Merchant Archive
Thread: Vendor Maintenance Fees coming – your input request
oh my gosh... why?
Please pass this 'money' sink to everyone and not just merchants/crafters. I think a sales tax would be the best way, though I do sell a large amount of items so maybe I'd just be hurting myself 
Make it so the person buying the item gets charged or something.
Remove the bazaar completely and let merchants really be merchants.
Anyways, I may free up my merchants skills and then become Master dancer and the only take custom orders on tailored items.
I don't wanna pay more for my vendors who don't work.
/sigh Well. So much for being a casual gamer and a Tailor/Merchant with a small independent shop. Or is that what they are trying to stop? People like me? /frown
With the new item limits on houses, we can't display anywhere near a full inventory of Tailor goods so customers who really aren't sure what they want, can at least see what we can make and what colors too. For a casual or solo gamer, it's practically essential we be able to keep a very well stocked vendor or two. If this high of a rate of maintenance fee does go in... I am out of business. I have a couple of partners whoare nearly ready to placeitems for sale on my vendors too... but even the three of us won't be able to afford those maintenance fees.Not as casual gamers.
Guess I'll be selling back all that hard earned Tailor xps and go hunt Durnis for a living. Bleh.
1. It should be a flat fee. Start getting crazy with these % based sinks on player-player xfer of money, and watch everyone begin to spend ALL their time doing the most profitable credit missions they can. Also, people would begin "shopping" via the internet, out of game. These boards for example. It's not hard for someone to put up a website on the internet with their prices etc. and take email orders. One person said they would be charged 4800 a day for a large harvester that lists at 150k and they aren't getting 4800 credits worth out of it, bingo, that really isn't fair.
Eventually, people would just learn to shop out of game or start doing the old shout-spamming of wares around the starports like the old EQ days in N. Freeport. How barbaric.
2. If you do a flat fee, it should be on a scaling per-item basis. This would need tweaking, but off the top of my head, this is where I would start.
Items that are listed at1-3000 creds (could be bazaared) should be 50 cr/day/ea.
Items that are listed at 3k-10k should be 200/day/ea.
Items that are listed at 10k-50k should be 500/day/ea.
Items that are 50k and up should be 1000/day/ea
Or, just charge a straight flat fee based on how many items are in there period. Database usage = credit sink, directly.
I'm a combat type guy who has been finding and mining resources to supplement my income. When I run around and manage all my harvesters and pay all the maintenence, it really starts adding up, and I have to be sure I'm harvesting stuff that people will buy or I'm just wasting my time, it costs ALLOT. If you add a tax based on items listed, you will really be squeazing the gameplay out of the artisan side of things. I tried using a vendor to list materials but it proved way to prohibitive as it was so it was back to the bazaar at 20/cred a pop for me.
Oh, finally, if you do add a flat fee, can you tie it into the house controls? Just up the rate of the house maintenence! One single pool of maintenence for the house to include any vendor(s) you have would be really nice and be an ENHANCEMENT.
your formula looks good q.
p.s. please fix ad barking. it still stops when the servers get reset. really annoying bug.
thanks
Fixed vendor fees based on offers to sell is uneconomic, and does not reflect any sort of real-life situation.
In real life, a merchant (e.g. a store) pays certain sunk costs -- rental payments for the physical store itself, salaries/benefits for employees, FICA/FUTA taxes, and (optionally) advertising. Additionally, they pay certain variable costs -- most notably sales tax and income tax, plus the hidden "costs" of shoplifting/vandalism and the like.
In SWG, some of these costs are modeled -- most notably, the rental payments for the real estate. This is reflected in the fixed maintenance fees for structures, which are required to place vendors. In SWG, as in real life, the rent is due whether or not you run a store out of the Wal-mart or set up a cot and live in it instead. Also, advertising is, in theory, an indirect expense; modelled via an increase in maintenance for vendors that "advertise" on the planetary map.
However, most of the costs of a real-life merchant aren't modelled. You don't have to pay salaries for your employees, you don't pay taxes on your earnings, and nobody can shoplift your merchandise.
