Merchants feeling a pinch?

[Salt Merchant]

Over time, I've been noticing various things about the "economies" of the various centers of population. After putting a few observations together, I've started to wonder about the merchant class.

- reboots are far less frequent than they used to be
- shops have less coin and run out quickly
- purchase limit on items of a given type
- competition from subguild crafters and subguild hagglers introduced

These changes all seem to stem from other things. Values for arms and armors taken through conquest was nerfed (gith, removal of the Black Moon). Shops had their starting funds reduced from tens of thousands in some cases to a few hundred or less, presumably to discourage chain hunting and the like. A limit of five items was put in, possibly to keep crafting under control.

All of which must have taken its toll on the true merchant. I can't see how the independent merchant can generate large sums of coins the way they used to be able to. With the competition of player-produced items, the shops running out of coin so quickly, the long times between reboots, and so forth, it hardly seems to matter that they can trade at advantageous prices. Buy something in one city, then wait for days or weeks to finish selling in another?

The competition with subguild crafters to be the first to sell can be pretty fierce at times, I suspect.

Has anyone been able to run an independent merchant recently and be able to build up a large sum of coin quickly (e.g. tens of thousands of coins)? This is the sort of income that's needed to buy a property, set up shop, hire guards and in general launch various plots through the motivation of coin and in general give the merchant a raison d'etre. I sense that the merchant class has lost this ability to a large extent.

[Gimfalisette]

PC merchants should be selling to PCs. That's where the real coin is. Every time I find a good PC merchant, that person is like a godsend (Teksend? Muksend?) to my character. Concentrate on getting PCs what they need and you will rule commerce.

[jstorrie]

PC merchants generally can't make anything interesting enough to sell to other PC merchants for a while, though; they rely on those NPC shops to scrape by until their skills get up.

I don't think being a PC crafter should be quite as difficult as it is. It should be challenging, sure, but it should be easier to carve wood for a living than hunt scrab, yeah?

[Troicha]

PC merchants generally can't make anything interesting enough to sell to other PC merchants for a while, though; they rely on those NPC shops to scrape by until their skills get up.

PC merchants are middlemen. Just like in RL, the supplier, NOT the manufacterer, makes the monies selling to the end user. Most PC merchant indies try to stick to the crafting end, though, and that doesn't work.

Indy merchants are all about connections. Crafting comes only later.

[Only He Stands There]

Any truly successful merchant is all about connections.

[Malken]

I don't agree.. The suppliers are the hunters, in my opinion. Then the PC merchants buy from them and craft items out of the materials to be sold to shops and wealthier PCs.

But I agree with the OP, my rangers and warriors most of the time always end up with 10000+ coins in the bank easily if I pick the right subguilds for them, and there's plenty of subguilds for me to choose from that'll turn me into a wealthy commoner.

Strange to say this, but pick a Merchant class if you plan to play a very social role.. Otherwise, if you're after quick cash, play something else than a merchant class PC.

[Synthesis]

I had a d-elf merchant about a year ago that was churning up -absurd- amounts of coin, buying/selling only to NPCs.

I don't have exact figures, but if I went all out, I could've probably been scaring up around 8K per reboot.

[Adiadochokinesis]

About a year ago the game didn't stay up for 5 days on a regular basis.

These sandstorms are getting pretty unplayable in certain areas.

[Mood]

I wouldn't mind seeing a daily, quick, automatic reboot at a specific time.

[Gimfalisette]

PC merchants generally can't make anything interesting enough to sell to other PC merchants for a while, though; they rely on those NPC shops to scrape by until their skills get up.

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.

[Dusky]

I wouldn't mind seeing a daily, quick, automatic reboot at a specific time.

Good idea.

[Lizzie]

I tried a merchant-crafter-middleman-direct sales role recently. For a group (not a "clan"). The only time the money was good was right after reboot, IF I was lucky to get there in time. If the group had to rely on PC sales, the group would've starved to death. PCs with enough sid to spend on things, can only use so many 20-sid pieces of chitin at a time, and can only carry a few blocky chunks of stone in their pack, worth only 5-10 sids to the seller. In the meantime, the seller has to pay for an apartment to store all ths stuff in, because there's no way he can carry around anything and everything that anyone -might- want to buy in a week's time, just in the hopes that someone would actually buy it.

So honestly the crafter whose primary source of income is selling the things he makes, will find MUCH more sid selling to shops than he will to PCs. At least, on the first day after reboot, and in many cases within the first hour and not after that.

I did pretty well by the way in the shops. Not nearly as well as I could have, if a couple of those shops actually had the money on reset that they offered for some of the things. I ended up selling "green widgets" for 50 sids after the NPC offered 400, simply because he NEVER had more than 50 sids on him, and I couldn't find a PC who wanted to buy it, and it was just wasting space in a box.

[Bebop]

I think merchants are a lot of fun to play and just awesome how they currently are.

[brytta.leofa]

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.

Seconded, thirded, and forfeited. There is a vast and mostly untapped market for <<stuff you can't get in my character's starting location>>.

[Dusky]

I think the problem is not just merchants / crafters - but it is (and as we've discussed before) rebooting and the shops.

I had a hunter recently who could not sell a set of carru antlers (worth less than 40sid) for four RL days.  When all you got is 25 sids in your belt, you need that cash for stable fees, water, an ale maybe. 

