With unlimited items in a sell shop, I could set up the "L2 Wal-Mart" and utterly dominate the trade just about anywhere but Giran. Given abnormal (but not unheard-of) resources, even Giran could be conquered, but I wouldn't be the one to do it.
By forcing a limited number of items per shop, it increases the number of shops required to supply all items, which actually benefits the average player. Instead of having one or two people completely dominate the market for an entire server, you have dozens of shops competing for your business, and also room for each player to peddle his pixels.
NO that doesn't work the way you are suggesting. Even if you could sell every item you had, so could everyone else. Sure you could buy the items every other player is selling at every point in time, and then put them into your conglomerate sell shop, however everyone else could also do the same. And because new materials and items are being constantly farmed, you'd have to continually buy these new items. This would require access to an unlimited amount of adena in order to continuously buy new items. As of now, nothing prevents you from to do this for any particular type of good, be it varnish or soul bows, but the fact that you aren't doing it and npbody else is doing it, suggests that it actually would be impossible.
So no, allowing everyone to sell every item they had at once wouldn't create a monopoly at all, rather it would do the opposite. Since everyone could sell everything at once, prices would fall as the amount of items being sold at any particular moment would be greater than it currently is, and everyone would have more perfect information in terms of what another player would sell an item for, something you can't have now as players are limited to the items they can put up in a sell shop. The overall effect, a shortened amount of time would taken to sell an entire warehouse of items.
I would have to agree I dont really see anyone dominating the entire market, since no one does this with any one item as it is. Obviously if someone is selling low, people will buy it and sell it at its normal price or try to sell high. But I dont think Ive ever seen anyone try to inflate an item buy buying every single iteration of it on the market. Its not really feasable.
Im not in favor of infinite sell shop, but 3 has always seemed harsh to me. I think limiting sell shops so much creates a homogenous market. People dont sell things that are hard to sell. People dont sell anything but the most popular and fast selling items. People dont generaly waste their time selling unpopular or mostly unused mats and piece. And if you can manage to find them its generaly under a farmer shop. I have often scanned over my WH looking for something to sell for the night, and skipped items that seemed to insignificant to waste a sell slot on. Or something I didnt feel I had much of. They wouldnt net me a good profit, and they wouldnt do it very fast. If we had ample space with which to sell, we might dust off those neglected items and sell them.
Since farmers have the ability to circumnavigate a limited sell shop, by having a seemingly unlimited number of toons. Something a normal person is not able to afford. They already corner the market. Farmers are probably responsible for selling an extremely large % of the mats on the market. Aside from manor system (or being a BH), a player doesnt really amass all to many mats all to often, And a player isnt usually excited about unloading a low priced, or undesired mat, for a mediocre return. But farmers will be there all day everday selling that mat, cuz they can easily.
I think we should have a much expanded sell shop !!with!! an ability to search for items in the town. Kind of like /findprivatestore but instead it looks for items and not stupid shop text. Maybe a menu that you could select items from. Kind of like the auction house people want so much, except people would have to be logged to have their items show up in the search. I think this change would help to give farmers a bit of competition, if even just a bit, and it would lower the number of toons sitting in town, cutting down on town lag.
I almost agreed with the idea that being able to sell more items from a private store would unclog the cities. But then I started think no there would still be the same amount of private sell and buy stores in town and they would all be selling more.
The only thing I would like to see changed in private stores is, having to have the item you want to buy. I have never understood why it was designed like that.
agreed Id be happy if they simply added the ability to search for items, by the item itself and not the text. Cuz half the time someone hasnt bothered to label their shop, they cant fit what they are selling into the title, or they simply cant spell.
The only reason I think that having more sell shop space would free up more space in Giran would be a farmer wouldnt have to break out 2 or 3 tunes to sell mats/parts/and whole items. They might just throw it all onto one toon. But there is a good chance they will just be able to sell extra stuff and keep all the toons in town.
Either way I think it would be a good way to increase variety and competition among uncommon or unpopular items. And maybe cause prices to drop a little in general, due to the fact that more people are potentialy suplying something that you demand.
agreed Id be happy if they simply added the ability to search for items, by the item itself and not the text.
That ability would make the market more "transparent" and easy to use. It would lower your chance to find a bargain. It would be a first step from the free and chaotic market we have now, to something as n00b as an Auction House. I am against a search function for the items themselves. L2 is hardcore in every aspect, even the market :D
To the OP:
"Unlimited" shops would be a total mess to browse. Giran is a tiny bit more crowded than orc-village, Splatter ;)
It's already a hazzle to look thru 4 or 5 sell-slots in each of the hundreds of shops, more would be overkill.
agreed Id be happy if they simply added the ability to search for items, by the item itself and not the text.
I suspect the present search is client side. Your client already has all the text in memory, for the player stores in the area. Recoloring the store titles can be done without contacting the server.
A search through store contents would require the server query each store, and send you the info. Much more work.