AH Mechanics

The current AH rules still annoy me to this day as both buyer and seller. If two sellers set their sale price to exactly the same value, then whoever listed first will sell first. On the other hand, if seller A lists for, say, 20,000, and seller B lists for 19,999 then seller B will get their sale completed first EVEN IF THE BUYER PAYS 20,000 OR HIGHER!

This makes no sense to me since both sellers have met the cutoff sale price that the buyer is willing to pay. Given that all sales are blind, I do not understand why someone who lists lower gets their sale completed first. In my opinion, it should be whoever listed first that satisfies the cutoff buying price. Now, some would argue that the current system encourages deflation since sellers have an incentive to list at a lower price. In theory, this seems plausible. However, in practice, I contend that it generally does not lower the price.

Most of the time, people just end up gaming the prices, reducing their sale price enough to get a quick sale but also to maximize their gain. Usually, their discount is not low enough to encourage buyers to shop for a better bargain. Instead, the discounts generally require annoying adjustments to various digits that, for most buyers, are not worth their effort.

By having sales go to whoever listed first -- and satisfies the cutoff buying price -- we avoid this silly game of "how do I lower the price ever so slightly to get a sale completed and maximize my gil gain as well." Sellers can still undercut -- which in itself is fine -- but under my proposed system we will see much better discounts from those who truly want a quick sale.

So is this a rant or do you expect something to happen by posting here? If you want something to change, the official forums are probably a better bet but really, I wouldn't expect too much.

hop in a time machine and explain that to them 17 years ago when they were developing the game.

Thats how the AH SHOULD work, but not the way they chose to do it.

If you're willing to pay the 20k instead of the 19,999 you should be buying the 20k and leaving the 19,999 one on the ah, but never try to explain logic to square.

10/10 would read again. I suggest you just use the Bazaar feature it is new but quite useful ! While we are wishful thinking how about a cross server AH so things sell even faster !

Umm because that's how a free market works. It's supply vs demand, if the supply of an item is higher then the demand, sellers will start lowing their price to sell faster, if demand is higher then sellers will raise their price to make more of a profit. FFXI use's a blind bidding system, which is common in many auction houses, to prevent abuse and price manipulation.

Also why they limit the amount of items you can place on AH to try to avoid people dominating the AH.

Except the AH does not in any way resemble a free market other than you are free to list and buy at whatever prices you want. When you as a buyer are willing to pay 20k for an item, and you have three sellers whose prices you don't know but are all willing to sell to you at your buying price, the only realistic way to determine who gets the sale is whomever provided the product first. (AH items do not decay -- they are just as new 10 years after someone uses it and places them up for sale as the day they were ever created.)

EDIT:

Also, in a free market, sellers selling at a lower price would only get their sale price -- but not a higher price than what they are asking for. Buyers buy from sellers who list a lower price in a free market because they can see the lower price -- and the seller only gets the lower value. Here, on the AH, a seller could list for lower and yet still get more than what he is asking. What real free market system works this way? None that I know of... except on FFXI.

It is both a rant and a suggestion. I only posted here because I figured it would get as much of a result as actually posting on the official forums -- i.e. no result whatsoever.

we tried telling people that like 47 million times already... let's try something new.... /clears throat

Hello Adventurer <Cerberus Boogs>!

Thank you for your well thought out and artfully articulated <suggestion>. We have read your <suggestion> about our <auction house system> and rest assured our tireless team of crack code clickers are working around the vana'diel clock to address your concern and/or recommendation.

The Square Enix Team

I honestly chuckled at this. Thanks for the smiles.

Real world market rules don't fully apply to the game's economy for 2 reasons. 1) you have npcs that will buy most things you can sell on ah, establishing a floor minimum value. And for some, that minimum value is worth more than the hassle of selling on ah. And why is ah a hassle? Because 2) we're limited to 7 items we can put up at a time. That makes the speed of a sale a huge factor in the price.

