Merchant Archive
Thread: Vendor Maintenance Fees coming – your input request
I have been a master merchant for over 2 weeks now.
I cannot hand clothes and such to my vendors, they just eat most of them or the item disappears after awhile.
My vendors say 0 maint cost but still take credits.
I have to reset my vendors everyday for the custom advertizements and the global ad, if I do not reset them it still charges money as if they were working properly. So I basically have to live in my house.
There are many many more vendor issues which can be said and never adressed. When I put a CSR in about these issues I was told:
"We cannot disclose any information regarding this, please ask other players in game for help on these issues."
So either I am a moron who has been Master Merchant for two weeks and I am doing something terribly wrong, or merchant is completely fubared.
Now we have an increased cost on top of all this, so we are having to pay credits to test the Merchant class for the game? This hardly seems fair.
I think that if vendor fees are raised the method should be scaled such as items costing 125k raise the maint as much as those costing 100 credits. So basically a guy selling 200 low end items should have his vendor cost the same as a guy selling 20 high end items, but if its just Item for sale value/credits this would not work, and if it was item number/credit it would not work either... tough question.
It sounds silly when I said I basically have to live in my house.
What I meant was that I cannot go on a business trip, I have to return to my shop every morning if I want my vendors to work.
Please don't, it will be harder for low end characters to get diecent weapons and items.
Lobam
None of these posts will be read, none of these concerns will be responded to. Nothing will happen. They will not fix anything before they add the money sink. You are your shoes, you ARE your Martha Stewart Handbag, you ARE your crappy ass vendor. And you ARE nothing but $15 a month they can push around freely.
Things will get changed for the merchant class, but I have no doubt it will be the last class fixed. It will be so long that in the end there will be 10 merchants in the entire galaxy! Wooooooo! This game rocks!
SOE: Wait, Merchants are making money? The people who sell items to the rest of the classes aren't supposed to have money! We must take thier money, and eat their items so they can not make money! MERCHANTS WITH MONEY?!? Why that is proposterous. We want a player run enconomy based on the trading of eggs and Sarlacc Bile.. not money!!
I've never really liked the value over time amount. What if you have a bad location? What if you don't advertise as much (i.e. you don't have enough merchant points to get your shop placed on the overhead map)? This system seriously hurts newer merchants from entering the economy and helps keep local monopolies by established characters in place (They get "free" advertising on the overhead map for example).
So, how do we not kill newbie venders and still allow for advantages to established merchants?
How about this: a flat tax to place an item and then another tax when the item is sold.
How it will work: Every item placed on a vendor has an immediate charge just like the bazaar for listing that item. I like the nice round figure of 100 credits, but this could be open for debate. Now, when the item is sold, there should be an additional "tax" on the item that comes directly out of the payment. Say 10% of the item cost is given as an imperial tax. Again, this percent could be up for debate.Heck, if the GCW swings one way or another and you are covert to one faction, maybe your merchant tax percent changes slightly. This would give additional meaning to the GCW as well. Are you a covert/overt Imp and the empire is crushing the rebellion - expect some merchant tax relief. Are the rebles causing trouble for the Empire? Time to raise the taxes a bit to pay for that new fleet of Star Destroyers.
Advantages over the current system:
1) Known costs. When you put something up for sale you know about how much you are going to lose in revenue on that item. Unlike the time based system where your coststo sell an item could conceivably be more than the actual sale.
2) You don't have to constantly run to your vendors to see if they have run out of "maintainence". This is just a silly concept that is nothing more than busy work for already overworked crafters. If you want to introduce a"paycheck"for the vendor'sservice, then that's fine but it should again be a flat rate. I would like everyone here who doesn't know either their hourly wage or salary to raise their hand. Just as I thought everyone knows how much their paycheck is each week/month/etc. 
For example, maybe a basic droid model costs 10 credits an hour in "upkeep" but if you want the sultry female salesperson that can belt out a cool sales pitch, its gonna cost you50 credits per hour.
3)The tax system could allow for some GCW effect, but still allow for profits to be made on items. See above scenario.
4) Novice and expert merchants have an equal economic footing (they can both sell things at similar prices for similar profits), but the more experienced merchants still retain some advantage in volume of sales (you can get listed on the overhead map as you gain merchant experience, get better vedors that allow you to advertise by shouting automatically, possibly reduce the vendor costs or tax costs slightly withone skill tree).
The disadvantage is since this is a new calculation method, getting the drain amount just right will have to be balanced over time. But really, you're thinking about trying new balancing out anyway so I don't consider this a big problem.
Any thoughts, modifications, constructive criticisms?
This is retarded.
I agree with some of the other posts. Make vendors a merchant only skill. Make novice merchant vendors terminals. If anyone becomes a merchant so they can store more items well so what, they are using up skill points. It's not like they aren't paying in some form or another.
If part of the problem is the database, well, what am i paying 15 bucks a month for, upgrade you fools. I would like to really see an economics adviser come on the boards and see what he has to say about this fledgling economy. I won't quit if this happens, but i will pull up my vendors probably if it is too expensive. I guess i might quit when i run out of money and i get tired of spamming in the city the when i should be crafting. I dunno. The solution proposed is so screwed up i gotta wonder if any of the idiot devs even play this game.
I pay maintenance on the house.
And pay maintenance on the vendor.
you say
Value / 100 Per 45 Minutes, Why not
1: make it 1 hour. Easier to calculate.
