Architect Archive
Thread: Message to the Merchant... From the Crafter...
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Kdr_Kane
Fri Jun 11, 2004 8:44 am
#14
I would recommend the following.
The Master Merchant has the ability to create a "Consignment Vendor". When the merchant creates the vendor, he has two new options.
- Set consignment fee (for example, 0-25%, set one time forever)
- Set consigner (set one time forever)
The consignment fee distributes a percentage of the sales to the merchant (vendor employer).
The consigner has rights to add and remove items from the vendor. He also has rights to add and remove maintenance.The merchant has none of the rights. The merchant canstilldestroythe structure to destroy the vendor. Quite drastic I know, but only necessary if the consigner disappears from the game and the vendor has no product and tons of maintenance. Remember, product goes into the stock room after 30 days anyway and self-destructs after 7 days in the stock room.
Of course as an alternative, it would be nice if the merchant has the ability to destroy the vendor if it is empty and has nothing in the stock room.
It's pretty simple really. It would take some code though.
Mkappus
Fri Jun 11, 2004 9:34 am
#15
Consignment
Instead of offering an item to a vendor, your offer an item for consigment.
The seller goes to a merchants vendor, examines the merchants consigment fee. They seller then offers the item for consignment to the vendor for a certain price.
The merchant reviews all offers for consigment and approves or rejects them. The merchant can also set the consigment fee from 1% to 20%.
When an item is purchased both the seller and the merchant receive an email. The seller gets his money less the consignment fee, themerchant gets his cut.
Essentially you are creating privately owned bazaars. Instead of a transaction fee going to a money sink, the fee goes to the merchant owner.
I also think we need to think of the impact this is really going to have. . Crafters won't be that hard hit in my opinion. Most big crafters also have and keep merchant skills. Resource hounds and loot hounds will be hurt hard. Many of them get bus 3 drop a terminal vendor and drop the skills.
LonelyGhost
Fri Jun 11, 2004 10:55 am
#16
I truly believe the entire Merchant profession needs to be revamped. Not just some new underlying code, but a whole new top level code too. Vendors, in their current implementation, need to go away. Poking arounf "inside" an NPC is creepy. NPC's should be there for informational purposes, and advetising purposes. I would like to see a Master Merchant Structure. I wouldn't even mind if it were a Player Civic structure like the Med Center or Cantina (able to exist wihout a city, but can only be dropped inside a city).
This structure would be customizable by the Architect to include a dizen different layouts. The inclusion of a couple 3PO droids for Mall Managers and Promotional Directors, colorized outer skins, and inside you can make things like a series of "kiosks", or cubicles, or regular rooms (with no doors) like you see in a standard Mall.
Each of these Points-of-Sales (POS) would beassigned to a crafter, and would include a single Terminal interface. The interface is what you use to buy stuff. The Kiosk/Room is like a regular structure, in that you can decorate it as you wish,set admin, etc... Here is the part I dont know if possible...Make "display" cases activated by the Terminal in which the crafter places items for sale. The grocery-store type shelves, jewelry store glass enclosures, racks to hang weapons on, bookshelves to line up deeds on, etc... These display cases would be loaded with the very things you want to sell. You drop a T-21 on a gun rack, and it appears, fully visible to the buyer, and able to be examined. They open a radial menu on the weapon and it says (put in shopping cart", which pulls the item out of stock. The buyer then goes to the "register" to pay for his Shopping cart, which is delivered to him normally. If the buyer leaves the shop/kiosk area, or logs out without buying, the item is automatically put back "on the shelves".
What this allows is a more comfortable and familiar way for people to buy stuff. They can wander around the shop, browsing, till they see something they want. Maybe we could even get the devs to change the deeds to reflect a miniature version of the item it is...like they did for droid deeds, but miniature. This way, people could see a tiny "model" of the Naboo Medium Home they might want to buy. Or Large Generic, harvester, Vehicle, etc...
But, if the Building is not possible, we need much better tools to manage vendors with. We need to be able to set a single person admin on them, who can put things up for sale at whatever price they want. We shoudl be able to set a commission on each category of item we are selling, not just a single amount on everything. It makes sense that the Merchant would get more or less depending on the item. Some things, like high-risk, slow moving things (like homes) might have a higher Commission, and others (like powerups) have less.
This would also mean the numbe rof vendors we have should increase. I would suggest thata Master Merchant shoudl have access to up to 20 vendors. At Management IV - 10, Mgmt III - 7, Mgmt II - 4, Mgmt I - 3, Novice - 2, Business IV - 1. Take away the business 3 vendor.
Merchant XP should be handles differenly too. Make it based off something other than number of vendors and time. Tie it to the number of unique visitors and the sales volume. Not Price volume, but the number of things sold off it. If I sell a thousand powerups in a month, I shoudl be getting pretty dang good XP. If I sell one thing a week, I should get none. In the latter case, I would need to spend time, and sacrifice some of my comission to attract crafters.
We need to have access to a robust sales report system too. Mass emailing is a BAD thing, so build in Opt-Outs for people who dont want to be spammed by Merchants. How many sales, broken down by day, or time period, unique "hits",stock volume, credit sales volume, number of people entering the building with the vendor, how many of those who do not buy, etc...
We need to be able to put things in the "stockroom" and have a single line-item foridentical itemson the vendor, so people can more quickly scan whats available. If I get a delivery of Resources, or crated powerups, etc...I can load them up in the Stockroom, and then people will have the option to buy as many as are available in the stockroom.
Cafa
Fri Jun 11, 2004 11:52 am
#17
I used to spend a lot of time on the Merchant forums about this, grew tired of banging my head on that wall too.
ONE item would change the scopeof Merchant to non-Merchant relations for the better:
- Consignment sales with payouts going directly to the wholesaler.
ONE item would overcome a large portion of lag issues with Merchant loading and save people time:
- Batch processing of like items
Just too frustrating to deal with these issues. Things that are so fundamental to gameplay have been looked over time and time again. /sigh
Fivo Asia
Dvnce
Sat Jun 12, 2004 12:28 am
#18
Baccarat wrote:
So what's the next step, Dvnce? Can we propose this to the devs as a way of resolving the vendor issue? There still are a lot of details to be worked out but the broad concept seems like a nice solution.
the next step is to have an open discussion with DocSavage about this concern.. and have this taken to the merchants..
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