Stop "fixing" the MW scrap it

[Kailok]

I agree with most of your post though. The Wards are disorganized. Someone suggested something about a single npc per catagory, which isn't bad... but it still doesn't allow for actual shops. Part of the problem I think, was that SE expected people to deal in a few certain areas, not all possible crafts, Resulting in huge fleamarkets rather than specific shops.

I had an idea for this a little while back: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...lease-everyone.

It was pretty much a mix between AH and MW that could please both the people who like to browse, and those who like convenience, all while giving the "feel" of a large Bazaar-type area. Right now, browsing for gear in a dark hallway seems like a black market to me >.>

[Frisque]

What would be the justification of having retainers if there were no market wards?

These jolly zombies exist to hold and sell your crap. IIRC the idea was to mimic the bazaars of XI without gumming up areas outside/within the cities and to allow you to sell your crap overnight without staying logged in. They were given there own collection of zones so prevent the game from crashing (read: wards crash, game does not)

So what do you propose? It wouldn't make much sense to keep the retainers if we're selling things through a market counter/auction house. But if square removes the retainers, the playerbase will rage even harder because that's 110 slots of precious inventory nuked.

My proposal would be give us MORE options, not less. Let the ones who want to buy from the counter at a slightly increased tax. Let the people who want to "play" the wards play them (btw, if you have ever gone to buy gear/weapon/items from a retainer and while you were there said "oh look, this retainers has a _____ for cheap. I'll pick that up too, sucka!" then you have "played" the wards).

By adding MORE options instead of nuking them you tend to make more people happy. Just sayin...

[Rowyne]

You waste as much time running to the retainer as bidding on an item in ffxi. Or buying and waiting and running to the mail box in WoW.

When's the last time you played WoW? Do you realize they put in three mailboxes right outside the AH in Stormwind? There's one right outside the AH's in Darnassus and Ironforge. There's one right across the room from the new AH NPC in Shattrath, and one right down the stairs from the new AH NPC in Dalaran.

So, in WoW, when you want something from the AH, you don't go through layers of menus, searching through categories (though you can choose to do that if you're just browsing). You usually just type the name of the item in the search field, it comes up, you hit the buy button, and it immediately goes to your mailbox (which takes all of 5 seconds or less to run to). The entire process takes less than 30 seconds.

[Mortikhan]

Some want to see the MWs scrapped others want to see if SE can make it work. Maybe a compromise would be in order. I can see and agree with the point that having multiple retainers per character would be an issue for the server to handle as well as it just being silly overall to have a tax for items simply because people are forced to put them in a separate ward because of space constraints or they want to sell different items from different fields. However, I also see the "shopping around" theory being plausible as well since the original system was implemented to be more based on what someone was willing to pay rather than price comparing like an AH. If you did not like what someone was selling an item for you could shop around for a better price. It also made it virtually impossible for people to gouge players and control the MWs.

On to a possible solution. Link the 3 current MWs. Remove additional retainers (ie. one per character) and turn the additional retainer into a safe with 200 slots. Make the retainer have 0 storage slots but a 20 slot bazaar. Minimize or remove the tax for items being from different wards. Add a minimal tax (1-3%) for shipping costs from other cities where a persons retainer might be posted. Have quests in game that allow you to "upgrade" both your retainer and safe space (maybe 5 quests each to increase retainer slots by 2 each quest and safe space by 20 each quest). Simplify the retainer interface by giving access to both your personal inventory and your safe inventory.

[AlexiaKidd]

I posted a topic on this sometime ago but I'll copy paste what I put here and see what you think:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...e-Market-Wards

Ideas to help the Market Wards


1) - Keep the wards but expanded them to include buying straight from item search list but maybe add an extra 5% delivery tax to encourage you to actually go into the ward to pick the item up. This would also help remove a little bit of gill from the economy.

2) - Add filter options and a better layout for the item search lists. Filters for thing like rank, class and so on and then sort them in order high to low and so on.

3) - Also show +1, +2 +3 items in the search list and so on.

4) - Add price history please. To make it so it is more difficult to exploit could you make it so you can see price history for last 20 sold, average price over the week, month, 3 months and so on. That should make it easy to spot if someone is trying to jack the price up or crash it on an item I think.

5) - Add an Item Seek Search so you can have look and see what items people are looking for and sell them if I have them. I also want my retainers to be able to Seek for items even if I currently don't have any of them. It seems silly that you can only seek items that you already have as most of the time you wouldn't be able seeking them if you had them. I believe the Item Seek List will be a big help to give the Wards a much needed boost.

6) - When you search for an item and venture into the wards maybe you could have a different coloured star above the person who is selling the item the cheapest.

7) - Maybe also link all the wards from the other cities. This could help ease congestion in Ul'dah's wards and maybe help stop them crashing so much.

8) - Allow retainers to be called at camps so we can drop off gear or grab something we have stored.

9) - Maybe you could have MW counters in the camps and hamlets, where you could buy items straight from the list but you would have to pay a 15% delivery tax on the item.

Anyone got any more ideas to add to these other than add an AH ^^

If you like the ideas or have any new ones then post them and show your support, if you don't like them then flame me to death ^^

*Casts Barfira*

[Chezen]

I had an idea for this a little while back: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...lease-everyone.

It was pretty much a mix between AH and MW that could please both the people who like to browse, and those who like convenience, all while giving the "feel" of a large Bazaar-type area. Right now, browsing for gear in a dark hallway seems like a black market to me >.>

Lol about the black market.

My issue with your proposal is that it takes away the possibilty of people having their own stores, or any possible game ideas that might be associated with that. Plus I really love my retainers.

