Don't Ruin the economy with an auction house! please![dev1019]

They should put in a dislike button. I'd prefer an auction house.

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Originally Posted by ESAR

Auction houses have problems, paying money to put items up means that gil is coming outta your pocket even if the item doesn't sell. (market wards solve this)

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Do you think there's an auction house committee that makes this part mandatory? defend the crap that is the market wards all you want but come up with something less half assed.

Obviously not a lot of people who studied economics in here. First off, anyone who says that adding a sales history is going to mess up the economy doesn't understand the concept of supply and demand. The reason prices rise is there is higher demand than supply and the reason prices fall is because there is higher supply than demand. It has absolutely jack to do with sales history. Also there are already ways to figure out average and median prices (YG) and also you can see all the prices posted using the search feature in the wards.

As for the fees, SE has to take money out of the economy somehow in order to combat inflation. The money that you get from leves, missions, quests w/e comes basically out of the void. If there are no fees, like those for choco rental, AH post fees, ward taxes, then eventually the prices in demand items will inflate drastically. Items which like gil, come out of the void commonly will be more immune to the inflation, but items that are more rare (like the Kraken Club in 11 which at one point was going for 900 million gil on Remora) will skyrocket in price.

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Originally Posted by Crios_Vandalus

Obviously not a lot of people who studied economics in here. First off, anyone who says that adding a sales history is going to mess up the economy doesn't understand the concept of supply and demand. The reason prices rise is there is higher demand than supply and the reason prices fall is because there is higher supply than demand. It has absolutely jack to do with sales history. Also there are already ways to figure out average and median prices (YG) and also you can see all the prices posted using the search feature in the wards.

As for the fees, SE has to take money out of the economy somehow in order to combat inflation. The money that you get from leves, missions, quests w/e comes basically out of the void. If there are no fees, like those for choco rental, AH post fees, ward taxes, then eventually the prices in demand items will inflate drastically. Items which like gil, come out of the void commonly will be more immune to the inflation, but items that are more rare (like the Kraken Club in 11 which at one point was going for 900 million gil on Remora) will skyrocket in price.

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+1 to you my friend, +1.

Just to elaborate on the price history bit. You are perfectly correct that those basic forces drive prices up and down, especially in a simplistic video game economy without the annoyances of real world concerns forcing shifts in prices. Assuming there is no YG because it's a voluntary system and the prices there reflect only the prices listed by those who participate in it (and while it is definitely a good number of people it's not the majority of the people who play the game that use it religiously), an in game price history helps to smooth out the price trends of items.

If we assume the old garbage system found in FFXI with all its problems completely unchanged, at the very least a price history helps avoid the spikes in prices from lack of awareness of what, historically, an item has been sold for. Hence the 'smoothing out' effect. Note that this does not speak to the tendency of the price to trend upwards or downwards but only to normalizing it at some level and allowing it to shift, either up or down, at an incremental rate instead of in massive blind spikes.

The hope is that in a proper AH system where both buy orders and sell orders are reflected there are two price trends showing those two separate trends (ie. what an item has been bought for, and sold for). This allows for the first thing I mentioned before (smoothing out the price) and for the two histories to meet at an equilibrium price dictated by both those selling the item and those seeking the item, instead of the traditional FFXI model which leaves the buyer with the only recourse of voicing their concerns over the price of an item through silent protest (ie. not buying it). That is somewhat insufficient in helping to shape the price trends of an item because not buying an item doesn't say anything at all to the sellers of the item. There is no appreciable difference between "you're charging too much" and "I don't need what you're selling" in a system like the FFXI model.

I won't waste time on the issue of fees. They are what they are, work around them and let them serve their gil sink function in peace.

TL;DR: Price history good, Crios smart, include buy orders in the AH system.

Out of any of suggestions i do feel linking each of the citys wards in someway or another would be a great thing to do ,im sure alot of people kind of feel obligated to stay in ul'dah to keep they're retainers up in whats proberly deemed the most busy area for marketing across most if not all servers following the same trend for that. I know one of the reasons i almost never travel outide of ul'dah towards areas like Limsa is greatly down to this reason alone with the markets resetting so frequently.

