What if vendors were only permitted inside houses and stalls..?

Greetings!
I had an interesting discussion with a guildmate some nights ago about vendors. Right now we have - understandably - the majority of vendors placed outside the houses. The advantages of that are clear: You get better visibility, can even use your vendor name as "advertisement". But there are, at least to me, also disadvantages, mainly "immersion".

Especially with the row lots right now there are not a lot of possibilities to place your vendor in a way that I (personal opinion here, yours may differ!) find pleasing to look at and still does not take you out of the "visibility competition". With village/larger lots you at least have the possibility to add stalls, which can be nice to look at, too. I can imagine a beautiful Brit Alleys with lots of row lots with nicely decorated store rooms inside the houses - the kind of store indicated by a sign hanging from the house. The vendors - no longer functioning as billboards - could then also be renamed to something more "fitting", more beneficial to "immersion".

Right now, nearly no one is doing it, because it would totally be a disadvantage. So what if the perk of added visibility was taken away from everyone? What if you were only able to place your vendor inside your home or stalls?

I'm not 100% sure why I feel the need to share this discussion here. From a technical point of view this might be impossible and I know we talked about easier to implement methods to give player vendors better visibility (aside from using them as billboards), e.g. giving town criers a billboard function, which is a splendid idea. Maybe I'm just adding this because it would be an incentive for players to decorate their homes and I love decorations.

Anyways, I'm interested in your opinion on the topic, thanks for taking the time reading this!

 

I had never thought of putting a vendor inside a house until I went to buy the yellow pages.

I don't want people in my house (that's why it's a mile out of town, the doors are locked and it doesn't have a gate that can be seen on the 10foot fence.)

I just assume everyone else is the same. If they want to sell me something they will put their vendor where I can see him.

 

When they first were introducing housing, it made sense to me to have more things designed as shops. Or downstairs shop, up stairs living.

But the way the game is now, the last thing you'd want to do is make it harder to find vendors.

 

That's a good point @Evilgamer - I am quite the opposite so I didn't think of that at all And yeah @PrimeRib, I agree that it is hard enough as is, I'm just a bit saddened for the lack of beautifully decorated stores. @Womby 's store is a great example for amazing decoration.

 

This is why I fought long and hard for Central Markets rather then Vendors on Housing lots, especially after the advent of Row Houses... Or at least an Option to have Central Markets.

To me, looking down the street in Brittney Alleys and seeing Vendor, Vendor, Vendor (ignoring for the moment that they're all clones of each other) is less than attractive, and having to wander around looking at every vendor to see what is stocked, or whether it's stocked at all, is a ... uncomfortable feeling in my posterior.

Central Markets have been shot down repeatedly as a possibility.

 

Maybe all the vendors shoyld be placed in hometown. Just rename it to vendor town lol

 

I have a sign (ranged cause bow maker) outside my row house and the bottom floor is the store front. No one buying anything. Waiting on sexy booth babes DLC.

 

I think the solution to this isn't going to satisfy each point for everyone. Forcing me to stick my vendor in a building would certainly break the so-called-immersion for me. Why shouldn't I have a choice? Is Portalarium going to stick all the NPCs indoors and ditch all the stalls we walk past in town centers? How would you tell someone you have a vendor? How do you tell people to step off the path, open your door, come inside, (maybe experience more lag as your items pop up), and walk to the far end to check your vendor? Are you going to ask them to do it a dozen or more times as they look for an item? No thanks, I'll just visit the public vendor (who is already outside anyway).

You could put up one of those symbol signs to get people in, but at this point the symbol signs are so overused and the vendor items are hardly ever specialized that I don't even register them when I'm looking. Most people will probably just resort to spelling something out in some item on their front lawn.

I think one possible solution is to make some houses that look more like stores and storefronts. Perhaps larger front windows for display, perhaps some good space under the second floor overhang. One example I see in-game of "indoor space outdoors" is that one large house that has a corner that looks more like a porch, albeit with a second floor above it. That way we may get a little more variety in the displays.

 

@AceBenSuited , @LoneStranger I agree that at the moment signs aren't very useful to get people to visit your store. I have my vendor outside too because of that. I compromised by giving him a store room inside, too, maybe he is on a pipe break

My initial post is in no way a suggestion to not give a choice to players or even a demand to change the way things are done now (if I had wanted to suggest something I'd have posted in the suggestions forum ). It is merely an invitation for discussing and maybe coming up with some interesting (new?) ideas.

