Stop "fixing" the MW scrap it

[HayaHime]

I like Market wards, it's more better for me than the AH. I can sell 10 items per retainer that's mean more gil's for me, and if we have AH it will be like the old one in FFXI or similar to it with 7~10 slots no more!

[Viridiana]

I like Market wards, it's more better for me than the AH. I can sell 10 items per retainer that's mean more gil's for me, and if we have AH it will be like the old one in FFXI or similar to it with 7~10 slots no more!

Who says it would be like XI's AH?

[Viridiana]

Hmm. . . I just tried to count the number of retainers in our server's Battlecraft. I figure since Battlecraft is full, then (retainers in battlecraft) x (nuber of wards) should = (maximum number of retainers). Walking very slowly, and erring on the side of caution if I wasn't sure I counted a retainer yet, I counted 181 retainers. Even rounding up to 200, that only allow 3,800 retainers across all wards, or 38,000 items being sold, total, per server. This also means that if the population ever goes above ~1.9k per server, some people won't be able to set retainers at all.

Yes, I know they're about to raise the maximum, but that just (A) pushes the numbers up, and (B) re-introduces MW crashes.

[AlexiaKidd]

People need to be careful what they are asking for in this thread, alot are screaming for an Auction House but I don't think they actually mean they want a system involving blind bidding or timed auctions. I believe what they mean is they want a menu driven system for buying and selling items, like an expanded version of the Item search feature but the ability to buy straight from the menu without visiting the wards and finding the retainer.

If the devs keep seeing "we want an AH" they may well think we want blind bidding and timed auctions and implement that instead. Of course I could be completely wrong and people actually want that but I get the feeling that I am correct in my assumption.

[Frisque]

What would be the justification of having retainers if there were no market wards?

These jolly zombies exist to hold and sell your crap. IIRC the idea was to mimic the bazaars of XI without gumming up areas outside/within the cities and to allow you to sell your crap overnight without staying logged in. They were given there own collection of zones so prevent the game from crashing (read: wards crash, game does not)

So what do you propose? It wouldn't make much sense to keep the retainers if we're selling things through a market counter/auction house. But if square removes the retainers, the playerbase will rage even harder because that's 110 slots of precious inventory nuked.

My proposal would be give us MORE options, not less. Let the ones who want to buy from the counter at a slightly increased tax. Let the people who want to "play" the wards play them (btw, if you have ever gone to buy gear/weapon/items from a retainer and while you were there said "oh look, this retainers has a _____ for cheap. I'll pick that up too, sucka!" then you have "played" the wards).

By adding MORE options instead of nuking them you tend to make more people happy. Just sayin...

[Mortikhan]

Some want to see the MWs scrapped others want to see if SE can make it work. Maybe a compromise would be in order. I can see and agree with the point that having multiple retainers per character would be an issue for the server to handle as well as it just being silly overall to have a tax for items simply because people are forced to put them in a separate ward because of space constraints or they want to sell different items from different fields. However, I also see the "shopping around" theory being plausible as well since the original system was implemented to be more based on what someone was willing to pay rather than price comparing like an AH. If you did not like what someone was selling an item for you could shop around for a better price. It also made it virtually impossible for people to gouge players and control the MWs.

On to a possible solution. Link the 3 current MWs. Remove additional retainers (ie. one per character) and turn the additional retainer into a safe with 200 slots. Make the retainer have 0 storage slots but a 20 slot bazaar. Minimize or remove the tax for items being from different wards. Add a minimal tax (1-3%) for shipping costs from other cities where a persons retainer might be posted. Have quests in game that allow you to "upgrade" both your retainer and safe space (maybe 5 quests each to increase retainer slots by 2 each quest and safe space by 20 each quest). Simplify the retainer interface by giving access to both your personal inventory and your safe inventory.

[Averix]

If they would like to keep the current system in place I think the easiest way to make it more fun/convenient is to add a far more advanced function. By this I mean (If you ever played EVE you know what I mean.) making the search button far more advanced, then making it possible to place "orders". This system will allow people to make gil simply by shopping around and traveling. When you place a buy order you simply set the time limit and add in some extra money as incentive for another player to deliver it to your home/retainer where you pick it up. This will make items more competitive and also make a great marketing tool since each area will have completely different market values (I think this is what they were aiming for), while at the same time adding another "job" people can pick-up to make gil.

Obviously it is far more complex but I think you will get the basic idea of it. This won't fix many of the issues that have been listed but it at the very least will add a layer of game-play while at the same time adding a simple option for those that don't want to bother with browsing retainers to simply pay for another guy to deliver the said item for the said price.

This will give a purpose to having the physical retainer placed somewhere. If you don't want to jump from retainer to retainer, zone to zone, trying to find the best price/item then you don't have to. Simply pay someone else to do it for you and have it delivered. Again, this is not a broad band-aid to the current issues, simply an idea that will help or be more entertaining with a specific problem.

[AlexiaKidd]

I posted a topic on this sometime ago but I'll copy paste what I put here and see what you think:

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

Ideas to help the Market Wards


1) - Keep the wards but expanded them to include buying straight from item search list but maybe add an extra 5% delivery tax to encourage you to actually go into the ward to pick the item up. This would also help remove a little bit of gill from the economy.

2) - Add filter options and a better layout for the item search lists. Filters for thing like rank, class and so on and then sort them in order high to low and so on.

