Merchant Archive

edUpkeep on the vendor itself and then a tax on sold items imho. Otherwise your forcing people to just say scrwe the vendors and sell by hand.

ed

Looking at someone with 10K of stock. We know it costs them 320 credits a day to maintain. Let's say they're selling their stock at a 20% profit (2000 credits). That means they need to sell out of their stock in 6.25 days in order to not run at a loss.

Take the same vendor, same stock value, but only a 10% profit this time. They'll need to sell out in 3.125 days.

So it's clear what you seem to be intending is for merchants to raise their profit margins, thus charging more to others as well as losing more themselves. The problem is, combat characters won't be willing to pay the extra. Not when they can buy it directly from someone for a lot less. Most shops will go out of business, and stop being a money sink at all. This is a particular issue for sellers of 'frivolous' items. Weapons and armour are the main things a combat character needs. Homes, clothes, food etc tend to be brought when they have some spare change. Any merchant change that discourages the sale of such items will remove a combat money sink.

Vendors should be a sink for some maintainence, and others have suggested some ways like the sales tax. Those would be more sustainable. The proposed formula will lookgreat in the first week, till most go bankrupt for reasons others have gone into. Then as merchants disappear, it'll stop being a money sink. So I hope the final change is something sustainable, not something that will cause a five-minute money reduction.

ed

Another point to keep in mind... all this does is help those with fast turn over and good sales to kill competition. How well do you think a person with a slow moving inventory is going to do against someone that has to work hard at keeping their vendor stocked? The person SELLING a bunch should pay more. The person that is having a hard time selling anything should get the break.

And if you think I'm trying to get this set up to my personal benefit think again.I'm the guy with 10's of millions of credits and can't keep my vendor stocked. You're going to kill the people that are already struggling.

ed

This change will have the opposite effect of what you're hoping to solve.

The only thing that will happen is that the majority of merchants in the game will turn off their vendors, and hawk their goods in the streets, and pay NO fees to do so. More money will stay in the game, instead of going out.

You're right, the NPC vendor price is much too low; however, going to the opposite extreme will just cause people to find a way around it. If you charge asalestax some small amount, that'll keep the vendors (and the merchants) in the game.

This sort of change really hurts architects too. I seriously doubt that there will be any vendors with deeds of any sort on them if a change like this is implemented.

If you really want to get some cash out of the game, then make some special items for players that can ONLY be bought from vendors: Flags and banners for the sides of houses and guild halls that have to be bought from the local guild merchants that can be modified by tailors; charge more for flights between cities and planets; start requiring that people consume food, so they HAVE to buy it; ....these are just a few things off the top of my head, I'm sure you and people here can think of many more...

If you want people to stop using vendors as extra storage, there's an easy solution: combine the amount a house and a vendor can hold. If a house can hold 250 items, the vendor and the house can hold no more than that.

Please take this post seriously; implementing a change like you're planning on doing is going to cause a lot of people a lot of heartache, and I'm sure some of them will quit the game as a result.

ed

I would have NO problem whatsoever with a sales tax-based system, wherein the merchant was charged a certain percentage when an item sells.

Why this would work:

1. It doesn't penalize those who have large, expensive items to sell.

2. It STILL drains money out of the system at the same rate, if not higher.

3. It would not penalize players who don't make sales as often as others (i.e. Architects are a prime example of this, so are Droid Engineers).

Some may point out that yes, merchants could raise their prices enough to compensate for the sales tax... but think on this... if the merchant doesn't raise prices, then the merchant's money drains into the economy. If the merchant DOES raise prices, then his customers' money drains into the economy. Either way, money flows and sinks into the economy.

Please think on this. It's a much more logical solution to take. Plus, 45 minutes... that's just wonky.

ed

I think you guys' eye is very off the ball.

Why don't you get the game subsystems working properly such that you leave a corpse, and require insurance.

Your biggest money sink is currenlty inop.

/Sigh

st

I agree with what people have been saying in general. A 1 per 1000 credit fee will basically mean I will NOT be using merchants any more. This is a 100% sure thing. Again, if I am charged 1 per 1000 credits fee every 45 minutes, I will sell my wares by hand and write off the merchant class as a 'nice idea, but completely useless'

I've just gotten to master weaponsmith, so my prices will be going up, so the example I will be about to give will only get worse (thus why I will not use vendors). Last week I made about 100,000 credits in sales. I have not been promoting my store, and this is simply from walkins and word of mouth. I started the week with about 60 items up for sale, not more than 6 of one type, but typeically 3-4 of each model I was selling. About half were on sale at 3,000 credits. Another 1/4 at around 5,000 credits, and the remaining 1/4 at 10,000 credits. This is about 315,000 credit worth of items for sale. Again, this is pre-master.

