Merchant Archive
Thread: Shared Vendors? Guess this is for you Doc.
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Chickenlad
Sat Oct 23, 2004 4:41 am
#1
Well, I did a search and couldn't find any information about this topic so here goes:
Will we ever be able to share a vendor with another person?
If not, is it because:
1. The Devs think the CSR teams would be flooded with reports of theft from people?
2. It's not technically feasible anytime soon - the way Vendors are created is distinct from other entities and admin rights cannot be shared/granted?
Mostly, I'm asking because I have a couple accounts - one with master merchant, another with 4404. It would be nice if I could change ownership or admin rights of vendors around so that I could keep the same vendor without having to take several hours of retrieving, storing, trading merchandise - destroying old vendor with character A, making new vendor with Character B (spend an hour finding one that even looks decent), then restocking all the items, one-at-an-oh-god-this-is-painfully-slow time.
-snift
GraySeven
Sat Oct 23, 2004 5:49 am
#2
I had a thread running here somewhere suggesting just such a thing, but it appears to have run off. A shared vendor would do wonders to bringing back the Merchant as a stand-alone profession
GraffDavu
Sun Oct 31, 2004 6:17 am
#3
Stealing would be actually an easy thing to avoid. The DEVs need to make the feature so that you "rent" the vendor to whoever you've given rights to.
Here's how it would work. Say I"m a merchant, and I have a friend who is a master weaponsmith. Now, he's using his skillpoints for crafting... blah, blah. So I make a merchant to his liking, place it in my structure. And instead of giving him administrative rights (which you can't do), or 1 by 1 placing all of his items on it and keeping track of potentially hundereds of sales, there should be a new feature called "rent vendor". It would ask you to select the person you're renting it to, then payment method. This could be done in 2 ways. A flat rate (which should start at a minumum of the vendor maitenance), or the second, a percentage of all sales.
Now, my thought on this is once you've "rented" a vendor,Then origianl ownercould no longer put anything for sale onto it. Hence it would be impossible for my tennant to steal from me.
And of course, if there would be a 'rent' command, there would need to be an 'evict' command. Basically, if you wanted a vendor out of your building that was actually owned by someone else, or you wanted to reclaim a vendor that was being rented to another player, you could activate the evict command. This would, as my suggestion, start a 2 week countdown that sends emails everyday to the 'renter' letting them know that they must clean out their vendor before it is either deystroyed or reclaimed by the 'owner'.
Arnwald
Sun Oct 31, 2004 7:40 am
#4
The merchant must have a way to limit the number of items the crafter can drop in the rented vendor.
All emails but maintenance ones should go to the merchant.
Therenter would have to pay the fees with an UI on the vendor.
If he doesn't :
- all his sales items would be removed from sale
- the merchant would be able to delete only the items left in the vendor
- the merchant would be able to put the items back for sale for the renter
=> seems not an easy task to program this... but i'd love to have it!
DocSavag
Sun Oct 31, 2004 10:21 am
#5
I don't support anything that has anyone other than a merchant actually managing the vendor. Giving me the power to rent out my skills just means that my merchant becomes an alt that never has to log on. Then I can just drop vendors for all my friends and never come back. That isn't playing a profession. Can your doctor rent you the ability to buff yoruself? No. Can an artisan rent you the ability to make a swoop? No. Merchants provide a service..renting the ability to perform that service is NOT the same thing as performing the service yourself.
I support a number of initiatives to make the merchant-supplier relationship easier and more robust and I"m open to anything that keeps the merchant involved in the transaction. The merchant is the one doing the selling.
I support a number of initiatives to make the merchant-supplier relationship easier and more robust and I"m open to anything that keeps the merchant involved in the transaction. The merchant is the one doing the selling.
Message Edited by DocSavag on 10-31-2004 12:23 PM
pervel
Sun Oct 31, 2004 9:13 pm
#7
Doc, while I can see your points, I think this issue should not be burried that quickly. I can see ways to make vendor-renting more of an actual skill/service than just a matter of skill sharing. If done the right way, it could give a retailer feel to the Merchant profession. One way to do this could be to enable the Merchant to put fees on each sale. These could be either an absolute fee or a percentage of the sale. You could also make it so that a portion of the maintenace paid by the renter goes directly to the Merchant.
Just saying that this would create an AFK'ing profession is not a valid argument. This is already a possiblity that people have with other professions. There are many people that buy an extra account just to have a personal doctor or entertainer. If they want to spend their money like that, then all power to them I guess. It wouldn't destroy our profession.
Btw Doc, am I not correct in saying thata correspondentdoesn't have to personally support an issue in order to take it further? Every proposal by the players deserve a chance for recognition as an issue even if you don't agree with it. 
