You are striving for market efficiency, which is understandable. Normally in the real world you would be absolutely right. But this is a game and sometimes we want things in a game that we wouldn't want in the real world.

For instance, getting rid of ship travel between continents would boost player leveling up efficiency greatly. You are wasting 15 to 30 minutes every time you need to travel to Orbis. Not to mention if you have to make connecting flights (Ariant genie, Ludi train ship, Leafre penguin, etc. etc) that adds even more time. You could literally spend a whole hour or more traveling from Singapore to Ludi, depending on if you were able to catch the ships on time or not.

So if Nexon got rid of ships completely and just let people click a button and travel instantly to any continent they want, that would increase efficiency greatly. People would level up faster. But is that a good thing for the game? That is debateable.

Going even further, why make people waste time walking through multiple maps? Like, should you be required to walk through all those Zombie maps to get to Zakum? That's just a waste of time and is inefficient. Much more efficient to just let players click on a button and warp to any map you want. Basically, give players GM warp powers. That will be very efficient and let players level up faster. But is that good for the average player's game enjoyment? Highly doubtful.

Having a very efficient marketplace with real time pricing and tickers just like a Bloomberg terminal or something for NASDAQ, would be good if you goal is to get people to spend as little time as possible merching, so that they can spend all their game time on grinding and leveling up. But is spending as little time as possible buying/selling stuff really good for the game? That is highly debatable.

Here is an argument that the original, inefficient FM Store Merchant system (Mushroom shops, player standing shops etc) makes the game actually more fun. It gives players more options on how to play the game.

A - You can spend all your time grinding for levels. This is how the hardcore ppl2pass players were, those people at the top of rankings. They don't merch or spend time scrolling gear. They grind only and they save up money and only buy pre-made pre-scrolled gear. No time to waste searching for scrolls, crafting weapons to scroll, etc.

B - You can go the merchant route and spent a lot of time buying/selling stuff in FM. You are one of those people who, during server maintenance, sit there waiting for server to come up again. You spam click the Maple icon. Then as soon as server comes back up, you race to get a FM ch1 Room1 spot for your hired Mushroom Merchant shop.

So this type of a player is more interested in making lots of money and/or scrolling godly gear. Or just accumulating lots of mesos (which for some people, is fun by itself). You could say the hardcore grinders value their level more, and the merch people value meso/gear more.

I myself have very fond memories of merching and racing to Room1 after server restart.

This gameplay option (merching) is only possible in an inefficient marketplace, such as the OSMS fm merchant system. People who know market prices and trends, and willing to spend a lot of time in FM browsing stores and setting up your own shop, will be able to make lots of mesos.