Vendor Malls 2.0

[Alamiester]

[Sir Blood]

Items of note:
- My mall if was at capacity has room for around 150 vendors... the 10k per vendor seems a little overpriced for larger malls. (unless there is a monthly price to rent the stool, and the mall gets at least 1/2 then by all means!!!) Make a maximum price or just leave the cost of the world teleporter the same that is currently is. The world teleporter is and always has been a luxury item, I suggest leaving it be.

- The more vendors you get packed into a mall, the much higher the chance of the vendors being forgotten about. Not uncommon for players to stop playing. The Gump MUST show last login date of account (at least up to 30 days)!

* Vendors by default should allow the property owner to always be allowed to move them. This way higher performing vendors can be moved to prime location inside the mall and less performing vendors can be moved as well.

* The idea of the vendor contract is outdated - why not have a vendor stool.
- Once placed any player can double click on it and place a vendor. Allow an option for disabling this feature and have 'offer to player'
- Have a base up front cost for the stool to be 10k and the mall gets at least 1/2 of that.

- Offer some sort of incentive for players to keep their vendors freshly stocked. For instance vendors restocked less than 7 days get free vendor listing on the searchable vendor site.

- Offer some sort of incentive for players to have more than 1 vendor at a mall. 1 vendor might be animals, another weapons another potion kegs etc
* FOR THE LOVE OF ODIN - potion kegs and other*heavy* items should have a weight of 1 stone when in a vendor!

- Items that don't sell - I often lower my price on an item to help them sell. If you are going to penalize players for pulling items out of the vendor you MUST allow them to reprice them IN the vendor. I often get pm's from players offering a lower price. I just lower the price and drop it back into the vendor. (this happens a lot to anyone that has a lot of stuff on vendors)

- There are a lot of slow moving items - Weapons - jewelry. If you want to keep items in vendors fresh, make the return to bank box ONLY applicable to TC and MZ vendors. This would offer incentive for players to list slower moving items in Player Malls.

- I know a lot of players drop items in their vendor for exuberant prices in TC. Possibly for any item over 100,000 gold you could have a 10% of value deposit required. At the same time, you NEED to allow for any item to be listed for -0- as a display. A suggestion for a display item, it must be tied to a bag, when the contents of the bag reach -0- gold/ed etc. the display item now goes on sale for a predetermined price. Players often have bags inside of bags so it must look at sale $$$

[+Requiem]

- My mall if was at capacity has room for around 150 vendors... the 10k per vendor seems a little overpriced for larger malls. (unless there is a monthly price to rent the stool, and the mall gets at least 1/2 then by all means!!!) Make a maximum price or just leave the cost of the world teleporter the same that is currently is. The world teleporter is and always has been a luxury item, I suggest leaving it be.

There should be a cost/benefit when adding new vendors. The more vendors in an area the more laggy too. So you want to be "big enough", without being "too big". That's 100% up to you all to decide. Also, the house owner/vendor mall owner can set rental prices for vendors. Most offer "free" spots now, and they would be free to after the change as well. However, depending where we take money from for the "vendor mall management fund", they might lose out on 'free' spots. This is yet to be determined.

ie: If we take 20% of stool gold, and put it towards the management fund, you'd get 0 for a free spot.
I was thinking some from the stools, and some from the sales tax. Also, by stool i previously meant vendor spot.
I'm not 100% sure stools would work, but understand I'm using stool/vendor spot interchangeably.

- The more vendors you get packed into a mall, the much higher the chance of the vendors being forgotten about. Not uncommon for players to stop playing. The Gump MUST show last login date of account (at least up to 30 days)!

Agreed. Probably easier to list any inactive for more than a week, or month. Perhaps a toggle between the two.

Vendors by default should allow the property owner to always be allowed to move them. This way higher performing vendors can be moved to prime location inside the mall and less performing vendors can be moved as well.

Agreed. I think the default 'contract' time should also be changed to 1 week.

* The idea of the vendor contract is outdated - why not have a vendor stool.
- Once placed any player can double click on it and place a vendor. Allow an option for disabling this feature and have 'offer to player'
- Have a base up front cost for the stool to be 10k and the mall gets at least 1/2 of that.

This is a possibility. However, any funds re-directed to the mall would be strictly for the mall. This isn't a feature for guild malls managers to get
rich off other peoples work. This is where the perks I mentioned in my opening post come in. This money would be used to purchase them.
I'm not opposed to taking some from the stools, and some from the actual vendor sales. Needs to be discussed more.

