Something needs to be done about Public Vendors

Remember those guys? They're in NPC towns (and PRTs), and only sell items in that one town. (I think Brittany's public vendors might share one list, but I'm not sure.) You remember those towns, right? Either nobody lives there, or everyone has already staked a claim on a lot and still doesn't live there. And lot deeds cost extra, too.

Note that I am not talking about regular vendors like you put on your own lot.

First of all, what they do:
- They have a 10% commission
I think that's way high compared to other MMOs, but it is what it is.
- You can list an item for one week
- Unsold items are deleted, and the NPC sale price is returned to the seller
Note that the NPC sale price of No Value items is 1gp, even if someone had put up a lot deed for sale. Ouch. This has always seemed excessive. My understanding is that back in the very old days (like before R20), they were worried about people using PVs for temporary item storage. Um, what? Yeah, even before persistence, it was clear that as long as you had somewhere to put a chest or two, you had lots of storage.
Maybe it was a worry about being used as bank space. This was long before bank storage was made global, but even then, there is still only one place where you could get the item back, and your choice was either a low price and risk someone buying it, or pay 10% up front of your "nobody would pay this" price.

And none of them are found in POTs.

So now what do we have?
- expensive (10% cost, paid when item listed, no refund)
- inconvenient to get to them to buy something (have to get to that town)
- unexpected deletion of items (deletion is not standard MMO behavior)
- only in NPC towns, so a lot less customer traffic in the modern era, with POTs dominant ,and NPC towns mostly dormant with most lots being "AFK". And the NPC towns that they're in aren't getting any bigger.

On the good side, anyone can use them, even new players. But why would a new player use one? They're not worth even a free listing now.

So what can be done with Public Vendors?
- Remove them
Their existence implies to new players that they should be used or they wouldn't be there. If they aren't useful, it's yet another little thing that makes the game seem dead.
- Combine them
They now have markets too small and too dormant to be worth the effort, but what if all of them were connected such that you could list something in Solania and buy in Mud? At that point the potential customer base would be much better, plus the global reach (minus POTs) would be worth the 10% fee.
- Remove the item destruction
It is counter-intuitive for new players, and even if it is mentioned somewhere when you list an item, it's EULA mice type-tier. There is no good reason in favor of destruction of unsold items. So stop it!

 

Commission should be lower and the item should be moved to your bank if it doesn't sell. Worries about people using it to overload their bank is dumb. I could claim a row lot somewhere, load it up with items and unclaim it to get all those items into my bank. Nobody abuses this because it too painful to deal with your bank (plus, you can store way more items on a row lot).

 

Very true, empty Public Vendors gave me the impression of a dead game in my early days.

 

This is just some old public vendor thread stuff...

 

I like the idea of combining them globally, I see them as a way for young players to try and sell their gear without having to have a lot, and there own vendor. I use them to try and sell my crafted weapons at what I think is a reasonable price. I can say it is kind of disheartening when they don’t sell and I don’t get the item back. So, now I’ll pull all my stuff back if they don’t sell by day 6.

I like the idea of returning the item and combining them globally.

 

Going to be an unpopular opinion but, just remove Public Vendors until the game (if ever) is more populated.

 

Awwwww….
I use them from time to time since I have no vendor. But I do agree with the premise they are intended for a larger populace.

 

Based on server stats, aside from a few early months of high numbers the daily population has remained rather stable in the same range. As expected it has very slowly eroded as the game ages but climbs slightly with new updates/content releases. So we are at population wise where we are going to be.

As for the vendors, they are handy to teach new players about vendors and for selling the odd item. I believe if the commission was halved and the item deletion was removed they would still be a handy thing to have for those of us who don't care about having their own vendor. I use the Soltown one and it gets lots of traffic.

 

How do you find this information? Just curious what the actual numbers are. I see some stuff regarding population but never really numbers.

 

https://steamcharts.com/app/326160

Steam analytics, pretty interesting. It shows a steady erosion of players over the years but once it hit a balance around 2020 it has held fairly steady with recent uptick.

 

Yep, I still feel very sorry for those players who linked their SOTA accounts to Steam.

You won't ever see those of us early backers counted within those numbers who are not Steam connected.
We are the ones that funded our game's creation, and there's enough of us to have raised the 12-14 mil, long before Steam accounts were ever offered.

~TL~

 

FYI, just because your account is linked to Steam does not mean you have to play through Steam.

