Merchant Archive
Thread: Vendor Maintenance Fees coming – your input request
This system would severely harm most crafters in SWG, either due to the enormous range of items that they are likely to have to have on a vendor (eg tailors) or due to the high cost of said items (eg architects). Remember, most crafters eventually run their own vendors - but they also run houses/shops, harvesters, factories, generators ... the game mechanics make it necessary for a craftsperson to have all these. It's not merely a question of a vendor cost, therefore ... its all the associated costs with it.
Most crafters I know just about break even pre-Master level, as it is, with having to afford the upkeep on all their structures and machinery.
It may have worked well in UO ... but here, the economy has started off very differently.
Basic vendor maintenance, in line with that for structures, or a sales tax would both be far better ideas, and fairer to the crafting community. The first allows accurate and easy forward planning for costs; the second, a far, far fairer way of operating this.
If fees go to a formula based on total inventory value, I'll simply drop my current NPC vendor and rely totally on custom orders. I'm a tailor, and tailors pretty much have to keep a large volume of inventory on their vendors; I have probably at least 150k in inventory on mine at any given point. That would mean afee of around 5k a day just to keep the silly thing stocked.Yes, I can keep up with it, but it's simply too **edit** much work to do it and it's no fun at all. And I'm constantly worrying that I don't have enough maintenance paid up on the silly thing. The change won't kill me--I'll just become a part timer, and I'll probably supplement my tailor income with missions, since I'll be able to specialize in a combat class now with the skill points this will free up. But I'll no longer be able to identify myself primarily as a tailor and an artisan, which is a shame, since I really enjoy doing it.
Forgive me for getting angry here, but this idea is retarded. I can see the need to increase NPC vendor fees, but basing them on inventory value targets precisely the people who should be encouraged--the dedicated artisan/merchants who want to sell what they make and maintain a large inventory for their browser customers. It alsoputs vendor fees totally out of whack with the maintenance levels charged for virtually everything else in the game (not by a little, but by a factor of two to five), and "balances" the money sink problem totally on the backs of shopkeepers, which just isn't fair. All you're going to do is drive a lot of people out of business, and possibly out the game. Here's an idea--look for a money sink that doesn't penalize crafters! Virtually all the ones you have now do, so it's no wonder crafters are feeling persecuted. If you could comeup with some way to spread the pain a bit,that would be something worth considering.
Ed,
The merchant profession class is almost completely useless as it is. The only real benefit you get from becoming a merchant is nicer looking vendors that don't cost as much as the ugly box type ones. Personally if this change goes live I will yank my vendor off and possibly even quit this game since the 'nerf bat' as you put it has been hitting way too often and too painfully. There are enough problems still to be solved with this game (ie factories, random maintenance fees, AT-STs, randomly disapearing items...yes the list goes on and on) for you guys to be wasting your time thinking up new and improved ways to remove cash from the system. So basically I believe you devs are missing a big point of this game..it is to have fun! It should not be an exercise in economics
I agree with everyone who has mentioned the idea of a sales tax. This would be much more feasible for my business. As a tailor, I find that you need to offer a high volume of different items in order to satisfy the demand for different items and colors. Yes, custom orders are a possibility, but quite frankly, they take up an inordinate amount of time compared to filling up my vendors. And none of my regular customers would be able to find the clothing they are from melooking for when I'm not online if I was forced to remove my well stocked vendors.
I was filling up my vendors so I didn't have to be tied to the shop all the time and could actually try to get away once in a while and do something besides tailoring. I love tailoring but everyone needs a break once in a while and I'd like to learn something different, as well. It's hard enough as it is to find the time to go out and train another profession with my current clientele base.
Well, I suppose you all will do as you see fit, but if the proposed change does actually go into effect and it doesn't remain profitable to run my vendors (and it won't be as it was proposed) , I see only two possibilities. Specialize entirely in custom orders or quit the tailoring business completely and just throw up a few master tailor items on the bazaar for 3k when I need a bit of extra cash for something. I know what my choice will be and there will be one less master tailor in business on Wanderhome.....
Brigide
Master Tailor, Wanderhome, Bestine
How about fixing systems that are supposed to already remove cash from the system. Like INSURANCE ? Or factories? Frankly I am sick of this "band aid" fixing you guys are obsessed with.
Lets not ignore the fact that vendors dont even work properly in the first place. Unretrievable items, missing items etc.
But aside from that...Charging a set percentage on whats for sale rather than whats actually sold is wrong. This isnt an effort to remove cash from the system, but to have less items in the database and damage small time crafters and merchants, this removing them. If anything charge it on a per sale thing, so the cost can be passed directly to the consumer and not the crafter or merchant. A sales tax. It would affect all merchants and crafters the same . Like on the bazaar. The merchant already has the daily charge of owning a building for their Vendor.
