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Market Wards can work
thirdechelon
Member Posts: 110
I used to play Ragnarok Online ages ago. There was a player class: Merchant that could setup a shop anywhere anytime, it would just make the character stand there with a caption(speech bubble) above their head. You could write anything inside the Caption to attract players. There used to be 100's of Merchants all over the main street of just stitting down. It took time to find things but the captions helped.
Normally people would park their characters and leave them selling stuff when they went to sleep/afk. If FFXIV just added speech bubbles above every sellers head that you could click and access from any distance, it would be a much smoother experience. Anyways things i would add.
+Put a Speech Bubble above every seller and the seller can type any msg inside of it, Make the Speech Bubble customisable changing borders and colours so that people can familiarise your shop, that leads to another issue, retainers look boring, needs some customising again to help people find you again.
+Maybe having market wards split into types of items, then have more retainers for each area as needed. Like 1 ward for crafting, 1 for equipement 1 for consumables. And make it so each retainer is restricted in the type of item they can put on sale in that particular ward. will make a difference with 1000's of shops to sort though.
+Also have all the retainers sitting down on a Mat on the floor and keep the area organised neatly. Perhaps retainers start with a small rug on the ground with a limit of 3 items for sale, and they could work there way upto a bigger rug, a small table, then a stall with a banner, with higher limits as it gets better.
+Perhaps a search menu whilst inside the Market Ward, maybe if you type in criteria it would grey out all the Speech Bubbles that dont have the item.
+Retainer Control, would be nice to have, make the retainer controllable and have the character be able to speak and search other shops, maybe make it they cant leave the market ward. Just control the character to move it to a different spot and customise the store and character.
Comments
Yes they CAN work,but in reality they don't.
People do stupid things ,like you will get multiple players all lined up in front of a needed NPC so making it a hassle to click that NPC.They like to stand in front of busy sections making it a hassle to move your player.Also if they are allowed to go anywhere,they pick a busy area and BAM LAG !.
This is why Square tried to implement a certain area for them to setup,preferably an instance.What is absolutely hilarious about this whole dumb setup is that Square is going to implement change because players do not like their setup.The change that SOE wil limplement is basically another ah setup ROFLMAO.
Square is going to eventually have a search system in the market area,so why not just have an AH,it is the same dam thing ..geesh,talk about stubborn,just admit your system blows and lose it and bring out the AH.SO after their update patch to the market system,all the different wards will be mini AH's.umm and how is that different than an AH setup as in FFXI?
Well there is a slight differnce,these mini AH's will tax those that don't sell the proper items.Well i see this as EXACTLY the same thing as FFXI,you sell in the small cities small tax,you sell in Jueno large tax.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
i didnt play FFXI, wouldnt know. I know a Market Ward System wouldnt be efficient or convinient compared to an Auction House but think of EVE online, it doesnt have a system where items magically appear in any mailbox anywhere in the universe, you have to set your buy orders and go to the exact Station it is at and pick it up yourself and move it from A to B.
For a fantasy setting game if you look at WoW's AH system it doesnt make sense in a feasible sense. The Items should be sold on streets and stores by vendors, they dont send gigantic double-edged axes and 1,000's of gold coins through a tiny letterbox. And from fantasy setting you couldn't browse and search through 10s of thousands of items with a simple window, you would have to ask around and look for it yourself.
Do you get what im trying to say here? its the "Role-Playing" in MMORPG. I understand simplicity, and theres a whole bunch of things that contradict this for FFXIV like autolooting and crafting those are part of the "Game" side.
I can see the Auction House wining out in the end, but i personally like the Wards.
if they get the wards/retainer system to a state that actually works i hope to god they either remove player bazaars or auto log them out after an hour or so.
Its such a pain wading through dozens of players standing around afk in all the key locations with their bazaar thingy on.
Yes, I had mentioned Ragnarok Online and their stalls in another post. It can work, but one thing RO has is the lack of delay between opening windows compared to FFXIV. That and being able to double click to enter a player's stall and see what they're selling. Trying to balance the UI between PC and PS3 copies is a terrible idea when you have to click on a player, click on an icon, then click on an icon in the menu and wait to see what people have; compared to double clicking on an icon or tag once and having it instantly pop up.
With a AH you normaly get History listings and thats where the RMTers take advantage but if you just have a search function in the wards then people will keep under cutting the next person and theres no history so its all fair game.
Yes, market wards can work. Unfortunately, most people seem to not want to give them a chance and instead beg for what they're used to (Auction Houses).
How does Market Ward work? I'm playing the game but I haven't tried buying stuff from other people, I'm just focusing on doing regional and local leves. I'm at Ul'dah, so where can I find this Market wards?
The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." - Sun Tzu, Art of War
I've been seeing signs here and there that there's something big related to the exchange of goods that the developers are hiding up their sleeves.
Retainers have a level. They're all level 1 right now. There's currently no mechanic in place to boost their level, so why the level?
The developers have dropped a hint about a "market battle" system.
They've mentioned in the same post about how wards are being organized by category that this is but the first of many changes to come.
The parley system placeholder indicates there might actually be a minigame tied to merchant dealings.
Areas such as The Golden Bazaar indicate that there's whole tracts of the game set aside for merchant dealings which are currently not yet enabled.
Will they do the precise things recommended here by the original poster? Maybe, maybe not. But in any case, it's pretty clear that big things are being worked on.
In Ul'dah, the Market Wards are located in the section called "The Dunes." You'll find similar exits of main cities leading to the market wards in Gridania and Limsa. Market Wards are currently real eyesores, just a lot of player retainers parked there, rather ponderous to navigate through, but improvements are on the way.
I really hope we get to customize our retainer in some way to make it more personal/useful. Right now mine kind of seems like a neglected housewife who I send to the street corner to peddle my shards. I have my fingers crossed for some type of Mog house, but actually a house and not just one room. For some reason player housing appeals to me even if it serves no greater purpose. I really doubt SE is going to put in a search function. If they do, it's pretty much an auction house, and they don't want an auction house. They REALLY need to do something though. I just can't handle the market wards -- my OCD kicks in when I see the mass clutter and I get twitchy.
I've found all types of things that look like they'll have a purpose at some point but they just don't. In the valley north of Skull Bone (or whatever) in Limsa Lomina there looks to be an airship tower of sorts, but you can't go to the top platform yet. The Golden Bazaar as you mention, is one of several towns I've explored with no purpose yet. I really wish they'd give us explorers more to see. I can only turn the corner and see the same pretty rocks or trees or coastal plains so many times. The quests talk about farms and small houses and the roaming brigades of soldiers on the roads -- I want to see that stuff in the world! Shrugs, maybe that type of thing only seems appealing to me, but I'd really like to see them make the world come alive with things other than mobs.