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My thoughts on the Bazaar and Market Place
robert4818
Member UncommonPosts: 661
Like many, I find myself frustrated trying to browse people's bazaar to try and find what I want. Often times I find myself looking at someones bazaar and either seeing nothing I want, or seeing what I want, and realizing that they want more than I've made in my first ten ranks for a optimal rank 6 item. Oh well, there's only 10 more guys in front of me to repeat this process with...
That being said, these are my suggestions for improvements to the bazaar.
1. Just as there is a guild Icon and a Bag icon that appear next to player's names, let players set an Icon next to their heads that shows what primary item(s) they have for sale. This would allow me to walk past all the different bazaars and only browse the ones that have a chance of having what I want.
-A sword for weapons.
-A ring for Jewelry
-A shield for shields and armor
-A question mark for miscellaneous
-Somethign else for materials
-A Crystal for Crystals.
2. When I click on an item in someone's bazaar I would like to see a bar-graph bell curve showing me the prices this thing sells at. If someone is selling it at 20,000 gil, I would like to see where that falls at on the curve of different prices, too high and I'll pass, to low and I'll buy it no questions. if it's just slightly above average, then I might buy it to save hassle.
3. Use the item boards in the market places to show whats for sale in that town's market place (Market only). List the name, the price, and the specific market instance. Include ONLY those bazaars that are manned by a retainer. Not actual players.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
Comments
I do enjoy the market style bazzar and agree with the sign concept however, the price range deal, at least to me, is much too easy. The idea of the bazzar is to find the cheapest item. Start putting in price ranges and it turns into a Wowclone and the AH may as well be inplimented where one can go and pick up whatever they find...easy.
I agree with Seabeast in that I think the graph idea is a bit much, not to mention it would add yet another window of information to the all ready overly busy UI.
Many people have all ready mentioned a search feature to the wards, but I like this more refined idea. The only thing I'd hate to see are the actual prices, as then you may as well just put in the AH since everyone is just going to go to the cheapest listed anyways.
As for the first point, I tend to play every MMO with names turned off, so it may not ever actually affect me. But just taking a guess, I think people would probably set them and then forget about them, even if the inventory changes. I've seen lots of retainers named something like "armorsandmats" but then have an inventory full of jewelry or something completely irrelevant to their name. On a side note, I really wish this game had less things tied directly to the name being visible or not (looking at you, Enemy Signs -.-).
EDIT: I r dumb. Corrected a sentence...
IMO implement EvE Onlines Market and the problem is solved.
I'm still confused as to why and how people think that the inclusion of an AH system will destroy the economy and its social benefits.
How many people are actually communicating for trades? How many retainers are attached to active players that you speak with before purchasing items? Is it even helping the social aspect at all? The only real benefit I can imagine is more dependance on the people you know to provide you with things you need that you can't obtain yourself. Aside from that...
Does the bazaar market not benefit scammers and price hikers far more than any AH could? What's to stop someone from dominating a certain market any more than an AH system? All it requires is some funds, and the patience to buy out anyone holding the same items you want to sell but has them up for a cheaper price. How obscenely overpriced are the "rare" items (by rare, I mean crafted stuff that isn't common yet) in comparison to their actual value? How can you expect that price to decline when there's no real market value for anything except for what a player is willing to spend?
Maybe I'm just ignorant, but I don't see how the current system benefits the playerbase; only the individual.
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
George Bernard Shaw
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde
My thoughts on the Bazaar and Market Place
Add an AH. That's it. Those are my thoughts.
And I'll bet within a month they will have one.
Hey, thanks for the reply...
That last bit kinda missed my point I think. There's a market ward in each city, right? So my point was that a player could easily (or painstakingly) go through the retainers there - if that were his goal - and clean out all of a specific item. From your first bit, you used copper nuggets as an example. Say one guy buys every bit of them up, then charges - instead of 400gil - 1000gil each, and your option is to buy it there, or make a full trip to the next city. There's no mail system to subvert this and have your buddy buy what you need at a lower price, and no AH to drive the price down once such items become more commonplace. Your only option is pay the hiked price, or make the trip - however long that may be - to another city, granted the situation might be the same there unless you know ahead of time.
I mean look, I'm not looking for negatives of it, but I'm not seeing any glaring benefit of such a system either, and none of the "We don't want no stinkin' AH!" posts have really pointed out much benefit either.
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
George Bernard Shaw
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde
Honestly, I think it's a throwback to EQ. Possibly even UO. People remember liking those systems. But I fear that the memories may be better than the system.
Price manipulations wont work in a player driven economy. Inflation might, but thats a different beast.
Economic supply and demand.
Bob and Ted both make shields. Bob is rich, and Ted is a new player. Shields cost 5000 to make.
Bob sells his shields for 10,000, Ted makes his first shield with all of his money and lists it at 8,000. Bob see's this, doesnt like his price getting undercut and buys Ted's shield. Ted just made 3,000 profit, and uses that plus some hunting money he made to make 2 new shields. He relists them at 8,000. Bob then buys both of these instantly. Ted now has 16,000 he uses that to make 3 shields, rinse and repeat....
While all this is going on Fred is browsing the market and notices theres only a few shields on the market, he refreshes and notices that the cheap ones just sold and only the 10,000 ones are there. He figures, why not try it, and makes 4 shields and lists them at 8000.
Bob eventually runs out of money, or adjusts his price. Eventually the competition between these three (and most likely many many more) gets close to cost.
