Merchant Archive
Thread: Raw Calculations on what they propose..
I have done a few calculations on their figures. - Doesnt look good for pure merchants.
SoE Maintenance Method
ok. Assume a Merchant has 200 items, worth on average 2,000 credits each (this is a lot lower than my current stock)
The daily maintenance on this would be ((200*2000)/1000)*32 = 12,800 Credits.
I buy purely from crafters and make no items myself (a Pure Merchant) - My average mark-up on an item is 20% (generous) . Therefore to break even, I need to turn over 12,800 *5 = 64,000 Credits worth of sales. (i.e. 32 items, or 16% of my stock each and every day.) - And this isn't even factoring in house mainetnance, training, travel fees, or other merchant outgoings.
Popular Method
ok. now if we run the same figures for the method which seems to be the most popular. (flat rate - say 100 credits per day per vendor + 5% sales tax)
Assume max 6 vendors = 600 Credits per day flat fee.
All this has the effect is to lower my profit from 20% to 15% plus 600 credits in maintenance per day (i.e. at 15% profit I need to sell 2 items to cover my 600 credit flat rate vendor maintenance fee - (2 items = 1% of stock.)
So the first 2 items sold per day generate me no profit, and all items after that only generate 15% profit instead of 20%..
Summary
The method proposed by SoE will kill Pure merchants stone cold dead - I never sell 16% of my stock consistently each and every day - sometimes I might offload up to 20% if one person buys armour, weapons and a droid for instance, but usually its 5-10% at the most. - NOTE at 10% turnover, I would be LOOSING 4,800 Credits + Expenses every day...
This method of vendor maintenance will even severely hurt crafter merchants who typically have a high profit margin on their items, and I would suggest put most of them out of business too.
Botom line I would love to know exactly what SoE's vision of hte Merchant is - As a standalone profession (utterly unfeasible...) or as a bolt on goodie to a Master Crafter... ???
Maybe it is a ploy to reduce the load on their database - make crafting and selling so unfeasible they put all the crafters out of business, and therefore greatly reduce the number of items in game. Either that or upset so many people 50% of their player base leaves the game, thereby reducing the number of items in half...
Maybe it is a ploy to reduce the load on their database
And the truth rears its ugly head again. SCS anyone? Practice Mode? House Limit?
Most decisions lead to this bottom line. Count up those beans...
I think what you have shown is that the general merchant, one that carries a wide variety of goods, is going to be hit hard. Why have master merchant if a general merchant isn't a viable playstyle? You're better off just tossing the skills into artisan.
The problem for the general merchant occurs because of the need to maintain a wide selection of goods. Most goods will sell quite slowly, and you may only want to have one or two on the vendor at any point in time. But the wider the selection, the more costly this becomes.
The problems will remain until vendor maintenance takes into account the variation in "time to sale" of the items we sell. The best way to do that is your suggestion of a flat fee and a sales tax.
Some people suggest that the sales tax just allows people to use the stockroom as storage, and therefore adversely impact the item database. Well, a possible solution is to only allow items into the stockroom after their 7-day sales period has expired. Any sales that are cancelled prior to that will place the item in your inventory rather than the stockroom. Finally, charge the sales tax on items that have a sale cancelled or are removed from the stockroom. Does this appear to create the right incentives to use vendors for sales rather than storage, yet solve the issue of high maintenance due to low sales?
After this "fix", the only way to sell goods will be to walk into town and use /shout.
And you don't need to be a merchant to do that.
Being a pure merchant isn't dead, and I have some notes (rather long) on why. BUT, merchant as it is used in most cases, probably is dead (pure merchants anyway).
The original poster said he carries about 200 items and of that 20% sells(max sales day, and i'll use it to keep the math easy). So he sells about 40 items a day. The problem actually is that he is massively overstocked, thats why the overhead will kill him.This sounds like a heavy handed generalization, but its true. I've been in retail in some form or another for almost 20 years and there are a butt load of formula's to help figure stock levels.While not complicated to use these stock tools its a bit drawn out so I'll save it for later.
The real question is why are you a merchant. The answer is crucial to being able to survive as a viable class for most people.
I am not trying to put words in your mouth, this is not my opinion of how you run your store in any way, but the feeling I have from most posts written on the subject of merchants, at least pure merchants, is that they buy stock and restock about once a week. They use it as a source of income through out the week while they pursue other interests, both in and out of game. For some the reason is they can or do only play on week ends and for others its a case of they like to explore, but aren't crazy for just running missions so 5 days a week they are in the middle of nowhere checking things out. Unless they get lucky, not a real money making past time. For these the class is dead, kaput, over and out, the fat lady sang ect. ect. ect. It's a shame in my opinion, because I think thats closing a whole class off to most casual players.
If you are into the long hours, working deals with suppliers, drumming up sales, tweaking product mix so there is no fat, then you will be ok. Problem with this is, its now a job, not a hobby. Of course you still have the old saying of Location! Location! Location! to deal with. Since there is little to no true advertisement ingame at the moment, if your shop isn't within the first ring or two of buildable space around a decent city you could be dead anyway. Although I'll bet this problem is fixed to some degree with player cities. That way like a shopping mall you know where the people will be so getting foot traffic will be easier.
As for the outlet stores where the product is made in the back room it will boil down to who is online more, they make the money off the sale instead of offthe resale,so the profit margin is much higher, but most will still only stock a couple of popular guns and will sold out 90% of the time they are offline. Which makes room for more crafters, at leastmore power crafters.
As to why they did this I think the answer comes in three parts:
1) Merchant is now a real proffesion that requires some skill to pull off and so at least to some more fun.
2) I think in a meta-game way, this slows down progress some, they haven't point blank said, but I suspect on the whole we are "leveling" at a MUCH MUCH higher rate than they dreamed. Holo said, on the nerf subject that nerfing an overpowered skill instead of boosting other skills or classes was due to the fact we would be out of balance with the whole envirnment, the net result of which would be reworking the combat system from the ground up. Not going to happen. By even legit leveling this fast, a large portion of the population is going to be at the end game, much faster than the programing time tables allowed for and one thing I have noticed that in just about every thing SOE does they have a plan. That plan might very well be fix #104 for problem # 123 will go in on the third tuesday of next month, regardless of how much we scream about needing it now. I think thats why a lot of people feel ignored. The fixes are planned just for a later date than we think is appropiate.
3) You hit it right on the head, database space. Here at least I don't blame them too much. While they should have probably been bigger and more robust from the start the fact is they weren't. I do think they want to make sure things work and work well, but they as a company have to make sure they squeeze every ounce out of the overwhelmed systems before they invest in whole new ones. If these types of fixes garners 10 more players on the same DB without it blowing up, then they are just being a smart company, and I'm sure more data bases boxes will be ordered when the time comes.