Auction House vs Wards

[Preypacer]

Thank you SE for keeping the markets wards. Glad that SE stood it's ground about market wards and not switching to an AH. This is not FFXI. If you want an AH take your arse back to XI.

I'm not sure what's more impressive... The frequency with which I see this "logic" of "if it's in FFXI it shouldn't be in XIV" come up. Or the fact that people actually think it's in any way a solid line of argument.

Considering that the AH system in XI actually works and has for as long as the game's been running with the only major change to it being all the nations' AH's being linked... Meanwhile, the ward system has presented nothing but issue on top of issue since launch (hence why they've had to continuously work on them and are giving them an overhaul for 2.0).

Also, if you're so against something in XI being in XIV then, in all sincerity, how the hell are you even playing this game?

Rhoegadyn -> Galka
Miqo'te -> Mithra
Elezen -> Elvaan
Lalafell -> Taru
Hume -> Hyur

Goblins in XIV are identical to the ones in XI
Qiqirn in XIV are identical to the ones in XI
Raptors in XIV are identical to the ones in XI
Notorious Monsters that drop rare gear? Yep! XI's got those too!
Job specific Artifact Armor obtained from chests/coffers and/or from NM-type boss fights? Yep, XI had that too
Real-time travel by ferry? Yep, XI had the Mhuara <-> Selbina ferry.

The list goes on.

Don't want XIV to be anything like XI? Too late! You're swimming in similarities every minute you're logged in.

So really, if you're so emotionally against "anything from XI being in XIV", then it boggles the mind how you can even stand getting past the damn character select screen.

It's like running into the ocean and then screaming that you don't want to get wet.

Or maybe it's just that you don't have a good argument against an AH in lieu of the MW system, but feel the need to say something anyway?

It further boggles my mind how people are bringing up suggestions for things to be "like in GW2", have brought up suggestions from WoW, and Rift, and TOR and other MMOs and that's perfectly fine. All MMOs that are their own universes and their own themes, with their own specific gameplay design and structure... that's a-okay. Bring those up all day long and no one will flinch. Bring up something from a previous title in the series that just happened to also be a MMO and just happened to have a successful run - like say, FFXI - and holy crap, people start foaming at the mouth.

TL;DR - An AH similar to FFXI's would be a better option than an incaration of XIV's MW system because XI's AH has demonstrably worked in that game for almost a decade. XIV's MW system has only persisted in frustrating, despite multiple attempts to improve and streamline it - some of those improvements, incidentally, being more in line with XI's AH than anything else.

[Alhanelem]

Borrowing ideas from other games that were successful isn't inherently bad, but in this case I feel people are just blinded by the term "AH" and they could say "we're putting AH in the game' but just rename the market wards and people wouldn't know the difference.

From the buyer's perspective, buying items works just like any auction house. This part is fine outside of needing some polish (sort options, collapsing identical items by the same seller, some other stuff ppl have mentioned)
The selling end needs considerably more work- but this can be done.

People complain about the markets being speerated, yes, that's true but that's going to be changed. It's a waste of time to complain about things that are already planned to be fixed.

[Orophin]

Another thing I want to see SE make work in their market system is the seeking for an item part. They implemented it, but pretty badly. First, you had to actually HAVE one of the items that you were looking to buy in your inventory. (kinda defeats the purpose huh?) Also, I don't think there was anything that reflected in the search that came later that someone was looking for something, but I think people stopped bothering using it by that point that even if it did appear I've never seen it.

A friend of mine is playing GW2 and he mentioned that they have a system like this in their AH where you can pick an item out of their list (maybe their AH list is populated from their database and will show every item available?) and make a request for it with a specific price, and people can interact with that directly through the AH.

[Breladine]

As long as the wards are centralized then I don't particularly care, but if they are centralizing them .. I keep asking myself "what's the point?" -- as soon as you centralize the wards/retainers, you may as well scrap the whole thing and set up an Auction House because it's not really much different. I'm not going to go searching through physical people in any ward, I'm going to use the search function and find what I need even if I have to pay a small premium for using the search function. Essentially all I'm doing is using an AH system at that point, so I'd rather they just implement that and be done with it.

[Xerius]

Another big problem with the market wards is an item's visibility. If you don't know exactly what you're looking for, you're probably not going to find it. There's really no way to easily browse the MWs. As long as this is fixed I really don't care whether we get an AH or keep the MW. Although, I do lean towards AH just because I'm more familiar with that style of setup.

[Alhanelem]

Another thing I want to see SE make work in their market system is the seeking for an item part. They implemented it, but pretty badly. First, you had to actually HAVE one of the items that you were looking to buy in your inventory.

That is a fair point. I like the idea of being able to request items, but it doesn't help much when you already have to posess the item before you request it (and you can only request up to the same number that you currently posess).

Like I said before, buying works fine for the most part (as mentioned before, more sorting options would be nice), it's selling that needs the most work.

They could mostly ditch the retainers (I suppose they could appear at the mercantile house while interacting with the same NPC you use to buy items) and instead let people idle in the market to add their personal bazaar in (right now, this doesn't seem to work).

For the most part, if they can cut down on the number of menus I have to go through to sell something, I'll be happy. The buying part already works the way I like it- I don't want bidding, because then I potentially have to either wait hours or pay extra if I want the item right away. But I ALWAYS want it right away.

Another big problem with the market wards is an item's visibility. If you don't know exactly what you're looking for, you're probably not going to find it. There's really no way to easily browse the MWs.

? If you at least know what KIND of item you're looking for, just use the category search, or just type the first few letters of an item name in (e.g. "Mind" gives me all four mind materia).

[Elexia]

Another big problem with the market wards is an item's visibility. If you don't know exactly what you're looking for, you're probably not going to find it. There's really no way to easily browse the MWs. As long as this is fixed I really don't care whether we get an AH or keep the MW. Although, I do lean towards AH just because I'm more familiar with that style of setup.

....

If you know your item is armor, you check in Armorfitters or Tailors Rows. If you know your item is a weapon you check in Battle or Magic which furthers break it down into the classes available.

If you know you're looking for food..well, where do you normally go when you want food? Or ingredients to make food?

[Pyretta_Blaze]

If you go into the mercantile house you don't even have to pick a ward, just type what you are looking for...

[Xerius]

....

If you know your item is armor, you check in Armorfitters or Tailors Rows. If you know your item is a weapon you check in Battle or Magic which furthers break it down into the classes available.

If you know you're looking for food..well, where do you normally go when you want food? Or ingredients to make food?

I get this but there's 3 different levels of tailor's row and their organized into subcategories that to a newer player wouldn't make sense. How's a new player supposed to know whether to buy from the hat section of tailoring or the head section for their botanist? I'm not talking about for the people that have been playing the game for a while. I'm talking about newer player. It may be plain as day to you but when I first came back I found the MWs intimidating when looking for gear.

[Seif]

Right now what matters the most is A) get rid of the retainers as they serve no function whatsoever

B) Re- brand the system as an Auction House to win over the intrest of people who left because of MW
It'll also serve as good advertising when ARR reviews mention that this is indeed fixed from the launch days.

MW as a system is such a stain on XIV's reputation and let's face it. It has been transformed so far from it's original idea that it turned into a disfigured rolanberry ah with much clunkier usability.