I choose Limsa Because i love the atmosphere of the place but alas my retainer cant use his or her own two feet to set themselfs up in the ward of my choosing without me babysitting them to the market of choice, something the anima attributes to saving as many points as i can so many of us keep it simple and stay in one place,de-valueing other citys somewhat into Ghost towns.

Mabey not compeltly to the main vein of the Op post but my two pence.

what economy.

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Originally Posted by Zkieve

what economy.

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Seriously? I have had no problem with the economy in terms of finding stuff to sell and/or buy. I made half a mill just selling random stuff in my inventory that I only had a bit of. Stack of one here, stack of three there. Freed up my inventory space no problem while I was sleeping. Granted, I started in Ul'dah and have stayed there since collectors edition pre-release, and the economies in Limsa and Grid especially are nearly non-existant.

Yes, its not perfect in its current state, but for the amount of gil generation : gil sinks, it is usable.

Don't have a price history then, an MMO won't be able to function long term without an AH.

The reason why the market was so screwed on FFXI was because the release dates were so different between the Japanese release vs North American release, it was almost a year and a half before North America got the game. Many people already had max crafts when an entire new playerbase came in, the market had been set for awhile and cornered by a few people on each server.

There is no reason to omit and AH, i'm sorry, the wards are nothing more but a stop-gap solution but if this is the long term solution we're in deeper trouble than I thought. I know people who refuse to play this game just based on the fact alone that there isn't an AH.

Something tells me this game will probably die before an AH is implemented >.>; I hope they do put one in though

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Originally Posted by origamikitsune

Seriously? I have had no problem with the economy in terms of finding stuff to sell and/or buy. I made half a mill just selling random stuff in my inventory that I only had a bit of. Stack of one here, stack of three there. Freed up my inventory space no problem while I was sleeping. Granted, I started in Ul'dah and have stayed there since collectors edition pre-release, and the economies in Limsa and Grid especially are nearly non-existant.

Yes, its not perfect in its current state, but for the amount of gil generation : gil sinks, it is usable.

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I've actually had a surprising amount of luck selling and getting repairs in the Gridania market. It's mostly a ghost town, but it would seem that people are still checking it frequently.

Suggestion:

Leave say 80% of it as is... (i.e. you can enter "X" row and summon your retainer for item management, ect...)

When I try entering the MWs give me a similar menu.

Then when I select Item Search I am given the option to search as it's setup now OR (improvement) type an item name, link an item, whatever...

Then I see that item, and/or related items, from whoever.

(change) Give me the ability to select any individual retainer in that menu and allow me to view that retainers items.

Next step --> buy whatever I want from them (same as it is now, but not in an instance).

Rinse / Repeat.

AH+MW

IMO you can only get rid of RMT by making it a private server game, or solo play. They can farm as we can farm. Doesn't matter if its questing, grinding, looting, ect.... They can sell as we can sell. Doesn't matter if its from shout chat only, or from ebay.

with the addition of search function for the wards...what is the difference between AH and MW??
1) you have to travel to the retainer and ward selling the specific item.
2) Price history?? (as most AH have some sort of price listing for previous buys)

So, it basically boils down to is "I want to know the going rate for a specific item so add a AH"?? either that or "I'm to lazy to travel to the ward".

Personally I think leave the AH to FFXI. The MW worked fine for me since the release. I have had no trouble in finding what I needed nor did I have a problem selling what I wanted. The problem comes down to "How do I know how much this is worth and how much am I suppose to sell it for". Well...it doesn't really matter what other people price their goods at.

