Merchant Archive

edTotal Value on vendors/1000 every 45 minutes. Ok, look up how many items Iree Siar has on her npc vendors on Chilastra. Outside Kadaara, Naboo. Hundreds! Lol. Customers are starting to discover my selection, which is my only edge (I'm a tailor). Just breaking even lately with the lack of clothing decay, just able to cover costs etc. for the last month or so. My selection (and my service too but) my selection, esp when I'm not online, is the online reason for someone to come to my shop over another. Let's see, I'll make a rough guess of a value of 500,000 (as I don't have many master level items up yet, when I do it may be closer to 1 mil.

Ok so 500000/1000 every 45 minutes. = 16,000/day!!!

theres 32 blocks of 45 mins per day (60 mins x 24 = 1440, then divide by 45 to get 32)

500,000/1000 = 500 every 45 minutes, multiply 500 by 32 = 16,000! Yikes!!!! (I hope I have done my rough math correctly!)

Respectfully, you have GOT to be kidding!!!

Granted, I keep alot more stock up than most but given the HUGE variety of clothing, and I only keep up a variety of the more interesting things not even a variety of everything that sells well, when clothes sell, as they haven't been lately.

I would ask you to consider instituting this either at the same time or AFTER you institute clothing decay. I know I can only speak from a tailor's perspective, altho there are other professions with much slower sales now as well. Keeping a decent selection up is the only edge I seem to have, and it is BARELY paying my structure maintenance and travel, etc. Some days I do a bit better than break even but then inevitably I have to pour more money into one of the money sinks in the game. Still, I know this has to go into the game.

I would think half the proposed rate would be more pleasing to me, altho 8000 a day for half a mil of stick, stil hurts at the current slow rate my product is moving. I generally have to put most items back up from the stockroom 2-3 times before they sell, just because there is so little traffic anymore checking out my wares. And also, because of the wide variety of people's tastes, I don't get every clothing style taste person wandering through my shop each week.

Anyway, I apologize for rambling so much, and you probably won't even consider half the currently proposed rate, but is there some way you can consider how fast the product moves? In other words, linking it to, at least a little, to how many transactions are conducted on the vendor? Making it purely x per x amount of time, it will really limit my ability to do business in the current economic/tailor climate, and also makes me wonder if it's another database issue where you do NOT want people having alot of stock for sale?

I do feel for ya at the probably oncoming onslaught of negative postings on this issue. Hopefully my reaction, though negative, is constructively negative. Lol. Looking forward to other interesting proposals on this, and kind of crossing my fingers that it's not going to stay at the proposed level!

The 500,000 was a rough estimate I may have a bit less up, I may have closer to 1 mil up, and I don't even have as much selection as I desire up on my vendors. SO. I will be closely watching this issue.

Sare
Iree Siar
Wearable Wonders by Iree
Outside Kadaara, Naboo

ed

This change I've been dreading for a long time.

Like many have stated, if you want a money sink, take a sales tax. A % of each sale, say 5%. And no maintence fee for vendors.

All I know is when I used terminal/droid vendors, it was too expensive for me to set up a shop. I just set a droid vendor up until I could get an NPC vendor, thenI could actually set up a shop. Running a shop is a very enjoyable part of this game, and I enjoy keeping my vendor well stocked will high and low end items. I dont see why I should be penalized for providing a good service with lots of quality, and I dont make tons of money doing it.

I realize there is a need for money sinks, but to me it seems there is enough for most crafters anyways. I think the real reason you see select people with tons of money, is because players are dishing out incredible amounts of money for items, way more than they are worth actually. Why can a single gun go for more than a house? There is a huge difference in resources used in those two products.

All I know is, even when Im up to 100k or so, It goes away pretty fast. Running 10 harvesters, or 8 and a house, or 6, a house, and a factory, gets very pricey.

I hope if NPC vendors are fixed, they implement a new method, as droid/terminal vendors are going to put alot of people out of work.

ed

Okay. First the raw facts with Holo given rate, you are looking at 31.25 days to sell an item before it starts to lose money. Assuming you make 100% profit on an item (if it sells imediately) it means you need to sell the item within 15.63 days to turn a profit on the particular item.

