Merchant Archive
Thread: Taxation without representation (aka Vendor maintenance changing based on value for sale)
In the hope a dev sees this if they missed my reply in Holo's vendor in houses thread:
Holocron wrote:
Have you looked at NPC vendors lately? Regardless of how much you dump on them, they charge 1 maintainance (0 if you have Efficiency III). People use NPC vendors to avoid maintenance charges.
Yeah, expect that to be fixed.
Please, if you're going to change this then at least make the maintenance rate less obscene or you're going to have another fiasco on your hands when you put up this "fix". I shouldn't have to pay 5000 a day in maintenance for my vendor that's selling a 50k house (I'm not exagerating, this is what the vendor's maintenance changes to when you put a single 50k house up on the bulky terminal you get at business 3).
I titled this post this way because that's exactly what this is... a taxation system based on the value of goods we have for sale. One so dramatically out of balance it'll kill merchant trade because we won't be able to put our bigger ticket items on our vendors (Architects in particular). We won't even be able to inflate our pricing to accomodate the vendor maintenance rate because it increases in proportion to the value you're selling.
This whole system needs to be recondisered please. The only reason this issue hasn't come to light before is because we all though the maintenance rate on NPC vendors was "as intended". If you "fix" this and the NPC merchants are on a similar scale as the business line terminal vendors, you can expect an extremely vocal outcry.
Nobody thought NPC vendors was "as intended." We all new it was wrong, and the merchant correspondant has mentioned it.
That said, yes this is ridiculous. As has been pointed out this would kill "pure merchants" because 24% and less markups will be eaten in a single day! (Not to say it won't be bad for everyone else.)
Where the system breaks down is for professions with any mass variety (furniture and clothing for example), high cost (resources, structure deeds), and others. I think maintenance, posting fee, tax, or whatever you want to call it is a great balance for merchants, but it quickly grows out of control.
The other thing is how unpredictable maintenance can be. If someone asked me how much it would cost to put up a 50k item on my vendor, I wouldn't have a clue. I could put it up, wait for a few minutes for the vendor to update, then check, but by then my vendor is already sucking away my credits.
While I'm not opposed to some sort of fee to add balance, a flat posting fee, sales tax, or a mix of the two is preferrable to the crazy maintenance in place now. On the other hand, the 0-1 credit maintainance on NPC vendors now is pretty crazy too!
I agree that the current percentage maintenance rates are way out of control. I would ask the devs to please give thought to a more resonable system before applying it to fix the NPC vendors. I realize that you are trying to control how people price items, but whyshould webe chargedhuge maintenance costson items that haven't even been sold yet?
I think a much better sytem to enact would be one where the vendor has a flat per day fee and then recieves a commision based on the value of the goods sold. That way we are only charged at the time of purchase. Perhaps even limit the number of items per vendor based on your merchant skills.
In the current maintenance rates on terminal vendors are applied to NPC vendors, it makes absolutely no sense to put high ticket items on my vendor since I will be charged enormous maintenance rates. I would like to think that vendors help the merchant or crafter merchant rather than severely limit their selling capability.Charging maintenance based on the asking pricepunishes vendors for pricing items too high. Shouldn't the playerbase be the judge of whether items are priced too high? Players can always refuse to buy those goods. Let us be the judge. If the item never sells, isn't that punishment enough for the merchant?
I agree that vendors shouldn't be used for storage, but the merchants should have other options available to them for storage.Charging more maintenance based on the asking price does very little to discouragevendor storagesince people can just charge 1 credit for the item and put it in the storeroom.
I really hope the devs present their propsed fix for the NPC vendors before implementing it, else I fear that that we may have the same intensity of response as seen with the housing issue. I strongly feel that if the NPC vendors are fixed like the terminal vendors, it will severely hinder the economy rather than help it to develop.
Siekierah
EDO Enterprises
Chilastra, Naboo
The current maintenance rates have nothing to do with pricing control. This is why they'll never go to a sales tax. It does nothing to fix the problem they're trying to fix.
What they're trying to fix with this is that they don't want people using vendors as storage. Now that you can't have vendors in private storage you have to price items really high if you don't want anyone to buy them. This fee prevents you from doing that, meaning someone could buy all your stuff.
Otherwise you could store an infinite amount of items in your vendor.
This is database related, not economy related.
