We need an AH

[Chezen]

The reason I haven't been making things to sell has far more to do with the crafting system game than the wards. Also, there can't be that many new players, who would normally be making low level gear.

Price history will make no difference to those who don't bother to follow it, or will exploit it, which in turn will make it more or less pointless.

While some reviews did mention it, no review ever pinned the game's fail on the MW. As for new players, I've no doubt that some will react in favor of an AH style, and some will not, like any group of people. We were ALL new players at one time, most of us have likely been here since before the item search was made.

Yet again Yoshi-P, I can only put forth my voice that I would like to see the MW work like they were intended. Few of the pioneers of invention got it right the first time. But whatever the decision, I know you will do what you think is best.

[Krin]

Price history will make no difference to those who don't bother to follow it, or will exploit it, which in turn will make it more or less pointless.

In response, yes and no. If 20 people are selling Lightning Crystals at 5,000 gil* a piece and someone posts a stack of 20 at 500 gil a piece, then the market will naturally correct itself. If one of the 20 people are serious market players, they will be checking on the prices of Lightning Crystals (among other things) regularly, note someone making a fire sell, buy out that person's stock, and then turn around and add the 20 crystals to their own stock at 5,000 gil a piece.

If that doesn't happen, then someone else posting a new listing of Lightning Crystals will have the incentive to do the same before posting their own at 5,000 gil. Even if no one buys it out, most people will gravitate towards the middle. You won't see someone magically post their stack of Lightning Crystals at 450 gil a piece.

Unless I spot a race to the bottom, I can generally assume that an in-demand item will sell if it's in the lower 25% of the price spread currently available. Hence, in the interest of making as much gil as possible, I need to gauge demand and determine if I need to be the cheapest, or cheap enough to come up the cheapest within the next 24 hours. However, spotting a declining market requires more than just staring at the 20 cheapest listings, it requires the entirety of everyone selling an item.

I don't need price histories, I just need the ability to manage my retainer, monitor prices, and quickly adjust my current prices such that it takes less than an entire night and a notebook to properly market a single bazaar's worth of wares.

Price histories are icing on the cake, but like I said, you can generally see trends just from the price spread. Then again, you need to be able to order things by when the retainer started selling in addition to from cheapest to most expensive.

These sorts of things very quickly, and naturally, occur to most people of mild intelligence within a month of starting to try to sell items in any sort of MMO economy. You don't necessarily need someone to tell you what items to sell.

I like that selling is a lot more work than Auctioneer averaging out the prices and undercutting by 10% while I wander off to make a sandwich. The problem is, that it's so much work, it raises the minimum amount of payoff I require to put time into it. This skews the Market Ward system up to higher value items and stops the desire to sell Sheepskin Halter Tops or whatever to others, which cuts back on the overall volume of the in-game economy.

The final leap, and you can research this yourself, is that the more volume in the overall economy, the more resistant to manipulation and meaningless price swings the economy becomes.

Most of us sellers don't want an AH, though we wouldn't mind some of it's convenience features. To be fair, I can see how in the interest of the forbidden, thread-hijacking, "i"-word, it has it's pluses. It's just that the MW's aren't quite scaling like they thought they would.

I love the MW's original concept. When I originally read about it, I imagined browsing for a piece of armor by seeing the retainer's model it, having a favorite retainer to go to because they always had the metals I wanted at reasonable prices, or perhaps finding a retainer always buying the logs I was gathering.

In reality, wards are full, no one "browses", I can't tell you of any retainers that I seek out specifically and shop on a regular basis, and I've yet to use or see someone use the "Seek Item" feature of Bazaars**. In those respects, the MW has failed it's original intentions. Hence, it needs to be deeply reworked.

EDIT: O.O; I think I ended up agreeing with you. Lol. The "yes and no" part was more in your comment on people using extra information for exploits and everyone else just ignoring it. :-)

* This is a completely arbitrary value devoid of any basis in reality.
** It could be that you only see people seeking what you have on you, so perhaps I just don't know how this works.

[Ava]

The reason I haven't been making things to sell has far more to do with the crafting system game than the wards. Also, there can't be that many new players, who would normally be making low level gear.

