Merchant Archive
Thread: Vendor Maintenance Fees coming – your input request
It has most likely been pointed out already.. but the other ill effect of fee based on stock is that it absolutely kills off the chances of a new merchant breaking into the marketplace. Untill he develops a clientele he can only carry a few items or go broke. Of course no one returns to a vendor that only has a few items, as it is much easier to shop with the big vendors / malls that are sprouting up all over. End result, no one buys from the new guy because he couldn't afford to have a semi-decent stock onhis vendor and he goes out of business.
Me.. I have well over a million credits worth of inventory in stock on my vendors right now. After paying for travel, harvesters, resources, resources wasted and lost in experimentation, vendor fee's, house fee's, factory fee's etc.. I have yet to have more than 50k in my bank for more than a day or two before being forced to spend the rest on new resources to stay competitive and you want to charge me 36k or more a day for vendors now? Hahahahaha.
You want a money sink?
How about my entire stock of Laser Weapons that just became unsellable because a much better link-steel alum finally popped on our server? Not to mention the hundreds of thousands I paid for all the now-useless link-steel alum now collecting dust indefinately in my resource bagAND the hundreds of thousands I am going to have to pay for the new stuff. I could be wrong.. but it seems like a singleresource shift that costs me over a half million credits is a **edit** good money sink already! (and this is not that uncommon an occurance)
Right, I haven't seen anyone come out and say this, so I'm gonna say it:
The system proposed here only hurts the people with alot to sell, not the people who sell alot
Now, that may not seem like much, but allow me to detail why maintenance is a much worse idea than sales tax. People who sell alot of items have money. People who sell alot of items rarely have many items on a vendor at once.
Consequently, the people who have inordinate amounts of money won't be charged very much by this system.
People who don't sell a lot of items don't have very much money. People who don't sell a lot of items tend to accumulate alot of items on their vendor
Therefore, the people who don't have huge sums of money lose more money.
Now, if you look at a sales tax or commission model, you'll find that it sinks money from the people truly making money, not those who already hardpressed to make money.
1. You're severely punishing crafting classes like architect that has the LOWEST profit margin but would not be able to afford to even list a few items.
2. Where have you ever seen a sales person that got paid more just because a higher priced item got put on the floor to be purchased? Either make it commision based, or flat hourly/salary
Either make them take a set amount per vendor per hour (10-20 seems reasonable) or make them do a commision if you want to peel money off based on value. But they shouldn't charge you 50 credits an hour for 50,000 worth of merchandise that is not selling. That's goofy.
If you want a commission based, make it 5-10 creds per hour flat pay rate, and 5% of each sale goes to the vendor.
I think this all around sucks. I've paid 5k in fees and haven't made any money yet. SoI guess when the money runs out, I'll be looking for a new game.
I think having take part of the sell would of been better, since thenI would of actualy sold something.
But having everyday fees is stupid.
Money sink for players? What about the non merchant/artisan classes, with billions? Where is their money sink?
At a glance, from a Master Architects perspective, maintenance charges based on Total Listed Value of Items / 1000 every 45 minutes looks extremely alarming. On actual number crunching it becomes terrifying. I currently stock around 3.5 million credits in assorted Harvesters, Houses, and Furniture on average. Due to the nature of Architecture, my profit margins must remain slim to make a profit. Typically, I make between 1:1 and 2:1 in profit on a sale. Under the proposed Vender Maintenance scheme, I will have to start paying 112k credits per day to maintain this level of stock considering there are 32 maintenance cycles per day. This will cause me to begin losing more credits every day than I am making by a fairly large margin. Further growth will be impossible unless I return to working only on contract out of cities.
While this would probably work out for players running a successful Weaponsmith business, this change will effectively put me out of business on the vender front as an Architect. It’s my gut feeling that the story will be the same for all other less-appreciated crafting professions.
I understand the need for more credit sinks in SWG, but the proposed sink to be applied to Vender Maintenance is too great. Vender Maintenance needs to be brought up slowly, and only to a moderate level that is not so high that it cripples the current economy as the proposed changes would. Other areas of the game then need to be considered for further credit sinks to bring sinks up to desired levels. (Areas of the game which enhance a player beyond basic functional requirements come to mind. Requiring a Storage Facility like a Stable for mounts in order to apply a certain level of upkeep for maintaining a mount, or fuel necessities for vehicles would be acceptable examples of credit sinks to supplement Vender Maintenance to bring down required sink needs. Anything desirable, but not critical to the game are the best options to deal with this. A player could always walk, it’s critical for a crafter to be able to turn a profit.)
As an alternative, I propose the following changes.
- Assign a basic ground-level rate of maintenance for available vender types. This is the daily pay, or upkeep necessary to retain the service of your vender. Require increased levels of basic pay for more interesting vender types. This should range from mostly negligible to moderately expensive, allowing crafters to not be completely brutalized by upkeep when operating in a low-activity vender. Possibly apply added capability to high end venders at some point down the road to justify costs.
- On top of daily pay, assign a base 2.5% commission rate for standard sales. This provides a credit sink fair to crafters selling at all levels, from 10k worth of stock to 10 billion. For advertisement barking, increase this by an extra 0.5%. For planetary advertising, increase another 1.5%, and so on. As I talked about above, advertising is an area of enhancement in SWG beyond the basic necessities of the game, and thus a prime candidate for credit sinks.