- Offer some sort of incentive for players to keep their vendors freshly stocked. For instance vendors restocked less than 7 days get free vendor listing on the searchable vendor site.

I don't want to get into the micromanagement game. This is for the vendor mall owners to do. They will be able to not renew a contract, or potentially move a vendor. I'm not 100% certain on
moving the vendor though, as it could potentially be abused.

- Offer some sort of incentive for players to have more than 1 vendor at a mall. 1 vendor might be animals, another weapons another potion kegs etc

Again, this would be up to the individual running the vendor mall in question.

* FOR THE LOVE OF ODIN - potion kegs and other*heavy* items should have a weight of 1 stone when in a vendor!

I did suggest removing weight limits, and going strictly by item limits, with a hard cap of 300 items. (this might be too much... what do you think)?

- Items that don't sell - I often lower my price on an item to help them sell. If you are going to penalize players for pulling items out of the vendor you MUST allow them to reprice them IN the vendor. I often get pm's from players offering a lower price. I just lower the price and drop it back into the vendor. (this happens a lot to anyone that has a lot of stuff on vendors)

This doesn't really fit with my definition of what a vendor should be used for, but i'm open to discussing it. If we're lowering the fees by a lot (100,000 gold vs 360,000 gold for a 1mil item over 2 months in my example) I don't see an issue with charging people. You're saving a lot of money in other places with this proposed change, that I feel your complaint isn't justified. It goes back to what I think a vendor should be, and that is a place to sell your items, for a certain price. There's other options if you want to negotiate, or haggle. If you can convince me, I'd be open to allowing this, as long as it doesn't involve avoiding the tax all together. (Note convincing me doesn't necessarily mean convincing the other staff who can still vote against it).

- There are a lot of slow moving items - Weapons - jewelry. If you want to keep items in vendors fresh, make the return to bank box ONLY applicable to TC and MZ vendors. This would offer incentive for players to list slower moving items in Player Malls.

My resoning behind the 2 month removal (subject to tweaking) is to help prevent people from intentionally overpricing an item, to see if it sells, then letting it sit there indefinitely. This is harmful to the economy, and doesn't do anybody any good. If there is a fee, that must 100% be paid, it deters you from overpricing an item, because you're going to lose money. If the item can just sit on a vendor forever with no daily fee, there is no consequence. I think that a consequence keeps people honest. As mentioned above, I am willing to listen, if you can convince me of why this would be a good thing.

That being said, I wouldn't mind a feature where you could reprice the item without penalty for ~30 minutes. This would allow for any typos, without harming the integrity of the system overall.

- I know a lot of players drop items in their vendor for exuberant prices in TC. Possibly for any item over 100,000 gold you could have a 10% of value deposit required. At the same time, you NEED to allow for any item to be listed for -0- as a display. A suggestion for a display item, it must be tied to a bag, when the contents of the bag reach -0- gold/ed etc. the display item now goes on sale for a predetermined price. Players often have bags inside of bags so it must look at sale $$$

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That's what the fee(s) are intended to provide, although at the end of the sale rather than the beginning. The purpose (in my opinion) of the vendor is to make money for the player. If we require a fee up-front, I think that is counter-productive. I'm not opposed to it, I just think it fits better at the end.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by the last part of what you said...

So theres a bag.. and it has some item in it for... X gold... when someone buys that item, the display item goes on sale for Y gold?

Are you just wanting a way to sell the display item, directly from the vendor?

[Alamiester]

basically they pay a few on what it sells for. doesnt matter the price, they pay a tax. for selling it in their state. sales tax
now add in tc tax, property tax, britian tax, etc, etc. hmmm tc isnt so free anymore is it, lol. sounds redunciluse to me, how it is now. not so bad, since everyone else is paying it.

[+Requiem]

basically they pay a few on what it sells for. doesnt matter the price, they pay a tax. for selling it in their state. sales tax
now add in tc tax, property tax, britian tax, etc, etc. hmmm tc isnt so free anymore is it, lol. sounds redunciluse to me, how it is now. not so bad, since everyone else is paying it.

Right now, stools in TC are around 20k a week. It has no daily fee. And I think a fee when an item sells of 3%.
Right now, outside TC - no stool fee, daily fee of .6% (I think).
Teleporter costs 300k per week now, with the cost going up 10% a week for renewal(if you keep your spot).

