New Vendors

Faeryl

Tim said:

Same could be said without reference to commissions. As a seller you set the price as high as you think it will sell for. If it isn't selling fast enough you lower the price. 

The proper price for any item is what someone else is willing to pay. 

The difference is, I can actually viably price stuff cheaper on the commission basis because all my profits aren't being eaten and putting me in the red if it sits for a couple days.

Petra_Fyde

Tim said:

Faeryl said:

Some people may try to charge more to compensate for the commission, but think about it this way... they could do that, but there will likely still be people who would sell cheaper.

The way I see it, you can either price something to get a pre-set amount when it eventually sells, or go a bit cheaper, and hopefully sell more of it to compensate for the lower profit per item.

Same could be said without reference to commissions. As a seller you set the price as high as you think it will sell for. If it isn't selling fast enough you lower the price. 

The proper price for any item is what someone else is willing to pay. 

I work the other way, I price stuff based on how hard it was for me to get it or make it, then put the price up till the resellers stop buying me out.

Tim

Sad to say english is my first language. What I was trying to say was I agree with you but I don't think most people will worry about the "commission". The price will be set by what the buyer is willing to pay. That is especially true for casual vendor operators like me. I can see myself putting excess item (I don't need it but it's to good the throw away) on at a price I think is fair and not checking it until I have more items to put on. And that is the way I want it.

Maximus_Neximus

About 50 weeks later and still holding onto hope....

Kyronix said:

These are on the radar for this year's series of publishes - which exact one I couldn't tell you yet.

I know you posted this five months ago. But any idea which one it could be in?

Tim

Oh yes pretty please 

Aenvar

I love Broadsword's work, but if you make this vendor happen… My heart is yours forever.

JollyJade

Right after the new account management hits in May 

Maximus_Neximus

[ image edited out by Rorschach ]

2. Can we have a vendor that does not charge by the hour?

Yes we can come up with an additional vendor that doesn't charge by the hour but instead takes up house storage and charges a commission percentage only when the item is sold. This type of vendor will be in addition to the original style of vendor.

It's officially been one year. Still waiting and quickly losing hope.

Aenvar

I'm not losing hope yet - Really want this to happen, even if the vendor is a bit more limited somehow so it doesn't make the other one 'useless', I'd be fine with that.

MissE

Reason I sell stuff is I don't have the lockdowns to STORE it so the day vendors take lockdowns that is the end of my vendors and 'hello' to the bin.

All my shops have stuff stored to the max lockdowns in the house to actually 'stock' the vendor, hence why they are always stocked. As an item sells it is replaced from stock.  I have 10-20 vendors on each shop, which hold 125 items each. 

Having thought about it for a while I think there should be ONE type of player vendor (normal and rental vendors) that operate in the following way:

• Put vendor up.
• Place items on vendor and price.
• On 'sale' of item a 10% fee is charged. (ie purchaser pays 1000 gps for item, vendor is credited 900 gps, 100gps charged as fee)
  
• Seller can edit the price of an item ON the vendor by right clicking on it and either increase or decrease price without incurring a fee.
• Items do not count towards storage.
• If the 'seller' removes an item from the vendor after it has been on the vendor for 8 hours a 5%  fee is automatically charged. (ie seller removes 1000 gps item from vendor they  get charged 50 gps which is deducted from - vendors account or players bank account)

Advantages:

• Solves problem of having different types of vendors
• Makes a 10% fee easy to calculate
• Stops people using vendors for storage if they cop a fee every time they remove something.
• If the seller has no funds on the vendor or in the bank then an item cannot be 'removed' from the vendor by the seller, they will either need to buy it at full price or get someone else to.
• Allows editing of the prices by the seller in case stuff is too expensive ,cheap or is mispriced without removing the item from the vendor.
•  When an item has been repriced and removed from the vendor within 24 hours of repricing, then the 5% fee charged will be based on the original sale price.  After 24 hours the 5% fee will be charged on the new price. To stop people repricing just to remove items.
• You can keep reducing the price on an item until it sells and only incur the 10% fee on sale of item. 
  
• No longer have daily fees.
• You can still move items from one vendor directly to an adjacent vendor (as you can currently do) without it affecting the item/price.
  
• Allows this type of vendor to be a rental vendor as well as owner placed vendor.  No house owner wants rental vendors taking up their storage.
• Suitable for small and large population shards.
  

Uriah_Heep

That makes entirely too much sense to ever be implemented in UO.

Tim

MissE said:

Reason I sell stuff is I don't have the lockdowns to STORE it so the day vendors take lockdowns that is the end of my vendors and 'hello' to the bin.

