Market Wards, enough is enough

[Kilta_Firelotus]

Ideally, what would be best for the economy, and for the future success of the game, in my opinion, would be The market ward system, minus the NPCs, plus a quick and easy menu interface, plus buy orders, plus a comprehensive price history, minus FF11 style AH (placing bids, etc)

I find what we have now easyu. And i take interactive content vs a menue any day. Much like I perfer fable 3s sacurarry over oblivions menu system. Yes i need to walk to each option, but i'm keeping active and interacting as my character. To me it seems you want npc shops. But with little to no traveling to them. Since anything player driven will at somepoint be an inconvienence as no matter how "fast" you get the item via a menu there is still the chance of the gear you want even being there. This was a flaw in ffxi. XD. And is a flaw here too even with crafting classes. Considering a few things...

[Amineri]

Ideally, what would be best for the economy, and for the future success of the game, in my opinion, would be The market ward system, minus the NPCs, plus a quick and easy menu interface, plus buy orders, plus a comprehensive price history, minus FF11 style AH (placing bids, etc)

Renta, I read through that Gamasutra article you posted up. I thought it was a decent read, but it is still one guy's opinion, which doesn't make it right. Two points that I feel he failed to mention were (a) the item equivalent of MIMO (money in-money out) and (b) manupulation of markets to the detriment of the majority of players. He also tended to try and gloss over issues that he didn't want to focus on, such as the following quote:

If we put aside EVE's physically separated markets (which are meaningful within that game due to the risk of travel, but not meaningful in many other games) then the EVE market provides players with perfect information (at least for the items that can be traded on the market itself).

My re-list of Rentahamster's proposals: (please correct me if I misrepresented you)

1. Removal of retainer NPC from transactions, replacing them with menu driven system
2. Addition of buy orders
3. Addition of comprehensive price history

I completely, absolutely 100% agree with item 2. In fact I think it should be the number one priority. Buy orders are already IN the game (something your Gamasutra reviewer failed to mention), but they are currently broken. Yes, I refer to the "seek item" feature.

Let me propose something new regarding "seek item", something inspired by reading about the EVE market. The "sought items" should be added to the search feature, but NOT through a separate sought item tab. Instead, the current hierarchical system to zero in on items should be retained. Once a single item type is called up, both items being sought and items being sold should be listed in the same menu. Show the 10 highest price being sought, and the 10 lowest price being offered. Putting the two together explicitly shows the gap between buyer / seller.

To accommodate HQ items, SE should add another level of branching, allowing searching explicitly for NQ, +1, +2, or +3 items, so that these items are not "shoved off" the buying / selling screen -- each level of HQ will have its own buying / selling screen, and each level of HQ will reach its own price point.

My list of what needs to be fixed with "seek item" / buy orders:

1. Addition of 'seek item' to the item search feature, so that sought items are on par with 'sold items'. (see above for details)
2. Allowing items not currently possessed to be sought.
3. Sought item order should be partially fillable. If I am seeking 100 lightning crystals, another player should be able to sell me 17, and my item seek is then modified to be seeking 83 lightning crystals.
4. Sought items should only require a single bazaar slot instead of the two currently required.

Additional issues I feel need to be addressed:

• Balancing of gil MIMO (essentially addition of gil sinks)
• Balancing of item MIMO (essentially addition of item sinks)

Without the balancing of these two systems the economy will STILL be messed up.

My version of Renta's list, added to, and re-prioritized:

1. Fix Seek Item, thus allowing 'buy orders'
2. Balancing of gil MIMO by introducing gil sinks
3. Balancing of item MIMO by introducing item sinks
4. Addition of comprehensive price history
5. Stabilization of systemic issues (i.e. 'crashing') regarding rendering of NPC retainers (by reorganization of the markets, changing to menu-driven system, reducing poly count on retainers, or some other method)

If people take exception to the above (and I'm sure they will ), please clarify whether you feel an item ON the list shouldn't be there, whether something is missing, or whether you feel the priorities should be different, and why.

[Rentahamster]

I completely, absolutely 100% agree with item 2. In fact I think it should be the number one priority. Buy orders are already IN the game (something your Gamasutra reviewer failed to mention),

Actually, that was mentioned in the article.

I like your elaboration of the buy order system in order to get it to work with the item search. However the method, it needs to be fast, easy, intuitive, and efficient.


As far as the item version of money-in-money-out is concerned, that is a bit of a problem we have here in FF14. EVE Online deals with this problem fairly easily - everyone's stuff gets blown to smithereens so often, you're likely to buy a lot of replacements. Hardly anything is really permanent. Of course, in FF14, we can't just go around blowing everyone's gear up. That would be totally wrong.

Solipse had a comment about item worthlessness a long time ago.

That's not why WoW's economy works.

I detailed it earlier - just adding soulbound items will not help at all. The reason being is that currently, more items are produced than can be consumed. This will always be the case in a game where crafting is a major part of the basic gameplay. There needs to be a reason for items to leave the economy. If people make a thousand crab bows but only 50 of those are bought, then there's a glut in the economy and the items become worthless. Soulbinding items would only remove those 50 from the economy, the other 950 will still be there.

This is the case with literally every single piece of equipment.

The reason why WoW's economy is healthy is NOT because of soulbound items - but rather because of the ability to disenchant gear. When the market becomes glutted with cheap items, enchanters buy up all the cheap items and break them apart for enchanting materials. THAT is the entire reason wow's economy functions. The whole system is a checks-and-balances type system that prevents massive deflation.

If we had some kind of desynth option, or some way to consume items that no one wants, then that might help.

