We need an AH

[Blarp]

You're exactly right. Things will hopefully come to them from experience.

It should have come to them from experience in XI. RMT ran the economy there for years. SE started making big gil items like O.Kote rare/ex and they had a team dedicated to investigating and banning gold sellers. They used to have huge ban waves. It seems this time around they went with the approach of designing things to directly combat RMT activity, but ignored the fact that if it sucks for gold sellers, it's going to suck even more for legitimate players.

This whole game feels like it was designed and developed in a vacuum where people were sucked into the big groupthink machine. It still boggles my mind how they have a decade of experience and solved problems in XI, yet they still exist in XIV. Where's the forward progress?

[kurokawa]

Market wards are cool, but honestly, Ah would be so much quicker.

Ah would make sense to everyone
Ah would be easy to use
Ah would stimulate the economy
Ah would help me find gear at my level

Go look for low ish level weapons in the markets wards...

Yes, that's right, there aren't any. Why, because it's a pain the arse to buy and sell and at this stage in the game's life, no one can be bothered to work out a good selling price so it's easier to npc and make up your money with leves.

There's no real incentive to sell in the wards unless you're flogging weapons or specific body armor.

I NPC all the basic drops I get, as it's easy.

If we had an AH i'd be able to sell to players.

I don 't have time to sit in a lagfest and exchange crap with my retainer.

Ah makes sense practically, but SE doesn't like the botters, the exploiters, the gilsellers, so we suffer..

But you've heard this one before haven't you....

[CapnBash]

It should have come to them from experience in XI. RMT ran the economy there for years. SE started making big gil items like O.Kote rare/ex and they had a team dedicated to investigating and banning gold sellers. They used to have huge ban waves. It seems this time around they went with the approach of designing things to directly combat RMT activity, but ignored the fact that if it sucks for gold sellers, it's going to suck even more for legitimate players.

This whole game feels like it was designed and developed in a vacuum where people were sucked into the big groupthink machine. It still boggles my mind how they have a decade of experience and solved problems in XI, yet they still exist in XIV. Where's the forward progress?

You're right, but I forgot to add "from this game". The whole group-think thing has really messed this game up. SE should've done a hell of a lot more research before going about things the way they did. It's like they wanted to make the game better than XI, but they didn't realize that XI had some very good things they could have borrowed from the get go. To all of those people bashing WoW and other MMO's, I can agree with you guys that I don't like all of the aspects of those games, but in order to make great games (or anything really) you need to have good references, and MMO's like WoW and etc. have certain things going for it that make them good in some ways, and SE can learn from them to an extent.

[Payadopa]

Because say for example real life is kept in check by profit / competition, granted this takes place to some extent in a video game but there are always those who don't care about making a loss on something just to sell, which then creates an instability in the marketplace.

And said person can undercut for an eternity? That's an aweful business model (unless you get lured into their store by that buying more in the end). Sooner or later that person will be broke. End of story.

[Rizon]

I have already voiced my opinions on this subject before as has almost everyone else ad infinitum. The only person from whom we have not heard is Yoshi-P. He must settle this soon one way or another. Community reps and Devs....if you actually do read these please get a solid commitment from him one way or another and end this endless debate. Maybe even him address the subject Tuesday at the live session.

[Cicatriz]

Market wards, in their current form, still take too long to get basic tasks done compared to the standard AH system. To list items I have to: 1) run to the search function and look up market price; 2) run to the ward I wish to sell in; 3) call retainer; 4) place item in retainer bazaar. That's too much dilly dallying for something so simple, as Tifa would put it.

Same thing for buying - why not make it so we can just buy it from the search rather than have to run to the specific retainer for each item we wish to buy?

I know the new devs are trying to work with what is already in place but this is an integral part of an MMO and needs to not turn players off. Someone should shoot the previous devs for their horribad ideas, especially the whole retainer/market wards nonsense. Hopefully the new devs are working on the servers to allow for more changes to this system.

[Takinagi]

I honestly wonder what the original team was thinking when designing the market wards. The idea itself is stupid comparing it to a auction house. Not to mention right now the wards are mostly full already, can't wait until PS3 Release when no one can get there retainer in any ward.

[Nakiamiie]

No we do not.

Current Marketward Transaction

Enter wards
Search for Item
Find Seller
Go to ward
Pick up Item

The quickest you can do it is approximately 30 seconds. The longest I've ever searched for a specific item is less then 2 minutes.


FFXI > Blind Auction
Run to AH
Search through item lists for item you want
Find item you want (100 Listed)
Check Item History
Bid for item 10% lower then item history:
wait 5 seconds
Fail
Bid for Item 5% lower then item history:
wait 5 seconds
Fail
Bid for item same as last item History:
wait 5 seconds
fail
Re-check Item History, Recent item has been sold since last checked. 15% more then one before it.
Bid for item same price as new last one sold :
wait 5 seconds
Fail
Bid for item 5% more then last one sold:
wait 5 seconds
Success, Item delivered to inventory.


WoW
Go to Auction House.
Filter through items you want. See that everything in your level is posted for prices that are way above your characters possible gold at your level.
Find one that is decent. Bid on it.
Wait 2 days. Lose Bid.
Look again
Find new item. Bid.
wait 4 hours. Win Bid.
Wait hour for item to deliver to mail box.
Find mailbox to pick it up.


Auctions Fail. The only difference between the Marketward and an Auction house is the marketward has no Auction. Blind or Timed.

Now for WoW they do have a buy it now but guess what.

Search for item
Buy It Now
Go to Mailbox
Pick up Item

YOU STILL HAVE TO GO PICK UP THE ITEM.

Ditto on that, no auction house needed! Great post by the way Cairdeas!

[Mahayana]

It should have come to them from experience in XI. RMT ran the economy there for years. SE started making big gil items like O.Kote rare/ex and they had a team dedicated to investigating and banning gold sellers. They used to have huge ban waves. It seems this time around they went with the approach of designing things to directly combat RMT activity, but ignored the fact that if it sucks for gold sellers, it's going to suck even more for legitimate players.

This whole game feels like it was designed and developed in a vacuum where people were sucked into the big groupthink machine. It still boggles my mind how they have a decade of experience and solved problems in XI, yet they still exist in XIV. Where's the forward progress?

I love this post. Its like when you have to plan defense for hackers hacking into a corporate network, you have to also think how it will effect your employee's and your clientele's ease of use for the system. Following the market wards logic, every time you wanted to get on the corporate wireless internet, you would be required to take a full body cavity search before granted access.

I personally would like the see retainers completely gone and in place a bank and just a simple market menu UI using the players real user name. maybe we can leave high dollar items handled in a more secure way but let common resources be sold in the most easy manner possible.

[Seif]

Its the weekend.

I do appreciate the snarkyness of your comment but seriously this isn't some recent issue that suddenly popped up.

This has been a major issue throughout the lifespan of the entire game even before these forums were formed people were asking for it and leaving because the lack of an AH or SE's failure to even promise one.

Those players will not be coming back no matter how they kick the dead horse that is the MW-system.
Those players were not asking for star marked retainers nor weeks devoted for ward loading issues nor ward decoration upgrades.

A lot of players just want an AH that's all there is to it.

Personally I don't understand how SE doesn't see that including this feature would be a great marketing asset as the lack of an AH was mentioned in nearly every review when XIV was released.