Tanaka Keynote at GDC China

[Hyan]

Actually, it is now tinkerer's ward.

[miokomioko]

Fuckin' lol.

[Spider-Dan]

Auctions are NOT about repeatedly guessing at the seller's value of their item until you figure out how much they actually want for it and then just paying that.

No, they're actually about repeatedly guessing at what your competitor's price limit is. Which is apparently far superior!

I mean, asking a seller "Will you take $30? $31? $32? $33?" is f*cking tedious and moronic, but a bidding war of $30, then $31, then $32, then $33... well, my friend, that is High Society.

Apparently, you have been walking up to an auction house and expecting to get a retail store.

Good work thinking incredibly short-term. Even you should know there was no point to this comment. I'm sure AH lists will get way too stupid with lists that look like:

Leather Shoes
Leather Shoes +1
Leather Shoes +2
Leather Shoes +3
Leather Shoes Red
Leather Shoes Red +1
Leather Shoes Red +2
Leather Shoes Red +3
Leather Shoes Black
Leather Shoes Black +1
Leather Shoes Black +2
Leather Shoes Black +3
Leather Shoes Green
Leather Shoes Green +1
Leather Shoes Green +2
Leather Shoes Green +3
Leather Shoes Ochre
Leather Shoes Ochre +1
Leather Shoes Ochre +2
Leather Shoes Ochre +3

For one, single item!

Even FFXI's AH only lists items that have a sales attempt. Even if that weren't the case, who cares if item lists are big? There's a magical button called PageDown that works pretty well for that.

I was never talking about how the Market Wards will miraculously relieve economic frustrations with how items get more expensive when the supply goes down, hurrrrrr. I'm talking about the buying experience in such a situation because of the fact that XI hides the fucking seller's perceived value of an item.

Yeah, because a reasonable criticism of XI's AH is that the prices were so volatile that no one could ever figure out what to pay, right?

There's a feature called Price History (you know, the thing you have been complaining about) that will, amazingly enough, enable you to discern the seller's perceived value and purchase an item on your first attempt somewhere in the neighborhood of 99% of the time.

My personal issues with XI's AH will not apply to XIV under those above assumptions because my problem isn't with economics, it's with the fucking guessing game you have to play to buy an item.

And you're accusing me of blowing things out of proportion? Outstanding work, chief.

[Elrina]

XI's AH was annoying as hell not only because you had to play a guessing game, but because the lag it had on top of that. Without that wait to find out whether or not you got something it wouldn't have been quite as bad, I think, although I'd still much prefer being able to see what people want and just decide whether I want to pay it or not.

And the reason I earlier mentioned Aion was because it's Broker is the same thing as the market wards, just not as slow and clunky, and with more information. It's nice knowing what people are selling an item for, and no, it doesn't have to be called an Auction House. Right now we just need a fast, convenient way to buy/sell things to each other.

It lists only the items being sold, since there is no price history list. You're able to search for any specific type of item you want, and then narrow down that search, by different criteria (shoes > leather shoes > level range), then you can scroll through what people have selling and how much they want for it. If you pay attention to the things you'll be wanting several levels higher than you rather than what you immediately need, you can have an idea of how the price is fluctuating. (Search function)

And it's similar to the market wards because it displays mostly the same information. The seller, what the item is, what the price they're selling it for is, but in an easily searchable window that has access to everything and lets you immediately purchase the item (or list items for sale). No teleporting, no cross-ward bullshit, no lag or delays. It also happens to tell you how many units are being sold, lets you list things in just about any amount of units (12 arrows, 50 arrows, 999 arrows, or 432 arrows, doesn't matter), and gives you a unit price for the item, so that you can see not just what they're charging, but what they're charging per unit. Meaning you can get away with charging more sometimes with a lower number of units, or a higher, depending on the item and current competition for selling it.

And it does this all in a convenient window. No searching different bazaars, or dealing with different retainers, or any bullshit. I'd like this because it seems reasonable, and extremely similar to what currently exists, just without all the extra bullshit involved. You talk to the npc or whatever, it lets you search for any items listed for sale, all relevant selling information, and lets you buy the item right from the window. No other stupid time wasting shit involved. The only real differences between that and the retainers are that this offers slightly more information (not a bad thing), and is much faster and easier.

If you really want a price history (something I don't really see them implementing, not because it's a bad thing, but because it creates a set previous price for things which will influence future purchases more, which is exactly part of what they said they didn't want), then talk to the XIV Pro guys and maybe they could set something up to scan the damn thing for a third party price history. But honestly, with crafting such a huge emphasis, a price history isn't really that big of a deal and not even remotely the biggest inconvenience right now while not having a semblance of an AH. When there are multiple items up for sale, people can compete with transparent pricing, and when there isn't, a lot of people won't know any damn better as to what it "should" cost anyway, but at least it'll be easy and fast to find, and easy and fast to buy what's listed for sale.

I'm not any crazy Aion fan or anything, I only even played it the first few months it was out in the US, but it's Broker was sure as hell a much more efficient and convenient way of accomplishing this same thing.

[tymora]

Aion's system is good? I hated Aion's system because of 1 simple flaw. Hai2 people who price items 1 gil less than you do and so on so far for the next 100 people. Repeat that countless times each day, week, month.
Sometimes more information is not necessarily good.

[Grey Jorildyn]

But most of the time it is. The mere fact that you could see who was selling something let you /tell them and barter. So even if someone was selling something 1g cheaper than someone else (and usually it was items that were listed fairly often), you could send them a tell and haggle a bit if they were online. Also, at least on my server, people didn't buy shit from known RMTs. That alone stifled a lot of RMT profits because players would rather buy from legit players than RMTs if they knew where the money was going.

