Tanaka Keynote at GDC China

[Grey Jorildyn]

I do. Because now what if i then want to search for another item in a different category? Or am looking to craft an item that requires products from several other classes, which is like every item btw? Am I going to have to see a dozen loading screens then? Because that is how it will be. Teleporting me around the wards sounds pretty retarded mechanic to me. Your argument also neglects to account for the fact that a bazaar may have items belonging to more than just one ward. Unless they give us more retainers quicker, that will also continue to plague the wards.

And furthermore, they'd be damned if they make that search thing per-ward and not cross-ward. Would just be the dumbest thing they've implemented since launch yet.

[miokomioko]

XI was no better with the loading crap. It could take ages to populate lists (lol alchemy materials) and you couldn't do shit until it finished. Hell, even if you have to wait for a little loading between wards (rather short loading time between wards) to get immediately to the retainer that's holding your Buffalo Leather Strap (and possibly other parts you might want), it's still a fucking step up from checking price histories, bidding low, bidding high, bidding way too high, giving up because the mystery seller is a douchebag.

Fucking hidden costs and price histories were retarded. I'd rather teleport around a few small Market Ward rooms and get what I'm searching for and leave rather than dealing with gouging asswipes and extremely limited AH slots.

[Spira]

thats the beauty of FFXI's AH actually. the system was a gem. the players who choose to be douchebags will still be, except in a Market Ward system you can see how much of a douchebag they're trying to be.. but (i dont remember if retainers come with owner names) still don't know who they really are.

XI's AH system's price history system is a prime example of a generally laissez-faire market. goods are taxed uniformly and whilst the lowest price-setter will always sell first, when prices are set the same, sales are indiscriminate, which is nice.

In the ward system, once a search system works, itll become the exact same thing. I don't think people will care so much who the retainer is as much as the price that they're gonna get. There is no purpose of individualism in the market. If you sell things in a group but the price is higher anyway, players wont buy - its the same thing.. but at a far bigger hasssle

of course, right now, its just a matter of luck if someone who wants something from you finds you before someone else... but thank god that will be gone soon

[miokomioko]

its the same thing.. but at a far bigger hasssle

I don't see what the huge hassle is. It functions in the same manner, price your shit how you want, the cheapest ones always sell first. The profit seems to be more focused on +1/2/3 system that every single item has.

[CasualPlayer]

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.

As much as im ashamed to admit I played PSU. This.

[CasualPlayer]

@Mioko: If the search function is cross ward your right. If they do it per ward it will suck. People sell gods in the wrong ward all the time you would have to search each ward to truly determine the best price.

[Spider-Dan]

I'd rather teleport around a few small Market Ward rooms and get what I'm searching for and leave rather than dealing with gouging asswipes and extremely limited AH slots.

Whenever I see the keywords "gouging" or "undercutting" in the context of FFXI, I immediately proceed to "this person has no clue how economics work." They are the favorite phrases of people who want everything they buy to be cheap but everything they sell to be expensive.

I have yet to see a legitimate complaint about either price-gouging (e.g. someone literally controlling the supply*) or undercutting (e.g. someone selling for less than cost to push competition out of the market) in FFXI, so all comments to that effect register as baseless whining to me. Consequently, calling the FFXI AH flawed because of phantom problems and insisting that XIV's wards will be a solution (to a problem that never existed) rings hollow.

As for limited AH slots, yeah, 7 AH slots is absurd and unworkable... but TEN retainer slots is awesome and amazing! And soon, we'll be able to get another 10 retainer slots, kind of like how we could get mules to AH in FFXI, but way better! You know, since we are no longer burdened with the inefficiency and excessive complexities of a delivery system.

All far superior to, say, simply increasing the number of AH slots each player gets.

*If someone controlled the supply in XIV, the problem would be just as bad, so this complaint really makes no sense in any context, but whatevs.

[Lucavi]

thats the beauty of FFXI's AH actually. the system was a gem.

Without a base price set by the game on each item listed on the AH to control inflation, the system was hardly a "gem".

[Hyan]

Without a base price set by the game on each item listed on the AH to control inflation, the system was hardly a "gem".

So wait, how does that work?

If an average player has 5 million gil in the game and the "base price" for item X is 5 gil, that would destroy the supply because who would bother selling it anymore? Is there something I am not understanding?

[Lucavi]

Yeah, there is. You have to start from the beginning with this system, which is why it wouldn't work at this point, since people like me already ran rampant with charging whatever we wanted because we were the first to make it.

