Exterior: open a shop

What do you think about the possibility to open up a little shop in the garden of your house? It could be added through some exterior furniture which allows to put some items on display there and mark them for sale (although not commended, you could also link those items with the mb).

To give the personal shop a more personal touch, people could rate a shop on certain criteria like prices, rarity of the items, frequency with which the shop gets new stock and so on. Naturally the shop owner would be able to decide whether to make the ratings public or not.

I don't know... I think exploring and finding rare treasures are fundamental aspects of any rpg experience. Adding a personal shop would make the wards a bit more livelier since it gives players an incentive to go on the hunt for good deals. It would also add to the feel of districts as places where people actually live.

The Expansion of Duties permit already accomplishes the basic idea since passing players can interact with the retainer to see what items it is selling on MB. I've seen players set up their retainers under the awning fixture as if it was an outdoor market stall.

I know you have something a little different in mind with your shop idea but it doesn't make sense to have 2 separate market systems. The big problem with utilizing the wards for your idea is there are too many of them to effectively direct player traffic to the specific locations where someone would be selling item. Few players are going to spend hours going through each ward hoping to find a player selling something when they can just go to a marketboard instead.

I'm always confused by people's concerns that the wards don't feel lived in when many neighborhoods in real life really aren't that different. The wards are very similar to a couple of neighborhoods that I lived in where the houses weren't on a major thoroughfare so didn't get traffic from non-residents. If kids weren't out playing or someone doing yard work they felt enpty. Considering we spend most of our time in the game world doing content, the wards are naturally going to feel similarly empty. It would actually be a bad sign to see the wards busy because it would mean players didn't have anything better to be doing with their time.

Hmm, I guess I considered my idea more of a gimmick than a fleshed out alternative to the mb. You could also add map markers or other icons to show which plots have active shops. There a many ways to increase visibility.

I mean the shop would be ignored by most but a few individuals would take it seriously and make proper work of it. It's up to the player to find them (or not ;p).

I think it is more confusing why you would compare real life neighbourhoods to the ingame districts. The districts are part of a game which implies they are there to offer the player something fun. Whether that's showing off your housing designer skills, shooing people away from your yard or just meeting new people during inactive content .

In the end of the day a personal shop will not be a priority, but I think it doesn't hurt to have multiple options to make the wards more interesting, other than having a house/appartment.

We have retainers, housing tags and mannekins (spelling?), so we can already have Item Shops, Clothing Models, whatever we want.

There's an Igloo thing you can use as a shop or you can use the Outdoor Counters...

SE has already given us the tools to do this, but the MB is more convenient, even if you're already in a Housing Ward.