So I've been doing the salvage -> material crafter -> material trader thing a lot recently. I've come to realize that if I plan on buying/selling a lot of rare materials to bring a lunch because it takes forever.
I understand that the prices can and do change while you're buying/selling a material. It has happened to me. Without knowing how it formulates the prices exactly I still know that the game knows at what quantity to change the price. I propose something along these lines:
* You drag a stack of steel into the sell box.
* The trader calculates the price for each taking into account the quantities and presents you with the following:
12 Steel @ 200g: 2400g
50 Steel @ 185g: 9250g
18 Steel @ 170g: 3060g
Sell 80 Steel for 14,710g?
[Sell] [Clear] [Goodbye]
The first 12 steel hit the price drop point as determined by the NPC's prior buying/selling. The 50 steel after that hit the next point... as an example.
This should work both buying and selling. For buying you could set it up like the material crafters. Have a list of materials available for sale, click on one and the quantity arrows appear at the bottom of the window. As you increase the quantity and hit price points it could list out the different quantities and prices like I've shown above for selling.
Maybe it's just me, I don't know, but I figured I'd throw it out there.
[Material Traders] One Material At A Time
Ba Ne