employing people

[Madouc]

it would be great if we could employ people (or better still, NPC\'s)

say if i would like to open a shop in the town center, i would need to be online for like all the time so that people would be able to buy stuff from me.
if i could employ a NPC (and would be able to teach him/her to a certain level) i could ceep my shop open during my own offline time.

i (as shopkeeper) would have to pay that NPC a normal wager ofcource and i would need to do the balancing and bringing money to the bank etc.

[PlaneWalker]

Hm... I assume, of course, the player has to stock the store themselves.

[Madouc]

Yes, All the decision making would be done by the shopkeeper.

He should also be able to make trade deals, with a travelling merchant for example, to buy goods from him from another town.
Or making a deal with a local blacksmith to sell his goods and have the blacksmith deliver them to the shop.

Or this could be a nice oppertunity for someone to start a delivery company.

By the way, is there going to be a postal service in PS?

[Caed]

This sounds good, it would mean the player would be able to set up a network of stores all over the place all run by npcs except for the tasks that you do yourself...

Entrepeneurs ready yourselves!

[PlaneWalker]

Too much chance for this to devolve to monopoly stores.

[Lonesamurai]

Originally posted by PlaneWalker
Too much chance for this to devolve to monopoly stores.

Just like real life then?
Not mentioning any names...

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[josephoenix]

I think that the GMs would probably keep a hand in such dealings to a certain extent... If you handle it correctly there isn\'t too much chance of that happening. Of course, that adds depth to the economy too. Having a strategically placed guild hall can enable a guild to control a particular mine, and if there is something particularly rare in said mine they would have the monopoly on it. Then you could have a revolt where their mighty regime is overthrown and there is free ore for all! Or not, and the guild progressively becomes stronger... and eventually... starts marketing it\'s own operating system!

josePhoenix

[Enter_the_Xero]

Hmmmm....

Sound like a good idea so,

1) Get a buch of money
2) Buy a place
3) Buy all of em supplies
4) Set everything up
5) Welcome you first customer
6) Get a lot of money of custumers
7) Buy more places and hire workers
8) Become filthy rich

That is gonna be so hard to putt into the game tho...

1) You need a system for bying houses and items and furniture and stuff... (An in game system would be nice)

2) Ability to put stuff where it is supposed to go. (in the shop) That means food / furniture / weapons / armor / whatev...

3) Ability to easyly take the custumers money and give em the items...

4) Cuztomize you\'r place\'s name....

That is like a lot of proggraming! Yet, this would be wery nice!!

[ArcaneFalcon]

This is done to an extent in EverQuest and it works just fine.  What most people end up doing is getting a second character going, and set them up in the \"bazaar\" (is what EQ calls it) and they set up the bazaar mule (second character) with all the gear at the prices they want to sell.  Then they just go on their way, playing on their main character, or doing rl stuff.  It has become such a success, in fact, that each EQ server has a very different economy (what is 1k on this server, is 2.5k minimum on another).  

So long as there is a feature in PS where PC\'s can set up and sell to other PC\'s, there won\'t be a need for hiring NPC\'s.  You can just make a bazaar mule of sorts, set them up, and leave \'em (only implications being you need another computer or another instance of PS).  Though, it would be fun to hire your own workers

[Madouc]

Originally posted by PlaneWalker
Too much chance for this to devolve to monopoly stores.

funny (or not) to see that everyone is emediately thinking about monopolys.

city council would we there to prohibit sutch a thing from happening.
one could aquire a shopkeeping licence for example. and if you don\'t follow the rules you\'d be kicked out of your store bij the council.

i for example would like to open a tade store. passing travellers would we able to sell me stuf, wich i could sell to the local population (other travellers). starters would be able to buy some besic stuff from my store simple daggers, clothing etc.
prices would be based on stock and demand (and buying price to a certain extent).

if i\'d be able to make deals with guilds so the\'d deliver clothes to me i would give them discounts on daggers or other equipment.

Originally posted by ArcaneFalcon
So long as there is a feature in PS where PC\'s can set up and sell to other PC\'s, there won\'t be a need for hiring NPC\'s. You can just make a bazaar mule of sorts, set them up, and leave \'em (only implications being you need another computer or another instance of PS). Though, it would be fun to hire your own workers

that just wouldn\'t work for me, i would like a steady shop, with regular opening hours. and i can\'t keep my pc running all the time.

[Entamis]

Originally posted by ArcaneFalcon
So long as there is a feature in PS where PC\'s can set up and sell to other PC\'s, there won\'t be a need for hiring NPC\'s.  You can just make a bazaar mule of sorts, set them up, and leave \'em (only implications being you need another computer or another instance of PS).  Though, it would be fun to hire your own workers

Why to do it this way when NPC\'s are a much better solution? We don\'t want to have any \'mule\' characters.

[ArcaneFalcon]

But if there can be, there will be.  I promise you.  Who will pay an NPC, when they can simply set up a PC to do the same job for free?

[Madouc]

Originally posted by ArcaneFalcon
But if there can be, there will be.  I promise you.  Who will pay an NPC, when they can simply set up a PC to do the same job for free?

But you would still have to be behind that pc to be able to sell and buy things. Or are you proposing to write your own bot?

[ArcaneFalcon]

Yeah, I forgot that part.  Let me go into a bit more detail on where all my thoughts and opinions concerning this are coming from.  

I played EQ (EverQuest, AKA EverCrack) for several years, and in the...3rd expansion (they\'ve had, like, 8 now ), The Shadows of Luclin, they added a zone called the bazaar.  Here people would buy special bags (trader satchels) which weighed too much to be useful in adventuring, yet carried a lot (10 slots, as big as they got).  You would put what you wanted to sell in these bags, and go stand on a trader platform.  These were just flagged areas of the zone  that you could stand to sell things(like grocery store isles, and you stood where the shelves would be).  You would then activate \"trader mode\" and set your prices.  Then, people could simply walk up to you, look through your items, and buy what they wanted, as if you were an NPC.  Once you were set up with your prices, you didn\'t need to be there (in rl).  If a sort of a merchant system is implemented into PS, it couldn\'t be too much different than this.  Yes, you can also use a standard trading system to sell things (and I\'m sure PS will be that way for a while), but when (if?) a merchant system is implemented, I promise you people will make mule characters simply to sell things, and NPC\'s will be unneeded.  There are some things the devs could do to change this, but in all honesty, I would bet money it will end up looking something like this.  Then again, the devs never cease to amaze me  I know this is not EQ, but it isn\'t all that much different.

[Madouc]

Ok, I see what you mean.

But how would your first character profit from the trade renerated from the mule character?
Becouse in-game they would be two different persons.
Or they would have a master/slave or employer/employee relation. In the last case you would have to pay him/her a wager I suppose.