Merchant Archive

See, the problem with getting any sort of changes done is the snowball effect that's apparent in this thread. First guy says, "I want a shop!", next guy says, "Yeah, I want a shop and...!", and so on and so forth, until the guy who thinks he's actually going to get something done decides to put in all the requests in one list.

Folks, start small.

I want a shop. Period. Once we get the shop, then we can whine, "I want it to only cost 1 lot!"

There's an art to begging.

I liked the "Declare Residence" option mentioned earlier. Instead of complicating things by having new deeds etc. Give a "Declare Store" option that is only selectable if the owner has Business IV. This will then change the exterior of the house to look more like a store.

This would be the least intrusive way to allow all existing structures to be converted to stores without the need to re-deed.

I'm not sure that having a certain option to change the exterior of a house to a shop is really as easy to impliment as it may seem. I've seen nothing like this ingame so far.

I'll go for the bullet list thing on my shop wishlist here and put in the ideas I like and some of my own.

- Novice merchants would be required to build a shop structure. This will deter shops being used as houses, like somebody already said. It will also give people more reason to pick up merchant.

- Shops are easily distinguishable from other structures. What's the point of a shop type if you don't know it's a shop?

- Shops take one lot. This should allow merchants to have shops all over the galaxy and merchant/crafters to have a couple shops without cutting into there lots too much. Larger shops, if implemented, would take up more lots of course.

- Shops would have a simple one room layout. This is probably my biggest beef with houses being used as shops at the moment. I don't want to put my vendors in an entry hall or small entry room because it looks tacky and I don't want to put them in the back room because people need to see them when they first walk in. The one room also works best for a showroom or cafe setting.

- The size of the shop should reflect the low lot cost. This will also discourage players from using a shop as a house. The shop should not be so small that it's worthless though. I think the size of a small tat house minus the back room would be about right.

- The shop's maintenance costs should be higher than a small house. Yes, I said higher. This will also stop shops from being used as houses, but since shops should be bringing in revenue and because they're specialized structures, they should have a higher cost.

- A shop should let you do little more than sell stuff. You should be able to place furniture, wares, and vendors in a shop and that's about it. Any other benefits houses have, shops should not have. I would even argue that as a place for sales rather than manufacturing, shops should not have crafting stations.

- Shop furniture added to what architects can make would be invaluable. All I want is a counter!

Blatant dreaming:

- Signs to reflect products on the shop would be nice. I would love to have a sign with a muffin or something on it hanging outside my shop rather than the default. There would be a set of icons to choose for shop sign in order to have potential customers determine your shop's type at a glance.

- A window in the front of a shop would be just dandy. Yeah right.

- Global advertising should be done by shop rather than vendor. This would make it so you could name vendors fun names like, "Yap Mendor - Waiter" rather than "Wacev's Interstellar Cafe." I mean what kind of parents, evin Bith ones, name their kid something like that?