Market Wards, enough is enough

[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.

[Amineri]

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.

Ha ha! Either I don't get it, or I do get it, but you don't get that I get it

In either an Auction House (with actual auctions, meaning bidding) or a marketplace of some kind, sellers don't set the price. The may ATTEMPT to set the price, but buyers have just as much power in determining the final sale price as the buyers.

I could try and sell my Darksteel Ore for 1million gil per piece, because no one else is selling. But no one would buy it. That means that I haven't set the price.

When I look at the item search function for the current market wards, I don't think "Item X is selling for price Y", I think "Someone is trying to sell item X for price Y". There is a world of difference.

Sellers always try and maximize the amount that they can sell an item for. Buyers always try and minimize the price they buy something for. Nothing will change that. The goal of a market system or auction system is to quickly and efficiently allow buyers and sellers to reach a compromise price that they will both agree on.

Currently, the system is ineffective and sluggish because sellers can only guess at prices, and if an item doesn't sell, re-list it at a lower price. Buyers are not represented, because the 'item seek' function is broken (in oh-so-many ways).

In the end transactions only happen because the buyer and seller value the item and gil differently. If the seller values 10k gil more than a pinch of bomb ash, and the buyer values the pinch of bomb ash more than the 10k gil, then a transaction occurs. The current market system fails to find these pairings efficiently.

Slapping an menu-interface on the current system, and allowing instant delivery of the item to the player will hardly accomplish anything. More tools to aid buying / selling are needed.

These could include:

• Fixing the 'seek item' system to allow it to be searched, sought items to take only one bazaar slot, purchasing of smaller increments than the total number requested, and not requiring the player to already have the items to be sought. This fix has nothing to do with auction house vs market wards.
  
• Allowing buy orders, where a retainer is given the order to go out and search for items at or under a given price. The retainer seeks through the market wards, looking for the item, returning it if found. If not, the buy order can remain in effect, until someone lists such an item. Again, nothing to do with auction house vs market ward.

This is what Bayohne said. There are deeper issues that are keeping buyer and seller from finding each other to exchange goods. I hope that the dev team is coming up with some good solutions ... but I'm not holding my breath.

[Sorel]

Slapping an menu-interface on the current system, and allowing instant delivery of the item to the player will hardly accomplish anything. More tools to aid buying / selling are needed.

These could include:

• Fixing the 'seek item' system to allow it to be searched, sought items to take only one bazaar slot, purchasing of smaller increments than the total number requested, and not requiring the player to already have the items to be sought. This fix has nothing to do with auction house vs market wards.
  
• Allowing buy orders, where a retainer is given the order to go out and search for items at or under a given price. The retainer seeks through the market wards, looking for the item, returning it if found. If not, the buy order can remain in effect, until someone lists such an item. Again, nothing to do with auction house vs market ward.

This is what Bayohne said. There are deeper issues that are keeping buyer and seller from finding each other to exchange goods. I hope that the dev team is coming up with some good solutions ... but I'm not holding my breath.

I am definitely on-board with the idea of buy orders.

But I don't think I understand your first bullet-point, Amineri. I don't understand what problem that is trying to solve. Could you break that one down for me?

[SuzakuCMX]

I am definitely on-board with the idea of buy orders.

But I don't think I understand your first bullet-point, Amineri. I don't understand what problem that is trying to solve. Could you break that one down for me?

Right now you need to have the item you're seeking in your inventory before you can put it up as being sought.

And your retainer will also ONLY buy the exact amount you want, no more and no less. So if you want 100 Ice Shards, somebody can't sell you 50 and then you'll only be seeking 50 more. They have to sell you all 100 at once.

[Amineri]

I am definitely on-board with the idea of buy orders.

But I don't think I understand your first bullet-point, Amineri. I don't understand what problem that is trying to solve. Could you break that one down for me?

The seek item feature has the following deficiencies:

• Items being sought cannot be searched via an item search function : there is no way to find a retainer that is seeking something, other than examining each and every retainer in the ward individually -- never going to happen. Not only that, there isn't even a unique icon for 'seek item' compared to selling item.
• You must have the item you wish to buy. Want to buy 100 lightning crystals? You must already have 100 lightning crystals, and these lightning crystals have to be kept on your retainer, until someone sells your retainer the crystals. Even better. Want to buy a Crab Bow +3? You can only do this if you already HAVE a Crab Bow +3. But if you already have it, why would you seek for it? To add insult to injury, the item you are seeking must be at 100% repair or it can't go into the bazaar.
• Suppose despite the above, you go ahead and have your retainer seek 100 lightning crystals. You give a price you are willing to pay, and lightning crystals go into the retainers bazaar. Now, the retainer will only buy ALL 100 crystals all at once, as part of a single transaction. If someone finds your retainer, and wants to sell 7 lightning crystals, it can't happen. It's all-or-nothing. A more rational system would let the retainer buy the 7 lightning crystals, and continue seeking for the remaining 93.
• As if the above weren't enough to make 'seek item' completely worthless, seeking an item takes up TWO bazaar slots. One slot is filled with the item(s) being sought, and the other slot is taken up by the gil or item reward. Thus a retainer can only seek for FIVE different items, compared to selling TEN items.