With a AH the price of goods is set by supply and demand, a steady price throughout all of the region. With MW you have much more range of price, the price of goods is set by the PLAYER not by supply and demand, player X feels cotton cowl is worth 20k and player Z says 5k. The buyer is now the one that decides "how much does this item mean to me...how much would I pay...what can I find it for...who can I talk to obtain this item" not "ok do I have 5k for this to buy from AH". I think market transactions and finding what you need should be more player involved rather that just going to the AH to buy what you need. Dont get me wrong with MW supply and demand still play a role but not nearly to the extent of setting the price of goods. Even with the recent search function it starts to stray away from this system and more geared towards the AH system. Not only that the idea of a player becoming a realistic vendor becomes obsolete because of AH. With MW your able to setup shop with your prices and still have a fair chance at selling what is needed...not setup shop with prices set by AH. I know its somewhat like 'bazaars' in FFXI but even with the player bazaars prices were still set by AH prices...not what a player thinks or feels the item is worth.
If you do implement AH then it becomes like every other game out there...camp at the AH window...very little player mingling and very little player to player/retainer involvement and it also makes the whole idea of even having retainers obsolete. It is a MMO after all.

BTW Happy 420 Everybody :o

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"how much does this item mean to me...how much would I pay...what can I find it for...who can I talk to obtain this item" not "ok do I have 5k for this to buy from AH". I think market transactions and finding what you need should be more player involved rather that just going to the AH to buy what you need.

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Seriously? I hear almost zero player to player trading. FFXI was always busy in Jeuno with trade chatting... WOW has thier own trade chat channel...

And price set by demand is exactly whats happening in the wards. Just 10x slower. You gotta be pretty stoned to buy the 20k cotton cowl with one up for 5k.

I feel right now the anti-AH peeps are fussin because the gil input/output is not balanced. Just wait until square fixes this and 70% of us become broke... now the cheapest avalible, or fastest way to sell wont sound so bad.

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Originally Posted by LazyKz

Seriously? I hear almost zero player to player trading. FFXI was always busy in Jeuno with trade chatting... WOW has thier own trade chat channel...

And price set by demand is exactly whats happening in the wards. Just 10x slower. You gotta be pretty stoned to buy the 20k cotton cowl with one up for 5k.

I feel right now the anti-AH peeps are fussin because the gil input/output is not balanced. Just wait until square fixes this and 70% of us become broke... now the cheapest avalible, or fastest way to sell wont sound so bad.

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I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. Player X and Z have the choice to sell their goods at whatever price they feel fit, but with the search function that way is gone. Like I said even with the search function it becomes more AH style orientated. With the search function that eliminates MW browsing...which makes the freedom of price setting obsolete. At this stage they mine as well go all the way and put in a AH window and get rid of retainers and MW all together.
Me personally i'm geared toward change when it comes to a new game, so i'm liking the MW system. But if AH is what will bring this game back to life then I don't really care what SE has to do to bring players back. Coming back after a couple months (due to RL issues) the game is...almost dead. Even with free trial still on! This makes me worry where the game is heading but after reading the last few months updates, letters from producers and seeing drastic in house changes on SE end...I still have high hopes for the game.

At least this new team has the balls to say "ok we fu**ed up...we see whats wrong and we hear the community"

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I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. Player X and Z have the choice to sell their goods at whatever price they feel fit, but with the search function that way is gone. Like I said even with the search function it becomes more AH style orientated. With the search function that eliminates MW browsing...which makes the freedom of price setting obsolete. At this stage they mine as well go all the way and put in a AH window and get rid of retainers and MW all together.
Me personally i'm geared toward change when it comes to a new game, so i'm liking the MW system. But if AH is what will bring this game back to life then I don't really care what SE has to do to bring players back. Coming back after a couple months (due to RL issues) the game is...almost dead. Even with free trial still on! This makes me worry where the game is heading but after reading the last few months updates, letters from producers and seeing drastic in house changes on SE end...I still have high hopes for the game.

At least this new team has the balls to say "ok we fu**ed up...we see whats wrong and we hear the community"

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Ok, I'm on board now... and I agree. I'm not upset they tried it either, change is the best and boldest move they can make. This is the most anti-wow MMO released that I know about I am glad for it. I'm also very curious about where it's heading because your right, the new team seems much better and more able. But how long can this last before the CEOs pull the plug....

The MW system does make for a competitive market in terms of you have more responsibility (benchmarking, data collecting, ect...) to becoming successful, but it just may be a little rough on the general MMO community.

