Linked Market Wards Search and Buy + AH existing together in harmony...
With 1.18 released, and new and old players returning. I've been spending quite a bit of time and gil helping out new players, and as such the same issues keep coming up and end up taking the most time spent educating the new player.
I've been a defender of the market wards, and to some points I still am, but one of the issues I spend the most time helping new players deal with is using the Markets...
A few issues that come up are:- The player is from XI or another MMO and wants an auction house
- A new player doesn't know how to find the markets when they first start
- A new player doesn't know what items belong in what ward so it makes it hard for them to search.
- And... A new player starts in a city other than Ul'dah and thus doesn't have any access to that city when they need to pick up some new gear.
So after spending some time thinking about how to improve upon the Markets I think I have something (IMO... obviously) that would help greatly simplify the buying and selling of items.
Here is my list of changes for the market wards:- Link the market wards search feature so that when searching for an item, you'll see what city the item is located in.
- Allow users to Search by Item Category (Weapon > Sword) (Weapon > Wand)... (Food > Meal) (Food > Ingredients) rather than by what ward the item should be located in (but isn't)...
- Allow users to buy right from the search list, but charge a delivery fee (small fee, will help take some of the gil out of the economy), and if the item is located in another city just charge a slightly higher delivery fee. Players can get around the fee by going into the market in the correct city/ward and buying from the retainer.
- (Personal preference) build in tools that show the average price, min and max of the item, since talk of custom UI systems have been confirmed with no detail on when, add this so that crafters can follow the market closely and be able to set fair prices, without the need of websites to do the work for them. If it's in game and standard, then everyone who wants to use it can.
Now I know this has been debated to death, but if the Wards acted like AH's from other MMOs with the buy now feature, and better search tools, the idea of the AH from XI, or other games don't hold a candle to the wards. Because you wouldn't have to spend time bidding on an item. In the wards you could just "buy now" without having to run the shop selling the item(s).
Now, that being said, I think that there could be a huge advantage of adding in an auction house, but some changes will need to be made for both to co-exist.
Here are my thoughts:
- Setup the auction house in Limsa (as there is the icon for it already) so it would only be in that city.
- Make it a true auction house, with no buy now feature. Players can put things up for bid, and set a time frame, by default it would be 7 days (or something like that). Players then can use the system like eBay setting a max bid for the item, and as long as players don't out bid you, by the time the auction expires you win for the current bid. If someone bids, but it isn't higher than your bid, you would automatically re-bid for the item. This would happen until the max bid was reached.
- With no buy now feature, players looking to buy something right away would use the markets, but players looking to bid on rare items could do so via the Auction House.
- Sellers can set the opening bid amount, and would also be charge a fee for listing an item on the auction house, thus removing some gil from the economy, and thus helping to keep the auction house clean of common items, with it's focus on higher end items and rare items.
All in all, the wards would evolve and provide the ease of use of a traditional auction house, and then the auction house would act like a true auction house for the buying and selling of rare items.
Of course these are just my thoughts on the subject; I'm interested in yours as well. I'm also hoping we'll get more news about fixes/changes planned for the markets in the near future.
