Another Market Ward post..

[Altena]

Not going to bother doing a search for this, even though I know this will have been posted before - because the more market ward complaints / spam on this forum - the more likely it will actually get seen and fixed.

Let me begin by saying the Mercantile Houses are a great addition (from patch 1.22), and are certainly a step forward in the right direction - along with the search function.

However I would like to stress a few already known, but major flaws in the system. Some of these will not be a simple fix and I understand the issues may have something to do with the poorly written 1.xx code in regards to the market system, however I am going to list my personal concerns with this anyway.

Not user friendly

- Once purchasing an item, the game kicks you out of the search feature, ie. forcing you to look the item up once more. This is a pain when purchasing multiple items of the same thing.

This may be difficult to improve in the current 1.xx coding, or servers, or whatever - I dunno, I'm no programmer or server expert, but it is both frustrating and time consuming.

- The UI lags and refreshes slowly.

Once again, I know UI overhaul in general has been mentioned to be improved come 2.0, and possibly impossible to do at the current state but thought it was worth flagging it.

Population & Economy

- Gridania and Limsa wards are still ignored by 90% of the server population

Let me just start off and say - the new mercuntile house is a huge improvement. Finally people who get stuck with having to put their retainers in Gridania and Limsa have a small chance to sell something. Although this chance remains small.

The item search feature should be merged into one. If you search for an item in the Ul'dah mercuntile house, all of the items in Gridania should also be shown in the list. As it stands - very few people actually bother to check all 3 mercuntile houses (I am guilty of checking only Ul'dah, as it saves time). Merge the search function of the 3 cities and most of the problems with the wards will be gone.

- Due to Ul'dah's population, every market ward is full.

A possible fix to this would be allow 1 retainer per person per city in the wards - ie. 1 player cannot have 2x retainers in Ul'dah wards. Also increase the limit on items in a retainer's bazaar.

- People overpricing items so their empty retainers do not get kicked out ie. losing their spot in the wards

Quite a simple solution to this one (from what I can tell). If a retainer does not sell a single item, or has no activity (any bazaar adjustment) within lets say 72hrs, they will be kicked from the wards. This will remove any retainers with overpriced items, no sales, no activity (just waste of space in other words).

The reason for this post was I am currently standing in Tanner's Ward (checking on my retainer that I had to purchase stall time for), in front of 3x retainers with *very* similar names, modelling full dream attire - with nothing in their wards aside from these dream pieces at capped price. This is just one of the many examples of what is going on - and it is everywhere.

The biggest, and worst problem with the current market ward system are these empty "waste of space" retainers with nothing buyable in their bazaar.

I, like a lot of players are extremely frustrated with these issues, and it would be a huge improvement to the market. You tried a unique idea, it didn't work, so ditch it or fix it.

End rant.