I am LOVING the search function. Its so much more of what I want. the ability to browse if I want to, or just grab something and leave. I really didnt want the AH implimented and im so glad they havent gone there

Basic fundamentals of game creation. Expand upon what has been proven to work, and not on things which obviously do not.

That is the huge flaw with this game and why I think the mass restructuring took place. You can wave your fanboy fan around, but fact is fact.

Yes, they are working diligently to address the major issues, but until some sort of better economy exists, what people who are left in the game will have little or nothing to do. I mean, there isn't any end-game that I've found yet, and it would appear that leveling crafts is the thing to do. However, the search function is a very small step in the right direction.

I think SE's refusal, or attempts to avoid an auction house will only damage the game more. I mean, what if instead of department stores we only had thousands of people in the parking lot, and went to look for goods with only the aid of names such as; IHAVEWEPS, POTIONSRUS, etc. Only to insert a search menu that now allows the user to identify which general location the guy or gal selling the goods is located in the big, expansive parking lot. Doesn't make much sense right?

I'm just saying don't try to reinvent the wheel, and help folks to enjoy the game. No one wants anything handed to them, but having things organized in a department store makes it easy for me to locate and procure the good that I am looking for, is asking for that in a game too much?

Edited, Dec 26th 2010 5:55am by Mathias2k

All this complaining about time sinks, what is the game in itself but a time sink. Your running around doing stuff that is essentially a waste of time to begin with. You are accomplishing nothing worthwhile. Your just ment to have fun, personally I love the new search feature, its a lot better than the old way. I found the items I needed in 3 minutes instead of wandering around for 3 hours. They made crafting a LOT easier, and leveling all the jobs really isn't that big a deal, what else do you have to do. If you want a game you can sit back, click a few buttons now and then and have things handed to you, go play WoW. If your time is so damn important do something with it instead of sitting in front of a computer.

Odd..posted in the wrong section :o

Edited, Dec 23rd 2010 7:02pm by Raiff

How odd, these market wards are getting closer and closer to being the Auction House we all seem to desire. Biggest difference right now is the fact that the player base now seems to be punished for selling several different items at the same time.

I would like to know why SE continues to fight the flow. Bazaar system + AH is a phenomenal way to go. IMO FFXI proved this.

Slam that AH in, and add some items that can't be tossed up on the AH. Ward lovers are happy, AH wishers are happy, and SE can finally direct their attention to other aspects of the game that need fixing/changing.

Oh well.

Edited, Dec 23rd 2010 7:09am by RustyMcDaggers

Regardless of the fact that the search returns items only which are in the correct ward, retainers which sell these items in other wards, still pop up with the star above their head. Established fact. Running through every other ward hoping to see a red dot or star takes too much time, even though its much better then before. Personally agreed. If a star would appear in the list of wards, when you are choosing which ward to move to, right next to the name of the ward which contains one or more retainers selling the specified item, I would be completely happy. People dont stick to selling 10 slots of the same item group ; so you do have items scattered all over and especially in this case; if a retainer sells every item for the item group associated with it's current ward, it will seem to be in the wrong ward when you see the remaining items in it's bazaar. As long as you can dive for any ward containing your search though, this won't matter.
It may require some time to learn exactly what goes where when searching and it may be that some rearranging of either just the search function or the ward item layout may be useful/necessary, but that isn't a big deal. I rather like the feel of buying from a market. With my suggestion, the time expended would be minimal and enjoyable.
I think that the tax reductions for properly associated items should continue as it encourages people to spread out some. Currently many people ignore this and over populate the battlecraft area as they expect people to only want to try to browse one ward. This makes it difficult to walk, easy to overlook retainers, and sometimes hard to even read their names even on 50" tv. If people know that they can sell whatever, wherever, they will likely gravitate towards the area where they will take the lowest tax hit for items they sell the most of (still allowing that they would likely sell other things also)

Edited, Dec 22nd 2010 10:55pm by firefreet

Edited, Dec 22nd 2010 11:06pm by firefreet

This post is not directed at anyone, and is an honest attempt at rational, constructive discussion.

The search feature does make looking for specific items more quick now, but only compared to the previous model, which was abysmal. However, it is still an inferior design to an AH.

