Auction House listing fees.

[AshidoNova]

Can it be modified so that listing fees are subtracted from the amount an item is sold for at the time of exchange, instead of just for listing it?

 

It doesn't really make sense and it's kind of expensive and annoying to guess at a good price to sell an item, just to have to adjust it and pay hundreds of thousands if not millions of inf.

[Adeon Hawkwood]

Is it possible? Sure. Is it a good idea? Not really.

 

So first off the AH only subtracts a fee of 5% of your listing price. The full fee of 10% of the sale price is paid when it sells (with the fee you've already paid being deducted from that). Having a portion of the listing fee paid upfront ensures that the seller has skin in the game, this encourages people to list things for a reasonable amount which helps to keep the market flowing rather than getting jammed up with people listing things high "just in case".

 

Does it hurt to have to relist stuff? Sure, I've got some stuff I listed to high that I'll probably pull and relist later today but it's the cost of doing business.

[AshidoNova]

"Only 5%" and then another 5% is a large chunk of expensive items. I would argue that it does the opposite and encourages disproportionate pricing and jamming up the market. It does nothing to encourage people to list at reasonable amounts, because the people that sell high will sell high anyway, and it punishes the people who actually are keeping the market flowing.

 

10% is really huge. Other MMOs have fees in the 1% range.

 

But I don't even care about the fee so much, I don't want to be punished for re-listing an item.

[_NOPE_]

There is no free lunch.

[Rylas]

Devil's advocate:

 

Back during live the upfront fee was less problematic with the established economy of the game and the larger player base. But for new players today, there's a disadvantage they face. With all the advice we hand out for how to start making money for new players, the one thing they can't do is list a rare salvage for 1 million influence if they can't pay the fee. Then they have to list for lower and are at the mercy of low ball bids waiting for such situations.

 

Granted, they can still make some profit, but the fee does put them at higher risk.

[Adeon Hawkwood]

That is a fair point, however there are plenty of things they can sell that have a lower listing fee (such as inspirations and enhancement converters) and it only really takes one sale to get enough inf to pay the fee for something in the 1-2million range.

[Zep]

I was able to get to the listing fee for my first rare salvage item in about 15 minutes by listing common items for 5000 each. Much more then the vendor pays for them and easily replaced.

 

Yes the fee up front is a *minor* pain however as others have said (IMO) it serves its need well enough.

 

The market in WOW for example is just different and not just in how the fee is charged. If you have not already I suggest reading up on how it works in detail. 

[srmalloy]

Back during live the upfront fee was less problematic with the established economy of the game and the larger player base. But for new players today, there's a disadvantage they face. With all the advice we hand out for how to start making money for new players, the one thing they can't do is list a rare salvage for 1 million influence if they can't pay the fee. Then they have to list for lower and are at the mercy of low ball bids waiting for such situations.

 

This is true only for items that don't go into the 'general pool' as it exists now, and then only if there are a small number of bidders. Remember that, for salvage, the AH is like a Star Trek replicator -- you put in rare salvage A, and someone can buy it as rare salvage B. If there are, say, 1500 people bidding on various rare salvage items, the likelihood that someone with a bid of 100 is going to get your item is miniscule -- and, in fact, listing low helps the low-level character, because the AH sells the lowest-listing item to the highest bidder.

[srmalloy]

"Only 5%" and then another 5% is a large chunk of expensive items. I would argue that it does the opposite and encourages disproportionate pricing and jamming up the market. It does nothing to encourage people to list at reasonable amounts, because the people that sell high will sell high anyway, and it punishes the people who actually are keeping the market flowing.

 

It is always 10% of the sale price, with your listing fee credited against it. Say you list an item for 100; the listing fee is 5. If it sells for 1000, the service fee is 100, of which 5 is already paid by your listing fee, so you would receive 905.

 

10% is really huge. Other MMOs have fees in the 1% range.

 

Yes, and? It's been this way since the AH was instituted; one of the purposes of the fee is to be an Inf suck.

 

But I don't even care about the fee so much, I don't want to be punished for re-listing an item.

 

Also unlike most other MMOs, you can leave an item listed in the AH forever, subject to the number of AH slots you have. The listing fee is a sunk cost -- that you lose this fee if you take an unsold item back is a feature to discourage people from listing items for outrageous prices in the hope that someone will eventually be desperate enough to pay what you're asking. And with other ways to get the rarest recipes than random drops, someone seeing unmet demand can turn merits into a recipe and list it to undercut you.

[chase]

The INF sink always was a big reason for the 10% fee.  The game's inf scaling as you level has always been a bit excessive and the devs needed some way (largely unsuccessful) to curb it a bit.  I was more amazed at how well it DID work with the out-of-control MUDFlation we had.  Sure, by the end, we had many alts sitting at the 2billion inf cap and they had to start introducing alternate currencies with new releases (vanguard merits, for example) but it was rather tame compared to other mud economic disasters.

 

 

[Shinobu]

 

What chase said.  Influence that you pay to the market as a fee is influence that disappears and is no longer a part of the economy.  The game need MORE ways to drain influence from the economy, because influence is generated far more than it's removed, and that eventually leads to inflation.

 

 

[Adeon Hawkwood]

The nice thing about the Auction House fees is that it's a scaling inf sink. For every 1 inf generated through play the economy is limited to a maximum of 10 inf worth of market transactions.