With this in mind:
If cash sinks are necessary to balance the economy -- which is what you have decided -- arguably, these cash sinks should not balance the economy in one way, but unbalance the economy in another way. And that's what I see this proposal doing.
Namely -- who in their right mind would ever put up a vendor?
The fundamental characteristic of a merchant in real life, in SWG, or in any theoretical economy that you can conceive is this: merchants ASSUME THE RISK that items will NOT sell in exchange for economic reward if they DO sell. I, as a merchant, give you money for your product. The moneyI give you is less than the price that demand for the good would dictate on the open market. You suffer an economic penalty in that aspect from selling for me. However, you obtain multiple benefits -- you have now earned aknown amount from your product regardless of shifts in demand. If the market for your product collapses tomorrow -- because, say, a better product is introduced -- it is the merchant that suffers, not you. This is ultimately the main reason why middlemen exist. (There are also other benefits -- avoiding distribution costs, centralizing advertising functions, etc. etc., that aren't relevant for SWG purposes).
What your proposal will do is IMMEDIATELY penalize a merchant for assuming this risk. The merchant will incur a fixed costfor merely accepting the good for sale. Under your formula,even if a merchant obtained a good for free, they would still lose money if thegood was not sold withina monthof being listed on the vendor. Inallcase.
(Mathematically -- themaintenance cost is equal tovalue/1000 every 45 minutes.Therefore, in 1000 45-minute periods -- which roughly equals 30 days -- the total maintenance cost for a given item will equal its listed price. Zero profit guaranteed.)
The bottom line? This creates a heavy disincentive for people to be merchants -- because it front-loads a cost burden for merely attempting to sell something. This isn't a reflection of any economic practice in real life.
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So what SHOULD the maintenance be? It SHOULD primarily be an income- or consumption-based cost. Anything else is unfair to the merchant. There is nothing wrong with having a basic, recurring fee for simply having a terminal/droid/NPC to sell your wares -- this models the salary of employees. However, scaling it to the value of items up for sale isn't realistic, isn't wise, and isn't going to achieve your desired result.
I don't know if it's too difficult to code a two-tiered "salary/tax" system of maintenance -- but it's the best option you have available to achieve your desired goals. If you adopt a sliding scale based on total asking price, I guarantee you're just going to push sales outside of the vendor system, and into person-to-person sales, which negates your cash-sink effect entirely.
Just my .02. Glad I can use my economics degree every now and then, too.
Premature Post... anyway, suppose vendors had different statistics (such as fixed cost, variable cost, and capacity)... where architects might choose a small capacity/high fixed cost vendor for the big ticket items, weaponsmiths might choose a more middle of the road option, and so on.
4. Another simple answer is to just cap the costs at a certain level, or change the function so that marginal cost decreases (perhaps up to some arbitrary point).
Just some ideas... I do think they should cost something to maintain, but the proposed formula seems both high and overly simplistic.
Rearden Roark, Master Architect
Gorath Server
Hey Q.....why do CRAFTERS get the money sink AGAIN??????
How about this for an ALTERNATIVE suggestion....
the BUYER pays a 5% imperial sales TAX....the vendor owner pays a flat fee of 800 credits a day...that way the COMBAT people, who make all the money get the freaking money sink....
basically any forumula that charges the vendor based on his items price just sitting in the vendor is screwing us and forcing us to either shout sell or just just the bazaar for a FLAT 20 credit fee...
why cant you guys just give us the % of the SALE like everyone wants...Koster is wrong again on this issue
The way droid Vendors are right now is NUTS for people that don't sell as much.
I persoanlly totally agree with the majority of this topic... Very low matanence with a % taken with each purchase.
Also, you might want to fix the vendors before you make us pay for them... The biggest thing I want done (Not sure if its supposed to be this way) PLEASE make all vendors SHARE the same stock room... Its a huge pain in the ass when you want to change a vendor's appearance or move houses and you have to first withdraw all sales, THEN retreave all the items. This takes forever. I don't see why we shouldn't be able to withdraw a sale with one vendor and then go to another, select the stockroom and put it up for sale on that vendor.
