Merchant Archive

ed

This just will not work as a money sink in your suggested way. I'd shut down my shop completely based on the per value of item per day, for I'd lose money otherwise. Now I stop selling as many items, yet players who would have bought my goods still have their money, for there was no purchase. In other words, no money 'sank'. Look at your other game, EQ. They have tons of money sinks, and yet their bazaar is free to use by all players. No fees, no taxes, nothing. Buy and sell, and everyone loves it. Find more creative ways to pull money out of the game. Maybe add decay to so many of the things that never do? (structures, clothing, etc). Give players more opporunities to spend cash in other areas of the game.

If you must tax the merchants, make it work like we all know and love/hate. Sales tax. It's the obvious solution, charging per 'asked' value is absurd. Charging what is actually sold makes sense, and it's how the world works. Add a small flat fee per merchant.

And fix the merchant class before even considering this, so many things are broken. Why do I need to re-register my merchant on the global map every single day (server resets)? If you don't go with a sales tax but use an value of items method,then there's a HUGE incentive to sell things immediately. Not having your merchant on the map until you get home from work/school each evening becomes a true issue.

Add a per item tax, and you'll see a lot less variety. Only top fast selling items will appear on merchants. Most people will change the name of their shop to 'Email me for all orders', and remove merchants completely.

ed

Currently i run a store that i feel is nice to shop at.

I have a wide selection of weapons at a good variety of prices.. The Key word being 'Variety' .. people can come to my store and pick up a weapon or two of thier choice from a selection. If they dont sell ..they dont sell , but the CHOICE is there for them, and my customer enjoy this.

When you revert to the 'based on total costs' method.. what you will in fact do is not create a 'money sink' you will just find People like myself will only offer a couple of items per vendor. You will in fact be killing of the Merchant as a shop keeper. Shops will become Devoid of choice and once again Empty vendors will stalk the land ..Hardly what you intended (or at least i hope..)

I create items for Profit .. Raising the vendor costs meen for most people meens they would struge to break even sale wise .. You say you want fin in the game? Wheres the fun in strugling and eventually giving up?

The Answer has been Written numerous times in this thread already.. SALES TAX. Charge me 5% - 10% Per item sale.. You get your cash sink becuase im not making as much money..

BUT! more importantly ... i can freely stock my vendor with as many items as i choose. I can give my customers a Huge selection of items.. I will stay a SHOP.

Please Consider this option Devs .. i dont want my vendor to be meerly being a item pickup station for when i cant meet a customer face to face.

ed

I'm not in favour of any maintenance increase in vendors until:

A> VEndors are fixed. Vanishing items after they are bought and items being stuck on vendors make them unuseable.

B> Bazaar sales are nerfed. Currently, too much is sold too easily on the bazaar. There is little enough reason to have vendors for low cost items (chef or tailored goods)

st

Hey, I know my NPCs were not costing what they should but

PLEASE fix items before you nerf them!

Currently, none of my Jewelry is selling because none of the icons are visible.

Currently, I can't sell tamed pets(or droids, for that matter)- there is a listing for "pet control devices" in the categories, but they can't be placed on vendors.

Currently, many high end wookie items are still listed as "miscellaneous", gunman's duster's are "robes", and animals and droids, who even have their own categories, are still listed as miscellaneous. This is seperate from the datapad issue, this is for BE animals and droid deeds.

I could live with the fees being fixed if you would fix everything else, as well.

ed

I agree with most people here. I agree also that vendor maintenance fee is absurd at the moment, but what you propose it way too high.

I also keep 500+ items on my vendors so that my customers can find what they want. I don't always sell much, and with such a high maintenance I would prolly lose money overall.

Having a tax of 10% on every item sold would be a great idea.

ed

Two problems:

Firstly, the suggested rate would just kill the merchant class. Instead of fully stocked vendors, you will see people using the boards or websites to sell their items with vendors containing display items or description items( e.g. small house 10k- email me as the description on a 1 credit item).

