Repopulating Gridania and Limsa Lominsa (how can we spread out?)

[DeadRiser]

Market wards is the biggest problem and also Ul'dah being the center between Mor Dhona, La Noscea, and the Black Shroud. I'm sick of Ul'dah. I miss Limsa but seeing it so empty at times takes me back to January... when no one played

[Overkill9000]

No. I've played various games with not only a global chat but a fully functioning LFG system/Group Finder and they have very little issues as far as functionality or people congregating in a particular area in order to find others to play with.

- Kurokikaze

yeah. that's fine then. i suppose i might just have a bit of global chat hatred built up. it does have it's benefits. it helps ppl find the RIGHT community for them, (as you said) it can help grps (thought i prefer a good lfg system; sometimes certain aspects of the raid grp are not communicated well thro lfg systems), and it MOST IMPORTANTLY lets ppl blow off steam in some place where no one gives a flying F.

[Starflare]

yeah. that's fine then. i suppose i might just have a bit of global chat hatred built up. it does have it's benefits. it helps ppl find the RIGHT community for them, (as you said) it can help grps (thought i prefer a good lfg system; sometimes certain aspects of the raid grp are not communicated well thro lfg systems), and it MOST IMPORTANTLY lets ppl blow off steam in some place where no one gives a flying F.

1 or the other shouldn't be done. They should both be implemented. And no I don't feel like I'm asking for much. I'm asking for SE to join other MMO companies on delivering the status-quo in respects to functionality and ease of use.

- Kurokikaze

[Overkill9000]

1 or the other shouldn't be done. They should both be implemented. And no I don't feel like I'm asking for much. I'm asking for SE to join other MMO companies on delivering the status-quo in respects to functionality and ease of use.

- Kurokikaze

AMEN then! so long as no one asks for global chat in replace of lfg system; i am more than content. *liked*

[LuciBlack]

I think SE is doing a great job in spreading people to differant citys with the guilds locations.
The new craft changes change this a lot.. sadfully.

But to answer the main question in my own opinion, I would say linking the wards would do it very easily.

[Overkill9000]

But to answer the main question in my own opinion, I would say linking the wards would do it very easily.

the wards are filled with too much lag already. it's like rolanberry fields on crack..... and oh a search function. mind you, i'm all for independent enterprise but they have no benefits that an entrepreneur would gain nor any benefits of a corporation.... (that i was waiting for; i thought that was the premises behind companies >.> stupid me thinking it had anything to do with the economy).... thus, they better make the market wards more market-like or follow suit of their current actions and over-simplifying everything and pleasing the 90% ffxi population.

[Picoman]

I am against Market Ward merger at this point as there may still be other options to try first.

It would be a little scary if Wutai's Ul'dah population were spread equally through Limsa and Grid, the game would feel so empty, just not enough people to go around.

If the servers population was 3x bigger then people would have no choice but to move to another city. The recent increase in the Ul'Dah Market Wards was baffling.

[Viridiana]

There's really no way to fix this and it's not an issue with only FFXIV. Almost all games will have a central player hub including, but not limited to, FFXI (Jueno/Whitegate) and WoW (Org>Shattrath>Dalaran>Org). The devs are doing a good job trying to balance the importance of each city through levequests, grand companies, task board, and guilds but at the end of the day, Ul'dah is the most centralized location and thus will be the most populated.

Airships may change this but for now it's simply common sense to make your base at Ul'dah where it is easiest to reach the other cities from.

Hmm. . . it was less of an issue in WoW. Yes, everyone set Shattrath/Dalaran as their homes, but neither of those places had market access (not counting trade chat). As such, in order to do business, people would take the convenient portals from those cities back to whichever capital city they liked most. I don't recall ever seeing Stormwind or Orgrimmar as deserted as LL and Grid are. Heck, they usually had more people in front of their AHs than LL and Grid have in their entire cities. . .

Yes, transportation is a large part of it. Also important, though, is giving players a reason to frequent multiple cities. They've started this with the leve changes and the grand companies, but they took a step backwards by increasing the retainer limit in Uldah. . .

[SnowTiger]

Being able to search all three from the same place and then buy without entering would too, but then that would just be an auction house.

While I agree with most of your post, I disagree here... There would still be one distinction between a wards based AH and a regular AH...

With an AH, you have to put things up for sale, either as stacks or singles,(or possible inbetween set quantities) and then after so long they get returned...

With a retainer based AH, you would be free to still list things as you now do on your retainers, then just send them to the AH as you normally would set them up in a ward.

The end result being all the best aspects of both an AH and the wards systems. Imo, it would be much better than either the current wards, or any AH I've seen. No wasting a bunch of slots selling items one by one, when you could just put the whole stack on the retainer, and people would be free to buy however many they want, instead of all or none. No more listing tons of stuff, then dealing with a bunch of returned items when someone lists a thousand of them at 1 gil under your price... No more AH related hassles in general.

And on the other side, you wouldn't have to go ward diving and sift through a thousand retainers either, because even with the search,(which is a complete godsend, and SCREW anyone who was opposed to it) it's still kind of a pain when it takes a bit to load all those retainers... Plus merging the wards with a system like that would take care of one of the core issues preventing any chance of all the cities being used.

So yeah, not to derail the topic or anything, but I felt that note was worth pointing out. And yes, that plus a /search would really take care of the problem all together imo, and I think you'd see a much more evenly distributed population.

[CptnGamble]

When looking at the maps of the cities it looks like the aetheryte plazas, market wards, and adventure's guilds are close to one another but it feels like Ul'dah is alot more convenient; plus the repair npc is right outside "The Quicksand" which creates a disadvantage for the other two cities.

I don't know maybe I'm just crazy 'cause I haven't seen anone else bring this up.