3) - Also show +1, +2 +3 items in the search list and so on.

4) - Add price history please. To make it so it is more difficult to exploit could you make it so you can see price history for last 20 sold, average price over the week, month, 3 months and so on. That should make it easy to spot if someone is trying to jack the price up or crash it on an item I think.

5) - Add an Item Seek Search so you can have look and see what items people are looking for and sell them if I have them. I also want my retainers to be able to Seek for items even if I currently don't have any of them. It seems silly that you can only seek items that you already have as most of the time you wouldn't be able seeking them if you had them. I believe the Item Seek List will be a big help to give the Wards a much needed boost.

6) - When you search for an item and venture into the wards maybe you could have a different coloured star above the person who is selling the item the cheapest.

7) - Maybe also link all the wards from the other cities. This could help ease congestion in Ul'dah's wards and maybe help stop them crashing so much.

8) - Allow retainers to be called at camps so we can drop off gear or grab something we have stored.

9) - Maybe you could have MW counters in the camps and hamlets, where you could buy items straight from the list but you would have to pay a 15% delivery tax on the item.

Anyone got any more ideas to add to these other than add an AH ^^

If you like the ideas or have any new ones then post them and show your support, if you don't like them then flame me to death ^^

*Casts Barfira*

[Viridiana]

I posted a topic on this sometime ago but I'll copy paste what I put here and see what you think:

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

Ideas to help the Market Wards


1) - Keep the wards but expanded them to include buying straight from item search list but maybe add an extra 5% delivery tax to encourage you to actually go into the ward to pick the item up. This would also help remove a little bit of gill from the economy.

2) - Add filter options and a better layout for the item search lists. Filters for thing like rank, class and so on and then sort them in order high to low and so on.

3) - Also show +1, +2 +3 items in the search list and so on.

4) - Add price history please. To make it so it is more difficult to exploit could you make it so you can see price history for last 20 sold, average price over the week, month, 3 months and so on. That should make it easy to spot if someone is trying to jack the price up or crash it on an item I think.

5) - Add an Item Seek Search so you can have look and see what items people are looking for and sell them if I have them. I also want my retainers to be able to Seek for items even if I currently don't have any of them. It seems silly that you can only seek items that you already have as most of the time you wouldn't be able seeking them if you had them. I believe the Item Seek List will be a big help to give the Wards a much needed boost.

6) - When you search for an item and venture into the wards maybe you could have a different coloured star above the person who is selling the item the cheapest.

7) - Maybe also link all the wards from the other cities. This could help ease congestion in Ul'dah's wards and maybe help stop them crashing so much.

8) - Allow retainers to be called at camps so we can drop off gear or grab something we have stored.

9) - Maybe you could have MW counters in the camps and hamlets, where you could buy items straight from the list but you would have to pay a 15% delivery tax on the item.

Anyone got any more ideas to add to these other than add an AH ^^

If you like the ideas or have any new ones then post them and show your support, if you don't like them then flame me to death ^^

*Casts Barfira*

Just a few comments. . .

1) I'm not sure this by itself is enough to solve much, but combined with #7, I think it would really help.

3) I would add to this the ability to see all the items in a search, not just the cheapest 20. Showing which ones are HQ doesn't help if none of them show up on the cheap list.

Other than that, though, not much to comment on. I'm still worried it'll be impossible for them to render that many NPCs without the wards crashing often, though.

[Eldaena]

I posted a topic on this sometime ago but I'll copy paste what I put here and see what you think:

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

Ideas to help the Market Wards


1) - Keep the wards but expanded them to include buying straight from item search list but maybe add an extra 5% delivery tax to encourage you to actually go into the ward to pick the item up. This would also help remove a little bit of gill from the economy.

2) - Add filter options and a better layout for the item search lists. Filters for thing like rank, class and so on and then sort them in order high to low and so on.

3) - Also show +1, +2 +3 items in the search list and so on.

4) - Add price history please. To make it so it is more difficult to exploit could you make it so you can see price history for last 20 sold, average price over the week, month, 3 months and so on. That should make it easy to spot if someone is trying to jack the price up or crash it on an item I think.

5) - Add an Item Seek Search so you can have look and see what items people are looking for and sell them if I have them. I also want my retainers to be able to Seek for items even if I currently don't have any of them. It seems silly that you can only seek items that you already have as most of the time you wouldn't be able seeking them if you had them. I believe the Item Seek List will be a big help to give the Wards a much needed boost.

6) - When you search for an item and venture into the wards maybe you could have a different coloured star above the person who is selling the item the cheapest.

7) - Maybe also link all the wards from the other cities. This could help ease congestion in Ul'dah's wards and maybe help stop them crashing so much.

8) - Allow retainers to be called at camps so we can drop off gear or grab something we have stored.

9) - Maybe you could have MW counters in the camps and hamlets, where you could buy items straight from the list but you would have to pay a 15% delivery tax on the item.

Anyone got any more ideas to add to these other than add an AH ^^

If you like the ideas or have any new ones then post them and show your support, if you don't like them then flame me to death ^^

*Casts Barfira*

I'm against a price history because I do not think people should be tied down by such a constraint,, but your other ideas are interesting otherwise and reflect some other people's opinions. I don't think it's necessary to be able to summon retainers and access marketwards from other areas, but if there is a taxation on it I think it would be fair.