Merchants feeling a pinch?

[Troicha]

Wow, straw men back to back!

[Fathi]

I truly believe that most of the problems with guild_merchant stem from the set of starting skills the class receives and how they do not vary by location.

I'd love to see, in Arm 2 or whatever, the general 'merchant' broken down into 3-4 classes/specialisations that you could pick, i.e. merchant-that-crafts-luxuries, merchant-that-crafts-leather-and-armour, merchant-that-crafts-wood-and-weapons, etc.

Merchants are very limited with where they can get work right now unless they're very well branched--why would a southern branch of Salarr or Kurac hire a merchant that can... chop trees and sew cloth? Often it has nothing to do with not wanting to hire that merchant PC and everything to do with having no coded use for the poor guy at all, from a crafting standpoint.

[Ender]

So Ender, you're saying that all guild-merchant PCs should be required to join a clan, and should not even attempt to be independent, and any attempt should be made SO impossible that only a really stupid newbie who didn't read any of the docs would bother trying.

Not what I said at all.  I even stated I had two independant merchanty types that were quite successful, and they weren't even merchant classes.  Both struggled in the beginning, immensely.  Both almost starved.  One was on the verge of dying of thirst at one point.

One of which actually made the majority of his money off running a tailor protection racket, only hiring and supporting tailors but was not actually a merchant or even a subclass tailor.

For me it was all about being diverse.  Not pigeonholing myself because of my skills, and finding all sorts of ways to make money through PC and NPC interaction.  I found a way to bring in capital without working for a clan, used it to invest in tailors, and found a way to turn a profit from that.

What I'm saying is that it shouldn't be -easy-.  A successful independent merchant should be a very hard and therefore REWARDING accomplishment.

[enigma]

I have to agree with the starting skillset thing.  If you're starting out in the south, you're going to have a tougher time getting started as a crafter because of the vast difference in available materials.  This forces guild merchants to pick a crafting subclass so that they'll start out with more marketable skills.

My other beef with the merchant guild is the fact that there's one skill that branches some other valuable skills that make absolutely no sense as to why one would branch those from that.  It makes playing a guilded merchant much more problematic and difficult, perhaps unnecessarily, even though there is a way to at least try to circumvent the problem.

Food for thought for Armageddon II merchants.

[My 2 sids]

What I'm saying is that it shouldn't be -easy-.  A successful independent merchant should be a very hard and therefore REWARDING accomplishment.

You're right.  But, many of the problems discussed here arn't due to IC struggles.  There is nothing rewarding and everything frustrating to come up with a PC who should be a perfect fit in Zananthas... only to have him/her struggle due to OOC factors.

The reason any Indy PCs need to make more money is because they have to pay for more crap.  A PC joining a clan gets networking, stable income, matterials (and a wide variety at that), shelter, food, water, and succurity (don't RP like having a cot in a secure location is something to be taken for granted)

The thing is, every indy PC represents the majority of society:  those not lucky enough to work for a house!  If a PC is looking down on joining a house -- let the IMMs handle the poor role-play;   if a PC is racking up (and keeping) tons of cash -- maybe some NPC should bring it to the attention of a Merchant house that So and So is starting to affect the monopoly of the house.  If an Indy PC is starting to have more networking and power than a Merchant House -- let the NPCs and IMMs provide a more realistic situation.    

But don't undermind players trying to play Average Amos by making life absolutly impossible w/o joining a clan.  (Including cirtain PC clans who suddenly become 'conserned' when Average Amos suddenly starts selling 10 sid junk on the street corner)

[Cale_Knight]

The base complaint here seems to be that merchants can't "quickly" rack up "tens of thousands of coins."

Seriously. That's a problem?

The problem is when you see merchants making more money via NPCs in a RL week than nobles receive in their yearly stipend.

[Salt Merchant]

The base complaint here seems to be that merchants can't "quickly" rack up "tens of thousands of coins."

Seriously. That's a problem?

The problem is when you see merchants making more money via NPCs in a RL week than nobles receive in their yearly stipend.

No. I don't accept that a rich merchant is an outrage in game terms. Merchants are all about making coin and using it. That's the point of the class. And it what gives them some sort of ability to influence the game, through divesting that coin. The problem so far as I can see is that they cannot make large sums of money anymore (without grinding for RL months the way any other character can). Between changes to the game and competition from subguilders.

