Vendor changes

Others and maybe even I have asked for it once or twice but please change the way we sell/buy items at vendors...making stacks that might fit the needs/capabilities of the customers is somehow annoying.
That's why I would like to suggest some change for the vendors.

First change
Make the inventory of vendor like it is for NPCs traders. You give a stack of 1537 items to the vendor tell him to sell it for x gold a piece and each avatar can decide if he would like to buy the whole stack or just parts of it.
Same for purchase orders. If you need e.g. 1000 mandrake you do not really care if one avatar at once or 41 avatars are delivering this amount in varying packages.

Second change
The first change maybe will need a change on pricings for not commission free vendors. I would suggest to add a tax somewhere between 1-10% with a minimum tax of 1 gold per trade and not in advance.
You are selling one book for 10 gold and the tax is 1% you will not pay 0.1 gold instead it will be rounded up to 1 gold and you will get 9 of the 10 gold. Selling 13 ore for each 50 gold and you might get 643 gold while (6.5 gold round up) 7 gold is payed as tax.

Depending on the region, season, type of good and/or other factors the taxes could be later even different.
E.g. selling an artifact in Drachvald could be taxed with 10% while in Norgard the tax is just 6% and in Midmaer it is 8% while in the next season it is Drachvald 3%, Norgard 9% and Midmaer 4%. This could bring some dynamic into the market.

Third change
Additionally I would suggest implementing possible general adjustments on pricing. E.g. everyone on your friend list gets a fix discount of 5% at your vendor, everyone in your guild 10% and your best mate will get 15% (while everyone on your black list have to pay 50% additional gold).

Maybe you even could set a value regarding amount of purchased items or total sum to have a possible dynamic discount. E.g. purchasing for more than 10000 gold and you get a 1% discount, for more than 50000 a 2% discount,…

Maybe a forth change
I’m honestly not pleased with the current system of commission free vendors as even with the above changes a commission free vendor is still a huge advantage if you would like to sell something…so I would suggest making all above changes also for the commission free vendor. (Please read further before you freak out )

The difference between a commission free vendor and a commission vendor could be simply something between 1% to 5% that is additionally deducted from the trades to pay the vendor…the commission. This would still offer a benefit to have a commission free vendor but it wouldn’t be a “must have”. Your decision when to sell what and where would be much more valuable to maximize your profits.

E.g. you are selling 784 ore for 50 per piece.

Commission free vendor = 784 * 50 gold = 39200 gold - 5% tax = 37240 gold for you and 1960 gold as tax

normal vendor = 784 * 50 gold = 39200 gold - 5% tax - 2% commision = 36456 gold for your avatar, 784 gold as commission and again 1960 gold as tax

I know at least this forth change will make some people unhappy but I think this would be fairer to everyone.

Ideas or suggestions?

 

I agree with you except yout 4th change. Sorry but its pointless ^^
The difference would still be the same beside the fact that you now tax vendors. So both have to pay but the comission vendor has to pay more. In the end, it would be the same as it is now.

 

Tax free means tax free, commission free means commission free......

 

I think a better approach to make selling items more new player friendly is to update the public vendors instead. Remove the penalty of losing your items completely if they don't sell or are taken off within 7 days. That is WAY too harsh. Also, increase the amount of time the item stays on the vendor from 7 days to at least 14 days but probably even longer.

 

You want to tick off people that paid money in the development of the game?
You change the functionality of the items they paid money for, thereby watering them down.

If I put up a piece of furniture for 1000 gold on my commission free vendor, I expect to get 1000 gold for that item. That was one of the perks I saw years ago that motivated me to drop more money into development of SOTA. Don't mince words by calling it a "tax" instead of a "commission". Essentially, in game mechanics terms, "tax" and "commission" are the same exact thing: a deduction on the amount of gold that you get for selling an item. Not cool at all.

I agree with the OP's First Change 100%.

In regards to the Third Change, I think about the mechanics of how the Friends List works. Everyone uses the friends list as a Directory of Teleportation. People throw around friends list invites like candy. Even my Friends List is chock full of people I don't know, or have even spoken to. Setting price discounts according to friends list would only make the friends list even more useless, as it would encourage everyone to friend everyone else in order to get special pricing. Friends List should be just that... a list of your friends. I do think that discounts for people in your guild (and discount levels for "Kindred" and "Trustee" and "Co-Owner" at your property) is a good idea. But, in the same vein as Friends List, people on your Black List paying more would re-defining what that list is for. Sure, i don't want to hear from someone, but that doesn't mean I won't take their money (because honestly, who is going to pay an extra 50% for an item).

