My biggest pet peeves:

[Rivienne]

People go to auction houses IRL all the time to have their stuff auctioned off, and they collect their item if it doesn't meet the minimum bid or their money if it sold from the same people, minus a cut for their services..

Uhmm. Yeah.. But... I think you are missing something here. I get you don't entirely care about the world environment with this, but in the real world they do this by interacting with other people, as in, the people who run the auction house. Who then do the selling/money management. The only time someone doesn't interact with the people at the auction house is when they send someone to act as Retainer for them... Just like in game. You can't avoid interaction and responsibility. Either you have to interact with someone else who does it for you, or you have to take the responsibility of doing it yourself. Make sense?

I mean when you really look at close, the whole purpose of this games design is to be immersive, you have to interact with people be they real or npc, so the system of selling is supposed to make sense from that stance as well. An automated (well, honestly "magic" is the best way I can think to describe it) board that manages your sales and money for you doesn't make sense in the world environment as it stands.

It doesn't have to go to your pocket book directly. It could be mailed or you could simply go back to the market board to collect your gil.

Okay, but that still requires a go-between with someone. Be it a delivery moogle, or a person at the auction house to give you the money.. So still haven't lost the retainer on this end, just maybe replaced it with the moogle or a different npc you have to go to, instead of who can come to you.

You just merge the retainer selling stuff for you into the market board/switch it to an AH and remove the whole step of having to go to the inn room to summons someone to sell something for you.

You do realize the primary place for summoning the retainer is right by the market boards? Doing so in the Inn is exactly what you describe as a solution a rich person in U'ldah would want, so they don't have to actually go down to the markets themselves. If you do away with the retainer, but somehow merge with the market boards, then now instead of being able to do the selling from your Inn, you would have to take the added step of going to the actual market and interacting with the board anyway. So it actually is less convenient in that sense.

Anyway, I don't mean to be argumentative, but I just don't see a way they could get rid of the retainer without making the system more complicated for the player, or breaking world immersion.