I really hope we can get physical markets someday

With farming coming into play and more housing also becoming available it'd be rad to see physical shops/farmers markets become a thing. Mostly for specialties and something fun to add to make the game immersive. Plus when you're not online you can always have your retainers as stand ins.

I'd probably be down for that if I hadn't played Mabinogi. It was neat seeing players roll out a rug and set up shop like some Resident Evil 4 Merchant but the clutter was immense.

Like how we used to have them?
Where there wasn't a market board but instead a sea of retainers and you had to click each one to see what it is selling and there wasn't a way to search for a specific item?

Or do you mean more like the markets people make in their housing since we can set up NPCs in our houses and yards and people can buy directly from their inventories? So people set them up with a theme and load this retainer down with lumber, that one with fashionable clothes, that one with raid food, etc.

OP I'm not entirely sure what you're asking for when you just say "physical markets." Can you elaborate?

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Originally Posted by ItMe

Like how we used to have them?
Where there wasn't a market board but instead a sea of retainers and you had to click each one to see what it is selling and there wasn't a way to search for a specific item?

Or do you mean more like the markets people make in their housing since we can set up NPCs in our houses and yards and people can buy directly from their inventories? So people set them up with a theme and load this retainer down with lumber, that one with fashionable clothes, that one with raid food, etc.

OP I'm not entirely sure what you're asking for when you just say "physical markets." Can you elaborate?

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There was in FFXIV version 1.0, the actual Market Wards in each city, and they were... quite frankly, AWFUL. There wasn't even a search function available for a good length of time, so you had to physically run around the entire damn Market trying to find a retainer selling what you were after (a search function was only belatedly added towards the end of 1.0's life after Yoshi took over as producer and director).

Add in the horribly cheesy elevator muzac (Nobuo Uematsu's infuriatingly cheery Supply and Demand) which just grated on the nerves after 10 seconds and made me want to start strangling the retainers, and yeah, it was just a horrible experience to have to deal with - a good idea that unfortunately did not work in practice on it's own, and was made worse by being terribly executed, like most of 1.0, frankly.

Hence why we have the Market Board in ARR, it's streamlining the Market Wards' search function into a simple, single point you can easily (by comparison) access and browse. No laggy Market Ward area, no dull retainers standing around like Sims waiting for instructions, no awful piped shopping centre muzac, just the Market Board and simplicity.

Lore-wise the Market Wards still exist, as they're where theoretically your retainers are sent when you put something up for sale, with the Market Board serving as the front end for transactions, but gameplay wise the Market Ward is replaced by the Market Board. It's clear the Market Wards will not be coming back.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

Like how we used to have them?
Where there wasn't a market board but instead a sea of retainers and you had to click each one to see what it is selling and there wasn't a way to search for a specific item?

Or do you mean more like the markets people make in their housing since we can set up NPCs in our houses and yards and people can buy directly from their inventories? So people set them up with a theme and load this retainer down with lumber, that one with fashionable clothes, that one with raid food, etc.

OP I'm not entirely sure what you're asking for when you just say "physical markets." Can you elaborate?

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ESO has kiosks and stalls you can list your stuff on if you're in a big enough guild. Having to go door to door, so to speak, or use a third party website that scans the markets to find a specific item at a decent price is annoying as hell.

FFXI had these in the form of Bazaars. You essentially made your character an NPC that other players can interact with to purchase items you place on your personal Bazaar inventory. Some used it strategically in certain locations, like next to a repeatable quest NPC that needed 6 tiger skins or 4 solid rocks etc etc. They quite literally became a middle man for others to make money turning in the quest items, by selling quest turn in's that they would farm to sell.

I used my Bazaar for party assistance, as I went all in on Cooking in FFXI. I would sell Meat Mithkabobs, Pineapple Juice, Tavnazian Tacos, Yagudo Drinks, and Wizard Cookies. I would literally be leveling in a party and someone in the party would purchase my food while they rested. Then other groups would be leveling around us and those parties would purchase my stuff as when your in the Crawlers Nest literally 30 min from Juneo, that Bazaar is really handy when you stuck in a great leveling party.

I would sell out about every time I joined a leveling party, and then I would go back to town and level up cooking some more. I never used the AH to sell my food, but it was a great way to buy my mats to feed other players appetite.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

There was in FFXIV version 1.0, the actual Market Wards in each city, and they were... quite frankly, AWFUL. There wasn't even a search function available for a good length of time, so you had to physically run around the entire damn Market trying to find a retainer selling what you were after (a search function was only belatedly added towards the end of 1.0's life after Yoshi took over as producer and director).

