Vendor system revamp

[PaPa]

qbf wrote: No way! No a thousand times. It is already a lag centre and takes ages to locate a vendor as it is. The seats come up frequently enough as it is for this server size. If our population doubled you could add another row.

well i dont see a lag at all you need a better internet speed.

[Matrix]

Server vendor system perfect working, if player leaves or stop playing and stop restocking tc vendor falling some time later and everybody can claim stool

otherwise many vendor hall avaible actually half of makato zento stools empty and if enough money in vendor spot forever yours

i remember many player sold vendor spot in tc, recently moulke sold her vendor (with dismiss options), i ask and she said me 300ed for vendor dismiss

after fall or dismiss vendor you must wait 30min - 4hours for claim, and everyone can claim while action that is really fair and equality for everybody

Dot.

[Wil]

The main Value of TC is that I can put something for dozens of items on sale for 2 million and it sits there for 4 months and then sells when the right buyer comes along.

This is why a lot of the stuff sitting in chests in my house isn't sitting on a vendor available for someone to buy. I have a lot of low-demand pets I sell only by request because I simply can't afford to keep them available for sale.

being able to have a vendor in my home like at TC would be nice as it would give people a reason to go to some of our amazing homes here...

Agreed. Putting the advantageously priced vendors at an advantageous location doubles-down on the unfairness. The adjustment from the old abandonment of TC swung the pendulum too far in the other direction.

[Johnny Warren]

well i dont see a lag at all you need a better internet speed.

I live in Australia... there's no such thing. Our govt does not believe in the internet here...

[AcidBern]

So I must put my 2 cents in on this matter. It is something that has caused me quite a bit of frustration for a while now. I think TC killed the Player Vendor Shop. So as most of you know, i've been doing Jewelry for years. When I had a TC vendor, there were times I had 300+ pieces stocked on my vendor. Jewelry sells, but it sells slow, and I price 8STR/8DEX pieces starting at 600k. There's a whole set price system. The problem is, the daily fees on regular vendors to hold that quantity of items at those prices defeats the purpose. I would end up losing money. In TC, I was only charged per transaction which works just like tax in the real world. In order to continue my UOEX Business after i lost the TC Vendor due to a break, I built a player shop but have to put items on display and try to direct people to the displays, rather than the few little vendors I have that don't really carry much.

So my point is, the pricing structure of TC has KILLED the player shop. I know it takes coding, and testing and so on to change a system like that, but I would really like to see some major across the board changes.

Thanks for listening =)

[Entora]

qbf wrote: No way! No a thousand times. It is already a lag centre and takes ages to locate a vendor as it is. The seats come up frequently enough as it is for this server size. If our population doubled you could add another row.

well i dont see a lag at all you need a better internet speed.

Ouch

[Silent]

Hey guys, I'm just going to leave you here with these thoughts:

This is an old post which lead to the current state we are in this server's trading:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=12316

Are things really going how we planned?

* Vendors should be profitable. Taxing everything, and/or charging (too much) for vendors is I think counter-productive in many (not all) cases. Low end item's don't make a lot of profit, since the market is newbies who don't have a lot to spend anyways.
* Vendors should be able to sell low end, and high end items, without extraordinary fees either way.
* If we enforce a fee that is considered “too high”, people will go back to using display tables.
* If we don't force a fee, people exploit the system to avoid paying, or overprice items with “PM offer”
* We could collect a fee up-front, but then it requires people to have money, which goes against why you're selling in the first place. Also hurts competition. (favors vets)
* Collecting a fee at the end makes more sense, but restricting players from exploiting by just removing that item, and selling it themselves... (could also lead to more people going back to table selling). (This can also hurt competition)
* Do we allow re-pricing at no-cost? Only within a certain amount? +- 5% free reprice, more than 5% some repricing fee? People could still just mark down 5%, then another 5% to get around it also....
* Non TC vendors need to be able to compete with TC vendors. No daily fee on one negates competition, and is unfair.
* TC should have unique qualities to keep people interested in it (ED/Elven Notes/Tokens as valid currency)
* If a player removes a vendor in TC/MZ, they should not be able to replace it for a certain time limit. (20 hours?)
* If a vendor is dropped for lack of payment, they should not be able to place a new vendor for a certain time limit.
* Clarification for where the money comes from upon renewals. (bank? exex? vendor itself?)
* Vendors should not be commodities to sell to one another.
* Maybe an auction system for TC vendor spots. Players bid on a vendor spot, then get it for X days, then a new auction.

