Merchant Archive
Thread: I got an idea that would help everyone involved with vendors....
This is working off an idea by Naufragus, but I am adding my own twist to his idea.
This will be a skill that is gotten at the master merchant level.
Once you reach master merchant, you are given the ability to give admin rights to people. These admin rights will work very similar to how the bazaar works. Thus turning your vendor into something like the bazaar.
How it works. You place someone as admin to your vendor. They are now allowed to put items for sale on your vendor just like they would on the bazaar but without the price cap. Also only the person who put the item up for sale can make changes to that item (just like the bazaar).
Possible limits:
1. Like the bazaar each admin added only has a set number of items he/she can put on your vendor. Let's say 10-50. The merchant himself can dictate how many items are allowed for each admin. Such as sayI have 2 guys I have given admin rights to, person1 I allow them to place 20 items on my vendor but person2 I allow them to place 30 items for sale.
2. The merchant can only add a certain number of admins to his vendor. Lets say it is between 5-10.
3. When the merchant sets the person as admin they can set a time frame for allowing the person to access their vendor. A sort of contract. Could be between 5-30 days and after that time is over all the items put up by that person drops to the stockroom. Once the time limit is set up by the merchant then it can't be changed until after the contract period is over. The person is of course notified by email that their contract is up and they have 1 week to collect their unsold items.
Benefits:
1. Makes dealings between merchants and non-merchants extremely simple.
2. Gives non-merchants an easy way to still sale their wares while not having the merchant skills
3. Could allow for the merchant to set up a sales tax to his admins(would be set up at the same time as the contract time limit and can not be changed throughout the contract period). Could be between 0-5%.
4. I think you would see a lot less empty vendors because if a merchant doesn't have anything to sell then at least he can admin people who do have stuff to sell. Would be 5-10 people putting stuff on the vendor instead of one.
Griefing Protections:
1. Once a person is an admin to a vendor then they can not be put on the ban list for the structure the vendor is located. Like wise the person can not be removed from the vendor admin list as long as they have an open contract.
2. The admin does not have to pay any entrance fees placed
3. A vendor can not be deleted as long as the vendor still has open contracts.
4. A house/merchant tentcan not be deleted when there is a vendor inside.
This is all I can come up with right now but please add any ideas or comments you have.
If this were implemented, what would the merchant do, besides watch the money roll in. This takes the active part out of merchanting. This function, if desirable, should be performed by npc's. Why should I spend half my skill points on something that turns my skills into a bazaar terminal. Boring!
NJ62 wrote:
If this were implemented, what would the merchant do, besides watch the money roll in. This takes the active part out of merchanting. This function, if desirable, should be performed by npc's. Why should I spend half my skill points on something that turns my skills into a bazaar terminal. Boring
What do you do now? Unless you have a crafting skill yourself, what do you do as a merchant? This allows for you to set up contracts with people, fire people after their contract, communicate with crafters, and actually run a shop. The only action we have now is placing items on a vendor...... Yea...
We don't have crap to do now so I really don't see any difference here. At least I would feel more like a businessman if I had the opportunity to hire and fire suppliers. And actually being a merchant by running a business that relies on suppliers.
Thorizan wrote:
Everything but the Griefing Protections seem fine. I don't think just having admin rights on a vendor would give you any rights to the house. The owner of the vendor sometimes doesn't have say on anything with the house.
You should really read closer. I never said the admin to the vendors would get admin to the house. I just said they couldn't be put on the ban list of that structure. Please read more carefully. Good day.
Yes, merchants have been asking for vendor admin rights since a week after the game was released.
This feature would let vendor owners work as resellers without having to waste all that time pricing and posting all the items their suppliers put up for Offer.
Plus they would not have to manually keep track of all their suppliers' pricing and transfering money back to the suppliers after sales.
The fee would not be a 'sales tax' - that's what cities charge. But you could call it anything you want. Perhaps 'commission' would be a good term. The commission could be a flat fee or a percentage of the sale price. The commission should let the vendor owner set the rate to '0' if they did not want to charge anything for posting sales on that vendor.
A few additional items though:
1) Vendor Admin could be implemented using much of the current game system already in place.
By adding an Admin option to the vendor radial vendor owners could add and remove'suppliers' from the admin list just as they already do for houses.
Adding the My Sales section to vendors suppliers could handle sales the same way they already do on the bazaar. The bazaarlimit of 24 items could even be used.
2) The current vendor timer on sales is 30 days.
The same timer should be used for the vendor owner and the item owner.
The same timer should be used for all items on a vendor.
Little or no recoding would be needed for this.
3) The current vendor timer on the stockroom for vendors is (supposed to be) 72 hours - 3 days.
All items from suppliers that drop to the stockroom should have the same timer.
All items in the vendor stockroom should have the same timer.
Little or no recoding would be needed for this.
4) When a sale occurs for a supplier'sitem , the money (minus any commission) should automatically be transfered to the item owner's bank account. The commission should automatically be transfered to the vendor owner's bank account.
5) It's not necessary to have any form of 'contract'. The current system can handle allmost everything necessary.
The simplest implementation would just be to allow vendor owners to add suppliers to the vendor's admin list.
Everything else about vendors would basically work as it does now except you would have items from multiple people posted for sale.
Not muchelse is really required to implement vendor admin lists and make them work.
If a vendor owner no longer wishes to have a suppliers items on their vendors, they can simply remove that supplier from the vendor's admin list and all of that suppliers items drop to the stockroom.
