Getting orders fulfilled by Kadius/Salarr

[Bebop]

Basically what I think it comes down to, and this is pretty fundamental.  Is the PC.  Is the PC and person behind the PC good at what they do?  Do they love what they do?  And are they around enough to do their job promptly?  The answer to that is usually no.

As well do the imms fullfill orders on time and so far this hasn't really been a problem in my eyes.

[Cale_Knight]

For the record, doing the actual merchanting as a merchant family member is insanely easy. You take your orders, you email them to staff once a week, and then you fill your orders.

I recently played an Agent for a certain house and was constantly "swamped" with orders, by which I mean I got at most two or three every RL day. When I did, I'd mark it down in a text file, wait until Friday night, and then send in a big order every week. Then I'd fill orders as people found me and asked about them.

It got a bit more complicated when it came to dealing with nobles, but not much.

And this was all essentially a sideline to doing the agenting thing. I sold stuff because there weren't any PC merchants around. And in the process I made silly amounts of coins, all as a sideline. It got to the point where I got a note on my account about how I was really good at merchanting, but needed more experience as an agent.

And I didn't do anything! I just let them come to me and ask to buy things! They were lining up aroudn the corner!

Bottom line is that if someone isn't a capable merchant because it's too difficult, they simply don't know what they're doing. If they're incapable because they find the role boring and don't log much, I don't necessarily blame them. I wouldn't want to be just a merchant, when house agents tend to sell anyway and also get to do other stuff as well.

[Larrath]

If you make an NPC shopkeeper with all of the objects a PC merchant can order, that shopkeeper would have, at the very least, some 400 objects for the merchant to scroll through.  Do you know what it is to browse through a shopkeeper's list that spans three full screens?  Madness.

Oh, come on Larrath. Come on. What's next, Zalanthians don't build stairs because they're too hard to climb?

Zalanthans?  I was talking about the work the player has to put in, not the PC.  I don't think you should expect regular players to start building staircases for you.

The "simple solution" I've seen above basically says that the PC merchant will need to write the special order objects personally.  First of all, this just means loading more work on a player who is probably already overworked if they're really trying to get the job done well.

Please stop and think about this for a moment. What does the PC merchant do anyway before he emails the Imm? Just write a note saying "uh... joe bloe wants a ... um, sword, yeah, with like leaves on it" and leave it at that, because he's so busy?

The PC merchant takes the description, runs it through whatever lists or database he has, and then sends an email to the staff with the best description they can get.  When someone asks for "a light, good sword", this either means finding an object after a lot of searching or getting a very detailed description - "Can you please load me a lightweight bone sword, slashing with a thick blade at the price range of 200-300?".
Because if you ask a staffer for "a good sword" they will die.

Second, Storyteller staff members need their objects to be approved by a Highlord or above before they're put into the game.  The Merchant's things would probably be looked at by their clan imm (to see they're not ridiculous) and only then moved to the HLs for approval.  It's not saving that much time.

No? Why do we have a character application system them? Why don't we just email our apps in and let the imms type in all the entries into the various fields, set all the flags etc. manually?

Two things.  First of all, a format similar to the character application would only save five minutes at most per object.  It's time, sure, but don't expect it to make much of a difference.
Second, this still means that the merchant PC will have to write that object.  Don't you think that's a little rude?  Between having to chase down orders and trying to lead a clan it's already pretty hard to have a good time, and now you want to make merchant PCs write objects?  If anything, the people placing the order should apply for the object, and even then it won't make much of a difference.

I think I'm finished on this thread.  Playing a Merchant, no matter how well organized and how good your object lists are, is hard.  It's hard because it is very tedious to keep working on those orders after three, four and five RL months.
If your idea of a merchant is a character that sits on his ass and sends a little email full of "i want swordz" to the staff once a week... I'm sorry.

The merchanting isn't difficult in many cases, it's just painfully boring.

[mansa]

Wow.  2003.

For the better part of 2003, I was playing a Kadian Merchant.  He was pretty popular, sold a lot of stuff, bought a lot of stuff.  I think he was on par with Marie Tor and Pearl on the ammount of clothing he personally bought.

I would have characters come up to me and ask me for a new outfit.  I would sit them down and get them to describe me the outfit.

This is what an outfit is:

Hat
Cloak
Shirt
Sleeves
Gloves
Pants
Boots

That's what an outfit is, typically.  I would request a set of clothes, of different values, and then I would purchase them all with my own coin.  I would put them in a certain place in the 'estate' and then let people come in and pick what they wanted, and I would tell them the price of it.  It went pretty well that way.  Usually in display cases or table items, so you can touch them.  ( I trusted people not to steal from me, too, but you could easily 'palm' items from those cases )

When I play a merchant again, that's the way I'll go again.



I tried to think of an idea where I would have 'fashion models' load up with different types of outfits on them.  Just an NPC wearing a certain set of clothes, while holding their cloak. (So it wouldn't cover up their body so you can see what shirt they are wearing)  It would be a special 'kadian only' command that would load up an npc wearing certain clothes, depending on the command I inputed.