The other classes all have their own ways of influencing the game, be it through strength of sword and bow, the power of magick, the ability to sneak their way past everything. Sometimes in combination with positions of power such as nobility or merchant house appointments.

What do the independent merchants have, though? They will never be strong fighters or great wielders of magick or prominent hunters or whatever. They're about economic power. Why has the ability to wield economic power been squelched?

Yes, someone posted about making 8k a reboot. Did that person stop to think that he was probably leaving the majority of shops in one or more cities 'sidless for the next six days? There's really only room for one character to be doing such a thing out of the entire player base, at any given time.

[Kronibas]

if a PC is racking up (and keeping) tons of cash -- maybe some NPC should bring it to the attention of a Merchant house that So and So is starting to affect the monopoly of the house.

It doesn't take an NPC or imm intervention to notice this on most occasions.  In my experience, if a Merchant House family member is well connected
and knows the slightest about what's going on, then they take note of these threats to their seat at the top of the merchantile food chain, and if
they so desire, they can take appropriate action.  And we all know what that can mean.

[Salt Merchant]

Maybe the argument here is that independent merchants need time to become powerful economically, just the way other classes need some time to become powerful. That would be fine if it were true. I don't see how it is.

Can anyone put forth an example of a successful independent merchant operation since House Kohmar? Meaning one that ended up with more than a kiosk in one city or village somewhere?

[Adiadochokinesis]

No. The argument here is that the ability to make money often rests on a variable OOC influence.

AKA reboots.

They used to come every few days. Two or three, MAYBE four or five at the max.

Now they are, pretty regularly, five to seven days in length.

It's not about merchant power. It's not about people making too much money.

It's about how dependent people are on reboots to eat, drink, and live in the game in any semblance of normalcy.

[Lizzie]

No. The argument here is that the ability to make money often rests on a variable OOC influence.

AKA reboots.

They used to come every few days. Two or three, MAYBE four or five at the max.

Now they are, pretty regularly, five to seven days in length.

It's not about merchant power. It's not about people making too much money.

It's about how dependent people are on reboots to eat, drink, and live in the game in any semblance of normalcy.

It's not even just that, it's also that you can find an NPC to buy just about anything in Armageddon, including all the "newbie crafter" stuff that your brand new 2-hour-old PC can make, and there isn't any PC who is willing to buy the same stuff. It's the shift of power that bothers me most. If I can spend 4 RL weeks actively seeking PC customers to buy the sandcloth clothing I've spent all my starting sids on making, and *must* end up joining a clan just to afford water, OR make a fortune selling this stuff to NPCs, then something is very very wrong. I shouldn't be faced with the choice: Make a whole lot of sids by ignoring the PCs, or starve by ignoring the NPCs.

You see, that is the problem. Those are the only two options an independant crafter has. They can either get rich off NPCs, or starve off PCs. They can join a clan, but then they wouldn't be independent. And if my understanding of the game history is close to accurate, some of these Greater Merchant Houses didn't exist until some *independent* PCs got together to create them.

[Dalmeth]

You see, that is the problem. Those are the only two options an independant crafter has. They can either get rich off NPCs, or starve off PCs. They can join a clan, but then they wouldn't be independent. And if my understanding of the game history is close to accurate, some of these Greater Merchant Houses didn't exist until some *independent* PCs got together to create them.

This is a problem, and there are several factors affecting it. First off, there's the limited availability of items for useful recipes.  If my character gets a good piece of leather,  my crafter should be able to make it into a variety of items, even if it overlaps with available recipes of other items.  In fact, I think it would be good if every large piece of leather in the game could be crafted into the same pair of generic, leather pants or other clothing items and things of use.  Secondly, there is the limited need to buy new things as your current items lose their utility.   My characters usually settle on a set of  armor and weapons and never buy anything else for the rest of their lives.  Honestly, they never have to.  If any piece of armor gets damaged, they just take it to the tailor and get it repaired like new.  So, maybe no more repairing like new.  Also, I'd like to see an effort to get at least one item per town per month that reflects that town's particular flavor added in as something only craftable by PCs.  As these new items are added in, you're going to have people who want to try them out, essentially creating fads.  In addition, you eventually get a large body of objects that can only be made by PCs.  So, PCs looking to have that extra piece of flare will have to go to PC crafters.  The simple fact is, something needs to change if we're going to have the independent crafter be something more fun than it is now.

