Rare Minerals

I personally believe that hoarding will lead to a huge price crash in the future. In most cases, the limitation on crafted item production isn't the rare materials. It's the production capacity, because the crafting buildings accelerate production on a much slower curve than standard items (2% vs. 4.5%). Sure, you can specialize to speed things up, but then you've eliminated capacity for all other item types.

I've seen several attempts to corner the market. To date, all have failed. There's simply too much commodity volume on the sidelines, and too much new material flowing in. The only thing that I think has been effectively cornered is Silversteel, because there are only 5 known mines. But if the owners dumped their SS output into the market, the crafting would immediately hit a limitation in fire and earth salts.

Also, I think price gouging, hoarding and market manipulation are great fun. We aren't allowed to do that in the real world. If it can be accomplished in a video game, I think that's kinda cool.

I understand the idea of hoarding, price gouging and setting the market and I know it's pretty easy to do that in this game with some T3 items while the markets are still somewhat stagnant.

I'm trying to make suggestions that'll partially eliminate them and help out in the short term and long term.

Most of the T3 items in my inventory came from side deals or the market.

I would say harvesting is already plenty 'click happy' there is no need to make it impossible to tell where you will harvest next.  

I agree, Llyr. I have enjoyed trading for rare resources.

Rill, there are already mobile rare resources in the form of NPCs. Mines and herbs provide some stability, and given the commitment necessary to harvest at scale, I think that's fair. I'm fielding 171 miners in one town, 14 cotters in a second, and 90 herbalists in another. That isn't feasible if the resource vanishes out from under your ownership. There are already mobile herbs like desert flame and snow bells for quickdraw herbalists.

Epi, I think this would make more sense if crafted equipment that required mineral input played a more meaningful role in overall strategies.  As it is, crafting equipment with rare minerals usually requires another input that is even more constrained, that respawns randomly and that cannot be effectively "claimed" by any single player or alliance.  I speak of course of elemental salts.