Public Vendors...yes/no?

I am starting a poll to see what players think of the public vendors and their increasing propagation, or if any changes are warranted (limit items per player, only non-property owning players may sell on them), whatever you think.
I am looking for as many relevant responses as I can get as I am hoping to have an impact on future decisions the devs make on this subject.

 

Good luck with this topic, you may want to tag a few of the top opinion makers/posters in here so that they can keep this post relevant and at the top of the sub forum.

V/R Brickbat

 

It's all a conspiracy man... see, first the corporations make these products and get you hooked on things and then they jack up the prices and then people can't afford insurance anymore so they gotta travel and the corporations win because they own everything!

Sorry...

Seriously though... NPCs are just sorta plopped everywhere right now. As the game fills out, vendor listings and governance of things will surely mature.

 

I think public vendors should definitely exist. I understand the need for regional economies, but I just think a unified vendor with larger commission would be an excellent gold sink and make for more activity and fun.

I dabbled in a little bit of Archeage before the server merges due to uneven population and lack of activity. For an MMO to thrive, we need to group everyone together as much as possible. Only then will the magic of interactions happen!

 

Yes, they should...

There're already restrictions and fee's that are charged if you price gouge, so if you can't afford the fee's then don't price gouge...

 

I don't mind them currently and do support, but since they usually have a yard sale of items, I would think they should be given an area that looks like a bazaar as their backdrop. It would be interesting to see several actually put in stalls/set areas where they only took specific types of items each dependent on element type. A variation would be to only grant access to local avatars [possibly based on where they are predominately bound timed on activity of a given month - sorry to those with tons of properties on one account], or maybe expanded access to their fellow public vendors in foreign cities via a set export or customs style fee. Anyway, would need to think on this a bit more but it wouldn't need to be too complex/convoluted.

 

I'm buying more from the public vendors than the private vendors. Variety is better and so are prices. In that way public vendors are helping establish lower pricing and forcing other vendors to be more competitive. Is it good for crafting, generally, at this early stage of the game? Yes because it gives crafters a place to sell their goods. And for the long-term economy, public vendors will make pricing more efficient/competitive.

If you want a protectionist system (which this game is designed to foster in several ways - see: regional economies), then public vendors are probably detrimental to that goal. But if you want a REAL economy, let public vendors exist (and I think there should be MORE of them) so we have a better idea of natural prices for raw materials and finished goods.

 

Yes, they should exist. If I can't find it at the NPC vendors, I go to the public vendors. If I can't find it at the public vendors, then the item might as well not exist.

 

Without Public Vendors, those who do not have a vendor of their own will either have no place to sell their wares or make them beholden to someone that does have their own.

Nothing in the game should Require that someone have Property.

 

What do I think of public vendors ?

I don't use them, either to sell or buy...​

That is what I personally think of them.


As to whether they should exist : Rufus answered that one above.

 

I love the concept of regional vendors, but there's little mechanic to support it:

In WoW (or most faction games), you can't trade items across factions except in limited context.
In Lineage taxes on items sold go to the guild which owns the local castle.
EvE and Archage made a whole game out of moving stuff around.

I'd be happy to see more of the game driven to the regions or individual player shops. But as it is now, I don't see much reason not to just have a global auction house. Right now it just feels like heavy handed friction with many loopholes and no mechanic.

 

That question is too vague to answer properly so I'd be very surprised if you got enough traction out of this to impact dev decisions since the dozens and more topics that we've had with very specific proposals or demands have usually resulted in verbal stalemates between different interest groups among players - where most deviate completely from the goals and visions as stated by Portalarium. So signal to noise ratio in these discussions are usually very very low.

But let me try giving a short reply at least:
We need a place where those without property can sell their goods - that implementation is right now Public Vendors.

Could there be improvements made on the Public Vendors as a system? Absolutely. I could give a list a 100 items long. But I will stop at 10 here and then you'll see in the responses that we as players usually agree on the basic stuff but disagree a lot on the more important stuff.

Basic stuff:

1. Public Vendors right now look bland - they really need to have a unique look and feel so that one can spot them from a mile away.
   Make it a stall with a special Awning with its own colors and patterns, put all kinds of knick knacks around them so that it looks like a proper middle eastern bazaar setting.
2. Public Vendors stalls should have multiple vendors (~4) each with a set of objects you are allowed to place on them. Combined with the stall mentioned above they could have one side each of a square stall.
   For instance if you have no property you are not interested in housing items. (Housing, Equipment, Resources, Paper)
   
3. Since Public Vendors enable trade functionality for those without property, their placement needs to always be close to both Bank service and if available Crafting services. This to ensure that it is as smooth as possible for them to run the triangle of Bank>Crafting>Vendor>etc.
4. Public Vendors should have a "price per item" field in the hover-tooltip.
   This so that if someone is selling 37 skins for 455 coins I can check the tooltip and see that it is ~12.3 per item.
5. Orders need to be much more integrated with sales.
   Since right now very few people see or remember to tab over to Orders to see them. While if they were side-by-side or some other such solution the economy would boost with much more things to do for players fulfilling other players' orders.

