The Auction House

Something that I have been wanting to know ever since the first time I ever put something up on the auction house. Why can you only use 7 of the 10 slots available? If anyone know the answer for that, please let me know. Maybe SE is just beeing plain evil and showing us what we can't have?

me thinks it is that way to entice you to buy another content id to sell on a mule.

It's their system set in place to battle RMT activites via the Auction House.

(I don't know if this is true but this is the excuse they give for all inconvenient things so lets go with it here too)

My theory is that at some point in the past of the game players were allowed to put 10 items on the AH at once, but it was reigned back for economy balance or something like that.

Either that, or the default box size is 10 and their programmers didn't feel like changing it.

I'm going to guess Sammitch's second theory.

same reason they sell hotdogs in 6 packs and buns in 8 packs

I dont know about that, I've been in this game for little more than 5 years, and there's never been that you could use all spaces during my time. I know! Maybe those players that lso work as GM's get the benefit of 10 spaces :D

At one point, I thought I had heard it was because of bandwidth concerns. I don't remember if this was speculation or an answer from SE.

It's not RMT because it's clear that SE had no plan originally for RMT, but the limit has been there from well before they started considering RMT. (The first RMT measures I remember are R/Ex twins and 1 million gil delivery limit.)

/nod

I remember that also. suddenly there was a line of people waiting by the delivery npc in lower jeuno AH.

Another possibility (which we discovered while making this site) is that the Auction House system is just poorly coded.

It uses poorly implemented socket code, the wrong type of data connection for its original intent, and relies on antiquated conventions to transmit data. Part of this poor coding can be seen in-game, by how the auction house downloads lists of items in "bursts," and is otherwise slow and hard to use. It's also evident by how trying to re-list certain menus while the others are still downloading -- even if you've closed the window -- errors and asks you to wait and try again.

The poorly implemented front-end, with its lack of search capability and multiple nested levels of long unordered lists are all there to disguise the fact that the system is absolute crap "under the hood."

I would not be surprised if they have only 7 slots available simply to keep their system from crashing.

SAE! <3

Oh and, to make it seem as if I am *not* stalking Saeryn, I will contribute to the thread.... SE just hates us :D

http://www.jpbutton.com/?p=157#more-157

On 07/09/2002 the number of items sold on the AH was lessened from 8 to 7. Since the page is just a listing, it doesn't cite reasonings however.

cool site! brings back memories :D

When they 1st implemented the AH it had 10 slots and it crashed several times. Then it had 8. I don't remember when but they moved it to 7 after that. So in other words, Jaerik hit the nail on the head.

Even if it is the cause of poor implementation, 7 is not a terrible number, in my humblest. It encourages people to price things appropriately or learn to bazaar effectively. These are good skills to cultivate.

AH coder must've been internship student :p

All SE programmers must be, who work on this game.

All in all, it helps with their "time sink"

Personally, any problem that we as FFXI players have we can have it "fixed" if we bomb the comment/ suggestion box within POL or on the main website. Like for instance the bibiki shell quest and why we can't regain that shell if it was lost way before the "tell us in a week and we'll get the item back for you" campaign.