Another thing that will happen (and one reason I don't care for AHs), is people all crowding around one particuliar NPC, which isn't very market-like to me. It also takes away the shop experience that some of us like.

I think your solution is good, but it won't address certain things.

How to let people have their stores and keep it organized, I admit that un's a biggie.

[Viridiana]

I posted a topic on this sometime ago but I'll copy paste what I put here and see what you think:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...e-Market-Wards

Ideas to help the Market Wards


1) - Keep the wards but expanded them to include buying straight from item search list but maybe add an extra 5% delivery tax to encourage you to actually go into the ward to pick the item up. This would also help remove a little bit of gill from the economy.

2) - Add filter options and a better layout for the item search lists. Filters for thing like rank, class and so on and then sort them in order high to low and so on.

3) - Also show +1, +2 +3 items in the search list and so on.

4) - Add price history please. To make it so it is more difficult to exploit could you make it so you can see price history for last 20 sold, average price over the week, month, 3 months and so on. That should make it easy to spot if someone is trying to jack the price up or crash it on an item I think.

5) - Add an Item Seek Search so you can have look and see what items people are looking for and sell them if I have them. I also want my retainers to be able to Seek for items even if I currently don't have any of them. It seems silly that you can only seek items that you already have as most of the time you wouldn't be able seeking them if you had them. I believe the Item Seek List will be a big help to give the Wards a much needed boost.

6) - When you search for an item and venture into the wards maybe you could have a different coloured star above the person who is selling the item the cheapest.

7) - Maybe also link all the wards from the other cities. This could help ease congestion in Ul'dah's wards and maybe help stop them crashing so much.

8) - Allow retainers to be called at camps so we can drop off gear or grab something we have stored.

9) - Maybe you could have MW counters in the camps and hamlets, where you could buy items straight from the list but you would have to pay a 15% delivery tax on the item.

Anyone got any more ideas to add to these other than add an AH ^^

If you like the ideas or have any new ones then post them and show your support, if you don't like them then flame me to death ^^

*Casts Barfira*

Just a few comments. . .

1) I'm not sure this by itself is enough to solve much, but combined with #7, I think it would really help.

3) I would add to this the ability to see all the items in a search, not just the cheapest 20. Showing which ones are HQ doesn't help if none of them show up on the cheap list.

Other than that, though, not much to comment on. I'm still worried it'll be impossible for them to render that many NPCs without the wards crashing often, though.

[normalforce]

Lol about the black market.

My issue with your proposal is that it takes away the possibilty of people having their own stores, or any possible game ideas that might be associated with that. Plus I really love my retainers.

Another thing that will happen (and one reason I don't care for AHs), is people all crowding around one particuliar NPC, which isn't very market-like to me. It also takes away the shop experience that some of us like.

I think your solution is good, but it won't address certain things.

How to let people have their stores and keep it organized, I admit that un's a biggie.

Not to veer too far off topic, but I've seen you mention stores and having retainer's eventually level up to offer more options before and I rather like that idea. (It reminds me of Recettear!) Have you given much thought about how you would advance your retainer? A few of the initial ideas that I had could be easily exploited, so other than going on a few quests for your retainer, I don't know what else could be done.

[Eldaena]

I posted a topic on this sometime ago but I'll copy paste what I put here and see what you think:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...e-Market-Wards

Ideas to help the Market Wards


1) - Keep the wards but expanded them to include buying straight from item search list but maybe add an extra 5% delivery tax to encourage you to actually go into the ward to pick the item up. This would also help remove a little bit of gill from the economy.

2) - Add filter options and a better layout for the item search lists. Filters for thing like rank, class and so on and then sort them in order high to low and so on.

3) - Also show +1, +2 +3 items in the search list and so on.

4) - Add price history please. To make it so it is more difficult to exploit could you make it so you can see price history for last 20 sold, average price over the week, month, 3 months and so on. That should make it easy to spot if someone is trying to jack the price up or crash it on an item I think.

5) - Add an Item Seek Search so you can have look and see what items people are looking for and sell them if I have them. I also want my retainers to be able to Seek for items even if I currently don't have any of them. It seems silly that you can only seek items that you already have as most of the time you wouldn't be able seeking them if you had them. I believe the Item Seek List will be a big help to give the Wards a much needed boost.

6) - When you search for an item and venture into the wards maybe you could have a different coloured star above the person who is selling the item the cheapest.

7) - Maybe also link all the wards from the other cities. This could help ease congestion in Ul'dah's wards and maybe help stop them crashing so much.

8) - Allow retainers to be called at camps so we can drop off gear or grab something we have stored.

9) - Maybe you could have MW counters in the camps and hamlets, where you could buy items straight from the list but you would have to pay a 15% delivery tax on the item.

Anyone got any more ideas to add to these other than add an AH ^^

If you like the ideas or have any new ones then post them and show your support, if you don't like them then flame me to death ^^

*Casts Barfira*

I'm against a price history because I do not think people should be tied down by such a constraint,, but your other ideas are interesting otherwise and reflect some other people's opinions. I don't think it's necessary to be able to summon retainers and access marketwards from other areas, but if there is a taxation on it I think it would be fair.

[Eldaena]

Not to veer too far off topic, but I've seen you mention stores and having retainer's eventually level up to offer more options before and I rather like that idea. (It reminds me of Recettear!) Have you given much thought about how you would advance your retainer? A few of the initial ideas that I had could be easily exploited, so other than going on a few quests for your retainer, I don't know what else could be done.

Well currently retainers do have a level on them, don't they? Maybe by the more items you sell, how much gil you make, or how many people visit the retainer could help you rank it up? It could benefit you by being able to sell more items and maybe reduce the price of stalls for you or something?