If they removed this cap, yes, you run the risk of individual players muscling everyone else out of a market, especially for craftable items where those with kupo/crafting shields can HQ more than the average player. This is already an issue for some items.

If they did something to cap the speed of a sale (let's say the game somehow guaranteed that all 7 items you put on ah would sell by JP midnight, but that you could only put up 7 items every 24hrs) then people would only ever put up the most expensive items they could sell. That would really screw over those who depend on the ah for buying large quantities of cheap farmable materials, because no one would bother wasting their precious ah slots on them.

The ah system isn't perfect, but at least it does give incentive for people to sell things fast (and lower the price as needed, which benefits the consumer), and doesn't penalize you for selling less valuable farmable materials that might help others out. If you're just complaining about the ah sale priority going to the undercutter, that's the way it works in the real world, except the ah spares the consumer the hassle of searching for the cheapest vendor and just gives it to them automatically. And there's nothing stopping you from putting your item up for 19,100 gil instead of 20,000 like everyone else.

No no no don’t suggest! Then we won’t get anymore silly rant posts :(

Since we are requesting things that will never happen. Can we request the SE official forums be shut down and this be the real forums !

No it is not. In the real world, buyers can see the seller's prices and do their shopping accordingly. The seller gets no more than what he asks for, and the buyer pays no more than what the sale price lists. On the AH, all prices are blind. So a buyer throws out a price at which they want to buy, and the AH chooses the lowest sale price equal to, but more often underneath, what the buyer is willing to pay. The buyer loses out any additional potential savings unless he starts at essentially the absolute minimum and work up from there. So if anything, it forces buyers to have to choose either between a time-consuming process of bidding higher and higher, or just accepting that they will lose out on some savings.


And nothing will stop anyone from pricing at 19,099; and the next guy at 19,001. There is no meaningful discount there; it's purely sellers gaming the system for speedy sales.

if this is the real forum.... then where are your badges

The FFXI AH is the best implementation of a market place of any MMO I've ever played. Have you actually tried to use AH's on other MMOs? It's horrible. 10304503 of the same item on the AH at a time, all priced exactly the same. You pick the seller and just buy from them directly. Which literally usually ends up being the one that has been on the AH the longest or the one who's name comes up first.

The bazaar is solution to your rant.

There you can see prices and compare and shop all you want.

Skip the search and maybe pay a different price? Auction House.

I like people who set up their bazaars where their sales are desired. Example, sell plutons next to Oboro. Sell weaponskill items next to moogle etc.

That isn't really a solution.

Problem; Undercutters

Solution; having to undercut and sell in bazaar.

See the problem there lol?

Bazaars help, but they do not offer a complete solution since there are people who are not online when I am, and vice versa. As a seller I try to park near appropriate NPCs, but it is hard to be in several places at one time -- esp. while AFK.

Anyway, my issues are with how the AH works and bazaars are really irrelevant.

So quit the game problem solved !

The way AH works is fine .. it's the fact we can only place 7 items on auction at any given time which has annoyed players since the game was released. We know why they can't increase it (SE explained it in "detail" many years ago), so we just moved on and accepted it.

I've never really heard anyone complain over the way AH sells. For example, those who place something low (like how I put skirmish stones up for 1 gil) have the chance of having it sell for lower than what they could've sold it for; and that's the risk you take. We can always take an item off AH and put it back on if the average price drops; they lowered all the additional selling fees a while back.

Bazaars are great for those items which 1) don't sell on AH, 2) you don't have a stack of (eg. 45 Heavy Metals), 3) you have looooads of stacks (eg. you farmed up 15 stacks of Alex and don't want to send to mules to sell on).

The single most annoying thing I find on AH is .. that one person who sees this item is required for something and they know it's the only one left on sale. The last one sold for 10m, so you bid 10m and it's not enough. You bid 11m .. still nothing. You put in 20m and it's still not enough! How much do these people want from me!? Why do they stick these items on sale with a 1000% increase? That's what really grinds my gears, and it's not even to do with AH .. it's to do with greedy players who won't stick to the average price, or at least .. somewhere close to it.

