No. This would make the location of shops irrelevant, destroying value of high profile mall shops as individuals could simply browse an easily accessible NPC for all shops.
I think you might be overestimating the 'perceived' worth of mall shops, etc.
As someone who visits, and used to visit many shops in game in both good and bad locations quite often, I can tell you many items in a lot of the mall shops sit on the shelves for months with not being purchased, just the same as happens in other locations.... and some of those items are priced much lower than the same exact item in the auctions while the items were sitting in the shops at those prices.
Part of the reason for that is that folks can just hop over to an auctioneer and buy the stuff in a few seconds and not worry about it any more since they have obtained what they wanted quickly.
All of the shops, both those is spectacular locations and those that are in the worse ones in game don't stand a chance vs the brown coats...
Start tweaking the value of players estates and there will be no faith in those asset values. No faith = no value, as the PED is a fiat currency based off another fiat currency.
It was nice the MA finally removed the monthly rent fees, but that action alone changed the 'perceived' value of all of the estates since they were all placed on more of level playing field...
Adding a shop directory would increase value on all estates, not destroy them since there would be more demand I suspect. People don't want to take the time to visits the shops since time=money, etc. It's a hassle to look for items in shops as things are now. a directory could help get rid of that hassle a little.
Mindark has tweaked the value of estates over and over and over again, almost to the point that they have no value as things are now because tomorrow they can introduce another bug and break things again in any estate... some estates that were bugged at one point in time got fixed, and then bugs come back now and then only to be fixed and then broken again later, etc. Values of estates can't stay stable in markup if nobody knows if tomorrow that particular estate will break... or get changed dramatically...
Just a few things MA has done to lower value of estates over the years...
- shops, booths, and apartments not allowing any items to be placed in them at various times in various locations since vu 10's implementation... (I think Medusa Head might be working right finally?). Some places that got fixed stopped working again a month or two after the fixes, and then started working again later, etc. Some were left broken for many months, or in some cases over a year or more, etc.
- shops, booths, and apartments not working prior to vu 10 at various times
https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/...opkeepers-5k&p=1514504&viewfull=1#post1514504 so it's not just the new game engine that caused the problems... it's the database itself...
- moved all estates to new locations at vu 10 by turning around the buildings backwards or rearanged the building locations vs where they were previously, etc.
- didn't sell off all estates in game that the estate broker holds prior to making new masses of estates to sell off (classic example is introduction of Medusa head, etc. while shops in some of the apartments/shops that existed back as far as 2006 or 2007 still have not been sold by the estate broker even though selling off of those pre-existing estates that was 'promised'/hinted at in a 2007 q&a, etc.)
- huge screw ups in the deer mall and all of the changes it's undergone over the years
- massive screw up in max number of items allowed in various locations
- tweaks in what parts of estates can hold items and what cannot
After all that stuff, and more, which they did to lower estate values, wouldn't it be nice if they just put in a directory to increase the value and usefulness of estates a little bit?...