CUEmu - Thread Posts

LadyGrey

Sat Jul 10, 2004 6:58 am

The problem: Advertising, getting the word out, letting people know that we're there. You know the feeling. You have become a master of your craft, you've invested in merchant in order to have a venue for selling your top-quality goods, and nobody shows up to buy them. The guy next-door, who sells the same stuff, is bragging about being a multi-millionaire. You don't want to spam in the spaceport (and I don't anyone who has gone to a store because it was being spammed in the spaceport). The world registry doesn't have enough flexibility to cover what you are offering. Or, perhaps you are a musician, dancer, or image designer, and you don't fit into the mold of having a vendor for what you can do.

What's a budding entrepreneur to do?

Possible solution: A "yellow-pages" terminal in the bazaar, maybe also in spaceports. This would be a distinctive terminal that players can go to, in order to find information about goods and services. In order to list your goods or services, you would need to pay a fee (of course) for each listing. You would then have the ability to either choose from existing categories, or create a new category. It could start out with the same categories that exist in the world registry, which are rather broad, but would probably quickly evolve to some very specific entries.

I can envision entries for contract surveying, musician and dancer buffs, specific resource brokering (such as doctor or combat medic supplies), possibly even escort services for people who need to go into dangerous areas to do surveying or harvester maintenance. Entries could indicate a location to go to, or a name to send email to. This type of system wouldallow for multiple entries, when you are capable or offering multiple goods/services, or for very specific entries, such as being a bio-engineer that specializes in tailoring additives.

The fees could be based upon merchant skills, or whether you have achieved master status in a particular profession.

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LadyGrey

Don't let the negative AFKophobes get you down. Play the game however you want.

Is the beta testing almost over for this game?

Smurfwalker

Sun Jul 11, 2004 6:08 pm

#2

Great idea LadyGray

zaphb

Mon Jul 19, 2004 11:56 pm

#3

This one deserves a wee bump for being a really great idea

Iono Aldo - Master Entertainer
Estei Finai - Noobish Smuggler

Ethalsar

Tue Jul 20, 2004 3:05 am

#4

LadyGrey wrote:

...possibly even escort services for people who need to go into dangerous areas to do surveying or harvester maintenance...

This is a great idea - something that would really help.

Thing is, though - you couldn't have a category titled 'Escorts' or 'Escort Services'... too many people would just get the wrong idea!

Spent some time thinking about this - came up with some more suggestions:

I'd suggest that the number of words you could use to describe your business would be dependent on your advancement up the Advertising tree (start at Business IV with64 characters, 128 at Novice Merchant, 256 at Advertising II and aMaster Merch would get 512 characters). At Advertising IV you could make your advert a 'premium' one (like on bazaar).

Costs would be per word per week - with discounts in the Efficiency tree. Basic cost would be 50cr per character per week (so a full basic listing would be 3200 cr / week at Bus IV, Master listing would be 25600 (without discounts). Discounts would come at Efficiency I (10%), Efficiency III (20%) and Master (40% - making a Master listing actually cost a max of 15360 cr/week). Advertising would be billed weekly and automatically in advance, listings would need to be pulled manually if you want to take them down. No refund if you just miss the deadline for pulling the ad. If your bank account is empty, the ads will be pulled - they'll be emailed to you so that you can copy & paste them back in when you get more cash!

As far as categories go, three options (or some combination of these) - (1) leave them as they are for global vendor listings - as mentioned, problems with this. (2) consult with the community (not just merchants) and get a range of categories that people want, and hard-code them in. Or (3) have an function to create a custom category within the advertising database. Not everyone would be able to create a category - perhaps only Master Merch could create a category, and there could be profession limitations on who can advertise in a category - e.g. a Master Merch is paid to set up a 'Tracking Services' category with a 'Ranger' profession limitation. Not sure about this last option, probably very open to abuse.

The number of listings you can have is dependent on the Management tree, and follows the same pattern as that for vendors... i.e. One at Bus IV (not III in this case), an extra at Novice Merchant, and +1 for each level of the tree.

Finally an idea that I personally would hate but perhaps others might like... and at least it would give a reason to hold the Master Merchant title. At Master you can pay for a junkmailing service. Each person who accesses the advertising terminal will get an email from you (the title would always start with the word 'Promotion') unless they register with a 'preference service' available on the Ctrl-O screen. This email would be limited to about 10 lines of text (maybe 1024 chars) and you would get charged 150 credits every time one was sent. Perhaps a weekly billing summary would be a good thing with this.

Just some ideas.

Aethal Sar, Weaponsmith. Retired from game - probably missing it already!

Links you may be interested in:
The SWG Links Library; the Doctor hunting list; and a summary of resource stat caps.

Merchant Archive

Thread: A suggestion for helping merchants to advertise their wares