Merchant Archive
Thread: Vendors and private houses
In this update, vendors can only be in public structures.
The first problem with vendors in private houses was that people were getting griefed using them. They were putting items up for sale which were reflected on local commodities markets and purchased, but then were not available for pickup because the vendor was locked away behind closed doors. The result was people getting gypped out of their money.
We plugged the grief hole short-term, but the long-term thing that needs to happen is probably having a PA-only vendor, if there's a big need for it. Can you explain to me what purpose your PA vendor serves? That would help me design the replacement.
The second problem: For what it's worth, vendors were always intended to be a "public structure only" feature. That's because they are not intended for storage, but for commerce. At the same, we can appreciate the desire to have drop-off facilities for PAs, or the ability to deny sales to specific groups (such as those scummy Rebels). 
This is why the maintenance fees for vendors are scaled off of the price of the goods--since anyone can get to them, to keep an item safe in one, you have to price goods exorbitantly high, which results in high vendor fees. If you price it cheaply to avoid the fees, then you run the risk of someone buying the item at a steal. This mechanic only works if the vendors are publicly available, of course, so that's a big reason why we didn't ever plan for private vendors.
Can you explain what you were using the vendors for? Was it storage, sales to PA members only, or something else?
My PA isusing vendors to transfer items between PA members who may not be onlineat the same time. If the PA Halls had more storage, now that the admin bug is fixed we could simply have a supply room there, but with 250 items as the limit, and over 30 members,it's obviously not a very feasible solution.
I like the option theearlier poster put forward, of having the same vendor provide different pricing to PA members and faction members. Being able to let PA Members, ora select subgroup of PA Members (crafters) add items to a vendor would be nice. PAs should be able to have one or a handful of vendors in a single location run by one player (the merchant) but with other users (artisans) being able to put their goodsfor sale on it.
Basically, there's two issues;
- Allowing inter PA transfer of goods either for free or at a reduced cost.
- Coordinating the efforts of PA crafters in a manner that allows for a single shop where the public can access the wares of all the PAs crafters.
Why can't you have a permissions list for vendors? Or perhaps add some optional vendors in the Merchant tree such as factional vendors (and do NOT make these cost faction points at a recruiter) or PA Only Vendor, that sort of thing.
The reson I stress factional vendors not being a 'faction perk' that costs faction points is because I don't see many merchants running out to do four hundred destroy missions just so they can get a vendor.
Just a tought
We run a small mining outfit on Ahazi based on Corellia and we had been using a privet vender for our members to sell back ore to the vender for 1credit. Then our mining guild leader who operated the vender would buy the ore and then distribute it to our many customers.
It is very hard with the many house bugs to find a better way to pass on our ore to our guild leader as many of us play at different times and our business suffers waiting to collect the ore.
Guny
Master CH/Novice BH
Ahazi
It was for use of the PA for transfer of resources and crafted goods.
We've been given ZERO ways to do this. No one, until yesterday, could drop things in a PA hall except for the owner. NOW they have to be admins, which means that EVERYONE who's an admin has access to the cash.
So we set up a vendor. We sell resources to the PA for 1cr on the vendor. The vendor buys things for 1cr. Any commonly needed goods get dropped off on the vendor. Special orders within the PA get dropped off on the vendor to be picked up, usually for 1cr.
Your design team created a PA system that doesn't support PAs, so vendors have had to become the work around.
I sell liquid energy stocks to PA members AT COST. But, I don't want the general world coming in and buying at 0.5 credit per unit and reselling it on the bazaar for 2-3 creds per unit.
Nin
I could be wrong, but I think they fixed housing to permit anyone with Admin access the ability to pick up/drop an item in a house. Assuming this is the case (and is intended, as well) you could reserve a back room for the purpose of dropping and picking up items for PA members.
The downsides are that you wouldn't be able to sort the items in any there would be no paper trail, and you would be bound by the limits of your house capacity.
shadok wrote:
My house was built next to our PA hall and set to private, with all PA members on the list. We used my vendor as a share and distribution point for resources and pharmaceuticals, all set at 1cr.
Yeah, that's exactly what they are NOT supposed to be for. 
Don't get me wrong, I understand that you want and needa PA vault and storage space. But that's not what vendors are intended to be, hence this change. We need to find an alternate solution to PA storage and distribution.