Enygma
Bouncer TBHG
Confused!? Is this Total Listed Value of Items on Vendor / 1000 every 45 minutes what it currently is or are we getting a price hike? I mean I was using the bazaar style vendor for awhile and it was okay for maintenance fees but it seemed to bebased on amount of items on vendor, notsale price which is very frustrating for low end tailors and chefs.
How about instead have it be Total Resource Units of Items on Vendor / 1000 every 60 minutes. As the base value of items should be based on the the average costs to make items. All you end up doing is keeping the high end items off the vendors and people do customizations instead.
I preferthe squeeze method thoughtokeep people from selling items to low as well as forcing the high end and squeezing from both sides.
Total Resource Units Compostionof Items on Vendor / 2000 every 60 minutes PLUS Total Value of Items on Vendor / 2000 every 60 minutes.
Resource Units Compostion is the amount of resources to make an item.
By basing the vendor sale rate on the sale value of items people will lower their values to what is realistic to maintain stock. Which has the negative effect for your sink because the people bringing in the money to the economy are the fighters, not the pure crafters. You basically just lowered the prices for fighters... but fighters are still making the same amount from missions. You need to figure out in your player base who is sucking in the money the easiest, right now as a crafter I am dependent on people buying my items and resources, I don't run missions which is where the facuet of credits come from. But that means people have to buy from me which they are not doing at my novice tailor level of skills.
---
There is also another way to move credits around and that is to force the minimum prices through the empire doctrine. If the average resource sale rate in the galaxy is 5 credits per unit than the base item cost for all sales is forced to be at least 5 credits per resource unitrequired to make the item. So a 100 resource unit item would be forced to be sold at minimum of 500 credits if the average sale price of resources was 5 credits. This takes credits away from the fighter types that are doing missions because they are forced in general to pay a minimum cost associated with an item and then you can think about upping your sinks with crafters if they are getting rich. As a crafter I pretty much only sell resources and items now, though there are those that do both and I find they tend to undercut the market more than pure crafters. I very infrequently run missions unless they are delivery missions while I am shopping for resources which means my faucet is the players buying from me. And resources sell better than items which is where I make my money.
---
Another problem is the people that are not taking money out of the economy right now. Tailors because of no decayon their items are one group. Fighters who's only sink is item decay, is decay fast enough or to slow?Fighter/Crafters who can undersell items are a problem as the sink for fighters could be larger than it is. You need to hit the people that are basically underselling the market if you want your sinks to work right otherwise you force PA's to run the ecomonybecause you end uphitting the crafters which are dependent on the player faucets, not the mission faucet. Which is a negative for casual gamers and those not in a PA. Why can PA's get around this? Distributed man power, pooled credits, fighters running missions to support crafters and so on.
---
Better money sinks. Fix the Chef line of foods! Make them the buff class they should be. People will buy their foods if they are worth it. This is an excellent sink as it is a consumable skill based class! Use it or lose it!
Grenades arealmost instantsinks. Give the commando something else or make another line of consumable types of grenades that can be usedby most allplayers. Anything consumable should be usable by the masses in general. I would love to use grenades and thrown types of consumables in combat.
Damaged Shots - Have a 1 in 10000 chance a player will be hit with a damaged attacked that seriously damages the equipment on the player but not the player's ham. It should be a sort of spectacular hit on a player.
Increased Cost to sell on bazaar for non-artisans. Give novice artisan a basic bazaar fee cut but all others have to pay a significant amount to post items on bazaar, say 50-100 creds, this raises the costs of all resources and loot droped items in general. It hits the fighter, gatherers directly. Though smugglers may get a cut in their underworld or slicingcategory for some reason. This does not affect people who are crafters with resource gathering and merchant skills.
Timed Super Powerups. A 20 minute timed super powerup item that lets you do a spectacular move or serious damage. Could even have one for the Master of chef line that is sort of a super buff but only usable every 20 minutes or so.
In general more consumables. A directy resource consumable is power and fuel as Harvesters and hopefully vehicles/starships need fuel to run. Houses require resource maintenance over time, worse so for non-artisans, and best for merchants. Possibly require power droids to be needed to recharge certain types of equipment. And of course this wares the power droid out through time and use.
Basically I think you are hitting the wrong group with the sink. My credit situation is pretty stable but I am not gaining right now, but I'm a novice tailor that doesn't run missions and sells resources to maintain costs and training fees. The master crafters who don't have training sinks are also another consideration for some type of resource/credit sink to maintain master status. Though I would prefer another method than to have to grind forever.
My suggestion - UPDATED
1) Base Fee - 250 creds per day
+ additional fee for improved store sign
+ additional fee for planetary map registration
+ additional fee for ad barking
Think of this fee as the hourly wage of the NPC vendor andcity registrations(or maintenance/connectivity fee for terminal).
