Merchant Archive

st

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Tyrin-the-scoutwrote:

Raise travel fees, make gambling more attractive, add cover charges to cantinas to reflect drink purchases, increase house maintnence cost, increase tax on transactions either by raising the tax or adding the mentioned "sales" tax to all sales. But for the love of all things holy, do *not* impliment this as it stands.

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This is what i call a MONEY SINK , not killing people businesses!

Good idea here Tyrin!

st

Money sinks? try running miners for a few days, that will take your money away.

Fix stuff that is broken before you make life a living hell for the straight merchant class.

FIX:

factories

re-deeding

house storage (no, 75 per lot is not a good amount)

slicing 4 (it's still broke)

BE (bio components)

AT-ST (and the rest of the tard imperials with their overpowered stuff)

disappearing storage bugs (losing materials this way is a great money sink, way to go guys)

unlocked containers (see the line above)

email never ending window (i hate having to close 15 windows when i send out ONE email)

group chat tab bugs (enough already)

guild chat bugs (see the line above)

porting backwards when i burst run (why run away faster if you end up back near the stuff trying to kill you?)

sitting in a freakin chair the right way (small issue that could be fixed easily)

hybrid clases- don't have any, all 'hybrid' means is: two classes, commando and smuggler get screwed out of 29 skill points for a worthless skill. who the hell uses melee weapons in a sci-fi game? (Jedi don't count, you melee's want to think you're a Jedi, but you aren't). you want that melee sword crap, go play DAOC.

make admin rights in a house work with the freakin vendors.

5 minute shuttles

make all dupers blow up or die of a rotting social disease (my personal favorite solution)

how about you second-rate Pong programmer wanna bees:

A. learn how to code.

B. learn how to code a little better.

C. fix the code you tried to write, because you had to copy off the smart guy in college, and lost something vital in the transcription.

D. stop trying to 'fix' what isn't broke because of whiners

E. stop listening to whiners.

F. stop wasting time on msg boards and learn how to write code.

G. you getting the point yet?

st

Cujoe, it *will* affect your money. By making the merchants pay more, who do you think will have to make up for their loss?

It is like insurance fraud. People do it to get "free" money out of the insurance companies, but the insurance companies turn right around and charge the honest customer more so they dont take a loss. Same thing will happen here. This will screw us *all.*

st

I dont have any vendors of my own, but will one day. But as a customer, these high fees are a bad idea. I like to go shopping. I enjoy wandering around and finding a merchant and seeing whats for sale. If i find a clothing merchant I think its neat that the tailor can put out a huge selection of different colors of the same clothing for me to buy. If you make these fees as proposed, the selection will go down, and crafters will lose money. Yes you can still give private orders to the tailor to make certain items for you, but seeing it on a vendor and being able to view it is better advertising and the ease of being able to instantly get that item and walk out of the shop with it asap does increase sales.

When i visit a planet I usually walk around to the vendors near the town im visiting and check out whats for sale. I wouldnt make a special trip back just to get a dress in the yellow color I might want, but if that dres was one of the many selections on a vendor, I could buy it and then return to my home planet.

If I am looking for a specific item, its a better chance I can find it on a vendor if people can keep many things in stock. With these new fees I dont see people keeping the same stock amount as they do currently on their vendors. And being an architect, I thought it would be nice to have a vendor with a few high ticket items for sale, that are available to my customers, no matter when they play the game. If they only play in offpeak hours or need that house now, they could just come to my shop and buy it. With those fees, it looks like I will have to be meeting each customer in game and taking orders only.

st

repost..I didn't get to read all 10+ pages of this

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Here's a suggestion for the maint cost.

In a real business, the more space you use up, the more it costs to run. If you're selling a $1000 item in a store that's only 2x2, you shouldn't have to pay 10% of the 1000.

If you're selling 1000 items at $1 and you're using up a store space of 10x10, then you should be expected to pay for all the store space you're using.

Okay, Here's where I'm getting at.

Merchants' Vendors will have different acceptable sizes for how much they can sell. If a Merchant goes over the alloted size, they have to pay more.

If Merchants are worried about selling 50+ items, they can either put them in backpacks, sell crates, or, if the Devs are up to it, give Merchants the ability to package items. This makes complete sense. Real world businesses can save space by packaging them.

st

I agree on the fact that there's more nerfing than actual fixing , and there's plenty of other ways to create this money sink. Heck i get sinked to death with the travel costs i have everday + my maintenance + the energy i buy for my harvesters + the redeeding i do like 20X a day + the upkeeps .....

