Of Retainers and Auction Houses

In the coming patch we will begin to see the slow decline of needing those fashion inapt companions we call Retainers, due to the ease of shopping from the Market Wards search menu. (See: Dev Team Posts for more information) So what shall happen to these lovably tacky NPCs?

If I may make a suggestion:

In the past their was an idea to have the Retainers "Level Up" and upon doing so being able to do more things. My suggestion is to use the Retainers to perform a "live auto-bazaar" function. Here is what I am proposing, Players would "assign" their Retainers to a particular city (at Retainer Level 1 they will only be able to be in one chosen city). Once assigned to a city you will have the option to "Search for Item_Name", as your Retainer levels up you will be able to search for more and more items at a time. (see chart provided below), Once you set your item you will be asked to set a buying price once set the Retainer will take that amount of Gil from your inventory to use for buying the item.

After you set your Retainer's city and the items you want, the Retainer will head out in search of your items, what they will do is search through Players' bazaars who are in your Retainers "searching city/camp", looking for that item. Once found the player with the item in their bazaar will be notified of a potential buyer for the item. They would only have to click the button to see the offer (like if you get invited to a party, or want to interact with an Aetheryte).

Your Retainer would list the Item in question and the price they are willing to purchase as well as the player who wants it. Some options that the owner could have is: Accept offer, which would complete the transaction, sending the item to your Mail Box/house, and giving the gil to the original owner of said item. Transaction complete. Another option would be to refuse offer, wherein the transaction is cancelled. A third and final option would be "Barter" which opens up a /tell to you (the person who wants the item) wherein the owner of the item could ask for a different amount of gil, and establish a possible meeting place if you like to complete the transaction.

On your end of the transaction, assuming the other player is fine with the terms and price being offered, you will be notified via same methods as above, wherein you can click to see what item you just bought, as well as an option to send a thank you tell to the person you just bought the item from, if you so choose.

Now you might be saying "What about those annoying 999,999,999 Gil bazaarers?" Well in response to that have an option when placing items in your bazaar to choose "Not for resale" which all it does it prevent you from selling the item on accident or to be able to flaunt the item in other players' faces. It would also prevent the Retainer from annoying the player with offers they are obviously going to refuse, since the item isn't really for sale.

For the system and how it would work? First your retainer "patrols" a particular city or camp depending on your Retainer's level. Basically if a player enters the "area" and has the item in question in their bazaar the Retainer will send the notification, if refused by said player then the Retainer will ignore that player until they rezone into the area and after 30min has passed. (both have to happen in order to get the Retainer to "notice" you again). This is to prevent player annoyance when going into different areas where the same Retainer might be "patrolling".

For example:
Retainer is patrolling Ul'dah and Black Brush. Player_A enters Ul'dah, he is notified that his Steel Lance is wanted to be purchased. Player_A doesn't agree to the price being offered, Offer Declined. Player_A gets leves for Black Brush and teleports to the camp. The Retainer doesn't notify Player_A of his item because he was just offered the deal within 30 minutes. 1 hour passes and Player_A is still in Black Brush, he still doesn't get the notification because he has not "rezoned" yet. Player_A finishes leves and goes back to Ul'dah, Retainer notices the item and prompts the deal again. Player_A wants to sell the Steel Lance, so he opts to Barter with the buyer. They work out a deal and meet to exchange the transaction. Item sold seemingly effortlessly.

Of course this is assuming the Market Wards eventually transform into the Auction House (which I believe what is happening). Also to reference the retainer chart, the removal of the inventory space would be in response to the Housing option that is being added into the game (assuming there will be "house" storage).

Links
Leveling chart

Please feel free to like/dislike and discuss! But I would like to make the dismiss any claims to server strain/overload because frankly we don't know what the servers can handle, and therefore should be left out of discussion. Thanks~ ^^

tl;dr
That's a shame you should learn to take the time to read to avoid confusion.

Only read the first paragraph, but um...

Retainers aren't going anywhere. We'll still sell everything through them and use them for storage. The only difference is that we'll be able to BUY items from the search list.

I liked it until you made it so complicated. Your retainer could simply auto-buy at the price as soon as someone puts it up for sale for that amount (in the area, and when it levels up possibly he is able to cover more areas).

