Mall discussion

[Kanu Unchou]

Aloha,

as you may know, player vendors are scattered all over the place. When someone asks for a good place to shop, there's just no right answer, because there ain't one.
Neither Luna, nor Makoto-Jima or Yew Moongate are really good. A few active vendors here and there, with alot of running around between places, and yet many things are nowhere to be found.

How can that be?

I think part of the problem is that accounts can have 5 house plots. If you take a closer look to, say, Makoto-Jima, you'll notice that most of the potential vendor space is being held by a handful of individuals.Keeping a good shop running is time consuming enough, so many people just won't bother trying to contact that plot's owner to try buying it.
You can tell that a plot had been taken just for the sake of reselling when it is unchanged for some time. Some of the plots I've visited are also somewhat worn already, being completely empty.
I doubt that any of those will be freed up anytime soon. Whoever holds them will make sure they're being refreshed soon enough.

With Luna and Makoto out of the picture, and the very limited space at the moongates, selling houses inside cities could have solved the problem. But houses in cities are not for sale, so what's left?

There is no real "player city" on pandora. Corp Mani is a "player city" as in "built by players", but that's not what I mean.

The other day there was a discussion about a public vendor area, where everyone could freely place their vendors. I like the idea, because the amount of shops in one place makes competition possible and also attracts more buyers. Ofcourse, there were people arguing against that idea, so I'm starting this discussion right here.

[Belegerandh]

I think it would be good but how will the zone be changed in the future? It prob sounds like I'm bashing the staff's ideas today and I'm not here to do any of that; they do a great job. However, making an area desirable for market brought changes in the pvp system and you have to shop from the street itself. You can't even walk into the shop major or you're in that 'grey area' where you can get whacked. I can understand why no one would want to shop in an unsafe area where your primary focus and attention should be on the goods themselves, weighing and comparing prices. It's also perfect for robbery and pk/looting. Natural order of things, right? So I can't fault the 'bad guys' and I won't fault anyone else for that matter.

An 'idea' would be a 'facet' vendor area where players could pay the staff in gold for house duration. It would take a little bit of the ever-growing currency from circulation (but not a lot; only a contribution) so if they don't pay then the vendor house is demolished if that player is just hogging space and not checking in or such.

Everyone would know where to go and what the 'facet' rules would be, no room for confusion with this facet but that facet's rules, etc .. and the blues and reds could shop in the same place. You know, that balance where blue and red can actually cooperate and 'x' amount of facet space is given to the shard's market growth.

Maybe the houses could be staff owned and they lease the space to vendors if it's easier to manage. Either way, this is the one time/place people 'should' be safe because without a consistent market, why bother with the rest at all?

[Gargarensis]

Definately having a public vendor area would give everyone a chance of placing their items, and that I think is great.
Not only because it will increase the offer and variety, but also it will encourage everyone to participate and think having a vendor as a posible way of earning some coins.
And maybe it will help decrease the amount of "offer" spamming that goes on through the trade channel.
In my case I have a lot of unused stuff that I would love to sell... but do not justify keeping a vendor.

[Belegerandh]

Ya, and we'd have some d*mn competition between vendors. Any market should have that benefit for shoppers if they can walk 20 paces and find a better deal. Makes you work and have fun, ya know?

[Belegerandh]

I'm also suggesting that the vendor area be limited in size for the sake of the rogues out there. I don't want to see any obsolete skills; some already are and I'd like to see as many preserved as possible.

[Gargarensis]

And maybe another limit could be to have only 1 free vendor per account.

[Kanu Unchou]

I had the idea to just build a 3-story somewhere easily accessible and transfer ownership to a GM. Maybe that isn't even necessary if there's a player whose reputation is great, so that player won't just kick all the co-owners or friends who have placed their vendor inside the house.

The only problem I had with this is, I didn't find a place in Trammel (must be Trammel for obvious reasons) that's fitting the conditions.

Well, one could ofcourse place a gate casting char in Insula. Those were quite common on a shard I played earlier.

[reg3131]

Back when me and a friend ran a shard we had a non pvp area for everyone to have one free vendor, if u wanted more we had a community for player houseing they could buy and place more here.

It really depends on where the GMs want to go with this, but i think some sort of vendor area is a great idea. IF this means new rules in current areas on house size, because some are huge and have just one vendor, or create an area in game that isnt used very little if at all to make a mall area. Many places where this can be done.

[Deadmau5]

I think a better solution without creating a free vendor mall would be limit the amount of houses one IP could have in luna and the samuri town.  I know that certain people on this shard have multiple houses inside luna walls.  Maybe having more players with houses inside the walls would promote more vendors to be placed.

[Belegerandh]

Well, you know, it may be up to us, the players, to make a change: like, make a place on a Tram facet on our own. Maybe the staff would prefer -we- did something without screaming to them, ya know? Maybe they want us to work together ..

[Belegerandh]

Maybe, just maybe, (oh, snap!) have our own merchant's guild. Heck, mages and rogues have them. Not even one with a tag but an 'unspoken' one where we could come together for own changes, once every two weeks or so. Pool our resources for this, maybe? Give some people a job and something to do ..

[Dleatherus]

well .. if we made the player town of corp mani 100% pvp free (i can build pvp areas on the plots outside of town), i would offer up our town as an area for this with the following thoughts

vendors could be placed along the ramparts ... limit vendors to 1 vendor per IP (NOT per account) to avoid overcrowding, .. this would give enough room to walk about the walls still

alternatively we have a lot of plots outside the town, and these could be used as a player mall ..still inside fel rules is the only problem


perhaps an alternative solution would be to come up with hard and fast, enforceable rules for luna, ... i have several plots there still that i would donate

i also have an 18x18 just outside of the east gate that i'd be more than happy to turn into a mall since we have moved into the player town

[Belegerandh]

If Luna gets changed too much, though, too many times, no one will have faith in it's (new) current state.

[Deadmau5]

There is no problem in Luna right now for any blue player.  Blues are 100% safe from being pked inside luna.  If they get attacked they can all guards and the npc call guards as well.  No one can even be attacked at all in the player vendor area of luna.  Reds / factions are the only people vulnerable to being attacked in luna and they should be since they have chosen the pvp path.

[Kanu Unchou]

A friend of mine just built a little house with a vendor. While it may be physically impossible to connect this place with other vendor places, locking down runes to other vendor houses on the steps can improve the situation.
Not sure what you mean by merchant guild, but this system of connecting vendor places with each other resembles a bit of the spirit you may have in mind.
if every vendor house of someone who's interested to be a part of such a merchant community has a runebook with vendor locations on their steps, shopping would be easier, and selling would be possible everywhere, not just at one place.

Then again, why not use, say, the merchant hall in Britain and allow one vendor per IP? You could have it placed by a GM after a page, maybe even pay a little more up front, and have it removed and the vendor's contents placed in your bank if it's not been touched by you for a set amount of time.

That's what I originally meant by Mall. But maybe there are other nice ideas around?

What I definitely dont wanna see is a restriction to such a thing as in "only for contributors". A freeshard shouldn't be like your averagy asian free-2-play-pay-2-win-mmo.