Stop "fixing" the MW scrap it

[Wolfie]

Nope. I'm just saying "That's an Auction House. Touch it with hands and see if you want it.", and I did it with the language most of the young and active people like to read because that makes them giggle =)

If you really want an Auction House, you want a Bidding system capable of a "Buy Now" function, remember that. If you still want it then keep this thread up and ask opening your heart for an Auction House to be implemented.
It doesn't give me heat or cold, because it'll always let me buy objects from the players.
It's just the fact of not trying to suggest to better a new system we already have and instead substitute it with an Auction House that pisses me off. Gives me the idea that you guys are too close-minded with this Auction House without thinking about how the Market Wards could be better and substitute the Auction House.

Try at least to fix something that has potential, instead of destroying it and replace with something that everybody has seen but functional. Who knows, you might be able to create another Buy-Sell standard!

Dude, there is no fixing a car with square wheels. There is no compromise. You can't have a car with square-yet-slightly-rounded wheels. You need to put round wheels on it.

[Prevbean]

Honestly anyone who is against having an Auction House is a giant fanboy period............

Its friggen simple only blind cultist fanboys that would eat a turd made by SE would enjoy something that is so ass backwards as what they have now.

You people are hilarioussssssssssss

[Coldfire]

Dude, there is no fixing a car with square wheels. There is no compromise. You can't have a car with square-yet-slightly-rounded wheels. You need to put round wheels on it.

You are so wrong!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwgvjTDgFxM

[Renshi]

Dude, there is no fixing a car with square wheels. There is no compromise. You can't have a car with square-yet-slightly-rounded wheels. You need to put round wheels on it.

The fact is that there are no squared wheels, but wooden wheels with a motorbike engine. Just fix that and you'll have your new car, instead of a generic car you had for like 12+ years.

[Wolfie]

The fact is that there are no squared wheels, but wooden wheels with a motorbike engine. Just fix that and you'll have your new car, instead of a generic car you had for like 12+ years.

Ok, I'm pretty sure you're either too stubborn or too uneducated to understand my explanations of what a fundamental flaw is and why it can't be fixed. Optimizing the code will only do so much.

[Renshi]

Ok, I'm pretty sure you're either too stubborn or too uneducated to understand my explanations of what a fundamental flaw is and why it can't be fixed. Optimizing the code will only do so much.

When suggesting for a game put the coding aside, as it is something only the Dev team is going to worry about.
Not optimizing the code. Optimizing the concept.

[Wolfie]

When suggesting for a game put the coding aside, as it is something only the Dev team is going to worry about.
Not optimizing the code. Optimizing the concept.

Optimizing the concept IS getting rid of physical retainers. That's the design flaw that's causing the problems with MW. No amount of re-arranging retainers or coming up with new names or zones or organizational structures is going to fix it. Will you ever get this through your thick skull?

[Kiroh]

And to this day (I have heard this argument since release) I have never seen a compelling argument against AHs. It's ALWAYS either "It keepz da RMTz away" (it doesn't, as I've said a hundred times before, RMT will exist in ANY GAME THAT MAKES THEM A PROFIT), or it's "Do not like, Do not want, Moar wards plox", which is not an argument, it's an opinion.

There is NO GOOD REASON to not have an Auction House in the game. It's more convenient, easier to use, easier on the servers and is already tested and proven in a previous FF game. Doing away with the Auction House for a logistically inferior alternative in the name of uniqueness is the most ridiculous thing SE has done in this game.

[Renshi]

Optimizing the concept IS getting rid of physical retainers. That's the design flaw that's causing the problems with MW. No amount of re-arranging retainers or coming up with new names or zones or organizational structures is going to fix it. Will you ever get this through your thick skull?

So if they weren't physically there the concept would not be flawed. Why so?
As I can see it, it only takes player's position and bazaar content as a weightful thing to care about. Please help me getting that into my thick skull =)

[Wolfie]

So if they weren't physically there the concept would not be flawed. Why so?
As I can see it, it only takes player's position and bazaar content as a weightful thing to care about. Please help me getting that into my thick skull =)

MW servers right now have to handle all of this:

Player data (graphical information, actions used, position, and all player information)
Retainer data(graphical information, position, full inventory)
Zone data and zoning
Transactions

A MW server that only has to deal with text has to handle the following:

Retainer data (inventory only)
Transactions

The difference between the two is that the former has to transfer 10-100 times the data between itself and a client compared to the latter. Consequently, the former can only handle a few hundred concurrent users and retainers, while the latter can handle in the tens of thousands. The system is buckling under a few hundred users; there is no way this system is going to work when/if this game becomes more popular and servers start seeing populations in the thousands.

Adding more machines will increase the cost of maintenance, increase downtime and start up time in case of outage, and increase programming complexity because software gets more complex naturally the more machines that it needs to run on. These are scalability and stability issues.

Aside from performance issues, there are usability issues (like organization). The ward names are merely suggestions of where to place a retainer, and in no way enforce any kind of organization; they server almost no purpose. You cannot force retainers to sell only what items their current ward allow, because the vast majority of people sell multiple kinds of items and there are not enough retainers to go around (and if you increase the retainer limit, you run into the issues above with stability and scalability). SE's plan to kick out retainers based on arbitrary rules is mediocre at best. In the best case scenario, you kick out a retainer that has no items for sale and piss someone off because he/she lost their spot in the ward. Worst case scenario, you kick out a retainer that still has items for sale. This plan fails to address what happens when a ward becomes full and no retainer is with an empty inventory.

When you stop rendering the retainers, all organization will be done at the point of sale via the interface. Retainers become more like names for shops, similar to how Amazon.com has user-made shops, as does Neopets -- and they work well. Sellers simply dump their items in the shop (or to use FFXIV nomenclature, retainers) and open the shop (and possibly set up a shop message). Any sort of "browsing" that you think you might lose by removing physical retainers can be reconstructed using a menu interface (i.e. when you browse to the category "weaving goods", you are presented with a list of all shops that carry weaving goods).

An interface to buy directly from retainers in their current form would help usability and organization a lot, yes. But it does nothing to solve the issues of scalability and stability.

In summary: physical retainers present organization and hardware challenges, but everything they do now can be replicated in a menu interface.