Anyway, you figure out how much money purely comes into the game by quests/missions/farming. Raw currency, not drops. Then you factor in how much your starting gear/items cost. Lastly, you set a price for each item in the game; a recommended price for selling on the AH. People can then choose to jack up the price far higher if they choose (IE: First on the server to have/make a particular item), but as the item becomes more and more common, it may or may not drop in price. However, the difference between this system and XI's AH is the fact that there will always be a base-line price for the item, independent of inflation or deflation.

If people want a quick sale, they undercut the base price (or whatever the current going rate is) slightly. When the item becomes hard to attain, or just plain drained from the market, you can jack the price up to reflect its value. When there is a steady stream of the items, it will hover around either the pre-set price or the "accepted standard" by the server.

When new players join the game, they find that prices aren't absolutely retarded and out of reach for them because the price bounces around the recommended price based on availability. They also find, however, that due to the base price, they'll always be able to at least make a little coin off of it when it comes time for them to sell it. The item will never degenerate into the realm of 2 cents on the AH, so long as it has value within the game and can be legitimately used in some way.

As the game ages and content grows, the base prices for new items become higher and higher to reflect players having increasing amounts of money. New players, however, shouldn't be able to use such high level items, and thus, won't have to worry about having to pay absurd prices for them. When those new players are at the appropriate level, though, they should be able to reasonably afford the item provided they're decent with making/saving money up, or from selling their mid-level items at effective mid-level prices, or even mid-level items at high level prices for high level players crafting mid-level things to skill up.

The gem with this system is that even if one greedy (or savvy) person attempts to buy up all of a single item and re-sell them at some jacked up prices, the recommended price acts as a permanent price history. Only the most desperate people will buy it at the newly inflated price; most will wait until the idiot lowers the price to make a sale, or someone else restocks the item at a higher-than-original-yet-way-lower-than-the-asshat price, thus eventually returning the item to its original baseline.

This wouldn't have worked in XI due to the fact that there was never any real upward expansion; the fact that everything was horizontal meant that fresh 75's and 5-year veteran 75's were still clamoring for some of the same items/mats, giving a stark advantage to the veteran 75 who could easily outbid the new guy and set a price at some astronomical number. It also meant that as more people hit higher levels, lower level or less useful items tanked in value until it was pointless to even put them on the AH.

[Selamis]

This wouldn't have worked in XI due to the fact that there was never any real upward expansion; the fact that everything was horizontal meant that fresh 75's and 5-year veteran 75's were still clamoring for some of the same items/mats, giving a stark advantage to the veteran 75 who could easily outbid the new guy and set a price at some astronomical number. It also meant that as more people hit higher levels, lower level or less useful items tanked in value until it was pointless to even put them on the AH.

So true. I couldn't even begin to tell you how hard a time I had for finding gear on the AH when I was trying to level subs up from 37 to 45 back when I was still playing, and they initially announced the level cap increase. Anything below level 50 gear was really hard to come by on my server.

[Lucavi]

That's the problem with holding a level cap for so many years, especially in a game that is excellent at retaining current subscriptions, yet poor at garnering new ones. The only real new characters were people that made a new one from getting busted cheating. We'll see if that changes now, however, as 2010 was a really, really good year for the game, and go figure, the cap is much higher now, giving those former 75's less of a reason to grab every 75 item in the game, thus barring new 75's from having a chance.

[Hyan]

So, if I understand this right, the only advantage is that you can't try to manipulate the market by buying everything and trying to jack up the price?

I never saw such a phenomenon in XI actually work, so I'm not sure what the big deal here is. Although I agree, the price history could have been longer, if not complete.

Selamis, the game became top heavy so the low level items weren't needed anymore. I don't see an upward expansion would have fixed this- only a constant influx of new players or people leveling new jobs would have worked. I also don't see why a 5 year old vet would compete with a fresh 75 player for the same items- logic would say that he already has the item in possession, while the fresh guy hasn't.

[Lucavi]

You weren't on Hades during the 05 Xmas rush, clearly.

Hyan: fresh guy wants some good 75 items for his first 75 job on the AH. 5-year vet wants the same items on his 7th 75 job on the AH. There's a very limited stock of the item. Guess who has more money to bid. That 5-year vet should be higher level, but since the cap stayed at 75 for so long, he has a near infinite amount of resources compared to the new guy. Clearly you can see the problem here.

[Hyan]

That wasn't a normal situation. More money came into the economy than was intended. If I understood you right, this would have meant the "base price" would have skyrocketed just as well.

[Spira]

Without a base price set by the game on each item listed on the AH to control inflation, the system was hardly a "gem".

base prices aren't necessary because of the equilibrium price set by demand and supply. if a few suppliers raise the price to higher than buyers are willing to pay, their goods wont sell, and other suppliers who give a favorable price will sell first. This also depends on the number of buyers and sellers for that good to begin with.

