Merchant Archive

ed

I am a master armor smith and I am listed on the planetary map. With the advent of colored armor I have to have a large number of full suits in varying colors on my vendor (currently 2 million credits worth). I have a full time job and have to leave my vendor for lengthy periods, which is not a problem when I can plan ahead and stock up. With these changes i would just display a ton of armor in my house and have my vendor bark atanyone who enteredto pick one of the suits they see and email me which they like. I could even have my vendor say that i will be there at 9pm eastern to sell then anything they like. This is a zero money sink, a tax on sales is very fair and i would glady pay even 20 percent sales tax that i can pass on but to tax my inventory is crazy.

Plus people still can still hide a vendor in a crafting station or crate and put things up for 1 credit each for extra storage.

The problem seems to me that you are haveing problems with too many items on the server. There has to be a better fix than making it imposible to sell a variety composite on vendors.

If you just want a money sink...

20% sales tax at the time of purchase will do it in no time flat.
If storage is the problem charge people aone time shelving fee of 10% andfor moving items to the stock room 20% of theposted price, that will keep people from using vendors to store stuff, and will still alow us to have a variety of items for sale.

edUgh! I don't mind it charging maint... but not as a percent of the value of things on the vendor... it hinders architects and other high dollar stuff quite a bit... it's not worth it for me to stock anything over the cost of a torch if it charges me an arm and a leg... have a base maint. fee and have a transaction fee (if somoene actually purchases something, tax that purchase). Please oh please don't make it the value of items on teh vendors

ed

Yes please make it a sales % tax instead of a maintenance fee.

I can live with a sales tax of 5%, but with 4 vendors and a ton of items on them, with the maintenance rate suggested, I would be ruined, forced to remove my vendors, give up on Merchant and have no place to stock items thus severely crippling my income, not to mention the fun factor.

I am pretty much a pure crafter, but I hardly make that much money at all and would not even come close to be able to afford even one single vendor, so please hearour pleads and make it a sales % tax.

ed

Here is a chilling calculation that's true for any of my items, I'll give one as example :

I am a master tailor, and I sell fleshwraps at 12k. Not a bad price for a master tailor item. I stock 10 on the vendor, each a different color (black, white, red, blue, green, yellow, etc, etc). I sell 2-3 per week off the vendor. When I sell one, I immediately remake the color sold and place it back on the vendor. Thus with the 1/1000 per 45 minutes, my cost to sell fleshwraps is (10 * 12000 ) / 1000 = 120 credits every 45 min = 3840 credits per day = 26880 credits per week.

If I sell 2, I bring in 24000. If I sell 3, I bring in 36000. I either lose 2880 or make 9120 under this new method. I might lose money for having variety, or if I make money...it's 4560 per item, when I should be getting 12k (which was a low price!).

That's true with most any item I sell, except perhaps cloaks, dusters, and uniform boots. Even those sales have slowed down recently. That's the end of my shop if this goes live. Sigh

ed

Ack!!! I've tried to run a shop with the normal vendors (non NPC)... The maitenance killed me and I had to fold within a week... Maitenance on a vendor based on teh value of goods is insaine... The Bazzare doesn't charge me rent for the stuff I'm selling... But a Vendor I own does?

Set the rate the same way you do buildings... Make NPC vendors cost more cuz their cooler... But don't base it on the value of the goods they sell.... make it a flat rate...Then if you want a big ugly box to sell stuff part time you can afford to do it cuz the vendor is afordable... But if your making big bucks you can have fancy well dressed NPC vendors that talk and stuff...

I fear that if it werent for the NPC vendors most of our merchants would fold just like I did...

You want my opinion... Think about this one carefully... This can really hurt the game on many levels if done wrong...

- Bidi

ed

There are several issues that need to be addressed before you do ANY changes to vendor maintenance.

1. Fix world map advertising. It falls off every day at servermaintenance time, and you have to log in to put them back on the map, even though you are being charged full money.

2. Install a better search engine on the bazaar terminals in the cities that includes vendors that advertise on the world map, or some level in between there. Maybe any vendor at Hiring1 or above. Charging the fees you are currently charging is very imballanced - what if I cannot log in until 9pm some evening? I pay 2k in fees to be on the world map, but my poor vendor is not even listed for the entire day.

3. The current system is very imballanced. If I have12 pieces of chitin armor on my vendor at 3k each, that's 36k in mdse. That equates to about 1600 credits per day in fees. If, because advertising is so imbalanced, I only sell 1 piece of armor in a day, I am paying much too much in fees to keep each other item listed until it sells. Its even worse for architects, who must sell their mdse for 10+ just to break even on resource costs.

SOLUTION

The best solution I see is a one-time fee for an item based on the value of the item. There is no reason to continually charge a merchant daily for the same piece of goods, until it sells. There are more than enough money sinks for artisans at this point, adding insult to injury is not very appropriate at this time, considering the state of the game.

