Over Crowded Wards (A Serious Discussion, Not a Plea for an AH)

[Neko_Yanagi]

Today I went to check on my retainers, and decided to set one up in the mender's ward for repairs. Now I understand that some of the more popular sections of the wards fill up (battlecraft, middle tailor, armorsmith) but MENDER'S WARD should not be one of them. The mender's ward is packed with retainers either selling stuff that they can't sell in other sections because they are too full, or retainers that are empty but are still taking up a spot in the ward. Now I know that the problem may lie with the players. We should put our retainers in the correct section and and take responsible action with our retainers and disband them when they are no longer selling anything. But dev's you must understand... WE ARE LAZY. Most people just set up the retainers and leave them for extended periods of time unattended. And it has become too convenient to do so.

I have come to appreciate the way the markets were, when they crashed and folks would have to go and set up their retainers again. It was a hassle, but an effective form of crowd control the the markets. Now I'm not proposing we go back to that... but there must be another effective way to control the over crowding of the markets. Maybe reset them once a week, on a specific day (like every Monday). Or maybe dev's can find a way to automatically dismiss retainers that sell out of items.

Another part of the problem (which i must admit, I contribute to it) is that many players are running out of inventory space on retainers and themselves, and are forced to create more characters and more retainers. this, in turn, does not help the over-crowded markets! Now people have 4, 6, 8, 10 retainers filling up the markets. Some are even used as placeholders for other retainers... it's getting a bit out of control. I'm not sure how to remedy this situation, because as I have said, I am part of the problem in this instance. I'm sure down the line, dev's will have plans they want to implement for helping with inventory space. But until then we're going to have this problem. And you will continue to have idiots screaming that they want an Auction House instead just fixing what we have.

This was a new innovative way to have player's sell their items, so I understand why it has some issues, and why it's not perfect. And I sincerely believe that an Auction House is NOT the solution. The markets are fantastic, and they have improved drastically, but they still have a lot of bugs that need to be worked out. And I would hope that player's will contribute with ideas and suggestions, and not just "markets suck, we need Auction House." And maybe, (a huge maybe) players can try being more responsible with their retainers. I personally will make an effort and only have 2 retainers up at a time, no matter how many characters I have, to reduce over crowding. I know my small effort is nothing, but if more players did so, it would make a difference.

I know not many players will see this thread, as I have decided to post it in the correct area of the forums and no one really checks this section >.> But I am hoping maybe a dev will respond so that is will gain more exposure. Thanks.

[Amineri]

I agree that a big part of the problem is not having that monthly charge deterrent. Combined with the limitations on retainer bazaar size and inventory overcrowding, it is 100% natural that people are creating 8 character (with 16 retainers per account). With the FFXIV retail box as cheap as it is, it would not surprise me that many people still playing have 2 or even three accounts, thus resulting in each such active player crowding the markets with 32 or 48 retainers.

Here are the intrinsic problems that I see with the system as it stands:

• Inventory space (with 1 character and two retainers) is limited to 300, but there are currently over 4500 items in the game. If various HQ levels are included, that total shoots up to 18,000 items. This creates a LOT of inventory pressure.
• With only two retainers, only 20 bazaar slots are available. This creates tremendous opportunity cost issues when choosing what to sell. This leads to each player choosing to sell only those items that maximize their profit.

I believe that inventory pressure was included as mechanism to increase buying and selling in the economy. For example, I do a lot of weaving and tanning. Storing all of the hemp, cotton, canvas, velveteen, linen, sheepskin, dodoskin, buffalo, toad, nakki, and boar dyes is just too prohibitive. Now, that wouldn't bother me if these were available to buy, as I'd just buy them occasionally, but this doesn't happen. And it doesn't happen because dye is too cheap to make. This leads to the situation where either the seller chooses to sell something else with higher profit, or the seller has to significantly mark up the price of the dye to represent the limited bazaar space. However, marking prices in this manner results in reduced sales, since the price is artificially inflated. So most low-cost items end up sold to an NPC, and the items remain unavailable on the market. It's a terrible situation.

Now, simply increasing inventory sizes to allow players to store everything that they need will NOT address the problem. If people could store everything that they want, participation in the economy would drop substantially. To a large degree, this is already happening with the "power players" keeping stables of 32 or 48 (or more!) retainers. 48 retainers allows storage of 4800 items, essentially allowing one of every item in the game.