6) The current vendor system mails the vendor owner when an item is removed for sale.
This is how it appears to work, it might be workingjust likethe bazaar though.
The current bazaar system mails the owner of the item when it is removed for sale.
The added vendor feature should mail the owner of the item when it is removed for sale.
It doesn't matter whether the item was physically removed or dropped due to time out.
7) Only the item's owner should be allowed to touch the item.
a) Only the item's owner should be allowed to remove the item from sale.
b) Only the item's owner should be allowed to remove the item from the stockroom.
c) Only the item's owner should see the items in the stockroom.
I'm not sure if this was mentioned.
Vendor owners and suppliers on the vendor's admin list should not be able to touch someone elses items.
And as a vendor owner I really don't need to see everyone elses Available Items when I look at a vendor for my own items.
8) A vendor should not be able to be removed if it has ANY items on it.
While it might be a pain for players to have to remove a few hundred items from a vendor, even if you destroy each item as you retrieve it to your inventory, ALL game options should take the path of LEAST risk.
Allowing players to remove vendors with items still on them has lead to MANY problems for player (losing items) AND for SOE (CSR tickets).
If an admin list is implemented for vendors, this risk will be compounded multiple times.
Players are not permitted to destroy HOUSES with items still in them.
Players are not permitted to destroy HARVESTERS with resources still in them.
I don't think players are permitted to delete FACTORIES with resources or items still in them.
WHY are players permitted to remove VENDORS with items still on them?????
9) A supplier should not be restricted from accessing the structure.
a) A supplier should not be able to be banned or ejected from a structure.
b) A supplier should be exempt from access fees.
I believe that if implemented as stated in the original post, with all the above additions/changes, there would be no way for someone to grief a person on a vendor admin list.
Unless someone can come up with some other way to restrict them from the structure, or the vendor, or the items on the vendor.
You can't delete a house as long as there are any items inside.
I think that includes vendors, but haven't tested it.
Jebwa wrote:
Thorizan wrote:
Everything but the Griefing Protections seem fine. I don't think just having admin rights on a vendor would give you any rights to the house. The owner of the vendor sometimes doesn't have say on anything with the house.
You should really read closer. I never said the admin to the vendors would get admin to the house. I just said they couldn't be put on the ban list of that structure. Please read more carefully. Good day.
The owner of the vendor can be banned from the building -- if he was taken from Admin rights after placing the vendor (a common practice)... why would the leasee be exempt? Why would the leasee be able to grief the owner of the building not letting them move his own structure?
These were my main points, I apologize for not voicing them better the first time.
The owner of the vendor can be banned from the building -- if he was taken from Admin rights after placing the vendor (a common practice)... why would the leasee be exempt? Why would the leasee be able to grief the owner of the building not letting them move his own structure?
These were my main points, I apologize for not voicing them better the first time
I really don't understand what you are saying here. Are you saying that a merchant places a vendor in a structure that he doesn't own but only has admin rights too and then after the owner of the structure removes him from the admin and bans him thus no allowing the merchant to get to his vendor?? If this is true well then it is just the merchants fault for being an idiot and placing a vendor in a person's house that he really couldn't trust.
In any case if this is true then it is something that needs to go on the list of stuff to be fixed. There are many easy ways to fix this so it needs to be taken care of as well.
As far as the leasee griefing the owner and not letting him remove his structure that is easily taken care of with the contracts. Once contract is up the leasee has 7 days to get his stuff or it disappears thus allowing the owner to move his own structure. If the owner of the structure is planning on moving soon then he would be stupid to allow people admin rights to his vendor don't you think? If you don't think you can trust the supplier because you don't know them then just give them a short contract period thus only having their goods/or lack there of for only a few days instead of a month.
Well, what I was saying is that you don't need to implement any kind of 'contract' system or the interfaces for something like that - it's not really necessary to allow people to use this type of sales method.
You can use systems that are already in the game to do everything that needs to be done to allow vendor owners to give people access to a vendor (reguardless of where the vendor is placed) and try to get this feature set into the game quickly and easily.
When someone is added to the vendor Admin List, they can place items on that vendor and only they can touch those items, wherever they are in the vendor.
Any kind of agreement that would exist between the two parties exists as long as that person has access to that vendor (is on the Admin List).
If the item owner wants to break the agreement they have, they just remove all their items from the vendor and go somewhere else.
If the vendor owner wants to break the agreement they have, they just remove that person from that vendors Admin List and all that persons items drop to the vendor stockroom. When that person is automatically notified by mail that their items have been removed from sale (same as when the vendor owner removes his own items from sale, they are notified by mail) they have the normal number of days to remove their items from the stockroom.
This way the vendor owner and the structure owner (who may be the same person, or different people) would not be held hostage for up to 30 days waiting for the 'contract' to expire if they needed to move the vendor or the structure. At the most, everything would be tied up for 7 days, or whatever the timer on the stockroom is.
And as long as the item owner cannot be excluded from the structure, the vendor, or the items by the game systems, they cold not be griefed either.
The strongest incentive for using already existing systems to permit commission/consignment sales is the fact that everything could be implemented by modifying current systems rather than coding entirely new systems which would require alot more programming and testing resources on the part of SOE.
It's more likely that they would agree to implement the features if they could do it without investing alot of resources into making the changes.
And using existing systems could give us everything we need to facilitate this method of sales.
Why invent new features when the ones we already have could be used, with a minimum of effort, to get this sales method into the game for us and ease the headache of selling 3rd party items???