Market Ward Stores

One thing I have noticed lately is that the stalls in the market ward have no real purpose. Especially now with the item search feature (which I feel really helped the current system great job on it so far!). But I think that a lot could be done to improve the market wards using the stalls.

After hearing the plans as to how SE plans to change up the crafting system to allow crafters to adjust item stats I feel that markets are going to be more personal than ever, with everyone wanting the best stats for their play style.

So my idea is to add some options to the stalls to add personality. First of all choose a name for your stalls, this will then be used on all stalls you rent and will be registered to you (to avoid people copying you to get people to look at their wares) this is used to let people know you and remember you. So if you make a lot of items they like they can look through and say "oh I rember that store! they sell good stuff." and you can grow a good reputation through the game's community.

People looking through the markets to visit are given a list of open stalls, so if you move your mouse over the tailors ward, a window pops up beside it listing all the stores inside, this gives stall users another chance to advertise, and again happy customers may become regulars if they can see where you are.

Stalls should be rented out for hours, days or a week depending on how much they are willing to spend, also depending on how long you rent the stall out for the more slots the store has to sell things, because a stall that will be open for a whole week needs a larger inventory that one that is open for 3 days.

You should be able to set greetings, and goodbyes to your retainer. So when people come to look through your store they get a nice greeting that will be great for helping people remember you.

Items you are selling should be displayed, and retainers should be given animations showcasing them.

Well that's about all I can think of at the moment. If anyone has something to add I am more than happy to hear it.

I, too, noticed the market ward stalls are almost useless now. People simply look up the item they need, get it marked by the red star and simply walk up to these retainers before leaving. Don't be mistaken, I absolutely love (really! :o ) being able to put a retainer up with my things and do random shopping in the market wards from time to time, however the feeling is not the same as before the search feature (I like the search feature too, I'm just saying it's different now).

Basically, I am in favour of a complete redesign of the market wards, but I'll get into that later. Now, the stalls.
Players should have an advantage in renting a stall, making them more attractive to both buyers and sellers. For example, sellers could have lowered tax on items sold when renting a stall and the same low tax on all item sold at the stall (even for items sold outside the proper market ward). I addition, sellers renting stalls would have their wares listed in the search menu of the other two city-states, the buyers would be able to import these wares, for a price (instead of going all the way to the other city to buy it).
Just that would make the stalls much more appealing for both buyers and sellers.

Also, there many different kinds of stalls available outside the market wards for the NPCs, while we can only choose three display for our retainers in the market wards. Why can't we have access to these display to choose from as well (leatherworker, carpenter stall, etc)?

However, just that is not enough for the market wards themselves. The market wards are not appealing to players to come do random shopping in them. It requires a lot of teleportation from ward to ward, everything looks the same, retainers are all packed and disorganized (it's like a closet where we stock our retainers)... in short, the market wards needs to be tweaked to be more lively and appealing. The market wards need to be easily accessible, convenient and fun to walk through. With the search feature, we already have improved convenience, this could further be improved with delivery (for a price, of course!) and importations from other city-state (for a price, of course!). Easier access is achieved with a more seamless transition between the city and the market wards, between the wards themselves and by having wards that are less crowded. To make the transition more seamless, the entrance to the market wards should not be an invisible wall but a real seamless entrance. Next to that entrance, an elevator to move directly to the appropriate ward for players in a hurry. When you step seamlessly from the city to inside the market wards, there are many possibilities for the developers: have a lobby with a REAL search counter and other features, or end up directly in a ward (either one chosen randomly or the first on the list), or anything else.
Also, the wards need to be less disorganized and less "crowded", by make the wards larger (put two market ward side by side and open the doors on the side with no 2 stands instead of 3). This will enable more stands for people to rent, allow retainers to be more dispersed and give a better visibility, easier for buyers to cycle through the retainers. Obviously, to prevent a ward to become overcrowded again, just put a limit on how many retainers can be in a single ward. Also, another alternative to the doubling the size of each ward, is to have side by side two different wards (with the doors opened on the side once again). These two different wards paired like this: a popular ward with a ward that is not popular.

I agree with you that the search took away MW browsing, unfortunately making the stalls useless. No one uses the stalls anymore and neither do I when I always used a stall before. I also enjoyed having a stall and selling my goods out of a stall. Having only stalls able to export goods to another city is an interesting idea or maybe only the retainers with stalls are shown in global searches. Should discuss that one more.
More design options is a must. All the stalls have the same look which is...boring and bland and again makes stalls not that interesting.
Let us customize table top, stall posts, roof, retainer position, retainer anims, custom sign where player can enter some text, maybe different options like sales (5% off - 50% off day), preferred customers list (enter player names in a list and gives special discounts to that player or LS).
Be able to rent out everything from a hut to a cheap side street corner cloth on the ground sitting on the ground to a walk in store. The bigger the hut or stall or store, the more rent but the more your retainer is able to put up for sale (5 items for a cheapy 'stall' and up to 20 for a store + your normal 10 slots)

With the search function they should just rename the wards to normal names and let us sell out of any ward we want while the search still functions the same and gives the ward name, retainer name, marks with a star. Of course, add a search box where we can enter text to find item or use a menu driven search option where you can search for item using menus. This will eliminate ward crowding.