[Request] Merge Mercantile Houses

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Originally Posted by Rukkirii

To all the shoppers and merchants out there, here are some responses to a couple questions we have been seeing.


This was actually the development team’s original plan, but with problems related to the implementation of direct purchasing, it ultimately had to be implemented the way it is now for the current version.


Currently, we do not have any plans of increasing the number of call bell locations. However, if there continues to be overcrowding issues we will look into this again.

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Has the dev team considered kicking retainers that haven't sold anything in a week out of the wards to make room for new, active retainers? Or a similar alternative. *Pulls from Rukkirii's whiskers ;c*

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Originally Posted by Majidah

Mercantile Houses were released last patch.
For those who haven't gotten around to using them yet, they basically give you access to search in the ward of any city from any city.

Here's the problem though.

Uldah's wards are up to the neck in stock and variety while the other two are always empty.

I propose they are merged into a single Mercantile House and that the search retrieves results from all three cities in a single window as to foment players to start placing their retainers outside uldah.

Like this post if you agree.

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i thought that was what was happening when i read the original notes. sucks still if the search only searches one

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Originally Posted by Holland

My bet is that the physical form of the retainers is going away completely and switched to some sort of market. I hope the bidding nature of the FFXI AH is not what they have in mind.

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I don't really want the bidding part of an auction house... I prefer a market system where I can just see what is for sale, at what price, and buy it if I am willing to pay.

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Originally Posted by Majidah

I have my retainers all placed in gridania. Its a ghost town. Why would anyone look there instead of uldah?

I just went to buy a hatchet in uldah and they only had TWO in gridania. Not two in stock, TWO hatches TOTAL. From 1 to 50.

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Well, if you've placed your retainer somewhere other than Uldah, then I applaud you. You've taken everyone one step closer to spreading themselves out beyond the "hub". Convince others to follow suit and over time this issue will negate itself.

If you don't think that it's possible, then ask yourself how everyone came to start "hubbing" in Uldah from the start. Other players referred the idea to one another and thus we're in the current situation. Most players started gathering in one spot out of the sheer sake that there weren't many people playing at a particular time in the game and people wanted to centralize themselves in order to make things easier.

Why people still feel the need to centralize themselves after the server merger (in which some servers are now maximum capacity) is beyond me. It's now to the point to where things are crashing, but players are still being obstinate enough to want to be in the "hub".

Kind of silly, really...

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Originally Posted by Rukkirii

To all the shoppers and merchants out there, here are some responses to a couple questions we have been seeing.


This was actually the development team’s original plan, but with problems related to the implementation of direct purchasing, it ultimately had to be implemented the way it is now for the current version.


Currently, we do not have any plans of increasing the number of call bell locations. However, if there continues to be overcrowding issues we will look into this again.

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how about just having 1 house but 3 NPCs one for each nation in it to search from.

Also would be nice to have a bell in the inn rooms

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Originally Posted by Pyretta_Blaze

I don't really want the bidding part of an auction house... I prefer a market system where I can just see what is for sale, at what price, and buy it if I am willing to pay.

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Most modern MMO have AH's with both a bidding and buyout option for items.

I doubt this team will bother with adding a bidding option but there is a good chance we will get a better interface that rivals the likes of WoW's AH.

Actually Diablo 3's AH is a work of art, when you buy an item if the system finds it cheaper elsewhere it will refund the difference lol.

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Originally Posted by Krausus

how about just having 1 house but 3 NPCs one for each nation in it to search from.

Also would be nice to have a bell in the inn rooms

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Thats what her post said, they tried exactly that but the proceeder for buying item wouldn't allow them to do so.

Wat we have is massively better than when Yoshi took over so I think we should probably just be grateful and wait til 2.0 unless they find a better way to do it in the mean time.

There really should be more retainer bells, out of convenience, not just because of overcrowding.

I'd personally find it especially awesome if I could summon retainers to my inn room.

I think having a single mercantile house containing NPCs for each city would be much more satisfactory then having to zone each time to check other cities' goods

Unfortunately (and amazingly), it seems like their instant-item-buy code is actually linked to the character's /physical position in Eorzea/. Presumably, in order to buy from a bazaar, you have to be in the same zone as the character you're buying from; the transaction is handled by a zone server, and each Market Wards is handled by a different zone server, so you couldn't be in all three market wards at the same time like that.

When you go to the Ul'dah mercantile house from Gridania, your character is actually /in/ Ul'dah during that time period. Presumably, the cost/benefit of removing all three market wards and replacing them with a single Wards shared over all three cities is prohibitive (at the very least, it'd just re-cause the exact same problems Ul'dah MWs are currently seeing), so they've implemented this as a stopgap until 2.0.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

There really should be more retainer bells, out of convenience, not just because of overcrowding.

I'd personally find it especially awesome if I could summon retainers to my inn room.

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Hell yeah I wanna heck the bed with my retainer :p