We need an AH

[Vackashken]

If I was trying to be funny I would have wrote lol somewhere like I always do. So basically my logic isn't flawed base off of your own statement. Vack you make about two lines worth of something then two people hit the [like] button to give ya epeen a stroke.

Shhh, the statement of yours was meant to be witty. It didn't work out. Don't bother covering it up with more nonsense. Move on. As for an "epeen" stroke... Okay? Someone stroke my ego! I'm here for that rather then pointing out absurdly glib post as aforementioned above!

At the end of it all the only difference there will be for a MW system and Ah system is a few steps.

Unnecessary steps that never should have been there in the first place no matter which way you or anyone in favor of this redundant, ridiculous system, want to cut it. Period.

Seriously that is my opinion on the matter and you felt the need to copy/paste a pic of a balding guy holding his hand over his face. So you have the 5 mins to copy/paste that pic but not the time to search and run to buy your item? Don't answer I feel no need to continue reading your two liner posts.

OK, I won't answer

[Cairdeas]

Why? Why do you hate them?

Also, describe specifically what kind of AH you want and why you think it would be better than the current system.

I love how no one actually answers this question or the question "What features that make an AH so great are you missing from the market wards"

[Akumu]

Ok more than two lines I can fuck wit it.

Shhh, the statement of yours was meant to be witty. It didn't work out. Don't bother covering it up with more nonsense. Move on. As for an "epeen" stroke... Okay? Someone stroke my ego! I'm here for that rather then pointing out absurdly glib post as aforementioned above!

Umm no it wasn't meant to be witty, funny, sarcastic, or anything else but serious. Every last post I made where I added a bit of something besides seriousness I always add lol somewhere. I forgot though Vack is my homie down the street whom I chill with all day so he knows in perfect detail what I mean when I write/speak...lol seriously?

Unnecessary steps that never should have been there in the first place no matter which way you or anyone in favor of this redundant, ridiculous system, want to cut it. Period.

There are people complaining about a few steps making unnecessary complaints which shouldn't be made in the first place no matter which way you or anyone else against this system wants to cut it. Period.

lol See what I did there? It's easy to come up with opinions.


I wonder how many people that cry for immersion are against this system? Just a thought

[sasukeuchiha]

I love how no one actually answers this question or the question "What features that make an AH so great are you missing from the market wards"

A Faster more convenient system were you can by and sell you items in seconds rather then taking 5+ minutes. You know people actually want to play the game then spend hours on end shopping like this in real life why do we need it in a game. We play the game to escape the real world not to have a system like real life come back thats not fun.

[Seif]

I love how no one actually answers this question or the question "What features that make an AH so great are you missing from the market wards"

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...s_.php?print=1

Gamasutra is the most respected publication aimed at game industry insiders and to those who are interested in game design and business.

Small quote:

A Case Study in Doing It Wrong: Final Fantasy XIV

Now that I've said all this about markets, let me make a few broad presuppositions about typical players. For the most part, when players engage in the market they want these things:

* To feel like they're getting a fair price for anything they buy or sell
* To be able to sell things promptly
* To know what is available for sale and, if something's available, buy it promptly
* To be doing all this with the least amount of time, money, and effort as possible
* To not have to resort to using external systems to engage in the game's market is they can avoid it (they will do so if they feel it gives them a competitive advantage in the marketplace)
* Finally, players do not want to be advertised-to or be "spammed" by people shouting about what they want to sell.

Final Fantasy XIV's market system is based on the "bazaar" system seen in many Asian MMORPGs, including its predecessor, Final Fantasy XI. The bazaar allows players to place a number of items (in FFXIV, 10) for sale at a listed price.

Once created, players with a bazaar bear an icon next to their name indicating the presence of a bazaar. Other players can click on that player and chose "browse" from the list of player interactions (along with trade, invite to party, and so forth). This opens a window just like an NPC store with the items for sale and their price.

The purchasing player conducts the transaction just as they would with an NPC merchant: selecting items and quantity and, if they have enough money for the transaction, they get the items and the bazaar-bearing player gets their coin (minus a transaction fee, of course).

Square Enix has declared that it wanted to rely on this system because it encourages "creative selling" and makes players feel personally engaged in market transactions. This is all ridiculous head-in-clouds dreaming, of course.

The actual reality is to find areas crowded with AFK players all sitting around with their bazaar icons up, and other players browsing the crowd in the hopes of finding an interesting item for sale.

This has two negative consequences: the crowding of player areas, which causes lag and increases server overhead for the game operators, and it irks players who would rather be playing the game instead of standing around trying to sell stuff.

In its effort to really drive the bazaar system into peoples' hearts, Square Enix introduced Retainers and the Market Wards. Retainers act as a player's personal storage in FFXIV. Just like the player, the retainer also has a bazaar of 10 items, set up in just the same way.

However, retainers can only be seen by other players (and, thus, sell items) when they are placed within Market Wards, special marketplace-esque instances in each major city. There are a number of wards, each featuring a category of item to be sold, however players need not obey these directions and they do nothing to help players trying to sell multiple categorically different items.

