Market Wards, enough is enough

[Amineri]

It's just semantics to say that people asking for an "AH" want AUCTIONS AUCTIONS AUCTIONS and NOTHING ELSE will suffice. I'd really like to know how many people use "buyout" options verse actual auctions. I personally rarely ever actually auction items or bid on them, and I'd be surprised if most people got most of their purchases that way.

When people ask for an AH, I daresay they're more referring to a general set of features associated with an auction house, not AUCTIONS OR DIE, and a system with every single feature except literal auctions isn't good enough. Like when you're at a restaurant, and someone orders a "Coke". They don't necessarily mean, "I want a Coke, and Pepsi or Faygo or Royal Crown will not suffice," they usually just mean, "I want a dark carbonated cola."

Is it possible they specifically want Coke and nothing else? Sure. But I think we're all intelligent enough to understand what's being said in this given situation.

I agree completely, ShinChuck. When people say they want an "auction house", they don't actually want bids and auctions. So, rather than saying "I want an auction house", why don't people get more specific about what's really missing?

Pretty much all I've heard people wanting that is different from the current system is the ability to not have to walk in to the wards to purchase the item. Is there some more than this? I don't think that not having to walk into the wards is going to fix the significant problems in the economy as it stands (e.g. massive gil inflation, overabundance of items, inability to find price-point between buyer and seller).

So list those specific features, and we can get down to serious discussion!! (Believe me, I don't think the Market System is perfect or even works well. I simply object to the notion that a cry of "auction house" will magically make everything get better.)

[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.

[Cairdeas]

It's just semantics to say that people asking for an "AH" want AUCTIONS AUCTIONS AUCTIONS and NOTHING ELSE will suffice. I'd really like to know how many people use "buyout" options verse actual auctions. I personally rarely ever actually auction items or bid on them, and I'd be surprised if most people got most of their purchases that way.

When people ask for an AH, I daresay they're more referring to a general set of features associated with an auction house, not AUCTIONS OR DIE, and a system with every single feature except literal auctions isn't good enough. Like when you're at a restaurant, and someone orders a "Coke". They don't necessarily mean, "I want a Coke, and Pepsi or Faygo or Royal Crown will not suffice," they usually just mean, "I want a dark carbonated cola."

Is it possible they specifically want Coke and nothing else? Sure. But I think we're all intelligent enough to understand what's being said in this given situation.

This is what I've been saying. In the inverse the people who are screaming "We do not want an auction house" are not saying they do not want all those additions that get tacked onto an auction house for the time and convenience and are labeled as an Auction house. We are saying we do not want Timed or Blind Bidding which is the only feature an auction house offers that is exclusive to the auction house itself. All the other bonus features are illusionary features and do not require an auction house to be implemented into a market system.

[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.

[Akuun]

Rest assured that the team is in the process on stabilizing and improving the current retainer system. Something that I want everyone to keep in mind is that even if we simply changed the current system over to an auction house, that doesn’t mean it would solve all of our problems overnight. There are more things that would still need to be adjusted if that were to happen. As such we aren't currently planning on switching over to an auction house system as of yet.

If Yoshi-P really wants to make that system work, then they will need to create retainer models, ones that are much lower poly counts than the player models currently used. Displaying all those high poly models is very tasking on any system.

Also another thing that would help is removing retainers once they have run out of items to sell, unless they are renting a booth (that would only be fair).

My honest opinion of the market is it's unstable, over crowded, very tasking on clients/server, it looks horrid and not even one bit like a market. and I think it would probably be better to replace it with something like the Ul'dah market strips with open sky, and have NPCs sell for players on commission (not retainers). With these changes it might even be possible to have npcs that walk around shopping (adjusted by number of players in the ward) which would give atmosphere and make the game feel a little more alive (seriously, the game feels pretty dead in towns, npcs wandering around going about daily tasks adds a nice feel)

[Elexia]

PS don't bother replying I wont bother with people like you it's like talking to someone in a cult.

"Don't bother arguing my point because I'm right and you're wrong there's nothing etc and I'll continue to ignore that they're working on the actual game that should have been completed before release."

Guess you got rejected from the Matilda casting call eh?

[Elexia]

Also, lol@people still thinking an AH is an instant fix.

[Larther]

Auction House, please.

[Demacia]

Just cut the retainer selling bullshit and make all sales happen through an interface (aka an AH).