Commissioned vendors and pricing

Btw @ⒹⒿAlleine Dragonfyre -- if we want to talk fairness, we'd also have to talk about tax-free lot deeds, too, wouldn't we? Paying taxes on your lot in this game is really a huge disadvantage.

 

I don't mean it disparagingly. It's an industry term in the Casino business that refers to high rollers. Why do people keep getting upset with it? I've used the term once. I won't again if it bothers people.

 

In SOTA going back a few years it was used in that way to basically say that those that invested a lot were treated differently or controlled what the team does. Which is the farthest thing from the truth. I'm no "whale", hell I'm not even a tuna, might be a cod though

 

Your kindness for explaining this too me is very much appreciated. I won't use it again, then. If you are a codfish you are a King among the Cod!

 

Thank you and for one thing imo it is a word of power like me against them type of thing. Which is not fact based. One meaning I found of Whales is "a person with deep pockets or lots of disposable income." But it is like saying terms like "care bears", "trolls", etc and really none of which are respectful to another person. I do not have a thin skin I would say but such is not the case with everyone. We all get emotional about this game with so many things going on to discuss and iron out before release and beyond. We need to stick together not fall apart with labeling or hasty judgements of each other. Not saying this to just you but to us all. I have little income atm, true I do have a higher tier pledge as described but as to am I Whale because of it, well no way, I could only wish.

Ok so back on topic. I still think something could be worked out if someone does not want to use a commissioned vendor just don't do it and take the alternative as I mentioned. I don't think Portalarium will pull back commission free vendors or change this situation but you never know. I have been wrong before.

I for one am not of the mindset that we should have too much control over pricing. I know some may think this needs micro-managed for the economy which I don't care about, but for me I don't mind window shopping sometimes and looking for good deals. In the game Black Desert prices were set everything costs a certain amount always. In this game the player has choices of what to sell for. I see item amounts fluctuate. I bought quite a few throne of bones for a theme idea I had going on. I was amazed at the difference in pricing I saw for this item. Mostly I was able to buy it for 500 gold or less but then I would see it for 20,000 gold and think hmmm perhaps this person does not know that you can get it for free if you go to ravensmoor dungeon and grab loot the chest before the Lich tries to kill you. You could do this every day probably if you wanted to. Anyway I am ok though if someone wants to work out how to fairly price our vendors but to me, it is a little more interesting to search out the deals and be able to have a sale day.

 

I saw you said you won't use it but I thought an FYI could be useful.

A Casino Host would never use the term whale when interacting with clients. search any casino in Vegas and they avoid that term as much as possible. So it is not an industry term.

Instead it was used as a slur term when talking about someone behind their back. Not something you'd use to their face.
Kinda like talking about someone as "the money". (Used to be by kids about their rich patent, or their partner, but now increasingly by streamers about their viewers).

It is through press and media that the term became popular. Much to the chagrin of the casinos. Where they discourage their employees from using it even in private.
Where the casinos would much prefer other more respectful terms.

Just thought you'd like to know.

 

As for the whale thing, I jokingly refer to myself as a "dolphin". But only as a joke. And then I went and spent more on seedinvest than I did on everything else.

Getting a tax-free lot means that you (or whoever originally bought the bundle) supported the game up front. You can also pay a taxable lot with COTOs. But if you did that, it would take 2-3 years worth of COTOs to put in as much money to support the game. Or you could earn IGG and pay with that. So the tax-free lot situation seems rather balanced to me.

I know a different area with two different chests that each have a dragonbone throne, and you don't even have to bother with a lich. I always get one of them if I'm going there, but I won't go out of my way to go there just for the chairs. They're also quite heavy and limit how much other loot I can carry.

That would make sharing vendors between multiple players much more complicated. How do you keep track of who each item belongs to when it is stored in a generic container? The vendors we have now are specifically designed to keep track of that.

The "hired" vendor thing makes a lot more sense. Basically there are different reasons for a fee on public vendors vs a fee on private vendors. In the former case, you're using a limited public resource and you get the advantage of a well-known location. It is also rather like hiring an auction house to sell your item (except for that "destroyed if not sold" thing, which I don't like) You are renting the vendor space.

In the latter case you are limited to where your lot is placed, and you are using up your own deco limits. The vendor is more like an employee, so paying him a regular fixed salary actually makes sense. And the best part is that we already have the tech to do that in the lot taxes system! How much is still a question, but it shouldn't be anywhere near the lot tax. 50-100 a day wouldn't be unreasonable.

 

Except then you're still not paid for because you have to continue paying taxes after 2-3 years, and its more worth it value-wise to just try to buy a tax-free deed from someone. Besides which, it creates a problem balancing the economy to have players with tax-free deeds because the devs determine a lot about how the economy works based on how much excess gold people are accumulating and create gold sinks to deal with that to prevent inflation.

I do have a tax-free deed, by the way, and my point wasn't even to propose to get rid of them. It was just to point out to Alleine that the same problem that exists with vendors exists with lot deeds, so I wasn't sure why she was only focusing on the lot deeds. However, even though I wouldn't propose getting rid of them, I would, as I said, maintain that the TF deeds do create a balance problem and make taxed deeds feel not worth having.

Hmm not necessarily based on the tech they create for it, but I get your point.

 

agree 10% just for listing an item is extremelly expensive and commissioned vendor are now useless, the fee should be 3% or less and you only should pay when effectivelly sell the item.

 

I'd be cool with a much smaller commission rate AND only when it sells.

 

Running around looking at these today before launch, it looks like public vendor use by the current player base is essentially nil for any practical trade purposes.
The real test will be to see if new players, starting without lots and without commission-free vendors, use the public vendors at the post-R-51 launch.

 

Totally agree with the OP.

 

If they did that... people would have less incentive to upgrade to get commission free vendors. The game needs to make money some how to keep going and expand, and that would effectively limit one of their revenue streams. IMHO.

 

Commission is moving to post sale in Q2.

Darkstarr's comment about it:

 

Good to hear, just as good as my suggestion. Achieves the same result.

I suggested my solution as I thought it may be less work than moving the tax to at the point of sale.


Regards
Spung