Merchant Archive
Thread: Vendor Maintenance Fees coming – your input request
Vendor Maintenance Fees (VMF)IMO would best be handled if they directly influenced the maintenance fees of the house or building in which they are stationed.
For instance, each Vendor will incur a 5% to 10% maintenance penalty to the building in which they reside due to their VMF.
However, given items that the vendor sells could be taxed a certain amount, depending on planetary taxes. For instance, perhaps a tax on Weapons and Armour on Tatooine would be greater than Chem, General and food items due to Imperial influence. In such a case, one would desire to go to a different planet and purchase their goods rather than buy on a planet with heightened taxes on varying items.
My point here is that it would be more effective for the economy if taxation were placed on vendor goods sold rather than mere Vendor Maintenance fees. Varying taxation prices on different goods would give the game more flavor, and also make player cities a hot spot if said taxes could be lowered/raised. And if players did not feel they should have to pay taxes, then they would be more likely to seek out player crafters and trade one on one.
Taxes and tax evasion... hmmm... sounds like a good niche for a Smuggler.
Ida wrote:Why are there so many money sinks for merchants and artisans and nearly none for fighting class people.
This actually is not a good way of looking at it. By money sinks he means money leaving the economy and not going to other players. Fighting class people spend money, but they give that money to other players for the most part (artisans). If merchant fees are raised, the price of goods will go up, and the fighters will have to spend more money. The trick is to raise merchant fees in such a way that it is fair, favors people who have invested in merchant skills more, and taxes all types of merchants equally (i.e. you are not financially penalized for selling lots of small cheap items over large expensive items, or vice versa).
Sure this makes sense but if prices rise there is no telling that people will continue to buy. And if they do why buy the inflated vendor prices (when you can rarely even find the vendor anyway because Ad III is fubarred). When I can run around town and sell at pre-vendor-nerf prices why would anyone buy at the increased prices on vendors ?? People will just stop using them thats all there is too it. Sure a select few that move massive ammounts of items will use them because they're well know masters but novice anything would never be able to sustain a new store that had inventory. It seems more and more like those that got in early and power leveled and/or power missioned to get their large stacks of cash are going to own the game when SOE tries to make it impossible for anyone to catch up
lol ... I'm bitter and enjoy being bitter !
Seeing as how ill be posted on like the 10th page of this thread, im sure its been said before, but I thinkthat the time-based issue isn't that bad of an idea because its just like how everything else in the game works. I do however think the price is way too much. I sell an assortment of high quality items that range from 1,000 to 120,000 credits. My vendor is always well stocked, and this would cost me thousands of credits everyday to maintain my vendor. As a result, my prices, along with every other businessman's, would be forced to increase. This is what you are trying to prevent. If these prices were raised, you'd just have more money being shifted around because I guarantee you as long as there are desirable items to be bought, there will be marksmen and brawlers working hard on missions to make sure they can purchase those such items. Thanks.
Tuzmoor Abbas
President & CEO
Tuzapp Inc. -5619, 3275 near Theed
Scylla server
Ok. Assume that I, as an architect have 5 of each type of medium harvester for sale in my vendor. I charge 10k for mineral, moisture, and solar harvesters, and 30k for flora, chemical, and gas. That's 650k credits, and by your insane little formula, I would be losing 650 credits per 45 minutes. Or 20800 per day. If I sold everything, I would have just enough money to cover JUST my vendor costs for a month.
I think you're making a mistaken assumption that ALL merchants are selling at a good clip through their vendors. This is a bad assumption, because my shop is out a couple klicks east of Doaba Guerfel, which isn't exactly heavily trafficked.
With this formula, you're effectively charging downtown Manhattan rents for a small country store out somewhere in the plains states.
I am much more in favor of a low, fixed 'over time' cost for a vendor, followed with a sales tax made AT THE TIME OF SALE that provides an appropriately sized drain for the merchant (less for small shops, more for the busy ones)
I agree with the common theme of "fix them first".
However, if you're looking to set a fee to increase the money sink, base it on a "sales tax" type formula rather than Inventory_Value/X. Why?
Unsold inventory is already a money sink for that merchant. In addition, the IV/X model favors the 24x7 player at the expense of the less hardcore gamer as the 24x7 player is more able to practice "just in time" inventory and minimize their costs. Those players that log in less frequently will have to carry larger inventories (and thus pay higher maintenance) to keep an adequate supply of goods to make their shops attractive and worth the travel.