Unfortunately, it works rather poorly, especially since the game can only render a very limited number of NPCs at a time. And it doesn't stop players from doing the AFK bazaar thing too. Why limit yourself to an NPC no one will check, when you can also go AFK and bazaar in the streets?

In a nutshell, the Market Ward system is broken. Players don't feel like they're getting a fair price because they have no idea what the prices are: they have to manually check every NPC and player bazaar in order to find out what the prices for items are. Moreover, they can only see prices for items currently being offered by NPCs. If a particular item happens to be sold out by everyone, there's no way to gauge its price.

On the topic of something not being sold, there's no way to know if a particular item is actually being sold or not until you find it on an NPC. If you never find it, it might actually be for sale... you just didn't find it! So, huge time and effort involvement with doing even a small scan of NPCs for available items and price comparison, which all has to be done manually, of course.

And, heaven forbid you actually decide to go back and buy something from a previously seen price list: if you can't remember which NPC it was on or if you can't get that NPC to render... you're out of luck! Incidentally, you can "technically" set up a buy order, but you can only buy what you already have (if you want to buy four healing potions, you have to have four healing potions) and buying takes up more space than selling (both the item you're buying and the money you're offering take up separate spaces that could have been used for two sell orders).


Final Fantasy XIV

What about the provision about external systems? It's happening in FFXIV. Some websites have helpfully designed marketplace systems that, quite honestly, should have been implemented in the game itself. They allow players to list the items on their retainer or in their personal bazaar, list a location for each, and even place purchase orders should anyone feel like filling it.

Sadly, with no API from the game for the sites to draw upon, the information on the website can quickly become dated and inaccurate. It is not at all uncommon to see a listing on the website, only to futilely search to find the retainer in the market ward after that retainer has been removed, or find the retainer without the item in question. Also, external tools like these are only as effective as the players that use them: if only a tiny portion of the player base uses the tools to list their items, they serve a very limited use in finding items for sale.

There's another reason I started with the story about Asheron's Call. AC's economy did quite fine despite the absence of any market system, so why does FFXIV suffer so? It's primarily because of the sheer number of items in FFXIV and the importance of crafting in the game. In AC, there wasn't much to trade; in FFXIV, there's probably several thousand items, and 4 versions (regular, +1, +2, +3) of each.

Because of the complexity of crafting and the inter-craft dependence (it can take 16 components made by five crafters to make even a basic item) players need a rich, robust market system to exchange all these myriad items with one another. This is further reinforced by the limits to inventory space: players can only hold a tiny portion of the available items at one time, thus are forced to sell the majority of what they acquire, either to other players or to vendors.

Obviously they've taken out the +1-+3 items but I think the last point is still valid because of the immense number of material gathered through a normal play session. Even in XI I find that the inventory fills up a lot slower because the items obtainable are better limited by zone or mob placements.

[Cairdeas]

A Faster more convenient system were you can by and sell you items in seconds rather then taking 5+ minutes. You know people actually want to play the game then spend hours on end shopping like this in real life why do we need it in a game. We play the game to escape the real world not to have a system like real life come back thats not fun.

None of that makes the market system an Auction House and all of it can be implemented into the Market Ward....

and Sief that article appears to be before they made any of the current updates to the wards available.

[Akumu]

Hoping my tired self didn't skip over anything.

* To be doing all this with the least amount of time

This will be the only thing MW will lose to compared to an AH(but is also a way to cut down time). Everything else has been fixed already and can be fixed to meet all the other stated "problems."

edit: That article must be old since it didn't take into account the updates to the MW system.

[Bled]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...s_.php?print=1

Gamasutra is the most respected publication aimed at game industry insiders and to those who are interested in game design and business.

Small quote:


Obviously they've taken out the +1-+3 items but I think the last point is still valid because of the immense number of material gathered through a normal play session. Even in XI I find that the inventory fills up a lot slower because the items obtainable are better limited by zone or mob placements.

I skimmed through the short quote O.o so correct me if I'm wrong but this was written pre Market Ward search function correct? If so i feel that the search function solved many of the issues talked about in this dissertation.

[sasukeuchiha]

None of that makes the market system an Auction House and all of it can be implemented into the Market Ward....

and Sief that article appears to be before they made any of the current updates to the wards available.

To many people just want an auction house. People also happen to like to use a system they are familiar with. Would you rather get more people to play this game so it can survive or just let it slowly die because you don't want marketing wards ruined with the addition of an auction house.

[Cairdeas]

I skimmed through the short quote O.o so correct me if I'm wrong but this was written pre Market Ward search function correct? If so i feel that the search function solved many of the issues talked about in this dissertation.

It did.

Again. the only thing that makes a market system into an Auction House is some sort of variable bidding where the price listed isn't always the price paid or received. IE Blind or Timed Bidding.

All Convenience changes that an AH have beyond those two points can be implemented into the Market Ward. You don't need an AH for them.

The only reason you would implement an AH is if you were going to introduce the Variable Bidding.

Which as of yet, I've yet to see anyone say that the reason they want an AH is because of Variable Bidding.