Mail, AH and Banks

Excellent Idea!!! Make the Retainers the "Post Man" :p

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Originally Posted by Cairdeas

And I've yet to see a majority of players ask specifically for Timed or Blind Bidding, Just an easy and convenient place to easily sell and buy items.

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That's actually fine with me. Don't really need bidding. A market window that allows me to NEVER have to enter a market ward is great, and it'd be perfect if I never even have to talk to my retainer (except maybe to get mail or store items, but setting up sales? no ty. I'd rather use a market window to do that).

Edit: I voted on the poll too. Thanks for that.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-Auction-House

1. I don't see why we STILL don't have a mail system, I haven't seen one person saying they did not want it added

2. Why can't they have both AH (NOT blind bid but selling at fixed price) AND market wards ie. keep AH to limited slots like the 10 we have per retainer, but have retainers rent-able for x gil/week so more focused crafters can have a place to sell 20 rings if they want, or the stacks of mats they'd otherwise vendor due to lack of room to sell. AH is a basic function we're lacking, markets can augment that function but not replace it IMO

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Originally Posted by Cairdeas

I've already posted multiple times an idea for the MW that incorporates all the good stuff about an AH (time and convenience) without implementing the shitty stuff (Timed Bidding, Blind Bidding, and Price History).

1. Remove the Physical Wards.
2. Make the Wards a Menu
3. When you search for an item it does like it does now and lists the retainer of the user with the lowest price first.
4. Clicking the retainer opens their inventory in a new menu and lets you buy the item you were searching for, It also keeps the "Window Shopping" Effect.
5. You can blind search the lists of retainers still.
6. When you buy an item its delivered to a mailbox. Go pick it up.

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I like this but instead let us keep a retainer in a house (instanced) that does this instead of a menu.

I got an idea for how a MW/AH works.

Have a single Market ward area labeled "Market Wards."
You enter it.
You see several empty Vendor counters.
You approach it.
Menu pops up.
Pick an item you want of any category.
the selected NPC that carries the item appears behind the vendor counter.
You buy the item and the NPC offers other items that is in the bag.
You dismiss the retainer, as the retainer bows or say goodbye and disappears.
Begins looking up another item.

It's very convenient as you don't need to travel each area for a single item and still see other player's retainers, while having the shopping feel.

I don't understand people who want to add more steps to the buying process by having the items sent to the player house. If I'm buying new gear 99% of the time I want to equip it right away.

I would go even further than adding XI style AH I think when buying a new piece of gear the player should be offered a command to equip it right away and even better an option to see new gear and stat changes compared to the previous gear like most -98 era rpgs did.

I think in all of the FF games they nailed gear buying best in IX of all games. There was never any guesswork on the stat changes and you could see all the info you needed in one screen.

(I also loved the skills learned from items but that's another story)

There's not even a mail/PM system on these forums. It made me think once the forums got oficial and out of beta phase, and added the character information this would include a way to comunicate aka leave a message to someone mayhaps, but seems SE doesn't see it like that.

First off, I'm not an advocate of "What? No AH? This game is crap". I sit firmly on the fence of whether we need an AH or whether the wards can be improved to the point that the idea of an AH is redundant.

But I would like to point out that an AH isnt all "bed of roses".
Inroducing an AH would have to be done intelligently as it would be a hive of activity that I dont think the servers are capable of withstanding at this time. Who recalls the AH in Whitegate in FFXI? The lag was inconcievable to the point that I'd only use it in an emergency.

Perhaps if the AH was a seperate zone in itself with a bolstered server just to handle the load, maybe that would work, but I'm no programmer so I am only speaking in layman's terms.
If they can overcome the lag issues that come with a busy AH, I'd buy that.

But until the servers are robust enough to cope, I will settle for more funcionality on the wards. Being able to compare gear stats of gear currently worn with the item you are thinking of purchasing would put a big smile on my face for a start :D

Still no feedback on these? The whole community is very interested in these, especially an AH or Market system. I don't intend on attacking anyone with this comment but, the market wards/retainer is a broken and overly complicated system. It seems to me and to the other players that the only reason why SE is investing into trying to improve it is only because they plan on making us pay extra $ for retainers.