All my shops have stuff stored to the max lockdowns in the house to actually 'stock' the vendor, hence why they are always stocked. As an item sells it is replaced from stock.  I have 10-20 vendors on each shop, which hold 125 items each. 

Having thought about it for a while I think there should be ONE type of player vendor (normal and rental vendors) that operate in the following way:

• Put vendor up.
• Place items on vendor and price.
• On 'sale' of item a 10% fee is charged. (ie purchaser pays 1000 gps for item, vendor is credited 900 gps, 100gps charged as fee)
  
• Seller can edit the price of an item ON the vendor by right clicking on it and either increase or decrease price without incurring a fee.
• Items do not count towards storage.
• If the 'seller' removes an item from the vendor after it has been on the vendor for 8 hours a 5%  fee is automatically charged. (ie seller removes 1000 gps item from vendor they  get charged 50 gps which is deducted from - vendors account or players bank account)

Advantages:

• Solves problem of having different types of vendors
• Makes a 10% fee easy to calculate
• Stops people using vendors for storage if they cop a fee every time they remove something.
• If the seller has no funds on the vendor or in the bank then an item cannot be 'removed' from the vendor by the seller, they will either need to buy it at full price or get someone else to.
• Allows editing of the prices by the seller in case stuff is too expensive ,cheap or is mispriced without removing the item from the vendor.
•  When an item has been repriced and removed from the vendor within 24 hours of repricing, then the 5% fee charged will be based on the original sale price.  After 24 hours the 5% fee will be charged on the new price. To stop people repricing just to remove items.
• You can keep reducing the price on an item until it sells and only incur the 10% fee on sale of item. 
  
• No longer have daily fees.
• You can still move items from one vendor directly to an adjacent vendor (as you can currently do) without it affecting the item/price.
  
• Allows this type of vendor to be a rental vendor as well as owner placed vendor.  No house owner wants rental vendors taking up their storage.
• Suitable for small and large population shards.
  

To paraphrase FREE STORAGE 

Place of vendor at high price
When you want to remove
Reduce to 10 gps 
Take off vendor pay 1 gps fee

The real question is what is the problem with having a second (really 3rd) type of vendor? As far as I know no one is suggesting changing or removing the existing vendors.

MissE

Tim said: 

To paraphrase FREE STORAGE

Place of vendor at high price
When you want to remove
Reduce to 10 gps 
Take off vendor pay 1 gps fee

The real question is what is the problem with having a second (really 3rd) type of vendor? As far as I know no one is suggesting changing or removing the existing vendors.

Another person who cannot read.

As I said above:

 When an item has been repriced and removed from the vendor within 24 hours of repricing, then the 5% fee charged will be based on the original sale price.  After 24 hours the 5% fee will be charged on the new price. To stop people repricing just to remove items.

So basically if you want to take your item off the vendor you must reprice then let the item SIT THERE FOR 24 HOURS before you can remove it or pay the 5% holding fee on the original price.

So if someone puts a 50 million gold item on their vendor and reduces it to 10gps, then it must sit there for 24 HOURS before they can remove it or they would still cop a 2.5 mil fee.   If you would want to risk someone coming along and buying it at 10gps sure do that.  

(And yes, you can get someone to come along and buy it as soon as you reprice it but how many hours and days are you gonna spend putting an item on a vendor, reducing the price, getting someone else, or another char on another account you own, to buy it before someone else does and do that on 125 items or whatever you have on a vendor  just to store stuff.  Anyone who got in the habit of doing that will have people camping their vendor waiting for the reprice so they can buy it before you can. There is always a delay when an item is put on the vendor to when you can buy it so people will see the price drop and get ready to beat you to the 'click' to buy.  Wanna risk your 50mil item just so you save one lockdown?   Sure go ahead, it could become a new past time for people camping crooked vendor houses to scoop up repriced items. 

People are not gonna bother doing that to store an item.  Much too much mucking about. 

However the devs could also get around repricing by making it that to 'reprice' an item you can only price down by up to 10% increments per reprice so an item of 1mil can only be priced down to 900k one day, 800k the day after, etc.  There are ways around it without making a whole bunch of dif type vendors.

People used to remove items off the vendors NOT to get free storage but to AVOID paying fees, so when it was calculated at the same time each day they knew they could remove stuff at say 4pm and put it back at 4.15pm and avoid the vendor fee, they stopped that when they made it so the fees were charged in increments throughout the day.  That particular rort saved some high priced atlantic vendor mall owners millions in fees so was worth doing.   Had nothing to do with using vendors for storage.