Secondly, a "sales tax" is more easily accounted for by the merchant. If I put a crate of items up on my vendor for 10,000 credits, it's a simple matter to just pass the cost on to the buyer by bumping my price up a bit (if I choose to pass the tax on).
A "sales tax" model has a nice rubberband effect in that new and/or struggling merchants pay significantly less than the successful merchants. This gives them more money to purchase better items (and resources in the case of crafter-merchant) to offer in order to better compete.
Finally, and this is my own personal situation, I have a vendor I use as a "display" vendor to show the various foods and drink I am capable of making and which the customer can have custom made. I price these items extremely high in order to ensure that no one will buy them (even though people have bought my display items much to my ire). If you're going with a value-based maintenance cost, please implement a "display toggle" where merchants can place an item on a vendor that is viewable by the customer but unable to be purchased.
Cheers,
Kaizen
I'm all for low daily fee + sales tax per item. It's bad enough the merchant tree is a joke with add barking and planetary advertising broken.
For the person who mentioned Tailor's shouldn't have a say in this debate-Can I have a bit of whatever you're smoking? We have to have a HUGE selection for customers, no one revisits empty vendors or ones with no variety.
Missing inventory, ghosted items in stockroom, buggy factories and harvesters. The crafting profession's already hard enough as it is without this ridiculous rate(every 45mins. !? *smacks whoever didn't think of at least rounded to the hour*).
Tell ya what, when this goes live, let me know what city I should meet the CSR in so I can bend over and take yet another one from SOE for choosing a crafting profession.
MONEY SINK! FIX AND TURN ON INSURANCE!*smack*
How would items removed from vendors solve a DB problem though. The same items would still be in the game. Except now they would be on people. They would have to deal with tracking items as they zone, or what house they are in, which backpack. Doesn't make any sense to me. The same items will be there, they will just be in different places.
The only thing I see this doing is lessening the amount of items made and the amount of money traded around. This will do nothing to stem the flow of money into the economy. As long as there are mission payouts, money will keep coming in.
Where does money come into the economy...mission runners, not the crafters. If the crafters were the sole reason for money ENTERING the economy, things would be much different. But they are adding a tax to a class that depends on people gaining money and then spending it on their wares. This has absolutely NO affect on sinking money as the combat professions where money comes into the system will not notice anything except it will be tougher to SPEND the cash because less will be made, less will be sold and it will be more difficult to find items.
Maybe this is REALLY a nerf to tone down speed of combat advancement. They can't advance as fast with sub par items when they can't find the top of the top weapons because everyhing is sold person to person.
Just my ranting.
That's just my take on making the merchant class have some real value.
Vendor costs should be a low flat rate with a 5% fee upon sale of the item.
I'm not sure what the devs are wanting to happen with this 'money sink'. Do they want to drain money away from the crafters or the buyers? The current proposed maintenance fees will definately drain money from the selling party, and have little to no impact on the buying side. A tax per sale will cause merchants to raise their prices accordingly to cover the cost, effectively draining more money from the buyers.
Perhaps the solution is to just make the original source of money more scarce. Where is money created? Missions are the only source of new money into the economy right? And they are pretty much money for nothing. Simply make them pay less.
This will cause a great outcry from the adventuring class. From everyone really. I run two mineral miners, a solar generator and a small house. If I don't sell anything, I need to spend a few minutes each night running simple missions to collect the few thousand credits to pay up everything till the next day.
Ok I'm running out of steam finally so to try to sum it up...
Adventurers make money too easily. Crafters need to spend lots of money to create their wares that will sell for whatever the rich adventurers are willing to pay. The solution does not lie in bothering the crafters and changing how they sell. It is in making money scarce. Thats the way the real economy works and is influenced by the government changing interest rates to make money more scarce at times or more available at times. Right now the SWG economy is in serious need of adjustment. I believe that messing with vendor costs will not fix this problem. Money does not need to be drained from players, it needs to be harder to get.
Sorry all. I'm done for now.
Tien Indabut
Flurry
Master Artisan, Novice Architect, Novice Pistoleer, Novice Tailor, Novice Merchant, former Entertainer, almost Master Scout, almost out of skill points waiting to see how things develop to decide what classes to leave behind.