-Nyka, Starsider

ed

I don't like the idea of 45 minute vendor maintenance fees based on the value of your items for sale. This will cripple merchants selling large credit items (ex: houses, clones) which sell slowly. In particular it will just steamroll the Bio Engineer who is keeping a variety of pets on his vendor. These sell very slowly, but you have to keep a variety up or people lose interest in your shop.

Go with a flat rate fee for items to be put up for sale on a vendor.... small like20 credits per item? won't cripple those selling small items. Or base it off of the items value? 0.05% transaction fee paid by the consumer when purchasing... just like out of the bank tips.

Value/1000 per 45 minutes is too much... way too much for slow selling big dollar items that must be kept in stock.

edJust do like in real life. Instead of charging maint. on a vendor charge a sales tax. Like 8% or something. Nothing higher than that though I would say. Have a fee based on the Amount of items and cost of them on your vendor REALLY hurts the merchant class. how can u expect a merchant to have a well stocked vendor if it is gonna cost them out the ass to do so.

ed

I didn't finish the whole thread, I don't have time before work, but I already think that I'm not saying anything new, I'm just voting.

A 3.2% per day inventory tax is morally offensive. Nobody in his right mind would keep items in stock on a vendor at that price, period. Congratulations, you just solved the database problem. Of course, you created a new problem: you'll have to be a member of a PA or a clique to find anything that isn't offered on the Bazaar. Yeah, that'll encourage players to stick around - not.

If you absolutely must do this, then frankly, you should be looking at 1% per day as a cap. No merchant can possibly afford to pay more than that, not and actually carry items in stock.

I agree with the long, long list of people who say that a sales tax would be much more fair and reasonable than an inventory tax. I'll accept a much higher sales tax than I would an inventory tax, maybe even one as high as 25%.

Except that this isn't just about a money sink, is it? You're not just trying to balance the economy on the backs of the merchants, you're trying to thin the database aggressively, too, aren't you? That's why you haven't fixed the bug where items on vendors also time out every seven days. It's because you don't want us to offer a wide and varied inventory, because your databases are having a hard time dealing with it. Am I wrong here?

ed

This change is clearly not fair to artisans. First missions are nerfed. So we have to lower prices, despite the fact that our overhead remains the same. Now our overhead will be higher? Where are the customers supposed to get the money to pay for our new higher overhead with missions nerfed? Prices will go up because of that, and will go up because selling in volume will no longer be profitable with the new fees.

In many situations this will be far more expensive than selling on the Bazaar. For example, a 2500 credit item will only have a 20credit charge and will stay on the Bazaar for 7 whole days. But, you say, one can only put 25 items on the Bazaar. Well, one can only put 25 or fewer items on the vendor too, at this rate!

Eventually people will stop crafting and do other things. Prices will soar. Weapons will gofor huge amounts, thereby leaving no disposable income for clothes, food and whatnot. Dancers and Medics will not get tipped at all (and they may subsequently quit). Alternatively, the PA will become the caretakers of the crafters, medics, and dancers effectively destroying a free-market economy and forcing people to join a PA.

Without surplus wealth, we become a rat-race to survive and lose all pleasantries of roleplaying such as drinking, wearing pretty outfits, and having entertainment in the cantinas. Moneygrubbing will lead to unpleasantness.

Perhaps it is "too easy" to make money. What is so bad about having a bunch of rich, happy, well-dressed, well-fed players running around the countryside, killing the occasional beastie? After all, Sony implemented wait times on shuttles so we can "socialize." How much time will we have to socialize when money becomes even more difficult to make?

ed3-5% sales tax sounds good, when player cities come out a portion of that could support the city budget? (and be raised by mayor?)

ed

Here is a good example of how it will crush the Bio Engineer.

30 pets with an average of 10k value each.

300,000 credits of value... so 300 credits per 45 minutes or 9600 credits a day.

So I'm selling 1 pet for 400 credits per day.

Now if I sell 2, fine it works, but honestly pets move slowly.

I'm sure architects and droid engineers will have similiar problems also.

DOWN with the Value/1000 idea! Charge a flat rate per item.

edI agree wholeheartedly with the idea of a percent-based tax on the amount *sold*. That way you're doing more to funnel some money away from the population that has too much of it (successful merchants who sell a great deal) rather than putting yet another strain on those who don't (struggling, just starting out merchants who don't sell much yet). And it works well from a role-playing standpoint, as most salespeople are paid commission, so it's entirely reasonable for your NPC vendor to expect a cut of every sale he or she makes. Commission-based salesmen don't get paid for the stuff they don't sell, only the stuff they do.

Just please don't make the fee based on the *number* of items offered for sale (which is rough for the chefs and tailors who have to offer large variety of low-dollar items) or the *value* of the items offered for sale (which is hard on the architects, who sell only a few very high-dollar products).