Improving the Game Economically

[Amineri]

I think that both the OP (Roaran) and Xenor are making valid points, but looking at different aspects of the economy.

Replying first to the OP:

I agree that something does need to be done to address the concentration of the economy into a single city. Since essentially all servers are seeing this concentration into Ul'dah, it must be systemic in nature, rather than a random process -- otherwise, the chosen concentration point would be different on different servers.

I am concerned about your suggestion to link all of the market areas into one, however. Such a step, once done, cannot effectively be undone. I have seen many, many games that have been severely diminished by 'globalization' of the world.

As you point out, the purpose of a market is to bring buyers and sellers together. Player A has an item, but has little need for it, while Player B has need of the item and is willing to pay gil for it. The purpose of the market system is supposed to be to bring these two players together, so that exchange of gil and items can take place.

In what ways is this current system failing?

1) Only sellers are represented.
The current market system only lets searches (within one city) be performed on items being sold. Thus only the supply side of the economy is represented. Buyers, and the demand side, must play a passive role. Retainers have the option to seek items, yet this function is currently crippled by a host of problems (cannot search, takes two bazaar slots, must have item(s) wish to purchase, must purchase entire stack at once) that, if addressed, could provide sellers some guidance as to what buyers are willing to pay.

2) Bazaar space is limited
Given the rate at which items are obtained through combat drops, gathering, and crafting, and the sheer number of different items in the game, the 20 bazaar slots available through the two retainers means that there is significant opportunity cost in choosing to list one item instead of another. I'm certain that most people that are selling are taking advantage of character slots being currently free of charge to effectively obtain more bazaar selling space, which is a short term solution.

I'm not suggesting that more bazaar space simply be added (although that is an option), but that retainers be made to fulfill better the function that they are supposed to.

3) Retainers are not autonomous enough
In the very beginning, when you obtained your first retainer, you are told that the retainer is there to help you buy and sell, since you are an adventurer, not a shop-keeper. And yet, your retainer seems to need a lot of hand-holding. In so many ways....

Retainers can be summoned from across the world by the ringing of a bell, yet they cannot go, on your direction, to a particular ward, in a particular city, to sell your goods. Instead, you must physically take your character to the particular ward, to the particular city, and lead your retainer by the hand to tell them where to sell. Why is this so? What is the harm in directing your retainer from Limsa, to travel to Gridania in order to sell your goods? Retainers certainly seem capable enough of travelling around the world.

Additionally, items can only be moved from the retainer's inventory to/from the bazaar in the presence of the player. I fail to see why this sort of instruction could not take place via a linkpearl connecting the retainer and the player. Allowing a player to move new items into the bazaar remotely to replace those that have sold, or repricing existing items lower in order to move goods, would help compensate for the limited number of bazaar slots that retainers have.

Finally, retainers only buy and sell passively. Truth be told, purchasing materials is somewhat tedious and problematic. This seems more like the kind of task that should be given to a retainer. Perhaps, as alternative to "seek item" (or in addition), a retainer could be instructed to purchase certain types of items, at a given price or below, but the retainer would not be put into the market wards as a seller/buyer. Instead the retainer would be "roaming the markets" in virtually the same manner as the player would, buying items or searching for them as they come available. This frees the player from the drudgery of continually canvassing the markets, leaving them free to ... well ... be an adventurer. Since retainers can clearly move from city to city, retainers could move from city to city, searching them all (with time), thus providing some economic connection between the cities without that drudgery being forced upon the players.

Functionally, this could work by give the retainer the seek item task, not setting them in the wards, and waiting. After some length of time (and additional cost, to fund the retainers travel and prevent abuses), if the item is available, the retainer would purchase what can be purchased (length of time to prevent abuses and simulate players performing a similar search).

Retainer were supposed to free adventurers from being chained to the markets, but instead are chaining us to the markets themselves.

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In direct response to your points:

Link the Market Wards.

Having diversity of market wards, in the long run, I hope will make a richer and more compelling game world. There are alternatives to linking the market wards via a single NPC, as I have suggested, and hopefully you (and others) will critique them and point out flaws and improvements.

By allowing retainers to travel to sell in distant wards without requiring the player to travel there, and by allowing retainers to travel to purchase items, the markets would be linked. The first allows players to place the retainer where they wish to sell the item, without the player investing the time to travel there. The second allows players to place their retainers more freely where they wish, without the concern that no one will see the goods being sold. Together these could result in retainers being more evenly distributed through the various regional markets.

One stop shopping.

I agree that ease of buying and selling should be improved, but I (personally) dislike the over-simplification of the economy into talking to a single NPC. I believe that reducing the amount of time that the player must spend to buy and sell items is the key point here, not necessarily the time spent between desire to have an item and when the item is in the player's inventory.

If I can spend two minutes directing my retainer to go and seek puk wings (for wing glue, say), then go off and do guild leves, or explore the wilds, and two hours later when I return my retainer has the purchase, I would be pleased.

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In summary, while I agree with the OP's goals, I believe that the same functionality of linking the markets and making buying and selling less time intensive can be done by adding more functionality to the existing retainers.