- Requiem notes.

We are using display items, we are using forum and world chat announcements , we have a dead trading system outside of TC we have player vendor town barely making it, newbs don't have a friendly trading system, crafting and selling is a money sink outside of TC, and most recently auctions everywhere.

A no pvp shard should be more trader friendly than the current situation. Seeing TC has the titan hammer of trading is not how this should be. TC should be about selling endgame high priced gear and the remaining areas should be allowed to have many items of all ranges free of the current taxes so that they could sit for many weeks and allow all players to have fun being traders and not barely making it or losing money.

I going to leave a few suggestions that during my years here I believe they would improve the game. Overall I am not really interested in further discussing this since there are many selfish reasoning always going on here.

-TC should be destroyed (yep sry).

-Creation of a real trading centre in e.g. green acres:
Built into server logs which would require a patch on client files, and with more space. This would reduce lag for those who find it and have the centre for high priced objects from weapons to artifacts to deco. (players could even be a part of this remodelling through a contest I believe many would love being involved in something that stays for long)
Have the advantage of ED and other currency selling to promote large transactions and have the normal tax system on purchases.
Auction area could also be built in this place, I again recommend it to be built into the server files.

-The rest of the world should have fixed weekly fees and taxations on transactions. Allowing guilds to build back their markets and reduce all the parallel market system.

-Newbie spawn should have a proper area for them. Spawning in the middle of fully endgame geared players with all vendors selling heavy priced stuff is not the ideal area of spawning. It is barely attractive since players spawn with what? like 5k?
(an area with books of info, portals to main newbie areas and proper explanation on things)

For the staff: I know there is a great work still to be done on the trading system, the current changes are only suitable for a certain player base and for this shard to thrive it must have a wide range of options. Any level player should have a chance on the vending system even the newbie guy who crafts armour should be able to keep a shop. Since players don't lose their gear here it's very difficult to have a demand for items however, those low to mid traders are an important part of the economy since they allow newb to mid game players to have a shot in making money out of the monster bashing.
If you need any help with anything you can easily find me

I truly hope to see this system over to have traders flourishing once again and those items off the chests!

Sorry for the long post, no potato.

[Muolke]

While I don't agree that TC should be destroyed I certainly see your point of view.

I think selling low cost items on vendors is a complete waste of time because you don't make any money on it.

What is the solution? I say leave TC as it is and create a duplicate of TC for new player low cost items. Literally the same thing as TC, but have new players spawn there and call it something like "Player Vendors Hall". Get rid of the weekly and daily fees and only have a 3% fee on any items sold. Cap the price of any item listed on these vendors to 25,000 gold. Limit it to where any player can only have 1 vendor in this area as well.

I think this would take care of at least some of the issues with low end items on player vendors.

[Atienne Navarre]

I dont think that TC really needs to be destroyed. However, I do think that the server should be fair across all the areas and that means that all the vendors should be the same. There is no reason other than greed to have different kinds of vendors and vendor fees. All vendors on the server should be like the TC vendors and truly allow for fair unbiased competition. TCs only advantage should be that it has such easy access, the vendors should not be special and when others say they should the are speaking based off their own greed and want to reduce competition on yet another market that is easier for a vet to exploit.

Moving all the vendors over to the same system used in TC would allow for vendors all over the shard to be stocked with tons of items and a wide range of prices on the items. Making all vendors friendly for newbies, mid-lvl players, and vets. Sometimes that amount of artificial barriers on this server kills me and they hold back a lot of new players.

