Tanaka Keynote at GDC China

[Manako]

He spoke yesterday; so far no other information besides the Gamasutra article, which is run by the same people who run GDC.

http://gamasutra.com/view/news/31857...guered_MMO.php

n his keynote presentation at GDC China, Square Enix SVP Hiromichi Tanaka described steps the company is taking to make improvements to its latest MMO.

Things have not gone well for the latest launch from Final Fantasy house Square Enix. Its most recent MMO, Final Fantasy XIV, has gone through two 30-day-trial extensions.

So far, users who bought the game at launch have gotten 90 free days of play instead of the expected 30.

The company has extended the trial due to widespread complaints about the game from users -- as it rushes to patch the title so users can "be given the opportunity to experience these changes firsthand before deciding to fully commit to the game," the company said in a statement on its official site.

Partnering With Shanda for Improvements

In his GDC China Keynote in Shanghai, Tanaka said, "It's a pity, but we haven't reached the expectations of the players. And of course we are working on it."

This portion of his speech, aimed at the show's Chinese attendees, centered on how the company's Chinese partner Shanda is offering feedback on the game which will help improve the game for all audiences.

Shanda is evaluating the game (which has not yet launched in this territory) and gathering feedback which it is sending to Square Enix -- which the company, apparently, will use alongside from feedback from audiences in the West and Japan, where the game has already launched as a retail product.

Said Tanaka, "We'll make every effort to increase the fun and quality of the game. The proposal from Shanda [takes into account] not only the requirements and feelings of Chinese players, but I think it's good feedback overall for global players. We can update this Chinese feedback into our global system. After the improvement process, we'll try to present this game to the Chinese players."

Auction House Woes

Meanwhile, Tanaka also addressed concerns players have with the game's user-to-user selling system, which was recently skewered in a Gamasutra feature and has drawn widespread complaints. "In a nutshell, the Market Ward system is broken," wrote feature author Simon Ludgate.

Final Fantasy XI, the company's first MMO, which it first launched in Japan in 2002, pioneered the now-traditional auction house system.

Said Tanaka, that system "encouraged interaction between different players. One of the benefits of the system was that it was cross-region, and though it was cross-region we had a communication assist system so players could communicate with each other 24 hours a day. However, because the information on prices was open and everyone knew the prices, it wouldn't cause any mistreatment of players."

However, the company saw a downside -- since all players on all servers and in all regions knew the "right" prices for items, this increased deflation. This encouraged the developers to take a different tact with Final Fantasy XIV.

While Tanaka says that the company was aware that the system, which has players hire NPCs to sell their goods, would create an "inconvenience" for players, the team chose this direction to "avoid some of the disadvantages of Final Fantasy XI's system; players can make some profit out of this deal."

Unfortunately, this "inconvenience" means that players cannot search for a specific item easily and must engage with a huge number of NPCs.

Tanaka's slide during his presentation said that this system was developed because it "makes it difficult for a single market rate to become established, providing the seller with more opportunity to turn a profit."

However, the slide went on to imply that the company may completely backpedal on its new in-game selling system. "We wish to continue observing the current in game market trends before deciding which method, [auction house or NPC market], is better," it said.

Tanaka added that "We can prepare new tools to improve searching."

[Katlan]

And... what was wrong about XI's AH system? One of the things i loved about XI was its AH system, compared to other mmo's. I thought the item history feature and just showing how many items were listed was a much better system then other tradition AH's that show every [same] item listed and all the different prices for those [same] items

[Hyan]

Okay, now get the search features out of the way and implement the AH then

[Levin]

One thing I liked about FFXI's price history was that I could make judgement if people actually still bought a certain item, or if it was a "dead item".
As for the market wards in FFXIV, even if they added a search function there is an issue. Not everyone sells items in the ward they are meant to be sold in because we only have one retainer. Even then, it's kinda just moving this ward system to an AH system anyways.

[The Blackrose]

It felt like SE took one huge step backwards in respect to how to deal with the whole vendor system. And it's not like the Auction House-type system, where it has not been done before. EverQuest had a vendor-type system for years with the Bazaar (talking around Planes of Power/Omens of War, not sure if they've changed since then), and even then SE managed to find a way to do it worse. Hell, if the dev team copied EQ's Bazaar system down to the letter with vendor searching, price matching and the ability to get a dynamic path to follow to the vendor, I doubt the system would not be getting as much complaints as it is right now.

It's not a bad system per se, but others have done it before and they've done it far better. It's a shit pile in its current manifestation.

EDIT: Now if you excuse me, I have to go take a cold shower for saying that SOE did something better.

[Riposte]

There will be a purchase history added at some point. Not sure how it will work.

[Grey Jorildyn]

I feel what they need is more transparency, not more secrecy. It's nice to turn a profit, but until they make gil worthwhile to earn, it really doesn't have any value whatsoever. I know once gilsinks like chocobos, airships, and maybe instance-entry costs are added, that will give gil some meaning, but until then I don't feel patching the currently, admittedly broken system, is the way to go.

What I'd personally like to see is a broker system more akin to Aion. There was no price history for items, so when an item was not listed, you could turn a profit. However, when there were listings, you could see the item, the quantity of that item, the asking price/price per unit if multiple items, and who was selling it. Players would not buy crap from known RMT that way, unlike in FFXI where it was a mystery who your seller was until you purchased the item. I am not saying honor-system is the way to go here, but I think we all get the feeling that anti-RMT tactics was somewhat, if not a major, of a factor when designing the bullshit market wards.

XIV had a chance to be revolutionary and they just screwed the pooch. Experimenting with your new flagship mmo just isn't the right way to go now Tanaka.

[Hyan]

I'm kinda hoping even with these additions the system will work differently to AH so they can implement it later without making the marketplace a completely useless effort.

