Considerations Regarding Vendor Change

[heyyo]

I really liked being able to search by price. It's like real world economics, but I guess UO isn't the real world so you have to shop like they did in the old days.

This will be more time consuming, and overall I believe less items will be sold. More taxes though. More items on vendor for longer periods of times = a higher daily charge on average, and the additional fee to be listed on the vendor site. Time will tell if this goldsink will have the intended result I suppose.

[alchemyjim]

nyx i understand what you are saying. it should not matter if they list it but no big deal. i will announce pricing and what i sell old school advertising. in my allowed ad 1 per half hour.
I would appreciate if you could confirm what i was saying on price all i have seen on 5000 is what above poster said. These changes have closed serps hold emptied trinsic but i guess it is ok as long as it fills tc. As stated other post these changes are going to kill home sales or malls.
when i started tc was 6000 gold a seat when my uncle died i was gone awhile not sure of coming back. I did eventually but even putting something in vendor once a week it was moved to dead vendor area then it was 50000 big increase.
earlier in summer I suggested lowering price. it was declined. I agree we need gold sinks that is what tables in trinsic are for also the auctions.It should not be what vendors are. this change will eliminate new players starting vendors.

even in old days zento was not frequented much and always had empties. if you moved vendors from zento and placed them in tc ,tc might be full. and zento could go the way the shops of excelsior did.

[+Nyx]

When the staff put something in place to stop something from happening, and then a player finds a way to continue doing it knowing full well we don't intend for it to be allowed any longer, that is exploiting. If I find vendors doing this, I will remove the items they listed the price in the description for and put them in the player's bank. They'll have to re-list the item and if they continued, then we'd revoke their privilege of listing on the site at all, or something.

Vendor malls existed en masse before the vendors.uoex.net site. The site is essentially a luxury service provided by Temoc and the staff, it's something above and beyond regular OSI and other free shards, like many other things we have here. It isn't going to close all the vendor malls unless all the vendor mall owners decide to close because they're irritated at not getting their mall listed for free. Yes, it's possible a lot of players will move their vendors to TC/MZ in the next couple months. But there are limited spots there, and many more player-run vendors than the two areas can hold.

Pricing is entirely up to Colibri. The number of 5k from his announcement is, at the moment, what he plans to go with. When he's decided on all of that for 100%, I'm sure he'll make effort to announce it.

[Kevan]

Personal opinion: I don't have an issue with removing the pricing from vendors.uoex.net or encouraging players to get a vendor in TC or MZ if that's the GM's intention. However, as a person with limited playtime I can assure you that seasoned vets with low prices and low margins due to scripting and with prime TC real estate are going to get the vast majority of my business. Players not on vendors.uoex.net will get none. I don't find searching through dozens of items on dozens of vendors to be remotely interesting or fun. I hope the GMs' ultimate intention isn't to promote vendor diving because most players don't enjoy it and would rather spend their time doing enjoyable activities. Exceptions exist obviously, just as some people buy from yard sales instead of amazon.com.

I agree with other posters that this could absolutely destroy young players' sales opportunities. If they aren't on the site or have primo real estate they're going to face extraordinary challenges in getting anything sold.

And on a final note: just because something worked in the past doesn't make it better or even good. If that we're the case, progress would cease to exist.

[Unbeliever]

And on a final note: just because something worked in the past doesn't make it better or even good. If that we're the case, progress would cease to exist.

It's not really that advertising vendors in chat or the market forum, recalling/running to and from those vendors, and maintaining runebooks to your favorites is that big a deal. It was the only way I ever knew how to do it up until I joined this server over four months ago. I think the question is how some people trying to do business that way will work out when it's in competition with the more modern and easy way. I'm no oracle (several other threads on the forum prove that conclusively) so I won't make a prediction. I guess the best thing to do is wait and see, as with the new champion spawn system.

[alchemyjim]

nyx i agree with you what i said i am leaning towards not listing items in britain just in tc and in tc there will be a book stating all same items at my brit store. I have always had brit and tc no reason they cant work hand and hand. time will tell if this kills off player malls i know 3 it already has(well really 2.5) trinsic not dead yet. tc last i counted still had 24 chairs available about double that many in zento.
. my shop will be there i do not worry about it. I know one shop folded because teleporter price doubled. something i pay no complaint but something another could not.

[Omeni]

No taxation without representation.........
Didn't a situation like this pop up somewhere in the world about 230 years ago?
I don't even have any vendors, and i think the staff do a great job, but a question I would like to ask, is there any player input into these kinds of things? like a player council or something along those lines? Its not my intention to kick the hornets nest here.

