanted to gain a friend base environment where it takes team work to get things accomplished, which ultimately back fired in a way because people wanted ways to get good items by themselves or very low man so over time they changed the game gradually to suite individual characters.

in all reality SE would rather for the players to work at getting there own stuff and not use AH. AH is really used for "x" player that can do something else he/she is good at or love doing, example like farming, and use what he makes (gil) to sell to the person who may not like farming that particular item so the "x" farmer can buy something he may not have the man power or time to do.

Personally, I'd like to see the AH done in a more realistic manner, that being one similar to ebay. You list your item and the starting bid price, in addition to that, there is a buy now option. Bids are totaled once every 24 hours, and you get your item in the deliver box if you won the bid.

Doubt we'll see anything like that in a MMO for at least another 10 years, and by then, you should be able to do your bidding and tracking from your cell phone :D

I like everyones point of view on that, some made my idea seem stupid, but workable lol.
But this guys idea ^^^^
Seems ligit, eBay is ftw, that would make the best AH, but could also have a flaw like mine. People would price gauge so much. >.<

This is pretty much exactly how Perfect World does their auctions. :P

LOTRO had an interesting AH system. It needed some cleaning up for sure (such as more sorting options), but worked out for the most part. Of course they don't have the playerbase that FFXI does.

To address an earlier comment made, Runescape also sets limits on trades to the market equivalent. It's been a while so I'm not sure if that's still there, but from my understanding it was. There are a lot more people offering to sell stuff 'at your minimum'. Like I said, it's been a while since I've been on there.

New players shouldn't be expected to have all these glorious gears and weapons.

AH system like that wouldn't make sense since more items that sell now on FF go for less and less the faster they sell.

I really want to know how this game worked out at the start when the servers first opened. Coupon couldn't give enough to start this game these days.

They raised it from 10 gil to 100 gil >_>

I don't believe there's gonna be the ultimate AH system for any MMO unless it's a static price dictated by the company. Even then you lose the AH and just buying from vendors.

The Runescape market system is actually good, IMO. Yes, it would be hard to put into place this late in the game and I wouldn't suggest it. The only other system that appeals to me is the ebay-like AH (as long as it includes 'buy now' options.

It's been a while since I played LOTRO, but I think it had a bid and buy now type system. Can anyone confirm that?

WoW's (Gasp!) system wasn't too bad for starting players.

For those that never dabbled with it here's how it works. You can set a "Buy it now" option on your stuff and how long you want it listed. No one really tried to sell items waaaay overpriced like some do on FF. Most of the stuff was sold for disenchanting since getting gear drops was too easy.

Any overpriced items were ultra-rare/time consuming items that weren't really needed by even the elitests.

This is exactly how WAR does it but with no price history which makes it difficult to know how much an item is really worth.

An item is worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it.

Yeah but there has to be a "normal price" for it.

I think you're just restating what Tbest said--the way the AH currently works, supply and demand decide the consistent range within which the item is sold.

In other words, the buyers are willing to pay x amount of gil for a certain item, and the price range "normalizes" according to the suppliers. The more times an item is placed on the AH (read: the more supply), the more times price will be reduced due to natural undercutting. The more people that buy the item off the AH (read: the more demand) the higher the price will go, due to the consistent lowering of the supply (making it "more rare" in a matter of speaking).

There is no 'normal' price. An item will be worth however much someone wants to pay for it. Let's give ya a few examples here:

Cuchulain's Mantle:
AH Price : ~4mil.
I got offered 4.6 mil for mine the other day. Does this mean I could sell it for more on the AH since there are 0 up atm and have been 0 up for awhile? Probably.
Is it worth 4 mil +? When you look at the other back pieces with accuracy / dex and the buyers willing to pay it, obviously so.

Rock Salt:
NPC Price: 170-800g per stack.
AH Price: 1000g per stack.
Will people pay 2k+ for a stack of salt? Probably not since it's easily accessible from a vendor.

Igqira Weskit:
AH Price: 15k
Mat Price to make: 40k
So, why isn't the weskit worth more?
You'd think people would only sell them for 40-50k+, right?
I mean... EVERY Black Mage needs one if they don't have Genie/Morrigan's, right?
And on top of that... People augment them like CRAZY to get int + as well as magic skill + / mag. acc. +. But, because the crafters make them in bulk when hoping for a Genie weskit, the price is much lower than the cost to make them. This holds true for 'almost' all synths that are made in bulk when hoping for a HQ.