This can very well become a "complementary" system to the AH... but not a real replacement.

[Agito]

I'll take the current market wards system with the search function to find specific items over an auction house anyday. You don't have limited space, taxes, time durations and mass undercutting due to there simply beings alot of the same item listed because everyone is in a hurry to sell. There's alot more benefits to the market wards and auction house just causes more problems than it needs to. Sure, the auction house is a convenient way to sell and purchase items but once the market ward search feature goes up then the two will be close to convenience. Auction house is more convenient maybe one might say but it's a pain in the rear having to constantly re-list all of you items for selling because some people undercutted the heck out of your listed items and lowered the price so nobody is willing to pay the price you listed your items for.

[Reapz]

It doesn't matter how much they improve the market wards. Myself and i'm sure 99.9% of the population playing the game will always want an AH, because it works so well. They could keep the market wards for the 3 starter cities with its improvements and search function etc, but definetly want it to go back to AH when they open up Ishgard

[Riposte]

Using yg is pretty rad. Sounds like, if all those details were in the game, the system would be exactly what people want. More people need to use it, and more people need to play with yg updater in the background.

[wildmuffin]

The market system is a good alternative to the old ffxi Rolanberry Bazaars, BUT we still need a proper Auction House!

[Dein]

SE should have realized that the moment they implemented any form of search for items people would begin undercutting each other and prices would be set. They can't really stop one of the most basic things in any economy from happening without crippling the system sadly.

[Lucavi]

And... what was wrong about XI's AH system? One of the things i loved about XI was its AH system, compared to other mmo's. I thought the item history feature and just showing how many items were listed was a much better system then other tradition AH's that show every [same] item listed and all the different prices for those [same] items

They explained it: since everyone knew the "value" of items, deflation ran rampant as everyone tried to continuously shave off an additional profit on items that everyone knew the value of.

I liked WoW's system, with a recommended, flat rate for all items, and then giving the player the freedom to overcharge or undercut as they see fit to do. Inflation or deflation hasn't really been a problem in that game, to boot.

Since XIV's currency system resembles WoW's (money is easy to gain, and easy to spend), a similar AH system would be pretty nice.

Aion had a decent system as well. I wouldn't mind seeing some of that injected into XIV's system.

[millionsknives]

Tanaka says that the company was aware that the system [...] would create an "inconvenience" for players

SE through and through

[Rustyhagun]

XIV had a chance to be revolutionary and they just screwed the pooch. Experimenting with your new flagship mmo just isn't the right way to go now Tanaka.

The game is very young. I think if you wanted to experiment with a new way of doing things, it would have to be during the infancy level of a launch. Let them try, because going back to AH, for them/us, would change a few things in the world that we have now or would later have.

Ex:
1. We would loose our retainers and the extra 100 slots of storage. Unless they give us back our personal Mog Houses and have our retainers act like the moogles did in ffxi.

2. The one above would make them rethink housing all together, and the idea for Company owned housing(house/ships) wouldn't hold much weight anymore and that whole idea would have to be re-thunk.


Some things that I just thought up, that could improve marketwards:

-Make the tax charge for selling an item(3%).
-You can only sell the item in the proper "Ward" section.
-Have error message pop from retainer's mouth, stating that said item cannot be sold here.
-Implement the search feature on each 'Ward' floor/section. Via your retainer.
-Results would be shown through retainer chat..eg:"I have seen no such item being sold here today" or "I have seen a 'Blinding dagger' being sold by such and such a person."
-Retainer would then precede to list the people(retainers) with the said item.
-The names of the retainers would now be displayed in red.
-On top of that, you now have a separate window, that your retainer brought up at the same time, that now shows all the names of the retainers(in red) selling 'Blinding Daggers' & the price of each.
-Now here is the cool part. You don't have to close all this out to walk to the retainer in question.
-Select the desired retainer name, in the same window your retainer brought up, and click 'buy'
-Done and done. Feel free to expand the idea forum.

Come on SE you can do it!

[Thiefami]

Ill do you one better. Implement a search feature for items. Exchange wards for moghouses, do it ala PSU style where after sifting through item/price it warps you to player store front where you can view/purchase/ and browse their other wares.

[Riposte]

Wards are actually places in the world map. Also most of these ideas are way out there.

EDIT: Here is how you do it: Use interact when near the noticeboards located in middle of any ward. Brings up a menu much like yg where you search an item and see every retainer who is selling it(in other wards/rows/etc and maybe even in other cities). And finally allow players to use this search feature to allow them to set an item they don't have to "buying" on themselves or their retainer. Stuff like marking sellers and purchase history seems to already be in the works.

Oh and add a ward listed before Battlecraft where everything is taxed at max-1(9%?). Maybe a ward dedicated entirely to repairs too, where everything sold is heavily taxed. (EDIT: Actually thinking this over... since the wards already exist in the world map this probably isn't possible. No idea how much SE will limit themselves this time around.)

And one final thing: Allow us to NPC sell stuff to the retainer. Like a "quick sell" feature.

One final, final thing: retainers with stands should always load first. It should be like marked retainers > stand retainers > retainers near you > retainers farther from you.

And while not related to market wards: It would be nice if we could dismiss our retainers from any retainer bell. And adding bells to Camps is a good idea.

EDIT: Eh, while I am at it, it would be nice if you could put on a setting where no retainers load but your own. This way anyone can experience 60 fps retainer managing or crafting(or chatting or whatever they like to do all alone) in peace if they'd like.

[miokomioko]

I want more to be mentioned about Companies and their headquarters. That, by far, is the most interesting/intriguing future plan for XIV.

[Riposte]

They won't begin to hype that stuff until after the december update