- Apply limits to the amount of stock that may be placed on a vender to be modified by the Efficiency line of the Merchant profession. For a basic Artisan vender, this limit should be set at 25 items. A Novice Merchant may increase this to a maximum capacity of 75 items. 150 items at Efficiency I, 300 items at Efficiency II, 600 items at Efficiency III, 1200 items at Efficiency IV, 2500 items at Master Merchant. A new vender would always have a default item capacity of 25. As a player gains the skill to increase this capacity, a new vender option is available to increase the capacity of that vender, which then modifies the basic ground-level daily pay. The main idea here is to limit the capacity of abusing venders for personal storage facilities, while increasing credit sinks in the economy further.
With vender storage abuse limited, private venders may be allowed. I come from the largest crafter-oriented PA on Naritus. We make heavy use of Supply Depots in which we stockpile the resources harvested by the stagnant lots of our combat-oriented players to sell at special rates to our crafting members. It’s an incredible frustration to not have private venders for PA use. This is a huge issue that needs to be taken into consideration.
If increasing credit sinks in the game is such an issue, I would like to see some creative progress in the direction of new perks for the game. I’m talking about things like introducing an upkeep rate for PA’s (which I feel TRULY needs to be in place. A PA should require multiple players to keep alive, not just because they disband if less than five individuals are members,) and introducing options like custom logo’s to be displayed on the avatars of members of the PA for an increased upkeep rate, a personal Guild-Only Bazaar, tons of options can be played with here. Allow for Architects to customize personal Housing to add more storage capacity for a higher rate of upkeep, up to a certain level for each size of house. Do this through items like “Home Storage Upgrade Kit” that may be used by the owner of a house through the upkeep terminal. Introduce Factory Efficiency Kits to speed up Factory production for higher upkeep. Anything that would improve structures storage or efficiency on structures, besides any structure that harvesters resources, would be an ideal candidate for credit sinks, as well as bringing down the amount of structures out there. I’ve got many friends who run 8+ factories for increased output, or have multiple homes because they’re out of storage for resources and crafting components.
Hell, just dropping an NPC to sell Survey information in Artisan Guild Halls for the region would get billions of credits sunk every week. Hands down surveying has to be the most tedious aspect of SWG. Take advantage of that. *grin*
This level of Vendor Fees will, proverbally, "Kick us while we're down"
Merchant is a sorrowly broken profession. Half of the tree is basically useless, and the half that does have use, mostly doesn't work. Myself, to stay competitive as a Tailor/Shop owner, I must keep a large stock of items on my vendors(currently only Bulky or Droid), and the maintenance is killing me.
It's a catch 22. In order to make more money, I have to keep a large stock, which results in high maintenance fees, which results in me barely breaking even. On the flipside, I can drastically reduce my stock. This results in far less sales which results in me, again, barely breaking even.
The player-driven economy you guys envisioned has, for all intents and purposes, blown up in your face. Money is worthless because due to exploits, duping, whatever, there's far too much of it out there. You wanna get rid of alot of it? Great. I'm all for it.
But for christ's sakes, don't make a horribly broken profession suffer because you guys screwed up.
10000/1000 per 45 mins = 10 creds per 45 mins = 20 per 1.5 hrs = 280 creds per 24 hrs
100k creds will run 2800 creds per day....hmmm bad idea, for an architect to have any selection at all they will have over 200k in selections at least. I am a DE and i stock over 200k in droids, so i will have to pay more to my vendor than for my pa hall or 1 large harvester? that seems out of wack! its bad enough crafters have to generate enough cash to pay for harvesters, but raise vendor prices will kill all the casual crafters! please, please dont do it!
I'm sorry, I just can't read 36 pages of this.... has there been any response at all from SOE on this outpouring against this?
--- if not, my 2 credits worth ---
First, I /vote tax based system.
As it is right now, every time I land in Coronet Corellia (the 'center') of the system. I face horrendous lag of 30-60 (more?) players shouting their wares. I have to 'look down at the ground' at times just to make it thru. Implement this crazy formula and we will be facing 100's of vendors doing business in central locations.
I can't even imagine what a Friday or Saturday night would be like !
I don't like the idea of X/1000 per hour. For the casual gamer this will be a killer. A house and harvesters already take away most of my money. I have a lot of items on my vendor but I don't get a lot of visitors due the remote location of our city. When I do get a visitor, I know there is a good chance they will find what they are looking for.I will end up having todismiss my vendorsand sell weapons only to those I meet. For those who sell inexpensive items, that will be their death blow. Not everyone in this gameis overly wealthy. Please implement a system where the fee's are based on the value of the item being sold,taken once it issold, not the vendor itself. Exception to this rule would be for listing on the global map. Advertising costs money and that would be an acceptable fee.
Zavannah
make vender fees really cheap, like 1/100 of item cost per week. keep the item up until the merchant takes it down. when an item actually sells, charge 5 or 10% of the cost for the sale but dont charge a lot for keeping a large costly selection for upkeep so the item actually only gives the merchant 90 or 95% of the item that got sold. this way a merchant can keep a large variety of high quality goods without having to bear a huge brunt to their upkeep.
this game favors fighting classes enough as it is and keeping harvesters venders and factories running takes an enormous amount of effort for merchants. making the money sink out of the crafting classes who keep the the whole economy running will mean the doom for crafting professions and the costs for goods will rise as the quality of goods will go down as more and more crafters will quit from the pure frustration of the problems already associated with their professions. killing the merchant by giving them the brunt of the money sink will hurt the economy as a whole and should not be done as the description of 1/1000 for 45 min.