 

Wow, that's good to know, but that also means that Steams numbers on how many play our game are even further less accurate.
All my accounts are not linked to Steam, but I still like Steam for many other games I own there.

On a further note about numbers of players, I truly doubt that it would effect my own SOTA playtime if there were more or less who played, and it certainly dosn't effect my playtime knowing or not knowing how many actually play.

I still see characters in-game that I've never seen before and aren't on my friends list, so it's not like there's only a small "us" who play. Not everyone is social and there's even fewer who post here in our forums.

Reports on numbers of players can be very deceiving, but also very unconsequential ~TL~

 

Steam makes it really easy to play Windows games on Linux, so it definitely has value for me. In fact, the SteamDeck OS is Linux.

 

Steam accounts were available starting in November of 2014 and the community had raised $5 million at that point.

 

It's not about accuracy, it's about gaging change trends.
If Steam SotA population is shrinking, then it's safe to assume general SotA population is shrinking as well.

 

In the past there was a big market to sell pledges players had bought. Linking to steam made that not possible I heard. It sounded like giving away your rights to steam. Now while I do not play the game through steam I unfortunately did link to steam when we first got it available since I mistakenly thought we had to. Also I've never thought of selling anyway but I was very sorry to have linked to it unnecessarily.

Now I can be wrong on some facts and that market is not what it once was anyway. Like getting a founder pledge was a big deal then but now most of the items that came with these pledges are now available for most players to obtain. It was a very different time in this games' history.

For me I'm fine that players can get all the game offers but for those who enjoyed making money off of the game is was a sad day. So don't quote me because it's not necessarily all exactly correct just enjoy playing on steam or not. The game has evolved in many ways and so far it keeps on going forward. Thanks to a pretty steady player base.

 

Because of the real world's "situation", I think there were more players of all games and now that the "situation" has been opening up, I suspect that our player numbers have dropped as many gamers re-enter the sunshine outside their bio-bunkers. I also think there's possibly an increasing amount of players who play other games in their game inventory.

Earlier this week I was playing some X-Com (1) while also playing through Ultima: The Savage Empire, as well as some Civ-4. I've been doing that because I'm waiting on something to enter my SOTA world which is a center piece to a deco design, while I've been writing out of game the thing that the deco will be showcasing.

With the above example, our game is sort of unique when it comes to numbers of players. I personally don't need to be in the game/logged on to be playing SOTA. There's in-game activities and there also SOTA out of game activities.

Do those numbers of players from any source bother me, no. SOTA is a game that has a slow steady progress in it's programing, and it's normal for past players to come spend some time in-game and then play other games for a long while, waiting on more SOTA developed content.

I personally take my time now when I play our game because I don't want to reach top level content. I don't want to reach that content on a normal basis because if I did (which I have done in the past), I'd have to go looking for some other game waiting for more SOTA content. I'm extremely glad that there are some of our super players that know it all and can move their fingers like lightning across their keyboard, because I need those players whenever I want to do something I don't know about. I really truly enjoy not knowing everything.

The TL~ is very happy not knowing anything at all


Living inside the SOTA envelope is always my goal now. Not the top of the envelope, but the middle or even the bottom is a really enjoyable place so our game still has "wonder".

I've also noticed through our development, that when we have had more players (at least more on the forums or social connections), that when many players gather they have also ganged up on our development team and lead us in some wrong directions or created friction with an avalanche of whining, complaining and generally causing a toxic enviorment of nosy busy-bodies that make our world seem terrible.

If our game is making it's bills and our developers are happy with their pay checks, then I'm a happy SOTA Citizen. I certainly don't think our development team would be working any harder if our game had more players, they'd just be hiring more staff. In saying that, we have a hard working staff of developers and they seem happy and have a really solid grasp of our SOTA so as not to let our game go out of business. As long as our development team is happy, my little SOTA world keeps spinning very nicely

The word "crucial" doesn't apply to SOTA because of it's great business model. Our staff sometimes expands and at other times contracts but the boat always keeps sailing.

Are our player numbers crucial?
Not from where I'm at ~TL~

 

That only counts people who use steam to log into the game. People who have never used steam, and people who have linked to steam but bypass it straight to the native login, are not counted. And they are the majority of players.

Better indicator are the leaderboard and the API to database activity, though I don't follow them.

 

Likely, though if the recent advertisements have been pointing people to the standalone client that might not be the case. Even when people start on Steam (as I did) I often fill them in that patches on the standalone are usually smaller and faster, and I know I've been responsible for dropping the steam number by at least couple users who switched to standalone.