One Ward To Rule Them All ...

[Gath]

So that we are clear.



I apologize for being a hard-ass in regards to this, but we already have over a dozen threads on those subjects. This thread is not intended to re-argue the points made in those other threads.

As much as I agree on there are a whole lot of other threads about this, it still pertains to the MW system and how it WILL die off when they put the AH in, there's no argument, it's just the facts.

[Chezen]

I'd rather the wards work as three seperate markets. It makes for three possible places for a market-oriented player to be successful, opening up more opportunity.

Yes, the game needs the player base to make it work.

It's not that your idea is a bad one, I think it's cute. But the way it's set up has more potential I think. It's just a matter of getting the population to spread out... which is kind of the problem, no? lol. The reason I go to Uldah is because I can't buy or sell anywhere else.

[Anima]

Good Job Sorel! Finally someone who is not full of himself, repeating arguments, and all negative! I like the things you mentioned and thought of some myself XD like Retainer being in stalls only, circling position, etc. But I never really liked posting in forums, especially in this EN forum, unless I liked the topic :P Keep it going, and Good Job to Hamster too! I've seen her trying to make a lot of cool suggestions for the game to improve!

EDIT: Trading Union would be cool, but I do agree we need to do something about it that will spread people to Limsa and Grid. Like maybe special privileges if you're in a city? I.E Grid would give benefits to CRP, BOT, TAN, LNC, ARC Items, etc.

[trinta]

It's cute how people create public threads, and then try to dictate who can post in them and what can be said.

This is just one step closer to a unified AH, it's like all the inconvenience of a Market Ward, but without the inconvenience of three different cities. I ask, why?

[Sorel]

I'd rather the wards work as three seperate markets. It makes for three possible places for a market-oriented player to be successful, opening up more opportunity.

Yes, the game needs the player base to make it work.

It's not that your idea is a bad one, I think it's cute. But the way it's set up has more potential I think. It's just a matter of getting the population to spread out... which is kind of the problem, no? lol. The reason I go to Uldah is because I can't buy or sell anywhere else.

The population will be hard pressed to spread out to other markets while the Ul'dah Market Ward still holds the majority of goods. Short of the Development Team shutting it down, there is very little that will move commerce away from Ul'dah of it's own accord.

Making the Unified Market Ward eliminates Ul'dah's commerce advantage by leveling the commerce playing field. It's also very scalable. When Ishgard and Sharlayan come online they won't need their own separate ward systems and databases.

[AuctionGirl]

The best idea... is to actually not have wards at all, but retainers that you summons from the bells only, and when you search (from any atheryte, or summon bell) you can purchase items directly from there and its delivered to the retainer of choice and you can pull the item off the retainer.

All worlds can be connected with this retainer thing, and this prevents a "maximum" amount of players in a certain area, while fulfilling the feel of an AH, reducing the time needed to search, market wards crashing, and more...

[Alhanelem]

As much as I like the idea, a single ward for everything is completely impractical, it would increase the stress on the server drastically.

[Sorel]

The best idea... is to actually not have wards at all, but retainers that you summons from the bells only, and when you search (from any atheryte, or summon bell) you can purchase items directly from there and its delivered to the retainer of choice and you can pull the item off the retainer.

All worlds can be connected with this retainer thing, and this prevents a "maximum" amount of players in a certain area, while fulfilling the feel of an AH, reducing the time needed to search, market wards crashing, and more...

Fair enough. But you realize at that point, we would just be making Retainers into bank tellers with customized skins for each player. At that point, for the sake of efficiency, we'd be even more better off just having one NPC that performs the Retainer duties for all the players. This logic only leads us further and further down to an EVE online system of spreadsheets and transactions, instead of shoppers and vendors.

Server issues are a valid point, though. A massive cluster would be required to pull the vision in the OP off.

[_C-a-e-r-i-t-h_]

Aether Ward does have a nice ring to it, and I don't think it's being used yet in MTG. Existing in an alternate dimension doesn't sound bad either, but I'm not 100% on that. But it wouldn't be without precedent. FFXI was loaded with alternate dimensions.

Alternately, I was thinking it could be called Burt Ward.

Actually having the zone be inside the aetheryte crystal is kind of mind-bending though because it implies that all aetheryte crystals can hold worlds, which means Eorzea could be inside an aetheryte crystal and all our characters are really just retainers that became self-aware, and there's a real world outside of Eorzea with real characters (i.e. The Twelve Guardians). The metaphysical implications are vast. Like FFX dreams of the Fayth vast. We may not want to open up that door.

Well, there is that. I was thinking that because it's organized in concentric rings of variable size, it isn't likely to exist in any man-made structure. Though when I said inside the dark aetheryte, I didn't mean inside the crystal itself but inside the aether that crystal's attuned to/made out of. Like, timeless space. Or a quick teleport to the TARDIS.

That would mean that your retainer can somehow make multiple copies of himself. If retainers are real NPCs, that wouldn't be possible. We'd have to make them holograms or magical constructs of the dark aetheryte crystal in order for that to work I think. That may be taking things a bit too far out.

Not exactly. It's not that the retainer is copied or moves, they'd actually stay in one absolute position the whole time. The individual "areas" would be more like a quantum tunnel that only goes from stall to stall depending on what type of stall it is. So a shopper who enters the "hat area" actually enters the "hat quantum tunnel" that teleports him from hat stall to hat stall but from his perspective it's all just one long hallway.

I think just allowing players to have their retainers sell whatever they want in whatever area they want without restriction would be OK. The only requirement is that the player has to assign the retainer to a stall in one area, for system administration purposes.

I've always had an issue with this. I'm fine with letting people sell whatever, but unless you only sell one type of thing, some of the stuff you're selling is going to be overlooked by people looking to buy it. Like, if you're selling 5 hats and 5 stacks of dyed cloth, you can be in the right area for one or the other but not both; shoppers can find your hats, but they'll never see your cloth. The only way around it currently is to have a different retainer for each item type, but this is a non-solution.

Hence my quantum suggestion. But that might be a little too Doctor Who.