Everything in UO gets complicated for complications sake.  A vendor that operates ONE way makes life simple and does not add to the complication of the game. Beats having a whole bunch of different style vendors.  Sure they can have 2-3-4-20 different types of vendor but my question would be why?  Why not  have ONE type that can satisfy all requirements.

The basic outline above is one thing.................. SIMPLE. 

• put something on a vendor, pay 10% commission on sale of item
• if you take the item off the vendor pay a 5% holding fee
• same 5% fee applies for 24 hrs after repricing
• reprice items by right clicking on the item in a vendor pack

It can't get more simple.

• Satisfies small shards as the fee is 10% and it doesn't matter how long it sits there you are not gonna get to where the fees are more than the item is worth.
• Satisfies those who rent vendors as the vendor will not take up house storage.
• Satisfies large scale vendor house operators as they don't take storage but also it doesn't matter how long stuff takes to sell so on high turnover shards like Atlantic it will have little affect but on small shards high priced items will not cripple the vendor mall in fees.

This game needs to try to make things simple not more complicated. 

Tim

We have different opinions on "simple"

I admit that I didn't see the line about 24 hr wait but that wouldn't be a problem outside of luna with vendor search turned off. If we were starting a new game your solution might be better but we aren't.

Problems I see with your "simple" solution are

1. Rather than just coding a new vendor. Basically a new type of house container that sells things for a commission you want them to rewrite the entire vendor code. 
2. If they go with your new single type of vendor they then have the bug phase to go through for all vendors not just the few new type. With a new separate type if there is problems they should be able to freeze or take them off line without taking all vending off line.
3. What about all the existing vendors? Do you grandfather them or write more code to convert them to a new type and hope nothing gets lost? If grandfather why wouldn't you just leave them available. More likely they would have to make everybody take their vendors down then put up new ones. Wouldn't that be fun but less trouble than all the lost item/gold claims.

I really can not see how having 2 types of vendors is complicated. Once again NO ONE is saying do away with the existing vendors. If you are using and are happy with the existing vendor keep it, adding a new type will not affect you. 

MissE

I am not gonna convince you as you are obviously a fan of vendors taking up all your lockdowns.  No doubt the devs will end up going that way which won't do large vendor houses like mine any good, so I shall continue to ship my high end goods to Atlantic as I don't have the lockdown space to set up a lot vendors like that.  I can work around it as I always do and set up maybe 1/20 to operate for just high end goods.  Still wont solve the problem of having vendor fees killing me on low end slow selling goods and I will not have the lockdowns to change them over.  I have 1600 items currently on my vendors so no chance in hell of swapping them over to 'storage' vendors. Especially as my vendor mall also runs the shard rune library so is already lockdown heavy. I have about 200 spare lockdowns right now without including the stuff on vendors.

As for your other points it doesn't matter what type of vendor they introduce they will ALL require recoding, they will all require debugging and they will have to deal with exisiting vendors by just grandfathering them or leaving them as is and running two types, so that is no issue no matter what way they go.  You are tossing up obstacles for a streamlined system just to toss up obstacles.

I don't really care what they do, I would just hope they actually think about 'fixing' them so that they suit ALL types of vendor situations and streamlining it to one vendor that suits all needs is better than a bunch of dif ones. 

As you said yourself you are a 'casual' vendor operator, I am not I run malls on Oceania and on Siege and I also have rental vendor on Atlantic at a friends house and there is no way they are gonna rent vendors to people if they use their lockdowns up especially as the guy on Atlantic rents vendors out to all people on our shard as a service as we can't own houses there.

Your solution does NOT suit me at all and ONLY suits casual vendor operators. I am trying to find a solution that suits EVERYONE. 

Tim

Sorry the proposed solution won't help you but my read of what was asked for and what was promised was not the issue you are having. Doing away with all ongoing costs for vendors (weekly gold or storage) to my knowledge was never in the cards. 

If vendor storage should have a weekly charge is a much bigger discussion. Thinking about Broadsword's actions on storage with EJ accounts and storage lockers I don't think they would agree with vendors having no ongoing cost. Be it house storage or gold per week that storage on vendors is going to cost. Not to say I disagree with the idea just that it is a much bigger issue.

Also my point on the programming was that if they just add a new type of vendor it should have no contact with or change to the existing system other than vendor search. So only the new vendor code would have to be dealt with. The old vendor code should not need to be touched. Example when they introduced the Jewelry Box they didn't have to change the code for all the other containers.

I don't think anyone could come up with a single solution that suits everyone. Trying to shoehorn one into an already agree to solution only muddies the water and makes it more likely that nothing gets changed.

Once again I'm sorry the storage based vendor won't help you but it will be of use to me if it ever get add to the game.

Ezekiel_Zane

Nobody has suggested getting rid of the current system, the way vendors currently work.

