Ward's and Auction House(s) Suggestions

[azura84]

There are significant pro's and con's to an auction house system, I appreciate the steps SE has taken in preparing the Retainers and their wards but I don't really think it's enough.

The biggest problem with the retainer system currently is the ward capacity, It definitely see why there is a need for a capacity, nobody wants to walk into the wards and be incapable of seeing their own avatar much less being unable to differentiate between retainer names and having to cycle through thousands. No. No, the capacity in itself is a good idea, the problem is the capacity does not or rather will not suffice for a global market of players especially when more returning members and future PS3 members start to play due to the future added content. The wards will not suffice, they just won't be able to hold all of the retainers that players will NEED in any single city of wards. And even if the game was more equal populated (since Ul'dah is obviously a central to almost every server) players won't feel a need to travel to the other less populated cities if they don't expect to see decent search hits on their desired items. Especially if Anima is still of any importance as it is now, but I am deviating.

If SE wants their market to succeed they need to change some thing(s), these are but a few of my own suggestions:

1.) Place individual auction houses within the wards, say.. in the middle of each.
This idea is my favorite, because you can still make the retainers valuable by giving them a much lower tax as compared to using the auction houses. Also what I mean by individual auction houses, is to create an auction house for each ward that deals only with the items of that ward's jurisdiction.
--- An AH system that integrates History AND current retainer values.

2.) Revamp the Market Ward sizes, increase the actual graphic size of each ward to be capable of maintaining larger numbers of retainers to suite the needs of it's players.

3.) Cross the different cities of Wards so that each city enters the same Worldly Retainer Market, this could somewhat equalize the games populous as well. (this still won't effect the amount of retainers you can put into a single ward unless you make them larger or apply some form of Market/Auction House)

[Quoc]

Instead of looking into a ward for an item we need, why not just type in the item's name into a "search" box? It's alot more conventional than figuring out the item's category then trusting the seller to post it in the right section.

[Colt47]

My vote would be to make the retainers like body doubles for player run shops and just replace the wards with a proper AH system interface. Innovation is a good thing, but this instanced marketing ward with hundreds of avatars piled onto each other is just painful to go through and utilize, especially as a new player.

Actually, another idea would be to make the retainers more like servants that help people in the field get their items back to town faster. Imagine being able to call a retainer out in the field, hand him goods for the AH, and then let him shuttle them back to the main cities AH to be peddled off for a small fee. Now that would be something to write home about.

However, as short term changes I do agree with you Azura. Having cross city wards with higher capacities would be a step in the right direction, as a unified ward will allow players to more easily get what they need when they need it regardless of location.

Edit: Btw, is there a section for ingame suggestions or do people just kind of use this one for it?