Making us pay extra $ for characters and now extra retainers, seems a bit greedy to me and i'm sure a lot of players out there think the same thing. I don't know of any other MMORPG having that mentality and even more some are adopting the free to play strategy or no monthly fee but pay for extra items, game feautres etc...

If FFXIV has any chance of competing with the other great MMOs out there, we need to have these systems in place and we need to drop that mentality of let's keep broken stuff because there is extra money to be made with it.

Feedback:

Mail system - They already stated will come when the servers are fixed. They don't need to repeat this every day.

AH - Unneeded. They already stated they're working on the MW system and for the most part they're pretty much the same system. We don't need a 'centralized' area before they even balance the game out, it's actually only going to make matters worse.

You're not paying for anything, so that argument is moot.

Bank - Unless you're regarding storage, this is what retainers also are for. A monetary bank system would do no good with a serverside interface because the workload to call 1000s of player's banks, sometimes simultaneously would hinder game performance.

XIV will draw in it's own playerbase or it wouldn't be called Final Fantasy XIV, it would be called Generic Fantasy Clone Infinity, just like Rift purposefully designed itself to be a WoW clone to pull in that group of players and how GW2 is trying to cater to the crowd tired of said games.

So to reiterate:

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the only reason why SE is investing into trying to improve it is only because they plan on making us pay extra $ for retainers.

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Proves you've never played MMORPGs beyond XIV before -- If you have, you wouldn't have said this, because every MMORPG since the 90s improved existing systems overtime.

The only time something was scrapped was because they reintroduced the system in a new way, MW and Retainer system only need adjustments instead of wasting resources and designing and implementing a generic auction house. How many times have they stated they're heavily considering resource allocation?

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Originally Posted by Onidemon

Still no feedback on these? The whole community is very interested in these, especially an AH or Market system. I don't intend on attacking anyone with this comment but, the market wards/retainer is a broken and overly complicated system. It seems to me and to the other players that the only reason why SE is investing into trying to improve it is only because they plan on making us pay extra $ for retainers.

Making us pay extra $ for characters and now extra retainers, seems a bit greedy to me and i'm sure a lot of players out there think the same thing. I don't know of any other MMORPG having that mentality and even more some are adopting the free to play strategy or no monthly fee but pay for extra items, game feautres etc...

If FFXIV has any chance of competing with the other great MMOs out there, we need to have these systems in place and we need to drop that mentality of let's keep broken stuff because there is extra money to be made with it.

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I agree and I wonder how many threads will it take for SE to finally address this? Even if somebody likes to hassle with the MWs that doesn't mean this wouldn't be a more appealing game to a lot more people if they ADDED an AH.

Honestly adding a working AH doesn't mean the end of RPing for the few of you who like the broken version of it. Even in XI people happily used the dingy rolanberry zombiemarket alongside a perfectly working AH it didn't replace AH nor did either hinder the other's existence.

I asked this question many times before and never gotten an answer:

When you ask someone what MMORPG they're looking forward to, how many times have you honestly heard someone say "I'm wanting to play (x) MMORPG because it has an Auction House system"? You're lying to yourselves if you can honestly say a lot of people want to play an MMORPG because of it's Auction House system and nothing more.

this game need at least 1 more years til it becomes playable.

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Originally Posted by zoekwon

this game need at least 1 more years til it becomes playable.

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It is perfectly playable.. Already better then 90% of all MMO's i have played.

The game does not need a mailing system..
SE already gave everyone a blog/forum kind of thing.
Message eachother there and keep the servers mailspam clean :D
No lag this way ^^

Mail is unnecessary; item transfers is a feature that can simply be added to retainers.

Auction houses are unnecessary; we already have market wards.

Banks are unnecessary; retainers serve the exact same function.

