Idea - Market Apartments

[Angela Christine]

I like the "sales tax" idea.  Merchants should be helping to support the police force that protects them from thieves, or at least instakills those thieves after the fact, which is great for preventing recidivism.  


You pay to rent the space (goes to either the city, Nenyuk, or whoever owns the property), you pay the "wages" for the NPC shop minder, and you pay your taxes to the city.  The NPC shopkeeper might want a % commission on sales, instead of or in addition to a minimum wage.  

Applying sales tax and/or NPC commissions would help encourage people to still seek out PC to PC interaction.  If you sell a sword for 100 sid from your shop you might only get 90 sid of that in your pocket.  If you sell directly to the PC you can charge 95 sid, resulting in a better deal for both you and the buyer.


:idea:


It would also be good if you could buy goods through your shop, not just sell.  If you are a jeweler you'd set your shop to buy gems, saving you from having to go out into the dangerous world to dig for gems yourself.  I'm not sure if the code would let you buy specific items or just classes of items, either would probably be ok.  Rather than setting an exact price for each item you'll buy, you could set it as a % of the Value (as determined by the Value skill).  Most NPC shops buy things much below Value, and re-sell them greatly above Value.  If you could set your shop to buy for, say, 90% of Value most grebbers would rather sell to you than to the money grubbing NPCs, and you are still saving money in relation to what it would cost you to buy from NPCs or hire someone to go foraging specifically for you.  Even if your NPC shopkeeper would only buy 5 of each item, your shop would still be attractive because you'd be clearing out those 5s every day or two.  


:idea:


An option for more expensive shops would be to hire a guard as well as a shopkeeper.  The guard stands around and looks menacing.  If a shop has a guard the difficulty of stealing is raised.  Like most shop guards he wouldn't actually do much besides shout "Thief!  Thief!" but it would still be kind of cool.  These guards wouldn't be as high a quality as those that guard the gates to estates, but even a second-rate guard can help discourage crime and protect your shopkeeper if monsters start pouring out of the sewers or something.


:idea:


If NPCs kill your shopkeeper, a portion of their goods and cash on hand should also be automatically destroyed.  If a wandering mekillot or sewer-thing kills your shopkeeper it just makes sense that they are going to spoil some of your goods in the process.


:idea:

To be super-double-cool, expensive shops could include a backroom or upstairs apartment/sleeping area, so that you can live in your shop.  It wouldn't be thief proof, but a thief would have to go through your shop, past your shopkeeper or guard, and past the locked door before they could get into your back room and steal your couch.

Specialized shops could also include descriptions of areas where the owner can cook or do other crafts (possibly with a coded skill bonus).  If you are setting up a bakery shop, it would be good if you could actually do the baking there, rather than at the Gaj cooking pits.  These areas could be rolled into the "backroom apartment" so that random crafters wouldn't be camping in your shop working.



OK, I'll stop now.



Angela Christine

[Gimfalisette]

AC's ideas rock too. Also very much like what could be done in Star Wars Galaxies, with the exception of the guarding/thieving stuff, which would be awesome.

[moab]

This stuff makes me want to play a merchant again.

[Jherlen]

I'd be in favor of the modified approach... having NPC storekeepers to sell goods when the PC wasn't around to run the shop. You could have those NPCs given some standardized talk scripts, maybe to say the owner of the shop and a "greeting" or "sales pitch" to people who wanted to talk to it.

I envision a subset of House Nenyuk that sells space and contracts out trained salespeople to sell goods. Just like there are real-life marketing/promotional firms, Nenyuk could train their people in general merchanting/hawking skills and let crafters provide inventory. (Plus, this gives Nenyuk something more public to do beyond running apartments and banks.)

You could still do your crafting in a PC shop and be around to run it, but having NPCs there would make them more persistent and maybe encourage more PCs to use them or peruse them.

To feed the derail a bit... The only way Salarr/Kadius/Kurac would start caring about individual, independent merchants would be if they started impacting sales in a significant way, stealing big-name clients. Salarr doesn't care if some two-bit spear maker opens up a shop... however they would certainly care if that spear maker started undercutting them and their contracts to the templarate/noble houses for less.

All in all, I love this idea.

[Tlaloc]

I like the "sales tax" idea. Merchants should be helping to support the police force that protects them from thieves, or at least instakills those thieves after the fact, which is great for preventing recidivism.

It should be noted that all NPC merchants generally have to deal with 'taxes', naturally, as a part of the code. So, yes, if an NPC merchant was created as per Hal's idea, they would likely also deal with taxes as per normal.

[Mudder]

Man this is a super sweet idea! I hope Hal gets it in game, I just might end up having to play a merchant even though I said I never would, but with his in game it would bring playing one to a whole different level! Very sweet.

[Koala]

Just the idea of this code being implemented made me black out for a few RL minutes . If this is ever implemented, there will be great RP opportunities for anyone who has some trade, but cannot find the right people just because of the difference in their playing times and time zones.

Also this may create an oppurtunity for tribal traders, who wish to trade their good in one of the city states. It seems to be, with the current code, it is difficult (not impossible) for tribals to get involved in trading relations with city based pc merchants. With the "open market" idea, they can easily locate those pc merchants and do some trade. Hell, maybe those tribals can open a lasting shop for themselves, who knows.

Another contribution of this code would be that you can own one store in Allanak and another one in Tuluk (or somewhere else). This will create more RP opportunities (hiring a mercenary group or etc.) when those merchants start regularly shipping their goods between their shops.

[mangler]

Wow, this is a mega cool idea, souds great, and it would be even better with Npc shopkeepers, reminds me of when i had an weapon crafter once, who's life ambition was to run his own shop, but at the time,i thought it would be a bit much to send a special app for my own shop. But rent a shop would be fab.

[Anonymous]

The original idea has merit however i don't know about getting NPCs to do the work one would otherwise do ICly.

The biggest problems i see with merchants and crafters is almost everyone hangs out in the taverns and crafting or hawking there is for the most part is considered bad form. If this idea was implemented without NPCs(or even with), a room or two (bazar or mall) solely for these shops would have to be made. The original complaint with this was that it might further separate the player base between places. Though I kinda like the idea of people going to the busy bazars in the day and then spending the nights in the taverns. It would be nice seeing players hawk and working on their crafting, socializing with others and sharing crafting ideas.

A possible problem i see with having NPCs run the shop is: a person sets up shop, still has to do the crafting behind closed doors and then isn't required to do any of the RP work to sell his stuff since the NPC now take care of that. It doesn't nessasarily solve any of the orginal problems or create that much RP (creates additional gameplay but not nessasarily more RP)..trade is now being handled through NPC more then ever.

I don't know like i said the idea has merit...