Secondly, my wife has a vendor that keeps disapearing. She has logged numerous bugs and csr's (800305 is the latest). If her vendor keeps disapearing, why should she be forced to pay for the items listed when no one can buy them? or what happens if it disapears and she cannot pay maintainance. Fix this bug first, then consider the fees.

edActually thinking about this topic more, I think it's a whole mind game psychological thing on the part of SOE. Announce that there will be a nerf. Propose a totally unacceptable nerf. Know that the community will be in an uproar and people will know there is a nerf coming, and be expecting the worst. Ask for feedback from the community so they look like good guys, actually deliver a nerf that's not as bad as the proposed nerf and have everyone breathing a sigh of relief and thanking SOE for their generosity. Maybe it's the paranoia of mine sinking in, but sometimes I think we're just being screwed with. This proposed maintenance rate is so ridiculous and so terribly thought out that I gotta think either they really mean it and are dumber than I gave them credit for or they're smarter than I thought they were and are messing with our minds to get them good will later on when nerf is delivered.

stI also think that having asales tax is the best way to deal with this. Make the sales tax start at 30% in the business line and decrease it by 5% for each box in the efficiency line and an additional 5% at master merchant (resulting in a 5% tax for master merchants). This makes the efficiency line worthwhile and appealing without destroying the ability of artisans and part-time merchants to sell items on their vendors.

ed

I have to go with those that prefer the sales tax method.

Upkeep at the proposed rate will force me to shut down my shop. As an architect I have high priced items with low turnover. This means massive upkeep fees on vendors using theproposed formula. Even if a sales tax took out a larger chunk in the end, it would still keep me from having to run stupid delivery type missions in the meantime just to afford to keep them on display (especially since I already run them sometimes to keep my harvesters going). I could instead spend that time crafting, which is kind of why I'm playing that character.

Maintenance Fees = more things for the players to have to continuallykeep track of, making it more difficult for any player, but especially the casual player

Sales Tax = the player only has to think about it once, when they price their product, so it is more player friendly, yet it can be just as big a money sink (or even bigger) if you set it at the right rate. Plus it can be made into a story element if it's called an Imperial War Tax or something.

ed

"...The game is in need of more money sinks...."

Yes... for high up combat oriented players. (who can make upwards of 10k a mission, 20k if they take two at once)

Believe me Artisans have enough money sinks as it is. Between my house, my harvesters, and buying specialty resources on the bazaar. I can barely stay a float. The artisan survey missions are nice, but if you guys keep adding more, "money sinks" I am really going to have to rethink this game. It's almost becoming a "Chore" for me to get on and do missions just to get money.

I would sell some of my products, but the markets seem overflooded with higher level products and nobody wants my stuff. If I can't sell my products how can I pay maintenance on everything, except for the survey missions which pay upwards of ........... 1500 credits each!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Wow that's really going to help....

Seriously, I know some Bounty Hunters who have every armour in the game, every weapon and droid and pet imaginable, and still have millions in credits stored up.

Now give me a way to store up millions of credits and then you can talk about more "money sinks" for Artisans.

edIck, yeah, I just realized, right before reading a post to this effect, what this rate is going to do to Architects. You will never see another structure vendor in the game again after implementing that maintenance rate.

I like the idea of a sales tax too, but it'd never work, because you could have people email you if they saw something they wanted on your vendor, have you retrieve it for them, and then just sell it through the transfer window.

Come to think of it, though, the way I personally would address this would be to put a single "price list" item on the vendor, one which is overpriced for what you'd get (like a 1000cr bofa treat). Thus my maintenance rate is 1cr per unit (32cr per day at the 45min rate). People need only read the description of the item, then send me mail requesting what they want. I would fill the request (if possible) and then send email to arrange either a face-to-face transfer, or (for a small fee) to leave the finished item on my vendor for up to 24 hours, or offer it at the vendor of the customer's choice.

Honestly, I think that flat-rate vendor maintenance is going to be the only way to deal with this. If your concern is that people are going to chew up database space with tons of items on vendors, then you should instead cap the number of items a vendor can hold, with the possibility of increasing this cap at a higher maintenance cost as one moves up the Hiring tree (justification: someone with a bigger business needs employees with more training to manage bigger inventories, and therefore should expect to pay higher wages).

ed

The timebased fee's are the quick and dirty way to implement.

There's a better way to do it.

1.) A timebased basefee which is small (say....100 per day)

2.) A usage based fee which is also small (every use by non-owner/non-admin costs like5 - 20)

3.) A provision based maintenence fee (5% off of the itemprice if sold)

ed

Hey q3p0, dont call it maintenance!! That makes people cry nerf!!

Call it "WAGES"

And you should base it on daily profits, not the amount of stock held by the vendor.

So if he's sellin more, the boss pays more