Merchant Archive
Thread: Vendor Maintenance Fees coming – your input request
Q-3PO wrote:
Before we swing the proverbial nerf bat, we want to get your input on this issue.
You know, Q, you really should have said this instead, "Before we swing the proverbial nerf bat, we want to fix all of the CURRENT PROBLEMS WITH THE MERCHANT PROFESSION. After we have accomplished that, we want to get your input on adjusting the maintenance rate on NPC vendors, which as you should have realizedhas been unrealistically low."
Had you said (and actually followed through by fixing the Merchant profession) I would have no problem with raising NPC vendor fees. Your intention, however, seems to be to nerf first, fix last (if at all). So, I'll be forced to sell things this way:
A) El cheapo items (20-200 credits) on my Vendors.
B) Mid-priced items (200-3000 credits) on the bazaar, since I only pay 16cr per listing for a week right now (but I'm sure you'll nerf that soon, too). I'm about to take Efficiency III, so I guess that will get knocked down to 12cr or so per listing - I suppose the bulk of my sales will come from this now.
C) High-end items (3k+) a mixture of P2P (person to person) and P2V2P (person to vendor to person - I'll put the item in the vendor for the person, who is standing right there, who will then immediately buy it).
Also, since you guys removed all value from Ad IV and gave us reduced fees on a broken skill, I'll be polishing up my /shout spam macros and playing AFK advertiser for all of my lowend stuff.
I really wish you guys would focus on making this game more FUN, instead of whatever it is becoming (which, by the way, is less and less fun for me).
Q, Holo, anybody that makes decisions there ... This decision of Value/1000/45min will KILL the Architect business - Not that we have much to begin with. And that's the point.
You can't (Ok, you can, and you're going to because you -don't- listen) charge people based on that; It will kill those of us who have low profit margins (Architect is the worst, I think DE is pretty bad since the perma-death droid nerf).
Let's just presume that I'm selling a medium for 60,000 (Which I'd generally be lucky to get since all architecture is the same and doesn't decay, therefore there is no market).
Now, that medium house takes up 20600 resources total. *IF* I can mine all of those myself my cost per unit will be around 1 per - Generally it's more like 2 per because ore resources are bunk in most places - but we'll assume 1 per. Now, let's take into account the horrible architect failure rate because you haven't fixed the assembly rates.... Tack on another 25% resources (Or more) - We're looking at 25,750 resources now.
So at 1 credit per resource I should make 34250 credits in profit (25,750 paid for the resources). That's not TOO bad until you take into account that it's horribly easy to crit fail that medium sized house (Again, fix the assembly mods!) . So I might have to make (Well, try to make) Two .
Now...Given the market, and the fact thatI'm a starting architect with generally no reputation... I have asale maybe once a week, IF I'm lucky.
So, how much will this cost per week to have on the vendor? Well, 60,000 / 1,000 = 60cr per 45 min .1440 minutes in a day would be ..... 1440/45 = 32 * 60 = 1,920 credits per day . To host it for a week would be 13,440 credits.
Now, take that out of the profits and I'm left with 20810 . Wait, what's that? that's not even enough to make another medium naboo house at 1 cr per unit ...And if I had to get the resources at2cr per unit, well I'd LOSE money with your scheme.
*** PLEASE *** make this a sales tax . 5% .. 10% .. Heck, even 15% .. but NOT a time-based fee.
You really need to fix every class and all other problemsbefore you go messing with the economy of a game that isn't even a month old.
Here's an idea for a money sink ...
Uncap bazaar prices. Let me put in 1,000,000 if I want to. Now, charge a fee for listing (20 creds is fine, heck even increase that to50 per to keep low enditems from flooding the market) AND charge a % (5-10%) of the final sale price when it's sold.
-Disappointed, disheartened and about ready to quit the architect class I just worked so hard to get to.
/start rant In response to this: "Unfortunately (for some of you) this change is scheduled to happen. We will still keep an ear out for your debate on it, but expect it in an update."
I cannot believe you are going to impliment this system without feedback! This is the problem right here. Why not impliment the system correct the first time, instead of pushing out a process, and then modifying it? This is been the cause of 70% of the rant posts. Coming from experience, when you modify things on the fly is usually when you break something. *cough* factory *cough*
/stop rant ; /mumble "ok now, give some feedback" ; /ccriticism
I ask this question. Who is making the money via merchants? Well, its the people moving their product the fastest. I know many multi-millionare weaponsmiths that cannot keep there vendor stocked with weapons. How does this time system take money from them if they sell out within 1-2 hours? Now, think of an architect that has many high priced items that do not move quickly. Or the casual games that does not have the elite items to sell, and survives by selling 1 - 2 items per day.
Who are you punishing with this time-based system?
/mild rant; /yell CASUAL GAMERS, not the people with money
You are correct when you state that money will come out of the system faster, but you are getting it from the wrong area of the economy.
/solution; As everyone else has probably written. Make the system percentage based on sales. A sales tax so to speak. This takes the money from the people that sell the most, hence make more money.
Come'on man see the light!
AND WHAT ABOUT US CRAFTERS WHO ARE STILL TRYING TO TRAIN OUR SKILLS?
AND DON'T HAVE MILLIONS OF CREDITS?
I AM LUCKY TO SELL ONE **edit** THING A DAY.
