Merchant Archive
Thread: Official Issue with the vendor fees.
Given the lack of ways to bring people into our shops, the broken Ad Line, the Dupped resources to no end, and just poor thought
I URGE THE DEVELOPERS TO RETHINK THE FEES FOR A VENDOR, LOWER THEM ASAP BEFORE WE ALL HAVE TO CLOSE OUR SHOPS.
Selling anything over a bunch of power-ups and food brings fees to the point were merchants are lossing money, faster then they can make it.
Please post your thoughts
marqie wrote:Selling anything over a bunch of power-ups and food brings fees to the point were merchants are lossing money, faster then they can make it.
I agree. I have no problem paying some sort of fee that is fair, but the current system (which many are avoiding at the moment via NPC vendors which have bugged fees) needs some serious rebalancing.
I also find the way the vendor calculates maintenance highly confusing. I would prefer there to be an item limit along with a flat posting fee and/or sales tax. That way, I at least know where I stand instead of playing a guessing game with putting a 10k item on (will I need to go rob a bank to pay for this or not?).
It is absurd...
NPC vendors eat split stack resources. Can't sell them there.
Non-NPC vendors are outrageously expensive when you list mineral resources for sale on them.And thanks to the dupe exploit and the subsequent crash of the resource market, I can't afford that cost.
Fix this devs.
I think many people don't understand why the maintenance is there.
Many suggest a "sales tax." The devs will not go with this, because this does not fix their problem.
The problem is that they don't want you using your vendor for storage.
So they do 2 things.
1. No vendors in private houses.
2. Maintenance dependent on listing price.
Combined, if you intend to use your vendor for storage you have to have it in a public house. As a result anyone can buy the stuff you stored. So to counter you just make it really expensive, but then there's the maintenance as a punishment.
I know you can stick them in the stockroom. Evidently the devs don't think we're that smart. Read any post by Holo on the issue and he'll tell you this is the problem.
As you can see the sales tax idea doesn't fix this.
I say that a one time fee for listing, dependent on the price of the item is the way to go. This would solve the devs problem, and wouldn't punish us for having something on a vendor for more than 2 days (heaven forbid).
i cant find the thread now....bit someone had a quiote from Koster where he says it is "working as intended "and the same system has worked in other games and its basically staying the same....
All i have to say is it is one of the silliest things i have ever seen....we can use the Bazaar at 1/10th the cost...
My real feeling is that
TERMINALS should cost nothing....or very little....itsa machine, a peice of furniture basicallyand should take minial maintence...what is the reasoning that it costs so much
DROIDS should cost nothing...but they should need batteries to keep functioning
NPCs....should costa salary...you have to pay that person to stand there all the time
Has Holo ever stated the intended purpose of the merchant?
Because going by vendor maintenance, I think many of us are wrong.
With the way it is now it's very obvious merchant is a side class used by crafters, not a stand alone. With the maintenance the way it is merchants will pay 24% of the value of the product a day in maintenance.
Obviously to counter this and make a profit markups would have to be monstrous. So obviously there were not meant to be true merchants who act as distribution for crafters.
It's clear that what was intended was for weaponsmiths, chefs etc. to pick up merchant to increase their ability to sell thier own goods.
If the developers do not see or do not care that a class of merchants who don't make their own goods has arisen, then in my opinion there won't be any soon. Once the NPC goes to something similar to the terminal, all the true merchants will be gone in a couple days.
This is absolutely the worst way to prevent people from using vendors as storage. With decreased money comming into the economy via missions and now increased costs for merchantsfor usingthier defining feature how can a merchant stay in business? Little money comming in and lots of money going out means out of business merchant. We can't even sell resources on the side anymore because of all the exploiters dupping and flooding the market much less anything else except for weapons or food. Do the exploiters get punished no.. Do thier resources get removed...no. Do honest merchants that didn't exploit get punished.. Obviously!
Please find another way other than breaking our backs financially to fix this issue.
What Holo said, was that people in other games get buy just fine with the kind of maintenance we will have.
What Holo doesn't realize is that other games don't have the kind of merchants this game has. They have crafters with shops, not merchants.
Crafters with shops will bite the bullet and suffer more expenses, but true merchants, they shall die.
What Holo said, was that people in other games get buy just fine with the kind of maintenance we will have.
What Holo doesn't realize is that other games don't have the kind of merchants this game has. They have crafters with shops, not merchants.
Well "other games" must mean UO since it's the only other game with vendors.
As a UO merchant who is a "crafter with a shop" and was at the point I left running three merchants, one in Skara Brae, one at the Britain/Yew/Skara crossroads (yes I have a small tower there on chessie), and a third in a Malas vendor mall. Trust me, the maintenance in UO was NOT the type of maintenance that the NPC vendors charge. It was far far lower even though it was based on total volume of goods on the merchant. I was able to put a reasonable amount of maintenance on a vendor and leave them for weeks and still make a decent profit.
It's not so much the method as it is the amount. A total value on vendor is fine if it's at the levels of UO.
And just as a by the way, crafters with merchants face the same problems with this as resellers do. We keep just as much stock as the rest of you. It would be nice if we could present a united face against issues like this instead of the finger pointing.
I think the difference some people see between the crafting merchants and the non-crafting merchants, is that the non-crafters get a lot smaller proportion of the sale then a crafting merchant does. A weaponsmith selling a gun for 3500 gets the keep the whole thing, but if I buy the gun from him for 3000, then sell it for 3500, I'm getting a whole lot less.
I agree though, the higher maintainance fees threaten to put 95% of merchants out of business. If nothing else, let the reduced vendor fees with Efficiency 2 reduce them from the 10% to 1%. Then you can't just pick up Business 3 to have a storage vendor, you have to work your way up the merchant tree a bit. I dunno, I'm just throwing things out.
ajm317 wrote:
I think many people don't understand why the maintenance is there.
Many suggest a "sales tax." The devs will not go with this, because this does not fix their problem.
The problem is that they don't want you using your vendor for storage.
So they do 2 things.
1. No vendors in private houses.
2. Maintenance dependent on listing price.
Maintenance fees don't stop the storage issue as most people that had vendors in private housing would post items for shared storagefor 1 credit (or in our case, we'd have them put it up at an oddball low number so we know it wasmeant for someone in particular).
Not to mention thata lot ofpersonal storage was done through the offer function which isn't taken into account in this wacky maintenance rate.
But your right, it's not just taxation, which I called it yesterday in my thread but after consideration it's far worse because you have to pay the fee for every day your items are listed even if the item doesn't sell. So maybe it's really a "suckers tax" or our vendors are just grifting from us 
So that said, I don't think we really do understand why the maintenance is on a sliding scale at all. Are we paying our vendors a sales commission? If so, shouldn't we only have to pay it if the items sells? Also if so, shouldn't the vendor actually be running to town looking for business and handling all of the interpersonal stuff (such as helping the customer by providing information,negotiating sales deals, forecasting revenue, etc) that would warrant such a commission? Otherwise it should just be a flat salary rate.