The Free Market needs a change.

I think it's time for Nexon to really do a complete overhaul of the FM. (Has it ever changed?)

Here are some ideas I had that I would like to share that I think would make the whole FM experience much better.

1) I know it's a pipe dream, but it would be great if Nexon just scrapped the idea of Owls. There should be an NPC in the Free Market Entrance (like next to Frederick or Scrooge) that will do a search for items very similar as if you were using an Owl. Of course there will be some limitations like you can only do 1 search every half hour or each search costs 50k mesos, something along these lines. I know I'm very cheap but I can tell you right now I don't think there would be anyone complaining that Owls were no more and searching was free. I think many Maplers would very much appreciate this change, because it is mind numbingly slow to browse the FMs if you're looking for a particular item. It's very time consuming and boring.

2) Each FM should have and invisible grid. Meaning you can setup your shop/merchant on the particular part of the grid. This makes the FM look much more neat and uniform and as well stopping people from taking up 2 spots.

3) One thing that I would be great to see is different FMs selling particular items. For example, if you're looking to sell this great dagger you scrolled, Setup a shop in the "Thieves Weapons FM". Or lets say you interested in buying some INT earrings, take a look in the "Mage Equips FM". Something that I noticed in my server is there is something similar to this. It seems FM1 CH2 you can always find Summon/Magic rocks, Ores, DM/Orbis scrolls at a cheap price. It seems the maple community has an understanding that this is the place to go for selling these items. Now only if the Maple Community can establish where other items should be sold that would be great for selling so Maplers know where to go for fast and easy service.

Also, it wouldn't hurt to give the FM a big makeover. It's a bit dull looking, but that's my opinion.

If you have any ideas you would like to share, post em.

It seems FM1 CH2 you can always find Summon/Magic rocks, Ores, DM/Orbis scrolls at a cheap price.

easy to merchant, always in demand, etc. they're honestly the easiest items to sell in the free market. and an item specific freemarket room wouldn't necessarily work because what if you just went on a boss run or hoarded a lot of items and are ready to sell? if you've got fifteen lv 100 equips and weapons of varying classes, you could only sell one or two of those at a time under that architecture. if they're going to change things, they need to make it like an auction house in wow. an MTS with mesos. then it becomes a matter of economy and then they'll need to create more meso sinks.

Agreed with 2 and 3. I wish people would be more descriptive of what they're selling. I've been looking for a cheap Angel Wings with no luck.

The problem with 3 is, the FM's a free for all. If someone knows a certain room is popular, they'll set up their shop there.
Maybe you could set specific channels though - eg. 10 Warrior, 11 Mage, 12 Bowman, 13 Thief, 14 Pirate - and then you'd have enough rooms to fill the stuff out.

Making owls free, or a cheap meso fee, would help the FM be better in so many ways. Easier to find stuff, easier to set prices selling, harder for people to maintain monopolies, etc.

The problem with 3 is, the FM's a free for all. If someone knows a certain room is popular, they'll set up their shop there.
Maybe you could set specific channels though - eg. 10 Warrior, 11 Mage, 12 Bowman, 13 Thief, 14 Pirate - and then you'd have enough rooms to fill the stuff out.

Making owls free, or a cheap meso fee, would help the FM be better in so many ways.

Dont we already have that problem anyway

I'd love to have more kinds of differnt fm areas. Like now, we've perion and ludi and such but then you'd have stuff like orbis or aqua road!

It seems like the more recent patches have simply added popular ideas from other games. If they were to update the FM , they would probably just make it an auction house, right?

It seems like the more recent patches have simply added popular ideas from other games. If they were to update the FM , they would probably just [SIZE="7"]make it an auction house[/SIZE], right?

1m times this.

Auction House Replaced the Lame-Ass Goldbuyer Economy in DFO for a better one.

1) I know it's a pipe dream, but it would be great if Nexon just scrapped the idea of Owls. There should be an NPC in the Free Market Entrance (like next to Frederick or Scrooge) that will do a search for items very similar as if you were using an Owl. Of course there will be some limitations like you can only do 1 search every half hour or each search costs 50k mesos, something along these lines. I know I'm very cheap but I can tell you right now I don't think there would be anyone complaining that Owls were no more and searching was free. I think many Maplers would very much appreciate this change, because it is mind numbingly slow to browse the FMs if you're looking for a particular item. It's very time consuming and boring.

I don't see why there should be any limit to searching for items, or any fee for searching other than a small meso sink. It's not like it costs Nexon anything to provide a service that is available in just about every other MMO. It'd be a whole lot simpler if everything was done via search.

I don't see why there should be any limit to searching for items, or any fee for searching other than a small meso sink. It's not like it costs Nexon anything to provide a service that is available in just about every other MMO. It'd be a whole lot simpler if everything was done via search.

I assumed if everyone in the FM is seaching at the same time almost every min of the day, it would probably put alot of strain of the servers. Same reason why websites only allow 5 seaches every min or w/e.

