I’d like to bring up an important issue with the Central Market: the fixed price limits. While they were introduced to prevent inflation and market abuse, in practice they create serious imbalances. Let me explain:

False Shortages Despite Huge Demand

– Rough Stone: Over 600,000 buy orders, yet no supply. Sellers don’t list it because the price cap makes it not worth their time.
– Ash Sap: Thousands of orders pending for weeks. Again, demand is real, but supply is locked because gatherers cannot sell at a price that reflects the effort.
– There are many other similar materials (e.g., Powder of Earth, Trace of Ascension) stuck in the same cycle.

Economic Distortion Instead of Inflation Control

– The intention was to stop hyperinflation, but in a game economy inflation is inevitable and actually necessary. As silver supply grows, prices must adjust naturally.
– By freezing prices, the system creates artificial scarcity and hidden inflation: players still pay “more” through time loss and frustration, rather than silver.

Disincentive for Lifeskillers

– Gathering, alchemy, and processing lose value because players cannot sell at the true worth of their time and effort.
– This reduces market activity and undermines professions that should actually stabilize the economy.

Healthy Economies Need Flexibility

– In real and virtual markets, prices regulate themselves through supply & demand.
– Dynamic pricing would not only reflect true value but also encourage participation, ensuring materials like Rough Stone or Ash Sap are always available — at a fair cost.

Suggestion
– Instead of strict price ceilings, allow wider and more flexible price ranges that move with the economy. This would:
– Prevent artificial shortages,
– Keep lifeskilling rewarding,
– And still discourage extreme manipulation by spreading prices more gradually.

I gather a lot and never want to sell any of it. The only problem I see with this is the cost of alchemy will go up but the profit will go down, if you either sell on CM or do imperial. If they included a dynamic price valuation for imperial I would be ok with this. I think

Yes totally understand the tax it is a need and prevents people to but cheap and sell expensive but this stricts price caps are pointless... some people only play this game for lifeskills and dont even have a PVE gear but bilions of worth life skill gear lol.. 

I get wanting to stop any chance of RMT, but things are always forgotten when PA dose there seemingly yearly artifical silver inflation. alot of the prices are still consistant with 2016 silver per hour.

Silver is the most commen item in the game at this point, makes hordeing for self exp gains > CM silver gains.

Why sell anything for crumbs.

PA insisting on raising cron stone prices and number of cron stones required to enhance whatever the latest untradable gear is is at the root of many of these problems. People need much more silver than they used to. Recently, grindspots have not kept pace with upgrade costs. Central market has been disconnected from said costs for a while now, same goes for imperial delivery.

In alchemy most of the elixirs arn't worth selling it costs more to craft them.  Even imperial alchemy most boxes are a net loss with materials bought from CM or self crafted.

so true, this also a very strong argument supports my point, thank you.. PA add that to prevent bot accounts but they also added AFK fishing for that.. 

Another example, alchemy tools... 1 week order and doesnt even get filled cos only 3m max price cap

The whole thing is also fascinating if you ever studied any economics:

What is happening here is what every economics textbook will tell you what will happen if price control is imposed on a market...

I pretty much agree on everything OP said but wanted to highlight the point on controlling inflation. The fact that PA thinks price control will control inflation tells me one of two things:

(1) PA doesn't actually have trained economists, or

(2) PA is intentionally creating inefficient market as a way to artificially inflate player activity or engagement (e.g. pre-orders for the new life skill crystals aren't getting filled so the player has to gather the corals and make the crystals themselves).

In either case, I don't think price control will be removed from CM (sudden removal will probably implode the entire in-game economy) but I strongly agree that price controls should be removed for most lifeskill materials/ingredients so that there is actually an efficient market for something in this game (any item where even a new player can immediately become sellers like Rough Stones or Logs should embrace perfectly competitive market and have the price controls removed).

Also, has PA ever shared how they derive the price ceilings and floors for certain items? Because it feels like PA is basing the prices off of estimated cost of production/enhancing and NOT necessarily around the true value/market clearing price which they could probably estimate with precision using CM data (e.g. demand=pre-orders; supply=listings)