There is no need for us to be bombarded with offers from NPC's.

But will we honestly get use of the Retainers like before? Probably not, also there will be no point of their "level" since they will basically be useless.

Also I failed to mention that a declined transactions = 1/4th of a successful transaction in means of leveling up. That way you can still level up the Retainer without much hassle.

Well if the price is what the player is selling for then sure just buy it, but I thought the option of "bartering" to be unique and offers a moment to communicate with other players (something this game is kind of lacking besides the /shouts in Ul'dah). But sure it could be more simple, I was merely trying to cover all grounds. :s

If complicated any more, we'll have to call it the Final Fantasy Commodity Exchange.

Well that's the beauty of it, the Retainer does all the work, you just tell him where to look. (sounds complicated when you try to explain it, that, or Im just a bad explainer of things)

I think if you attepted it, most of these ideas would make you put a gun in your mouth once you realize how "okay" ideas sound good until you impliment them then see how many issues you never thought of can occur.

That, and frankly, I feel your ideas are massivly overcomplicated concepts of much simpler and easier to manage systems that could be put in there place.

retainers are not being put out of commission, you will still set up what you are selling in your retainer just like you do now, the search system will still be checking through a database of retainers, and will still show the results of the retainers that have the items you want, at this point you will be able to go for a run in the MW to find the retainer you want, or buy direct from teh search counter. you still need a retainer to do business

I wouldn't mind a little mini game for leveling up your retainer, with each level giving it certain perks. My big issue had always been devising a way that would keep people from gaming the system.

If leveling up with based upon the number of transactions, I could ask a bunch of my friends to buy everything on my retainer and I'd gladly pay them back. And in under an hour, I'd get enough transactions to max out my retainer.

I never could thing of a fun and interesting way to level up a retainer.

I like the idea, but I do agree with another poster that being bombarded with offers could be annoying. I would simply make it pop up as an option in aetheryte range to 'View Bazaar' to see all the current retainer offers for that camp.

Are you proposing that 20 be the max level? If so then you may want to recalibrate it so that you can search three cities at max rank, since to me that would be one of the biggest benefits of leveling the retainer.

I already posted my thoughts on how I think player shops should be handled...

In comparison to PSU again, your Partner Machinery, or PM (pretty much the equivalent of a retainer in FF14), could be leveled up in terms of what items it could synthesize and battling alongside you, but its battle level was pretty much irrelevant due to the horrible AI on that game, other than changing what model PM you had (some PM models required a certain level battle stat in order to turn them into that model), plus the fact that each PM model had fixed gear that couldn't be changed. As such, if you weren't using them to store or sell items, they were pretty much used only as meatshields in battle, some of them casting random weak buffs and heals, some using a special attack at the most inopportune times if they somehow managed to live long enough. One of the main reasons why PSO veterans are raving to see MAG's again in PSO2, but I digress...

Having your retainers go to different areas sounds like a cool concept, but I think it would be largely unnecessary. I think it would be easier for everyone to manage their items for sale through their own personal housing that could easily be instanced, rather than confusing, crappy-looking Market Ward hallways filled with retainers, or grouping tons of players in one spot at an Auction House where prices aren't listed, and multiple AH's may not be able to interact with each other, meaning that Ul'dah would most likely remain the center of the game's economy, and server load would continue to be an issue. Besides, most people I know always use their personal bazaars for extra storage space rather than sell things through them, because let's face it: no one's going to search through every single player's shop just to see what they have, especially without a proper search function, which we don't even have in the wards yet. If you're wanting to buy or sell something, there should just be a designated place for it.

That said, if the AI was done properly, and we could change their equipment, I wouldn't mind being able to have retainers (or hell, our Path Companions from the main storyline quests... is SE going to do anything else with them?) assist me in battle when soloing. I'm just not too keen on the idea of item-selling being so automated and inefficient.

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Originally Posted by Coglin

I think if you attepted it, most of these ideas would make you put a gun in your mouth once you realize how "okay" ideas sound good until you impliment them then see how many issues you never thought of can occur.

That, and frankly, I feel your ideas are massivly overcomplicated concepts of much simpler and easier to manage systems that could be put in there place.

