CUEmu - Thread Posts

Mkappus

Mon Jun 28, 2004 10:32 am

I don't like the limit on how much in goods we can display or sell per week, I think that is the wrong way to approach it. The wayI would do it is have the maintenance rate of the vendor be a percentage of the total cost of the goods stocked.

So, I have 100 million in goods stocked on the vendor it costs me 50,000 per day. I have 1 million in goods it costs 500 per day. This would keep people from listing things with prices of 999,999,999. This would also create the risk/reward for merchants. The more consignment deals I sign, the more maintenance I have to pay. If the items don't sell I may lose money. Having a flat rate for vendor maintenance doesn't make sense to me.

I know lots of resource vendors that carry 20-30 million units of resources on their vendors, at costs of 2-5 cpu that is a ton of inventory.

Don't come up with an arbitrary cap number, come up with a system that makes sense. The more I have to sell the more it costs me.

Goliath
Master Shipwright, Master Architect, Master Artisan
-=V=- Shipworks 3 Locations Theed, Coronet and
Tatooine by Krayt Graveyard 5909, 4373

3 vendors at GF6 11/11 - Shipwright, Architect, Resources

p4Samwise

Mon Jun 28, 2004 11:32 am

#28

Kwee wrote:

And why do roleplayers keep coming up? The majority of shops I enter have somewhat attractive NPC vendors, often dressed up nicely, meaning they have taken and used Hiring boxes and used their valuable time in trying to get an aesthetically pleasing vendor.

1) My feeling is that having attractive/thoughtfully placed/nicely dressed vendors should be encouraged in any way possible, rather than given a skill point cost - the skill pointsystem exists to keep the game balanced in terms of the economy and combat.Charging skill points for interior decorating perks doesn't fit into that formula.

2)Another motivation comes from my own shopping experiences - the majority of shops I enter have defaultvendors plunked down by the door with garish randomly generated outfits.My hope is thatmaking vendor customization a bit more accessible would make the game world that much more of a pleasant thing to look at. I'd rather get novice merchants started early on being able to customize vendors, which gives them time to experiment with new looks as they climb up the tree and set up bigger and better stores.

3) There's also the angle that if all merchants can ID/dress their vendors without having to spend an extra 14 skill points, there's that much more of a market for image designers and tailors, which I never see enough of in game(though I'm going to bow to your experience in that area, Kwee).

Kwee wrote:

I also feel you are limiting your view of Advertising by wanting to chop out Ad Bark. A vendor can certainly play an advertising role either by informing a customer that you take custom orders or giving out coordinates to another shop (just a couple of examples). Also don't forget the vendors that can see through walls and holler at people walking around outside Ad barking again is a skill that people see as valuable and as such should have a place in a tree, not at Novice Merchant.

The vendors that see through walls only do that if someone's already wandered in to initialize them, as far as I can tell. Good point about giving coordinates to other shops, though (although that can also be accomplished by naming items with that information and placing them strategically).

Those are uses for "custom barking", though. Any reason not to scrap the preprogrammed barking skill and have there be a single "Vendor barking" skill that allows customization? The Advertising tree in its current state reeks of "quick, think of random skills to fill these boxes so people will feel like they get something for their skill points."

Kwee wrote:
Why seek to gimp the profession on the hope that more things will be added to replace skillboxes taken down to the Novice Merchant level? Removing skill boxes reminds me of that statement made in Fanfest that perhaps Merchant should take less skillpoints since it doesn't have a lot of meat to it (my paraphrase). That's dangerous territory imo.

I definitely do not want to remove skill boxes and leave nothing in their place - that would indeed be a "gimping". What I want to do is provide skills that are more on par, functionality-wise, with what other professions have, and to a large extent I feel that the current skills in those boxes are "placeholders" that provide an excuse for not doing that.

"Prettiest shim on Bria!" - Sev
Certified "cool" by the Darth Vader of Bria
Blue glowie.

Cafa

Mon Jun 28, 2004 2:12 pm

#29

lisasdarren wrote:

There is no reason why a low level merchant who logs in twice a day to manage their store shouldn't be able to out sell a master merchant who only logs in once a week, they are working harder and therefore deserve a greater reward.

A master who logs in twice a day can still sell more than a novice who logs in twice a day if they have the customer base to buy that much of their stock, but the master who only logs in twice a weekwon't be able to make as much.

The system should encourage people to be online using their skills and not make it possible to succeed as well only playing once a week asyou canplaying daily.

I have a real problem with this. My vendors regularly hold 100 of EVERY heavy harvestor and 150 to 200 mediums. When people want them they clean out whatever resource is hot. This would prevent my slaes, not help them.

Also, playing a merchant should have manageable tools associated, not twice a day log in requirements.

