Market Wards, enough is enough

[Kilta_Firelotus]

The way I see it, We do not just level up or gather/ crafting classes to repair or make higher stuff, but to make stuff easier or gather stuff easier. I do not hoard as I feel I can just go and gather what I need at any time. Since the higher I am easier it is finding the right spots for the mats I need. I've done that with my btn and my crp. tbh I haven't had any trouble with anything on this game minus how quiet this game is and getting ppl to chat is almost the hardest part in this game.

[SuzakuCMX]

Oh, I thought Amazon.com the game was like setting up your own customized window (NAMEYOURSHOPANDEVERYTHING) from which to buy stuff from the Item Search Counter...so instead of it listing the retainer name and having it pop up with a star, it would instead take you to that shop's interface (selectable templates for this please!) from which to buy stuff (a new menu! Like traditional style FFXIV menus). Keep the selling tax and also have buyable upgrades (like increased shop space, new interface templates, etc.)

And get rid of the retainers and give us an old style vault. Not WoW-like where you have a teller do it, but make it have the tellers up top that can give you info and allow you to buy upgrades (again increased storage!) and then there are vaults in the basement that you have to walk to to open your storage up (If I can teleport my retainer around, why can't the city vaults be linked?)

The problem with changing the storage though is that some items could be lost when transferring from retainers to the new storage :X IT HAS HAPPENED BEFORE SOMEWHERE PROBABLY.

I kinda went off-topic. But I'd like to see semi-personalized shops.

[Shai]

That's the point. Currently, the MW's reliance on NPC retainers is more of a liability than a benefit. Fixing it requires much more overhauls to game engine efficiency and server optimization. If I were in charge, this is what I would do;

Temporarily remove the ward aspect of the market ward system, but keep the retainers as storage and bazaar.

Have all buying and selling be done through the item search interface menu. (this should not take long since they don't have to deal with NPC overcrowding anymore)

Fix the underlying game engine and server problems so that the game can sustain a single area full of NPC retainers.

Reintroduce the "ward" concept and reintroduce retainer bazaars along with features such as custom stalls, advertising, etc.

Side note: you may want to read my market stall suggestions in my gil sink thread for more insight.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/11434-DevTalk-GIL-SINKS!-Ideas-to-Stabilize-the-Economy-and-Curb-Inflation

Enter a bot that buys low and sells high ad infinitum and YAY! No more worrisome crafting.

At least in the current system any one trying to control product distribution has to actually move around and be at their position (and ideally, 1 per city if all Wards were being used). This will make it much easier. Hey, it's going to happen anyway, why make them work for it.

[Amineri]

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.

[Rentahamster]

Enter a bot that buys low and sells high ad infinitum and YAY! No more worrisome crafting.

A bot that can do that along with containing critical market analysis algorithms that are accurate aren't that easy to make. A slight mess up in the algorithm and they end up not selling their product.

With a comprehensive price history, this sort of behavior can be easily seen by players, and those who are trying to game the system are easily identified.

As long as there are enough real players in the system, they should be able to even out any aberrations in real market value caused by bots.

Having the ability to place buy orders allows you to get direct access to sellers, should they wish to sell directly to you and not the bot.

[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

[Rentahamster]

(b) manupulation of markets to the detriment of the majority of players.

Oh, I forgot to mention that in the comments to that article, he links to 2 more articles he wrote about RMT:

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Simon...ed_Economy.php

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Simon...Your_Money.php

[Rentahamster]

It's as if Renta is saying (and forgive me if I am mistaken, but that's the point of a paraphrase) if the Wards could meet all these expectations you've put in bold then it would be the same as an Auction House and thus acceptable, but an AH would be "easier" (not sure how you quantify that) so just do that.

Am I inferring your meaning correctly?

I'm not exactly sure which post of mine you're trying to paraphrase, here.

[xAsthenia]

I actually think the Market is a really good idea, I was a bit sceptical about the whole thing when I joined but I think it's better than the AH as it's pretty much the same thing but an original idea.

As for the crashing I think there's a reason why we're not 'Paying' for this at the moment and if we're not paying for it then I have no room to complain about it.

After all this is a new game and has a vast amount of improvements left to be made.

[Naguru]

There is a reason AHs are all over the place in MMOs... It's cause they are the current best system! Current system is painful at best.