Now, I don't have the mathematics at hand to calculate the reduction of costs throught the week, but the best case scenario would be if my 100,000 credits of sales sold in the first 45 minutes with nothing selling the rest of the week. In this best case scenario, I would have 215,000 credits of items up before the first 45 minute period expired. Best case, I've been charged 48,160 credits, cutting my profits in half. Worst case scenario, the 100,000 credits of sales sold in the last 45 minutes, in which case I would have been charged 70,560 credits. So basically we can expect 48-70% reduction in profits if we use vendors with this proposed system.

Now, again, what will I do now that I am a master weaponsmith and will have weapons rangeing from 15k to 30k, and sometimes even more, for sale?

Now, given that, how do we fix vendors?

A) Charge X amount against the maintenence poolone time charge each time you list an item, similar to how it is done on bazaar.

B) Charge X amount against the maintenence pool per day for each item is in warehouse/storeroom

If A and B are set right, this should prevent people storeing 100's of items on a vendor just for storage cause they will have to either pay A every7 days, or Bevery day it they try to let it slip to warehouse/storeroom to keep it stored. Those using merchants as they should should not see this as a problem, as one would not want wares sitting unable to be bought, so will attempt ot just have enought up so that they dont have to repay for A too often, similar to how we currently try to not have so much up on bazaar of one thing that it doesn't sell after 7 days.

If that still is not enough of a money sink for you (being that one of the goals seems to be to have more expenses), then

C) Charge Y% charge against the maintenence pool every time an item is sold.

Given A, B, and C, we can calculate ahead of time how much we should have in our maintenence pool to make sure a vendor keeps running given the items we have up for sale. For example, if I wanted to just sell 1 250,000 item, I would put X + Y% of 250,000 + X (in case it drops to storehouse and I happen to not be there on that day) in as maintenence, and now that my vendor will have enough to cover costs.

ed

I am an arcitect with over 1,000,000 credits worth of stock on my vendor at all times. Im not going to calculate the price that i would pay others in the thread did that already its insanely high. I live on Talus where the minicipal zone was about 2k out up untill the "mission patch" now mission no longer come to my town and sales have dropped drastically im not going to move though and if this system is put into place i will stopp using my vendor.

heres the catch

Say i was using my vendor to hold items.... I kepp doing so and price the items at 1 credit and set my house on private.The cost i pay is minimal,

<<money sink circumvented>>

<<Storage exploit intact>>

Zorlac

Scyilla

edAgree. Tax with small fee. Not a /1000 divisiable. Itis crippling to us.
Most of our features (ok ALL) are broken. The world map needs to be re-registered everyday, the speach never works and cothing is bork'd.
If you add on top of the a huge expense everyday it will kill us.

The fact is, there are a few vendors that make 100k a day easy. But the fair majority of us make very very little. We craft and sell, not in huge volumes but small amounts and small margins. I am all for a Tax rather than a fee based on total cost on vendor.

If you are trying to make people stop using their vendor as storage, I think the private structure thing took that away. If it didnt IF I where to use one as storage it would be a 1Cr per unit anyway.

please please please dont do this. At least fix a few of our perks first to give us at least a small shot at making money before you use us as a money sink.

This is just bad.

ed

Highvendor sales will work perfectly fine, if the reduced fees in the efficiency skill tree of the merchant profession is significantly lower. Then, IMO, this would help balance both the full time Merchant who would be killed by high vendor fees across the board, and artisans who want to operate their own shop.

ed

Flat fee + Sales Tax Please!

Thankyou!

OBIDREW
ARMORSMITH
=TnA= ARMOR II
/Waypoint -2859 1355 (Mos Espa, Tatooine)
"...**edit**, I smell good!"

ed

It should be like selling on comission.

The fee should be a flat (say, 10%) off the value of the item, IF a sale happens.

Otherwise, you're providing a serious money sink on the people who DON'T have money: The unsuccessful sellers. Have the 'reduced vendor maint' in merchant reduce the comission taken out at time of sale so the skill does something. Charging per-value-per-time really, really shafts any non-already-successful business people who might go a day or two between sales.

--

Nivis Nix

Kettemoor

st

AlynClinang wrote:

edJust as a warning, the formula, the way it's listed, penalizes those who have to post a larger number of items for variety, just to get people in the store, like lower level Tailors or Chefs

I want to call out this statement please! It is VERY true. Simply put, if your formula goes into effect, you will put me out of business.

I'm a Chef & Pharmacist. I NEED to have a wide selection of items stocked on my vendor at all times, so if a customer makes the trek out to my store, I have what he needs. Its not unusual for a customer to buy between 10 - 30 items a trip, so I HAVE to keep ample supply on hand.

At any particular time I have 100 - 200 items stocked. Some, like crates of meds, sell for as high as 85k...average items is probably a little over 1k...so I might have 300k - 400k worth of items on my vendor at any time.

I use the 'vending machine' vendor right now and its not unusual for me to pay 10k a day in maintenance right now as is.That is a pretty hefty fee in my opinion.

Your new formula will put me out of business period, no if's ands or buts.

I've worked SO hard to build my business. If you sink me in this manner you've definately lost 3 customers (Myself, my wife, and my son)

--Ssauron