Now I look at my vendor. I would say less than 15% of my items as a weaponsmith/installation designerstay on my vendor longer than 7 days. With at least 75% selling during the first 2 days. If the item sells at the 2 day markI effectively pay a 6.4% sales tax. (I pay not the customer.) At the 7 day mark its up to 22.4% and that is a little steep but on the bareable side. If it stays on my vendor longer than 7 days chances are pretty slim that it is going to sell at the given price.

As a weaponsmith and architect I think I could live with these rates. And I can have more than a million credits worth of sales going at any given time. However, I have to show some compasion. Particularly to tailors. The fact is their items need to be fitted to the customer far more than a weapon or a building does and so items tend to have a much longer shelf life. So I see them having to raise their prices (possibly by as much as doubling.)

All those numbers said. I'd really like it to be X/1000 per hour. Its just better math dealing in hours than in 45 minute segments.

ed

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Q-3PO wrote:

Before we swing the proverbial nerf bat, we want to get your input on this issue.
Where we are asking for your input is, given that there will be maintenance, how much is appropriate? How much will give us an appropriate drain without crippling any players?
We are currently planning for the formula to be:
Total Listed Value of Items on Vendor / 1000 every 45 minutes
What do you feel it should be at? How much should it cost to maintain your vendors? (answering zero is the same as not answering the question at hand by the way ).

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I feel qualified to respond to this as I have been keeping a terminal vendor (the one that charges maintenance) and a NPC vendor (the one that does not charge maintenance) as a comparison.

I am an architect btw, and our prices typically are in the 6 digits for Master Level and Level IV Installations.

Note, my calculations are based on interpreting your formula correctly. I may be wrong...

Typically, the cost of a Large House would cost let's say 140,000 credits. If we were to apply your formula, then listing this house on my vendor would cost me 140 credits every 45 minutes (why use 45 minutes? this is so clunky to work with). This would equal 4480 credits PER DAY to list just ONE ITEM on my vendor. If I were to list 5 large houses, this would equal 22,400 credtis PER DAY. This is far too costly in my opinion. I would never use my vendor then. In fact, I would rather stand in the streets and hawk my houses to sell rather then be charge these kinds of credits to use my vendor.

And I would work around the system. I would place a frivolous item in my vendor with a description to send me a tellto purchase my house at 140,000 credits and put a 1 credit value in the cost of the sale.

You also have additional issues here besides the imbalance of high cost items per listing. Guilds and folks placing vendors typically put them in their houses or 'shops' which are at least a 5 minute run from any city. The traffic to anyone's vendor can not be compared to the traffic the bazaar gets, and therefore your bazaar items move faster than items on personal vendors. Those with personal vendors may have their items listed for days due to lack of 'pedestrian traffic'. In these cases, the costs involved in keeping your items listed exceed the profits your vendor would bring in.

One could argue that placing your vendor on the global map would be the answer to this. But I have been on the global map for weeks, and this does not influence buyers to come to my store in any manner. In fact, most users are not even AWARE of how to use the global map to find vendors.

I think your pricing formulas have to be more complex then to assume one formula will 'fix' the money sink issues for all professions' wares.

Of course, one assumes that before you implement this, that the retrieval issues will have been throughly tested first. I'd hate to deal with paying mainentance fees on items that are stuck in vendor limboland.

ed

Isee a potential problem if it is based off of items sold, consider the base of comparison:

A friend of mine is a master architecht, has 50 heavy harvesters on his vendor.

I am a master doctor, keep it stocked with 50 stimpack b's.

Problem if charging is based off of items sold:
In a day, he may sell 5 harvesters, makes 750,000 credits. I on the other hand would sell the full stack of stimpacks or more, making 25,000 credits. Obviously based on the amount of items sold I as the doctor would take the larger hit not only because I sold more items, but also because I made less money in the day.