As for gilsinks, I and others have put in a lot of examples in the gil sinks thread

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Curb-Inflation

[Amineri]

I like your elaboration of the buy order system in order to get it to work with the item search. However the method, it needs to be fast, easy, intuitive, and efficient.

Thanks! I keep trying to beat the drum on this, as I believe this one feature is a key foundational piece of the FF14 economy that is missing. It needn't be my proposal, of course ... I'm simply trying to point out one possible implementation and the reasoning behind it.

As far as the item version of money-in-money-out is concerned, that is a bit of a problem we have here in FF14. EVE Online deals with this problem fairly easily - everyone's stuff gets blown to smithereens so often, you're likely to buy a lot of replacements. Hardly anything is really permanent. Of course, in FF14, we can't just go around blowing everyone's gear up. That would be totally wrong.

Solipse had a comment about item worthlessness a long time ago.

If we had some kind of desynth option, or some way to consume items that no one wants, then that might help.

As for gilsinks, I and others have put in a lot of examples in the gil sinks thread

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Curb-Inflation

I think I've seen and contributed to all of those threads already, I think XD. My opinion at this point is that the gil sinks and item sinks (ala de-synthesis or making items into materia or whatever) should be a higher priority than redesigning the UI for the market system. My reasoning is that with the item and gil glut we have now, streamlining the UI won't have any significant effect, since there's such huge supply / demand imbalances.

However, the big unknown factor is just how much design / programming effort it would take on SE's side -- something I can only vaguely guess at, not knowing anything about the back-end architecture. So, it could very well be that a UI change would be a minimal effort -- however, it could just as easily be a monumental undertaking. Not really much more to say in that regard.

[Sorel]

My version of Renta's list, added to, and re-prioritized:

1. Fix Seek Item, thus allowing 'buy orders'
2. Balancing of gil MIMO by introducing gil sinks
3. Balancing of item MIMO by introducing item sinks
4. Addition of comprehensive price history
5. Stabilization of systemic issues (i.e. 'crashing') regarding rendering of NPC retainers (by reorganization of the markets, changing to menu-driven system, reducing poly count on retainers, or some other method)

I think I can be down with this.

As far as the item version of money-in-money-out is concerned, that is a bit of a problem we have here in FF14. EVE Online deals with this problem fairly easily - everyone's stuff gets blown to smithereens so often, you're likely to buy a lot of replacements. Hardly anything is really permanent. Of course, in FF14, we can't just go around blowing everyone's gear up. That would be totally wrong.

If we had some kind of desynth option, or some way to consume items that no one wants, then that might help.

I don't think "item destruction" would be that wrong. We have a durability system. As long as we can bazaar and trade items with less than 100% durability (not sell to NPC), the players can establish their own market for them. Add the ability to desynth those same items, and we have a very organic and effective way of removing items from the economy.

This would give players 4 options when an item is less then 100% durability:

1. Discard the item and buy a new one.
2. Have the item repaired by a PC or NPC.
3. Sell the item to a PC.
4. Desynth the item for raw materials.

Options #1 & #4 removes the item from the economy. Option #3 gives another player an equal opportunity to remove the item from the economy if he so chooses.

The Development Team can also introduce enemies with a set of "Break" skills that can bring an item's durability down to 0 to help accelerate the development of this market.

[Rentahamster]

(b) manupulation of markets to the detriment of the majority of players.

Oh, I forgot to mention that in the comments to that article, he links to 2 more articles he wrote about RMT:

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Simon...ed_Economy.php

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Simon...Your_Money.php

[Amineri]

Oh, I forgot to mention that in the comments to that article, he links to 2 more articles he wrote about RMT:

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Simon...ed_Economy.php

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Simon...Your_Money.php

Thanks for posting those up -- they were good reads. One item I noted was not by the original author, but in the the comments:

Furthermore, EVE does not operate on a 'global' auction house. Items made in location X stay in location X, and cannot be moved unless someone physically moves them there. If you buy an item, it does not magically appear in a mailbox, you have to go get it. If you want it delivered, expect to pay someone to move it for you.

I haven't played EVE, so I can't testify to this, but from the little I know it seems correct. So, if we want to tout EVE as the basis on which to model an MMO economy, should not market localization stay in effect? That is, purchasing items through the search window and having them instantly delivered would be counter to that notion. The item search window tells you where to find an item (or where to sell it once the 'seek item' feature is fixed), but the game still requires SOMEONE to go there.

[Tiraelina]

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Market_guide

Explains it better than I can myself.

[Shai]

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Market_guide

Explains it better than I can myself.

I will ... read it if it isn't abysmally written after I finish a re-read of the Gamastutra article.

Also I agree with Kilta. 1 post out of 2,824 ain't bad.
The time spent walking is often the time spent bidding in XI. Good call.

[SuzakuCMX]

Oh, I thought Amazon.com the game was like setting up your own customized window (NAMEYOURSHOPANDEVERYTHING) from which to buy stuff from the Item Search Counter...so instead of it listing the retainer name and having it pop up with a star, it would instead take you to that shop's interface (selectable templates for this please!) from which to buy stuff (a new menu! Like traditional style FFXIV menus). Keep the selling tax and also have buyable upgrades (like increased shop space, new interface templates, etc.)

And get rid of the retainers and give us an old style vault. Not WoW-like where you have a teller do it, but make it have the tellers up top that can give you info and allow you to buy upgrades (again increased storage!) and then there are vaults in the basement that you have to walk to to open your storage up (If I can teleport my retainer around, why can't the city vaults be linked?)

The problem with changing the storage though is that some items could be lost when transferring from retainers to the new storage :X IT HAS HAPPENED BEFORE SOMEWHERE PROBABLY.

I kinda went off-topic. But I'd like to see semi-personalized shops.