DocSavag
Mon Nov 01, 2004 7:44 am
#8
pervel wrote:Doc, while I can see your points, I think this issue should not be burried that quickly. I can see ways to make vendor-renting more of an actual skill/service than just a matter of skill sharing. If done the right way, it could give a retailer feel to the Merchant profession. One way to do this could be to enable the Merchant to put fees on each sale. These could be either an absolute fee or a percentage of the sale. You could also make it so that a portion of the maintenace paid by the renter goes directly to the Merchant.Just saying that this would create an AFK'ing profession is not a valid argument. This is already a possiblity that people have with other professions. There are many people that buy an extra account just to have a personal doctor or entertainer. If they want to spend their money like that, then all power to them I guess. It wouldn't destroy our profession.Btw Doc, am I not correct in saying thata correspondentdoesn't have to personally support an issue in order to take it further? Every proposal by the players deserve a chance for recognition as an issue even if you don't agree with it.
I said I wouldn't support it. I didn't say I wouldn't report the desire. It will not get approved by the devs that way though becuase they don't approve of AFK professions either. The ones that exist now do so becuase making them AFK proof is harder than it seems.
And you are wrong about what it would do to the profession. Spend 5 minutes in the Entertainer forums to see what game mechanics that allow people to automate your service based skill do to a profession.
Andymantium
Mon Nov 01, 2004 8:40 am
#9
I don't believe shared vendors would be a good thing. All you need is one person in a guild, for example, to master merchant, and "share" the vendor with others. Multiple peoplewould thenreceivevendorcapabilities with no skill point investment.
Cafa
Mon Nov 01, 2004 9:03 am
#10
Shared vendors make skill points moot.
We need semi-automated consignment sales where the merchant gets a cut and has to approve the sale of each item before it gets listed on their vendor(s). Any person posting something for consignment sale could list a price, note the instructions a merchant would have on the vendor indicating his percentage fee for sales on said vendor(s), and possibly also give the merchant a WHOLESALE price that he could purchase the product for at a discount for direct retail sales.
A thought.
Fivo Asia
DocSavag
Mon Nov 01, 2004 9:15 am
#11
Cafa wrote:Shared vendors make skill points moot.We need semi-automated consignment sales where the merchant gets a cut and has to approve the sale of each item before it gets listed on their vendor(s). Any person posting something for consignment sale could list a price, note the instructions a merchant would have on the vendor indicating his percentage fee for sales on said vendor(s), and possibly also give the merchant a WHOLESALE price that he could purchase the product for at a discount for direct retail sales.A thought.
Fivo Asia
This is where my thoughts are on this issue as well. I want real tools to handle consignment like sales and to make retail sales for merchants servicing crafters efficient instead of a huge pain in the neck.
pervel
Mon Nov 01, 2004 6:08 pm
#12
DocSavag wrote:
And you are wrong about what it would do to the profession. Spend 5 minutes in the Entertainer forums to see what game mechanics that allow people to automate your service based skill do to a profession.
I have to say I am a bit suprised by your position. Yes, the devs hate AFK'ing. However, I fail to see how being able to sell your service is AFK'ing more than the Merchant profession already is. As it stands right now, the Merchant profession means nothing by itself. It is purely a support profession. In fact, it is the only profession (apart from Politician perhaps) that has no way of supporting itself. There is no direct way to make money as a Merchant.
Some people say that it would make it possible for a single Merchant to support an entire guild. Well, a Master Merchant can only place 12 vendors. And nobody says that this new kind of leased vendor shouldn't have some limit.
I am suprised this idea of enhancing the profession is being dismissed so quickly. If properly implemented, it could give more meaning to spending all those skill points in a profession that right now is purely a support profession. But oh well... I guess that if the correspondent is so strongly against even touching the subject, it doesn't stand a chance.
DocSavag
Mon Nov 01, 2004 7:30 pm
#13
pervel wrote:
DocSavag wrote:
And you are wrong about what it would do to the profession. Spend 5 minutes in the Entertainer forums to see what game mechanics that allow people to automate your service based skill do to a profession.I have to say I am a bit suprised by your position. Yes, the devs hate AFK'ing. However, I fail to see how being able to sell your service is AFK'ing more than the Merchant profession already is. As it stands right now, the Merchant profession means nothing by itself. It is purely a support profession. In fact, it is the only profession (apart from Politician perhaps) that has no way of supporting itself. There is no direct way to make money as a Merchant.Some people say that it would make it possible for a single Merchant to support an entire guild. Well, a Master Merchant can only place 12 vendors. And nobody says that this new kind of leased vendor shouldn't have some limit.I am suprised this idea of enhancing the profession is being dismissed so quickly. If properly implemented, it could give more meaning to spending all those skill points in a profession that right now is purely a support profession. But oh well... I guess that if the correspondent is so strongly against even touching the subject, it doesn't stand a chance.
You aren't selling a service when you give the vendor to someone else to manage you are selling your skills. This isn't going to fly. We've talked about it for over a year. It isn't some snap decision. I'm sorry you don't like my personal opinion about it but I would do a disservice to the profession if I blindly went along with an idea I feel would be bad for the community. The devs don't take my word for things however and if they thought this was a good idea my opinion wouldn't matter to them..they don't think this is a good idea any more than I do though.
There are ways to make the profession better wihtout giving away the service we perform to absentee merchant accounts.
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