Merchant Archive

For our player city we are debating tents vs one big PA Hall Mall vs a few house/stores

The downside to tents is requiring Eff 4 and limited space

I have Ad 3 so I can register the town vendros on the map regardless

So are tents really worth the skill points and the lack of space? do they deliver more sales?

Tents only take up 1 building lot, and seem to stand out against residential buidlings.

I find they promote sales.

From a customer's standpoint, I tend to like Shopping Malls, instead of having to run to 4 or 5 different tents. You can just run in and see what is available, if the Merchants have decorated correctly (putting up a display of armor near the armor vendor, vendors holding weapons at the weapons vendor, etc) From a 'solo' merchant with limited lots perspective,I like the Merchant tent idea... The best setup i have seen, was in a Player City. I was going to browse their Armor Vendors, which they had in a Guild Hall (high traffic vendors were in the Guild Hall). But as soon as I got off their Shuttle I was greeted by a line of Merchant tents leading to the Mall, which were full of low traffic items. It was sort of like a street bazaar leading up to the main Shopping Center. The tents contained stuff I wouldn't normally look at, but some of the signs caught my eye and I found myself browsing the vendors. And then browsing them again while waiting for the shuttle to arrive. I liked the 'leading to the mall' design, I've seen a market square approach and it wasn't as appealing to me.

I think there is a place for both in the game. I don't have a mall in my player city. We have houses which have vendors in them and we have a couple of tents out in front of the city hall with vendors. Those tents get a lot of activity.

Absolutely. Whenever I go to a new player city that I haven't been to, I know that 99% of all tents I find have vendors in them, regardless of advertising or other indicators. I'm sure most other people consider this too. Good cities will have a large cluster of tents around their shuttleports, and avenues of merchant tents, possibly lined by houses acting as merchant buildings.

I've even started ignoring regular buildings for looking for vendors, unless they are well advertised, or in or around merchant tents.

It's too hard to find one house out of 20 for random merchants, while tents clusted together promote a good commercial area, and impulse buying.

If you don't have a tent, and need increased traffic, I'd definitely work to get one if I were you. Efficiency 4 for the tent, and planetary advertising are some good ways to get your business booming.

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DocSavag wrote:

I think there is a place for both in the game. I don't have a mall in my player city. We have houses which have vendors in them and we have a couple of tents out in front of the city hall with vendors. Those tents get a lot of activity.

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I tend to agree,

I have had a merchant on Lok for months and no one ever stopped in. I moved to Dant into a player city, right next to a Shuttle port and bam!, i have had an large increase in sales.

Just remember to follow the 3 rules of business

1. Location

2. LOCATION

3. LOCATION

I like tents, but as they say this is a throw away profession, I intend to throw it away soon. I will stay a Master Artisan and keep vendors around, but this is an experimentation that has turned into a Master Obsession.

They really need to do something about the Dropping of Merchant and keeping vendors. That is not right...