If this is a crafter focused game, SE will have to give us the most cutting edge tools for conducting commerce, which is the whole point of crafting. It does not make sense to create a craftcentric game with substandard means of conducting commerce. Imagine if New York City sent all its mail by steam powered trains because its Mayor liked trains and steampunk.

Not only the most cutting edge tools, but also a variety of them. As players we should be spending time making high level business and strategic decisions, not clicking through retainers.

If they want to experiment with their ward system, by all means. However, an AH as an alternative for the Ward system to measure up to should be a given. They can continue to tweak their ward system alongside the AH model and let the players with the business savvy decide which is better. SE can then use that to gauge the maturity of their Ward system.

If more players are getting rich off the Ward system then the AH system, then SE will know for sure it has a winner, and does not even have to listen to player feedback.

However, to anyone with any knowledge of economics, the Ward system even with its search feature simply cannot measure up to an AH in terms of convenience and speed. If SE released AH tomorrow I promise you, even the most vehement opposers will use them.

Wards also do not guarantee against exploitation and monopoly, it is already happening with the ward system: http://ffxiv.zam.com/forum.html?forum=173&mid=1291687327287436226&page=1


Solution: Major cities have AHs, move wards to camps. They can charge rent or tax for the retainers to set up shop.

There is already demand for this, it's just not obvious.

Camps are major centres of crafting at the current time, and crafters will definitely want to save on anima and travel time by searching through the wards in the camp they are living in. The prices will definitely be more stable in the city, and the camp retainers will likely be imposing mark ups, but the city is a long way away.

This is the sort of tactical decision we as players should be making. In this case, it is completely permissible to favour wards over AHs for camps, since players have an alternative to conduct trade in the city, where they have their AH. (It's also a mirror of real life to have better trade infrastructure in cities)

We can even use chocobos to give our retainers a means to travel between camps. In real life, this is called a caravan, and mirrors actual travelling merchants.

It would be so awesome if SE gave us travelling commerce.

It would also be trivial for SE to create extra demand for conducting commerce in camps by having quests where camp NPCs order items from players. This would then CREATE TURNOVER FOR EQUIPMENT.

If SE is serious about creating a game for crafters, then they really need to hire an economist.

They could also have beastmen raid camps and steal retainer assets. That would be simply magnificent, since it would give DoW/DoM some more direct effect on the crafter world.

I don't understand this 'need for an auction house'. And here is why.
1. Yesterday was the first day of the new set-up. It's going to take 24-36 hours just for everyone to log their retainers back in and put them in wards, so you weren't even searching for items with full wards yet.
2. As people put new items up for sale in the wards they will get added to the search inventory list...so those of you who liked the old Auction House system for it's ability to compare similiar items quickly will soon have just that.
3. The search feature will mark the retainers with the requested item on any floor of the ward it happens to be on (I personally only buy from people on the correct floors but each to their own). Also lets say you searched for gloves in Ul'dah. Then went to LL...the markets would still remember you were searching for these gloves and mark all the retainers with them there as well.
4. We have 2 retainers for free now...that means you can have 20 items up for sale at any one time...really how can that not be good enough when with the Auction House System (FFXI) I believe you could only have seven. (I don't want to hear yeah but the stuff I have to sell belongs on 6 different wards...stack and sell people. Again 2 free retainers plus your character equals 330 inventory slots including your bazaars.)

Now the truely flame worthy part...I think these new changes are awesome. I can find anything I want in 1-2 minutes if it is in fact for sale. And now with the search feature, I can even quickly compare stats on gears. But even with the old system (once they switched to item-specific wards) I was able to find what I wanted in usually under 5 minutes.

Give up on an auction house, it doesn't fit this game. They WANT you to get to know the crafters on your server...they want you to ask 'so and so' in you linkshell who's a dedicated weaver to make your gears. I am in a close-knit linkshell and between our crafters,gathers, and battle classes, we all have the gears,supplies and items we need/want...sometimes we even have too many. Oh and also, if you liked the Auction House for the 'bidding aspect' (Wow, I just got this 200K item for 20K because someone screwed up) again, I get my gears and repairs for free/cheap from linkshell mates. Granted, that happens because I'm nice to them and help farm/craft/search for the items they need to level their crafts and make items.