[Adiadochokinesis]

Let us not forget the off-peak merchants who rarely have steady PC customers to sell to.

[Bebop]

I will conceed that the shops need to have more money, I just wish that players could not spam out selling so much. That is where the problem comes in.  People selling and no one buying.  But then realistically it's hard to reapproach the whole economy in time for the game going down such as certain items costing way more than they should to be tailored or purchased.

[Adiadochokinesis]

Shops shouldn't have more money.

But they should regenerate money on their own.

Or there should be more reboots.

[Malken]

More reboots would totally screw up an already totally screwed up economy. It's like pouring more money in because you can't fix your economy by other means.

I feel bad for anyone that can't make enough to survive on Armageddon because they either don't play enough to do so, are newish to the game, or just plain unlucky in being logged on when there's a crash or a reboot, but realize that for every one of you, there's probably ten characters making a small fortune at any time. If you increase the reboot or chances for said characters to make even more money than they already are making, then maybe you'll be helping up that one guy who is struggling but you're going to screw up the rest of the game by making the rest even more wealthy than they should be to begin with.

If you don't believe me, just go to your next local auction and you'll see all these tribals and nobodies bidding over 1000+ coins per item like it's nothing. Heck, I've even seen a tribal tip a bard nearly 800 coins once.

[Adiadochokinesis]

Easy solution.



Kill them and take their money.

Also, that sort of thing should be dealt with by the immortals.

[enigma]

It's not supposed to be that easy to be an independent merchant and rack up so much wealth in coins.  I personally think it's ridiculous that indies can still make more than merchants of the Houses, who are supposed to be the dominant figures in the economy of Zalanthas.  Even despite all the complaints about shops lacking coins, it's still possible.  Logically, common people should be climbing over each other to get these lucrative jobs with the merchant Houses, but because it's so much easier to get richer as an independent, they don't.  Independents SHOULD have a lot more trouble finding buyers for their goods.  A- Independents don't have the reputation earned by the Houses over many generations, and B- Goods made by independents are not of the same caliber of quality as those produced by merchant Houses.

As a result, the merchant House clans suffer due to lack of interest.  I've noticed that even nobility and templars will often buy from independents because they feel they're getting a better deal, even though the merchant Houses are known throughout the known world for having the best of the best quality goods out there.  I know that not every noble and templar out there does that, but I have seen it happen.

Yes, I understand that indies have complete freedom, with no one to report to and no one cutting in on their profits.  In my opinion, the economy is skewed.  If all the NPCs and VNPCs behaved the way PCs do, Zalanthas would not be the way it is in the documentation.  Merchant Houses would have crumbled by now and the economy would be dominated by independents.

[Adiadochokinesis]

It's more a matter of keeping a PC alive rather than gaining wealth or paying for an apartment when reboots get to be 7 days in coming.

[Ender]

Yea agreeing with Enigma, I have very little sympathy for the woes of the independent merchant.

It should be hard as hell to become an established merchant.  I've had two PCs make it as merchants (though neither were guild merchants), one who couldn't craft anything was successful and the other who did sell his crafted goods was wildly successful, so much so that I could afford a nice apartment for myself and an apartment for my PC brother who was on the dole, and still have enough money for extras and to give my brother an allowance so he seemed successful to others and I was still making profit.

The trick for me was to make/sell stuff that PCs actually wanted and were willing to pay for.  Both of those PCs were in situations were they could obtain or make stuff people -really- wanted and shops did pay well for.

A newbie who is guilded merchant should have a hard time achieving this, and would feel extremely lucky to get a job with Kadius, Kurac, or Salarr who could show them the ropes and train them.  A merchant who can't keep up or find a way to survive in the tough world of Zalanthan economics -should- starve to death or just barely scrape by.

Expecting that a merchant PC should be easier than any other guild is a fallacy and goes against the nature of arm where survival let alone success should ever be easy.

[Adiadochokinesis]

I think you may be missing the point.

[Lizzie]

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.

Of course that means if a newbie who -has- read the docs, makes a guild-merchant, hoping to be clanned, expecting to be clanned, and the market is already saturated for clanned guild-merchants and none of them are hiring new ones OR none of them play during that guy's play time, then oh fucking well, sucks to be a newbie, thanks for playing try again some other day?

May I be the first to say:

No.

I really think you're missing the point. No one expects crafting to be easy. And for me, I'm personally talking about crafters, since -anyone- can try to be a merchant, but only people with the coded crafting skills can be crafters in this game. I've tried being a jeweler, did pretty well at making jewelry too. But I had to rely on the NPCs to sell the jewelry to them, if I had any desire to live on the proceeds. Because no one wanted the pure crap I churned out when I was first learning how to make jewelry except the NPCs. In fact, most people didn't even want the good stuff once I learned how to make that. I had in my possession something worth 1000 retail according to one shop, for almost the entire year that my jewelery PC existed, because I couldn't find ANYONE to sell it to. And the shops couldn't afford it, even if I lowered the price they offered to pay by half.

I tried the same with being a tailor; no dice. I couldn't GIVE away half the stuff I made, and you can't forage for cloth. You have to buy it.

I even went the full-merchant route, in a clan. I ended up retiring the character, it was such drugery, because there wans't a damned thing I made that the clan actually needed, and I had no one to teach me how to make anything they -did- need. I got paid, sometimes, when the PC boss happened to be around, but it was just totally pointless.