Tats what I'm talkin about.
/1000 every 45 minutes well thats interesting. I ran around to vendors last night just to see what people had in stock I checked 30 houses just in the Coronet area on Corbantis and here are some interesting numbers.
Non Merchants (or merchantswith 1 vendor) had an average of 50k worth ofstock. Merchants (or people with more than 1 vendor) had an average of 300k in stock. Now this did include a few architects but also included the 300k in my droid vendors.
Doing the math300k is 300 credits everyu 45 minutes or 32times per day for a total of 9600 credits per day. I don't know about youbutI am not able to pay that every day for more than say a week before I need to have to close shop.
Now the solution to you seems clear, charged based on total price of the stock. This doesnt work because low voolume big ticket item vendors like architects are hurt by this. Paying a flat rate per item favors the big ticket guys but hurts the food vendors selling stuff betweek 50 and 100 credits per item and in the long run they end up paying more. So how besst to solve the problem.
Well maybee its as simple as Both a maintainence rate andcomission.....the vendors themselves could take flat rates like 10 credits per hour that would be effected by merchant skills and a comission of 10% could be assessed per sale. This way a merchant with 6 vendors is paying 1440 in flat rate fees and if they sell all 300k of the items in their shop in one day that 30k out of the economy. Heck 15% would be fine if merchants could reduce that to 10% thru skills.
So my vote is 10 credits per hour (or 45 minutes if you must)per vendor. And Comission of 10%.
--Dolomite
P.S. Another possible solutiontothe database issues and "storage" vendorsis to put the vendors in the hands of the serious merchants and remove the vendor at business 3 instead placing it at master merchant.
Gotta agree with the above.
Fix the stack bug with NPC vendors.
Change your calculations to a flat rate + value of items sold/1000. To base it on only items listed cripples some merchants (resourcers especially) and is just plain unrealistic... In the real world, most states charge a sales tax, not an inventory tax.
I know we need more sinks, butlook at fixing the insurance issues before balancing the whole thing on Merchant's heads.
My 2 cents added to the heap 
The vendors require artisans to use up skill points to gain Business lvls...and if so desired can go up thru merchant. The spending of skill pts should (in my opinion) entitle a character to free maintenance. The perks of increased merchant status may come through advertising & sleeker vendor models (perhaps even increases to the quantity of items allowed in a vendor. Where theBazaar allows 25 items, perhaps the first vendor allows 50 items....the next lvl of vendor 100...etc. (Note: This may already be an aspect of the game...as I have not tested the volume limits of vendors as of yet)
However, if free maintenance is unacceptable and you wish to address the "improper storage issue", why not charge a posting fee of 20 credits/itemsimilar to the bazaar w/ a timeout of 7 days? If someone wants to store 500 items at 20 credits each for 7 days...let them. They paid the skill pts to get a vendor where others use their pts for combat, etc. Perhaps requiring that the only person who can add items to (or remove items from) a vendor is the person who placed it (no administrator rights transfer)....might help alleviate some of the storageconcerns created bymembers of larger groups and/orPA's all using the same vendor. This "single point of vendor contact" might also help increasethe value ofthe merchant class to groups as well as the basic economy.
The way maintenance is right now, the use of private vendors seems to be discouraged. This forces players to either switch to combat roles, rely solely on the bazaar (for lower cost items or "placeholders"when trying to sell the higher cost ones), or spam the city streets as they hawk their wares.
In the end, let's not lose sight of the fact that this is a game and as such, should be as enjoyable as possible. People will always find a way to skirt the system, and games that rein in players too much (whether it be for improper vendor storage, macros, or whatever the new flavor the week is) tend to achieve the opposite of their ultimate goal. Along the way, such games tend to becomeincreasingly rigid,and simply lose a little more "flavor" w/ each constraint.
For example, if vendor costs remain high, many artisans will likely stop stocking items (I am witnessing the beginnings of this already)...thus effectively removing minor (but fun) game aspects such as window shopping & bargain hunting. Players will eventually gravitate toward email transactions & external websites to conduct in-game business. True, the storage issue will be solved, but at what cost? I ask that you be careful of knee-jerk reactions to such issues. Please weigh what you may lose with what you may gain from both the micro and macro levels.
Thank you for your time.
Convene