Shops and Traveling Salesmen

[Harwen]

Mainly, I want to know how the devs will deal with shops set up by players.

There can be potentially 1000+ shops at a time not including NPC shops.

How will one city fit even a quarter of that within it\'s walls?

Will a player be able to set up a shop everywhere he/she/it goes?

If so, how will the abuse of the ability to carry alot of items and swords be handled?  

I have answers to these questions myself, but I want to know what people, and the devs think.

The solution to the first question would be: Portable, free to set up shops. I mean I could sell you the contents of my pockets right now, at no cost to me without much effort. The bad thing is that I can\'t carry many things in my pockets, so would I be restricted to what I can carry to set up a portable shop? I think that the answer to this is having some sort of animal to carry some stuff, or a bigger pack, which would cost money...

I just don\'t want people that have a portable shop to be able to carry 99 of everything, just because they are a vendor...

I think the overall solution to this is shop size...you would buy a shop size let\'s say 15 items of space for 100 tria, 20 items for 150 tria, 25 for 200 and so on. But the weight would make the store owner terribly slow at combat, not to mention the stamina issue. But by weight I mean in addition to what the character can normally carry so some races would make better merchants than others, Ylian, Kran, Dwarves, and some races would be terribly poor at it having a max shop size of 20 or 30, Klyros, Xacha...

I do think that having a nomadic band of self-sufficient traders is appealing, since they would feed themselves and protect themselves.

[Wedge]

I bet there is a thread on this somewhere... but I never read it in any case, sooooooo...

Are you thinking of a portable shop as a metaphor or an actual thing?  Coz\' it should be an actual item.  Not like a portable Washington Mutual branch, but just what it would logically be... a cart.

You buy a cart.  You put stuff in the cart.  You drag it around.  Obviously cart sizes vary, and they can be enchanted to carry more, or be faster (as in not make you as slow).  Should be animals you can buy to drag them though.  You can try to sell stuff you are carrying in your pack, but you can\'t set up an automated shop from that.

[Harwen]

Yeah, but there shoudl be a way to sell anything, anywhere because if I just gave you a very powerful sword and I expected money from you, you could just run away or log off, screwing me, and withoug an effective pk system that would instill fear in people, then I can\'t trust anyone to give me money....how about that?

You are right, though an automated portable shop wouldn\'t be good, but a personal shop, if you were a traveling salesman.

Not metifphorically, I just mean the amount of items that you can carry restricting the ability to sell lots of items in the wilderness.

[sashok]

cool I love the idea of walking markets. Large Caravans that travel with goods that bring rare materials goods from different ends of the planetshift world.  Big carriages with lots of goods could be collected by merchants(players).  TO join the caravan you would for example have to show that you have a lot of goods to offer and that you have some kind of skill.  wether you are skilled buisnessman or craftsman you could join caravans that go from city to city in planetshift thru dangerous roads and forests, for long time .

Yeah, I know.  How in the world would this be accomplished? If everyone plays at the different time.  Well, caravan could set it\'s depart time and stay time.  For example, the leader sets a date in real life time, october 15, 18:00GM Caravan sets off.  The travel time is 2 hours in real time.  The next area is the city \"CityName\".  The stay is 5 real days.  Whoever doesn\'t show up at the departing time is left behind.  Wether he wants to leave his goods on the caravan, so that later he could catch up, or not, is up to the merchant.

[Xandria]

There are several threads about this elsewhere in the forum (I know because I\'ve posted in them, and I\'ve probably created one ).

While being a travelling merchant is a great idea, it would be somewhat difficult to have a caravan of players.  It would require that everyone be present at a certain time for departure, then you all have to stay online for the duration of the trip.  Once you reach the next town, you can stay there for a few days or so, but then you\'ll all have to get on at the same time again to leave for the next destination, or else you\'ll be stuck in a town all by yourself  

[Wedge]

You can\'t just set up shops, however that doesn\'t mean you can\'t set have an official system regulated trade  (which I do believe we will have in CB).