Banks = retainers

Ah = market place

Mail = lalafel messenger class incoming


•A shared bank (retainers) will be good ti rise as a LS
•The mail... no words for that. We need it!
•AH. You have to realice this is already an AH. You guys have to raalice it. Is and "virtual" virtual AH forgot about a window to buy a big sword. Is just meaby more realistic. Yes. It need improvements like HQ items, overload of wards, distribution of wards, etc etc. But is already an AH no like wow one but like the ffxi one. But instead of see las 10 sold items... We can see the 10 cheapest items.

This is why SE need a testing server, if they proved that deleting the MW and going for a text window based AH system showed vast server performance then I would be up for moving to an AH (no blind bids or bidding allowed). I dont dislike the wards I quite enjoy looking through them but it does get tedious after a while, especially if your looking for multiple items. Maybe add a menu command that portals you to the ward from anywhere in the city so you dont have to run (yes its lazy i know). I like the idea of banking, you can even tie in quests to unlock bigger holding space or have LS space that is rentable (isk sink).

I have another idea - I know this might not be the right thread to post it in so please dont flame.

If they ever do add a 'drag + drop' UI system for the pc version I would like it see if they would add a auto-macro for equiping gear. It would have two icons, the first one in the main icon where all the gear equipping takes place it would be within the main menu (the one that appears on the whole right hand side of the screen) and clicking the option pops up a window that gives you 10 tabs, each tab can be renamed by the user so for example - White Mage, Maurauder, Paladin, Miner, Botanist, Armourer etc etc. But instead of writing the macro all you have to do is drag and drop the item from your inventory into the slot's so it would look like the same gear equip screen we currently have now. You drag all the items you want over from your inventory and it is stored in the macro and disappears from the inventory screen when slotted. To enable the gear switch have another fast equip icon along side the current icons at the right hand bottom of the screen that pops up how ever many macros tabs are active in list form, so if you only have 2 tabs with gear in it only shows those 2 tabs, a simple click on the name within the list enables the gear switch. Maybe have a simlar thing with skills too?

I think its a simplier version of the current macro system and one that is fool proof in terms of getting it right, having to re-write macros because of one erroneous character is annoying.

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Originally Posted by Ilethius

This is why SE need a testing server, if they proved that deleting the MW and going for a text window based AH system showed vast server performance then I would be up for moving to an AH (no blind bids or bidding allowed). I dont dislike the wards I quite enjoy looking through them but it does get tedious after a while, especially if your looking for multiple items. Maybe add a menu command that portals you to the ward from anywhere in the city so you dont have to run (yes its lazy i know). I like the idea of banking, you can even tie in quests to unlock bigger holding space or have LS space that is rentable (isk sink).

I have another idea - I know this might not be the right thread to post it in so please dont flame.

If they ever do add a 'drag + drop' UI system for the pc version I would like it see if they would add a auto-macro for equiping gear. It would have two icons, the first one in the main icon where all the gear equipping takes place it would be within the main menu (the one that appears on the whole right hand side of the screen) and clicking the option pops up a window that gives you 10 tabs, each tab can be renamed by the user so for example - White Mage, Maurauder, Paladin, Miner, Botanist, Armourer etc etc. But instead of writing the macro all you have to do is drag and drop the item from your inventory into the slot's so it would look like the same gear equip screen we currently have now. You drag all the items you want over from your inventory and it is stored in the macro and disappears from the inventory screen when slotted. To enable the gear switch have another fast equip icon along side the current icons at the right hand bottom of the screen that pops up how ever many macros tabs are active in list form, so if you only have 2 tabs with gear in it only shows those 2 tabs, a simple click on the name within the list enables the gear switch. Maybe have a simlar thing with skills too?

I think its a simplier version of the current macro system and one that is fool proof in terms of getting it right, having to re-write macros because of one erroneous character is annoying.

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Yet again the inclusion of an AH does NOT automatically mean that the MW would be axed.

I think you have really good ideas on how to improve the PC UI btw.

Haven't there been several comments made about these systems already by devs...why do we keep getting these threads? Is research really so hard? Are you too lazy? both?

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AH - Unneeded. They already stated they're working on the MW system and for the most part they're pretty much the same system. We don't need a 'centralized' area before they even balance the game out, it's actually only going to make matters worse.

