Bazaar Question

[Zempten]

Hello

I was just wondering, why can't we have a search engine sort of thing for people's bazaars? It just feels like an incredibile waste of time to go thru everyone's bazaar looking for a specific item. I realize the implementation of the bazaar comments like "Want to Buy" and "Want to Sell", but to be honest all of the people that bazaar . . . like only about 10% of everyone does it, perhaps even less.

So what's wrong with having a search engine that allows us to just type the item we want ( we could even use that auto-translator for it ) so we can immediately find who to /target <PC> and buy and be on our way around Vana'diel?

[Sabaron]

This would effectively replace the Auction House for a great many things even if you were just told who is selling it. For all those items that require multiple relistings to get rid of, why would you even bother listing? Just bazaar it and wait for someone to ask. It also makes it less Bazaar-like when you don't have to look through the market. The system itself has to keep track of everyone's bazaar. This would be an enormous amount of data--with probably 1000s of searches requested simultaneously. The implementation is (IMO) an absolute nightmare.

[kiffkin]

Just getting people to read bazaar comments would be a huge improvement. For example, just now I'm selling Cursed Soup. I have a bazaar message saying

Cooking Skill Up
Royal Jelly -> Cursed Soup
Do you need it? 5k

It seems to me pretty obvious that Cursed Soup is going to be occurring somewhere in there.

However, I get plenty of people (probably about three quarters of the people who /check me) who go straight into and out of my bazaar, even when I'm in CN making the things (sometimes actually in sight if the person checking my bazaar).

More of this rant on another thread somewhere...

[Zempten]

I didn't realize there was another thread for this, if so I apologize.

However the way I see AH and the way I see Bazaar is just different I guess. AH is a place I put things up for sell when I need to go aroudn Vana'diel, my adventurers per say. Bazaar is something I do when I have real life stuff to do like going out to the movies, dinner with friends, work, . . .etc.

I remeber something like this from Everquest, where they had an entire zone dedicated to this, a bazaar. People could put their bazaar up and someone could just enter the zone open a search engine of sorts and just start looking for whatever they want.

In my mind it would work better then just comments, that's all. Perhaps I'm just being biased

[Sabaron]

Well, it certainly would be better than reading comments. I don't know about other servers, but Rolanberry Fields is the most popular bazaar area on Azura. Having a Jeuno Bazaar zone would be kinda nifty except for the fact that it would do a lot of harm to the AH. SE would probably have to tack a tax on it to sink gil, so there would still be outlying area bazaars. The population of said zone would likely be filled to overbursting at all hours and the lag would be awful unless multiple boxes were dedicated to serving this zone. This would be an expensive proposition and require a great deal of coding to complete when they've already got a well-established sales system already in place (AH). It is doubtful that this type of system will be realized on FFXI.

[kiffkin]

I didn't realize there was another thread for this, if so I apologize.

No, it's okay, it's my rant that was duplicated elsewhere (well, sort of), not the thread topic.

[Zempten]

Well, I was kind of thinking maybe instead of having taxes we can just be charged a one time fee per time we set up bazaar. It'll be something close to handing out a bag rare/ex that has 60 slots in it and we can transfer the items we want to sell into that bag and bazaar the bag up.

As far as most people doing outland bazaars I don't think it would be much of a problem because the fact that humans by nature are lazy, at least most are. Who would rather goto say Rolanberry and search over 50+ people for a single item when they can just goto say Jeuno Bazaar zone and just type it out and be directed to the player just the same as Widescan would be used?

Implementation would be difficult, but sometimes things have to be changed for the best and wether it is diffcult or not shouldn't be a reason for not doing something when it will benefit people.

Just my opinion though ^ ^

[tdh]

Personally I like this idea. Going to Rolanberry Fields is often a place to find bargains on some high price items, and then of course there are the items that can't be sold at the Auction House.

I'm all for the AH tax, and the Bazaar tax in Jeuno and Whitegate, however I like the Free Bazaar in Rolanberry. Being able to search for items would be save a lot of time as well. I was looking for an Air Tank, which you can't buy at the AH, and trying to farm the damn thing was taking too long. There are almost always a few of them out in the Field, and it's easier and faster to just /check everybody than it is to go through everybody's /seacom.

I don't think this would kill the AH, but I think it would help items to sell faster in Bazaar, and people would spend less time in Rolanberry... or maybe more time since items would sell faster and they'd just restock. lol

[Lmnop]

would it be easier to implement a search of /seacom? Like a Google search ;P You can already search by dot color (I think) so when you search for everyone with dots of the Item color (dunn even know what color that is >.>) and just add a term like "Air Tank." So it'd search using the existing engine to locate all people with comments of a certain color, and narrow it down to everyone who mentions "Air Tank." Not much different than looking for all beastmasters on the server, and then the engine narrows it down to levels 37-40.