Not everyone though runs a house full of vendors and needs every available lockdown to keep up with restocking.

The current vendor fees are killing small vendor houses and have made it nearly impossible for low populated shards to maintain any kind of 24 hour autonomous merchant system.  You can't find nearly anything of significant value on  a vendor nor can you find just plain old everyday useful things or resources.  Vendor fees eat up all the profits.  There is more of an economy in chat than there is using vendors.

I've run mostly small time vendor shops selling BODs, rewards and raw materials and resources.  I don't need 50 vendors in a house to do this nor do I need the entire house's storage to keep them stocked.  I must micro manage each vendor though because otherwise the fees consume nearly all the profit when things sit for days, weeks and longer.  Just running the four vendors I do right now costs me 30k per day.  Sometimes I don't sell anything for a week.

In my situation it would be extremely beneficial to me and to players who would like to purchase what I have to sell, if my vendors took up house storage space and only charged a fee upon sale.  Then I could fill my vendors up with items and not lose a million gold a week in fees.

What has been asked for is another vendor type.  Not a replacement for what already exists.  Leave the dang vendors alone as they currently are and add another option for a vendor that does take up house storage but doesn't charge hourly/daily fees.

Uriah_Heep

If it's gonna cost us house storage space, that should BE the fee.  Not storage and gold...

popps

Vendors should : A) NOT use House Lockdowns or any type of items' count, B ) should be possible to be placed on a Private Home's doorsteps without having to make it Public and C) should only charge their fees if, and only if the item sells.

That is how Vendors should work, to my opinion.

This way, low population Shards could afford having an economy and items be possible to be found there up for sale, also....

A) is fundamental to permit House owners on a low populated Shard, where items sell rarely, not to see their storage capacity be drastically reduced by having Vendors with items that only rarely can sell.

B ) Is important for those players who would like to have some Vendors but do not want to make their House as Public because of that.

C) Is also much important in low Population Shards where items take a much longer time to sell. Unless fees where to be ONLY charged at the time of sale (and not counting how long they remained on the vendor before they actually were able to sell), having fees be charged on a time basis would make it prohibitive for players to put anything up on a Vendor that would take a very long time before it sells because of the low population of that Shard.

This is what I think New Vendors should be like.

Ezekiel_Zane

Uriah_Heep said:

If it's gonna cost us house storage space, that should BE the fee.  Not storage and gold...

I totally agree but for some reason these devs seem to always think there must be a penalty for every benefit.  I doubt they'll give us any kind of vendor without at least a minimal gold sink.

Tim

Rather than make you read the whole thread before you post I'll explain it again. I'm choosing my words carefully so as not to speak for anyone else or discussions I was not personally a part of.

The short version is as I understand it Broadsword was asked for a vendor that used house storage rather than weekly gold in addition to the existing type of vendors. They said yes. 

So house storage and a commission when sold. No ongoing charge for having an item on a vendor with unlimited storage like the old style. If the present vendor fits you needs you can keep using them if not you have another option.

If you want to lobby for a vendor with no weekly charge and no storage cost that is not what was discussed here. Or if I recall correctly discussed and shot down. I would suggest you start a new discussion thread if that is what you are after. I feel mixing that argument into this one would just muddy the water and make it more likely Broadsword will just drop the whole idea.

popps

Tim said:

Rather than make you read the whole thread before you post I'll explain it again. I'm choosing my words carefully so as not to speak for anyone else or discussions I was not personally a part of.

The short version is as I understand it Broadsword was asked for a vendor that used house storage rather than weekly gold in addition to the existing type of vendors. They said yes. 

So house storage and a commission when sold. No ongoing charge for having an item on a vendor with unlimited storage like the old style. If the present vendor fits you needs you can keep using them if not you have another option.

If you want to lobby for a vendor with no weekly charge and no storage cost that is not what was discussed here. Or if I recall correctly discussed and shot down. I would suggest you start a new discussion thread if that is what you are after. I feel mixing that argument into this one would just muddy the water and make it more likely Broadsword will just drop the whole idea.

Argument : Permitting gameplay on LOW Populated Shard.

Option 1) - As it currently is, no lockdowns but with a time charge. NOT VIABLE as, on a Low Populated Shard, items sell way more rarely and with more difficulty therefore, the charges ADD UP and often they "eat" what the item sells for, no profit.

It kills gameplay so, not good.

Option 2) - No charge, but taking up Lockdowns. NOT VIABLE just as well, because of the same reasons that, on LOW Populated Shards items on Vendors sell way more rarely and with much increased difficulty. If they ate Lockdowns for an extended period of time, before they sold (if ever), this would FUTHER reduce players' Storage capabilities thus making their gameplay evem more difficult and not enjoyable.