Like:

>call model tor aide 2
>call model tor scorpion 3
>call model tor silver 1
>call model tor noble 5
>call model borsail noble 8
>call model borsail wyvern 1
>call model borsail aide 4

And it would load up an NPC 'model' with the clothing of the clan.  The odd numbers would be the males and the even numbers would be the females.

***

There are hundreds of 'red' items, hundreds of 'crimson' items, hundreds of 'scarlet' items.  If you set your pagelength to be 35, you would scroll through the 'kadian' list after about 57 pages.  (2000 / 35)  

Oh wait, there's a problem.  The 'list' doesn't load that high.  It stops at 255.

[Yet another]

I don't understand why whenever we talk about Great Merchant Houses, there are always demands to make PCs life easier at the price of nothing: more wages and bonuses to employers, better selection of goods, fast completion of orders to customers, etc. This particular discussion looks like a dispute between managers of Wal-Mart and unhappy customers, I can barely believe that we talk about harsh world of Zalanthas where resources sparse. Or so they say. And they indeed shamelessly lie.

I think some of you guys need to travel, expand your horizons or something. Even in our modern era there are god forgotten towns, where central shops hold three types of t-shirts, two types of pants and a single business suit (not a type, but single item of size that doesn't fit anyone in 100-mile radius). When you are there, you know that Wal-Mart exists and has better selection of goods, but it does not help you because you need to buy a plane for something to be delivered from there.

And now we have a bunch of dirty commoners with firm belief that whatever item was ever made in the world is free for them to purchase. Tell you what, peasants, I think you are wrong and there is a need to change your mindset. All items are handmade, recourses sparse, trade routes unprotected, literacy insignificant. In the world such as this all high-end items got to be rare and money shouldn't buy you everything. And I believe that everything more complicated than loincloth is high-end product in Zalanthas.

Advertising slogan of "harsh world and sparse resources" holds true only when we talk about raw materials. IMO, they are realistically hard and dangerous to get. I believe PC population purchases tens time more of gems than it gathers. I believe only one out of ten hunters who wear carru leather (or don't wear it, because "bleh, it's just carru") was ever capable to kill carru for real. I believe that less than 10% of items used by PCs were made in game, and barely 5% were made from PC's gathered resources. Zalanthas becomes Communism and Utopia, two in one, when we talk about finished products, mostly because of GMH's activity and unrealistic expectations of virtual world that should provide whatever we want. And by Merchant House activity I mean work of immortals loading items made of thin air.

1. I don't buy idea that by making character's life easier, by giving easy access to resources, products and sid, we save their time for "interesting stuff" and interaction. No, this way we just increase the number of idling tavern sitters. Who sit there not because they like it, but because they have no desire and need to do something else - to survive, to be better than your neighbor, to struggle against or for anything.

2. Larrath has said that serving as middle-man between PC-customers and immortals can become boring if done from month to month. He is right as always, because process of getting what customers want is indeed as hard and lengthy as Under7 and Mansa describe and takes time. But I'd bet it's even more boring to be staffer to load these items for years. Do you always dare to ask immortal to help with your project, if you know that they spent hours already to complete twenty orders gathered by kind Cale_Knight while he was skipping his agentry duties?

3. While everything comes out of nowhere Great Merchant Houses will never achieve the real place of economic power they deserve. Right now even family members have no real effect on PC economic, thus their economical protection and political standing are virtual. Kill them and safe bet is that another one will be appointed in a couple of weeks and everything will again appear out of nowhere, so why care about them? I am not even talking about hunters/crafters. They loose in competition to endless virtual vaults of immortals. So who cares if they exist at all, if their work has no effect? Treat them just if they are rinthi breeds, kill them all, burn estates – there will be no delays in orders, because immortals are always there to load everything you want.

[jhunter]

I think the times it has taken for orders in the past has been just fine personally. It seemed realistic enough to me. I don't have any issues with it. Of course, I rarely place orders for anything but anyway....

[spawnloser]

I have a feeling that Cale Knight was playing an agent after there hadn't been any presence by members of the GMH for a while...and was using the, "Well, that's what my IMM loaded," mentality instead of the, "Gotta

I know the character mansa was talking about playing, and I will say that he was one of the best merchants played in my time here, if not the best.  His style of merchanting, allowed choices on the part of the customer.  Sure, he didn't make quite as much per sale, but he made a lot more sales, met more people, and didn't skimp on other duties either.

I know that he put a lot of work into it.  I saw him with a couple consecutive characters.  If it's not at least some work for you the player, your character isn't a fantastic merchant...adequete maybe, but not good.

[FightClub]

I don't know about anybody else, But I want know what a flippant request is to a merchant.