• Make retainer "Seek Item" work
• Allow placement of retainers without the player traveling to the ward
• Allow players to adjust retainer bazaar remotely via retainer linkpearl
• Allow retainers to purchase items from the wards

[Roaran]

Thanks Amineri for you input .

I am glad we basically agree on what the problems are. I think that as long as we can agree on the problem a solution is inevitable, and the more we discuss it, the best solution can be found.

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Honestly I had not put much thought into the the bazaar seeking, as I rarely if ever see it being used. Though this is most likely, as you point out, because it is extremely unreliable. And from a seeker's perpsective, your solution would quite easily allow players to base themselves in another region, yet still participate in foreign markets. You would obviously still require a search feature to find what items are be sought after. However, outside of this very limited use, I think this may turn into being a very unintuitive feature.

To explain, suppose a rank 30 player, based in Limsa Lominsa, wishes to participate in the Gridania marketplace. Under the proposed system, our retainer would be able to help us. First, let us again suppose the adventurer is seeking an item that is in shorty supply in Limsa, yet is plentiful in Gridania. Through this system, the adventurer can place his retainer all the way in Gridania and start seeking for the item. But, after placing his retainer, the adventurer must wait or either move on to something else before he/she can recieve the wanted items. Even though there may be plenty of items in the bazaars, there is no independent interaction between bazaars; and, in order for the Limsa-based player to get the items they seek, it will require Gridania players to personally sell these items directly to the bazaar which may or may not require the players to first take items out of their bazaars find the seekers bazaar and then finally make the transaction.

A solution to this may be, to allow bazaars to have automatic transactions. Under certain circumstances bazaars would handle trades and transactions themselves. For example, if a bazaar is currently selling an item and another seeking the item; they would then be able to handle the transaction. But it would also require prices either matching, or implementing a new mechanic that allows players to seek items for a certain price range, and I do not see a mechanic like this ever being implemented.

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The Probelm with a single dominant Market in FFXIV

Before moving on, I would remind everyone, the particular problem we are dealing with here, is how best to spread the population out into the various regions. This particular problem has two roots: first the weak overall population encourages players to seek a common hub, and the second, markets are completely inaccessible from different regions. The former can only be solved with increased popularity, and an overall improvement in the game itself. The latter, however, can be fixed through a myriad of methods. Although, it may be said, that the latter may influence the former if done properly.

Also, in the future, Ishguard may become they new hub of popularity for players. This would mean a desertion of Ul'dah and the other regions completely, as the market would then move to Ishguard (assuming there is a market ward there).

This particular problem affects two groups of players in particular. Newer players and players playing in other regions. Newer players are the most uniformed player, and it is highly likely, in the current situation, that they will not choose Ul'dah as their starting location. Secondly, if the market place moves entirely away from the starting cities to Ishguard, a new player would most likely not be able to participate in a viable marketplace for a very long time. While newer players are unknowingly placing themselves at a disadvantage, there are some players who do so knowingly. These players like to play in the Black Shroud & La Noscea for the most part, and rarely make the long journey to Ul'dah for supplies. Aside from limiting their economic participation, it also places a unnecessary burden on these players. In addition, I don't believe Square-Enix developed equal amounts of content in each zone, just for only one zone to become so dominant. The coalescing of players also places severe pressure on server stability as well. Thus, from a developer and player stand point, it is better to fix this problem.

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I am concerned about your suggestion to link all of the market areas into one, however. Such a step, once done, cannot effectively be undone. I have seen many, many games that have been severely diminished by 'globalization' of the world.

I do agree with you on this one. Once done, a linking of the market wards would probably never ever be undone, as its convenience would be too hard to part with. For a very long time I shared your exact sentiments. I see the FFXIV economy being one of the most interesting of all online games right now, and it at least has very good potential. I also believed that linking the market wards should not be done or even considered until major means of transportation have been implemented. I still do hold this sentiment to a degree, I am not necessarily in a rush to link the wards. If there were no means of transportation coming, however, it would be almost required for the markets to be linked.

Yet, I have now come to the conclusion that an eventual linking of the markets should take place. I do not come to this conclusion lightly, as I hope you can see I have put a great amount of thought into this subject. By linking the market wards, certain aspects of a dynamic ecnonomy would be eliminated. Although most of these aspects in mind would arguably be more profound with better transportation, they currently are not being employed to any great degree. But, the main point is this: The economy and market system must serve the game, not vice versa, and that linking the market wards would, by helping to alleviate the problems I outlined above, would help lead to a better game.

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Finding the best method to improve the Markets.

