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Universal vendor with price

Discussion in 'Wishlist Requests' started by simon1974, Dec 28, 2020.

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  1. FrostII

    FrostII Bug Hunter

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    Certainly not ALL items, only reagents fall into that category.

    Grown regs can easily ( AND PROFITABLY ) be sold for 1 gold over cost !
     
  2. Scooby Doo

    Scooby Doo Avatar

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    1000 times YES to vendor search.
    Just do it already.
    I no longer shop cause I don’t have hours to waste. I’m better off messaging Cici and paying a commission. he’ll find what I’m looking for or let me know where to go.
     
  3. Lazarus Long

    Lazarus Long Avatar

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    All goods gathered in the wild will be reduced to nothing.

    Wood. Ore. Clay. Beetles. Hides. Suet. Granite. Tin. Tungsten. Metal Scrap. Carcasses Etc. You get the drift. There is A LOT more to it than most think.
    Since it cost NOTHING <but time> to get them then people will drop prices till there is either no one willing to go gather them or they get to 1 gp each.
    This will in fact cause price reductions across the board for EVERYTHING!
     
  4. necronut

    necronut Avatar

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    For things with cost to the seller: (Cost) / (.75) gives you a 25% profit margin.

    For when you know the cost: (Sell - Cost) / (Sell) gives you the percentage of profit.

    For things that have no cost other than time: Be competitive... but nothing will ever drop to one. That's a bit melodramatic.

    When you go shopping for tires, do you trust the first guy to give you a price? Or do you shop around?

    When you're having a roof put on your house, do you trust the first contractor to give you bid? Or do you shop around?

    And if you're selling something, do you immediately sell it for a penny because you know no one can beat that price, or do you value your own time enough to give it a price that is both profitable for you, and reasonable for your consumer.


    We're not asking for the apocalypse here, @Lazarus Long we're asking to be able to shop for goods without having to walk around the entire planet, shaking hands with every man, woman, and child, asking "Where the regs, where the regs, where the regs at?"
     
  5. Lazarus Long

    Lazarus Long Avatar

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    You SHOP AROUND :)

    Like go to Amazon and buy from the lowest price vendor right?

    Or go to eBay and buy from the lowest price vendor right?

    Or Query Google and go to the lowest price vendor right?

    In todays world it's easy.
    So if you didn't have An Amazon or eBay or Google. How easy would it be to shop around for said roof or tires???
    A real conundrum you have there without that convivence to shop for the lowest prices around.

    While your roof or car tires have value due to commodities that have to be paid for to get.

    You have to pay lumberjacks to cut down trees. They sell to mills that cut and produce boards. They sell to the roofer who then builds your roof.

    You have to pay a worker to go get the raw rubber. He sells to a factory who in turn refines the rubber to produce tires. They sell tires to you.

    This is not true in the virtual world of economics. I go and harvest, cut down, mine all my own commodities. No middle men. No one to pay for said products.

    When I list MY items on eBay you better believe I sell them for LESS than any other listed seller.
    And when the competition gets stiff the prices drop.

    You better believe I'll be looking an those prices and undercutting my competitors.. as will everyone else and their dog will be till prices are stupidly low.
    (they may not drop to 1gp but you get the picture here)

    Now with that all said. Would I love to shop like I do on Amazon and eBay here in game? You bet!
    Do I wanna do it at the cost of having to be so competitive that I gotta drop prices so low just to make money.. NO.

    TIME = $

    And those with all the free time on their hands will be making the $$$$

    When it gets to that state in the game players will give up on doing all the work for little return leaving those with free time and no cost to make all the $$

    Shameless self promotion here.
    Tune in to Lunch with Laz & Jack for more on this topic tomorrow @ Noon CST / NBT

    I could go on here but I'll save it for the show. We'll cover Auctions and other topics as well this week :)
    Public Vendors Anyone?
     
  6. necronut

    necronut Avatar

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    Interesting analogy. Amazon and Google sell a wide variety of products, almost ALL of which have multiple vendors.

    They have some sort of "feature" that allows you to compare the prices of all these vendors... I can't think of what the name of it is right off hand. :)


    And pray tell, Laz... how do you get your competitors prices? What's the term I was thinking of above...? :)



    Oh wait... I remember. You can shop on Amazon and Google and look at everyone's prices on the Universal Search Feature that lists prices.

