Merchant Archive
Thread: Vendor maintenance fees are ridiculously high
before you start yes i know the NPC vendors cost 1 cr right now and thats not the point of this post. the point is when they "fix" the npc vendors everyone is going to scream.
i tested the coke machins vendors for a week and somthing really needs to be done , as it is right now unless your a weapon smith or armor smith who can get away with charging 20+ cr per unit for their items you might as well not use a vendor. as a archetect i useally can charge about 5-6 cr per unit on furniture before sales drop and people stop buying from me and look for a cheaper arch shop. with sales that low i was just coming on top when putting items on vendor , also when im selling furniture i need to place a lot of items on the vendor and the more i stuck on the higher the maint got. it got so rediculouse that at one point i had to pull items off the vendor to save on the main cost. and this wasnt 100s of items it was just 70!
on busy days i could just make a bit more than what my cost was and on slow days the vendor ended up costing me money and these werent that slow of a day .
I think this is to encourage you to use real merchants to sell your goods.
I hope you will always see exhorbatant (sp?) prices on the Bus III term vendor. Why else would you use a merchant?
No, even the merchants with all of the vendor choices have this problem. Except for NPC vendors (which have low maintenance costs because they're bugged), all the terminal and droid vendors are ridiculously expensive to keep stock for sale in.
This is the single most important problem with the merchant class, and one which (if not fixed) will destroy the class and reduce the economy to the point that only very few of the crafting professions can be sustained.
If they want to tax sales, then that's how the vendors should figure maintenance - based on sales, not on goods available for sale.
Since they haven't listened yet, I'll try another example: Say a company wants to sell widgets in a shop in a mall. Now, the company knows what it costs to make each widget, what it costs to market the widgets to generate a certain amount of sales, what the rent will be to the mall owner and what it's labor and staff costs are. The cost of making the widgets is a variable cost, all the others are fixed costs.
Suppose the mall owner suddenly decided that instead of charging rent, they would charge the owner a percentage of the revenue from the sale of widgets. This, in effect, makes the mall owner and the widget seller partners. If the widget seller succeeds, they both make good money. If the widget seller struggles, the mall owner gets less. (Income and Sales taxes work the same way, but lets keep this simple.)
One day (in our little story) the mall owner has an accident and can't run his business anymore.(uh oh, it just got complicated.)The people who take over the mall seem to be very well connected with influential politicians and labor unions. They decide to change the agreements with the shop keepers in the mall. The new agreement dictates that the widget seller must hire only union employees. The union employees have a contract with owners stating that they get paid based on the amount of inventory they are responsible for. The contract also states the very high rates the union employees are to be paid, and that the employees do NOT have to actively try to sell the inventory by telling customers about it for more than a few hours, and that the do NOT have to wear the company uniform.
Well, the rates based on inventory are so high, the shop-keeper has no choice but to keep less stock in the store. With less stock in the store, his sales drop off because customers risk the chance of visiting his store to find it empty. His shop is in danger of going out of business unless he can find an alternative method of selling widgets.
He could try to keep his store stocked with less widgets delivered more frequently, but then his manufacturing and logistics costs go way up because he's buying smaller lots and paying for more transportation. (Besides the new union staff will only accept deliveries from Teamster drivers, who charge almost twice as much as other delivery services.)
But wait...there's something new...the Internet! Yes, That's it! Forget all the rules of doing business in the Mall, I'll get my widgets made, and then go sell them on E-Bay!
So, the widget seller no longer pays the mall or employs the staff. Busienss broken, jobs lost. The customers can only get what they want by going outside the normal channels and to E-Bay. Prices skyrocket, since because no one can build a sustainable business in the local mall, the widget makers control the market completely and outside of all regluation.
Ok, I'll admit this little allegory got out of hand, but what do you forsee happening? Aren't game items already being bought and sold via non-game venues? If the NPC vendors get fixed so that their maintenance rates are the same as the other vendor models, how many do you think will be around?
Personally, I was shocked at the cost....(at least w/ Business IV). It is so high, most artisans seem to be forced to spam w/ continual tells in town...or request characters to either go to their ext. website or send an in-game email for price lists & offerings. This seems to defeat much of the purpose of having a vendor in the first place.
What is the point of spending maintenance costs for a house & then more for a vendor? Didn't we earn the right to have a vendor (free or at some low rate---equivalent to maybe the house fees)...by spending the skill pts?
Just one person's experience, but it seems that many (and growing)of the artisans & craftsman are closing out their vendors completely or just providing the smallest of token offerings, primarily due to the excessive vendor maintenance.
I enjoyedwalking from shop to shop looking at wares from time to time, but this interestingaddition to the gameseems to be drying up quickly.
Has anyone heard if there are plansfrom the developers to address the excessive vendor maintenance feesin the near future?
I fully understand that this game is evolving, so I am basically looking to see if this will eventually be fixed, or do the developers feel that the vendor maintenance is fine (and thus adjustments need to be made on our/my end...External websites, prompts for emails...etc.)?
Thanks,
Convene