Market Wards vs AH

[AriNahoki]

Market Wards allow players to "Seek Items" making it superior to an AH.

The only thing mising is a "Seeking Item" search window, which you could use to search what items retainers are auto-buying before you sit down to craft.

I fully agree with this. I think that the dev team should definitely be looking to expand the 'seeking items' feature of the bazaars.

As of right now, where we are able to search all market wards and see what people are selling, the seeking item feature is useless because no one is going to be looking at random bazaars. However, if it was changed so there was an organized window showing who's seeking what, it would really push market wards above the AH.

On the other topics, I am not having a huge problem with not having a search history. While part of me misses mindlessly just putting items up on the AH at the search history price, I feel like the system we have now is more flexible in what prices it is allowing.

If the item I'm trying to sell has a lot of sellers, I can see their prices and try to get to a low point, and if in a day it doesn't sell, I can keep lowering it.

And in the other case, if there is no sellers, you can set the price at what you want and see if people bite. Giving a more realistic feel of supply and demand. And again if it doesn't sell just lower it.

You currently get 20 selling spots, which is more than I can keep filled up, and when we get more retainers that will increase more, so keeping things up and lowing the price isn't any strain on spots.

There has been so much great progress with the bazaar system since it first started as a chaotic mess, I think it would be odd to just completely go in a different direction when it has, for the most part, been working fine from my point of view.

[sasukeuchiha]

I do not see how the wards are superior. Despite what ever one saying i have yet to see one positive side at all to the system.

[Randis]

i like the market wards, i am sure they will get tweaked some more but in general i like em.
i can find what i am searching for and i can also kill time walking around looking at the goods.

What i really would like is a post office so you can send cash and items to others like in FFXI

[Taru_TwoPointO]

Lets not forget the another reason why the Market Wards were chosen by SE and not a normal Auction House..

Auction House botting. Yes, there are auction house bots. They sit in that one single place and bid items at low prices waiting to snag that one item that person wanted to sell for cheap. If it wasn't that, then they would just purchase all of a specific item and raise the price.

I haven't seen this brought up once in this entire 23 pages of discussion. I think this is really one of the main reasons SE has us running around to get our merchandise. Think about it. You cannot in no way shape or form. Code a bot to search and item in the wards, choose the ward, then go to that person with the star on there head to purchase it in its current form.

On top of that. Why do people feel the need to have price histories? That is a large contributor to creating inflation in the economy. Put that item up for what you feel its worth. Their is always checking to see if that item is being sold by someone else and adjusting the your selling price.

I'm all for implementing more features to the wards. But if they create single location where we can just stand there, browse, purchase, and receive the item, it will cause eventually cause rmt to get hold of the economy once again. As well as create huge inflations. This would cause a huge problem in a game where gil is abundant.

[Malakhim]

So I'm probably going to repeat several things due to not having 23 pages of context, but I like the idea behind the market wards. That being said, they definitely need a bit of work in my opinion.

First off, people have been complaining left and right about "copy-pasted terrain", and yet there is no greater offender than the market wards themselves. What we have right now are closed off segments that lack variety on everything save for what kind of floorboards they use, and I think this is a pretty big deal in the immersion department. When I'm in the southern islands in Limsa, it should be an open-air marketplace with maybe a stone fountain in a section, and outcrops from which I can see birds, ships, the sky or the ocean. When at the lotus gardens in Gridania, I should see trees over the different stands and maybe some small animals or something wandering around the ground. I'm not saying stick every retainer in one huge zone, as that would be a lag/dev nightmare, but redesigning the zones themselves might make people a bit more comfortable with shopping there.

Fix the aesthetics of the area, and make people WANT to go there.

[Fensfield]

Above.

Hehe, yeah, I agree a bit, here. The lack of differentiation between different wards didn't bother me too much.. though it would of course be nice, but I was disappointed to discover Ul'dah at least wasn't open air. Gridania's have a nice style going on, though, I think..

But heck yes, I think it'd be lovely if the individual wards were visually different on some level.

[CeeKay]

I learned how the Market Wards worked the last day the server was up. My fifth day playing the game.
I have to say I thought they were pretty cool and just as effective as an ah, with more life involved. Maybe there can be minor tweaks to make it up to par and better.

[Malakhim]

Hey guys, there's this really awesome forum feature that I recently discovered called a "search function".

With it, I was able to pull up a thread that has been active for some time on a relevant topic(namely this one), without having to create another thread about it and thus taking up extra forum space(the other 10 new ones). Technology's awesome.

Seriously though, I have an idea that may seem a bit outlandish, but hear me out.

As I mentioned in an earlier post regarding the MW, I appreciate the idea, however upon further thought, I've come to the conclusion that the MW as I envisioned them were very much dependent on the implementation of companies, and without said companies, the MW idea kind of fizzled out for me.

What I thought of was that once the devs implement companies, they could allocate the Market Wards zones(after some visual sprucing up I mentioned before) to be designated zones for company housing. Each company would be able to promote themselves and their own wares in game using a variety of methods, and within or outside of a company's housing, they would have "company retainers" open up shop to sell whatever items the company deigns to create.

This of course could be supplemented by an external AH that might be open only to certain types of items(for example no crafting materials) that would behave like actual auction houses.

I think this would serve to create a huge sense of community and competition, as well as really give crafters(which I am not) an even bigger role in the game.