[acolyte]

The people who don't want any change from the current system are the ones who already have TC vendors, so they profit the most from this and they want to keep it that way. The system certainly works fine for you if you have exclusive access to something that the majority of other people don't. Better to keep your advantages and not allow any competition.

I think it's a case of the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction. In the past, you needed to give items a price you would expect them to for sell soon due to the daily fees on every vendor and TC vendors were not special. Now there is a huge disparity between TC and regular vendors because of the percentage based fees that other vendors have. TC vendors got a huge buff (no daily percentage based fees) while the other vendors were not changed.

Personally I don't think the problem is that TC vendors are too good, but other vendors are simply bad for selling expensive items. This locks out people who don't have TC vendors (read: newer and mid-level players) from selling expensive items.

Yes it's possible to sell anything on the forums or global chat, but the vast majority of items are sold through vendors.

This is how it works right now:

A newer player lucks out in the gauntlet and gets an SOT, he wants to sell it so he can buy other things he needs. He can't put it on his non TC vendor at the market price because of the daily fee so he is inclined to sell it for a significantly cheaper price. Someone with a TC vendor buys it, then marks it up by 25% and puts it on his TC vendor with no daily fee. The prices are artificially raised here. This wasn't so extreme in the past because of the daily fee, but now it's possible because of the TC vendor buff. Maybe these types of things still happened before the buff, but it was to a much lesser extent. It's a flaw in the system that benefits veteran people who aren't short of gold, and it makes it more difficult for the mid-level and newer players that do need help.

There is *absolutely* nothing wrong individual people with buying something to resell it for a higher price. However, the vendor system right now massively benefits those people, and they are not mid level and newer players.

[AcidBern]

Everything you said was absolutely correct. And very well saod!

[Charon]

*Grabs Cavorting club*
*Kills wild horse*
*Beats Horse with club*

[Wil]

Personally I don't think the problem is that TC vendors are too good, but other vendors are simply bad for selling expensive items.

+1

I like the rest of what you said too, but this is right on the money.

[Sinfoo]

Yes - Demolish the TC.

The beauty of demolishing the Town Center is it can be resurrected with something bigger and better. I avoid the TC and I see a lot of newbie do as well. My reason is because it's loaded with TC Campers and, cramped and bit over whelming. If the Town Center was rebuilt bigger and had better purpose with benefits, then it should be. It's all part of the UO experience and if we could make a change to enhance that. Why not!?

Vendors - Oh the vendors! Even with the original UO. The vendor system is horrid. The TC Vendors do not make this system better. The main issues are Over Priced items and Searching Items. Going from one vendor to the next and going through the mound of items or endless empty bag is such a waste of time. The same item from one vendor to the next in this game is ridiculous. This is because people make their prices rather than a standard pricing system. So this means, I need to search a lot of vendors to get the best price.

Suggestion: I know We can't get rid of vendors but they can organized better in a few locations. Keep vendors for newbies and mid-level players is good. On the other hand we could have a "Black Market" system similar to ExEx. Where Items are posted and priced and everyone can see multiple listings of the same items like cost, who's selling it , and where to pick it up. This would help to level prices, reduce global chat spam, and endless vendor searching. The Black market could also have a standard tax on everything. and Items would sell faster!!

[Nick]

[Exex does already allow you to store items in it (think its like 25) that are not sellable on [exex it would be nice to be able to list individual items on [exex though I am sure it would require a patch/coding to add a item sale tab. (maybe in that tab have the player name as a tab to see their 25 items?) Not sure if you could really make it searchable since so many items are so diffrent.

also, price uniformity is not a goal of the shard admins as the online vendor goods search items interface no longer shows the price of the good and any reference in the comment to the price is prohibited on penalty of being removed from the search site. The intent is to force players to have to bounce around from vendor to vendor to see what is available and at what price.

I don't really mind the TC vendor situation that much. If I could make a change I would make zero rent, point of sale 3% tax, all currency vendors available at homes as well and not just in TC. Private vendor contracts are essentially worthless as the daily tax on any high price item that sits for any length of time cost-prohibitive.

Hope everyone has a good day.
Nick