And remember, that those 32 or 48 retainers are all going to be clogging the markets (and the Ul'dah markets, at that).

I think that a likely first step is to adjust the way that the bazaar functions. Currently there is no incentive to sell goods with low profits.

I can't claim to have THE answer, but one thought occurs to me. Perhaps adjust the number of items that can be sold in a retainer's bazaar in the following way: Always at minimum 10 items can be listed. However, allow more items to be listed if the price per item is lower. Perhaps always allow more items to be added to the bazaar until the total selling value is 1 million gil, to toss out a number.

[Alzelia]

Snip.

Very well thought out!! I agree completely

[Eveille]

Repost from a post I made in the GD forum (wasn't aware there was a market forum yet, I'm just now exploring forums x.x), that thread has 45 pages though and a lot more suggestions:

I like the market wards, what they could do is just make it possible to buy straight from the search screen so that players don't have to walk into the actual wards and crash them with people everywhere. However, I also like the option of being able to walk into the wards if I so chose and just browse around like people used to do in Rolanberry in XI. In fact, I think the market wards are a pretty good combo of rolanberry bazaars and AH, it was a pretty cool idea. Just add a buy option from the search screen.

Also having to be next to a bazaar to buy something is annoying, especially when I see something at a camp and the person starts a leve and runs off @_@. I get that it's realistic, but it's one of those realisms that I feel is unnecessary.

[zoozoo]

Just had this problem tonight, and was going to make a thread about it until i saw this one.

It's very frustrating to change wards 6 or 7 times just to summon your retainer. It's even more frustrating when you have a certain item for sale, and can't sell in the appropriate ward because it's full. And when you look around at all the retainers, they're either empty or selling something completely unrelated to the ward they're in.

My solution: Make retainers despawn if they are empty, or if a retainer's bazaar prices haven't been changed in over 5 days (kind of like posting to to an AH, it would have a limit on how long the auction remains up). This way, if someone is just turtling the markets with overpriced goods, they'll at least have to refresh the bazaar every so often if they're serious about selling.

If this is a problem right now, i'd hate to see what it would become if FFXIV became more popular. This needs to get fixed, and soon. Not being able to access your retainer, or sell goods in the appropriate ward is such a huge play deterrent.

[Roaran]

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

Still think this is the best solution.

Just set up a single ward, with an NPC to talk to and search for items, then you just summon the Retainer you want to buy from to you. Just like when you summon your own retainer, noone needs to see the summoned retainer besides you.

Wish more people would go to this thread and post, wondering if it's just too hard too understand, but the CURRENT market wards system, even with they link the wards and spread out the population will be a pain in the ass for the devs for years, and it will not last.

[Chezen]

I think despawning after selling out of items or a set period (I think 3 days is good) would help a lot.

[Fuzball]

I'm on Selbina, and every single market ward is full in Ul'dah! I've tried at least twice a day to summon a retainer in each of the wards for quite some time now... When I first saw the patch notes I was glad that they got on top of the issue before it got too annoying, but not being able to sell stuff is much more annoying than occasional crashes!

I'd seriously rather have the markets crash at least once a day so that a spot would open up--with the current stability of the market areas, I don't think I'll get a spot besides stands until someone either cancels their free account or gets kicked from the game ;_;

Anyone else having this problem to this degree??

[lun4tic]

Here's a screenshot of the issue:



Note that one person has about a dozen shops set up, all with similar names. I doubt any single person can have so much to sell, but there's really no room for anybody else.

[Fuzball]

Here's a screenshot of the issue:



Note that one person has about a dozen shops set up, all with similar names. I doubt any single person can have so much to sell, but there's really no room for anybody else.

I remember seeing them before the patch, but haven't noticed them since the view distance of retainers is now a centi-yalm in diameter ._.

Does that count as abuse, or just an overindulgence of mithra?

As much as I loved the idea of being able to have a more interactive method of selling and buying items--this is just not working... and it's only getting worse as they try to salvage the idea!! It's been said more than a million times here--and for good reason--that a menu-based market is the only solution to handle the volume of players in any MMO

Props for trying though, SE...

( note that i said menu-based market... not AH ... :3 ... )