So yes, to those of you who 'Want an Auction House' I don't understand why you see the current system as 'broken' or a 'time-sync'. If you can't stand using the Wards or find it too time-consuming and troubling may I suggest what rich lazy princesses do in real life? --Hire a personal shopper...heck it can be the next Gathering Class Job.

I've found that I can use the search feature for almost any object in any ward, not just the ward associated with that object.

When you do a search for, say, a blue coif in the middle tailor's ward, it brings up the number of blue coifs for sale there and allows you to put a star above each of the sellers and the sellers appear as pink spots on your minimap. This is, I believe how the system was designed to work.

However, you don't have to stop looking for them before going to a different ward. Just pop into, say, another tailor's ward and start looking for pink spots/stars in there and you'll find any of the item you're looking for in the unassociated ward. You can even look for your coif in the iron mongers ward in this way if you think you'll have any luck there.

Not only that, but the retainers selling your item appear before any others so you can just run through the entire ward before the other retainers show up to find any pink stars/spots.

I'm not sure if this non associated wards business was intended to work this way or not but I'm finding it very handy. Many tend to sell related but not ward associated items together (like clothes of different levels in my example above) so if I can't find the right priced pink star/spot in the right ward I just run through similar wards and find the best deals quite easily.

Yes, there are far less cumbersome ways SE could have dealt with this whole shopping experience issue, and there are many improvements they could make even for this search function they've just added (such as not associating the items in the search with wards at all - it can be hard to remember if something is in, say, the ironmonger's ward or the masonry ward so I want to look for the item type rather than the ward it's in first - but just have it tell you what ward it's associated with after you've found the item type you want and give you the option to go there straight away) and there are other unrelated issues I'm not too happy about either, but this is still a GREAT improvement over what we had before.

The developers want feedback - complaints are a valid form of feedback. You may not agree with them (and I find them annoying as well), but they do fuel the fire behind all the changes that are happening.


I'm pretty sure the point of limiting the search in this way is to further encourage people to sell their stuff in the right ward. A big part of the time sink for me is looking for items in wards they weren't supposed to be sold in.


It takes much longer than a few weeks for a new team to have actionable results. What we're seeing now is the work done under previous management.

There will be no auction house. Move along, please.
You can yell all you want, but I think it's pretty safe to say there will never be an auction house. SE has said on several occasions that they want something different. Through major changes in management, many updates, and statements of future commitments, they continue to work with what they have rather than implement an entirely new system. If an AH is a requirement for your future enjoyment of the game, then I suggest you get out now before you waste any more of your time.

Edited, Dec 22nd 2010 5:30am by timothyjoelwright

Not sure why these people come on here and complain, with the search it does speed up time, not by much but it does. It's better than what we had, plus, its F2P so why complain? IMO it's a great MMO for a F2P. When it's done and they start charging, I'll be glad to say i stuck by SE through it all and be glad to pay for FFXIV. So stop complaining, and enjoy the improvments....jackasses

Auction house......even if they wanted to give it to you tomorrow it takes time for Designers, Art teams and programmers to start getting those systems up. This right now is what they can do easily (its just data in databases) to give us something that is functional. They know they messed up bad...they know it sucks and its not selling and SE prolly got humbed along the way..These Designers Artists and programmers are people and they are passionate about their jobs. You have no idea on the hours from home and friends will be gone to make this product as good. They could have just told you to deal with it...They took a risk to be different and it failed...now they have to fix it...I am a Combat Designer (not from SE), I do know that now and days your game has to be a hit from day one or the fans and media will destroy your IP. Forums are the brutal truth and most designers read them...A lot. I would say most of you are disapointed....its free to play...what else do you want. Give it time and if you can't then just go...WOW has a great product right now....But me...I want to watch this process, grow with it...even the most horrible times....It teaches me what not to do lol...but a few times a month they give you everything they have...give em time...Designers of games care what you think..it just takes more time then most like...and a complete fix like this....its going to be work..and time So cheer up..help is otw..its just going to be a long ride. Just try and remember that they are people and people make mistakes...even in making games. No one or any cocompany is perfect..At least this one is doing its best to fix it...most don't.

SE wants us to lvl multiple jobs and crafts. then gives us this crap. plus only give us 1 and soon 2 npcs to sell the stuff we sell they are soo goign the wrong way.