Quote Originally Posted by Rentahamster View Post
Ideally, what would be best for the economy, and for the future success of the game, in my opinion, would be The market ward system, minus the NPCs, plus a quick and easy menu interface, plus buy orders, plus a comprehensive price history, minus FF11 style AH (placing bids, etc)
Renta, I read through that Gamasutra article you posted up. I thought it was a decent read, but it is still one guy's opinion, which doesn't make it right. Two points that I feel he failed to mention were (a) the item equivalent of MIMO (money in-money out) and (b) manupulation of markets to the detriment of the majority of players. He also tended to try and gloss over issues that he didn't want to focus on, such as the following quote:
If we put aside EVE's physically separated markets (which are meaningful within that game due to the risk of travel, but not meaningful in many other games) then the EVE market provides players with perfect information (at least for the items that can be traded on the market itself).
My re-list of Rentahamster's proposals: (please correct me if I misrepresented you)
  1. Removal of retainer NPC from transactions, replacing them with menu driven system
  2. Addition of buy orders
  3. Addition of comprehensive price history
I completely, absolutely 100% agree with item 2. In fact I think it should be the number one priority. Buy orders are already IN the game (something your Gamasutra reviewer failed to mention), but they are currently broken. Yes, I refer to the "seek item" feature.

Let me propose something new regarding "seek item", something inspired by reading about the EVE market. The "sought items" should be added to the search feature, but NOT through a separate sought item tab. Instead, the current hierarchical system to zero in on items should be retained. Once a single item type is called up, both items being sought and items being sold should be listed in the same menu. Show the 10 highest price being sought, and the 10 lowest price being offered. Putting the two together explicitly shows the gap between buyer / seller.

To accommodate HQ items, SE should add another level of branching, allowing searching explicitly for NQ, +1, +2, or +3 items, so that these items are not "shoved off" the buying / selling screen -- each level of HQ will have its own buying / selling screen, and each level of HQ will reach its own price point.

My list of what needs to be fixed with "seek item" / buy orders:
  1. Addition of 'seek item' to the item search feature, so that sought items are on par with 'sold items'. (see above for details)
  2. Allowing items not currently possessed to be sought.
  3. Sought item order should be partially fillable. If I am seeking 100 lightning crystals, another player should be able to sell me 17, and my item seek is then modified to be seeking 83 lightning crystals.
  4. Sought items should only require a single bazaar slot instead of the two currently required.
Additional issues I feel need to be addressed:
  • Balancing of gil MIMO (essentially addition of gil sinks)
  • Balancing of item MIMO (essentially addition of item sinks)
Without the balancing of these two systems the economy will STILL be messed up.

My version of Renta's list, added to, and re-prioritized:
  1. Fix Seek Item, thus allowing 'buy orders'
  2. Balancing of gil MIMO by introducing gil sinks
  3. Balancing of item MIMO by introducing item sinks
  4. Addition of comprehensive price history
  5. Stabilization of systemic issues (i.e. 'crashing') regarding rendering of NPC retainers (by reorganization of the markets, changing to menu-driven system, reducing poly count on retainers, or some other method)

If people take exception to the above (and I'm sure they will ), please clarify whether you feel an item ON the list shouldn't be there, whether something is missing, or whether you feel the priorities should be different, and why.