How to Decentralize Ul'dah

[Phen]

I think the link/clone wards idea is good as well as making the search function a little more global. Linked markets with the establishment of alliances seems story fit as well as a "linked" economy. Plus the Ul'dahan in me sees prosperous trade as the heart of the alliance yes?

After all, anytime I leave my glorious hometown to head to that stick and tree hovel up north its so inconvenient to have to trot back home to a proper country to grab some spare materials.

[Vesper]

I'd rather them spend less time having to try and create a new AH system, and focus on other aspects of the game that need more attention. Making the market wards so they share one instance is much better then rebuilding an entire AH system.

I like the market wards, I prefer them to auction houses. Yet having an Auction house wouldn't decentralize Ul'dah it would still be an issue.

Techno, at this point the market system needs to be changed drastically. As of right this minute I could go into Uldah wards on Besaid keep trying to summon a retainer and not be able to do it at all. Its so populated, people have started 'saving' spots for later in the wards by leaving retainers up or putting all their alts retainers up and flooding the wards. Its absolutely ridiculous, the system is a failure.

Whats your next suggestion? Increase the retainer cap in the area? Okay we already did that, so now it takes even longer for retainers to load, once PS3 hits the wards will be a cluster **** and no one will be able to place retainers at all, its hard enough to TRY and do it now on populated servers. The problem here is they keep tweaking the market wards when they should just add in a linked AH system with a better search feature.

As far as world chat goes, sure they can add in a world chat. But we all know whats going to happen. Asshats spamming the crap out of it for trade, RMT spamming gold selling websites and morons arguing in chat, in the end it will be a cesspool of idiots like most MMOs, most people will turn it off. The search feature just needs to be tweaked and the ability to add custom messages for Loooking for members as well as looking for group.

[SilvertearRen]

We just need an AH that's connected to all three cities. Problem solved. A world chat that you can toggle and filter would be great as well.

Easy solution: Implement an NPC delivery service for buying goods in another city. That solves it.

Also, Ul'dah will get decentralized anyway when they open Ishgard.

[Jinko]

Fully support this idea, one massive market ward to encompass all city states would be ideal IMO (assuming they could keep it stable) and agree with the world chat option as well, we need something to help assist in making parties until they decide to update the party search function.

[Technolust]

Techno, at this point the market system needs to be changed drastically. As of right this minute I could go into Uldah wards on Besaid keep trying to summon a retainer and not be able to do it at all. Its so populated, people have started 'saving' spots for later in the wards by leaving retainers up or putting all their alts retainers up and flooding the wards. Its absolutely ridiculous, the system is a failure.

Whats your next suggestion? Increase the retainer cap in the area? Okay we already did that, so now it takes even longer for retainers to load, once PS3 hits the wards will be a cluster **** and no one will be able to place retainers at all, its hard enough to TRY and do it now on populated servers. The problem here is they keep tweaking the market wards when they should just add in a linked AH system with a better search feature.

Yes I understand the congestion you speak of, I have issues with it as well. With my OP I'm talking about having 3 separate market wards that are linked. Then the issues of everyone putting their retainers in one cities market wards will hopefully be alleviated. Despite what the popular opinion might think there are a lot of us that would love to make Limsa or Gridiana our port of call.

Linking 3 separate wards would be awesome. Hell you could even set it up insofar as this.

Keep the market wards, link all 3 market wards zones to each other, give people the ability to search through the system with current search system but allow people to buy from the search function and have the item either mailed or dropped into persons inventory.

That would solve a lot of issues people seem to have. It wouldn't scrap the market wards, so people can still access them and store their items.

World chat, yeah their will always be idiots who spam world/trade chat black list is an awesome tool to fix a lot of that.

[Secret_Reeve]

i dont know if this has been pointed out but theres 2 or 3 definate advantages to linking all 3 cities marks

1) allows you to view other cities retainers without having to travel to them first (in some cases only to find it doesnt have what you need)

2) encourages people to place retainers in gridania or LL

3) reduces demand on ul'dah market ward meaning people can actually summon thier retainers there if they wish to.

[Vesper]

Yes I understand the congestion you speak of, I have issues with it as well. With my OP I'm talking about having 3 separate market wards that are linked. Then the issues of everyone putting their retainers in one cities market wards will hopefully be alleviated. Despite what the popular opinion might think there are a lot of us that would love to make Limsa or Gridiana our port of call.

Linking 3 separate wards would be awesome. Hell you could even set it up insofar as this.

Keep the market wards, link all 3 market wards zones to each other, give people the ability to search through the system with current search system but allow people to buy from the search function and have the item either mailed or dropped into persons inventory.

That would solve a lot of issues people seem to have. It wouldn't scrap the market wards, so people can still access them and store their items.

World chat, yeah their will always be idiots who spam world/trade chat black list is an awesome tool to fix a lot of that.

This seems like its just a single step away from being an AH house and at that point, may as well go the distance and make it an auction house. If with an AH people can still use their retainers at bells for storage.

[Technolust]

This seems like its just a single step away from being an AH house and at that point, may as well go the distance and make it an auction house. If with an AH people can still use their retainers at bells for storage.

Honestly if it were that simple to create an Auction House interface they might have already done it. It seems to me that the way this game was coded, did not allow for drastic changes. I've discussed this with other programmers, and some of us have come to the conclusion that SE did not think ahead with coding changes.

My response to your previous post was merely a simpler fix in what SE could do without overhauling the entire market wards/auction house system. Yes the market wards do need to be revamped. Yet it's been beaten to death, my OP is about making stuff easier with the current system.

Thank you for the intelligent discourse! =)

[Karis]

I would prefer the linked market wards over an AH system. Reason being that I don't like the system of bidding and trying not to overpay for an item that an AH would bring. I like the simple listing of items for prices.

The thing is, I wouldn't mind being able to just buy from the item search interface. The walking around to each retainer who has your items is such a waste of time for no good purpose.

[Vesper]

Honestly if it were that simple to create an Auction House interface they might have already done it. It seems to me that the way this game was coded, did not allow for drastic changes. I've discussed this with other programmers, and some of us have come to the conclusion that SE did not think ahead with coding changes.

My response to your previous post was merely a simpler fix in what SE could do without overhauling the entire market wards/auction house system. Yes the market wards do need to be revamped. Yet it's been beaten to death, my OP is about making stuff easier with the current system.

Thank you for the intelligent discourse! =)

Coding... yeah I am not a coder, but the coding in this game has to be an absolute nightmare, everytime they announce a feature that is coming its "but its hard" or "very complicated". Maybe with their next mmo they will finally get this stuff down...

But again I am still pro-auction house, even if it takes 6 months to implement. I standbye my thought that once PS3 launches wards are going to be an even bigger mess, even if people spread out a bit.. Just increasing caps again is going to be no help in the end as wards MAY start crashing again, at the very least the lag will get worse, especially on people who are not running the game great rigs.