Merchant Archive

edBtw, I just pulled out a calculator, and it figured up like this, if I didthe math right.

If the total value of items on your vendor is 10,000 credits, you will be charged 320 credits a day.

60m X 24h =1440 minutes in a day

1440/45 = 32 fourty-five minute blocks in a day

10,000c / 1000c per 45 minute block = 100c

100c X 32 fourty-five minute blocks = 320 credits a day.

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, who don't make as much money per item for the lower level items than say a weapon or armoursmith w(ho can also generally craft for demand), and yet who don't have any of the items that sell for larger amounts yet.

ed

I've been paying maintenance all along and let me tell you, as an architect that formula is a killer. Putting a couple heavy harvesters on my vendor last night because I had to go to bed before the customer who had ordered them could get there cost me 5k.

If there were some way that special orders were excluded, or dealt with a different way, I'd say the current fee is ok.

edI say the best possible thing would be a small maintenace fee to maintain the vendor and then a % taken at every sale. That way people don't get hurt bad by wasting money for vendors no one ever visits.

ed

I personally am not a merchant, but it would seem to me that taking a cut of the item SALES would make much more sense than a constant rate. If you do it off of a continual rate it will encourage crafters to put the least amount of items possible on their vendors. That would cause less selection for the rest of us non-crafters.

Perhaps a sliding percentage scale like real world taxes would be in order? I think they should pay little to no fee for items under 100 credits. However items above 3000 credits should have a fee that's quite a bit higher, that would help to keep prices lower.

I think those two things would keep prices low, and selection high. Which is what we're all looking for right?

D.J.

edThe new fee seems reasonable to me but for the love of swg test this change on the TC before pushing it to live..there are enough problems already with vendors and merchants overall without adding more. Thanks.

ed

Can you make it a sales tax, please? With perhaps a very minor maintainence fee.

I use the terminal vendor and have to keep most of my stock on the floor in a bag because if I put it all on the vendor, the maintainence fee kills me.

Cutting the maintainence fee to 1% of it's current value and then implementing a sales tax could result in the same net moneysink, and I wouldn't have to let my stock sit in a bag on the floor.

ed

what do you mean needs more money sinks??? The only reason I used valuable skill points to get buss line was because i couldn't afford the robo venders. They cost too much. they want to ban me because they don't like my post, well here is why I vent. i bought this game because it was supposed to support crafting. but every change seems to put it down more. private venders should be free. It;s hard enough selling on them when you get them on the map. With out that it's nearly impossible to sell. first you have to get someone to come to your place to see if you even have anything they want. They can't check from the bazaars anymore to see who has what. The more costly items are slow movers, They may sit on the Bazaar for weeks making the robo venders eat any chance of profit.. I have been in since day one and I now have a wopping 60k, a sizeable chunk of which is about to get spent tending harevstors.

And now with criticals at an impossible level, it cost even more to make stuff, that means we have to charge a whole lot more for what we manage to make, with the current system on the robo venders, that means it will cost even more to sell. All you will end up with is the few crafters that remain, runing around the towns spaning what they have for sale. And i can tell you from DAOC, the non-crafters won't like it and will start screaming about all the people trying to sell stuff in the towns.

ed

I think the change is far too much money. Per your value, an archetect who is selling 5 fusions, 5 personal harvs and 5 medium harvs (total value approx 600,000) would be charged :

600,000/1000 = 600

45min x4 = 3 hrs

3x8 = 24 hrs

Therefore - 8x4 = 32 Pay Periods/day

So 32x600 = $19,200 PER DAY

Thats 19,200 per day for this guy. Archetects are not making that much profit anyway, and this stuff may sell out in 1 week (Its a lot of stuff - not everyone can afford a fusion).

So in 1 week assuming you sell it all and make 600,000 you would then have to pay almost 140,000 in costs - that is ALMOST 33% in COSTS!!!

Now the problem is the Vendor cannot pass this cost on to the client (the player buying it) since INCREASING his prices will make the maintanance go UP.

So its really hurting people selling items for a lot. Please rethink the VALUE that you choose !!! Thanks!!!

ed

I, too, believe it should be on a tax basis rather than a % per hour fee. If you do the per hour fee, you'll put a lot of people out of business simply out of sheer expense of maintaining the vendor. Not to mention, many professions have higher-priced items, which would become costly very quickly.

I do agree that a maintenence fee needs to be set; however, unless everyone stocks their vendor with 500cr items or lower, the costs will far outweigh the benefits of having a vendor. Many of us cannot run our businesses face-to-face for RL reasons (my husband & I are two who play, maintain shops, yet do have a full life outside of the game). Therefore, when we make custom orders, we usually place them on vendors for customers to retrieve later on at their convenience, rather than forcing them to rely on our schedules. But if you do put the vendors on a per hour fee, we would effectively be punished for making it easier on our customers---especially for my husband, who is an almost-master droid engineer. Some of his orders are very pricey, so it'd add up quickly if he had just a few custom orders sitting on the vendor waiting for pick-up.

So, basically, please consider another method for maintenence fees.

--Brianne

ed

make the fee a tax of items that are sold.

5% of each item sold should go into the maintenance pool as a sales tax.

If i sell no items i suggest a small vendor fee. 100 credsa dayor something like that, depending on ad barking, and planet advertising (Fix this please!)

I have 6 vendors on Valcyn, and i am selling items for my PA, if u introduce the value of items /1000 every 45 mins i will be absolutey broke..

ed

Please think of the merchant in your plan of reduced fees. I know this one will be over looked just like the installations fees now.
Right now I pay 0 maint on any of my vendors once I got reduced maint on the vendors but I don’t agree with me going up that tree and paying the same as the person that did not go up the merchants tree.

edYeah, but after you fix them... They should be a flat fee, not based on how much stock a person has.

Let's face it... the checker at the supermarket gets paid just as much no matter how much inventory the store currently has.

A flat fee is the only way to go, since a value based fee kills architects, while a volume based fee kills the non-architects.

I would like to see the maintenance fee be at around 4... maybe as high as 8 tho. (should you really need to pay a checker more than the rent on your store?)

But I agree... You really need to fix the current vendor issue FIRST(ie. a day before), then swing that nerf bat, so that we are getting charged for something that works instead of a new fee added to a broken item.

-Loserwan Ka'newbie