TC vendors have a HUGE advantage for anything that sit's for any length of time, because they are paying nothing to keep it on the vendor.

Proposed way: stool 10k, no daily fee, slightly larger fee on sale/removal of item, - make non-TC vendors competitive by
removing daily fee, and adding in slightly larger fee on sale/removal of item, normalizing cost of world teleporters by number of vendors in mall * 10k / week (so the stools would be the same in all locations)

So if you list an item for 1 million, right now, outside of TC, You're paying 6000 gold per day it sits on your vendor. I don't know the average number of days an item sits on a vendor, but for the sake of argument, lets say 7.

TC now way, you would pay 0 for 7 days, and I think 30,000 on sale.
Standard vendor (non tc way currently) you would pay 56,000 gold, plus another 6000 a day until it sold, was removed.
Proposed way, you would pay 0 for 7 days.
If you removed it, you would pay lets say 2% (made up number, not yet determined) 20,000.
If it sold, you would receive 1,000,000 less 5% (made up number, not yet determined) 1m - 50,000 = 950,000
If it didn't sell in 60 days, it would get sent back to your bank, and you would be charged 20,000.

If we revisit those numbers at day 59 (day before it gets sent back to your bank)
You would have paid 354,000 gold in daily vendor fees under the current non-tc system
TC system would still be 0
Proposed would still be 0
if you removed it (or it got sent to your bank tomorrow) you'd pay (the same proposed %) 20,000 listing fee
if it sold, you would receive 1m less 5% (made up number, not yet determined) 1m - 50,000 = 950,000

Even if the proposed sales tax was as high as 10%, 100,000 is still WAY WAY less than the current daily fee which
added up to 354,000. I understand some things will sell quickly, and you'll pay a bit more. That's why the numbers
need to make sense I think balancing it around it taking 1 week (7 days) to sell an average item is more than fair.


*****RED FLAG just noticed *****
Would need to be a way to actually charge someone with a balance that couldn't afford the fee
Maybe put the item in a unique location, that required them to pay the fee to get it out.
Unique by player Secured Lockbox - similar to a players bank? with just a gump, and cost to retrieve
item (or bag of all items). This could also work with a vendor drop.

Thoughts?

[Athena Tenebris]

I am not sure why there needs to be a de-listing fee for an item that doesn't sell.

I am ok with a listing fee; that makes perfect sense. Consignment shops may or may not charge you a listing fee; or they take a portion if and when the item sells. They do NOT charge you to remove the item from the shop.

I do prefer just a listing fee; certain percentage of listing fee.

If you are worried about someone selling it outside the vendor after for a lower price; then put a 5 day account bound time on it; though I do not agree with this either; since we would already pay the listing fee.

If we listed it for a high price; we paid a higher listing fee. So what if someone decides to remove it after and private sale it? They already paid a fee. Why hit someone twice?

Trying to use vendors as a gold sink is not a good approach.

The economy is never going to really be what you would want it too. I do not think its possible. Even if you reset everyones gold to 0. You would have zillionaires in a couple weeks again I am sure


Anyways; just my thoughts.

[Animol]

I honestly don't understand this fixation on the goldsink aspect of vendors. Listing fees, delisting fees, locking/bounding items, preventing players from doing this or that... Why complicate vendor mechanics so much? This is UO, not Vendor Manager 2018. The original idea behind vendor revamp was to simply make them more affordable outside of TC but now all I see is "how do we make sure players will not be able to avoid fees/taxes" like it was the biggest issue ever. There are better, player-friendly ways of removing gold from the shard (raffles, auctions, ED room, deco room).

[+Requiem]

If you are worried about someone selling it outside the vendor after for a lower price; then put a 5 day account bound time on it; though I do not agree with this either; since we would already pay the listing fee.

If we listed it for a high price; we paid a higher listing fee. So what if someone decides to remove it after and private sale it? They already paid a fee. Why hit someone twice?

You don't pay the fee until the item is removed, or sold. So if someone removed it, they would get around the listing fee, which is what is happening currently, and the reasoning behind the fee in the first place.

I honestly don't understand this fixation on the goldsink aspect of vendors. Listing fees, delisting fees, locking/bounding items, preventing players from doing this or that... Why complicate vendor mechanics so much? This is UO, not Vendor Manager 2018. The original idea behind vendor revamp was to simply make them more affordable outside of TC but now all I see is "how do we make sure players will not be able to avoid fees/taxes" like it was the biggest issue ever. There are better, player-friendly ways of removing gold from the shard (raffles, auctions, ED room, deco room).