Furthermore, undercutting is a much bigger problem in a completely hidden market like XI's AH. You're worried about 1g less? In FFXI that was more like 10k-100k less and it added up over time until items were worth nothing. Also, the BoE system kept items within a certain value. That and the fact that items had a "minimum cost" to make because some of materials required were from vendors (ie. charcoals to make ingots or other reagents necessary to make parts). At least the market didn't suck ass like it did in XI. They literally had to try and eliminate every single RMT in order to have some semblance of balance in that economy. Not the case in Aion whatsoever.

Aion's broker, while not seemingly that much better than XI's AH, had enough transparency and improved functionality to make it light years better in practice. The mere fact that you could type in what you were looking for helped a shitload too. No more having to load all "Feet" to get to the one item you wanted and all that crap. Check-boxing all common/superior/etc. items to narrow searched was pretty badass too, although that is not an Aion-specific feature.

[tymora]

Also, at least on my server, people didn't buy shit from known RMTs.

That wasn't true on my server. If anything the RMT and bots drove the legit players out of most raw materials - aethers, leathers, ores...etc

In FFXI that was more like 10k-100k less and it added up over time until items were worth nothing.

People blatantly pricing goods 1 to 10 gil under me pisses me off a lot more than 10-100k less when I can see it and even more so when you know the other fella is a known bot/RMT.

When people can't see the prices but only the history as in FFXI, the system will iron out these small pricing irregularities. I will say ignorance is bliss here.

---------
The large decline in prices you see on some items are because the items were overpriced when they are first introduced. All equips become non-profitable in the long run because that is the nature of a system that doesn't destroy items (a.k.a. wear + break) and has HQs, especially those items with a low % (e.g. 1 HQ per 50 regular...etc).

If you want to compare, look at crystal prices or the basic raw materials. Give and take some small natural fluctuations, prices remain relatively stable in FFXI as compared to Aion. The deflation trend didn't affect these items much. There is a decline in prices but it is slow. On my server in Aion, leather prices can go span several orders of magnitude from day to day (depends when the RMT gets enough to dump...).

[miokomioko]

XI's undercutting was obnoxious as shit because you couldn't tell someone was undercutting you until their 1~10gil cheaper item sold first just because it was priced lower than yours. The hidden prices are what causes any problems I had with that AH system. There needed to be something done about such a tiny increment less in value guaranteeing priority. Like, if someone made a bid, all items valued lower or equal to the bid had a random chance of being the one that sold and not always the cheapest.

[Elrina]

If you want to compare, look at crystal prices or the basic raw materials. Give and take some small natural fluctuations, prices remain relatively stable in FFXI as compared to Aion. The deflation trend didn't affect these items much. There is a decline in prices but it is slow. On my server in Aion, leather prices can go span several orders of magnitude from day to day (depends when the RMT gets enough to dump...).

I think that's the point, though. They want people to not know a "going price" for an item, so that it can fluctuate from one day/week to the next, so that it's easier for crafters to make money from people that don't know the value of the item. That's what SE wants with the market wards, that's what we have, it's just a lot slower and worse. At least this would be similar to what they want anyway (making it a lot more realistic to hope for), and a lot more efficient and useful for us.

And I agree with Grey, I don't know about everyone else for sure, but I and the people I knew didn't buy stuff that was marked 1 under simply because I thought that was being a complete douchebag. There was known RMT, which we avoided buying stuff from (it really wasn't difficult to farm your own raw mats for crafting, even mass quantities of aether and ore, I'd maxed both gathering skills early and easily and I think only bought mats a handful of times because I was feeling impatient while finishing the 400+ quests for the crafts I mastered), but pretty much anybody that did that (undercut for 1-10 on the max price) I wouldn't buy from. If you're going to undercut someone else, at least save me some actual money for buying your crap, don't just mark it 1 under or something ridiculous to have a "lower price".

[Spira]

woo.. only six easy steps just to find your item before going to buy it!
and not only that, searches are separated by wards! because people always sell their goods in the correct wards right?

...yup. so not a hassle. so much more convenient that the FFXI AH.

[kisada]

not to mention it's a system that encourages people to hold onto their ignorant misconceptions of how the market should work. i wouldn't be surprised if they hold onto tanaka's ideals and continue to try and circumvent/impede natural economics.

[Spira]

itll fail at some point, unless they realize it soon enough and change it.

i mean... sure, u wanna use something u put so much time into designing.. but economics has decades more material worth considering that could easily break the whole game just because you adamantly choose to use a flawed economic system

[LinktheDeme]

not to mention it's a system that encourages people to hold onto their ignorant misconceptions of how the market should work. i wouldn't be surprised if they hold onto tanaka's ideals and continue to try and circumvent/impede natural economics.

I'm starting to wonder if the change of management was one of two things or a combination

1) It was done only so the public could see new management might bring new ideas, but in reality Tanaka is still in control. (I believe it was in an interview afterwards that Tanaka made the comment that an Auction house something the players have been asking for will never be done. Why is that? Simply because he says it is? Why would he be in the position to say this if he wasn't in charge still)

2) It was done to lower the overall cost of maintaining XIV so that Tanaka could still push his ideas onto them without having to pay Tanaka his salary on that project but still get his ideas.

I can see why they don't want to implement an auction house because of spending the resources on that when they already have a system in place. However if they want their system in place they have to make it function conveniently for the players.


Like everyone else said, have it scan all the market wards of that area and list off by ward what they're in and the price they are selling it at. And then have the option if you want to filter it out by ward.


edit: Also The whole part about removing player base from knowing how many players online is the biggest bullshit move they could do. Fact of the matter is it probably scared away more people that they did this than they gained because no one wants to be fed bullshit and kept in the dark.