    So by that logic, because Amazon, Google, and eBay are already stiff competition for each other, and they have competing vendors on their own sites selling the same products as one another...

    All the prices are now next to free?

    BRB, heading to Amazon to buy everything for a dollar because competition.



    Final edit:

    Instead of giving consumers the chance to easily shop for competitive prices, some contractors prefer to keep all prices unlisted and force everyone to get in their car and literally drive to every single contractor in the region to get bids, making the whole endeavor cost more in fuel and time than it's worth to go shopping at all.

    There's a word for these kinda people... I can't think of it... crook, maybe?
     
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2021
  7. Scooby Doo

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    Laz, I want to buy some of all those items you mentioned.
    can you tell me which vendor has those items available?
    I spent about 2 hrs vendor browsing on the weekend, all I found was a few hundred suet. :mad: I gave up and logged off.
     
  8. necronut

    necronut Avatar

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    Reminder: The two highest voted items in this thread: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...er-priorities-poll.167017/page-4#post-1322974

    1. Balance/Debug/Polish/Completion passes on existing systems
      72 vote(s)
      55.0%
    2. Global Vendor Search Need solution
      50 vote(s)
      38.2%
    The people have voted. Do we listen to what the majority have been begging for? Or do we continue listening to a small handful of vendors who only have their own best interests in mind?
     
  9. CICI

    CICI Avatar

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    Vendor Search within the same town will also work well it's a win win for players and pot's =) 80% of the time is trying to find all the vendors within a town

    also the vendor ui needs to be fix lol
     
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  10. necronut

    necronut Avatar

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    If by

    "Vendor Search within the same town"

    You mean

    "Universal Search With Prices"

    Then you're in agreement with the vast majority! Nice! The community appreciates your support.

    We're looking forward to not having to walk all over creation to find vendors! Thanks for getting behind a good idea.
     
  11. CICI

    CICI Avatar

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    yep with prices lol I been asking for this even if within the same town for many years
     
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  12. necronut

    necronut Avatar

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  13. Sentinel2

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    How about this. A town vendor search without prices.

    Half the time I'm frustrated spending hours running around to find items. I have no idea if the entire town has that one gidget I'm looking for. At least tell me where to look. Who is selling what I want.

    A good compromise perhaps?
     
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  14. Violet Ronso

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    What I dislike about this solution myself is that the only thing it does is reduce the amount of vendors you're looking through, but you will still end up looking for the cheapest price (who wouldn't?) so why not just put the price in right away so you know where you're going? Why are we looking for solutions to keep the "time wasted in game" high? Who even likes spending hours running around looking at vendors? No one, if we have the option to either 1. reduce this from Hours to Hour or 2. Reduce this to minutes, why not go the minute option? Every buyer will be happy, and sellers just need to determine how low they are willing to go. If you arent happy people are undercutting you, buy them out, I know a few people that do that already with our current system, so I doubt they would be upset to find an easier way to hunt those undercutters down.

    The only people this would hurt is those that want to have over-priced stuff, everyone else would benefit, just put the price in, the MAJORITY will be happy.
     
  15. Tirrag

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    I'm not sure it has been said but I really believe the greatest hesitation here on the dev side is that a global search will decrease the importance of vendor towns. While that may be true, it will bring to attention many other towns that are previously not visited as people move their vendors to their own POTs which can be a lot of fun.

    As for a compromise to global searching, maybe it can be offset by paying a fee in GP for the global search. Pay a small fee X and get a town search (thus not defeating the value of vendor towns). Pay a much larger fee Y and get a global search. That way if you don't want to pay GP you can old-school quest for an item by travelling vendor to vendor. If you go to Britt Mart, you can pay a fee and search for it there. Or you can nuke it from orbit and pay the much larger fee and global search.
     
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  16. Tahru

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    I am not taking a position on this. I am just going to explain the #1 reason why people are against aggregated pricing in just two words "local economy". One of the main promises in SOTA from the beginning was it would have local economies. The moment, all the prices are shown, that promise is lost. Nobody can debate that. However, there is plenty that can be debated, like there aren't enough players to make local economies viable and so...
     