Vendors have always been a gold sink. While we are removing some aspect of it (daily fee), I'd like to move a portion of it to these 1 time fees, which are overall less than the daily fee was.

The original idea behind the change was to allow high-end items to be sold without super hefty daily fees. Since that didn't work as intended, and led us to where we are now, this is attempting to fix that.

I went a step further, by trying to come up with new content (vendor mall manager), which I'm not sure anyone likes or dislikes, since everyone seems focused on these fees, which I am trying to lessen overall, to make all vendors more competitive with no daily fee at TC.

Am I looking too deeply into this? Would a much easier solution be to just revert vendors to the old daily fee, and give up my idea of having high value items being sold on vendors?

[Animol]

I went a step further, by trying to come up with new content (vendor mall manager), which I'm not sure anyone likes or dislikes

There's a few of us that were giving you ideas in chat not long ago so yeah, at least some people like it

since everyone seems focused on these fees

Are you surprised? There's way more people interested in having a vendor or two than those wanting to run a whole mall.

Am I looking too deeply into this? Would a much easier solution be to just revert vendors to the old daily fee, and give up my idea of having high value items being sold on vendors?

Remove the daily fee, switch all vendors to sale tax and see how it pans out before applying any funky tax-evasion-prevention features. They might as well not be necessary on the more competitive market.

[Onoquoy]

As a Vendor mall operator i am very interested in the ideas of changes and developments. I posted in the first version of this, again i am here and would be very interested in helping test out things and bouncing ideas with people .

[daragincajun]

well i only disagree with the fact about overpricing and item like on my vendor i put a empty DNA next to the pack that sells DNA items, IF we can do that there should be an option to put that item as a not for sell like backpack so theres no doubt of whats in the pack. ive seen so many hours of mine searching backpacks with name and it doesnt even match whats in them pls add an option to add display items Not For Sale so that we dont have to make it 1000% more then its worth so players wont buy the display item

[Devlin]

Right now, outside TC - no stool fee, daily fee of .6% (I think).
Thoughts?

This is correct. 6000 gold per 1,000,000 daily (0.6%), or 42k weekly (4.2%). I'll try to respond in depth later on when work isn't quite as busy, just wanted to confirm that (you mentioned fees being 6% and making the listing fees/sales tax total 10-12%, which seems very high.)

<3

[Sir Blood]

- Items that don't sell - I often lower my price on an item to help them sell. If you are going to penalize players for pulling items out of the vendor you MUST allow them to reprice them IN the vendor. I often get pm's from players offering a lower price. I just lower the price and drop it back into the vendor. (this happens a lot to anyone that has a lot of stuff on vendors)

This doesn't really fit with my definition of what a vendor should be used for, but i'm open to discussing it. If we're lowering the fees by a lot (100,000 gold vs 360,000 gold for a 1mil item over 2 months in my example) I don't see an issue with charging people. You're saving a lot of money in other places with this proposed change, that I feel your complaint isn't justified. It goes back to what I think a vendor should be, and that is a place to sell your items, for a certain price. There's other options if you want to negotiate, or haggle. If you can convince me, I'd be open to allowing this, as long as it doesn't involve avoiding the tax all together. (Note convincing me doesn't necessarily mean convincing the other staff who can still vote against it).

If you go the sales tax method then there would be no real need to implement a vendor repricing script. IF there is a listing fee when you drop an item into the vendor then you would want to allow items to be repriced while inside the vendor. The whole concept behind a player driven supply/demand pricing market is prices are NEGOTIABLE and vendors are there to sell goods in the players absence.

IF there is a listing charge AND a tax, the ability to reprice an item will encourage players NOT to attempt to circumvent paying tax. If I am selling 5 high quality weapons and someone wants to buy all of them they deserve some sort of bulk purchase discount.

IMHO - the whole listing fee in an attempt to curb players from doing something is someone trying to find fault in a system that is working exactly as it was intended to! If you are dead set on trying to intervene I would suggest having an invisible timer that players can not see. If the item is transferred to another account in any conceivable way while that counter is still active they pay tax based on the highest price that item was listed at on their vendor for the past 7 days

- I know a lot of players drop items in their vendor for exuberant prices in TC. Possibly for any item over 100,000 gold you could have a 10% of value deposit required. At the same time, you NEED to allow for any item to be listed for -0- as a display. A suggestion for a display item, it must be tied to a bag, when the contents of the bag reach -0- gold/ed etc. the display item now goes on sale for a predetermined price. Players often have bags inside of bags so it must look at sale $$$

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by the last part of what you said...