I don't assume to have the best ideas, far from it in fact. I am just looking at the most visible problems, and giving suggestions. I believe that while linking the market wards is important, it may be more important to improve the Market Wards system first. I'll outline what we have as major problems so far:

• Placing Retainers
• Moving to each Retainer to Buy
• Unable to see what items are being sought after.
• Market Crashes

These are structural problems within the ward system itself. As I look at these, the best idea that comes to mind is the one I had suggested. Maybe the exact implementation is not best. But a single point to reference all bazaars for items would eliminate the need for players to place retainers in specific wards, and would remove the need for players to move to each retainer to buy the items. A mechanic to search for seeker's items would still need to be implemented. But the bazaar reference system would still be able to handle this. But the most important reason for my suggestion is this: as the game popularity increases. It becomes obvious how bad the market crashes might become. Already there are caps on certain market locations that prevent some retainers from being used effectively. If there is a 30% increase in population, there is no chance for the market wards to hold these retainers. Thus this problem only serves to show how unsustainable the market wards are in the future. It will always be a thorn in the side of the developers that must be continually addressed. This very problem may eventually force the developers to link the market wards, just to distribute the retainers more evenly across the other markets as well. Thus a system that is capable of only referencing the Retainers would be far more effecient, and cause far fewer technicaly problems for the developers.

[Jinko]

Amineri and Roaran you have some great idea and its nice to see two people discussing idea's politely.

The problem I see is that what you are suggesting would require a lot of work on the developers part which is fine for the long term but they need to do something soon (before PS3 release).

FWIW we asked many times in beta that retainers be allowed to do our shopping, similar to how you suggested, ie tell retainer to look for item between the price of X and X, I guess we can assume it wasn't considered (mind you that was when Tanaka was leading the game) and as I said the amount of programming and variables to consider would be mind boggling I would imagine.

I do like the idea that you can intrust a retainer to go to a different city, this however brings up a few questions, assuming we send a retainer from Ul'dah to Gridania would this mean we couldn't summon the retainer for 30 mins (ie the length of the journey) or would they have their own Anima :P??

I'm not really a fan of waiting for things, say for example you suggest sending your retainer to buy something and do leves for 2 hours to wait for them to make the purchase and return, what if i have done my leves and want to crack on with some crafting and I'm missing the item/s i require to do that. Does that mean I would have to wait 2 hours for my retainer to return to me with the item or would it mean that if i wanted the item straight away I would have to go get the item/s myself? (this negates the purpose surely)

I feel right now the best way to solve the issue would be SE allowing people to teleport to any of the wards at the market entrance, ie I run up to the market wards in Ul'dah and get a choice which city ward I want to teleport to, obviously this adds another layer to the menu system which I'm not really a fan of but it could be a quick stop gap, there would be no need to link the wards together as they would be easily accessed between the 3 cities. (of course if you enter Limsa market wards from Ul'dah you would only have the choice to exit to the place in which you entered in this case The Fronds)

Another suggestion would be to make the MW's one place (ie one massive instance) and not specific to any one City state but perhaps this is just the same as linking them and would require a seperate server just to handle the traffic flow and crashing issues.

[AttacKat]

Sorry, a bit late on joining this thread ...

I just started playing FF14 couple of months ago. Having played a few player driven economy MMOs in the past few years, the two major ones are EVE Online and Entropia, I like to share my two gils on this matter ...

Running the risk of repeating what have already been stated, but to help understand, allow me to list some of the issues I have with FF14's market:

- Lacks system resources caused the market to be not fully functional (visual retainers)
- Lacks market data
- Lacks buying/selling functions
- Lacks storage in relation to the massive item inventory

First of all, while the Retainer idea is very noble and entertaining, IMHO it is the major cause of all the issues mentioned above. A lot of the changes can still be done in a form of a "Retainer", but with its functions changed/enhanced.

I suggest SE replace the Retainer, or redo its functionality, and make it a world inventory storage with a pre-defined items space (IE: 250). Additional items space can be purchased via monthly fee, (IE: 1USD = +250). We can access the storage in different terminals (NPC) in the major cities. This reduces the need of players having multiple retainers, as well as the need for players to do the inventory shuffle. (DB overload due to excessive unnecessary data calls.)

Replace the associated market function with retainers altogether and replace it with a world-wide Trade House (TH) AND an Auction House (AH). Both the TH/AH can be accessed via different locations in major cities, and maybe as well as major camps.

The TH needs two major operations, to list sell orders and buy orders. For selling, a player should be able to list items for sale, in whatever quality they like, and at the price they selling it at.

The buy orders will work in reverse. Buyer lists buy order at a set price, and seller sells their inventory to fill the buy order.

The player should be given the ability to set how long their list will stay on the market, eg: 1d, 1w, 30d, limited ability to update item price with time constraints such as once every 30 mins.

The AH will work like eBay, items are listed with a set end date, with or without a buy-out price. SE may or may not limited the AH to unique items.

Both the TH/AH should have low listing fees, and final fee based on transaction value.

With this new world-market, SE now can also gather market data and can make different market trend reports available in game and offer better UI with search ability.

The current visual retainer implementation just does not work, aside from being resource intensive due to all the animation, it is also location restrictive.

IMHO the world storage will help resolve the limitations set by the current retainer system. Being only level 50 with my THM/BLM, I have just and started to level up my DoH this past week, and I am running out of inventory space with two retainers, and I have not even begin serious crafting yet. Yet, none of this is my doing, but necessary caused by game design. The fact that one needs to be a Goldsmith, Blacksmith, Armorer, and Carpenter to craft a level 14 Brass Head Knife, a lot of inventory slots is required for just for one finished product.

In the end, as always, there is more then one way to skin a cat, this is just one additional one.

jc