2: if i have a vendor with 50000 Creds worth of stuff this comes to:
50000/1000 = 50 * 32(32 periods of 45 Minutes in 24 hours) = 1600 Maintenance Per Day
My house Pays Mainternance Rate of 8 per small = 256 Per Day.
The vendor is inside my house. Id be willing to go a Rate of same rate as house per vendor.
Item contents not to matter. So if i have a small house i pay 256 per day.
so if i have 4 vendors in 1 house i pay for 4 * maint rate of house.
Assuming that's the base amount to be charged (not counting discounts from merchant skills), this is fine...
...until Architects are taken into account. We architects get so little in return and sell high ticket items that we will not be able to sell our wares on vendors. We're lucky if we sell one or 2 houses a day. Our profit would not only be eaten up by the vendor cost, but we'd have to run missions just to pay for the privilage to sell our stuff at a loss.
If you give Architects a break, some how, then I think it'll be ok. Maybe use the useless skill branch architects have to give us extra discounts?
Also Make Merchants have a useful skill, like a multiple listing service.
Makr the merchant have a list of Wnt to sell and Want to Buy.
The merchant connects the two and brokers the deal.
that way you dont change the professions except for the merchant.
Q3PO -
After reading your initial comments I have to say I'm more than a little surprised at this direction being taken by the powers that be (hereafter to be referred to as TPTB). I understand the need to find additional money sinks in the ecconomy. As things stand there are quite a number of wealthy players. Without viable sinks in the game (such as insurance would have been had it been functioning correctly), the credits would just pile up and leave all but the recently initiated to the game almost completely uninterested in any of the non-factional mission types.
Where TPTB are losing me is in the perception that the vendors are an appropriate place to draw money back out of the ecconomy. I do see the purpose of maintenace fees, even though as they stand it is difficult to determine how much money is actually required for upkeep at any given time (the Status tab provides some detail, but does not appear to update frequently - I heavily loaded a fresh vendor just last night and afterward it still displayed as much time available as it had before I started loading it). While I could see this being addressed with a simple readout in the vendor window that updates after each item is listed, and again after each sale, I am not convinced that this is where the ecconomic balance needs to be struck. After all, are vendor sales really such an ecconomic force that they require this level of attention?
My impression from all of this is that TPTB are looking for ways to drain the ecconomy. To that end, I do have a few suggestions. They are not minor or quick, but they would represent not only a viable sink for funds, but an asset to the gameplay as well.
If there is a place I can see money justifiably flowing away from the populace of a Star Wars based game, it would be in taxation and tarrifs. The Empire is in control in this environment, yet the impact of living under the yoke of The Emperor is not felt ecconomically. This could be expressed in game terms in any number of ways that would create viable sinks, and a particular example comes to mind.
First I would suggest that people using starports (and perhaps shuttle ports) be subject to search by the controlling factional NPCs. When leaving their home planet, they would check in at a terminal to have their belongings automatically declared. When arriving at their destination, the passenger would then need to report to an NPCDuty Officer (likely Imperial) and have their inventory checked automatically. They would then be charged a duty on certain imported items being brought in (5% of actual market value as reflected by the planetary bazaar?), perhaps with a low chance (1%) that the Duty Officer would either miss an item or two, or overcharge for the enlargementof his/her own purse. This would provide an adequete drain for the planet hopping wealthy, and be a very minimal concern to those newbies taking their first adventure off world. This would be particularly effective where miners harvesting resources on multiple worlds would be concerned, giving local miners the ability to better compete with off world imports.
While I am not a smuggler, it occurs to me that while they are interesting and useful characters to have around, they don't actually smuggle anything. And that is because there is no need to smuggle anything. With the above in place, the *need* for smuggling comes into play. What if the Duty Officers could have a chance of detecting a sliced weapon, or discovering your stash of spice, resulting in their being confiscated and a fine being issued? The populace would then need the services of smugglers to do what they are born to do: slip things past inspection and into your waiting hands. This additional putpose could cause an imbalance in the smuggler class, so it may need to be saved for an "elite-elite" class.
That is just one thought. It is likely you are looking for a quick fix, and the above might involve more work than is practical to implement in a short amount of time. So, on the assumption that the bulk of the above is a wasted idea, let me add the following into your conversation of the proposed change to vendors:
Keep the numbers simple enough to figure out costs at a glance,and provide easy to read screens showing the total amount of product in the vendor, its total price, and how many days we will actually get for our fees. Please have this information update on the fly.
Keep foremost in mind that vendors are used by many folks who can barely sell anything. I am strongly of the opinion that these players should not be penalized further by making their starter business less viable through these additional costs. Any vendor costs should never exceed the amount of money that the player is generating by having the vendor. Otherwise, these items will simply become the tools of those who do not need them to generate revenue.
And hey - keep the costs reasonable. I do, sometimes, have a reasonably large selction of items in my own vendor, many of which are priced above the bazaar limit. Should these prices escalate beyond a reasonable fee, I'll simply sell face to face at all times to avoid the cost. That would have the effect of making one of the primary draws of a player town (stocked vendors in many houses) an obsolete commodity, and would hurt the ongoing development of one of the up and coming features being touted by TPTB.
- Acroyear
- Jack of All Trades
- Intrepid galaxy, Talus, Dearic
Why not make it fun and have NPC Imperials Raid and tax the richest players. Or better yet Digiteer Imperials. This would also force people to try to hide or "smuggle" things in some way, making the smuggler class a little more viable.