Merchant Archive
Thread: Vendor Maintenance Fees coming – your input request
Vendor maintenance should NOT be an hourly or time-based charge. That prohibits the sale of high-value items such as deeds by vendors. It also is much more costly to merchants that have a lower inventoryturnover than others. (Example, a "miner" who stocks only rare resources with extraordinary properties, with corresponding extraordinary prices. Most people won't buy them, but when the high-end crafter who NEEDS those properties is willing to pay the premium, the sale will be made.)
The proper way to charge merchants for using vendors is to charge a fixed percentage of the sale price when an item is sold. To prevent vendors from being used as "storage", charge a "restocking fee" (maybe 25% or something of thesale price)whenever the merchant removes that item from sale and into the stock room.
There may also be a smallhourly charge simply for HAVING a vendor, but it should be much lower than current maintenance fees. Charge this fee based on the NUMBER of items in a vendor's stock, not on the PRICES for those items.
(OBTW, you are going to FIX the bug onNPC vendors preventing them from being used to sell resources, right?)
Sir, it's quite possible that this game is not entirely stable.
"Not entirely stable." Well, I'm glad you're here to tell us these things. Chewie! Take the professor in the back and plug him into the patch server!
I agree with the majority of posters, raising the maintenance fee is a little too much. I am quite a crafter (master artisan/architect/tailor/Bioengineer) and it's bad enough I have harvester maintenance, house maintenace, and my vendor already did have maitenance working, but now to raise that price? I'm not a grinder for the simple reason of I WANT TO PLAY THE GAME. I don't want to spend all my time running missions to pay for my harvesters and such. I'm actually taking them down one by one because it's getting stupid. If you read other message boards there are plenty of ideas going around for money sinks, on the BE boards alone I know of three absolutely wonderful ideas floating around that would work much better as money sinks, without killing all the crafters out there. Contrary to popular belief, crafters are NOT the rich ones in the game, the combat classes are, and I know this because of my friends. I have 10k credits to my name right now, while my BH friend has about 200k, and he just went on a shopping spree. How about thinking of a way to make the combatants blow their money instead? Most of them have more than enough, and since they're not paying for anything except armor and weapons, it makes sense to me. I hate to sound judgemental, but I have definitely noticed it seems you guys always favor the combat classes over the crafting classes. BE and CH are just great examples. The CHs whine about something being broken and needing a fix, and every patch they get a whole list. BEs have delt with being broken from day 1, and we don't whine and scream, we have nice discussion about it, ways it could be fixed, things to add, etc. And yet no fixes. I know the majority of your subscribers just want the game to go kill stuff in a star wars environment, but don't forget those of us who joined the game to make things, have fun, and enjoy the game. And please don't forget casual gamers. This sort of thing is making them jump ship by the handful. I already miss several friends I've made in-game because they left due to how rediculous this sort of thing has gotten. Sorry, but it's how I feel.
/rant off
I agree with the sales tax idea. Charge a simple maintenace fee for the vendor itself, like 500 per day just for having the vendor, and then charge a sales tax based on WHEN the item sells. If you're looking to soak up some of the money, then make the sales tax something like 5-10%.
Seriously, could you imagine that many architects are going to sell fusion reactors or PA halls through a vendor if they've got to pay value/1000 every 45 minutes??
I'd say a small hourly fee to "pay" or "upkeep" the vendor plus a "sales tax" on items sold.
The current fee based on inventory will makes ithard for startup Businessmen to afford their shop since they will not have the customers to pay for keeping a decent stock on their vendor. The current system will also make it hard for casual player to run a decent shop since it willbe costly for them to keep enough items on their vendor to last more than a day or two.
A sales tax system will provide the needed credit sink. Players that sell more pay more isfair andrepresentativeof real life. And a small fee such as 200 to 400 credits a day should be a decent enough sink without creating the need for abusinessman to run missions just to stay afloat.
I just have to put my 2 cents in here as well. I am a soloing architect. Hard enough as the economy is. Between maintaining my harvestors/Store/Facotires and now this vendor idea i would just ditch the vendor all together. I mean really as it is now I have 4 small 1 medium and odd's 'N inns on my vendor. Smalls are 10k each Medium is 70k and about 15k in small stuff. Thats 125k for a small time Architect. At this rate it would be 3750 cr a day for 1 vendor. What the heck are you all thinking? I mean come on you made this game you would think that some sort of common sense is needed to just develope it! Get a freaking clue people for crying out loud! And to think I was actually looking forward to being on the planetary map.
This is totally screwed up logic and to think these are the people who I pay to play? What the hell....
Strike up yet another dumb ass notion to the devs...