Myself, the smallest order any of my chars has ever placed with salarr or kadius was 1800 coins, the largest nearly 9000 coins. The smallest I've even seen from anybody else was still over 600, and the average seems to be around 1600. I've seen nobles order a single item for in excess of 10,000 coins and still need to wait 1-4rl months.

Anything over a week IG is rediculous really, this isn't a problem that particularly threatens me, but I see the concern.  I mean a lot of it in my eyes would be due to that fact that merchants are boring to play (in my opinion) and the majority that i've met don't play that often.  That placed with tricky play times, and dealing with immortals makes things entirely too difficult.

We need to find a way to resolve this, another points that I haven't looked too much ,or seen mentioned is lost orders, I frequently hear of merchants dying or getting lost, and leaving several orders unfulfilled, resolutions to this? Perhaps a board specifically for orders with an edit function to allow people to say "Hey this was filled"  "Hey this needs attention it's been waiting for quite a while."  This might be in act, but I seriously doubt it.  It's another of many problems that should be looked into, not only by the staff, but primarily by the players, I would hope that more people take responsibility and help with these sorts of things.

[FightClub]

Another concept.  Most of the crafting rooms only contain supplies brought to you by the pc's...  Why not npc's, VNPC's who would be otherwise present, and doing this stuff as well, resolution.

Auto replinished stock gains based on what kadius/salarr/whoever attains and uses most often, by product included -- this might give the staff some leeway from constantly loading things.  Also  I see a lot of mention of staff loading things, why are they, beyond a complete custom build?  The current merchants in place -should- have crafts for every single item they're expected to produce upon entering that clan, branched or not.  

Perhaps -- making seperate craft skills for clan made items only would be in order, that are easily removed, and given upon entering a clan would be good.  like ..

ex: craft salarr (bleh bleh) into (a salarri emblazoned chainmail vest of death)
or
ex: craft kadius (bleh bleh) into (a platinum ring with lots of bling!)

I don't know, just some thoughts.

[Merchant Kank]

Anything over a week IG is rediculous really

How do you figure?  Assume items get loaded by the Imms once a week.  That means that the most you should have to wait is a week, right?  Wrong.  That leaves no margin for error, when sometimes you need a substantial margin.  If you have a PC merchant who is sending their Imm a list of items ordered only once a week, that's probably going to be a long list if they're doing their job as a merchant.  So, you send off a list to the Imms that says, I need one of these, two of these, 12 of these, something that looks like this...etc etc etc.  And the Imms should get it exactly right every time?  I think that's asking a bit much of them to be so exacting with a game that everyone -else- is playing.  Plus, if the order gets messed up, what player is going to go back and bug the Imm about it instead of just waiting another week?  None, I hope, since these players are bugging the Imms for stuff already every week.  PC merchants can usually only estimate prices.  They can only estimate delivery times.  So, when the item doesn't come in or it costs a bit more than the player thought it would, guess what happens?  Customer PCs yell at you.  They accuse your character of being a bad merchant.  Because of things that are out of your control.  Silly me, I'm so sorry, I'll have it fedExed first thing in the morning.  Uh-huh.  This may surprise you, but getting yelled at for things that aren't your fault and having to cover for them anyway is not really any more fun when it happens all the time in a game than when it happens in real life.  This isn't intended as a whine.  I actually like playing a merchant, just trying to give people a view from this side if they don't know.  Yeah, you can bite PC merchants heads off for not having your orders filled on time, but in my experience, most of the time its kinda like when players come back after an absence.  Even if their stories don't quite make sense, you have to give them a little slack to account for the IC/OOC gap.  IMHO

[mansa]

Anything over a week IG is rediculous really, this isn't a problem that particularly threatens me, but I see the concern.  I mean a lot of it in my eyes would be due to that fact that merchants are boring to play (in my opinion) and the majority that i've met don't play that often.  That placed with tricky play times, and dealing with immortals makes things entirely too difficult.

I bolded the part I'd like to speak about.

One week IN GAME is broken apart by 11 days, which is then broken apart by 9 hours in each day.

1 hour IN GAME is consider 10 minutes.  1 day IN GAME is considered 90 minutes.  1 week IN GAME is considered 990 minutes.

990 minutes translates into 16.5 hours.

You're asking that someone should place an order with a PC, and have an immortal LOAD that item within the next 16 hours.


You are asking for an automated system to request items.  That already exists.  HOWEVER Nobody wants the 255 or so items that you can request of.  People want item #4390 and then item #2997, and definitely item #14014.

And that brings into the subject of 'special' items.  They are only special if few exist.  Which means, an Immortal should consider the item request, discuss with other immortals from other clans about the importance of that item and how many should be in existence in game, and then load it.

That sometimes takes 2 weeks to consider, for a lowly item that has one smallest bit of silver in the sdesc.  

Now, should I speak about the technology of the items involved?  I remember when every item that had the word 'VELVET' was removed from the game because VELVET was nearly impossible to create with the technology of Zalanthas.  It should definitely take longer than 16 hours to load your special cloak with a fur frill.