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Care to elaborate on the bold? Or are you speaking of the current method of having to browse through bazaars manually and have to be within a certain range to purchase (like 2 ft from them) although you can "browse" from 15ft...then have to make sure they are not running away because you cannot move when you Browse a Bazaar--being the simpler and easier system? This is a discussion so all ideas are worthy of mention, hell it would be nice to suggest and refine to what we want so if/when SE does it, it's what we asked for rather than just a random stab in the dark.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Grandm

retainers are not being put out of commission, you will still set up what you are selling in your retainer just like you do now, the search system will still be checking through a database of retainers, and will still show the results of the retainers that have the items you want, at this point you will be able to go for a run in the MW to find the retainer you want, or buy direct from teh search counter. you still need a retainer to do business

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You are correct in every way, but honestly, if we have an Auction House-like system take effect in 1.20 then why even bother with the MW? Just make it a full-blown AH system, if it works like an AH, smells like an AH, but doesn't look like one...might has well change the appearance and seal the deal, no? Also why can't retainers do both? Why cant they become personal house merchants, wherein you can tell them to add a certain item to the AH, as well as search people's bazaars?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Normalforce

I wouldn't mind a little mini game for leveling up your retainer, with each level giving it certain perks. My big issue had always been devising a way that would keep people from gaming the system.

If leveling up with based upon the number of transactions, I could ask a bunch of my friends to buy everything on my retainer and I'd gladly pay them back. And in under an hour, I'd get enough transactions to max out my retainer.

I never could thing of a fun and interesting way to level up a retainer.

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Sadly transaction numbers were the only way I could think to level it up as well...which sadly can be broken by what you've pointed out. So any suggestion to better this would be welcome! ^^;

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dreamer

I like the idea, but I do agree with another poster that being bombarded with offers could be annoying. I would simply make it pop up as an option in aetheryte range to 'View Bazaar' to see all the current retainer offers for that camp.

Are you proposing that 20 be the max level? If so then you may want to recalibrate it so that you can search three cities at max rank, since to me that would be one of the biggest benefits of leveling the retainer.

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Well the notification, was not for the entire region, I should have clarified, it was purely around the camp (near the Aetheryte) not out in the wilderness, also there were the conditions to get the notifications, if you leave from the notification area then they disappear, they do not remain, kind of like how when you get near the Aetherytes the icon pops up in the menu. Could also make the cities just in the Adventurer's Guild or near the Aetheryte in the city as well.

Yes I was proposing 20 being the max level, I was on the fence with the 2 or 3, then thought to allow some competition? But if the general consensus believes 20 should be all cities then a change like that is no biggie.


Thanks for the feedback, also thanks for the non-inflammatory discussions!

OP maybe your ideas (although i do agree with some1's post earlier, it could be simpler) but your ideas could be something for 2.0, i can't see it before then purely for this one reason, yoshi said hardest job the programmers have had for this patch is the market ward revamp, (i think it was the last letter from the producer i read this) anyway this made thing think of 2 things. first this suggests that what they have done is the most they could possibly do, so your ideas would be far to hard to program, and secondly the server is rubbish, and only when it is replaced can they make the market system they want.

of course i could be way off, but that is what i think

Why don't we actually wait and hear about the plans of the reworking of the market wards? Yoshi-P said they were working on reworking it completely, I'd really like to hear from that first and then submit suggestion to help stir that in the right direction. I doubt he didn't plan something for the retainers already.

Maybe OP's ideas fits in too, who knows.

Well originally I thought that was the purpose of the forums /blush (Oh how wrong was I, right?)

But yeah, this would be a 2.0 idea/suggestion if anything, as knowing a little bit about C++ coding (I'm in no way good enough to program anything like an MMO though! lol) it would be a lot of coding, something I think this current system/server cannot handle due to all the unnecessary stress the system puts on the server (from what Yoshi-P has mentioned lightly I'm not too sure on details of course).

But I will always encourage anyone and everyone to suggest ideas no matter if they don't make sense or don't fit with the plan, at the very least it might spark an idea in someone else's head that would work with the current setup of the game. So I would have to disagree about the wait until we know more (and I mean no offense). But honestly I feel if we waited until they say "hey we have this coming new thing coming out next patch/two patches from now" all we have left to do is complain or like it, since it is so far into the development already. You know what I mean?