All of these add up to a system that is completely useless. As a consequence buyers are forced to exert their influence passively, by buying or refusing to buy items that sellers list.

If the 'seek item' feature were working, it could work both ways: buyers could see what sellers are willing to sell at, and sellers could see what buyers are willing to buy at. This extra information would hopefully allow prices to converge to an acceptable compromise more quickly.

Additionally, it is not uncommon for me to end up with one or two of a semi-valuable stackable item. It isn't worth MY time to try and use a bazaar slot to sell a single item. If the 'seek item' feature worked, I could sell the item to a player (for more than I could NPC it), and the player could turn around and resell it for a higher price. This works because that player has a large stock of the item, and is willing to wait the longer periods of time necessary to sell the item.

This is win-win. I get more gil than selling to an NPC. The reseller earns gil by simply buying and reselling items. More of the items stay in the game (rather than being sold to NPC or discarded), making greater availability and more stable prices for consumer of the items.

[IveraIvalice]

i haven't seen anyone who said they want an AH say they want bidding and waiting. do i don't understand why people are saying no to the traditional bidding and waiting to see if you got it, kuz no one seems to be saying that. it pretty much throws off the whole conversation. im sure everyone including myself are talking about AH as in the FFXI AH, considering most people are huge fans of FFXI.
so im gonna go ahead and break down some of the major pros and cons with market wards vs the benefits of an AH. (and since some people cant put together auction house in a final fantasy mmo. i'm talking about an AH like the one in FFXI)

Market Ward Cons
#1 you have to change areas to buy or sell items, very time consuming.
#2 the wards are not linked together, i have to waste anima to teleport to another more popular city just to buy something or sell something. very annoying if you cant tell.
#3 you have a limited amount of retainers, so that either means A. you have a retainer in the spells section but since you have a lot of different types of items to sell, you got retainers in the spells section selling dodo skin and marmot meat.
or B. add more retainers and then it becomes another issue about having too many things to go through just to sell items and get your money. both are really annoying and it doesn't seem like there's a fix for this.
#4 selling anything means you got to guess at how much you want to sell it for. you have no idea how much an item is worth, it slows down the economy because then people don't know how much to buy if for either, kuz there will be so many different prices. sure the will always pick the least expensive one but when that price jumps up 20k in a day people are like "i don't think i want to buy that".
#5 leaving the market wards means you have to run all the way to the end of the room. not a huge deal but it just doesn't help when you already have to jump to multiple areas to get your items (buy or sell)

Market Ward Pros
#1 it has a nice market shopping kinda feel, its not bad for a shopping experience if that's what your looking for
#2 you get to name your retainer and is like the first thing in the game that is really YOURS. in ffxi they had a mog house and moogle that was all yours but there's nothing like that in this game, its pretty disappointing, so this is the only thing that you get to determine.
honestly there aren't many pros.. it just seems like they wanted to make it different then the system in ffxi so its still trying to get UP to ffxi AH standards, it doesn't have anything that makes it better in any way, and i think people notice it and that why they want a FFXI type AH. which i agree with. though i would like to add that IF they did what i had suggested in an earlier post (make an AH as the new main selling and buying system but not get rid of the current market ward) then almost all of these Cons for market wards would turn to Pros because then there not the only option. if there's a better system for buying and selling items then the market wards would replace mules in ffxi and have it all in a shopping area that changes the pace and would be pretty enjoyable. it wouldn't be ignored because it is truly a "going to the mall" experience, its different in every city and prices can vary which may be what some people want and would want to do. but like i said earlier, since its the main system right now, its very annoying to HAVE to do that no matter what, if it was more of a bonus then it would be nice.

Auction House Pros (FFXI style)
#1 everything is in a list and easily accessible. yes the item search feature is the same way but its only to find the item. in the AH its to buy and sell the item, not just to find it
#2 all the AH are linked together, no need to travel across the world to find one item because its not in the city your in.
#3 you can compare prices very easily for selling because its all in a list right there in the same place.
#4 you can sell items right there, no need to exit the menu and travel to a whole other area and find or summon your retainer to go through his list just to sell something
#5 your money is sent to you directly. the current system makes you have to go through the trouble of finding or summoning your retainer (same as selling) just to get your money.
#6 just the ease of having everything in front of you in stead of running around to find stuff

Auction House Cons (FFXI style)
#1 its pretty boring, there is not shopping feel to it like the wards have
and that's actually all i can think of, because there were many years to perfect that system its pretty hard to find major faults in it.