THIS is the only issue with an AH. If Bob has enough money, he can sell the item at under cost driving Ted, Fred, and others out of the market. Once they realize there isnt any money to be made, they start making other things. Bob then raises the prices back to where he likes them, and it starts all over.
Markets self correct over time... thats just the way it is. No one can fix prices for long, it just gets too expensive. The ONLY way to fix prices is to lock an item down to where only YOU can produce it. I.E. Opec oil cartel in real life. However, this doesnt work in MMO's as anyone can gather and take up a craft.
Now, what you are probably really concerned with is inflation. Tons of money enters the markets in MMO's and most of the time there isnt any money sinks (wow is real bad about this). After a certain period of time, money becomes devalued and folks begin raising prices to compensate. Lineage 2 is a great example of this, so is WoW.
However, auction houses have no affect on this... its simply comes down to how fast money enters the global game economy and how fast it leaves...if it ever does.
Eve online has a fully player run economy very similar to FFXIV... the only difference is in EvE when you die, items are destroyed. There fore that ship I made you last week is only going to last so long, then you will need to buy another. In FFXIV as far as I know items can be repaired for ever. If this is true, then yes, in a bit prices are going to get high... but thats just how they made the game....again... nothing to do with an AH.
If items can be repaired forever, prices will go way down. The market won't have a use for the items because the items already exist. And if someone doesn't have something, there will be a glut to choose from. That's why BoP and BoE exist in other games.
I never even tried to, but can you trade ALL wearable items in this game?
Usually this forces prices up. If I only get one sale out of you Im going to make damn sure that I get my money...then again... I've never seen this system in a fully functional player economy where items are only player crafted.
With people choosing crafters as a game style...things may get rather interesting economically.
Well not really, Pyro. Initially the prices will be sky-high on freshly crafted, high-demand-because-noone-else-can-make-them-yet items, but in time those items will have almost no value whatsoever when many players can craft them, and former owners of the initial items no longer need them due to upgrades, and turn around to sell them. The abundance will only pile up and drive the price as low as a vendor will take it off your hands for.
It'll only escalate the issue for newer players as market forces will likely do as I was describing earlier, keeping resource item prices high (constant demand; players will always want to skill up craft, regardless of item usefulness/value), and given XIV's interlaced crafting skills, lots of folks will always be demanding lots of craft-required materials because you essentially have to level all crafts to level one, unless you're trading, or buying your non-target materials. Nothing stops this from happening in an AH system, but the whole bazaar thing doesn't change that either.
While I'm at it; every single MMO with any form of trading is a "fully functional player economy". Mobs drop gold and trash that sells for gold. Players trade useful items for gold. Game removes X amount of gold from economy, and prices are dictated thusly. AH, bazaar, market... whatever, they're all player-based economies. I'm still not seeing the difference, or the benefit, and if I'm being obtuse, say so.
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
George Bernard Shaw
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde
Exactly!
The fact is, time is valuable for real players. Time is very, very cheap for RMT outfits. If anyone is going to systematically catelogue and corner the profitable markets, it's going to be RMT groups, not the players. Also, aside from tightly managed "companies" (clan/guild), who is going to be able to map out and run a super efficient crafting machine, playing on all the interdependencies in the system, better than an RMT operation? They will level crafters and gatherers (and combat/magic) classes of all the professions. They will have all the combinations they need 24 hours a day. They will farm the mobs with the most profitable crafting mats and churn out armor and weapons with an efficiency no one else will be able to match.
Lack of AH buys us NOTHING vs. RMT and, in fact, by making it extremely difficult for normal players to produce, it gives those operations a huge advantage.
An AH also can provide the player base and the devs a convenient way to identify suspected farmers and RMT linked crafters, This system makes it very hard to identify these people. In most MMOs, they are easy to spot from AH activity and I know I'm not the only one who avoids dealing with them.
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Not sure if I only noticed it now, but can it be that since the last patch it is actually possible to choose a shop layout when you have one? They have the standards looks like for weapon, food stuff, accesiores and so on to select for the shop.
they are going to be adding an Ah sooner or later
While the Bazaar is a neat idea, it goes against the idea and concept of the "casual player". SE said they wanted to give the casual player a game that could give those with a few hours of gaming time the ability to hop on, do things and leave having accomplished something. To me, the bazaar is very convoluted and nothing short of chaos. There is no organization, no structure. Retainers sometime overlap each other canceling out one bazaar. Bluntly, it's a freaking mess. I spend over 70 minutes looking for profession material. That's absurd!
My whole LS (30+ members ATM) have agreed we are done with it so we supply each other with materials and gear using the barter system. I see this happening more and more and the bazaars going away fast and there will be little to no economy growth. The only way to keep this from happening is a Auction House.
In UO I sometimes shopped at more expensive shops, because they had a lot of stuff to sell, and a lot of other vendors near. So I just needed to go to 1 place.
Also I prefered shops that were organized above cheap shops that you had to go through many vendors to get something interesting.
Cheapest isn't always best in a game without AH. You can't spent all your time to find the right retainer, that is just a waste of time, so you will learn what the good shops are, slowly. You will listen to your friends, and when you have spare time you will look, and you will remember, because you don't want to waste time with looking.
Of course everyone who only want to battle can't see what so great about retainers, of course they horrible for them, because they can't find the right items quick for the cheapest prizes.
But if you can quickly find the cheapest retainer then the whole idea about the retainer is gone. You shouldn't find things quickly, you need to learn what the good shops are, and the player Merchants must find a way to get your attention.