Market Wards, enough is enough

[Shai]

Shai, I'm afraid I'll have to respectfully disagree with you here. And this is speaking as a someone who thinks of herself as a crafter / gatherer first and foremost.

The market system should NOT cater to crafters and gatherers first, imho. It should serve all players equally, whether supplier or consumers, buyers or sellers. Setting up crafters and gatherers to have fun at the expense of combat classes won't lead to a fun game.

Let me take a stab at a Matsui-san style mission statement for the market system (which could include the current market wards, a simplified menu-driven interface, or a true bidding-style auction house, or whatever crazy scheme gets cooked up).

The goal of the market system is to provide tools to:

• Efficiently match buyers and sellers
• Allow mutually satisfactory prices to be quickly determined
• Minimize the impact of market manipulation forces

That buyers should be able to find their wares quickly and efficiently?
This doesn't benefit the crafter/gatherer how?

My statement was meant to say we should protect the producers from RMT as opposed to give it to RMT so that battle-oriented players can find their arrows 1 minute faster. Perhaps I lost focus. There is no good reason to sacrifice the entire market to RMT just so people who don't craft/gather can find their gear ever-so-slightly faster.

[Amineri]

That buyers should be able to find their wares quickly and efficiently?
This doesn't benefit the crafter/gatherer how?

My statement was meant to say we should protect the producers from RMT as opposed to give it to RMT so that battle-oriented players can find their arrows 1 minute faster. Perhaps I lost focus. There is no good reason to sacrifice the entire market to RMT just so people who don't craft/gather can find their gear ever-so-slightly faster.

Sorry if I misunderstood.

I guess what it boils down to is the following:

• Some people want maximal ease in satisfying their whim to buy whatever they want, regardless of any other consequences.
• Some people want to be able to sell for whatever prices they so choose, thus accumulating power and prestige for themselves, regardless of any other consequences.

In my haste, it seemed like you were stating that the ability to sell easily was more important than the ability to buy easily (not that I lumped you into the latter category, but others might interpret it that way <3).

I agree that we need to protect the producers from monopolizing forces (I use this term which includes most RMT, but is not exclusive to them). However, protecting consumers from these same forces is just as important.

The current market system is imbalanced in representing only sellers and not buyers. Fixing 'seek item' (and fix 'repair item' while at it), adding a delivery system (with 'convenience fees'), and addressing the gil imbalances are probably the highest priority issues. Unfortunately, addressing gil imbalances probably requires new content, which is being delayed until the battle system is implemented. What a mess...

In the end, the reality is, there is no perfect system. If a system is too easy to buy and sell, it is inherently too easy to manipulate. However, I probably won't be able to convince even 1% of the players that this is true, so can only hope the the developers keep their wits about them!