Merchant Archive
Thread: Vendor Maintenance Fees coming – your input request
Not sure if this idea has been mentioned before.. But here goes...
I realize that the idea behind a maintenance fee is to keep non-merchant type players from using vendors for extra storage.. but this seeminglypunishes the rest of us that actually use a vendor for businessby having to actually pay a high vendor maintenance.
I like the idea of a Tax based system on the items sold. however non-merchant types would then be able to use vendors for storage again, if the system were solely based on this idea, since they wont be planning on selling anything.
Lets say that maintenance costover time is kept as is.. what is it.. a charge every 45 minutes based on the item cost that the vendor has for sale?.. How does this combat storage players who put their items at 1credit per item, and make their building private?
The flat fee idea is alright.. except that again, the storage players would still have an outlet for holding their items.. if the flat fee is raised, then we real merchants could potentially still be gouged..
Here is my proposed solution..
Vendors hold what.. 100 items max? (i wouldn't know, because if i placed that many items on my vendor, he'd die instantly due to my items costs.. I'm an architect :smileywink
To me, it would seem fair if the vendors held say.. the first 25 - 35 items for free.. maybe only charge the player a Tax on items sold.. maybe start the tax at like 15% then decrease that percentage as the merchant moves up the skill tree. After said 25 - 35 items are stored on the vendor, we then notice a slight maintenance fee for items 35 - 60'ish. items stored that are 61+ see an increasing maintenance fee.
This solution would prevent players from storing large quantities of items, it would also assist players who are just starting their first shop, as its easy going on the fee's (just a tax on items sold). players who eventually start to stock their vendors with larger quantities of items, would hopefully have enough merchant experience to combat the increasing maintenance fee's attached to larger quantities..
Just my thoughts..
Guan Yu'
Corbantis Server
Q, this will put me out of business 
I'm an armor crafter with many tens of thousands of credits on my vendor. With all the different types of armor (and now COLORS too!!) my customers want a good selection, or else they won't come to my store. The amount of stock on my vendor FAR exceeds my daily sales.
Also - since the global vendor listings are still bugged (the listing vanishes about once a day!!) I am losing sales constantly unless I stay logged in and check my vendor listing frequently. How can I afford to pay thousands of credits an hour as maintenance on my vendor when my global map listing vanishes and I'm not making any sales?
Suze / Radiant
Total Listed Value of Items on Vendor / 1000 every 45 minutes? All I have to say is RAPE!
If that calc goes in I'll pull my vendor stay with personal contacts.
Money sink? yeah right. Try some marketable items that we can sell that are not bugged or going to be nerf...lol
If you think the fee really is needed I would rather have a flat fee. If you really need a money sink raise ticket prices for traveling.
You're also forgeting you already have a big money sink that is turned off right now, and thats insurance.
If thats fixed and lets judge how much more of a money sink the system needs.
Please rethink charging by how many items/cost of itemsthe vendor has. This punishes architects trying to sell single large-dollar items. Architects already have it bad enough with the crit failure system and a lack of a decaying product, why screw them over more with this?
It needs to be based on items *sold*, not on items held.
Does a car salesman get paid for every car the company is currently holding on the lot? No they get paid by comission of what they sale plus a flat rate.
The current system isn't logical or fair.
~Jeht ~ Tarquinas
If you do not fix vendors and factories before you start taking more money from me, I won't play anymore. That is such a cliched statement, it has become meaningless, I know. But I do not believe your priorities are in order, and its really not worth it to have you drain away what money I can make because YOU think there needs to be more money sinks. It also strikes me as illogical that you want to have a player based economy, but you want to penalize the people who are in the best position to make that work.
Since you've said the decision has already been made, I second the opinion of those telling you to make it a sales tax. I don't think successful merchants can stay in business if they don't offer a variety to their customers. As someone who deals primarily in resources, the value of the items I put up for sale is far greater than other merchants, and I think you're just making busy work for me (read: waste of my gaming time) because I'll have to check my vendors several times a day to ensure there is some sort of stock on them, as opposed to checking once a day or once every other day. Busy work is not interesting, it is not fun, and it is certainly not worth paying you money. If I want busy work, I'll clean up my RL house and do some gardening.
Actually, no, they don't want you to have a vendor. Their database can't hack it, their DBAs can't hack it so instead they come up with these insane ideas to force people to stop using the database. Less vendors = less load. Less crafters = less load. Less money = less load.
And this was such a good game.
A few words from an early Master Merchant:
Dear Devs:
An ancient Arabic proverb says "A merchant who does not have what the customer wants has empty shelves"
Take a ride out to my store outside Coronet on Bloodfin. I carry resources and supply weaponscrafters, architects and other crafters. I then buy their merchandise and resell it to the public. I put many many hours of work into making sure I have plenty of raw and finished goods for sale. My clientle reward me with repeat business and loyalty. More importantly I supply content..a place for people to meet and talk, to make business deals and deal in the business of being social and having fun.
I carry enough that anyone can come and buy what they need, when they need it. It's a valuable service and one that the game design calls for.
