Market Wards, enough is enough

[Amineri]

Seeing as this is such a ridiculously volatile argument I think it is only reasonable to ask Square to do another new survey. I think the community is pretty split down the middle. The numbers from the last survey are completely unreliable as they did not specifically ask about this. They instead asked where this issue was prioritized in the community. If they want to preserve their player base this question must be answered.

Personally I am of the opinion that this argument is unnecessary. If you want to satisfy both sides of the argument you need only add and AH with taxes on it to create a gil sink and simultaneously remove the taxes from the market wards. The market wards will then become their intended purpose of a Rollenmart deterrent.

Seeing the confusion just in this thread about what "auction house" means, a poll is probably a bad idea. Unless the poll gets into details about just what features of 'auction house' or 'market wards' are being talked about, and, let's face it, most players don't care enough to get into that kind of detail.

In addition, such a poll would NOT be representative, but would only represent those that are (a) currently playing the game, and (b) interested enough to bother to respond to the poll.

A random survey would probably be more effective, imho.

[Shai]

I agree a poll is a bad idea.

However, reasonable minded people can agree that what people voted on in January when the Wards were a goddamn mess and what people would vote on now when they are starved for new gear, new recipes, new things to do - might be vastly different things.

No, no, Shai, that would be ridiculous. People want what they wanted in January.
Oh yeah - Content!

[Amineri]

I agree. But if there is the items that are sold to it need to have a special designation so you can't sell chaff and brittle on it. IE.

Just so. There is no reason for puk wings to be up for auction. These things would ONLY ever be listed for a 'buy it now' price. Commodities should stay in a market.

Something like what I designed in my Gob Shop idea where you can sell Unique/Untradable items to the "Auction House" then they are recycled turned into new items and exchanged out to people buying them in "Gamble Bags" A bag that when you open it you get a random item from the inventory of the system. This prevents RMT's from being able to corner the market on special items and if you use an Endgame token system to use it then you can limit the amount of RMT influence on it over all.

I like your concept for random mystery grab bags. Games like Magic:TG, and Pokemon show that people will gamble on getting "phat loot".

I think that there are also items that naturally lend themselves to being auctioned rather than sold in a marketplace. Someone in my LS recently made an engraved iron bhuj +3. What sort of price is appropriate for that? Also, there is no way to effectively advertise such an item, without standing in Ul'dah and shout-spamming.

THAT (to my mind) is the type of item that deserves to go onto an AH. The purpose is the (a) create visibility (b) determine market price for rare items. RMT is going to be a factor ... there is no getting around it. Whether it's sold in the wards or put up for auction, it's a sad reality. All SE can do is try to minimize the impact.

This sort of system would require:
a) barriers to prevent commodities from flooding an auction system
A high listing cost, and absence of "buy it now" option may be sufficient here.
b) Some sort of anti-sniping measure
Perhaps an autoextension of the bidding whenever a new bid is placed, of perhaps 12 hours. And further allow the seller to actively end the auction, taking the highest current bid, so that auctions don't go on indefinitely.

My $0.02

[Kilta_Firelotus]

I think both is a good compromise. AH with limited slots like 10. And SE can put in both. Just remove player bazaar. And let people call retainer from anywhere. So people can sell item from both retainers and an AH. One of my pet peeves is the afk people lagging up the town. This was a pet peeve from any game. Just make an AH bidding and retainer being the buy now. This will lieviate the issue of over stocking the auction houses. Which was an issue in ffxi. It was almost faster to set up a bazaar in jeuno/white gate and shout what items your selling. Or keep/do all three. More options = more players

[Kilta_Firelotus]

Btw an AH should not be a price determiner. Make your own price up. (which is how stuff start anyway) I played ffxi when they added new stuff on the AH like all the lvl 78 gear.... they were 50K a peice before stablizing. Make up your own price and see if people buy it. If not lower the price a bit. Items rarely stay "rare" after a while in mmo.

[Amineri]

Btw an AH should not be a price determiner. Make your own price up. (which is how stuff start anyway) I played ffxi when they added new stuff on the AH like all the lvl 78 gear.... they were 50K a peice before stablizing. Make up your own price and see if people buy it. If not lower the price a bit. Items rarely stay "rare" after a while in mmo.

Making up your own price doesn't take into account the realities of compromise between buyer and seller. Seller can set whatever price they want, but it won't sell unless some buyer is willing to pay that price. Any market system should serve to facilitate bringing buyers and sellers together to exchange goods. An actual auction can serve this purpose.

And yes, agree 100% items don't remain rare. When items become common enough to become a commodity, they'd move to the markets, since people know how to price. Then the undercutting comes in, bringing down the price to some sort of equilibrium.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

Making up your own price doesn't take into account the realities of compromise between buyer and seller. Seller can set whatever price they want, but it won't sell unless some buyer is willing to pay that price. Any market system should serve to facilitate bringing buyers and sellers together to exchange goods. An actual auction can serve this purpose.

And yes, agree 100% items don't remain rare. When items become common enough to become a commodity, they'd move to the markets, since people know how to price. Then the undercutting comes in, bringing down the price to some sort of equilibrium.

You do not get it :P which is ok. no harm no foul.

Even with an Auction house players whom are first to sell something are the first to set a price. And they tend to go for greed vs anything else. Everytime a new item an item was added to the AH it always had a 50K-1mil price tag. Even with an AH system players are setting the price. SE doesn't tell players what price is good.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

An example is ffxi's barwatera spell. Lower jeunos shop had it for about 200-300 gil. (been a while) while the AH price right next to it had a 1K price tag. people then flooded the AH with them and price droped.

[Kam]

As such we aren't currently planning on switching over to an auction house system [SIZE="5"]as of yet.[/SIZE]

One of the only decent things you've posted, and it's still only a maybe <3

BUT WE STILL HAVE HOPE!

Good luck SE devs. Fix yo' *** programming and servers!

[Rentahamster]

I'm just gonna leave this here again:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...os_.php?page=5

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...earch-counter?