[Throttle]

I've also noticed a severe lack of independent merchants in the past couple of years, and it's not like the merchant houses have many more than they used to so I'm assuming this is because the playerbase has stopped making those characters. There's always going to be a few around, just as no amount of nerfing and abuse will ever keep the game literally free of guild_pickpocket PCs, but they (indie merchants) have no apparent impact on the game or the economy as far as I can tell.

Crafting generally sucks. It takes quite a while and a LOT of expenses before you can even make something that any player would consider buying, and even then, their first two choices would be an NPC shop and a merchant house. I get the impression that most of the time, when a PC buys something from another PC (non-House), it's because the player wanted to buy something in order to interact and not so much because the character absolutely needed that item and couldn't get it elsewhere. A PC tailor will have trouble making things of equal or better quality than the shops, let alone keeping up with the fashion (not that anyone really cares about that beyond a select few nobles or bards). Weaponcrafters will have a hard time offering anything that Salarr can't do better, and the buyer knows House Salarr isn't going to go out and die to a scrab after taking your order, and that they probably have several PCs who can make the transaction when it's ready instead of having to wait around for one guy. In short, I see very few reasons to trade with an independent merchant other than an OOC motivation to interact and doing it for the lulz.

Shops have been dumbed down so much that noone can really use them. With a select few exceptions, such as Salarr's stores, most of the time if you try to sell something remotely valuable you're met with "I have too many of those" or "I can't afford it". It's pretty obvious that the game has more players who want to sell things in order to make money than there are players who want to buy things, that's how it goes and we thank the vNPC population for making up 99% of any given bazaar stall's customers. They don't put any money in, though, so when nine out of ten players are going to take money out, often by selling the least useful items in the world, then there's nothing left for the next guy who wants to sell his shit. The shop's coffers have been emptied in return for spiny cactus, pieces of crystal and wooden armor imported from the north. So within a day after a crash or reboot, practically every frequently-used shop is drained dry.

But that's not a problem! There's other ways to make money, right? Get a glasshacker and go mining, earn more than a noble. Pick the right plants and sell them in the right places and you're living like a king. Exploit the mindless nature of NPC shops and import wooden shields from Salarr's stores in Tuluk and sell them back to Salarr's stores in Allanak. Everything's fair in love and economics, right? Hell, you can live fairly well off of scavenging in the 'rinth. No need to be poor when looting three corpses (and they're always around because NPCs hate eachother) and make 2-300 'sid. You don't need to be a crafter, you don't have to be guild_merchant, so why not pick ranger or something equally tempting and overplayed? We all know that most merchants' income is largely based on things other than their actual craft, and that the average tailor has fifteen silk garments in his closet although he has sold two all year.

Fixing the economy will bring an automatic fix to the merchant guild.

[enigma]

No. The argument here is that the ability to make money often rests on a variable OOC influence.

AKA reboots.

They used to come every few days. Two or three, MAYBE four or five at the max.

Now they are, pretty regularly, five to seven days in length.

It's not about merchant power. It's not about people making too much money.

It's about how dependent people are on reboots to eat, drink, and live in the game in any semblance of normalcy.

Ideally the game reboots once a week, with the weekly downtime for maintenance.  Those more frequent reboots you were experiencing were either due to crashes, or new stuff being implemented right away for whatever reason the IMMs had for doing it.  You should not be depending on frequent reboots to ensure the livelihood of your PC, because you simply cannot count on them happening more often than once a week.  Perhaps this means it's time for you to seek out other ways in the game to survive.

In response to the comment about independent merchant operations, I have encountered several in the last OOC year alone, where one or more independents have come together and were successful (for a time) in their operation.  They may not have been as large scale as the merchant Houses, but they were hiring and paying people regularly within their operations.  These independent operations did rake in quite a bit of money while they were going on.

[Throttle]

PC merchants don't necessarily have to craft at all in order to sell to other PCs, though it's surely helpful. There are plenty of characters in Allanak who can't go to Luir's or Tuluk or Cenyr or Red Storm or etc etc to get what they need from those locations, or vice versa characters in Tuluk. All a PC merchant needs in order to trade between cities is connections to other PCs, a knowledge of what's available in the markets and some idea of pricing, haggle, a mount, and the ability to ride from point A to point B.