I really like @LoneStranger 's idea with the store front, although technically it would probably be a problem because of having to load all the decorations inside the whole house... Maybe there could be a row house with a compartment counting as "outside" looking like a storefront with a window or a service counter (like those walk-by-bakery-counters, no clue how they are called in english) and a seperate inside compartment? I'd love that and would sooo spend money on that

 

As a consumer, I decide when I want to buy something. If someone is trying to sell me something by making noise, then that's a sure way to get me to /ignore them... because they'd be nothing more than spam.

If someone actually make decent gear in the public vendor, I will come to them for personal requests. You got your signature on your items so that's literally your business card.

 

No. It's already hard enough getting any traffic at all to private vendors unless you got really lucky with your lot placement or paid a ridiculous sum of money to get the better lots first.

 

The last thing I'm going to do is whisper someone just because I bought something off the public vendor.

Mostly because the quality of gear I'm looking for no sane crafter is going to pay the public vendor fee to put their high gold items there. So I have no reason to expect the guy who put non masterwork chain on there to be able to make the +10 I actually want.

Connecting buyer and seller is a huge huge issue no doubt. We need at least regional search. Even city wide doesn't cut it because I'm not stopping by 20+ towns on my way from home to Brittany much less the other 90% of the world.

 

Thank you. Vyrin has done the same with his bookstore in Aerie, but our case is different. We need to provide an environment where people can relax and browse, read what's on offer and not feel hurried. That's why we put the vendors inside. We also think that's the way a bookstore should be. I can't remember ever seeing a bookstore with the sales counter on the street.

If Portalarium provided a search function that would report the location of the vendor that sells item x for the lowest unit cost, then there would be no disadvantage to having them inside. It shouldn't be too difficult to implement, since all the information required is already on a database. Until then, while I agree with the OP, I don't think we'll see it happen.

 

This is the only way I could agree with vendors being inside buildings... if there was a way to mass search at least an entire region for items that are being sold, and it then points you to the vendor selling that item. Otherwise it's already difficult getting vendor traffic as it is right now, and forcing vendors inside would only amplify that difficulty.

 

I think what you two provide, and any other bookstores that pop up, is so niche at this point that having a vendor inside does not harm your business one bit. A large part of that is the uniqueness of books. You may sort of be competing with other authors, but really, what they make isn't going to be made anywhere else. Someone looking for books is willing to take the extra effort because it is rewarding.

It's possible that other niches open up that are also not harmed with an indoor vendor, but for the most part, everyone else is generic and has to practically trip you to get you to notice them. Even the highest-level masterworking/enchantment plus-whatever items, while rare at this point, are not really unique. There isn't really anything that the person in front of the keyboard can do except press some buttons and get lucky. That's why those vendors need to be in your face.

The vendor lookup could help a great deal. It would at least let people know it's not a waste of time to go to the far corners of the scene to get something they need. Of course, you'll have people in the best places fight any kind of directory because it hurts the value of what they pledged that high to receive.

 

If I'm buying items off the public vendors, then that means that the items are already good enough for me. If I want upgrades, I can just look at the crafter's name and go "Yo dude! Can you make me X with Y? Name your price!"

Except that they're designed to allow trade while the crafter is offline... and when they're offline, I hope they lock their doors. Actually scratch that, don't lock the doors please

 

I enjoy saving up gold and going on a hunt for items at PC vendors. But a simple fix for the "emersion issue" would be to allow small stalls that could fit outside row houses. Another option is to put all PC vendors at row houses inside but with outside signage of some type required; it would be cool to see stores inside with a vendor counter top and nicely decorated stores.

 

I'm trying something different.

I make basic chainmail suits out of iron. Then I mastercraft/enchant them and put them up for sale on a public vendor for a couple hundred gold per piece.

Since I harvested all the stuff myself that went into the items, I am technically making a tiny profit over the cost of fuel that went into them..and the items showcase my ability to make a decent suit of chainmail.

And it allows me to increase my skills in masterworking and enchanting.

I look at the public vendor as the billboard. People may or may not hit private vendors as they run around town, but they usually will look at the public vendor before leaving.

 

Lets see it the other way around:

What would you say, if you see no vendors at all on the streets, beside those npc-vendors on the marketplaces here and there, have to walk into every house and bumb into lots of locked doors, to see if there probably might be a vendor inside (or not)? Would that be better than seeing lots of vendors standing outside the houses along the streets?

 

Well, I'd hope that the people who placed store signs on their houses would have a vendor set up and their doors unlocked obviously.

I'm gonna feature request a store front compartment/home or small vendor stalls that fit on row lots - I really really like that idea.