Further proof that the market wards are a festival of failure.

[Wolfie]

Sadly No.. SE is not God..
Thats Walter Disney.

Nor Pinkie Pie.

[Rentahamster]

I'm pretty sure they want to keep the wards in due to the micro-transaction model of $1 per retainer per character per month.

However, I'm also pretty sure you can scrap the wards but keep the retainers just for storage purposes. People would still pay extra for more inventory space. (Hell, I would pay that NOW if I could).

Get rid of the wards now and convert into a non-bidding style menu system (basically exactly what we have now, just no NPC middlemen). Fix the server issues.

C'mon, your priority is to FIX the game and make it enjoyable to everyone, not preserve your one hope for micro-transactions. Make people want to pay the monthly fee FIRST. Then, you can figure out how to nickle-and-dime them later once the game is worth being nickle-and-dimed over.

[Dreadnought]

i think its absolutely rediculous that they are spending time and resources in a system that is disliked and lookded down on by so many other people who are proffenssionally in the industry, interview after interview, thread after thread its been nothing but "what if ____ happens, then what for the wards?" and "wouldnt it have just been alot simplar to just ____?"

SE originally planned for this game to compete with other successful MMOs, but the market wards do not accomodate as many players as other MMOs AND requires much more extensive adjusting as time goes on. i. just. dont. get. it.

AH please

[JunkPunch]

How many players do you think it would take to purposely crash the wards? 30 or so? We could boycott the wards and keep em down lol.

[normalforce]

Get rid of the wards now and convert into a non-bidding style menu system (basically exactly what we have now, just no NPC middlemen). Fix the server issues.

Yes, please. No worrying about server load or crashing the wards due to whatever reasons. We've near got the interface to do this right now, SE just needs to take it one set further. From the item search counter, skip placing a star over a retainers head in a particular ward, bring up that retainer's bazaar window so we can purchase the items immediately. This can even be done via any retainer bell.

Because if they wanted to do the Market Wards right, hundreds of retainers wouldn't be crammed together into such a little space. It's just an ugly design. The better design would be, one large zone for all the retainers (like a mini Ul'dah), broken into different areas to represent the various wards where every retainer gets their own stall (or shares one with other retainers) and are laid out in such a way that doesn't choke the server by loading hundreds of retainers at once. This idea is not without its flaws but that's how it should have been done first.

[Icopico]

The market wards are a complete waste of time, Why don't they just add a "purchase" button in the item search counter results?

[Rau]

Yes, please. No worrying about server load or crashing the wards due to whatever reasons. We've near got the interface to do this right now, SE just needs to take it one set further. From the item search counter, skip placing a star over a retainers head in a particular ward, bring up that retainer's bazaar window so we can purchase the items immediately. This can even be done via any retainer bell.

Because if they wanted to do the Market Wards right, hundreds of retainers wouldn't be crammed together into such a little space. It's just an ugly design. The better design would be, one large zone for all the retainers (like a mini Ul'dah), broken into different areas to represent the various wards where every retainer gets their own stall (or shares one with other retainers) and are laid out in such a way that doesn't choke the server by loading hundreds of retainers at once. This idea is not without its flaws but that's how it should have been done first.

Joke post?

[Adol]

Joke post?

No I don't think they were joking.
I thought that post was quite well written, really.
I'm not quite sure why you thought it was a joke post.

[Doho]

seriously, how can we boycott market wards? this is getting a tad ridiculous.

raising the cap on the number of retainers that can fit in the ward is going to do nothing, but make them crash more often. the cap will always and inevitably be reached as new people start playing the game. they're more than likely going to have more than one character and you've already given us 2 retainers. so the wards WILL be packed.

cut out the aesthetic. we don't care about it. we don't care about seeing the retainers. we barely care about retainers. we just.. want... to sell... and... BUY THINGS.. QUICKLY and efficiently.

EDIT: I'll rephrase. the aesthetic/visual representation should not conflict with the goals of the MW system itself. fitting tons of npcs into one zone obviously isn't working, why not instead reserve the visual representation of retainers for private venues such as a player housing? (If there are even plans for this somewhere down the road). That way, players can choose whether or not to open up their house as a shop to maintain the visual browsing aspect without so much strain on one area. *shrug*

[Viridiana]

I'm surprised how bad some people think the market wards are. =p I enjoy them. I guess those who dislike the wards are the majority that post here while people that enjoy them are busy using them. lol

I'm not sure how many of the others I can speak for, but I'm sure I'm not alone in this. It's not that I actively dislike the MW system. I actually think it's nicely different. I can navigate it just fine; I can buy stuff just fine; I can sell stuff just fine.

There are problems with the MW system, though, and these problems are very much population-based. Right now, I'd say most of the servers don't have enough player population to make these problems really stand out, but the tell-tale signs are already there. I'm sure Lindblum's not the only server where it's impossible to set up a new retainer in the Battlecraft Ward. "So set it up in a different ward," you say. Not the point, I say. The system is encouraging me to do one thing, but is so limited that it won't actually allow me to do it. This should never happen.

Now, they're saying that they're gonna increase the limit on how many retainers can be in a ward at one time. This seems like a good idea that would solve everything, until you remember that each retainer in an area increases the stress on the server. Remember when the wards used to crash all the time? Well, unless they're doing something to relieve stress at the same time they raise the limits, expect to see that again. They probably won't even need a new system to reset the retainers in the wards, because the crashes will do that for them.

When a chain has a weak link on the verge of breaking, you don't fix it by bolstering all the other links. You do something about the weak one. The fact remains that rendering the retainers is the weak link of this system (as much as I don't want it to be--again, I like the MW concept). How can they fix it? Well, they could find some way to dramatically reduce the stress each retainer causes on the server. I say "dramatically" because the stress-related problems of today will only grow worse when there's a sizeable population using the wards. Even with less stress per retainer, though, you'd still reach caps on how many retainers you can have per ward. They could increase the number of wards, but how many Battlecrafts does it take before all the weapon sellers can fit? They could try what they're doing now, with periodic resets, but then good luck getting back into the ward you need to (depending on how it's done, I suppose). Or, they could just do away with rendering the NPCs all together, and just let us buy from the menu. Honestly, the only problem I can think of with this is that I won't be able to preview what new gear looks like from modeling retainers.

Regardless, they need to fix it. Moreover, they need to fix it in a way that will actually stand up to having more than enough population for them to turn a profit. If they think they can do that while keeping the physical wards, well. . . I wish them luck, but I'm not holding my breath.