I would consider it wrong for the game to require a merchant to travel the world in order to make a profit. To make the most profit, sure, but it shouldn't be a necessity. Traveling the world alone should be nearly unthinkable for anyone who isn't an experienced badass who can survive those groups of gith, raiders, raptors and whatever else is supposedly threatening travelers (even if the players know they can avoid it all by taking that particular route). Making a living as a merchant in a city should be perfectly possible, you should be able to keep yourself with water and bread on nothing but pottery. Doing the whole Khann thing should be the way to get stinking rich by ways of a dangerous life, not what it takes to make a decent living.

Also, there's really very few things that your character absolutely needs that they can't get in the location that they live in, unless they live in Red Storm or something. They might like to have a beetle lamp or a game of Tek's Tower, but it's not like there's a huge market for things you can't get elsewhere. Most players will just go themselves because of the above-mentioned utter lack of danger in travel, or are friends with someone who's a hunter for House Whatever and moves from city to city every other week anyway.

[Salt Merchant]

PC merchants don't necessarily have to craft at all in order to sell to other PCs, though it's surely helpful. There are plenty of characters in Allanak who can't go to Luir's or Tuluk or Cenyr or Red Storm or etc etc to get what they need from those locations, or vice versa characters in Tuluk. All a PC merchant needs in order to trade between cities is connections to other PCs, a knowledge of what's available in the markets and some idea of pricing, haggle, a mount, and the ability to ride from point A to point B.

You'd think so, wouldn't you? But if you stock up in Tuluk, travel to 'nak and find the shops have no coin, what happens to your trader then? And the PC market is just too thin to extract thousands of coins, enough to pay guards, maintain a compound and the like, in sufficient time. Especially if you play off-peak.

[enigma]

You'd think so, wouldn't you? But if you stock up in Tuluk, travel to 'nak and find the shops have no coin, what happens to your trader then? And the PC market is just too thin to extract thousands of coins, enough to pay guards, maintain a compound and the like, in sufficient time. Especially if you play off-peak.

IMO, that's how it should be.  The merchant Houses didn't get to where they are today overnight, and they certainly didn't get there easily.  It shouldn't be any easier for anyone else.

[Salt Merchant]

You'd think so, wouldn't you? But if you stock up in Tuluk, travel to 'nak and find the shops have no coin, what happens to your trader then? And the PC market is just too thin to extract thousands of coins, enough to pay guards, maintain a compound and the like, in sufficient time. Especially if you play off-peak.

IMO, that's how it should be.  The merchant Houses didn't get to where they are today overnight, and they certainly didn't get there easily.  It shouldn't be any easier for anyone else.

Maybe it shouldn't be easy, but it should be easier for merchants than for rangers, assassins and whatever. And I'm wondering if it's possible at all. I can't recall the last time I saw an independent merchant with a guard or two in tow.

[Lizzie]

Enigma I don't think anyone is suggesting it should be easy to make it as an independent merchant. In fact I don't think anyone is even suggesting it be a desireable thing. But I do think the primary suggestion is that it should be *doable* without having to pick between getting filthy stinking rich by making use (and abuse) of the NPC merchants, OR starving by trying to maintain game integrity and sticking with PC interaction.

The shop system is not working well at all. It hasn't been working well at least since I started playing, and from what I've read it sounds like it hasn't ever really worked very well. The only "fix" I've read about was that shops now generally only accept five of each item they buy, and some run out of coins until someone buys something from them, or until reboot, whichever comes first. That isn't a fix, it's a temporary bandaid that a game would implement until they can come up with an actual solution.

Only buying 5 of each doesn't even work if the NPC never has enough sids to buy one (I know of 3 NPC merchants, spread out over both cities, who buy things most places won't buy, who offer sids for things I've brought them, and have NEVER had the sids to pay even close to what they've offered). Only buying 5 of each doesn't work if the NPC already has 5 of everything, and has been typoed, bugged, and wished up the wazoo and still has the same stuff it has had for over a year, almost all of which has been sold to her by PCs. (Yes, there is a merchant in the game like that, she has 4 -pages- worth of "list" in the screen scroll, and has had almost that much for over a year). Only buying 5 of each doesn't help if you can't find a merchant who will buy what you make, and you can't find a PC to buy what you make, and you end up stuck with a lot of really nice, expensive stuff that no one wants, and you had to pay for the raw materials to make it all.

