Market Ward concept has failed

[lun4tic]

The market ward concept has failed and requires revision.

There isn't enough space on each row to accommodate everybody's retainers. This leads to monopolizing certain areas of the market as well as extreme disorganization within the market wards, because spots are so rare that people sell whatever they have when they find one.

What purpose do they serve, anymore, anyways? What's the point of perusing the markets when you can easily search for whatever you need and instantly find it? It's a system that combines the search functionality of an auction house with the manual labor of a market. It needs to be one or the other.

[GTKashi]

I came here to say the title of this thread.

I reinstalled the game recently, coming in after having quit soon after release. I made a new character and got him up to 14 in just a few hours. I was feeling pretty good about things. Then I decided "maybe I should go sell some of this stuff I've got so I can buy gear."

Then I got back to town, remembered I needed a retainer, got one, gave her my junk, and set off for the markets. Then I got there, searched through the main things I wanted to price, and tried to set her up in a market. Except I couldn't, presumably because the place was wall to wall NPCs already.

I completely forgot how horrible this was. It's a cute idea in theory, but trying to emulate the realism of a real market and having to go to vendor to vendor, and even with the search function having to go and find them, is nonsense.

Make a decent auction house, then tell everyone they've got two weeks to get their junk out of the market before it all vanishes into the abyss. This market idea needs to be purged with fire. Even the AH in FFXI, as horrible as that was (hello mystery prices and 7 item caps!), was less miserable that this mess.

[Kobushi]

Yup i agree with everything you guys said, i dont' get it how there are people that defend that the market is a good idea, i find myself having to write down the name of 10 items i want to sell and their respective categories because i have to go search for them 1 by 1 to check their price then write down their prices next to the name so i dont forget and then go back to summon my retainer, if there is any space left... then finaly set the the baazar up and leave, not to mention the process of buying for example a full set of gear u have to look for every piece of gear and jump from ward to ward trought a barrage of loading screens till ur actualy done with shooping, it's ridiculous

[Irana]

The market ward was doomed to fail since the first day we started using it.

[Zeeker]

So I quit this game about 4 months ago because I was tired of the disaster they call the Market Wards. I don't give a rats a$$ who thinks that the wards are a good idea! They are TERRIBLE. It takes you, at least, 4 times as long to look for an item you could easily walk up to an AH window and search for in 30 seconds. I beta tested this game last summer and I truely WANT it to succeed, but without a consolidated way of gathering resources/weapons/armor/ect. in a time sensitive way, there is no way I am coming back. I heard that they were dropping the fatigue system, which is also a step in the right direction. I'm still not sure where SE gets off thinking that they have the right to dictate my play time and/or halting my progress in the first place for a game they hope that I will pay for. I played FFXI for 3 1/2 years and I was hoping that they would take the best of that game and up the ante a bit to this one. Bad news it appears, because TERA comes out in September and your chances of winning some of your loyal crowd back will die when it does. I can deal with questing bugs, glitches, and everything else if finding/selling items doesn't seem like such a timesink that I cannot quest. Good luck!

[AamesxDavid]

I'm honestly relieved to not see anyone defending this system. Before the search feature went in, the wards were almost a game-breaking failure. Now they've been mitigated to an annoyance. But still, why do they exist? The very feature that improved them also proved how pointless they are. I'm searching through an auction house-like system anyway to find the item I want, it's organized by price, so I'm obviously going to buy the cheapest one.. why am I marking the retainers, transporting to the ward, finding the NPC, and buying it from them? It would be comically absurd if it wasn't so dreadfully stupid.

Retainers are great storage. They are atrocious zombie merchants. An AH would fix a lot of issues.

[Kio]

... But still, why do they exist? ...

Quote snipped. The direct answer to this, I fear, is that SE's original plans was to motivate people into adding $1 per retainer per running subscription. Mind, we were only intended originally to have one freebee retainer. People were supposed to be motivated to buy additional retainers per ward per city they wanted to sell in. With the option of not, but losing out on game profits by high tax penalties or not being represented in a pocket market. To my knowledge this plan is still going forward after billing is reinstated.

We've been promised numerous times, that if the fan base wanted an auction house so will it be. However, its been a very long time that we've requested it and we still get the same response. I've become to fear that the promise of the auction house is an empty one.

If the reason why the wards are kept on life support is a financial one, I can't say I entirely blame SE for trying. the FF series mmo's have the unique and wonderful feature of centralizing around one character and one subscription. Unlike other MMO's on the market which gather a few extra bucks off people who have to pay to play as an alternative class. There's really was never a need for anyone to buy an extra character in FFXI unless...wait for it... you wanted extra spaces to sell stuff on the auction house. FFXIV is the same way, more or less, except switch out mules for future retainers.

I don't like any bit of it though.

I'm confused as to why people settle for the wards and don't better advocate for an auction system. Because they added a sort of search function and that's good enough? It's all lipstick on a pig to me. The only argument I ever see repeated is players don't want them to focus resources on making something different at a time when other things should be done. But if you look into the development schedule, they have more market ward stuff planned. If they're putting time on the plate for wards anyway, it could just as easily be diverted into an auction house.

[Shyd]

.........It's all lipstick on a pig to me.

Market Wards is one SEXY pig!

[Souljacker]

If the reason why the wards are kept on life support is a financial one, I can't say I entirely blame SE for trying. the FF series mmo's have the unique and wonderful feature of centralizing around one character and one subscription. Unlike other MMO's on the market which gather a few extra bucks off people who have to pay to play as an alternative class. There's really was never a need for anyone to buy an extra character in FFXI unless...wait for it... you wanted extra spaces to sell stuff on the auction house. FFXIV is the same way, more or less, except switch out mules for future retainers.

Well that's not entirely true. There's probably only a handful of lesser mmos that require you to pay for additional characters - mainstream games like WoW and Rift give you ten per realm, 50 realms total or something equally ridiculous. That's a lot of characters for your subscription, and it's actually a lot less limiting than FFXI and XIV if you really take the time to think about it. FFXI could argue a convenience factor with having everything centralized, but it should in no way affect the standard mmo base price and it always felt like a heavy-handed tactic.

If they continue with these plans, I can guarantee you their next reviews will be even worse than the last ones, because when the game is fixed to a point where they CAN charge for it, what they DO charge for it will be in the spotlight. No one is going to understand why SE seems to need to charge 3$ per extra character \ 1$ per retainer when WoW lets you have 50 with your subscription.

[Aeyis]

Well that's not entirely true. There's probably only a handful of lesser mmos that require you to pay for additional characters - mainstream games like WoW and Rift give you ten per realm, 50 realms total or something equally ridiculous. That's a lot of characters for your subscription, and it's actually a lot less limiting than FFXI and XIV if you really take the time to think about it.

As someone who had...8? Maxed level characters in wow during WotLK, i can tell you that its not quite as limitless as youd think.

Why? Because all of those chars i mentioned save 1 after all different classes. >.>
Those classes have also been almost every spec imagineable, even changing things like only a few points..which really hurts you monetary gain.

FFXIV may have little available in terms of quantity of chars, but you can do A LOT more with a single character then in any 'mainstream' mmos ive played.

Actually, most games beat WoW in that aspect, seeing as how wow doesnt even have character based customizable stats points.

So as far as ''taking a little time to think about it'', take a bit longer to think about it, and youll reach the same conclusion.