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  17. Spungwa

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    As long as they publish both buy and sell prices it is both, Sell prices race to the bottom, and buy prices race to the top. Until the profit margin between the two becomes too small to trade. Traders stop trading it then the prices widening again in an ever undulating cycle that traders should track. At least this is my experience of tracking 15+ years of the Eve Online economy.

    If an item races to the bottom to 1 GP then there means there is no buy orders. If there is no buy orders, there is no demand. Items that have zero demand should cost zero (or in this games terms the NPC buy price). If I spend my days creating/farming something that no one wants, I should not expect to be able to sell it, this is true in the real world and a player driven economy closer mirrors the real world.

    Items with no demand are items the developers should look at and make then useful, why have items you have to support though upgrades etc that have no use..... This would help them know which items they are easily by seeing that their only value is to sell to an NPC.

    I have always been pro sell and buy orders being global and public. To make foot traffic in towns, not for economic, but social reasons, I think you should have to go to the vendor to pick it up (no deliveries).


    Regards
    Spungwa
     
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2021
  18. Tahru

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    I think this is a non-issue. Mall towns exist because their owners really cared to make a particular feel and they actively asked other players to be a part of that fantasy making a good play experience for other players to enjoy as well. They will continue to be successful just because they deserve it.

    I have a successful crafting place in a perfect location based on the original SOTA design. When they took away the challenge paths, added teleport scrolls and global banking, the market was utterly destroyed for that kind of lot service. Yet, players still use it every day. So there is no reason for town owners to fear.

    One good thing about it would be that ore and wood prices "might" drop to a more reasonable level. That will create a new market for crafted items. Currently most crafted items are not profitable unless the maker also gather mats, because the mats are too expensive. And if they do gather, it is more profitable to sell the mats. That is pretty messed up.

    I would just be happy knowing what a fair price is for something whether I am buying or selling it. That is all I would get out of it.
     
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  19. necronut

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    Amen to everything you said. I genuinely, and wholeheartedly agree. Crafter's Town, Novia Market, et. al., have absolutely nothing to fear but more success.

    Places with higher prices still have nothing to fear either.

    Some will always be willing to pay more for convenience, much in the same way that you know milk is cheaper at the grocery store, but the gas station 2 blocks from your house has it too. Sure... it's more expensive... but you ain't tryna go shoppin' right now, the grocery store's on the other side of town, and you just wanna have a bowl of cereal before you go to work. So you bite the bullet and pay a buck more for your milk this morning.

    Convenience.
    Context.

    Businesses always ebb and flow. Competition is always healthy.

    The free distribution of information is good.

    I dream of being able to visit an npc, or just push a hotkey that opens a window with a searchbox on it.
    Type in what I'm looking for, after a few moments...
    Every instance of that item is on my screen, location, amount available, price, Vendor Name, option to WP like with Town Crier.

    I would, in a lot of cases be willing to pay more if one particular location had the amount I need, but the cheaper location possessed only a mere fraction.

    Sure, there are lots of times I'd go buy the fraction(s) first, but the bulk of my order would be purchased at the higher priced and/or more convenient location.

    I got to save a bit of coin, and everyone in that equation profited.

    It was fair. It was easy.

    And... this is key: I didn't have to walk around the ENTIRE PLANET, EXPERIENCING LOADING SCREEN AFTER LOADING SCREEN, WANDERING AROUND EVERY INCH OF EVERY TOWN, LOOKING FOR EVERY VENDOR ON EVERY LOT, LOOKING FOR ONE OR TWO SPECIFIC ITEMS... as fun as it is... it's really inconvenient in terms of time.

    And to quote Laz...

    "Time = $"
     
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2021
  20. Lazlo

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    Imo the main reason not to do this sooner was that it would devalue property in high traffic locations. These days, there are no high traffic locations, and anyone can get a good spot in one of the market towns anyway.

    Maybe selling would become less profitable in a more competitive market, but we're all also buyers, and buying becomes cheaper if that happens, which is fine by me. I think it's really not that important compared to people being able to find the things they want in a reasonable amount of time.
     
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