Soltown Vendors are dropping the ball

Spoon, I really appreciated hearing your side of efforts to help the new players in Soltown. You obviously gave a lot of thought and effort for the players and it hasn't gone well. There is no fix for players who want to take advantage of your good will. I share Vladamir's concern about early player experience and how that may impact player retention in the game. If I can help you in some way at your spot there, let me know.

Jade, I've only played the game around 4 months and Soltown was part of my early experience. I think it is great that your guild took the time and effort to set up a spot for new players. I don't want in any way to come across as maligning but I do want to give you what my impression was as a new player because I suspect it isn't what your guild intends. I saw your prices for coal and wax as a newbie when I had only been playing a couple of days and happened to go to Ardoris for a quest the same day and saw the NPC vendor price there. My immediate impression was that your guild price of those items in Soltown was taking advantage of players who had no idea what actual prices were and avoided all your guild vendors in all locations since. Most players are not new to MMOs. Most of us are also not new to some guilds in some games freely taking advantage of the unwary. If an early impression is misunderstood you can look like one of those guilds. You might consider adding information at the site that lets new players know that the price reflects cost plus a fee for stocking or some such.

 

Well, don't forget that no one knows that but people who read this post. Everyone else sees what they see. You might suggest to your guild members who list in Soltown to consider their target market.

 

There is a bigger picture to this. At launch, IMHO (cause plans change), new players will end up in a region where their path takes them (near Solace Bridge, near Highvale, near Blood River) and not drag them to Soltown to begin with.

Perhaps you want to devote some of this passion on topics that could be modeled as good business practices for goods like food, slightly better weapons, crafting mats tailored in new player landing areas across all the areas to come.

 

No worries, after all that is kinda my thing, being overly verbose.

Takes much more to make me mad, hehe.

Also I could easily see where you were coming from and understood the base reasoning, so I didn't take it as much as directed at my effort as directed at the real issue of the problems for New Players, and perceptions are a big thing in the NUX (new user experience) so regardless of why things are the way they are - the feeling and the perception such things give is a real thing.

Although it would have most likely suited your intention and purpose better to frame your OP in the form of questions as to why people do what they do instead of stating it as a matter of fact that I and others was ripping off newcomers.

Oh, I've taken enough newcomers through the motions to know the vibe. Same thing but worse when they finally go to Owl's Head since people continually send them to Hidden Vale to level up.

We tried that through the Hospitalers, it was too many different opinions, strong wills and different ideals in how to help.
So sometimes its better to ignore the wish for consensus and just encourage eachother in doing whatever each person finds fun enough to keep doing.

Also such initiatives usually takes more game time than it gives, and as such leaves less time to do nice things for new players. I like showing new outlanders the ropes.
So if presented with the choice of attending/holding such meetings and actually being out there showing a new player around, I'd go with the latter every time.

I hope you see the irony in that the ones you mention positively by name that you think are good examples has also been apart of the guild that the OP says are ripping off newcomers.

Good points.
The buying of mats would be better for someone who has a want and a need for new outlander mats and as such a good gold turnaround.
As such I'd love to work with anyone who wants to take up such a business, with the new permission system for Vendors I could easily set up the lot as to give such a volunteer Vendor rights.
However it doesn't make you money even if you do it like you say with a 10% margin, this since you can only list that many Buy Orders and to make it reachable for new players you need to set each Buy Order to a really low quantity. So the time spent would never be worth it even with a margin. I tried that Soltown<>Ardoris run early on, and I think I'm about 200k g in the red. So this again relies on volunteer work for at best breakeven or more likely a loss.

Good thinking on the perception thingie - what I will do tonight when restocking instead of removing the service enterily, would rather be adding some paper notes/conversation to that vendor table explaining the concept and why it works like that so that the perception doesn't needlessly deviate so much from the intention. That way I can also repeat the tips of the Public Vendors as the better way to sell and outline that the Cheap Vendor is only valid if one isn't ready for the Public Vendors yet.

Those prices are much higher than the ones which the Cheap Vendor traditionally sells for. That one is specifically for <100g deals.
Hmm... Would have to think on that one and talk to some newcomers what they would prefer.

Again a good point. Most of my triage and reasoning is from before the Oracle 500.

Oh, I do get and enjoy the merchant part. I also get and enjoy the helping new players part.
But... the hauling and constant headache of restocking is the boring part due to how the games implementation. Restocking the Cheap and Guide vendors can take 20min without macros. If Portalarium would fix things according to our feedback on such then it wouldn't be as much of an issue.

 

Exactly what Stryker said. To some, Soltown is a new player stop on the way to bigger things. To others, it's literally the NPC town next door to where they live. Some will buy in soltown and will not buy in ardoris or even enter ardoris all the time. Soltown is going to be a permanent mark of the economy forever - and to many, may be one of the last towns they encounter on their story... not the first.

 

So there are 3 starting areas (The Battles of: Solace Bridge, Highvale, and Blood River) that lead the player to one of 3 cities (Soltown, Resolute, and Aerie (not sure on Aerie, but it's close to Blood River)). I know Soltown is the oldest of the 3 in the game that's in use, but why the hyper focus on it? Shouldn't we be getting ready for using the other locations as well? (This since the OP was talking about what vendors "should" have on them in "the" starting area.)

 

I guess I'm just a bit more hard core after being in IT for 25 years and still to this day watching my employees still needing to show people how to use a mouse. Sure, back 15 years ago people said I was one of the best customer support orientated people they ever met. I lost the patients for it long ago. I have no issues against those that can, I simply cant any longer... especially in a game which I am trying to play for entertainment. I've left a guild in SOTA when they allowed far to many people in the guild and all the seasoned players kept leaving which resulted in a guild full of a lot of really noobish people begging (no... expecting) for people to help them.

I personally would rather play with 10,000 players who can walk into Soltown and find the city center then 100,000 who can't.

But this topic is once again more of a fundamental structural issues with how the game is designed (NUx). I think it is GREAT for a hardened player and terrible for a new player to a game. I personally want to play in a game thats complex and demands that I learn it which challenges me. I actually feel like Im with Lord British on this with the exception that he probably would like everyone to be able to play in a complex way. I have no faith that most people can play a complex game like this.

 

Please feel free to do a run through them and report back.

 

While I appreciate you candor. I'll stick with what sells and is profitable thanks.
Potions are not worth the time for the return in investment and best left to the new folks to learn about and make on their own.
I do now stock empty flasks so they don't have to travel all the way to Ardoris now

But I'll Stick to what I know Sells

And that is what I call SALES.

And that's just one part of a day's sales

I NEED MORE ROOM Not less items LOL!

Thanks tho,

Laz

 

hmm... I might start selling scrolls too hahahaha