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Well if there's no AH here is what is NEEDED at the very least
- In-game price history, easily accessible while setting prices on your retainers.
- Market wards that are shared between all locations, otherwise some areas never sell anything, or develop pricing issues.

Really an AH is the better means of fixing all of these problems at once.
I'm really tired of having to check pricing on some website, then going back into FF14 (alt-tab is still broken), setting prices on my retainers in Gridania Market Ward, only to log a week later have having sold nothing. At that point it becomes extremly annoyingm hence people asking for a centralised AH system.

My two cents
-- Francois424

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Originally Posted by Francois424

Well if there's no AH here is what is NEEDED at the very least
- In-game price history, easily accessible while setting prices on your retainers.
- Market wards that are shared between all locations, otherwise some areas never sell anything, or develop pricing issues.

Really an AH is the better means of fixing all of these problems at once.
I'm really tired of having to check pricing on some website, then going back into FF14 (alt-tab is still broken), setting prices on my retainers in Gridania Market Ward, only to log a week later have having sold nothing. At that point it becomes extremly annoyingm hence people asking for a centralised AH system.

My two cents
-- Francois424

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Price histories are corruptable. The only way i'd accept price histories is if its an average and doesnt list who it was that sold it. So for instance

If a Silver Rings sells five times for different prices, 1000, 900, 800, 1000, 20000, The ui would say "Average selling price is 1000" not "The last selling price was 20000"

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Originally Posted by Francois424

Well if there's no AH here is what is NEEDED at the very least
- In-game price history, easily accessible while setting prices on your retainers.
- Market wards that are shared between all locations, otherwise some areas never sell anything, or develop pricing issues.

Really an AH is the better means of fixing all of these problems at once.
I'm really tired of having to check pricing on some website, then going back into FF14 (alt-tab is still broken), setting prices on my retainers in Gridania Market Ward, only to log a week later have having sold nothing. At that point it becomes extremly annoyingm hence people asking for a centralised AH system.

My two cents
-- Francois424

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An AH isn't an instant fix. The dev team even said just slapping on an AH won't fix anything, so it's kind of hard to argue against what the people behind the game states.

An AH in gridania won't have people flooding back given it's well known most people station themselves in Ul`dah, which means not only when the Uldah AH is flooded, thus lower prices, no one would utilize the AH in Limsa or Grid due to the fact he prices will always be higher.

Thus, no instant fix and only more problems.

Yes, I know about everyone flockling to Uldah.
I was not very clear about what a centralised AH meant, or I used a wrong world to describe it.

Think of it as ONE AH for the whole world. If I am not mistaken this is the way FF11 operates nowadays... and WoW too ! That way it dosent matter if you access the AH from Gridania, Limsa Lominsa, or Ul'dah, or any new major settlements in future expentions. You will still see the same items, in the same numbers, for the same prices. Note that keeping an history and hiding the true price of the listed items (such as FF11 was/is) is my prefered way of doing things.

It will still take tame for the economy to balance out, and the prices might fluctuate with the exemples you provided for some time. But I think it would the better move, seriously.

If you only keep market wards, it keeps potential players away and annoy a lot of the ones already playing.
-- Francois424

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Originally Posted by Cairdeas

Price histories are corruptable. The only way i'd accept price histories is if its an average and doesnt list who it was that sold it. So for instance

If a Silver Rings sells five times for different prices, 1000, 900, 800, 1000, 20000, The ui would say "Average selling price is 1000" not "The last selling price was 20000"

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You say corruptible, But I actually like a system where I can collaborate with other suppliers and Buyers. Along with a lot of other factors the lack of a price history leads to buying and selling uncertainty and unstable prices. A price history helps sellers establish the price they want to place on the item and buyers establish a price they want to pay for that item. The middle ground of that will establish a much more stabilized price of goods than we have right now.

I do like the averaging system you mentioned, but perhaps we could have that be the headline of the price history and then you can click further to view the entire list of recent exchanges.

The whole market wards retainer system just needs to go, it was a retarded idea to start with and is a retarded idea to continue with. I can't believe it's still there after this long seriously...