Not sure if I'm reading you right, but are you saying since we don't see many new players that we shouldn't worry about these systems, which are part of the reason we don't see new players? Most of the people I try introducing to the game quit because of one of the following:

- No mailbox
- Market Wards are too difficult to use
- Repairing is expensive and you cannot repair to 100% without a crafter
- Cannot find parties easily
- Guildleve system promotes unfun playstyles

At the top of this list I'd say it's mailbox/wards/repairs. Getting your upgrades shouldn't be difficult. Getting the gil to get your upgrades should be the difficult part. Funny thing is, at the moment it's completely the other way around.

[akisato]

It would be completely pointless to have the npc repair to 100%. If your using it for yourself then ok but if you plan to sell it you'll never be able to match of a crafter's price unless you plan to always sell at a loss.

[Seif]

No we do not.

Current Marketward Transaction

Enter wards
Search for Item
Find Seller
Go to ward
Pick up Item

The quickest you can do it is approximately 30 seconds. The longest I've ever searched for a specific item is less then 2 minutes.


FFXI > Blind Auction
Run to AH
Search through item lists for item you want
Find item you want (100 Listed)
Check Item History
Bid for item 10% lower then item history:
wait 5 seconds
Fail
Bid for Item 5% lower then item history:
wait 5 seconds
Fail
Bid for item same as last item History:
wait 5 seconds
fail
Re-check Item History, Recent item has been sold since last checked. 15% more then one before it.
Bid for item same price as new last one sold :
wait 5 seconds
Fail
Bid for item 5% more then last one sold:
wait 5 seconds
Success, Item delivered to inventory.


WoW
Go to Auction House.
Filter through items you want. See that everything in your level is posted for prices that are way above your characters possible gold at your level.
Find one that is decent. Bid on it.
Wait 2 days. Lose Bid.
Look again
Find new item. Bid.
wait 4 hours. Win Bid.
Wait hour for item to deliver to mail box.
Find mailbox to pick it up.


Auctions Fail. The only difference between the Marketward and an Auction house is the marketward has no Auction. Blind or Timed.

Now for WoW they do have a buy it now but guess what.

Search for item
Buy It Now
Go to Mailbox
Pick up Item

YOU STILL HAVE TO GO PICK UP THE ITEM.

FFXI AH description fail--->pointless post.

[akisato]

FFXI AH description fail--->pointless post.

Guess you where one of the lucky ones who guessed right on the 1st try evertime. I remember times where there were no item up for what the price history had posted.

[TheVedis]

Guess you where one of the lucky ones who guessed right on the 1st try evertime. I remember times where there were no item up for what the price history had posted.

no kidding, even if you do guess right on the first try.....it still took time to do everything(including finding the item in the menus) so even with the "no failed bids" it took a bit of time

[Aenarion]

Price history will make no difference to those who don't bother to follow it, or will exploit it, which in turn will make it more or less pointless.

depends on how it's implemented.

In EVE, they keep market history entries for up to one whole year, including stats such as daily volume, high/low, median price etc. Hard to manipulate the history there for quick gains :P

[Seif]

no kidding, even if you do guess right on the first try.....it still took time to do everything(including finding the item in the menus) so even with the "no failed bids" it took a bit of time

This prevents items from having completely "set" prices while giving the economy room to breathe. But I do agree that the UI could have been designed better and I'm sure many were hoping that this evolution of the AH and the removal of the strict number of selling slots would happen in XIV. Nobody foresaw that they'd take this massive step backwards and only bother to do the lesser used cheaper to implement bazaar system that isn't any less "copied from XI" than a useful AH would be.

In fact XI had one of the first AH's in MMO games period.

It's time to stop pretending that the players will ever embrace this new system because it's not an unique feature nor is it bringing in any new players because it exists.

[Gennosuke]

This prevents items from having completely "set" prices while giving the economy room to breathe. But I do agree that the UI could have been designed better and I'm sure many were hoping that this evolution of the AH and the removal of the strict number of selling slots would happen in XIV. Nobody foresaw that they'd take this massive step backwards and only bother to do the lesser used cheaper to implement bazaar system that isn't any less "copied from XI" than a useful AH would be.

In fact XI had one of the first AH's in MMO games period.

It's time to stop pretending that the players will ever embrace this new system because it's not an unique feature nor is it bringing in any new players because it exists.

Agreed.. I just find it funny when some people try to dig up shortcomings of AH in the aim of defending MW when MW is an obvious pure fail to the masses and is far from competent.
Some people just love to argue for the sake of arguing, simple as that.