If you limit people to 5 free owls per hour, it would cover the bases pretty well. Usually you go to the FM and want to buy/sell only a couple items at a time. And maybe prices wouldn't fluctuate so fast if people knew what prices were.

1. and 2. would be really lovely. I can imagine #1. as a meso sink, so it'll help keep the economy under wraps. 50k doesn't sound too bad. Heck, even 100k is chump change to the insanely wealthy. #2. I could see implemented using some sort of designated icon or whatnot in the Free Market. For example, you have to be within a very small distance from the spot, and you double click. If you have a permit, the game registers your clicks as valid, and you "claim" the spot and the shop gets opened up in an exact and orderly fashion.

Reading these great ideas, and knowing that they aren't currently implemented, hurts. ;_;

I prefer the previously espoused idea of ditching the market altogether and turning the FM into a world specific meso for payment version of MTS.

No space limitations, easier to navigate, no fighting for spots or any of that crap.
You could still be required to buy a permit to put items in. They could still limit the number of items you can sell to the type of permit you have. Hell, they could even still require an owl to use the search functionality, or to use it more frequently than once an hour or whatever.

1. No Owls are a Cash Shop feature and it's good the way it is. Why don't you just ask them to revive you if you die for 1m and replace wheels too?

2. Yeah it's neater but there are less FM spots.

3. No. So now I need to buy more mushies or set up different permits just because I have both an Int and a Luck item for sale?

1. No Owls are a Cash Shop feature and it's good the way it is. Why don't you just ask them to revive you if you die for 1m and replace wheels too?

1. Dungeon Fighter already does that for free for their Auction House, and they also give you up to 3 free revives everyday for their dungeons, extra revives costing NX. It's a F2P game. I don't see why it can't be a bit more like that. It's not going to break the game, but I can see deflation on more common items.

I prefer the previously espoused idea of ditching the market altogether and turning the FM into a world specific meso for payment version of MTS.

No space limitations, easier to navigate, no fighting for spots or any of that crap.
You could still be required to buy a permit to put items in. They could still limit the number of items you can sell to the type of permit you have. Hell, they could even still require an owl to use the search functionality, or to use it more frequently than once an hour or whatever.

That would be a huge strain on merchanting, which Nexon has already recognized as an in-game activity. Many many more people would sell stuff, and alot more of it instead of just the 16 item limit or whatever. So a MTS-version would be cram packed with loads of garbage just like MTS. It would be nearly impossible to scan every page for things to buy for cheap and resell.
Also, some people, like me, don't always know what they're looking for in FM until we find it. Would be really hard to just scan a FM-MTS.

The one thing that would be nice from that though, would be them keeping the FM and just renaming it so people could still go there and hangout/AFK with friends.

1. No Owls are a Cash Shop feature and it's good the way it is. Why don't you just ask them to revive you if you die for 1m and replace wheels too?

Where do you get this assumtion that I want them to change wheel prices? Please stay on topic.

2. Yeah it's neater but there are less FM spots.

All senseable logic dictates the exact opposite to what you just said. Less people taking up 2 spots = More FM spots.

3. No. So now I need to buy more mushies or set up different permits just because I have both an Int and a Luck item for sale?

Who said anything about more mushies and permits? I simply stated there should be designated areas where you can go to buy and sell specific items. If you don't want to use these areas, then don't. Plain and simple. For those who do, it's a win-win. The buyer can easily locate items of their class, and the seller can sell the items faster if he is in a spot where people are more likely to buy.

Where do you get this assumtion that I want them to change wheel prices? Please stay on topic.

There's a literary term for what he did, give me a second. It was not off-topic, however.

Here we go:

Slippery Slope: Suggesting that one step will inevitably lead to more and more negative steps.

Who said anything about more mushies and permits? I simply stated there should be designated areas where you can go to buy and sell specific items. If you don't want to use these areas, then don't. Plain and simple. For those who do, it's a win-win. The buyer can easily locate items of their class, and the seller can sell the items faster if he is in a spot where people are more likely to buy.

That's what your idea implies. I have two items for sale: A thief top, and a mage bottom. Obviously, I can't sell both in the "Thief FM", just as I can't sell both in the "Mage FM". Therefore, I either have to get two permits, or sell one at a time rather than both at the same time.

And if with this new "Owl" feature you are suggesting, wouldn't that make job-specific FM rooms obsolete anyway?

what about a mix of things? seeing how we have (well, most worlds) 19 channels wth 20? FM each, as has been said, divide the FM's as in CH1: headgear, CH2: gloves, etc etc etc, and then in said channel, divide them into job specific and the such, and the room work in an MTS-way

"i need a new helm"
go CH1
"i want a CZak"
go FM1

open the "MTS-like" function and work from there.

and have a limit of how much stuff a person can have total in the MTS, kind of like a shop permit that allows you to put 16 items total in their respective FM locations