MAN YOU GUYS AT SONY ARE STARTING TO PISS ME OFF.
Sum /1000 per 45 min would make it extremely expensive to use a vendor for high level items.
I am an armorsmith. If I put up 1 set of all armors from Chitin and up that would be roughly 345 K worth of good, based on price levels for high quality full sets from fellow armorsmiths.
Thats 345 cred every 45 min = 11040 cred per DAY in maintenance.
Having armor for sale is not the same thing as selling it. Such a prohibitive maint rate would force anything but cheap stuff off the vendor, basically rendering the vendors useless for any serious trade.
So if you want vendors to be at all useful, divide it by 10000 instead of 1000. I can live with 1104 cred per day in maintenance.
If you are looking for a good money sink, how about raising the limit on the Bazaars of the item pricing????? 3K is way too low a limit. By putting higherl imits on Bazaar items, manufacturers of high priced items will put more on the Bazaar which is where most people do their shopping anyway. This will cause more people to spend more money and generate a REAL economy. Also, give more XP than you currently do if someone uses the item you've crafted, which will encourage moving up the crafting the ladders through the sale of items rather than making 10 billion swords to move to the next level. Another good money sink would be to allow declared PC's the ability to buy droids (basic models) or uniforms with CASH rather than faction points- thus saving the faction points for moving up in ranks etc. - Also put a food/drink vendor in the cantinas where CPU generated drinks and items can e purchased- allowing chefs and other food makers to maintain their skill. As it stands , nobody wants to be a chef or other food/chem manufacturer because its so difficult to sell the stuff.
Just a few thoughts from a humble merchant
Garold
I agree with those who want a fixed price per item on the vendor. For those of us who do a small number of higher-priced items that may take days to liquidate, the per-hour vendor fees are killer. I'd pay 5% per transaction, but I won't pay $-X per HOUR to sell an item from a vendor I run in a house I own and pay maintenence on.
You could have a variable rate based on the business level of the player. An artisan with 3rd level Business might have to pay 15% per item, where a Master Merchant would only have to pay 2% per item.
Look, I am a true merchant. I make nothing. period. I have several people who don't want the hassle of running vendors and buy their products and list them on my vendors. Most items I buy and 50- 75% of what they can retail at. I usually have less than 100k credits on me at any one time. I spent most of last week with closer to 40k. If some of my stocks sold, I have to buy more. I am also running a couple of havestors that are good money sinks. Especially since there is a resource glut and its difficult to make any real money off of resourses like we could before the patch.
If you fix vendor fees before you fix the blankity-blank advertising and barking skills you are going to ruin me. Everyday I have to log on just to register my vendors and enable barking. Not to mention that hiring 4 just doesn't work.
Please concentrate on helping me keep my business open before you focus on taking my meager money away.
If you have to up vendor fees, make it a listing fee like on the bazaar. Say 1% - 3% of the list price. that way you won't suck us dry on items that don't sell. Of course, if they don't sell then we will have to relist them again for another couple hundred credits. But if I leave a couple of rancors on my vendors for a week, there goes the profits. If i have to relist them, then I might as well pack it up.
Esidrix Serax
Merchant
Wanderhome
[email protected]
I've already stated on this thread I'm in favor of a flat fee. I'm not keen on the concept of some sort of tax, but if it is implemented it needs to be value-added or come straight from the sale, not added on top of the sale price.
The one thing that concerns me is how merchants and artisans bear a disproportionate burden of dealing with money sinks as do the other professions. Between harvesters, generators, shop, and vendor maintenance we are shelling out more money in sinks than anyone. A large factor in the surplus of credits is the exploitation of various things in the game. We, the merchants and artisans, very likely were not involved in these but have to bear the brunt of correcting the problem. It is not fair.
Geeze, what is it you guys love so much about using really weird timing systems? Every 45 minutes?? Why not per hour? Who knows how many 45 minute periods are in a day (off the top of your head). Do you guys own stock in some calculator company? It's the same with structure maintenance and that half-hour period.
Anyway, I think you see which way the wind is blowing. Charging a vendor fee based on how expensive the items listed are is stupid and completely unrealistic. No one charges rent based on how expensive your goods are. The 98 Cent store pays the same amount of rent as the car dealer next to it, even though they have far less valuable inventory in stock.
Implement a sales tax of some sort would be perfect. You're already going to do it for player cities anyway.
As an architect my vendor costs would be through the roof and I'd simply stop using them. With the planetary ad bug, I only get to advertise 10 hours a day anyway, so my vendors would be costing me an arm and a leg even during the bulk of the day when no one knows they are there.
what q-3po meant to say is:
"we're constantly looking for methods that prevent you from leaching up our bandwidth, so we can milk you for even more money. we've made SCS, the auto-disconnect if you afk for more than 30 min, and now we're putting insane timed in game fees just for you to sell your sh*t using a game feature...and we are charging you more than all the other major MMORPGs in monthly fees. and i'm not even going to mention that vendors are broken any way... we're much more concerned with dwindling down your in game play time to 30 minutes a week so we can use the saved money to add extensions to our summer homes in hawaii."
that's really what it comes down to isn't it?
i think we need a truth campaign for SOE bullsh*t like they have for tobacco companies.
where the hell are the bug fixes, content, vehicles and any feature to actually make this game fun and actually worth paying 15 bucks a month for?