Retainer/Market Ward system will never be as good as Auction House.

[Wolfie]

Whatcha mean, they can be used as both storage and bazaar at the same time. they can hold up to 100 storage and 10 bazaar items each. And you can now summon them from anywhere even if they are selling in the market wards.

You can't send them back for now.

There's some "perks" to this system like for every retainer you get an additional 90 storage + 10 more bazaar/storage slots.

But then, it would be simpler to have a mog house that just gave you 90 more storage, and an auction house that gave you 10 more auction slots.

Everything the devs will do with this system to make it more user friendly or intuitive will turn out to be extremely roundabout or awkward, because the base design of "NPCs selling your stuff in a separate zone like bazaars" is a bad design. There is nothing that this system does, that an AH couldn't do better, easier, and for cheaper in terms of development costs.

[Grit]

Everything the devs will do with this system to make it more user friendly or intuitive will turn out to be extremely roundabout or awkward, because the base design of "NPCs selling your stuff in a separate zone like bazaars" is a bad design. There is nothing that this system does, that an AH couldn't do better, easier, and for cheaper in terms of development costs.

This is the cold, hard truth about the retainer system. Despite certain advantages, it will never be as efficient as the tried-and-tested Auction House. Never.

I've always thought that the retainer system could have been great. However, my vision of a bustling market zone can't come true in FFXIV.. I've come to that realization.

So an Auction House is the only answer.