so i hope you guys can tell by now, i'm pro AH. but im not like "WE WANT AUCTION HOUSE NOW RAWWWWR!!!"
so, by saying that, i understand the people that would prefer the market wards, and im not quick to throw out the market wards system but, i don't see how it can ever be better than the FFXI AH that alot of people here have used and never had a problem with, and i don't think people are saying its gonna be an instant fix to add an AH it just seems like it will be the better choice with more ease of its functions after its perfected.

so for anyone that looked at this and was like "dammnnnnnn! im not reading all that" heres the sum up. i gave you my opinion and tried to sum up what everyone else is saying in a non barbaric way. kuz i think we can all agree, a post that says "AUCTION HOUSE NOW!!" doesn't help anyone.
and i know there are probably more Pros and cons of the AH and MW so feel free to post more if you think it will actually make a difference. and my opinion is to make an AH as the main system for buying and selling and keep market wards as a unique shopping, "mall" type of experience that replaces the 100+ people that stand around for hours selling things off their bazaar.
I just want to gather the community's thoughts so we can get right down to fixing the issue

[Cairdeas]

Auction House Pros (FFXI style)
#1 everything is in a list and easily accessible. yes the item search feature is the same way but its only to find the item. in the AH its to buy and sell the item, not just to find it
#2 all the AH are linked together, no need to travel across the world to find one item because its not in the city your in.
#3 you can compare prices very easily for selling because its all in a list right there in the same place.
#4 you can sell items right there, no need to exit the menu and travel to a whole other area and find or summon your retainer to go through his list just to sell something
#5 your money is sent to you directly. the current system makes you have to go through the trouble of finding or summoning your retainer (same as selling) just to get your money.
#6 just the ease of having everything in front of you in stead of running around to find stuff

1. Not Exclusive to Auction Houses. Can be implemented in the Market Ward.
2. Not Exclusive to Auction Houses. Can be implemented in the Market Ward.
3. Market Wards already allow you to compare prices of items others are selling. If you feel you can make a profit and sell the item faster for a lower price then already listed, go ahead. Thats economics.
4. Not Exclusive.
5. In FFXI your money was not given to you directly when you sold an item. It was delievered to your mailbox and you had to go to a mog house to get it. Same with every other AH the money is dropped in a mailbox that you have to go hunt down.
6. Not exclusive.


Everything you mentioned can be implemented into the Market Ward without an Auction house.

[Sorel]

Very well said, Amineri. You've outlined the problem perfectly. I am hoping Bayohne will forward your feedback to the Development Team.

The seek item feature has the following deficiencies:

Items being sought cannot be searched via an item search function : there is no way to find a retainer that is seeking something, other than examining each and every retainer in the ward individually -- never going to happen. Not only that, there isn't even a unique icon for 'seek item' compared to selling item.

Something that would solve this facet of the problem would be adding an option after "Item Search Counter" called "Buyer Search Counter". Item Search currently lists and marks those Retainers who are selling a particular item. "Buyer Search" could list and mark those Retainers who are buying a particular item.

You must have the item you wish to buy. Want to buy 100 lightning crystals? You must already have 100 lightning crystals, and these lightning crystals have to be kept on your retainer, until someone sells your retainer the crystals. Even better. Want to buy a Crab Bow +3? You can only do this if you already HAVE a Crab Bow +3. But if you already have it, why would you seek for it? To add insult to injury, the item you are seeking must be at 100% repair or it can't go into the bazaar.

This facet of the problem is due to the fact that Retainers do not have direct access to the "master" item databases on the server. They have to keep a "local" item database on their person in the form of the items they have in their slots. This was probably to prevent server overload issues. The solution would be for the game client (not the server) to list all the available items from its database on the local computer, then the player chooses what he wants to buy from that list. The client then transmits that "buy list" to the Retainer on the server.

Suppose despite the above, you go ahead and have your retainer seek 100 lightning crystals. You give a price you are willing to pay, and lightning crystals go into the retainers bazaar. Now, the retainer will only buy ALL 100 crystals all at once, as part of a single transaction. If someone finds your retainer, and wants to sell 7 lightning crystals, it can't happen. It's all-or-nothing. A more rational system would let the retainer buy the 7 lightning crystals, and continue seeking for the remaining 93.

This is just due to bad algorithm design. A better algorithm would be more like online stock buying. When a player creates a "buy order" or "buy list", the Retainer should ask 3 questions.

1. What do you want me to buy?
2. At what price do you want me to stop buying?
3. At what quantity do you want me to stop buying?

This solution allows a player to tell their Retainer to buy Iron Nuggets, for no more than 500gil per nugget, and no more than 25 nuggets.

As if the above weren't enough to make 'seek item' completely worthless, seeking an item takes up TWO bazaar slots. One slot is filled with the item(s) being sought, and the other slot is taken up by the gil or item reward. Thus a retainer can only seek for FIVE different items, compared to selling TEN items.

Well, if you are trading an item instead of paying gil, I don't see how to avoid using a slot for the item you are offering. But I agree gil sales should just pull from your Retainer's currency pool. That should be an easy fix for the Development Team.

[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.