Important stuff (from my point of view)

1. Right now the fee for Public Vendors is 10g+10% up front.
   That 10g is way too low resulting in lots of trash listed. That should be dynamic and much more expensive the more popular a Public Vendor is. This would ensure that the most popular ones only have higher value items, get more distinction between popular+expensive versus remote+cheap, and act as a larger gold sink on the high earners.
2. Items should not be auto-trashed when they expire.
   Instead there should be a default option when you place it with "No Sale Insurance 100g" which one can de-select, but which if paid would place the object in the local bank instead of trashing it. Not only would it drive correct behavior but it would also be much more intuitive in that if you opt out of paying then the object is at risk.
3. Add per item / partial sales.
   Let us make one listing where we set a price per item and then how many items to place. So that I can put up 100 health potions for 60g each, where the buyer can select how many they want and only pay for that. (the listing still has the same time restriction and fee on the total as a normal listing)
4. Add a billboard next to the Public Vendor for announcements/advertising.
   Where anyone can pay a fee and get their 'flyer' listed for X days. And where interested parties can read the headlines, double click to read the flyer and drag and drop to take a copy.
5. Let the Public Vendors banter just like the regular NPC merchants does.
   Every X seconds, pick a random listing, then put that in local chat like "100 apples for 300 coins" to make them seem integrated and a part of the other NPCs in town.

 

For me the main advantage of the public vendor is I can click it, tab out and wait for all the stuff on it to load, but then use filters etc. to find what I want, instead of clicking on hundreds of individual vendors. You know, kind of how you can on the broker/auction house/etc. in most other MMOs. Except its not global, its only that town, so basically, go to Owl's head for the big selection and maybe check a few of the other local ones when you're passing by.

Honestly, rather than a public vendor I'd much rather see a local bulletin board allowing you to 'browse' vendor contents in that town from a central location and perhaps give you a way point to the vendor (similar to how town crier directs you to empty lots). Then the only people who would need to post on the public vendor would be people who didn't have local real estate.

 

The game needs public vendors, but keep the tax on them so that private vendors are more in demand. I would say have the tax rate on public vendors slightly higher than private vendors.

 

Private vendors are just not doing the job. There are too many of them. In too many cities. It takes too long to find what you want....at the price you want.

So the solution is to not use them. There have already been stories of people putting up quality items at ridiculously low prices only to find nobody buys it...because nobody clicks on their vendor.

The only 'economy' and I do use that word very lightly....exists in the public vendors. They work...not perfectly...but at least they do work. Everything Spoon said is spot on....the public vendors need to be more visible. They need to be better categorized. And there needs to be one in every town.

 

I like the public vendors. They serve their purpose. A few tweaks here and there are needed to address massive content, but other than that I see no problem. If there is no competition going to make your individual vendor unique and more public user friendly then that would be on me.

 

Did people forget that public vendors are the only option to sell items for those without a house or something?

 

public vendors should have lower tax rate,
for now it just makes cap between poor and rich even higher.
something like 1-2% would be alot better

 

Obviously either public vendors or an equivalent should exist. However, charging you over 10% of your price even if you don't sell, for only one week, and destroying your item if you aren't an addict and can log in every day to claim your items is ridiculous. The only reason you pay that is because you have no choice. Like for example there is no simple way to post and then mail the item to someone... you have to meet and do an in person trade.

Also having such high fees and low time means nobody will ever post things in unpopular towns...they'll pay the same huge fee for very low chance someone will buy it, further reducing any chance that this town will ever gain any visitors.

If this junk is to prevent people from posting bogus sales to store items, then just make it use up bank space when they post until it sells/reclaims. They should make the post much longer, for lower price (at least per post time), and return it to your bank if it fails, not destroy it. If they extend the time, refund fees on non-sales, or just take the fee out of the sale price, then the fee can stay the same amount.

So I suggest:
- make a sale posting use bank space (collecting similar items together in stacks to use only what the bank would use to store the same)
- make fee part of list price, paid on sale, not paid on return
- make time adjustable and much longer
- never destroy items

or:
make it like real life... a marketplace in each town where you can buy space for in-game money where you can place vendors without such ridiculous fees and problems and without having to own a house.

 

I love to browse the public vendors. I also love to browse player-owned vendors that are in POTs, PRTs and out-of-the-way spots in NPC towns. The only time I click on a player vendor that is on a main NPC town thoroughfare is when I am looking for something in particular or comparing prices.