 

I don’t think so.
Currently if you have a commission free vendor you can place items in his inventory and basically do not care about when they are sold but with the mentioned changes you would have to now and then take look at the taxes in the region and adjust your offers depending on the situation to optimize your profit. As maybe currently it wouldn't that good to sell weapons with a 9% tax and it might be wiser to switch your sales to 3% taxed reagents or you could send your vendor on holiday until the taxes are more profitable in that region. Indeed it wouldn't be as easy as today to get the most profit but I think the market would be more dynamic and would offer more avatars a chance to make a good bargain.

Actually I think the whole vendor system is still their first iteration of this mechanic and needs anyway some changes and of course the suggested change wouldn’t be a loved feature for everyone but I think overall we would win more than we lose.

Well actually if you need 1000 gold you would simply have to add the expenses (taxes) to that sum that after your sale is taxed you still get the 1000 gold your need…sometimes that would mean you need to charge 1100 gold for an item and sometimes you just have to charge 1010 gold for your item.
And even if each gold sink is technically the same there is a difference in them for someone out of this game world. Commissions are payed to a single person (your vendor), while fees are more a regional charge (e.g. the town) and taxes are e.g. demanded from the widely government. All these charges are used for different purposes your vendor needs something to eat, the town has to pay the guards and the government needs to pay an army to free all the sieged towns...but in the end it is just a suggestion and as already said not everyone will love the idea but we can constructive discuss about it.

Well actually it is up to you how you use your friend list. I personally just have friends or at least person I’m calling “acquaintance” on my friend list and simply refuse unknown invitations but if others are using this list as destination finder for teleporting this is their way of handling things and just to say it neither their nor my usage for this feature is wrong…just different.
And of course in this case you might better deactivate the discount for friends but I would have guessed you would have the option to activate/deactivate these options as you please and if you do not like to give discounts you do not have to activate any of them but at as far as I could read there are quite some avatars in Novia who would appreciate such a possibility as e.g. they like their guild mates enough to make them a better offer than to a stranger.
And about the extra charge for unliked persons…well again it would be just an option but if you are a famous crafter you might be willing to oversee the crimes of your foes for the moment if they pay some extra gold to get one of your outstanding items and would basically add some meaning to not liking someone and might be even more crucial once guild wars are active and you feel in your pocket while purchasing your daily needs how many foes you have.

 

I agree with @Rowell.

#1 change is a great idea and I fully support it.

#2 change I think the varying commision % may be confusing to keep track of for players and without a global mechanism to see all options without having to travel the world to find a deal... this won't help sales in low population areas. I think @Kain Darkmoor has a better suggestion to help make non-commission free vendors better. I think this should get applied to both public vendors and the commission vendors you can buy in-game.

#3 change is probably more trouble than what its worth to try to code in. If you want a vendor with discounts to guildies only, you can put a vendor in a basement restricted to guildies only, and just set better pricing. Or, just have guildies contact you for a personal transaction at the better price. Friends list isn't necessarily just "friends" in SOTA so I don't think this would work.

#4 change is a definite no go. Commission free vendors were a major reason why many pledges were made and to charge any kind of fee when selling things on them would be changing their specific purpose. That is not something that Portalarium would like to get involved with changing.

 

Mh. So you want it to regulate the flow of players into underrepresented regions? Do i get that right?
Like Brit and co. 15% Tax, Drachvald 2%?

 

@Daxxe Diggler
Well even if I think in a game in continously development there are no no goes it might be true that the devs will not touch features out of your mentioned reasons...even if I still think commission free does not mean tax free or that you never ever have to pay anything ingame. In my opinion it just means that you are free for a specific kind of charge (commission) but not for others. Just because you vendor is working for free this does not mean that the novian government is not interested in getting some kind of "civic contribution".

I think "regulate" is the wrong word even if it maybe could be used as some kind of stimuli from the devs to encourage avatars to visit specific regions.
I thought more about maybe regular reoccurirng changes...maybe more like a calendar. Like every spring selling ore is somewhere most profitable and once discovered you would know that in the next novian year it will be the same.
But dynamic changes could be a later option if there would be e.g. regional desasters this could indeed influence these values...like there was a siege and there is now a need of gold to rebuild the town...normally a good reason for a medieval governor to raise the taxes.