[sashok]

xandria, that\'s the whole fun of it.  if the merchants are dedicated strick rules would apply to the traveling of the caravan.  Otherwise, have fun being a merchant by yourself.  But having a caravan would bring merchants together, having best goods and items form different corners of planeshift and whenever such caravan that would for example have 30-40 merchants stop at a city, it would be a celebration for the locals.  Everyone would look forward to these things.  I think it\'s cool, don\'t you agree?

[Harwen]

I am writing a sort of journal of my adventures in Yliakum for my boredom, so I had to make up an entire guild that has sub-groups of self-sufficient nomadic merchants.

Structure:

Leader: Arranges all destinations, does regular inventory, major deals and transactions pertaining to the Trading Band.

Merchants:
--Pharmacy
--Food
--Armour Smithy
--Weapon Smithy
--Misc. Item Shop (scrolls, bombs, traps, e.t.c)

Mages:
--Cleric of Crystal Way (brings back dead people for money)

Warriors:
--Defenders (Protect the Trading Band from monsters and Bandits)

The merchants would be in pairs, one for business, and each for the Band itself. THe Warriors would get free weapons, armour and food, as long as they did a good job. Everyone else shared food and items and had a specific job for the Trading Band.

They would settle their camp right outside the Bronze Doors, to take advantage of leaving adventurers needing first aid, or food, and arrivals making last-minute check-ups.

[Harwen]

Originally posted by Wedge
You can\'t just set up shops, however that doesn\'t mean you can\'t set have an official system regulated trade  (which I do believe we will have in CB).

Yeah, but think about 500+ people wanting to sell things in a city with definetly less than 500 houses. This would make things unfair for players just coming in.

Could you really just set up a mini-shop with the items on your back? With prices to prevent bati/switch scams?

[Wedge]

Errr, you can set up your own shop, just not anywhere without anything.  You should need a cart or at least a friggin\' rug or something so it\'s there could be flea market areas and stuff.  I\'m just saying you can\'t magically set-up a shop, and then you can just be clicked on and they see your inventory.  You need a special shop-type holding/display item.

There shouldn\'t be (single) player owned building shops anyway, or if someone tries it won\'t really work.  Those things need to be made so only a group of players, and probably a guild, can maintain a shop that actually has it\'s own building.

[Kixie]

hehe quotes 1000s of people \"maybe we should have to have licenses to make a store?\"

[Goji]

Oh wow... sounds too much like RL!  Licencing?  Nah.  That would make it impossible for n00bs to set up shop.  I mean, what about n00b buyers?  they wont go to a big shop for inexpensive goods... they\'ll go to a small guy selling garbage for cheap right?

I think that there should be a way to set up shop (needing a cart or somesuch) but when you toggle a \'sell mode\' you become like an npc... where they can buy items from you without you being present.  This would allow for chars to be left on when peeps are at work or stuff like that and actually do something.  You set your prices for items and they choose what to buy... without haggling.  If they want an item for cheaper, they\'re just gonna have to try to buy it when your there

Also, depends on what you choose as a class.... i mean, armourers would be able to set up shop.... to sell armour.  Alchemists... to sell potions, balms, elixers... etc.  so that you cant just set up shop and sell anything.  if you want to sell certian things, you go to the correct vendor and sell it to them for cheaper, and then it is resold.

[Harwen]

Jeez, this is one of the subjects where I give up and hope the Devs come up with a simple and efficent system!   THen, when they are done, I can complain and hopefully suggest an improvement/addition.

I don\'t understand why a n00b can\'t sell me his, let\'s say \"Soul\" for 200, without any hassle? Again I could sell you my \"Soul\" very easily in real life, so I don\'t think it should be too hard to implement this.  ?(

[Goji]

ROFLMAO!

But wouldn\'t that be bypassing the big guy down below?  I mean, he still wants his due too!