As a stimpack chemist, i barely do any cash to be honest atm... I sell good quality with a low price , but with this patch i can close the doors.

stI'm using the first lvl vendor and didn't know the others charged far less maintence. I'm opposed to a tax on items sold, I don't think that will help the inflation in the economy at all. Now the maintence rate may need to be lowered some but not by too much. As it is crafters need to be selective about the items they but on their vendor and need to work on getting people into their store. If there are too many crafters then that is an issue that will balance itself out. If there are too many armorsmiths in a server then some will drop out bacause they cant make enough money. In a player build economy we have to deal with the peaks and valleys of supply and demand just like a realy economy.

If you have a buisness int he real world you have expenses that happen regardless of what your sales are. If you don't sell anything you still have to pay employees and upkeep costs. I like the current system (on machine vendors) and don't want vendors loaded up with items that will never sell.

st

Would be hard to implement, but if this fix is trully for people who use vendors as storage (ie pricing things at 9999999 credits ) then the sales tax on what is sold wouldnt stop this problem...

Perhaps there is some way to make a sytem where that anything that is sold for more than .. hmm say 10cr/unit would have a price on it. Has to be some way to determine how many units of resources went into making an item. Since most things on vendors are crafted, and not dropped from monsters, this would be ok. If you put up a dress that took 100 units of materials to make, and sold it for 1k you wouldnt get charge for it. But if it was sold for 2k or 999999k you would get taxed on it.

Cant really make this based on the price alone, as architect items are easily worth the 5-500k that some sell for. But if you looked at how many materials went into making them, the price is justified and shouldnt be taxed.

st1% of sale cost per sale.

Forget the per 45 mins. its too confusing to do math in ones head.

stYou know what the screwy thing is? You'll never make your money back. You can try putting up your prices to cover the cost, but as soon as you up the price...your maintenance goes up. So your own inflation of prices screws you over. I think it's a little silly to be setting it up like this. I'm in favor of the commission base, it's more realistic...which is what this economy is supposed to be. If the vendor makes a sale...he/she/it gets a percentage of the amount. That way it doesn't nail you hard as soon as you post the item to sell. Hell, the vendors cut could be 20%, as long as I don't have to pay it every single day for something that isn't selling. That's just my 2 creds, not like it's going to be listened to. They have already said that it's GOING to happen.

st

Summary:

1. Maintenance based on the value of items for sale is inherently unfair, and disconnected from the reality of a working economy. (Especially at the rates you've proposed.)

2. There would be no "need formore money sinks" if not for earlier exploits such as the Baz Nitch missions and other issues. Why will you punish the Merchants for this? Why don't you talk about the resource duping and have you punished those you've gotten rich because of it?

3. Merchants would gladly pay a percentage of SALES as a tax, and have said so repeatedly for weeks.

\rant on\

4. The formula utilizing 45 minutes as a timer gives the developers one more way to manipulate popular sentiment. If after all our pleas they give us a change from x/1000 per 45 minutes to x/800 per 45 minutes, and we're still not appeased, they can immediately say, "We feel your pain, and WILL GO THE EXTRA MILE with all the code drudgery involved and make it x/800 per 60 minutes!" We will feel comforted and taken care of, and they will have had to change one number to do it and stop us whining. It would be far more work for them to actually fix a basis of the economy, and include a tax on items sold. They don't want to work on the merchant class is seems. Evidence to this? Note the Vass post on the TC boards wherein he mentioned on Aug. 25 that "wow, resource splitting on vendors is a problem??" (I paraphrased).

\rant off\

No more gory details, no more long drawn-out discussions of economics, game theory (political, not computer games), or management practices. I'm just going to wait and see if the Merchant class will be considered an important, viable part of SWG or not.

st

ok let's see...

1. We (the Game) need another Moneysink.
2. The (crappy) DB needs fewer Items to keep track of.
3. Vendors can not allowed to work as storage.
4. Crafters and Merchants should face a risk while doing business (the risk to go broke).

Sales-Tax (VAT):
1: check
2: dont help
3: dont help at all
4: nope...
...you're out.

Flat fee for each Vendor (Salary):
1: check (if high)
2: dont help
3: could help - if the fee is high
4: check (if high enough, and drawn from your Bankaccount)
The Fee had to be very high, and this would punish the Malls more than what would be fair. Everyone would have only one Vendor, with all Stuff cramped in, and it will not help with 2 - so: you're OUT!