[Kevan]

It's not really that advertising vendors in chat or the market forum, recalling/running to and from those vendors, and maintaining runebooks to your favorites is that big a deal. It was the only way I ever knew how to do it up until I joined this server over four months ago. I think the question is how some people trying to do business that way will work out when it's in competition with the more modern and easy way. I'm no oracle (several other threads on the forum prove that conclusively) so I won't make a prediction. I guess the best thing to do is wait and see, as with the new champion spawn system.

In my case what you described above, with marking favorite shops: it won't happen. At least not very often. If what I want is in TC at a remotely reasonable price, I'll buy it. If not, I'll buy it off a vendor off the vendor site. I'm not going to go vendor diving at unlisted sites because it's a pointless, non-progressive, time-consuming, non-enjoyable activity. Often, the opportunity cost of money will also make it more expensive. If you save 10,000 gold by vendor diving your favorite locations but it costs you 10 minutes when you can earn 120,000 gold per hour then you've LOST gold.

[Mayar]

Hello all,
if I may add my 2gp - I don't think that prices shown on the vendors site, did any harm to the server economy. At least from my, very casual gamer, point of view.
For a person that can play rarely - I value my time (the only REAL resource invested in the game so far). Seeing prices on the site was was allowing me to save my time runнing here and there and directly go to the place with the lowest price of the item I need - thus having more time to PLAY and HAVE FUN respectively ...
One of the fellow players above mentioned that it is relatively all the same to him if a pet leash costs 6500 or 5000. If that is the case - no big deal - but I have seen items which prices were varying not in several percents but in hundreds - for a newbie like me it is not all the same if I can buy a item for 8000gp or for 40000+gp. And if I have to spent an hour or so circling around various vendors just to find something that I need and can afford in the same time - well that will eat preaty much all of my time for play in the evening ...
I am sure my opinion is not representing the situation of all players - but still I'd like to share it with you.
Having the ability to use http://vendors.uoex.net even without the prices is still a great tool, but it is very far from the convenience it was when the prices were visible.

[Yoda]

I think I will throw my 2 cents in wasn't going to but wow this has gotten heavy..

I pay for a world teleporter slot weekly and it gets JDI mall visible from the world teleporter.. to me thats more than enough

will I have the option turned on to be indexed by vendors.uoex.net probably not
do I think that will make a vast impact on my sales.. probably not..

the bottom line is this.. I have played on uo for many many years, and only in this last while have I been on a site with a vendor search such as this.. its a FIRST as in, never happened before.. did my sales suffer for it? no..

1. I can still use worldchat (without spamming beyond the limit) to market my vendors
2. people know what I sell generally and since I price fairly word of mouth occurs
3. I am in no mad hurry to sell my inventory its just an ancillary income..

overall people I think are making far too big a deal over this, and getting into a snit over nothing.. the listing fee is optional if you don't want to pay it.. turn the option off enjoy not paying it and do a little leg work marketing without the vendors site.. like you have done in UO for MOST of its lifecycle..

while I do agree the cost cannot be very high per day to list its still not worth this level of passion.. its change, change happens

as for the price removal I completely and totally support that, no good comes from having 1 stop comparison price cut shopping..

thanks guys and above all chill have fun its a game and remember.. this is an extra feature you USUALLY never had access to in the first place playing uo, and you survived without it for a long time.

Yoda

[Kevan]

Yoda,

I can't speak for anyone else, but I haven't purchased a single item from a vendor that I didn't first check on vendors.uoex.net since the day I started here, nearly 4 months ago.

I'm sure there are plenty of people just like me.

I think removing the prices on the vendor site to get rid of the cutthroat price wars would also manage to increase the value of TC by itself. I don't think a fee to be on the vendor site accomplishes anything meaningful and instead hurts the shard by taking a large part of the economy off the site and thus, out of reach for players who don't have the time or desire to go vendor diving.

If it were up to me, I'd remove the prices from the vendor site, and place a big, blatantly obvious direct teleporter to MZ in the middle of the TC vendor area. I'd also place a website stone to vendors.uoex.net in both locations. Then, I'd find the proper price point to charge vendors for using TC/MZ and the player housed vendors on the world teleporter to encourage people to use TC and MZ in addition to their own locations. But.. none of this is up to me, so we all have faith that the staff will figure out the best result eventually. They seem to get most things right so I have faith.

I wish they would discuss with the masses what their intentions are though. I'm sure they've discussed it at length with veteran players and whatnot, but that's only a very small sample of the population. While the vets have kept this shard going over the years, we can't discount the impact that the players who come and go affect the shard as well. It's important to keep them happy too. When I was looking for a shard to call home, the vendor site was a big draw for me, although not as large as the weapon leveling/relayering system which was the biggest for me. Paradise Found was the other shard I considered, but those two factors swayed me here. I probably still would have come without the vendor site, but it definitely helped make my choice a no-brainer.