 

I still don't like your tax idea but with the rest you posted you are onto something that might make for an interessting dynamic economy ^^

 

Perhaps something along these lines might work for commission vendors. Limit the amount of things a single person can sell on said vendor at a time.

Pay the commission, AFTER the sale is made. If I put my vehicle up for sale on consignment, I don't pay the commission fee up front. They get paid when it sells.
Then I get my share. This would allow folks starting out to have a better go of it.

 

So you are trying to add a "civic contribution" (AKA tax) in addition to the commission fees that are already charged to non-commission free vendors? If you add it to the pledge vendors, then you would have to add it to all the others too. What purpose does this serve?

All that would be is a gold sink and will only inflate prices for all items. Not a good scenario for newer players who will struggle with being poor to begin with.

It will also anger all the people who believed they were getting a vendor in their pledge that let them sell items with no fees whatsoever.

 

So you would like to adjust my suggestion like this?

First change
Make the inventory of vendor like it is for NPCs traders. You give a stack of 1537 items to the vendor tell him to sell it for x gold a piece and each avatar can decide if he would like to buy the whole stack or just parts of it.
Same for purchase orders. If you need e.g. 1000 mandrake you do not really care if one avatar at once or 41 avatars are delivering this amount in varying packages.

Second change
Additionally I would suggest implementing possible general adjustments on pricing. E.g. everyone on your friend list gets a fix discount of 5% at your vendor, everyone in your guild 10% and your best mate will get 15% (while everyone on your black list have to pay 50% additional gold).
Maybe you even could set a value regarding amount of purchased items or total sum to have a possible dynamic discount. E.g. purchasing for more than 10000 gold and you get a 1% discount, for more than 50000 a 2% discount,…
(Just to make it clear what adjustments are active is your decision. It would be just an option.)

Third change
The difference between a commission free vendor and a commission vendor could be simply something between 1% to 5% that is deducted from the trades to pay the vendor…the commission. E.g. you are selling 784 ore for 50 per piece.

Commission free vendor = 784 * 50 gold = 39200 gold for you
normal vendor = 784 * 50 gold = 39200 gold - 1% commission = 38808 gold for your avatar, 392 gold as commission


This would quite remove the dynamic effect I had originally in my mind as there would be no need to sometimes change your array of products or no appeal to search “cheaper” markets as trader and no need to move to other towns because of changing offers as a customer...but of course this would be a (rather boring ) possibility to adjust my suggestion.

 

Why is there a "tax" needed on vendors (commission-free or otherwise)? There are enough gold sinks in game as it is now. It offers absolutely nothing to the game except to take money out of, and to inflate the economy artificially. It's a great way to ruin an already stable in-game economy.

Commissions on vendors should collect the commission fee upon the sale of the item, not up front (if the item doesn't sell, the seller is losing money...which is not right. Consignment does not work that way).

 

I like the first change. Perhaps with the addition of setting a minimum amount that can be sold/bought.

I'm not really fond of your other ideas. Honestly I -hate- the idea of having to watch the market to see where taxes on which products are lowest this week. If I was into that, I'd play in the stock market IRL. Besides, you're making it sound as if I could choose where to sell my goods. Most of us have only one lot and one vendor. So there really is no choice, unless we all want to become town-hoppers now (probably no longer viable after launch anyways).

Like everyone else I'm using my friendlist as a bad replacement for a runebook. I have never spoken to half of the people that are on that list, and of course I don't want to give them discounts. If you want a discount, talk to me directly.

 

Actually I’m not the one who would be adamant that there has to be a commission for “normal” vendors. Actually I would be even satisfied if there would be visual differences like the commission free is wearing an ornate gear or that the normal vendor would have lesser space for orders but I do not think there is a possibility the commission could vanish completely.

Well actually you could have the possibility to choose even without swapping your loot…at least if I’m considering the offerings avatars made in the past. Not everyone is interested in using a vendor just for himself and so I would guess that there would be a reasonable amount of avatars who would offer an e.g. “sell at my vendor”-service but yeah I already recognized that not many find favor in this suggestion. I’m still sure I would like it but it was just an idea and no demand of implementation.

 

I really want to see the first item.