Problem if it is based on amount of items listed on the vendor:
He has 50, I have 50. At the end of the day, he has 45, I have 0. If you figure a standard average sale time throughout the day he pays a lot more then me. You can figure he pays full maintenence on 45 items and exponentially decreasing maintenence on 5 items, versus me who pays exponentially decreasing maintenence on 50 items. But remember, he still makes 750,000 credits to my 25,000 credits.

Problem if it is based on cost of items sold:
He sells 750,000 worth of items, I sell 25,000. He pays MUCH more maintenence then I do. Fair?? maybe.. but look at his overhead. He uses much much more resources then I do.

So... what is the best solution? Maybe make it like a house, or harvester. Make a set price for maintenence, almost like an NPC salary, or maintenece cost for the droid or terminal, but then restrict the cost of items that could be sold. Example, small vendors can only sell items up to 3000-5000 credits, and cost a small amount/day. Medium can sell items up to 50k, medium level costs. Large vendors can sell items up to 500k or no limit at all, but then the cost of maintenece is more.

The idea of this is that you pay a lower salary for a vendor to sell your items that are lower cost. Higher cost items (ones that are worth much more and would require a much more reliable and honest vendor) would require a vendor that gets a higher salary.

So, anyway. It's just an idea, but one that seems to make sense to me. What do you think Q-3PO? :-)

ed

personally i always liked the concept of the vendor fee being based on the price of items being held by the vendor. the only problem that i see is there isnt really an addequate way for players to make their products known since many folks at this point rarely enter my store or even realise its a store in the first place.

i think there should be a player based bazzaar in town that is like a bulitin board of the players vendor items that can be purchased at that location but then picked up at the appropriate vendor via email setup by the player or at the very least coordinates to the vendor location.

most of my things sit in my vendor for the full duration and never sell because i dont have time to advertise. Im really only a part time player in the evenings. High maintenence is ok if the product turnaround is high as well. At the moment all products can be repaired or do not degrade over time so once folks have these things it can be a few months before players need to buy the same product again. Either remove the repair function, make repairs only accesssable by those specialising in the field of products needing repair (armorsmiths repair armor, weaponsmiths repair weapons etc) or increase the rate of decay on products ...... ALL PRODUCTS .. including structures, clothing and tools.

The current vendor situation is good for perhaps one with business 3 but some additional convenience as ive listed above should be accessible to the merchant only. Also I feel that when folks offer products to sell on other persons vendors that the item should automatically be in the sale listings and if it sells the merchant gets 10% of the sale listing. Also Master Merchants should be able to place a vendor in a city in one of the many tents that line the city streets that would realistically be hustle and bustle. this would make master merchant a more viable class to play and make the vendor fees worth the expense. As it is now with the lack of automatic advertisement and gameplay mechanics that promote the use of vendors its more producti9ve to just stand in the street and holler your prices and fire your vendors. The idea to me is that vendors should make your business more practical and accessible ...... but i made more money making bone armor and selling it on the bazzaar than i ever did in a vendor.

bottom line is people dwell in the city ..... not in the outskirts (the game is developing so i understand its a struggle to make changes and im not flaming anyone at all. for the most part i like the game and plan to continue playing) the city is where the real merchant of societies do their works and it should be the same for the mechanics of this game.

The system as it is; when the vendor fees are fixed ill shut down my vendors fo good because i simply cant afford it and ill likely drop merchant as well as business. Architechs simply dont sell houses to the same folks twice ..... thanks for reading this post

ed

An Architect, who has 7 heavy harvesters for sale totalling 1mil credits, would have to pay 32kaday in maintanance. This is simply wrong. (I'm not an Arcitect, btw, but I visit their stores from time to time).

