Merchant Archive
Thread: Vendor Maintenance Fees coming – your input request
I am more than a casual gamer and my main profession is Pistoleer, but I have also been almost an entirely self sufficient Tailor, who just made Master last night. Since the mission rewards have gone down, I logged off each day with no more than 1000k in my account, after paying to keep my harvesters going and my house and vendor up as well. It's a big struggle but I finally have my store up and am very proud of it.
However, if the prices on the vendors increase so significantly, it's going to make it difficult to keep my shop, because of all the other costs involved.
I like the ideas of taking a percentage of the sales to go to the vendor, like a vendor tax, but please don't cost me thousands extra a day. There has to be a better way to do it without putting more people out of business.
I run a medical supply shop that gets quite a bit of business. The reason it gets a lot of business is my customers know they will always find crates of all the stims packs and wound packs currently in stock at good prices whenever they show up. In order to keep up with the demand I have to run 8 factories so my lots are all taken up. I don't have time or lots to plant harvesters. This means I have to buy all my resources. Currently I sell about 100k-200k worth of meds every day which I turn around and spend the entire amount on resources. I make decent money but in order to do so I need to keep 1,000,000+ credits on my vendor. After factory maintenance and buying resources I just don't have 32k a day to spend on vendors. My whole business depends on the fact that I can keep everything in stock... it's what my customers expect. This includes things like stun state meds that rarely sell and I have to relist them on the vendor quite often.
A 5% fee based off of sales makes much more sense than a flat fee. What vendor in the world charges based on what items the store has in stock instead of commisions. I wish that were the case in the real world, I'd quit my job as a computer programmer and go sell cars at a car lot that has 100+ cars on it.... I can see the money now.
This nerf would mean my business would end and since I find the combat in the game laughable, there would be nothing left for me to do but cancel my account.
Palinya
It's tough enough for architects to deal with no item decay (harvesters last forever, like houses and furniture), and the weird undercutting that went on since day 1, but now with the proposed system, I'll probably dump architect *and* merchant.
Let's look at one item. Large harvester. And let's call it 115k. That's about a nice price for it, as they tend to go between 100 and 150k on my server. Now add the 3600 credits per day for that one item in order for my vendor to STOP BARKING his ads and have to be reset with his custom ad every time I notice that he's not. (What the hell are we paying the vendors for?)
Now consider that I have a couple of large houses, some mediums, and a few heavy harvesters. They add up to about 1mil in inventory. And to top that off, I have a ton of furniture, since there are so many pieces, it's a good idea to try to have nearly 1-2 of anything thats not ugly.
Nah, forget the furniture. Just look at about 9 large structures. 9 items being sold at some 4-5 CPU (when I have been consistantly getting 3cpu on the bazaar, and more when its a good material in direct sales). That's 32k per day for those 9 items. 32k, per day. That means that it costs me mining and selling 11k resources per day in order to cover maintenance on those few items. And they don't sell like hotcakes.
Please, for the love of Palpatine, make it a commission based cost. Please don't adjust the maintenance rate to base it on sell price of goods.
You will find me one sad Rifleman/Scout, grumbling about wasting his time on Architect and Merchant.
Ok, Has anyone up there in Dev-land every worked retail? It seems there are a few fundamental business factors you are overlooking.
1. If it's not on the shelf you can't sell it. If I'm being charged just to put it up to be available to sell then I can't show the full range of items I want to sell. I sell three styles of Spec-Op Dusters and usually keep two to four of each up for sale to make sure I still have stock available if someone wants to buy one. If I have all twelve for sale for a week under the new system and only happen to sell one I lose money! The money from the sale does not cover the cost of making it available to be bought.
2. No mater how well you know the market your customers will suprise you. Out in the real world the store I run carries a few odd items that I would never buy, and think are silly things that no one would buy, but they sell. In game I want to have a variety of items listed on my vendor for those people who want something different than what I normally carry. If an item picks up in how often I sell it I can add it to my fulltime stock, but if I can't put things up tha t I expect NOT to sell, then there is no chance for people to buy some of the more unusual Items. And YOU have put a LOT of different items in the game to be sold. So being charged to carry things that I don't expect to sell quickly, if at all, means we can't practice simple business tecniques.
3. People don't spend the same amount of money every day of the week. Monday thru Thursday my vendors sell practically nothing. The majority of sales happen on the weekend. I assume you made the formula to reflect a normal sales day while people were playing (ie. the weekend) but during the week there is no way to make up the listing fees when nothing is selling. Are you expecting people to just unlist their entire inventory during the week and put it back up again for the weekend when someone might buy it?