Due to the vendor bugs..I keep my resources on a Terminal vendor. This vendor costs me 15k a day. I have five other NPC vendors selling clothes, house deeds, furniture, stims, spices, droids and foodstuffs. Assuming equal value this means that in this new plan I might be paying 90k a day just to maintain my vendors.
At the moment I can make a profit daily by making sure I get out and SHOUT about my store for several hours a day. I macro some of this boring time away.On days I do not do this..I may do considerably less than 90k of business in a day. Currently this isn't a terribly idea, but with the new plan should I fail to return to my store over a 4 day weekend I can be assured of having nothing to return to.SO I ask the question: Is it a game or a job?
In real life I run a business..that business has fixed costs, and it has variable costs. One of the costs I pay is taxes..taxes based on sales. If Wal-Mart were charged a fixed percentage of all merchandise on hand (above storage costs of course) every hour, they would quickly collapse because their business model depends on inventory. Instead they pay taxes on corporate profits, while consumers pay taxes on purchases, employees pay taxes on salaries, and other things like shipping are taxed as well, allowing the goverment to double-triple-quadruple dip into each transaction. Wal-Mart doesn't have to pay taxes on profits they didn't make, or services they didnt' use.
You want to create money sinks? Use a tax model. A smaller cost for maintainence, a larger cost based on sales that merchants can 'build into' the sale with efficiency creating increasing advantages. If you like have theplanetary government charge a tax to the buyer as well (it can even be different city to city!) . Want to prevent use of vendors as storage? Push vendors into Novice Merchant. Otherwise we're talking about a rather draconian method of preventing what I am assuming to be a very small part of overall server load.
No other class has so littleadvantage for so great a cost already. I use 'global advertising', and vendor barking, and anything else I can think of to promote my business, but these are ineffective tools as compared to..say..standing at the starport and shouting as my char has been doing as I write this. My business will survive a change like this because I already have the income, and I play long nights to be a success. Most merchants will not, and the whole game will be poorer. Let smallerbusinesses and larger ones pay a fair share..let wealthy guildmembers pay sales tax as well as vendor tax..but make the costs scaleable to the level of sales or it becomes an insurmountable obstacle for the start-up.
In conclusion, I ask that you consider the ancient proverb. If I am to be kept from running an honest and comprehensivebusiness because someone might use a vendor for storage, I am indeed a merchant with empty shelves. This model doesn't work in real life, and it doesn't work in fantasy life( Watto obviously wasn't worried about a tax on his inventory every hour..he had every piece of junk in the world). Let's recognize theMerchant class as theeconomic powerhouse that it is, and stop treating us as if we were a mistake in the design.
P.S.If you mustcharge us hourly on vendors, please make sure they allwork properly?
they had to make room for glowzies and flies and moths and bats
How does this combat storage players who put their items at 1credit per item, and make their building private?
==================================
Hmm... I thought they put a restriction in saying that a Vendor cannot be placed in aprivate building and a building with a vendor could not be private....
Those prices are absurd. If you have to pay enormous amounts just to keep items on the vendor, crafters with many different types of items (weaponsmith, tailor) or very expensive items (architect) will be forced to decide between paying ridiculous fees or having to babysit the vendor and restock every two hours, which defeats the entire purpose of having a vendor in the first place.
Pure merchants whoresell goods from other crafters will become unplayable. Their profit margins are already very small compared to crafters who sell their own wares, and if they have to pay over 10k a day in maintenance they'd end up losing more than they made.
It should be a flat fee rather than a large constant rate, or perhaps a fairly small constant rate similar to structuresplus a flat fee.
The vendor maintenance reduction in the Efficiency line needs a serious boost for it to be of any value. As it currently stands, the only useful skill in the entire Merchant profession is Advertising 3.
#1, above all else.... fix the vendors before you get these fees going.... no more having to re-register our vendors on the map every morning after a server reset, no more reseting the ad barking every morning, no more poofing items after a client buys them, no more items hung in vendor stockrooms........
#2.... the payment rate you suggest is INSANE for most players.... My char is an armorsmith/tailor, I have about 200 items on my vendor... with a total value easily over 500K, which means I'd be paying 16K per day in maintenance fees, not allowing for the supposed increase cost for ad barking and map registration.... heck, I barely make that much income on a GOOD day. I'd be broke before I could even figure out what I'd do with all the stock on my vendor, thanks to the [sarcasm] wonderful item limits on houses [/sarcasm]
Make the fees on a "tax per sale" basis, but the formula you offer will force all architects to stop using vendors, and probaly quit the proffesion. Most all the crafters will follow suit....
How about we get the goverment to charge a $1 per day per person fee for Sony to run SWG? Doesn't sound like much does it? That's basicly what you're doing to the crafters, you'll be charging us all more than we make in sales, driving us out of business....
Go back to the drawing board, no biskets for you.
I'm not sure if this is a recent change.. I was able to initialize my vendor, and walk away.. then i remembered that i had to change the privacy status.. Just as i had suspected, my shop was in private mode, and had to be changed.. This was only a few weeks ago (was before the big patch) so i dont know if it has been changed yet.. i will check it tonight.
-guan