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Originally Posted by LazyKz

Ok, I'm on board now... and I agree. I'm not upset they tried it either, change is the best and boldest move they can make. This is the most anti-wow MMO released that I know about I am glad for it. I'm also very curious about where it's heading because your right, the new team seems much better and more able. But how long can this last before the CEOs pull the plug....

The MW system does make for a competitive market in terms of you have more responsibility (benchmarking, data collecting, ect...) to becoming successful, but it just may be a little rough on the general MMO community.

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Well...I suggested something else in a thread "AH + Player Markets??"...read that and tell me what you think.

Staying away from sales history is simply enforcing a minimum level of ignorance, and that is a crappy way of limiting players. In a truly-player based economy, it will be hard to make money. That is the only way money can be actually valuable.

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Originally Posted by Smokie23

If you do implement AH then it becomes like every other game out there...camp at the AH window...very little player mingling and very little player to player/retainer involvement and it also makes the whole idea of even having retainers obsolete. It is a MMO after all.

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Hmmm.... I don't recally having any player to player mingling while going through retainers... and especially no player to retainer mingling. i've tried to mingle with one and man it was a no go >.>; at least I guess I didn't get rejected :D but no mingling D: in any case I'd prefer a buy/sell system even if like an auction house if not one

I don't know about you or anyone else but i'd rather buy the cheapest same item from anyone rather than having to select from 5k or 10k for the same item I don't really want to have to use up more time looking for the item/price i'm looking for. As for the AH you can certainly price your items at 10k vs 5k... just whether you get to sell yours first or not is a different story or whether you want yours sold first.

I actually like the Market Wards (I know that now you have to call me an idiot or a troll but it's true). I like how personal they are.

But I do think that there is a good compromise.

I like making my own equipment (when I can) but finding the materials is hard many times so an AH would be a nice way to buy stacked items and materials. It's quick easy and gets parts moving to the crafters.

But also with the new talk about the future of the crafting system and the ways that crafters can personalize armor I feel that a more personal market is a better choice. People can get to know what retainers sell armors and weapons that are specailized the way they like. It becomes personal as people are able to find who sells what they like.

Maybe it would make the Market Wards better if they had one tab on each retainer for selling items, and one tab on each retainer for purchasing items. You could specifiy what item you want, how many, and how much you are willing to pay (up to 10 items, just like the selling tab.) We then can have the market ward's search feature not only search for what people are selling, but also what they are buying. This could be a reasonably good compromise for everyone. (Sorry if anyone else posted an idea like this, I'm not quite finished reading the whole thread.)

(I know people can buy items through their retainers, but it requires having one of those items in the first place and takes up a selling slot. So I'm suggesting we have 10 spaces for selling, and 10 spaces for purchasing on each of our retainers. Then a way to choose the item you want to buy regardless if you own one of those items now. Does this make sense?)

I think with gear making they meant for a lot of leatherworkers at higher ranks to be making the little parts for stuff weavers make, (some synths in the 20s take a leatherworker part that you need r30+ leatherworker for, you do need leatherworker as a sub, but having it higher than wvr isn't a sub) It woudl be cool if they had something like this, where you could get parts of gears and it was higher profitable for crafters, and it would be easier for some to make the gear piece they need. I just used leatherworker and weaver because its what I know, but I'm sure there are other crafts like this.

Like someone stated before, the current system already is a half broken AH.

The price history wasnt a great invention and can be left out in an AH as well but this will not make the market any better nor will it prevent RMT. Its even better for RMT if there is no history since they can just buy stuff and sell for more, and theres no history at all. No ways to track them. A lot of RMT ive seen on shard buy and sells. The market is already pretty much rmt controlled. (and if thats no rmt, then players can cause the same problems as RMTs do)
They are doin it already. The current system is heaven for a professional RMT company imo.

The marktet wards are causeing trouble a lot, they drain too many resources, are not stable and they dont add immersion at all since you are teleported to a dark place with many npcs and click on them... what an immersion...
They are limited so even if you wanna put the retainer into the right ward there might be no room left... awesome system. and this is already happening in a game with only few players.