So theres a bag.. and it has some item in it for... X gold... when someone buys that item, the display item goes on sale for Y gold?

Are you just wanting a way to sell the display item, directly from the vendor?

I am wishing for the ability to make ANY item a display item. If you have a bag full of repair deeds, the display item allows players to easily see what is inside the bag.

I have lost track of the number of times players take the display item so the bag sits there without an easy way to see what is inside it. Display items make it a lot easier to see what a vendor has inside the 50 billion bags players always toss in there!

Understandably a lot of players would list an expensive item as a display item and have description "pm an offer" this could in theory circumvent the taxing rules... Having a display item tied to a bag would prevent people from a possible tax evasion exploit.

- Offer some sort of incentive for players to keep their vendors freshly stocked. For instance vendors restocked less than 7 days get free vendor listing on the searchable vendor site.

I don't want to get into the micromanagement game. This is for the vendor mall owners to do. They will be able to not renew a contract, or potentially move a vendor. I'm not 100% certain on
moving the vendor though, as it could potentially be abused.

The online vendor listing site is a game changer for finding goods listed on a vendor. It would be glorious if it was available for all vendors! I was suggesting a straight forward incentive for all players to keep their vendors freshly stocked. Would also provide a penalty for those who don't keep their vendors freshly stocked (no restock = no online listing).

-------------------------------------

- Players often have items tossed into a bag, for instance repair deeds - spellbooks - runebooks - potion kegs. Would it be possible for the 30 day/60 day or whatever timer count for the last sold from the container? I may very well have 200-300 repair deeds for free on my vendor and have no clue when I placed the last one in there. I just fill it up when it is low. It is possible for this to overflow bank boxes!

- For player vendor malls, you have to be careful how you implement the cost-reward benefit. Newer players don't usually have 'high end' equipment for sale, thus you might be removing new players ability to compete at all!

- TC/MZ vendors with -0- daily fees totally revamped vendors! If you bring back daily fees it will not take long to become a ghost town again. If you force daily fees there players will go back to the tried and true method of locking everything down in their house and offering goods for sale that way. *which will circumvent any taxes you try to get*

I understand taxes are a way to bleed gold out of the game to reduce inflation. Just implement a sales tax of whatever the [exex commission currently is. That way BOTH buyer and seller forfeit taxes.

[Yoda]

this has been an entertaining read, honestly what happened is the daily removal fee created a demand for vendors and an imbalance. since so much was said, Id say quite handily there is a great many people giving great advice to go with your thoughts.

but this comment stands out and wins the whole business for me

+Requiem wrote:
Am I looking too deeply into this? Would a much easier solution be to just revert vendors to the old daily fee, and give up my idea of having high value items being sold on vendors?

Remove the daily fee, switch all vendors to sale tax and see how it pans out before applying any funky tax-evasion-prevention features. They might as well not be necessary on the more competitive market.

this I would agree with, these problem 3% fee evading direct sellers were a huge number of players? would they still be in a market rebalanced to allow them to keep their insanity pricing localized to their house (WHICH IS FINE ITS CALLED UO)

I think what I am seeing that is awesome is a willingness to listen from the staff now
that was missing for a long time, the tone has changed
.
this is great, now can we ditch the overly rule oriented prepare for how awful players are tone that went along with the "era" and get back to the gaming and fun.

anyhoo the complexity of the thread.. this is earned LOL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXw7LYWNi5E

[Alamiester]

as far as high value items, i tried putting some of those on my mz vendor. but i removed them as soon as i saw how much gold a day it was costing. if i do have a high value item i want to sell, i prefer the more direct aproach for selling it. i make a few announcments on world chat. then i can usually sell it right away, usually not for what im asking but in the end it saves everyone time and gold.

which is kinda a way around all these taxes and fees that are being brought up. but that wouldnt be any different then buying used stuff off of cragslist or other for sale apps. that stuff doesnt get taxed when you buy used.

i dont think ive ever sold a high end item on my vendor. i make more gold selling cheap stuff, because the daily fee doesnt eat up all the profits. ive never had a tc vendor so i cant account for the costs incurred there, lol