Would you like to see retainer bazaars in residential areas?

[Kaes]

Would you like to have the ability to sell directly out of a Free Company chest or personal retainer through the use of an NPC which you can add to your estate?

This would serve the purpose of increasing traffic into the residential areas and making these areas more useful for visitors who don't own an estate, low traffic and low utility being two common complaints about the current housing.

I am aware they are called residential areas...

- but that certainly isn't keeping you from hiring repair NPCs and vendor NPCs right inside your estate.
- During the Starlight event, many estate owners eagerly installed trees
- ... and were delighted when NPCs were added to the subdivisions, which they complained about and requested

so clearly some of these estate holders wanted the extra visitors.

edited to add:

When I heard that you could have vendor NPCs in an estate, I thought those might be like FFXI bazaars, but it turns out those are just normal NPCs that sell you stuff. Why not let FCs sell their own Krakka Roots for money, right from the house? Auto-deposit to the Company Chest removes the need to delegate sales to an individual member, who has to use their own retainer allotment, keep track of sales and be trusted to log in regularly, monitor prices and promptly and honestly deposit all of the funds.

Since FC bazaars generate less exposure than the Market Board and are more inconvenient for buyers to visit, the costs should be slightly cheaper than the Market Board. It is possible to completely eliminate tax with direct trading, but since bazaars are more convenient than constantly advertising in shout and personally approving every trade, some small cost should be paid. The estate is already an investment itself, but bazaars potentially remove an existing constant gil sink (MB taxes), which needs to be continuously offset by more than just an one-time fee. Assuming that reduced taxes (paid in gil) would be the motivation to use these, I would make retainer sales tax-free but require a periodic payment of Ventures to keep them selling. Ventures don't have a direct gil value, but using them is a trade off from Exploration rewards. Perhaps 10 Ventures per week (purchasable with 2000 Grand Company Seals) would be adequate.

Just putting this out there to see what people think. Given development priorities and the upcoming expac, I don't realistically expect to see this soon, and I would rather see house sharing before bazaars (perhaps house keys like the blank EB invitations).

[Felis]

Something like the market wards, where retainer stand around in public and everyone can click on them and buy something? ^^ (but with a proper search system, I hope)
I really hope SE bring something like this again. It was also usefull to trade items between different characters on the same account.

[Nalien]

Yes. This is actually something I think they really should work on, the Market Wards of 1.0 were abysmal, but the concept behind them was awesome. Housing has a pay wall to at least have a better shot at the same concept. Think I made a few posts about this a while back...

An example of what I'd like to see;

Currently you put up items on the Market Board and you only get 95% of the value of what you sold due to the 5% tax.
With Housing Ward sales, items being sold would still show up on the Market Board, but that 5% tax would be moved to the buyer instead.
The Market Board would list the location of the Retainer (Lavender Beds Ward 5 Plot 10, for example), and if the buyer goes to that location they can purchase without the tax.
What would this achieve? Well, the current state of the Market Board doesn't give me much hope for this, but ideally;

Lets say I'm selling a shiny for 10,000G.
If I sell it on the Market Board, someone buys it for 10,000G and I get 9,500G.
If I sell it from my Retainer through Housing Wards, I'm not going to eat that 5% tax, so I sell if for 9,500G and get exactly the same value for selling it.
Buyers can either buy it straight off the Market Board, in which case they still pay 10,000G for it (yes I know that maths isn't correct but you get the concept), or they can go to my Retainer in the Housing Ward and get a discount.

Sadly the state of undercutting in this game would probably prevent such a concept from functioning properly. If the Market Board simply displays the total cost to the buyer (So I sell it from Wards for 9,500G, but the Market Board displays it at 10,000G and lists the Ward/Plot I'm selling from for anyone willing to hoof it there) then undercutters may not notice and spiral prices to oblivion, though.

Would work really well with market themed furniture as well... Mannequins especially...