Fixing the "ghost town" problem.

[Kazimir]

Make market wards global and i think we'd see a lot more people hanging out in Gridania and Limsa Lominsa. Not everyone hangs out in Ul'dah because they always find it most fun.

I agree that adds to the problem. But even if they were global people will still remain in Uldah because there is no benefit in going anywhere else. It's easier to have a one-stop travel hub. Opening up a new city like Ishgard will help with the situation a lot. It will need it's own retainer wards and be the central focus for other things like story line missions and areas for it to be the new hub however.

Even with that though we still need some sort of system that benefits us going into other areas. Not only would it make the game more fun while leveling up by adding more content to do, it will spread people out more. Affiliating ourselves with a city-state and gaining unique perks for doing so would be a great addition to the game I believe.

[Tonka]

As long as there are market wards, most people will level around the area where everything is most convenient. Global AH would be a great start.

[Kirith]

I like the ideas proposed here more: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-made-for-ME!)

[Lamhirh]

bring back Conquest and Signets. NPCs and other features are only available in cities in the highest position

and like in FFXI, most weill associate wit one country, and all others will be left with totally nothing<_<

[Kilta_Firelotus]

i kinda wish ppl get over their need over a central hub. all it will do is as the game ages ppl will no longer sell in the starter nations. and sorry if i make alts or after a while reroll ima be peeved if im going to have a hard time locating gear/weapons. Sorry there is a long term effect of a "jeuno" that ppl don't see. In ffxi ppl only sold to jeuno as the years when by. And being a level 5 and having to run their for gear was so annoying and time consuming. I'm happy we don;t have to buy spells that was another headache. Sorry but huntoing weeks/mnths for gear at various levels got old and annoying. As was getting kicked because of lacking gear. Even though they got told there was none to be had. I suggest thinking about the long term before you suggest an idea for a market ward change.

[Jinko]

Conquest would be great, I don't want to see a system that stops me being able to play with others from different nations though, so something simple like getting signet from a player controlled area would be great.

I also agree with global AH. (or a worse case scenario, globally linked market wards, although they would need to keep the damn things from crashing first)

[Kilta_Firelotus]

whats wrong with global Market wards? their just an interactive AH and they can add floors if they get full. part of the reason they crash is too many ppl placing retainers ontop of each other. Too much info in too snall of a space.

[Veasna]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Population-Fix

I think they need to make changes not only to the market wards, but to the cities - like the ideas this OP suggests.
There's more than one reason people gather in U'dah, so I don't think changing the market wards alone will fix it.

True not alone, it's just a minor help in fixing the problem. Personally i'd be way more in Gridania if i didn't have to manage my retainers in Ul'dah.

[Daniel_Hiroshi]

The Uldah trend for me started with the November update. Soloing Cobs and Dobs combined with leve linking Broken Water made Thalan the place to be, for battlecraft and thus the central market was born there too. While I like your ideas about having boons in your home city, I feel other things need to be done, before we can even start to think about breaking the Uldah as a main and only city problem (if you call it a problem, a few of my ls members with far more MMO experience than me have said, one city always naturallly becomes the main city). He are just a few thing I would like to see happen:

Economy:

The wards need to have a request button. An option to purchase an item from a ward in another city. I think you would still get regional differences in price, but the request option will mean if you set up your retainer in Limsa, it is not lost to the Uldah/Gridania players. I think without this you cannot break the central market, because players will feel their wares will not be viewed by enough people and in some cases anyone. It is also my belief that this should be the final evolution of the wards to being a fully functional market system. The only additions I would make then would be to how they look.

Battlecraft:

If I had wrote this a few months ago I would have said to nerf the cobs and dobs in some way and I am glad this has been done. They are still an affective grind for a duo (not nearly as affective as linking but affective).

The other thing which still remains is the linking. I think two things need to occur here. Firstly camps need to be brought into line with each other. Each camp should have a set number of leves, I would personally put this number at 8, maybe 10, but I feel 10 would make linking a bit too rare. At later leves each city should have a power leveling camp and a marks/credits camp. This would make it so certain camps are no longer better than others. Also if players would looking for credits/marks, they would travel to each areas camp to get them, same for players looking for power leveling. Finally and this is contraversial, to make this system work, would require the end to fail partying. At each reset the completed/failed leves in your journal are taken away and you start again afresh. For me the arugement of losing 1k of marks is not enough, it is pretty easy to get the marks you need just by ranking up to 50 and doing leves on easy difficulty solo, or with friends. The end of fail parties would make players travel to the best camp for their party. They would go where the links where, which brings me back to having 8 leves per camp. With this number you be able to get good links, whereas with 10 leves you would make linking a rarish event.

In conclusion these are two things I would try to do to spread the playerbase out. However, it is worth noting that right now the playerbase is low and maybe other cities will be brought more into the game by a population increase. Also the opening of Ishgard could cause a redistribution of the population as well. I do however, feel tht the ability to request items from retainers in other cities wards is essential. Without it there will always be a desire to have a centralised market place, through fear of of wares not being viewed by potential buyers.