Um.. About That Auction House...
FOR THE LOVE OF #@!$!!! CAN WE HAVE IT???
Seriously, This game is great, and getting better. But the Market Wards/Mercantile Houses are awful and very poorly designed.
People undercut each other as much as possible and since you can see who has the lowest price for that item, you're not going to buy the higher priced one >.> You could potentially have your item up for a long time and never have it sell because you are constantly being undercut by competitors. I know the easier argument here is "Oh.. well you should undercut them back" but that still doesn't address the fact that you make less each time you want to sell something.
Also, I know it's probably not as much of an issue on other servers, but Durandal is completely filled up with retainers about 99% of the time. You cannot sell your items through the Market Wards/Mercantile Houses if you can't put your retainer in place. It's stupid, If I want to sell items to other players, I should be able to with ease. Not have to relocate to another town to hopefully place my retainer in a Market Ward with little to no buyers. Which most of you say is the answer to having your retainer in place, but you're wrong. You place your retainer in a less favorable city and you're either forced to sell your items for cheaper to attract customers or they just buy it from Ul'Dah merchants, because it's more common to make your purchases there. And for those of you who can't grasp how frustrating it is to try and find a place to setup your retainer, I made a video showing my character going to each "Row" and trying to setup my retainer. If you still can't understand how frustrating it is after watching that video, then imagine going through that process each and every single time you want to sell an item. Click here for Video
We need a better alternative and the sooner we get it, the better this game can be once again. I don't mean to be another "FFXI's system was better" person, because I can accept that this game is different. But seriously, implement an Auction House, this current setup is just atrocious.
Players need to be able to list items for sale whenever they want, we also need to be able to access all items for sale server-wide, not just wares from the city we're in (that's outdated). Players should also be able to sell items for a hidden price which they set, that other players cannot see (hence the word "Hidden"), so they aren't penalized for listing their items reasonably, rather than so they can sell first. We don;t necessarily need a history of what the item was bought for before, or who bought it/sold it. But an indicator stating what the item usually sells for that ignores drastic outliers (to prevent including prices like 1 gil or 999,999,999 in the average).
Half-ass workarounds aren't going to cut it. Just scrap the Market Ward setup and put in an Auction House. Close off the Invisible Walls in each city with a station where we can speak to a NPC to list our items, Send our retainers out to sea to seek something more beyond the horizon. Just do something to give us a better solution and less headaches.