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Before the latest couple patches, I was all for an AH.
Since the latest, I would say both is a welcomed thought. You have your hometown bazaars for selling multiple items, seeking repairs, and not to mention storage space. Then there is the AH which if it's like xi at all, would have access to items throughout many new regions or outposts that are added. (Kazham, etc).
With the item search feature just needing a few tweaks, I'd say once battle mechanics are fixed, and closer to the ps3 release when the game is nearly 'ready'.. I would welcome the addition of the AH.. but not a replacement.
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I think Market Wards are the future as much as I did want an AH I think the wards could be even better.
If they make the layout of item search a bit better and add options to sort by class, rank and other things that would be a big help. Also add HQ results and the ability to type in an item for a quick search.
Yes wards are not and never will be as fast as as simply buying something from the AH but with wards I can sell half a stack of items and not need to sell them individually or have a full stack like what would be needed for an AH. People can come up and buy the amount they need quicker if say they needed 20 of an certain item. Also with wards I often go and buy an item from someone and find they are also selling something else at a nice price so I get that too.
Also without price history it makes it difficult for a price to be set on certain items so you sell it at what you feel like it is worth. I have been up many times to sell an item and seen there are none in stock so I have to figure out how much I think it's worth, maybe I priced it way to low, but I made that choice and obviously I was comfortable with selling at that price otherwise I wouldn't have put it up for that price. I have recently been looking for Bow's for my Archer and the prices varied greatly, someone was wanting 400k for it and the person next to him wanted 80k obviously both feel that is how much the item is worth and if the 80k one wasn't there I would have to ask is 400k a good price for that bow and decide.
If they could fix the frequent crashing and add more search and filter options I believe they will be better than an AH.
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"Do we really need it?" - OP
No we don't and I hope this isn't a priority for SE.
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I don't think there is an urgent need for one. I can, at the moment, find items I require very quickly in the wards and just as quickly buy them and be on my way.
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Just a few things to consider.
The current market wards system functions quite like an auction house. so in that reguard, I wouldn't say an auction house is "top priority". But. The population of the game isn't very high either, I've mentioned this in previous similar posts. How would the market wards look if there was 4-5000 players online on a server. An example. You zone into say the battlecraft wards, there's some 8-10,000 retainers there. You wait who knows how long for them to load, then walk over to the one you're after. Then you try to target it among all those others retainers.
Another point to consider, future players. Having an auction house is a pretty common to most online games, and having one would be a familiar item that future players could relate with when deciding whether or not to purchase/play the game. I'm not trying to say the game should should change everything just to suit future players, but it is worth thinking on.
And someone previously mentioned undercutting. While this may frustrate some, including myself, I think it is essential to the economy. Thus having a way to compare prices is a need (the wards system has it now I know). I mean, imagine if I had the only sheepskin up for sale. Technically I could charge you 50mil for it if I wanted to. Of course you probably wouldn't feel its worth that, so you would go out and farm your own. But competitive pricing is what makes the ecocomy functional. And supply and demand is a very crucial factor in determing the pricing of items.
I would like an auction house myself, but I don't feel it should be "top priority" right now. The market wards system has been changed to act almost like an auction house now, and future changes I would see a need for only further create the wards into more of a seudo-auction house. It looks like a lot of work has been done, and is going to be done, just to change the wards into an ah, why not just make it an ah.
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I think the best solution would be a cross between the two, get rid of the wards as Aldwin said population is low at the minute and they still crash, what will happen if they turn the game around and server populations double. Have a counter you can go to that will allow you to look for a certain item and see who is selling it and how much for and you can buy it there and then. With that you would obviously buy the cheapest one so undercutting would happen, but it is going to happen anyway no matter what you do.
RMT's or anyone really could abuse the AH with it's price history as you would look at that and see oh thats how much it sells for I'll put it up for that or I will pay that much so it could be abused easily. By removing the price history that will not be so easy as they would actually have to have that item up for sale for people to see the price, so they would not be able to control the prices as they did in FFXI.
An example would be the price of rings in FFXI you would look at the price history and see oh they are only 80k I'll get one but it would very rare that you could buy one for that price unless you were very lucky. What they were doing was trying to trap people selling the ring to look and see oh it's 80k i'll put mine up for that price then the RMT/player would buy it cheap when in reality it was worth 500k and then when they had a few of them they would sell and buy them back from each other to change the price history back to 500k and sell them at the increased price no prob because according to the price history that is how much the ring was worth.
By taking the best bits of the AH and the MW and combining them would make things better for everyone I believe, but that's just my opinion.
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Personally no I don't think we need a auction house. Being someone who plays both FFXI and FFXIV I can say that buying via the market wards is now equal to or faster then buying from the auction house in FFXI. Reason being that FFXI has become so bloated with items that nearly every catagory takes forever to load and until it does you can't do anything and have to wait and then there is waiting to see if your bid gets the item which takes a few seconds every time.
FFXIV on the other hand is far faster in it's menu and if you know what you are looking up you can find it and see the price and where it is in a time frame that's faster then the menu loading in FFXI so comparing FFXI and FFXIV the buy experience is better.
Selling is still a bit of a issue but that can easily be fixed. As some have mentioned we should be able to tell our retainers to sell stuff via a NPC pearl which makes perfect since and doesn't seem out of the range of possibility.
But as far as buying goes I think we are all set and selling isn't SO cumbersome that we need a AH for that single purpose.
The thing that's great about the current system is it doesn't let the gil sellers mess with the economy all that much. If they try jacking something up like they did in FFXI no one will buy it other players keep things in check easier in FFXIV then they could in FFXI. Mainly because you can see everyone who is selling and what they are selling it at instead of only seeing the number and going on what it sold for in the past. Having played through the days of 60k+ beehive chips in FFXI I don't really want to see that happen to FFXIV.
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If they:
1) Let you teleport next to the retainer selling the item you click on from the Search Counter.
2) Let you access the Search Counter while talking to your retainer so it's easier to check prices and put items up.
3) Place your retainer in the correct ward automatically whenever he/she has a Bazaar up, every time he/she is dismissed (regardless of where from)
Then I'd be more or less pleased with the market ward system.
I said this somewhere else, but while the current system is definitely usable, it's not what it should be. With the current wards we surpased old EQ1's market system: a game that's over 10 years old. That's not where we should stop, is it?
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It's not a matter of do we 'need' it, it's a matter of does it add convenience and ease of play to the game? And yes, it does. It also brings with it the issue of undercutting, but I think it'll be a good feature to add to the game regardless.