Item Suggestion: Player Vendor Vouchers

So I had an idea for a new item that could be added as a mob drop.

''Player vendor voucher'' is basically a gift card. It could be a semi rare drop in the amount of 25gp per voucher.

The item will stack and is used only for purchases made from player vendors.

The idea is to help stimulate sales via player vendors.

One possible downside is that players could simply purchase items from their own vendors using the vouchers in order to cash them in. But still, I estimate that adding this item will still help stimulate activity on player vendors for the most part.

Apologies for posting this in General Discussion. Not sure where else to post this as it doesn't exactly qualify as a wishlist request for me, and there is no subsection in Game Features for items specifically.

Thoughts on this?

 

I do like this suggestion

Possibly as some sort of "Note of the Realm", which could be restricted for use "through only the public vendor" within NPC towns, which then benefits those less fortunate not to have a privet vendor.
I think what @jammaplaya suggests here is a very "player driven economy" stimulating thing
~Time Lord~

 

Or like a coin made of cork that (player) merchants widely accept across Novia.

Of course when the coins are turned in to a merchant he'll keep the coin and give his owner 25 gold pieces.

 

Yeah and that coin can be gold in color! and be called GOLD!! Holy crap

 

The only things I remember buying from an NPC vendor over the course of the last... year(?)... have been fuels and tools, seeds, and other things that are only available through NPC Vendors.

I fail to see the usefulness of this 'premium currency'

 

I have plenty of sales (I don't price gouge or monopolize pricing), thank you very much, but I agree there needs some kind of advertising system... So that players can shop a region for what they're looking for...

I suggest a new NPC chr, one that travels around, checking stocked items, then standing at a set location... Lets call them an "auctioneer or Royal counter", they would start at their Podium and walk around to every player vendor taking note of all their stocked items (building a DB of that region), when talked to they would supply a list of all items they have noted at the time (a player could filter the list and get direction to the vendor via the compass similar to housing lots from a town crier)...

This new NPC could even travel the overworld each day and go to the next town/village (stay for the day and move on), like a traveling encounter, when talked to they could give you a region where your item could be found, they're not for buying/selling, only for advertising...

 

I like it

 

You know, that kind of gives me an idea here. What if the player vendor vouchers were based on the region that you got it? So those vouchers would be useable only in the region where you are actively farming anyways. This would help, in a sense, keep players from needing to go to 'that same vendor' they always shop at, cutting down some of their travel time and encouraging them to shop local. Heels yeeh!

So I don't really know all the region names, I know hidden vale could be one.

For those who aren't following, this is a method I thought of to encourage people to buy more often from player vendors. They act as a sort of 'discount' which will basically encourage more sales from vendors with prices that might be a few gold higher than others, so this new revelation in cutting it down further into regions helps with that substantially.

This is a semi-rare drop which comes from mid-tier mobs that, if implemented properly, shouldn't add much to inflation. In fact they could lower the frequency of 25 gold coin drops a little and balance this out completely. So just food for thought. This is likely my best idea thusfar!

Edit: How this would work is that NPC Player Vendors would first take the vouchers from the players inventory, then take whatever gold amount would be necessary after. They would take priority and maybe they could add a 'Voucher amount' line to the purchase window. It would be more difficult to code this in regionally, BUT it would be largely beneficial to the intended purpose.

 

It will be easy to understand if it gets implemented the way I've imagined it. Whereas you may make your own food, armor, etc etc everything you need, many players need to shop from player vendors for certain items still.

But then again, if you think coins made of cork are more 'premium' then some of the other currencies around... then you probably aren't immersed in this game enough to enjoy my posts or ideas of late! Kindest regards tho!!

 

@jammaplaya I have just 1 question? So who buys the voucher (meaning who puts in the gold value of 25g)? I assume you mean the game puts that gold in... So the game would keep adding gold with no end in sight... If you have 4x vouchers and purchase off a player vendor an item priced at 100g, then you pay nothing out of your pocket, and the vendor owner gets 100g from the game, as your player chr didn't supply that gold, right?

Why don't you just take the club that drops and sell it to an NPC for 25g, then save your gold until you have enough to buy what you want?

 

Because those 25gp could be spent at an NPC vendor as well.
He wants to creat an incentive to buy from players and not NPCs.
Didn't make up my mind about the whole idea so far but so far i don't feel comfortable about it.