3%-5% tax on every transaction, may be some minimal, fixedsalaryin addition to that - but not your current formula. Whoever came up with that idea, should play the game more.

edMy opnion and i know this will never work but i think that the cost should be a percentige of your sales, or simply paying your vendor on comission. this will suck cash from the UBEr rich armorsmiths/weaponsmiths/architechs whithout hurting the lower cost sellers to much. a 1%-2% taxing of your sales taken after the item sels, will not be that much but it will still suck cash oout very fast.

ed

Q,

I currently have five vendors in my shop... Since the nerf to mission payouts, my sales have dramatically decreased. I sell maybe 2-6 things off of my vendors per day. So my vendors are there for fun basically, they are not a money maker for me. Tailors in particular have to have a BIG selection for people to choose from. There are so many styles and colors... What you will be encouraging if vendor prices are too high will be for people to not go up Management (to lower vendor costs), and to have a poor selection for shoppers (disappointing for the shoppers, and depressing for the vendor).

My five vendors atm:

• Wookatme Kweestyles (wookiee clothing) -0 to 1 thing a daysells


• Kweestyle Accessories (belts, shoes, etc) - 0 to 2 things a day sell


• Kweestyle Boutique (bulk of clothes) - 2 to 6 things a day sell


• Kweestyle Beauty Salon (lists prices for Image Design) - nothing for sale, just a price list


• Kwee-crafted Knick Knacks (fishing poles, slitherhorns, spiced tea, etc) - 0 to 1 things a day sell

Don't take away my fun!!!!

I LOVE the sales tax idea. IF the item sells, take out 10% or whatever. Leave the vendors affordable. Maybe 2 credits an hour max.

Thank you for asking for feedback Q.

edYou know I posted on this Q-3po and what I am seeing is a lot of the same.

low Flat fee + sales tax is overwhelmingly preferred.

You know why?

- It is fair, you sell more you pay more
- It is well established, nearly every state in the US and most industrialized countries have some amount of VAT or sales tax. People expect it, people are used to paying it.
- People can factor it in to their costs more easily than this time based system you propose. 5% of revenue is a lot easier to work with than something times something so many times a day. I mean can you get more complex and opaque than that???
- It does not unfairly punish merchants with high value items like deeds or vendors who do not move a lot of product
- It does not result in people simply abandoning the whole vendor system entirely because it is vastly too expensive.

I think it is pretty clear what is the better approach.

edOh and just to be crystal clear the better approach IMO is

Low Flat fee + sales tax

ed

This would destroy my shop. Here's why:

I am a tailor. I cannot place items on my vendor based on what I expect to sell. I can't place6 scout pistols on there, because I tend to sell four a day and want to put an extra couple on just in case, and 6 FGW5s for the same reason, and so on.

If I want to run a shop that serves people well, I really have to put on five different versions of one dress, in different colours, and five of another, and five of another, and five of another. I might sell two dresses in a day, but I only sell those two because I give people choice. Of course, I sell other things too - pants, shirts etc etc. But the same thing applies with all of them.

So the sales per day vs stock on vendor ratio for me is pretty low. Maintenace based on stock on the vendor - rather than on sales - would make it impssible for me to run the vendor at a profit.

Now I know other people have the same issue to an extent and it may well be that I have over-simplified the life of a gunsmith, but I'm pretty sure the basic idea is a fair reflection of the way things are in-game. Tailors are in a slightly different position to other merchants, I think, and althoughI guess it may seema very selfish and personal point to make I'm not the only tailor who'll be affected.

Of course, some people will say that tailors should not run vendors and should make clothes personally for players. Maybe that's what the devs have in mind, fair enough (I've invested 8 skill blocks into merchant, plus novice merchant making 9, but I can always get the skill points back).

But *if* the devs do want to see well-stocked tailor shops with a wide selection of clothes and colours available, then I really think you'd need to base vendor fees on sales, not on stock available.

ed

I originally read the new calculation as total listed items /1000 but now rereading it I see its total value of items /1000 thats way too high. On just ONE of my vendors (of 5) I have somewhere in the region of 150 clothing items averaging 2500 in cost at any given time (I restock daily) so I would be paying 12000 credits for just one of my vendors time that by 5?

That's insane! I like to keep my vendors well stocked and I know my customers appreciatethis but you would be basically punishing me for doing so

Please charge a % per sale like has already been stated.