If we keep the MW SE better fails more and more so we dont get more ppl on the servers since then it will be a desaster :)

The MW is an AH without a history and its very easy to manipulate prizes. You cant even see WHO controls the market.
RMT friendly +3
Gamer friendly -3
(ok that is the case with most of the current game mechanics)

SE should start thinking about how the game can be mad more fun rather then how to prevent rmt without spending much cash on it (this will never work that way).

Sometimes i think most ppl whining about an AH are ppl who love the current MW system since they can manipulate like hell there... i dont see other reasons... and immersion is a lame excuse...

Wow. Anyone heard of "market manipulation"...look it up! Specifically the manipulation "Ramping".
Price history is NOT needed and will only create opportunities for market manipulations. In fact, RMT love price history as they can manipulate the market however they see fit.

Anty, tell me how you can manipulate the MW to your favor?

Excuse me, but how does making things easier to trade ruin an economy?

Also, people need to stop using RMT or bots as an excuse for limiting real player's game experience. You should never hurt real players to try and stop something that can never be stopped.

I'm thinking keep Market Wards for starting three zones and only give Ishgard broken AH :]

Just make all buying/selling UI based. Nobody wants to run around collecting items from NPCs.

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Originally Posted by Smokie23

Wow. Anyone heard of "market manipulation"...look it up! Specifically the manipulation "Ramping".
Price history is NOT needed and will only create opportunities for market manipulations. In fact, RMT love price history as they can manipulate the market however they see fit.

Anty, tell me how you can manipulate the MW to your favor?

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It's actually just as easy to manipulate the MW as it would be to manipulate an AH. Find items that are relatively rare but highly sought after. Buy all those items from the competitor’s retainers. Sell them on your retainer for whatever price you want, it doesn't matter that there is no price history since the item is highly sought after people will pay almost any price, and you are the only one selling said item. If anyone undercuts your price you simply buy the item and repost at the price you are selling yours for.

Well the fact you 'bought all items from competitors retainers' which means you did exactly what they want you to...buy their items at their price. It doesn't matter if you go any buy all items in the ward and throw them on your retainer at your higher price. All people have to do is undercut your price. Its not like people can't get more items. Your not the only one with the items. Your the second hand man. Other players are the one's mining/gathering the said item and all your doing is buying it from them. You would need a team of players on 24/7 to control the market to that degree for any time worthy of even trying.
Also, the fact that your higher the prices on said item only will benefit the gatherers and farmers. Seller doesn't care who he sells to as long as someone buys his stuff. So unless you control the market and are able to then control the farming and gathering of said item then you can manipulate the market to that degree. But until you control the gathering and farming of said item your still a middle man and there is no way you can control the gathering and farming of an item. That would be like having a person cover every node, mob, getting every single NM spawn in the entire game and not letting anyone on the server get said item by any means. Kind of hard.

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Originally Posted by Smokie23

Well the fact you 'bought all items from competitors retainers' which means you did exactly what they want you to...buy their items at their price. It doesn't matter if you go any buy all items in the ward and throw them on your retainer at your higher price. All people have to do is undercut your price. Its not like people can't get more items. Your not the only one with the items. Your the second hand man. Other players are the one's mining/gathering the said item and all your doing is buying it from them. You would need a team of players on 24/7 to control the market to that degree for any time worthy of even trying.
Also, the fact that your higher the prices on said item only will benefit the gatherers and farmers. Seller doesn't care who he sells to as long as someone buys his stuff. So unless you control the market and are able to then control the farming and gathering of said item then you can manipulate the market to that degree. But until you control the gathering and farming of said item your still a middle man and there is no way you can control the gathering and farming of an item. That would be like having a person cover every node, mob, getting every single NM spawn in the entire game and not letting anyone on the server get said item by any means. Kind of hard.

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I said rare items, ie items that are hard to obtain/items that have a much higher demand than supply... more of the same item will not be showing up on a regular basis, so the people that want said item have no choice to buy from you or wait until someone else sells one.

Please don't be so selfish guys. There are so many people out there THAT WOULD PLAY THIS GAME if there was an auction house.