 

That would be better just as long as it's not to a player (who's probably wealthy already) that gets it... Ya'know, it's My opinion, that only 10% of the player base has any kind of wealth (meaning they have a million gold or more), I could be wrong, but I check every player vendor I come across, and it's hard for me to imagine them getting any sales at all, judging on the prices they want...

Heck, Earl, I even went to the "Diamond Field" you suggested to me and All I found was 250, 500, 1000 lot of ores @47g was the cheapest (that's still 11,750g to buy 250 per of iron), like I have that much... After searching, I finally found a guy with a 30 lot of iron and bought it... Didn't see any Tin or Tungsten, which is what I was after... I finally found some at another location (which I will keep secret), I'm offering 100g per Tin on my vendor in Braemar and haven't had any takers, so I guess they're selling to someone else because I get lots of iron, copper, nickel and tungsten but I can't afford to keep buying, I'm going broke... Being only level 51, I can't survive in the mines, so what's a guy to do?

I think it would be better to "advertize" like any good businessman would do to boost sales... You can't rely on "Location, Location", and "price fixing" should be frowned upon big time, maybe even controlled...

If you're not getting any sales, and players know where you are, that leaves only 1 answer "you're price is higher than what they have to spend", so I would suggest lowering your prices and see what happens...

 

That was probably me.
I am trying to sell in small stacks and with prices below the BMC price list.

Interessting.
I will visit you as soon as i got some tin restocked ^^

Actually i have got 2 sources for my ore.
The first one is the OH "mine". Yepp, you got that right. But there you can farm copper and iron with the occasional bydrop of tungsten and tin in calm. Absolut calm. It's almost meditative.

The rest of my ores like Gold or Silver i pull from the overworld ecounters. Bandits and skeles in the plains road have gold and copper. Wolfs and stags in the woods have silver and copper.
Sieges have silver too.
Works pretty good so far. Good enough at least to buy a PoT row deed and the house for it.

I somewhat agree. Though i really like dthe idea of regional markets. But it isn't working. So we can as well switch to an open market.

 

I don't think it's a problem, pretty darn smart if you ask me... Smaller lots can sell to more players, and if they buy them all, ok then... I'm urging all SotA players to ignore BMC pricing (they're the Britannian Mining Consortium from UO and everyone knows how messed up the UO economy is)... Don't let them Monopolize pricing, use your own judgment...

At the moment I have a contract for: 50 copper, 50 iron, 2x 10 tin, 2x 10 tungsten, but take note that there's someone else that supplies me with everything but the tin... and I haven't been on today, so...

I gather in the same spots my friend, but it's very slow going, like Owl's Nest used to have loads of ore, but now it's nothing to what it used to be and the respawn is very slow... There's a scene just North with lots of spiders & bears, but also had about 20 iron ore nodes, I get ganked every time I try it, maybe you'll have better luck...

 

Hail SmokerKGB. Sorry for the late reply!

The vouchers would be a semi-rare dropped by mid-tier mobs. So once in a while, the game will give you a voucher, which is equal to 25gp, but is only spendable on player vendors. Whereas dropping an extra club here and there doesn't incentivize spending on player vendors.

One thing to understand here is that player vendors need to make sales in order for the game economy to be healthy. Even with 'commission free' vendors ensuring that there will always be vendors with wares to buy, people will still regard seeing the 'same old vendors' with the same exact wares list as last week/month as stagnation.

The vouchers will play a small role in helping player vendors to move product that would otherwise never sell, especially if they're coded in regionally, because they act as a discount. A discount that is also taking up a minor amount of carryweight, so people will want to get rid of them asap.

For players who would rather just have extra gold for buying whatever they like, they could still do so, by purchasing items from their own vendors using the vouchers. Although I believe you would need either a friend or an alternate account to do so. Because of this, not everyone will do it. I suspect many people will use them as intended, and so it really boils down to being a win for everyone. Even player vendor value will go up slightly, which is good for backers who have purchased them.

And it's not like the game is simply generating extra gold. People will still need to be out playing in order to get the vouchers. More vendor sales, more rare drops, more activity. It really is just a win win win situation for everyone. Honestly it might even be the best idea I've ever had in online gaming.

Is this the best idea for incentivizing player vendor sales? Maybe not, but I don't see any downside to it.

 

So if I understand you, the voucher has a 25 gold "discount" when making a purchase from player vendors. Where does that leave the vendor owner? holding the voucher?? Which they can use to make other purchases, but only from player vendors, right? Could I offer them back for sale to my customers for gold (player gold is something I could use)?

I'm just afraid of getting stuck with a bunch of vouchers when I need to purchase reagents, and no player is offering reagents in bulk...