The AH doesn't create inflation in and of itself. It does the contrary even without a fixed price because sellers are taxed on items they put for sell, buyers are not. The tax process is a credit drain - less gil in the actual economy = overall value of gil increases as people have less spending power.

The only reason why inflation was such a huge problem before was because gil creation (nms / beastmen / quest ) was exceeding drain (tax, buying from npcs, dyna/limbus) and aggravated by RMT because they'd hoarded up huge amounts of gil (which wouldn't affect the economy if they're out of circulation) but by selling millions at a go were injecting too much gil into the economy for it to drain, causing hyperinflation..

base prices would do nothing against this either. cap prices might have.

[Lucavi]

No. The base price NEVER changes. That's what always keeps the item attainable by the player attempting to get the item. A level 5 armor may cost 5k recommended. A level 35 may cost 56k recommended. A level 67 may cost 230k recommended.

Those prices for that single piece of armor will never change, because the armor itself never changes. Even if more people have more money over time due to the game evolving and level caps going up, those low level guys aren't going to have more unless they come in crafting and gathering and playing the market for high level people looking for low level goods (think of WoW's disenchantment system, which kept high levels looking for low level gear for a long time, helping to fund the banks of lower level players who got a lot of drops that they could AH to higher level crafters OR low level players looking for new gear). That armor hasn't changed, so its price shouldn't change so it can always be affordable by the people who need it the most - the lower level people.

With this system in place, combined with effective ways to remove gil from the economy (vanity or useful items for the rich, ect.; perhaps a personal blinged out chocobo for 15 million gil, or something or other), you control inflation. When SE sees that the richest players are hoarding up a bit too much money, they can simply introduce a new vanity item that has craft mats that can only be purchased from NPCs in-game (deleting that gil from the game entirely), with a moderate chance of success to craft. If the item looks cool enough or has enough value, people will buy it for the respect that comes from having things that most people couldn't dream of affording (think kclub back when drks didn't use it - it wasn't all that useful, but it was a sign of supreme wealth).

There are ways, but is SE willing to do the work to test them? To realize them?

@Spira: 2005 proved you wrong. People bought Scorp Harnesses for 22 mil. Haubys skyrocketed to 15+ mill. There was no such thing as "too high to buy" because people just bought gil so they could have them. You set standards for the AH and you devise inventive ways to drain gil from the economy from those who have the most and presto, you balance inflation. Doing the latter without the former would still cripple the low level players, especially in a game with stagnant growth at the eventual cap, and unbalanced items that allow for singlular items to last a character some 40+ levels.

[Spira]

You weren't on Hades during the 05 Xmas rush, clearly.

Hyan: fresh guy wants some good 75 items for his first 75 job on the AH. 5-year vet wants the same items on his 7th 75 job on the AH. There's a very limited stock of the item. Guess who has more money to bid. That 5-year vet should be higher level, but since the cap stayed at 75 for so long, he has a near infinite amount of resources compared to the new guy. Clearly you can see the problem here.

thats not so much a flaw of the AH system than it is a trait of a basic capitalist economy. the AH acts as an automatic negotiation unit for buyer and seller. Seller sets a base, buyer sets the cap and they intersect.
With a market ward system, this negotiation doesnt exist since the prices are fixed and the retainer cannot be bargained with. The only way to achieve this effect is if players do the whole WTS WTB thing all over again.

Not to mention the point you're making doesnt seem to take much regard for the seller. If someone is willing to pay a higher price for my good, I'd rather sell to him to earn a bigger profit, if its profit earning to begin with.

[Hyan]

I think this has less and less to do with AH and more to do with everything else.

Base price wouldn't have helped the game in 05 if there were not enough gil sinks in place to deal with the huge amount of currency that came into the circulation. The base price won't do shit when people have so much money to spend it doesn't matter whether the asked price is on par with the base price or triple it. People will buy it, since they have more money to spend.

Hyan: fresh guy wants some good 75 items for his first 75 job on the AH. 5-year vet wants the same items on his 7th 75 job on the AH. There's a very limited stock of the item. Guess who has more money to bid. That 5-year vet should be higher level, but since the cap stayed at 75 for so long, he has a near infinite amount of resources compared to the new guy. Clearly you can see the problem here.

Clearly the guy with his 7th job at 75 has had to obtain gear for his last 6 jobs as well, unlike the fresh guy. Are there also no gil sinks to keep the vet from having so much gil?

[sruon]

The only good point of FFXI AH was the fan website. Aion AH would be a lot lot lot better in this situation.