This would stop people from getting 'free' merchant xp, ex. set up a merchant with no items to gain xp. It would also persuade people to stock their vendors...since they are paying for them.
2)Vendor Commisions - 10% of item onSale
This would also promote keeping then vendor stocked (instead of punishing them for keeping the vendor stocked). Only charge per item maintenance if the item sells.
3) Withdrawal fee - 2% of item price
+ no charge to reprice items
+ no charge to change the descriptions of items
This would prevent people from using the vendor as 'storage'.If you have an item up for 1,000,000 credits so no one will buy it, you would bepaying 20,000 creds to retrieve this item. That is expensive storage! To prevent an exploit from someone lowering the price to withdraw the item, the withdrawal fee would be 2% of theHIGHEST LISTEDPRICE in the item's history.
4)Merchant skills to lower thevendor costs
Tier 1 lowers commission by 2% (8% total);Ad Barking50% cost
Tier 2 lowers commission by 2%(6% total);Ad Barking 25% cost, Custom Ad Barking50% cost
Tier 3 lowers commission by 2% (4% total);Custom Ad Barking 25% cost; PlanetaryAd 50% cost
Tier 4 lowers commission by 2% (2% total); City Shouts 50% cost; Planetary Ad 25% cost
Master lowers commision by 1% (1% total); City Shouts 25% cost; Something else cool here...
This would encourage people to keep their vendors stocked. The idea in the original post would encourage people to stop using vendors all together and just shout their wares in town...thus practically eliminating another profession.
It would also encourageMaster Merchants...someone dedicated JUST to being a merchant. He would be buying product from artisans, weaponsmiths, armorsmiths and selling it at a reduced rate since he is only paying 1% commision (compared to others who are paying upwards of 10%).The master merchant should be able to sell at a very reduced cost and have a great advantage over the 'Casual Merchant/Crafter'.
I hope this doesn't get lost in the 25-page shuffle but if you like this idea, please copy and bump it =)
some lame database bug/fix?
anyway.... what is the status on this? are we getting hit by this or not?
RazBlack wrote:
what is up with the 'ed' and 'st' in the messages?
some lame database bug/fix?
anyway.... what is the status on this? are we getting hit by this or not?
I have a suspicion that the 'ed' and 'st' entries are markers placed by whoever is reading this thread, indicating that those responses have been categorized and listed on the in-house planning documents.
'st' might indicate that the post is in support of a 'sales tax' concept, but I don't have the time or patience to verify that.
I just had a thought in regards to these newly proposed vendor costs. I am a currently starving architect. I've only just recently reached the point where I can make large houses. I spend much of the few hours I have each day running around harvesting what little resources I can (between bugged resource tables shifts), paying what little money I do make on harvestor maintanence costs. I average about approx 9,000 to 10,000 credits a day in costs just to keep my harvesters going. And that's assuming that I have enough power stockpiled. If I have to put up power generators, there's an additional 3,000 or so credits a day. Ok, so after spending 9,000 to 13,000 credits per day just extracting maybe enough resources to build a single large house, I decide to put it on my vendor before going to bed for the night. Now, with the proposed costs, this one house, which I hope to sell for around 120,000 credits, will cost me almost 4,000 credits in vendor costs for the next day, providing that it actually sells. Thus, I have spent upwards of 17,000 credits just to make and sell 1 house. But that doesn't even take into consideration travel costs (since the resources I need never seem to be on the same planet). Nor does it take into account the costs for my house, or the costs for my factory, or the costs for the items that I have to purchase because I do not have the skill to make them.
So bottom line is, IF I manage to aquire enough resources in a single day to make one large house, and IF that one house manages to sell the first day, I might come out with 20,000 credits by the end of the day. Which ought to be about enough money to get me started the next day.
Can someone please explain to me where my profit margin comes in to play? And come someone please explain to me how I am to excel in my craft at this rate?
In all honesty, the only thing I can see coming from such a proposed plan, is the inevitable crippling of starving, struggling crafters. If you're not already at the top of your profession, you have no hope of getting to the top because you cannot afford it. And since most of my day is spent between gathering resources, and crafting a single product, there certainly is no time to take on missions to support my profession.
So basically the only option available to me, is to build myself a network of friends such that someone I know and trust is online at all times during the day. And then shift my products around amongst these friends such that they are made available to the public when I am not online.
"The rich get richer,while the poor wither away. Thus goes the player driven economy, silently controlled by the creators."
Total Listed Value of Items on Vendor / 1000 every 45 minutes
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It should be around:
Total Listed Value of Items on Vendor / 1000 every 2 hours
Don't make me into a begger. I want to still be able to work with my fellow master craftsmen/women who need to stock large quantities of items on their vendors because they sell in bulk. You can also add a fee of # of items sold within that time frame (small % for galatictaxes or something) to get some compensation to what your are trying to accomplish.