If they make NPC vendor maintenance the same as terminals, (i.e. 1% per hour) I'm going to quit the merchant profession.
I know that sounds like a knee-jerk reaction, but it is not. I am the only merchant in a PA of over 100 players. I have 9 Vendors in my store selling everyhting including Weapons, Amrour, Clothes, Droids, Structures, Resources, & General Supplies. I have a Network of 20 crafters supporting me, which has enabled me to build up over 1.5m Credits worth of stock. Am I really expected to pay 15,000 credits an hour just to list them.
I mean come on I pay 80% of sales back to the crafter, so to BREAK EVEN I would have to have a turnover in excess of. 1.8M credits per day !!! - How feasible is that.
Whats more I can't really back off on the stock, as I only keep 2-3 of each item available in stock..
The player could simply sell an item for 1 credit on his vendor, then Withdraw the sale, thus moving it to his stockroom. This way his items is secure (only the vendor owner can access it's stockroom). What I'm uncertain is whether items in storage increase the maintenance rate of the vendor, and if so, by how much.
just a pain.
Craft something cheap and name it:
Redeemable for 1 medium house for 50k
Sell on your vendor for 1 cr.
Now, someone comes to you and says, "Hey, I have this, let's trade
for my house"
And you're done.
People may have been using them for storage, but maintenace isn't the
fix.
Calmer heads, and years of SOE and other games, have taught many of us to go with the flow on being merchants.
First point, erm, nobody besides one devoted corrospondent and afew dozen players are listening. You are shouting at either the chorus or the wind. Step back and take a breath. Anger and threats are hollow here.
Two. You have a valid point, a wonderful point, about the possbile increase in vendor fee's hurting our playstyle. It would force us to change.
Three. posted here are equally good points on how folks will work around it.
Four, and getting to the reality : Whatever it takes, trade between craftsmen and the rest of the populace will continue. If they remove merchants and buildings all together, trade will continue without missing a beat. If they overprice shop vendors, sales will turn to the bizarre first, and probably later to a "free-for-all" /yell fest at either bank areas or certain cities. Those that have played EQ know how Kelethin/Greater Faydark became the de-factor buy-n-sell location on nearly every server. If you wanted to sell something, you went here. If you were looking to buy something, you went there. Folks called the zone G-Fay. Endless price check shouts, WTB, WTS. Annoying, cumbersome, but it works. Buyer meets seller, both walk away with what they wanted.
So relax. Whatever the devs decide to do, or not do, trade will continue. Be a true merchant. Adapt and profit form the change.Start a tent city just outside of town and getother merchants & artisansto join it. Turn your "useless" storage droid into a showroom. Forget the store, put all your harvesters up on display for a weekend, throw a partyand let folks come play on them, see what they are about and hopefully buy them. Cost less to re-deed a heavy harvesteron displaythan2 hours of it's vendor pricing, eh? Look at the idea for 1 credit on the bizarre and vendors. If Merchant skills anger youthat much, give up merchant, use the simple artisan vendorand you can still have just as much fun and make just as much profit selling ItemX as any merchant, smuggler, bio-engineer or swordsman would.
"First point, erm, nobody besides one devoted corrospondent and afew dozen players are listening. You are shouting at either the chorus or the wind. Step back and take a breath. Anger and threats are hollow here."
While I agree with you at this point in time. I would be quite surprised if the threads don't fly off the handle if they implement the same vendor maintenance system on the NPC vendors as they do the terminal vendors. Most people don't come to the boards to voice off in the preventative manner. Most come to complain once they have been affected. And it works! Just look at the housing fiasco. They backed down within 24 hours and gave us 75/lot instead of 25 to appease the angry masses.
We are just trying to get some feedback from the devs before they implement a fix.
I do agree there needs to be a better solution to what we currently have for vendors. It is true that vendor fees are meant to be multipurpose and not just for being a money sink, also to stop people from using them as storage boxes and what not. There must be some way to make it reasonable for merchants while making it somewhat unreasonable for people using them for storage. (As an addon, while they may have taken away privacy it wouldn't be at all surprising to see access fees of 100k just to get into houses using vendors as storage now)
The best thing I could think of off hand is a higher base maint fee that puts it in line with say a wind generator and then an additional fee per item. Such as 1 cred per item. Nothing huge, and yes people are gonna still use them as storage but people would find a way anyway. They could also potentially add a max selling price to vendors that would go up maybe depending on a merchant's effeciency. But I'd forsee problems arising with the architect profession with this one. Imagine the whining if they instituted it at 10k limit at biz 3,15k at biz4, 25k at merch, 50 at eff1, 100 at eff2,200 at eff 3, 350 at eff 4 and 600 at master... (sure they would be able to sell a small house at biz 3 but why can't they sell everything like a weaponsmith could) not to mention what would happen if something started costing more than those limits...