Add in the horribly cheesy elevator muzac (Nobuo Uematsu's infuriatingly cheery Supply and Demand) which just grated on the nerves after 10 seconds and made me want to start strangling the retainers, and yeah, it was just a horrible experience to have to deal with - a good idea that unfortunately did not work in practice on it's own, and was made worse by being terribly executed, like most of 1.0, frankly.

Hence why we have the Market Board in ARR, it's streamlining the Market Wards' search function into a simple, single point you can easily (by comparison) access and browse. No laggy Market Ward area, no dull retainers standing around like Sims waiting for instructions, no awful piped shopping centre muzac, just the Market Board and simplicity.

Lore-wise the Market Wards still exist, as they're where theoretically your retainers are sent when you put something up for sale, with the Market Board serving as the front end for transactions, but gameplay wise the Market Ward is replaced by the Market Board. It's clear the Market Wards will not be coming back.

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I remember the retainers in 1.0 and how F*$)$@* HORRIBLE they were!
1. Go to the retainer board look for item you want/need.
2. Retainer Board tells you retainers name and Ward to visit to get that item. (write down the name)
3. Go to Market Ward zone instance
4. Select the #ward you need to visit
5. Teleport to that ward
6. Arrive in a "market" room....literally a room with....4 walls....floor ceiling. That's it.
7. Try to find the retainer through 2,000 other retainers in that room. Literally cycling through EVERY retainer until that one retainers name pops up.
8. Search the retainers wares....find that the item you wanted was sold 2 min ago.
9. Uninstall the game for the 3rd time.

That was 1.0 FFXIV market board interaction in a nutshell.....Be VERY happy with what we have now.

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Originally Posted by Sleepysmokee

With farming coming into play and more housing also becoming available it'd be rad to see physical shops/farmers markets become a thing. Mostly for specialties and something fun to add to make the game immersive. Plus when you're not online you can always have your retainers as stand ins.

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I'm sorry but that sounds like regressing in gameplay standards.
I played 9Dragons, in which there was a central city you could sit your character down and list your itens for sale, and while it's fun for 5 minutes to see the players forming lines selling their itens, the market board is leagues ahead in functionality and convenience.

Now, if you mean a market stall you put in front of your house and your retainer also appears there, like a decoration piece that people can access if they are passing by, sure, it would be cute, but seeing how abandoned are the housing districts, it would almost imediatelly become pointless as anything besides decoration.

Everquest......
Until much later in the expansion chain of the game, there the tunnel outside Freeport where on the weekend, you could take your character loaded up with the loot you wanted to sell, find a place to stand/sit in the tunnel, then /shout your WTS (Wanted To Sell) or WTB (Wanted To Buy) zone chat messages every several minutes.
When you got a tell from someone, you could discuss prices and tell them you exact location (map x-y-z) or party so they could find you easier via the player marker color change for party members.
This wasn't part of the game, it was just the player base dealing with the limitations of commerce in game coming up with the "system" of Tunnel Flea Market Weekends.

Later, they opened a market zone and a functionality with your character so you could become a "NPC Merchant" by basically afk'ing in the zone with a market flag enabled, then buyers could browser your wares in your bags and buy for the prices you set for each. It was later tweaked so you could log in an alt, your "Market Mule", and park them to sell, along with a Market Board Search function for items and a "path marker" that would lead to the Mule, but in both cases you were logged into the game the whole time.
So, a serious "end game" player did have more than one account, their main play account and one or more Market Mule accounts.
Otherwise one played/farmed/gathered goods to sell by day, then /afk'ed in the market by night.

So, yeah, the FF14 Retainer system is best.


Oh yeah, and you pretty much had to use the in game banks, as currency had weight that could encumber a player (not to mention the items in your bags too).....
I miss those good 'ole days of newbie-beggars outside the banks spam-begging for free coin and I would convert several Platinum into the tens of thousands Coppers they exchange down to, and /trade them to the beggar, which then locked them in place so they couldn't move.......
/evil grin

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Originally Posted by Sleepysmokee

With farming coming into play and more housing also becoming available it'd be rad to see physical shops/farmers markets become a thing. Mostly for specialties and something fun to add to make the game immersive. Plus when you're not online you can always have your retainers as stand ins.

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Seeing capitals overcrowded with pnj/player afk with their little stall like I saw in many MMO F2P or not, no thanks.

And it was small MMO and yet, it was overcrowded with afk stall in addition to goldsellers with non stop spam to see more than that. On an MMO that works like FFXIV, you don't know what you are asking for.

You can already have a stall in front of the house with a retainer, but since nobody goes there, it's useless.

ah yes, I dream about it
https://kimmania.files.wordpress.com...-prontera2.jpg

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Originally Posted by Naoki34

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This.
In small MMOs with less then 5000 active players it is manageable and actually nice.
But in these MMOs you also don't have much that you have to sale.
Just the occasional rare drop and a few quest items.