Item-count based fee:
1: check... well kinda... Hits only some crafters, and Merchants, with big Stock.
2: check.
3: check
4: well... not realy. Those Crafters with large itemcount (Tailors, for example) will stop using Vendors, and Mercants will chase to exist.

Sell-price fee per Time (the Q-Model)
1: check - if you want to sell offline, you *have* to use Vendors
2: check - since every Item costs money, you'll put less into the Vendor, hence produce only what you'll sell.
3: check - pay massive amounts, or face the risk of someone buying your storage.
4: check - no need to tell...

What to do? Lower your prices!
Allmost all Crafters/Merchants - seller at all -are way to greedy.

Let's do some math, with something we all know of:

Scoutblaster
Let's saywithout any adv. Components, and with a scope.

We'll start with the raw Materials - all the needed ressources come from harvesters.
Let's use Mineral Mining Inst., and Solar Generator.
Depending on Concentration, Solar Energy cost the Miner around 0,35cr. per Unit (50%) - thats including a Redeed every 5 Days
Let's say 100% gain for the Miner (greedy as he is) so it's0.7cr. per Unit Energy.
i know that nobody sells for that, but bear with me

If a Miner buys Energy at this rate, and uses MMIs to harvest at ca. 70%, he will pay 0.7cr. per Unit (including the all-5-Day redeed for 3000cr.)
Lets say he too wants 100% gain, and some more, so he would sell *any* ressource that is for 1.5cr. per Unit.
i *still* know nobody sells at this rate, but follow me a for a bit.

Now we come to the profession, where all the hard work, and the knowledge needs to be - the Master Weaponsmith, who makes Guns from the resources.
The Scoutblaster uses 111 Resources, including two subcomponents for the gun, and one optional for the Scope.
Resources x 1.5 = 166.5 cr.
4 Factory-runs = 10.000 with 95 Guns build (thats if he gets *real* unlucky) = 105.3 cr./Gun
200% gain (since he had all the Work, and the Skillpoints to invest)
Makes 544cr. for a Scoutblaster. Thats the Sale-price.

Now we go one Step further, and add another greedy Player - the Merchant.
Lets say, he makes a Bulkorder and gets the Scoutblasters (all 95 of them) for 500cr/Gun, from our Weaponsmith - thats less than 10% discount for Bulkorder.
He now adds another 100% gain ontop of all the Gains we had before, and sells this Gun for 999cr. at his Mall.

I sell them at 799cr. because i'm a *very* greedy Weaponsmith, and i make my own Energy, harvest my own Minerals...

Now tell me, what did you pay for your last Scout Blaster?

Let's say i put up the whole produktion in my Vendor, and i have no Mercant-Skill, to lower the cost.
That would be

95*799/1000*35= 2657cr./day (if i dont sell any, and have all 95 on my Vendor)

They cost me:
(0.65 x 111 x100 + 10000) / 95 = 181.21 cr per Gun. thats 617.79 gain per gun sold.

There are some other costs to factor in, as Energy for the Factorys, maint. for them, cost of the Shop, ect.pp. but that are minor costs.

Only those, who do not sell, will stop using Vendors - if you cant sell enough to make up for the Vendor maintenance, you do something wrong.

Lower your prices.
Raise your quality.
Make yourself Known.

If you still cant make it, you may not be the right one for selling your goods - sell to a talented Merchant.

st

Greets ...

Let's see a *real world* example of this system.

I am a weaponsmith.

I produce of "crate" of laser carbines which currently sell for 15k easy on my server.

Let's say I keep 5 of those on my vendor at any time.

5 * 15k = 75k / 1,000 = 75 / 45 * 60 = 100 credits per hour.

But who keeps 5 guns on a vendor? You keep more like 30 guns on a vendor.

30 * 15k = 450k / 1,000 = 450 / 45 * 60 = 600 credit per hour ... 14.k credits per day.

Sorry ... that is just a little bit high.

I should not have to pay 14k credits per day just to keep 30 items on a vendor ...

This is actually just wrong ... is should not be based upon "per hour" ... it should be based upon "per sale".

Why should it cost me to "keep" stuff on the vendor ... it should cost me to "sell" stuff ...

Heck ... what if my stuff doesn't sell? I just pay for the service of having a vendor?

Nope ... not the answer.

Hero out