[Melkor]

I doubt they discussed it with the Vets, it wasn't discussed with me that's for sure.

It seems that they want Vendors in TC and MZ again, so they are offering the free listing as an incentive. As for taking the price off, well, perhaps it is about price cutting, dunno. I would have liked to see the prices on there because it made it easy to price my items. Instead of undercutting, I just matched the lowest price listed.

While I liked the old system, all we can do is roll with the new system. To me the answer is clear, go get a TC or MZ spot before they are all gone.

[Gaara]

I think I will throw my 2 cents in wasn't going to but wow this has gotten heavy..

I pay for a world teleporter slot weekly and it gets JDI mall visible from the world teleporter.. to me thats more than enough

will I have the option turned on to be indexed by vendors.uoex.net probably not
do I think that will make a vast impact on my sales.. probably not..

the bottom line is this.. I have played on uo for many many years, and only in this last while have I been on a site with a vendor search such as this.. its a FIRST as in, never happened before.. did my sales suffer for it? no..

1. I can still use worldchat (without spamming beyond the limit) to market my vendors
2. people know what I sell generally and since I price fairly word of mouth occurs
3. I am in no mad hurry to sell my inventory its just an ancillary income..

overall people I think are making far too big a deal over this, and getting into a snit over nothing.. the listing fee is optional if you don't want to pay it.. turn the option off enjoy not paying it and do a little leg work marketing without the vendors site.. like you have done in UO for MOST of its lifecycle..

while I do agree the cost cannot be very high per day to list its still not worth this level of passion.. its change, change happens

as for the price removal I completely and totally support that, no good comes from having 1 stop comparison price cut shopping..

thanks guys and above all chill have fun its a game and remember.. this is an extra feature you USUALLY never had access to in the first place playing uo, and you survived without it for a long time.

Yoda

^ Couldn't agree more

[alchemyjim]

i agree change is change and if i understand right I will not pay a 5000 fee if i do not list. My shop is basic my customers know what I carry. Without price showing it just isn"t worth it. I am a klutz in typing. if you ever see 3250 in description on my keg please remove it that means that is one that was either grossly overpriced or underpriced. old vendors site an hour later i could see a keg mispriced for 30 million, like i had yesterday. Also I could check my stock and know what needed stocked.
It is what it is I do not sell high end items so my footprint is not huge on economy for next several months while one handed i will be doing mostly stocking. occasionally i sell travisty keys that is highest item i sell.

[+Colibri]

I've read through the thread, first a few things to note:

- The listing fee would be a minimum of "salary * factor", or the 5k. That means, if your vendor's salary is 300gp, the listing would be 5k. But if your vendor's salary is 12k, then the listing would be 12k (and not 5k+12k=17k).
- Like I've read, this doesn't make having a vendor impossible. You can still advertise your shop in chat (2x per hour under current rules), or I remember how shop owners used to keep a pet in the housegates area, signaling where the shop is and to attract customers. It's an advertising feature, in a way quite a cheap one (let's say at the 5k currently-intended-price, that's 35k per week, vs 200k+increments to have the teleporter shop... however not everyone knows of the vendor site, so the teleporter shop is still better advertising - and more expensive too).
- The listing fee would be daily.
- I've even heard that the site should be taken down, which would put things back to how it was, but I'm trying to figure out a way to incorporate it while not having too much of a "negative" impact.
- As far as prices being listed, I don't think they'll be added back... since although now you can find items, you still need to find the best price, if you so chose, or can even go hunt for non-listed vendors for even cheaper prices.
- Searching through vendors, even without the shops on the teleporter or website listing, is a part of the game. And things shouldn't be too easy - although by that logic ExEx is kinda in that alley, but at least it supports just a relatively narrow range of items.

For the future:

- I have prepared a cool new functionality that will be available only in TC & MZ, thus making those areas more appealing, which could offset the listing price (thinking a factor 0.5, and the minimum of 2-3k).
- I am also considering a sort of different pricing for TC vendors, where the rent would be higher, but the daily salary would be lower, thus making it appealing for players who sell high price items.
- There might be a discount for listing fee for vendors which are in shops, so that if you have just one vendor at home it's still cheaper to pay the daily listing fee instead of a complete shop telepad rental. Though if this is the case, the shop rental could depend on how many vendors are in that house.
- Or perhaps it's just that with the introduction of the shops on teleporter, the days of TC and MZ are history... in which case, MZ would be dismantled, and and perhaps TC rentals would be set to a more competitive price.

Prices will gradually go up (not sure if to the 100% factor & 5k minimum) during january, then in end of february we'll see how things are. If TC & MZ are approximately the same as before, then seems like this isnt the solution.