Seriously...

Why do you have to be so difficult? ANTI RMT MEANS ANTI PLAYER.

We want a fun engaging game not a time sink lag fest broken incomplete ideas (like the marketplace... )

How are you people having problems with the MW? If you need to sell something, you sell it. Just check the prices of it already selling and set the price appropriately, if no price then make your own. You need to buy something? Just use the item seek function. How is this complicated? Zoning takes 5 seconds, unless you are all using some dinosaur of a dial-up.
The only reason to have a history is for the purpose of making money, which is both useless right now and going to be dominated by high-level crafters anyways.

Sad you can't make money off of leveling a crafting item? Use local leves. Ta-Da! You are now making money leveling up.
And if this is too slow for you, toughen up and NPC the items. No pain, no gain.

cause npc'ing the items is so fast? lol takes like 3-5seconds to sell every item.

i don't want an ah, on top of that i don't like the changes they keep adding to the system we do have. it is becoming worse or same as an ah. it is as bad as warhammer type ah, and way worse then the ffxi system in my opinion already. i woudn't complain if they removed all the functions to find stuff, people are asking for an ah, what the hell do u call what we have anyway, only difference is now then before is you gotta take 2seconds to port to the item. are we all blind or something?

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Originally Posted by weeble

i don't want an ah, on top of that i don't like the changes they keep adding to the system we do have. it is becoming worse or same as an ah. it is as bad as warhammer type ah, and way worse then the ffxi system in my opinion already. i woudn't complain if they removed all the functions to find stuff, people are asking for an ah, what the hell do u call what we have anyway, only difference is now then before is you gotta take 2seconds to port to the item. are we all blind or something?

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Its not an AH if it doesn't have Blind or Timed bidding, which is the two things I do not want.

An auction house would make me actually bother to put items up for sale.

The retainer system is so BAD.

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Originally Posted by weeble

i don't want an ah, on top of that i don't like the changes they keep adding to the system we do have. it is becoming worse or same as an ah. it is as bad as warhammer type ah, and way worse then the ffxi system in my opinion already. i woudn't complain if they removed all the functions to find stuff, people are asking for an ah, what the hell do u call what we have anyway, only difference is now then before is you gotta take 2seconds to port to the item. are we all blind or something?

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Are you serious? So you enjoy either walking for a period of 1 hour from limsa to grid with ZERO guarantee that theres an item? Or do you enjoy having to walk into each different type of ward in search of that ONE item that you have no idea if ANYONE in the whole market in a city has it or not?

The search function was a great step forward.

I don't think there's an economy to ruin right now. I think the economy is already ruined. There needs to be more money sinks, more things to make money have worth. Right now we're seeing insane inflation, with the shard and mat-gathering bots making things worse by the day. An auction house or a similar implementation using the retainer system, would make things better. Equipment might start being sold for amounts more equivalent to the disposable income of someone of the appropriate level for that item.

Playing a little more now and i have to say we really need a auction house. There players selling items for 3k and for the same item up to 20k+ it make no sense. Top of that the item you really need are not even on there for low level class and there even players putting item for 999.999.999 o.o. I no longer want this Ward system i think we do best with a AH where all players are forced to sell a item for a price right now we have no economy a auction house would really fix this issue...

So please SE make a Auction house.

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Originally Posted by ESAR

The sales history defines the price of an item.
Since there is a history this defines the going rate for an item. In FFXI for me this caused me to need to be close to 100 to make money off my craft. This is BS, I do not want this same problem in this game and neither do you. It's going to happen with an AH / sale history, it's a bad idea. This is why the developers decided upon an alternate solution, the market wards.
Market wards are like rolanberry fields. It's a way to sell items without paying that fee to put them up. This works well for all types of weapons.

The bad economics are not caused by not having an auction house, it's caused because people have no way of telling what other people desire, therefore everyone including yourself is convinced we need an auction house. It's because a sales history is how we decided which items to sell or farm or make. Sales histories caused that vital flaw in the economy though and we do not need it or want it.