SueDenim wrote:
3. Database guys: Objective = not being fired for incompetence in their design and/or administration of Oracle - a DBMS that in the real world typically handles databases not unlike SWG's without requiring companies to do the equivalent of "eliminating newbie melons"
Nail's been hit on the head.
ROFL newbie melons, who didn't eat their's in the first 2 mins of the tutorial?
Q-3PO,
In my fair amount of selling of tailored and pharmaceutical items andin owning amerchant (Business IV), I have found very little use forvendors in the current state of the game. This is especiallybecauseI generally fill larger orders via /tells,since vendors are so expensive when you put a large amount on them; Not to mention they're buggy, slow, and tend to be a hassle to stock. With some exceptions, people don't visit vendors very often.
I do not know what the cost decrease of merchants would be if you were a master merchant, but I know that I wouldn't want to pay fordoing somethingmany crafters and I arealready doing for free (selling/buyingfrom people in /tells) because,currently,I perceive the opportunity costto be lower to sell it myself. The more maintenanceper vendorthe less desirable you make vendors because no one willstock them to their full potential.The less usefull the vendors are, theless people will buy fromthem. Because people will not buy from vendors, merchants will stock their vendors less and less, and the cycle will repeat.
The thing you're assuming ismost people use vendors in SWGtobuy things.I have observed just the opposite. Most of what I purchase is done by talking to someone and picking it up from them.The vastmajority of the time I circumvent the middle man because it's easier and cheaper (and you get what you want, because what you want isn't on the vendor). If you make it more expensive to use a vendor, people will avoid using them, and they will become less and less useful.
This all can change if vendors are made very cheap (and presumably very easy and convenient to use). You suggested a formula accruing every 45 mins. That formula suggests that selling 10 items worth 10k on your vendor would cost you 3200 a day. This price seems pretty steep, but almost within the ballpark.To encourage the use of them more, I suggest to make it Amount/2000accruing hourly for Business IV and amount/5000 accruing hourly for master merchant. 1200 and 480 accordingly per 100k items.
Why not make it a progressional reduced fee starting from that point. Make Manager worth something more than 6 vendors, or make Master Merchant something to attain in which this lame fee is reduced to almost nothing.
In order to fix the money problems in SWG, there needs to be a reduction in Mission Terminals and increase in NPC Missions. Why are the Devs going to add a fee to something that really doesn't even work right. Fix the Barking, Fix the Planetary Ads, Fix the Retrieval, Fix the clothing eaters, add the option of placing NPC advertisers in the city, or hiring NPC's in the city (the businessmen) to advertise for a fee, and make the dang Master Merchant worth something!
I think a Tax type system works better than a straight fee. You place the item, a certain tax is added, the buyer purchases, the tax is placed into the vendor for maintenance.
Please please please, fix the problems first and create a new cool thing for Master Merchants do, then add the costs in for the vendors. There should be a reward for being a Merchant, not a penalty. Increase the Merchant points needed, based on Purchases from NPC's only.
Lastly, this will certainly cause the Crafters to become the /tell battlers. You think grinding was bad. Wait til' you can't sell your PA Hall or Harvestors on any venue. Once people learn that you are selling these...you will be in Gmail and /tell hell. If you like that kind of stuff, then more power to you. I think most will burn out and give the game up. I they don't fix the problems first, and give the merchants something to look forward to...people will begin to leave this game left and right. Who wants to play a game where every new patch makes it less fun that it was before. I don't mind a challenge, but if you eliminate fun, you are losing the concept of Computer Games.
Jack
- Sales tax idea is good. To avoid people using vendors to store items or offer items that won't sell, tax us on point of offering an item, not point of sale (for a percentage of offering price). Merchants will factor this tax into the price of items.
- Charging maintenance over time based on items in vendor is bad as it's hard to predict costs and maintenance costs can get prohibitively high if items are not sold immediately. This system rewards the already-rich and successful merchant and punishes the new merchants.
- Item limits.. hrm. I sell a lot of little items (food, meds). That hurts my business compared to someone who sells a few big items. I would be more interested in a limit on total price of items in a vendor, with that limit raising with merchant skill.
- Raising merchant skills should reduce costs.
- All the other merchant skills (advertising, hiring, etc.) need to be improved and bugs fixed.
It should be based on sales made!!!
Not what is listed for sale.
I have a shop pretty far off where I make quite few sells. Don't make me have to move close to a 'Dev city' just to be able to maintain my vendors.
I want to have a large number of goods up for sale, not a minimum to keep vendor costs down.
Again, base the vendor fee on sales made, not on what is currently listed.
Thanks for listening.