I would much rather see them in 100 (common drop every where), 1,000 (semi rare), and 10,000 (rare drops) in value of discount received... This is looking more like a "new" currency idea where the currecy never dies and can be traded between players... I don't think they would have value unless there's a lot of them dropping...

 

Let the economy sort itself out for now until there is a player base then worry about tweaking and promoting if required. Players could reasonably price items for the phase of development we are in, or horde them until release when we have a population. Please don't implement changes based on less than a few hundred players that got into the game early, these players are generally the ones that know how to make what they need and have the skill to do it. Later is when these changes should be implemented but it is a good suggestion if player vendors still struggle when there is a larger population.

 

@SmokerKGB

I wanted to ask if you're affiliated with the KGB guild from uogamers hybrid?

Also, the voucher would be deleted by the game once it has been used at a player vendor. So the vendor owner would get 25gp and the voucher just gets deleted.

Just picture it like this:

You're out farming say deep ravenswood. It's mostly mid tier mobs. Maybe once or twice per hour you get a voucher. So after a typical 4 hour period of farming there, you go either to braemar or some POT nearby to sell your mob junk.

Let's say in that 4 hours you got maybe 8 vouchers. It's worth 200gp, but if you're like me, you'll be noticing that it also weighs .8 lbs and you'll want to get rid of it. So you wonder what you can spend it on. A player vendor is nearby, and is selling repair kits for your armor that you may need after farming. You end up buying 2 of them for 250 gold. You've only spent 50 gold, and the vouchers get deleted.

What just happened is that, because of the existence of vouchers, more players are now willing to stock NPC purchased goods like repair kits at their vendors, because they will be able to move them more easily for 50gp more than NPC prices. You're also now shopping around a little bit more often in areas near where you're farming, (if the vouchers are regionally based as suggested above), instead of simply recalling back to wherever your home base might be and doing all your shopping there.

Repair kits is just one example, and it's not the best example because they can also be crafted. Replace it with any crafting fuel, which I believe are all NPC vendor generated only. More player vendors will be willing to stock fuels now because they will be able to make a little profit for the effort more easily.

Certain towns also don't have every type of NPC vendor for purchasing fuels. I know Soltown doesn't have a carpenter, so you need to go all the way to another town to buy wax. It can be a pain when you're looking around on player vendors but none of them are carrying any wax. Now, because of vouchers, maybe every vendor will have stax of wax because they want to be the vendor getting all the voucher love. Imagine just walking up to any player vendor and finding everything you need while getting a discount on the purchase and paying under NPC prices, while the seller is making a little profit for their efforts.

Either way, the purpose behind the vouchers is to make things easier to sell on player vendors. It's a very small addition which could have very big results. I personally love getting rare drops, so seeing another variety of rare currency that is more common would be enjoyable.

 

I just wanted to add my idea for the lore behind this voucher system.

Basically, the player vendors have a little merchant fair while everyone is 'sleeping' once a month. It's a little 'get-together' for all the merchants, and they use the vouchers (which could be in the form of some coin made of cork) to make purchases at the fair. The vendor who has collected the most vouchers would have the most buying power, so perhaps for that month, he or she would end up buying some kind of cool hat or clothing.

So really, depending on how many vouchers your vendor has collected, you might end up seeing your vendor wearing some cool new outfit when you wake up! He or she will also have a serious hangover, and might mention the wild night they had spending all the vouchers.

The reason I suggested a coin made of cork is because I believe (if memory serves) that somewhere in my childhood I actually had a coin made of cork that was more or less a coupon for some festival I must have been at. That or I just came across it somehow. Pretty sure it was worth 5 dollars or something.

 

No, sorry, I thought of the name after I quit UO... It has nothing to do with the Guild...

I'm not sure you realize the problems here, the game is creating too much gold when Bandits drop a Halbert and players farm them just to earn gold, so they swap the Halberd with a club (which sells for much less)... Slowing the gold created... This problem remains the same if a Voucher drops or a Halberd drops...

Next problem: Players are trying to sell 2x repair kits for 250 gold (this is a mistake and one of the reasons player vendors don't get any sales), when an NPC sells the same item for 2x 100 gold (200 gold), it's far cheaper to buy from an NPC, than a player... Players will never lower they price because there is far too many resources involved to make repair kits, that's the main reason I don't stock repair kits (can't make any gold selling them)...

So unless the Devs decide to change that, this problem will remain, and supply/demand can't control the price (as it should)...