This would make changing vendors and/or houses SO much easier.
And just to say again... If you add your current formula, i'm quitting my crafting char. I can't afford that kind of maitanance (I'm a tailor and have 80+ itmes on EACH vendor). I totally agree on the 'Sales Tax' idea.
Yeah I hated having a game where people actually had items on their vendors... Any increase in vendor costs is a nerf to the entire community...
Also, the way maintenance is calculated is totally moronic. Time based maintenance shouldn't be based on the cost of the items... This kills architects or any other profession with big ticket items that rarely if ever sell....
The vendors should simply charge a commission. You sell something for 1k, the vendor gets50 credits or something....Why this isn't the way the system was implemented is just shocking. It is way too obvious that this is the way it should be... It should NOT be time based (i.e. daily maintenance (or half an hour based or whatever it is...)
Another note.
Someone above mentioned the idea oflimiting maximum number of items on vendorby the merchant skill of the crafter. While this seems like a good idea at first, it's an enormous problem for tailors. This would force almost every tailor to pick up the merchant (broken!) profession as well.
Compare the vendors of the various master crafters and the master tailors will have a much larger inventory than any other crafter.
Please pick a solution that is fair to everyone, and doesn't hurt one crafter profession more than another.
To: Q
A number of weeks ago I ran a small shop on Rori/Lowca for a while, selling popular clothing I would make while Iwas grinding.I tried to keep the vendor reasonably well stocked, but Rori is a quiet place, and there was little trafficin my shop's area, and not having the skill points left to learn merchant, I hoped word of mouth would supply my buisness. Honestly, I didn't really want to make a fortune, or even a large profit, but to break even, I thought, would be nice. This is the boring story of what happened to my store.
---Begin boring story---
Starting out, I purchased a small generic house. The cost of upkeep small houses is extremly reasonable, and even with the small amount of storage space, it made for a decent shop. I and I spent some time and money into decorating the place and promoting what it had on bazzar's around the planet. I then trained Buisness 4 and set up a Terminal type vendor.I figured I would have to raise my prices slightly tooffset the cost of this, and was well prepared to do so.Considering the low volume of customers Iexpected, Ifigured if I sold a few things a dayeverything should pay for itself. No luck. It cost well over 2000credits per day to operate. Not knowing at the time, that humanoid vendors were essentially free, I figured that I would give it a shot, and see how it worked out. It didn't. Despite SEVERAL major vendor problems including it ripping off customers, and loosing product, I tried to stick with it, but the overwhelming cost and constantly lostitems made it impossible to run a small buisness. Even as I made Master Tailor, I realised that a great deal of my daily profit was going back into that stupid machine. And so, I closed up shop and decided that I'd just work person to person, until I start surrendering tailoring.
I understand you need to take money out of the economy. I don't think that most high volumeshopkowners can possibly complain about 2k per day in mainence on a vendor, most will never realise the change. I also know that it's no ones fault but mine that my shop was unable to support itself. I should have placed on Naboo like everyone else in the game. However I have to suggest that you look elsewhere for your "money sink", and consider lowering maintence costs on vendors, paticularly the low end ones, as your effectively driving another nail into the coffin of small buisnesses, many of whom already can't compete with the Day 3 Masters. A base cost of 2000 credits a day is simply too much to charge someone who might not sell anything for days at a time.
--end boring story---
Here's my suggestion:
A Base Cost of 25cr Per Hour for Buisness III & IV vendors. A 10% surcharge is deducted from each transaction, and is removed from the econmy.
A Base Cost of 20cr Per Hour for Novice Merchant vendors. A 10% surcharge is deducted from each transaction, and is removed from the economy.
And so on...
As your skill in the Efficiancy line of Merchant increases, Maintence Costs and Surcharges are reduced to say a minimum of 5cr per hour with a 5% "tax" on all sales. Additionally, Merchant/Smugglers may be able to Slice some of thier their "tax" back out of thier personal vendors. I'm not sure if this system is implementable or not givin your current level of involvement in trying to fix the combat systems, but it would be far preferable to anything else, and would spread the cost of vendor ownership evenly over the rich and the poor.