Fivo Asia

- Strength In Numbers - Loyal Subjects of the Empire
Asia Brothers Industries - Asia Hall SiN CiTY, Dantooine (Offers Vendor at -4703 -1404)
A player bodyguard can't protect you either, something agroes you, you are dead. The
only difference between a pet and the person, is you pay the person to stand there
and watch you die. -- Straker Atrella

p4Samwise

Mon Jun 28, 2004 2:59 pm

#30

All right, we have a couple of people now who disagree with making the limits per-vendor, so I'm going to go ahead and lay out the slightly wilder idea that I had a while back. This is a slightly more radical change, but it does have some benefits over the current vendor-based one.

The shop, rather than the vendor, is the mechanism through which sales are conducted and limited according to merchant skill. Rather than the primary mechanism by which sales are conducted, vendors become purely interface widgets to access the "shop".

What this means in terms of game mechanics is that the limits (whatever they end up being) are associated with the shop - to set up a shop, rather than dropping a vendor, you go to the building management terminal and you set some property on the building itself. The building then is ranked as a shop based on your merchant skill plus the options you select. For example (using the same vague numbers that I used before, and again, these should not be thought of as absolutes), a Master Merchant who deeds a house can go to the terminal and declare that it's a "level 7 shop". That shop can then conduct200 million credits worth of business (or however much), regardless of how many vendors the merchant places in there. The same merchant could also opt to place multiple shops of lower level in order to distribute his/her business a bit more.

Within that shop, the merchant then has complete freedom to place one vendor, five vendors, or whatever will be most effective for categorizing his/her wares - the vendors do not grant increased selling volume, they simply provide more access points (like interface terminals) to the underlying shop functionality. There is therefore no need to place more vendors than needed. (An aside: if the commerce UI were better, it might not be necessary to place multiple vendors as a means of categorization - something worth keeping in mind.)

This gets tricky because tying Management to number of vendors starts to make less sense once it's the "shop" that everything is based off of - it might make more sense to tie Management to the number of shops that can be managed in different locations, with any one shop having an arbitrary number of vendors according to the merchant's whim. Or perhaps a combination of the two - additional ranks in Management give you additional shop locations and additional vendors per shop (and, going with Doc's idea, additional hiring-style benefits for those vendors).

Another tricky bit: what happens to "megamalls" once selling capability is per-building? There would have to be a mechanism for multiple merchants to pool their talents in one building to facilitate merchant cooperatives of that nature- perhaps if multiple characters have admin on one building, they can combine their selling capabilities to produce higher selling limits.

Obviously this complexifies things further and needs some fleshing out, which is why I didn't include it in the first draft, but if it solves problems without generating too many new ones it might merit more consideration.

"Prettiest shim on Bria!" - Sev
Certified "cool" by the Darth Vader of Bria
Blue glowie.

lisasdarren

Tue Jun 29, 2004 4:05 am

#31

Cafa wrote:

lisasdarren wrote:

There is no reason why a low level merchant who logs in twice a day to manage their store shouldn't be able to out sell a master merchant who only logs in once a week, they are working harder and therefore deserve a greater reward.

A master who logs in twice a day can still sell more than a novice who logs in twice a day if they have the customer base to buy that much of their stock, but the master who only logs in twice a weekwon't be able to make as much.

The system should encourage people to be online using their skills and not make it possible to succeed as well only playing once a week asyou canplaying daily.

I have a real problem with this. My vendors regularly hold 100 of EVERY heavy harvestor and 150 to 200 mediums. When people want them they clean out whatever resource is hot. This would prevent my slaes, not help them.

Also, playing a merchant should have manageable tools associated, not twice a day log in requirements.

Fivo Asia

I don't actually see how your having a 1000 harvesters on your vendor has anything to do with my point, but i could be missing something...

What i am saying is a master merchant has a bigger shop than a lower level merchant. Both can restock as often as they like, the more often you restock products that sell out the more sales you have the potential of making.

If you have a bigger store you need to restock less often in order to make the same sales as a merchant with a smaller shop. Assume you both sell 100000 creds of goods an hour, as a master you may need to log on twice a week to add enough stock to sustain this level of sales, but as a merchant you will need to restock daily or even twice daily. So being a master allows you to have a greater throughput of sales for the amount of "work" you need to undertake, as it should, but the lower level merchant can still out sell you if they "work" harder than you.

This doesn't mean you have twice daily log on requirements, unless you want to sell more than your rank of merchant allows with ease. This system means that effort is rewarded, but so is being a higher ranking merchant.

Just because a change to the system means that it will change the way you play does not make it a bad change, i don't know how much merchant you have and so i have no idea what your stock limits would be when converting into P4's theoretical system, but they may be enough for you to hold the same level of stock as you currently do or they may not be and you might need to change the way you play.

Trax Treort - Rifleman, Fencer & Imperial Pilot

p4Samwise

Tue Jun 29, 2004 11:50 am

#32

Mkappus wrote:

Sorry, I think the shop idea is even worse. I know many people like to have vendors on multiple planets. Would you be able to have multiple shops? Also, with the lot limitation, most vendors are not in houses owned by the merchant. What about all the malls that guilds have?