It kills gameplay so, not good.

Option 3) - Not taking any Lockdowns and no times charge BUT, charging the Vendor's fee at the time of the sale.

THIS, is what I think would be the MOST appropriate and viable situation to help out gameplay on LOW Populated Shards.... this way, players, even if items take extraordinary time to sell on Vendors, because of the scarcity of buyers, would not be hurt in their storage capabilities NOR see vendors' fees eat most or all of the items' sale profit.

Do not think just of Populated Shards, but think about MOST of Ultima Online's Shards which have a rather low Population that makes it MUCH harder and time consuming to sell anything...

Vendors that were set up to either eat Lockdowns OR a time based charge would "kill", to my opinion, gameplay on this Shards because players could not afford having them, either because they would reduce too much their storage capabilities, or because they would make the selling of items pointless, since the vendors' fees would "eat up" most if not all of the profits.

That is at least how I see it.

MissE

Ezekiel_Zane said:

What has been asked for is another vendor type.  Not a replacement for what already exists.  Leave the dang vendors alone as they currently are and add another option for a vendor that does take up house storage but doesn't charge hourly/daily fees.

Actually what was 'asked' for was for vendors fees to be adjusted so that they didn't kill trade on small shards so that it wasn't worth stocking stuff due to fees eating away what small amount of profit items were making given the slow selling time.

That is what generated this whole discussion.  The idea of two vendor types seemed to just MORPH from the original request. Not the other way round.

What I proposed would solve that even if they left exising vendors as are and offered the other type as I proposed.

One that charged 10% on sale of item

 5% on removal of item by seller

and the ability to 'edit' the prices on the vendor either up or down by 10% per day.

I don't know who first proposed that vendor should take up storage but like all bad ideas once someone floats an idea a whole bunch of ppl just jump on the bandwagon, and it doesn't matter if you are a huge vendor house or a one off vendor a bad idea is a bad idea.

There are other ways of giving us vendors without them taking up storage, but I guess it will go down to the those who rarely use a vendor and they will get what they wish for and in another 20 years we will get the opportunity to change it again.  Very short sighted by some people on here.

Uriah_Heep

I rate having vendors use storage space right up there with the idea of having puzzles on treasure chests... 

NamelessJourney

I would not mind if the "new" vendors used house storage, but that is me personally. I would probably use those specifically for my high gold items, and a mixture of the current type for the more basic needs types.. Tools and like simple lrc suits.

NamelessJourney

I would not mind if the "new" vendors used house storage, but that is me personally. I would probably use those specifically for my high gold items, and a mixture of the standard ones for needful items like exceptional crafting tools arrows bolts and basic lrc suits.

Aenvar

popps said:

C) should only charge their fees if, and only if the item sells.

That's the most important point, and I believe it's a simple change that would make trade flourish in the less populated shards. So much stuff considered 'basic' nowadays is missing there, for example in Drachenfels there are no 120 powerscrolls for sale at all and they are very hard to get for new players. Even full spellbooks or LRC suits are a rarity.

Newly placed vendors hardly last more than a week. Those players that make the effort to keep them up, personally I see them as heroes of the community because I really doubt they are getting any profit from them. 

Trade and economy are one of the main drives on Ultima and I really wish we can see a change soon.

NamelessJourney

I have played on less populated shards some since I returned, and I must say it's rare to find another player, and the newbie friendly vendors are few and far between. VS helps some, but it is still a challenge.
 I don't have shard shields, and xfer tokens are steep if only to hit another shard and return back to which ever, but I have had some luck either with people going to a shard and coming back or bumping into other friendly players who help out. I still like leveling up alts on random shards, so putting some feet down on a shard like Lake Austin and building a crafter from scratch is a weird hobby. Some advice I would give to others is start with mining and tinkering. Between the two you can leveling everything else up reasonably quick. Carpentry can sit on another character that has like swordsmanship and they can level lj and carpentry til you soul stone that over to the dedicated mule. Tinkering shines tho, as a good back bone skill. Armslore eh.. just let that ride on your mule as they level all the other crafts. Random blurb for the day complete.. *hides*

AQHF

I like Miss E's idea.

I don't like the idea of vendors using house storage, because it seems like it will be good for those with castles, keeps, and large houses but not for those with moderate to small houses. Large houses already come with the boon of lots of extra storage, giving them better cheaper vendors on top of that is really kicking the dirt into the faces of small house owners. 

NamelessJourney

Hmm.. maybe have a special "storage" just used for vendors.. like 500 spots the new vendors can use.