AH prices

[Levian]

I put a spell of Stone II up for 10.000 in Jeuno when there were no other scrolls on the AH. Next time I check, there's two more scrolls. When I checked next, a scroll had sold for exactly 10.000 before mine! Any logical explanation for this?

[Loony BoB]

They put it on sale for less. The way the system works is this: The lowest sale price will sell first, always. The auction is basically against other sellers, rather than by bidders. So if you put it up for 10,000 and someone puts theirs up for 9,999 (or even 1) their one will sell before yours. This is why I generally subtract about 99 from the price I hope to sell at - and someone might bid 901 on a 1k item, but more often than not they'll bid 1k and I'll get it ahead of anyone who has their items on sale for over 901 gil.

[Levian]

Ah, sneaky!

[Del Murder]

Yep I always subtract 99 or 999 depending on the price of the item.

[Quindiana Jones]

I always used to sell at the price it cost me to make/buy the item. That way I'm guaranteed to get my money back, at least. Most people just throw it to the norm anyway, so I almost always made a big profit. I only had items sell at low prices a few times.

[Miriel]

I like going with 97 just in case other people are doing the 99 thing.

[Rostum]

I usually put it 1 gil less - and a lot of the time people actually buy it for 1 gil less. How stingy do you want to be!

[Loony BoB]

I quite often have my moat carp sell at 4901 lately, so I'm probably going to have to up that to something like 4911 :p

[Aydin]

Wow, I didn't know that...

Thanks for the information, guys! :D

[WildRaubtier]

I'm a "hit down on any number that isn't two significant places once each" type of guy, myself.

There's a lot of things wrong with FFXI's auction house system. This is one of them.

[Del Murder]

Do other games do it better?

[Loony BoB]

Aside from the "only 7 items" thing, I can't think of much wrong with the system, personally.

[Quindiana Jones]

I'm with BoB. The lowest priced item gets sold first. Isn't that pretty close to how a real auction house works? Or, at least, a real shop works.

Everything to do with holding and storing stuff in 11 is stupid and wrong though. Stupid and wrong.

[Rostum]

Actually, it's a pretty bad system later on. Also, it's an easy target for gir-serrers to find loop holes and screw a lot of people over, especially crafters.

[Del Murder]

Bidding up or down the price of something with fake accounts is the only bad thing I can think of. There are loopholes but it's not hard to take advantage of them yourself or get around them.

[Rostum]

Usually RMT flood a niche market here and there and set their own prices for things, making it very hard for crafters.

[WildRaubtier]

I don't know how other games handle it.

The first item put up for auction should sell first, instead of the lowest priced. If the bid isn't high enough for the first, move onto the second, etc.

My personal opinion is that the most expensive item should sell first, again assuming that the bid is high enough.

Other problems include:
A) Only allowing 7 selling spots when 10 are displayed. This is just bad design.
B) Four separate markets. This has been redundant since Whitegate. Ideally, All AHs should be amalgamated, with the starter cities offering the lowest listing fees.
C) Speaking of listing fees. Useful for moving traffic out of busier areas, but unless you're a hardcore miser like I am, they're completely purposeless. They've been purposeless ever since the notorious inflation days.

I thought I could name a few more, but apparently I can't! Four is more than enough, anyway.

[Loony BoB]

If the most expensive item sold first, wouldn't prices would go up much faster? I like how it's set up in that regard, personally. It encourages people lowering prices if they want to sell fast, rather than the other way around.

I agree with A, although bad design is the last thing on my mind and a rather picky reason to label it as a flaw - I'm annoyed that I can't sell more without getting a mule. :p Which is probably just a smart plan by SE to make more money. I would prefer having only 10 slots allowed with 20 displayed slots than 7 slots allowed and only 7 displayed...

B is a fair point on some levels, however it would make my thoughts on C redundant if they were merged...

C, for me, isn't a flaw. If anything they could be changed according to how much stuff is on sale in them - a more realistic economy of supply and demand. The AH's should want to profit, and therefore the one getting the least amount of traffic should lower it's prices, while the ones getting huge traffic would increase their prices. Maybe this is already in effect, I don't know - but if it is, it could be done on a more dramatic level, further encouraging an even spread for AH's. Some might argue that it's annoying enough as it is to travel around the AH's looking for bargains but others could argue that it encourages people to actually, you know, travel around in the game...

So basically I don't care about display that much but I think that either the AH's should merge or the AH fees should be more dramatic in their differences. One or the other.

[WildRaubtier]

Prices would probably stay the same. The idea is undercutting items so they sell quicker would be because people pay less for the item, instead of the current system which penalises people for not undercutting.

Of course, I'd prefer it if they were just offline, anonymous bazaars even more.

A few years back, Squeenix released one of their census thingies which showed that the starter city auction houses were used primarily for crafting materials, and the Jueno AH for equipment and other battle related stuff. Ever since ToAU, crafters have had access to every guild in either Whitegate or Al Zahbi. There is literally no point in leaving Whitegate for any AH-related purpose. Furthermore, the remaining AHes have all deteriorated; they're now notorious for having wacky price fluctuations.

AH fees are still pointless gilsinks, either way.

[Quindiana Jones]

I always liked how the lowest price sold first. It's more realistic, I think. If there's five identical items on display that I know the price of, I will always buy the cheapest. The AH attempts to recreate this whilst leaving the prices anonymous with it's utilisation of the lowest price first thing.