Also, have you bothered to sit down with a calculator to look at this Value/1000 per 45 minute formula?
I currently have 142000 credits worth of value on my Armor Vendor (I also have two clothing vendors)
That's 142Cr / 45 Min. , 4544Cr / day, 31808Cr / week. So, my armor vendorALONE will cost me almost 32k Credits a week. IF I sell a good amount of armor that week then I usually make between 22k and 28k from all three of my vendors, which I turn around and put that into buying more supplies to make more items to sell. With your new "fee" system I will lose credits and go out of business !
I say find a way to do a sales tax. This vendor "fee" per item listed will end the player economy as all shop keepers will close their doors, not because they don't like the new system, but because they will be forced to close as they will have no credits to keep them open with.
Please don't do this. It is a bad and poorly developed idea that will do much harm and no good.
Normally if a merchant is faced with increased production costs, they can just raise prices to compensate. In this case, however, raising prices increases production costs by an equal amount so there's no way to increase profit.
Extremely poor system. Needs to be reworked into some kind of static fee for listing an item.
This change will destroy vendors as we know it and that is NOT a good thing. Such a drastic and dramatic change is going to negatively affect the entire economic system and bring crashing down the mercantile industry. I cannot begin to imagine what you think this is going to accomplish.
Horrible idea, don't even consider it.
I am finding it difficult to believe that the issue is really about a money sink. There are so many other ways to resolve the inflation problem.
1. Lower the payout for missions (especially the 10k suicide missions)
2. Raise the cost of shuttle tickets
3. Put access fees on med centers and cantinas (I am a dancer, I know this will hurt the already flawed tipping system)
4. Implement a one time stocking fee based on the value of the item for private vendors, and do the same for the bazaar.
5. Yes have a reasonable maintenance fee, and charge a flat rate to place a vendor or reclaim one.
Why focus the on just the crafters and merchants, spread the pain around a bit. Don't force crafters out of business and out of the game entirely. If players can't afford our goods we will be forced to lower the prices for them. In real life there is always a way for businesses to pass costs on to the consumer. You could come up with a way for crafters to pass their increased costs to the consumer and still have the money sink you need. Again, if there is too much money floating around in the economy it's because players are gaining it too quickly through soloing missions which should require a group (thereby splitting the payout to a fraction of what they would get soloing).
If the issue is an overabundance of items in the game then increase the frequency of critical failures during manufacture, or increase the quantity of resources required to craft items. If the issue is really one of people using vendors for storage then limit the number, or typesof vendors allowed in a building based on its size. One vendor for a small house, two for medium etc. Additionally, limit the number of items per vendor, again based on the size of the dwelling, or skill level of a player. A novice merchant does not need unlimited vendor capabilites. If melee classes want vendors for storage then make them use their precious skill points to get them.
Vendor fee's are a horrible way to bring the economy in-line.
Instead of taxing the people, you need to create more content for us to spend credits on. I've been playing the game for a week now and have nothing left to buy with my credits. I already have a medium house, and don't plan on getting a large. I have maxed out my lots with my harvesters and my factory. I make and sell spice on my lone vendor. Because I slice weapons for my PA's weaponsmith for free, I get first pick on all weapons made.
Wait until you add the landspeeder / mounts and player city buildings before you add these vendor fee's. I bet you anything, once you give the players something to spend their money on, there won't be as many credits floating around.
Raising vendor maintenance rates is not a good way to create a money sink. It is, however, a good way to create a merchandise sink. Rather than artisans sinking their money into their vendors, I foresee many of them removing the majority of items from their vendors altogether and crafting items by order only.This is a good way to frustrate both crafters and customers alike.
As a furniture architect (of master status) I have tried to keep my vendors filled with at least a couple of every item I can craft. My vendors typically hover at 150-200 items. With a terminal vendor I was paying4k-8k a day in maintenance. This in addition to all the maintenance I pay on my harvesters and factories was out of line. I switched to an NPC. If NPCs are raised to an exhorbitant rate, I will remove vendors entirely.
Also bear in mind, not all crafting professions are as profitable as others. Take a look at a weaponsmith's bank account and I'm sure you're thinking "need money sink." Then browse a BE's or a DE's profit margin and think again. Not all crafters are making credits hand over fist. Try fixing factories or merchant advertising before you go breaking things that no one is complaining about.
Oh, and you also might want to start an "items that produce uncrated" thread if you're interested in cutting down on items in the database.
FINALLY!
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