The whole point is that if there are more people selling an item than there are buying, the price needs to drop. Guaranteeing you won't sell your item without dropping the price will get that result. It's a good thing.

They would be better off listing sale prices and letting you pay the actual listing price (also fixes accidental bids, wow! granted this would require a complete infrastructure change), or just increasing the bazaar price maximum.

2 different topics. I Agree that undercutting is fine. Those who undercut risk losing gil or maybe value the item less. This is economics 101. The market price will, in the long term, be decided by supply and demand.

As far as Boogs Ah complaint, you dont like that you can have something listed for 5 days and someone comes in and sells it in an hour cuz they went 1gil less than you. I get that and its annoying. But what is the cut off? If i am willing to sell an item for 10mil less than you, shouldnt my item sell first? where would the cut off be? I am taking a risk/reduced income by selling at the price. The bidder is taking a risk by not bidding incrementally. I am willing to take less money than you.

The Ah system isnt perfect, and they wont change it now. But to make it better than it is would require much much more than anyone is willing to put into it.

LOOK FORWARD TO IT

Short answer: yes, it should -- and it still would under what I proposed. On the other hand, the current system works like this:

Let's just pretend for the moment that we both want to sell a 100mil item. I list mine at 100mil. My proposal in no way hinders you from listing your item for 10mil less, nor does it prevent buyers from trying to buy at 10mil less. Let's suppose a buyer finally comes around and tries bidding low, incrementing at 1mil per bid. If you listed your item at 10mil less (i.e. at 90mil) and then someone else comes along 2 weeks later and lists for 10.1mil less (i.e. at 89.9mil), this new seller gets to have his sale completed first _and_ gain the additional .1mil above his asking price when the buyer is willing to pay 90mil! Keep in mind that you don't know this new seller's price, nor does the buyer. And the new seller has no idea what your price is either. But the system rewards this new seller simply because his "secret number" was less than yours ever so slightly... So while I lose out to you (as it should be), you lose out to someone who valued the item essentially the same as you but gamed the system.

EDIT:

Current system:
Seller A lists to 100mil
Seller B lists at 90mil one day later
Seller C lists at 89.9mil 2 weeks later
Buyer spends 90mil.
Seller C gets the sale since this is the lowest price equal to or less than the buyer's price. And should there be a Seller D who lists for a single gil, then Seller D would get 90mil over all the other sellers.

Proposed system:
Seller A lists to 100mil
Seller B lists at 90mil one day later
Seller C lists at 89.9mil 2 weeks later
Buyer spends 90mil.
Seller B gets the sale since they meet the buyer's price AND listed earliest among all those who meet buyer's price.

It's not gaming the system, it's working with small increments.

If you want to sell something at 100M, but you want it to sell first and you consider 100k irrelevant. Ok, so you list it at 99,900,000. But wait, what if someone went lower? Ok, let's list it at 99,800,000. Maybe that 100k doesn't matter so much, if you'd theoretically be willing to lower your price again just to get the first sale.

If you need your item to sell first and it's that important to you, make a deep undercut. It's that simple. It's not broken, nobody is gaming it, they're just making larger potential sacrifices than you are. You won't ever know what they listed it for unless the bidder hit their actual increment, just that it was lower than you.. so stop worrying about it.

Maybe that's the simple solution then.

no more ability to make exact prices. No more 999

We only deal in Millions anyway, don't allow anyone to place it up for 949,753.

If you were really concerned about the 'insignificant' undercutting, look at lowest priced item's price. Any item within 1% of it's price is thrown into a list, and the one with the longest duration on AH is the one sold. Boom, fixed.

...It really doesn't matter, though. The way it is now encourages meaningful undercuts already. Next you'd just be complaining about someone listing a 100,000g item for 98,999 and getting the first sale.