Rather we have the tools to decipher what people want, they're just not using it the way they could be. Retainers have the ability to sell. Restricting this to just items in our possession however is not helping us communicate to others what we need. If they gave us the abilities to get our retainers to search for what we need, all our commerce (trading of goods) problems would be solved.

I for one will start farming materials so crafters don't need to, but how the hell am I supposed to tell what to farm?

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I don't agree with you. Some server economies may have been different but that was the biggest part of my enjoyment from FFXI, the Auction House. I didn't have a single craft in the 90's and I loved making gil at each level range of my craft. I researched npc prices, AH prices from farmers, found the best deals, and leveled my craft with profit in mind. It was much more enjoyable than the current level-as-crafter system that FFXIV has since the market ward system is a complete joke.

The fundamental idea behind running a business is to have a good location where your items are easily available. After that you can work on reducing your production price or inventory cost and weeding out the other guys if necessary. For example: ever buy a roll of film, disposable camera, or batteries at a tourist spot? Expensive, right? Those products didn't necessarily cost more to make, but they were able to charge more because the products were available. That was always an option in FFXI if you couldn't compete on the AH. Also, there was no need to make the product yourself in the first place, you could make good money in XI simply buying discount items on the AH and selling them in Bazaar elsewhere. I did it all the time.

The problem with the Market Ward system is that it's basically as you say, an implementation of Rolanmart -- where people would Bazaar high priced items for one general reason: to avoid paying city tax. It was not about location. It was not about the thrill of looking at 100 player characters and checking what they had listed. Often times you checked the same person 2, 3, 10 times by luck of the Tab-draw. It was painful, but there was a benefit to doing it. You kept the money the game was designed to take out of the system.

There is no benefit to the Market Ward system now unless you create enough bad factors to highlight the benefits. Really, in essence, that requires making the ability to buy and sell goods from other players outside of the Wards a bad idea, or less beneficial. It has to. Less cost of taxes is really the only benefit you could put into the Wards to get people to use them, but even then that would require the external taxes to be high enough to warrant the pain of using the ward system in the first place. Which, at the end of the day, results in building several flaws into the game just so people are motivated to use a broken system based off a player-base reaction to perceived injustices of high taxation from a previous game. How is this possibly a good idea?

So this is the way I see the whole thing coming about: Game developers see large crowds of players start to accumulate outside one of the major towns to sell their goods. This is replicated across multiple servers. By unwritten rule, more players join in. Developers mistakenly translate this into a desire by players to have an open market system where they manually check bazaars. Developers implement new system into next title in the series and are then shocked when the majority of players do not approve. Developers try to fix broken system. Players who failed at making gil in XI defend broken system because they are afraid they still won't make money on an Auction House.

Seriously, I loved economics of FFXI, but I just don't have the time to wander through an endless sea of retainers. I guess I'm just getting old enough to realize that I have a lot better things to do with my time. An AH would allow me to spend less time looking for comparison pricing, materials, and listing finished products, and would give me more time to enjoy the game and find other places to park my character to provide convenience items at higher costs. As for now, I log in from time to time, but I always yearn for the better days of FFXI. I log out, I do something else, and I eventually come back to look. This has resulted in disappointment. I'm sure there are a lot more players out there just like me: watching, waiting, hoping...

You might say that the game doesn't need people like us, that it doesn't need an auction house or a fully functional economy. You might think you are happy with the system, but games like these don't last long if they remain free. And this game will remain free as long as it can if the players do not return, but eventually it will die. Then your broken system will be a disappointment simply because you'll no longer be able to enjoy it. In that respect, if you truly love the game, you should think about the things that can change that would bring the most people back. Truthfully, the auction house is one such change.

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Originally Posted by Killjoy

I don't agree with you. Some server economies may have been different but that was the biggest part of my enjoyment from FFXI, the Auction House. I didn't have a single craft in the 90's and I loved making gil at each level range of my craft. I researched npc prices, AH prices from farmers, found the best deals, and leveled my craft with profit in mind. It was much more enjoyable than the current level-as-crafter system that FFXIV has since the market ward system is a complete joke. . . .

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Well said.