Market Wards, enough is enough

[Rentahamster]

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),

Actually, that was mentioned in the article.

I like your elaboration of the buy order system in order to get it to work with the item search. However the method, it needs to be fast, easy, intuitive, and efficient.


As far as the item version of money-in-money-out is concerned, that is a bit of a problem we have here in FF14. EVE Online deals with this problem fairly easily - everyone's stuff gets blown to smithereens so often, you're likely to buy a lot of replacements. Hardly anything is really permanent. Of course, in FF14, we can't just go around blowing everyone's gear up. That would be totally wrong.

Solipse had a comment about item worthlessness a long time ago.

That's not why WoW's economy works.

I detailed it earlier - just adding soulbound items will not help at all. The reason being is that currently, more items are produced than can be consumed. This will always be the case in a game where crafting is a major part of the basic gameplay. There needs to be a reason for items to leave the economy. If people make a thousand crab bows but only 50 of those are bought, then there's a glut in the economy and the items become worthless. Soulbinding items would only remove those 50 from the economy, the other 950 will still be there.

This is the case with literally every single piece of equipment.

The reason why WoW's economy is healthy is NOT because of soulbound items - but rather because of the ability to disenchant gear. When the market becomes glutted with cheap items, enchanters buy up all the cheap items and break them apart for enchanting materials. THAT is the entire reason wow's economy functions. The whole system is a checks-and-balances type system that prevents massive deflation.

If we had some kind of desynth option, or some way to consume items that no one wants, then that might help.

As for gilsinks, I and others have put in a lot of examples in the gil sinks thread

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Curb-Inflation

[Amineri]

I like your elaboration of the buy order system in order to get it to work with the item search. However the method, it needs to be fast, easy, intuitive, and efficient.

Thanks! I keep trying to beat the drum on this, as I believe this one feature is a key foundational piece of the FF14 economy that is missing. It needn't be my proposal, of course ... I'm simply trying to point out one possible implementation and the reasoning behind it.

As far as the item version of money-in-money-out is concerned, that is a bit of a problem we have here in FF14. EVE Online deals with this problem fairly easily - everyone's stuff gets blown to smithereens so often, you're likely to buy a lot of replacements. Hardly anything is really permanent. Of course, in FF14, we can't just go around blowing everyone's gear up. That would be totally wrong.

Solipse had a comment about item worthlessness a long time ago.

If we had some kind of desynth option, or some way to consume items that no one wants, then that might help.

As for gilsinks, I and others have put in a lot of examples in the gil sinks thread

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Curb-Inflation

I think I've seen and contributed to all of those threads already, I think XD. My opinion at this point is that the gil sinks and item sinks (ala de-synthesis or making items into materia or whatever) should be a higher priority than redesigning the UI for the market system. My reasoning is that with the item and gil glut we have now, streamlining the UI won't have any significant effect, since there's such huge supply / demand imbalances.

However, the big unknown factor is just how much design / programming effort it would take on SE's side -- something I can only vaguely guess at, not knowing anything about the back-end architecture. So, it could very well be that a UI change would be a minimal effort -- however, it could just as easily be a monumental undertaking. Not really much more to say in that regard.

[Sorel]

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)

I think I can be down with this.

As far as the item version of money-in-money-out is concerned, that is a bit of a problem we have here in FF14. EVE Online deals with this problem fairly easily - everyone's stuff gets blown to smithereens so often, you're likely to buy a lot of replacements. Hardly anything is really permanent. Of course, in FF14, we can't just go around blowing everyone's gear up. That would be totally wrong.

If we had some kind of desynth option, or some way to consume items that no one wants, then that might help.

I don't think "item destruction" would be that wrong. We have a durability system. As long as we can bazaar and trade items with less than 100% durability (not sell to NPC), the players can establish their own market for them. Add the ability to desynth those same items, and we have a very organic and effective way of removing items from the economy.

This would give players 4 options when an item is less then 100% durability:

1. Discard the item and buy a new one.
2. Have the item repaired by a PC or NPC.
3. Sell the item to a PC.
4. Desynth the item for raw materials.

Options #1 & #4 removes the item from the economy. Option #3 gives another player an equal opportunity to remove the item from the economy if he so chooses.

The Development Team can also introduce enemies with a set of "Break" skills that can bring an item's durability down to 0 to help accelerate the development of this market.