[Xio]

IMO the only way the whole merchant/crafter thing could be remedied is if 90% of the things you could buy, or atleast are 'worth' buying, you had to get from a PC. Maybe not directly, but at least indirectly. I myself don't use the merchant guild, simply cause I don't think I'd survive or be able to handle all the time it takes to branch and be able to make exciting things.
The problem I myself see for merchants, is the NPC competition, and not that of other PCs. If the source of inventory for NPCs were actually PC-based, PCs would be better off. Armor deteriorating faster to require frequent repairs and/or replacements would also help the economy. But for that to work, they're have to be more money in the hands of the players. I've never had a char with expensive tastes, simply cause they've never been able to afford it, so I don't know how much money the people who really rack it in have. Usually after I spend my starting sid its me skating by on just enough for food and water, with the occasional spike to get better armor/weapons/etc and perhaps a mount if I don't already have one.
If PCs were able to make -everything- NPCs can make, and then a hell of a lot more and better things, I think PCs would be better off. That's my take on the whole thing, from a poor consumer standpoint. I could be terribly wrong, I'm just the guy on the corner gnawing on a cactus to stave off his thirst after all.

Edit:
Side-note I feel should be mentioned: Other than nobles, is there really a large group of PCs that desires luxurious things that have no real use? Maybe having PC crafters be able to create Truly useful things you can't get from an NPC, unless some PC sold it to them, I think merchants will be stuck. That, or PCs need more money to toss at people for those things that look nice.

[Barzalene]

Maybe it shouldn't be easy, but it should be easier for merchants than for rangers, assassins and whatever.

Why?

[Salt Merchant]

Maybe it shouldn't be easy, but it should be easier for merchants than for rangers, assassins and whatever.

Why?

Note that when I said easier, I was referring to making coin, not necessarily staying alive.

Why? What is a merchant good for, if not making coin? Rangers, assassins, pickpockets; they all have their putative functions. But the whole raison d'etre of the merchant class is to, well, make coin. That's what their skills are directed towards. That's all their skills are directed toward, really.

Sure, you could make a merchant character who doesn't care about becoming wealthy, but we're talking about the class and its opportunities here, not individual characters.

Merchants have always been one of those to become wealthy. People who simply live by the fruits of their own physical labors generally do not, if you take medieval society as an example. The rich either harvest their wealth from others through land ownership and rights (nobles) or they do it through trade and commerce (merchants) that magnifies the value of items with relatively little effort spent by the merchant herself, or they do it through plunder (making war on people with something worth taking).

Part of the problem too is that every class can be something of a merchant now, simply by tacking on the right subguild. It makes the merchant class sort of obsolete.

[Xio]

I agree with SM. Merchants, imo, should be providing the salary for hunters/warriors/guards/etc, and thus would need to make more than them. The reason I say this, is cause its a merchant who would be hiring these people for their services. While anyone can do such a thing, its more liking to see a merchant doing so. (Excluding Nobles and the like naturally) 'Pure' hunters who live off the fruits of their labor are poor people who eat and, usually, wear what they kill. A guard is just that, a guard. A guard without a job guarding something isn't a guard at all. So merchants have the most potential to hire and make use of these people, hell a merchant could hire a pick-pocket to make trouble for a rival encroaching on his particular facet of wares, or if he wanted to go for drastic measures he could hire an assassin.

Of course this strays a bit from the whole crafter thing as you do not have to be a crafter to be a merchant and a merchant can employ a crafter if s/he so see fit. In essence though, crafters would still profit.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

How to make Merchants work right? Make the profit they garner from barter more and easier, and make the products that can be sold nearly entirely PC exclusivly crafted.

That means that unless the weapon dealer on the block gets a merchant coming in to unload a couple of longswords, there are none in the game that are no used by either another PC, a NPC, or stored somewhere in a lockbox.

Make Merchants the blood of the world and the game will do right.

[Xio]

How to make Merchants work right? Make the profit they garner from barter more and easier, and make the products that can be sold nearly entirely PC exclusivly crafted.

That means that unless the weapon dealer on the block gets a merchant coming in to unload a couple of longswords, there are none in the game that are no used by either another PC, a NPC, or stored somewhere in a lockbox.

Make Merchants the blood of the world and the game will do right.

Basically exactly how I feel, in less words.