I actually discussed both of those points in my last post, calling them out as problems that were tricky but not insurmountable.

"Prettiest shim on Bria!" - Sev
Certified "cool" by the Darth Vader of Bria
Blue glowie.

Mkappus

Tue Jun 29, 2004 12:33 pm

#33

Sorry, I think the shop idea is even worse. I know many people like to have vendors on multiple planets. Would you be able to have multiple shops? Also, with the lot limitation, most vendors are not in houses owned by the merchant. What about all the malls that guilds have?

I think the way to do it is make it a sliding scale of percent of inventory for sale. Something like this would be the maintenance rate per vendor per day:

0-1million in inventory 0.2% per day.

1-10 million in inventory 0.3% per day.

10-50million in inventory 0.4% per day.

50-100million 0.5% per day.

100 million plus .75% per day.

As you go up the tree you get discounts off of these. This would give the small guy a chance to compete, and discourage people from taking consigment from anyone and everyone. You have to be selective about what you sell, or it increases your costs. This would also get rid of the storage issue, since having expensive items would increase your costs.

This also adds to the risk reward function. The more items you place for sale, the higher your costs/risk over time. However, being able to sell 100million or more in goods at a time could lead to a huge reward. If we get consignment, vendor fees are going to have to change dramatically.

Message Edited by Mkappus on 06-29-2004 01:37 AM

Goliath
Master Shipwright, Master Architect, Master Artisan
-=V=- Shipworks 3 Locations Theed, Coronet and
Tatooine by Krayt Graveyard 5909, 4373

3 vendors at GF6 11/11 - Shipwright, Architect, Resources

mhal9000

Tue Jun 29, 2004 8:25 pm

#34

I'm finding myself falling into the vendor maintenance camp in regards to limiting the usefulness of vendors as storage.

Item limits would impact all sellers, especially those crafts who have the capacity to have large amounts of inventory, ie tailors.

Basing vendor maintenace on the total sale price of all items posted would still hit everyone, but it would hit the 9999999 packages the hardest in my opinion.

I've got probably around 20-30 million credits worth up for sale at any given time, so I would get hit by this too, but I don't mind paying a little extra for having the inventory up.

Federated ResourcesHork Haggis, Retired

p4Samwise

Wed Jun 30, 2004 1:44 pm

#35

I'm starting to come around to the idea of the limit being a flat "for sale at any one time" thing rather than being weekly. It's true that lower level merchants can get around this by logging in more often, but that's sufficiently annoying that I don't think it'll dissuade anyone from investing in higher level shops.

I also like Doc's idea of the limit being jacked-up maint costs past a certain point, rather than an absolute limit. It'd provide room for the hypothetical lower-level-but-more-skilled novice merchant to outsell the master on really high-priced items - he'd just have to work a lot harder,since theinflated cost of operating would force him to find ways to move his stock quickly and restock frequently to keep on top of it.

Anyone else have any thoughts on the "shop vs vendor" thing? It seems like a potentially veryelegant solution to me, but it's a big departure from the current system.

"Prettiest shim on Bria!" - Sev
Certified "cool" by the Darth Vader of Bria
Blue glowie.

Mkappus

Wed Jun 30, 2004 2:15 pm

#36

I think a mix of the shop and vendor would be the optimal solution.

Create a new structure that is a shop, roughly the size of a small house. You could also use the merchant tent but I like shops better so that you have room to decorate and create ambiance. Limit the structure to master merchant. Each merchant would be limited to one of these structures.

Within a shop a merchant could place X number of vendors, but the entire shop counts as 1 vendor. This way a merchant could still run multiple locations if he so chooses. Allowing X number of vendors would give the merchant the flexibility to organize his goods in an efficient manner amoung multiple vendors. How large should X be? I think 5 is a good number, 10 may be too much.

Goliath
Master Shipwright, Master Architect, Master Artisan
-=V=- Shipworks 3 Locations Theed, Coronet and
Tatooine by Krayt Graveyard 5909, 4373

3 vendors at GF6 11/11 - Shipwright, Architect, Resources

p4Samwise

Wed Jun 30, 2004 4:08 pm

#37

New art assets seem to take an inordinate amount of time to develop, so I haven't suggested anything that would involve new art. Particularly buildings, since I don't trust any new buildings that are addedto have decent floorplans, having seen the floorplans for all the existing ones.

Why limit the "shop" concept to master merchants? It seems like once the code is in place to make it work, it'd be simpler to handle all merchant commerce under that system, rather than having a split.

"Prettiest shim on Bria!" - Sev
Certified "cool" by the Darth Vader of Bria
Blue glowie.

p4Samwise

Sun Jul 18, 2004 12:05 am

#38

Never mind... I have seen the light.

"Prettiest shim on Bria!" - Sev
Certified "cool" by the Darth Vader of Bria
Blue glowie.

Merchant Archive

Thread: Revamp proposal, draft 1.. comments please!