I don't know, no matter what you do it seems there are big problems involved with vendors and I wish SOE luck trying to figure out a good balance with it cause I don't think it's gonna be easy. At best i think just lowering the price to 1 cred per 2000 base might work and would at least settle down people enough for awhile to figure out a better solution.
I agree with the topic of this post. I am a droid vendor, and almost a master merchant. I have over 500k worth of stock
in 6 vendors and even stock droid lubricant for the roleplaying aspect. There are probably several things they could do
besides this insane and I do mean insane maintainence system.
I don't mind paying 1 credit a day or hour ... even as much as 10 credits an hour would be fine by me. Thats still 1440
credits a day for my vendors. There are probably several solutions where it would disuade people from storing things in a
vendor.... but the proposed system is just plane wrong.
My solution would be to raise it to 25 credits per hour per vendor. This would disuade those casual users from abusing
vendors for storage. Then reduce that by 6 if you take Novice Merchant. And an additional 2 at efficiency I, 3 at
efficiency 2, 4 at effieiency 4 and 5 at Master merchant. That would be a reduction of 20 over time.. or drop it to 5 per
vendor. Thats 30 per hour with 6 vendors or 720 a day.
Things like adding to the planetary map in the adventising line could add 2 credits for vendors that have Ad Barking
turned on and 3 more for those on the planetary add campaign. Of course at level 4 it would reduce this to 1 credit for
registered vendors.
Comission or sallary are just bad ideas though. They imply that we do a hiring and set wages for employees and since we
cannot interview people or place adds for workers we should not be forced into a specific sallary price. However another
way to control abuse would also be a vendor initialization fee, of maybee 2500cr to initialize a new vendor.
If the storage is a problem lets set the storage to 5 spaces, and add an increased storage skill to merchants. Stary with
+20 at novice and increase by 10 at each level of efficiency and 20 more at master. That would be 80 slots for storage
for serious merchants.
While they are in the code for this stuff, fix the code for corporate image so that vendors actually wear clothing we
give them ... im not giving the twilek in my shop clothing because I want to go out with her, im giving it to here so she
will look hot and sell more for me... its the same reason I has the biggest NPC possible for my offers vendor... to
intimidate people into a better price ... hehe
And while im hot what about giving us soimething cool at master merchant... maybee a billboard that we can put on the
side of a building in town or a sign that we can put in town around the bazzaar or elsewhare that we could put our shop
name and coordinates on. There arent that meny of us so it wouldn't be that bad.... heck give it maintainence of 5cr per
hour so we have to pay attention to it.... perhapse even a vendor in town in one of those now unused (solid)
buildings.... the inventory could be limited to say 20 items so we drive sales back to our shop and it could cost alot
more maintainence but would be a payoff for "wasting" all those skill points...heck even a vending machine to sell live
bait or drinks and food from would be kinda cool but would definately be abusable ...
I know some people who only have artisan levels and have that one vendor are going to be angry at my pricing structure,
but to be honest you aren't a real merchant till you take the merchant class... wallmart can pay people minimum wage and
make them stand at the door and greet people and blast advertising all over the place because they are real merchants,
that comic book store guy who has that shop on the back side of the strip mall and has that weird guy that smells funny
that works for him is closer to the truth... That one vendor should cost you more, he has to work overtime after all,
and he probably steals from the register....
I would like to see portable vending stations like camps that could be made and set up in town or a portion of town that
would allow people whi had no vendors or shops to hock their wares. They could be like camps and have a little tent and
some chairs, maybee a table...or perhapse a cart on wheel s similar to a hot dog vendor that someone could store things
in and set up in town and sell stuff next to... I dont think that would be asking too much for those peoiple...
Anyway i sort of wandered from topic and rambled .... thats all for now
--Dolomite Droid Engineer/Merchant (Coronet/Corellia/Corbantis)