Capt. Rik
09-12-04, 17:34
Threads demanding player shops have been pretty regular over the last couple of months. To those players demanding them, think about what you are really asking for...
I've been thinking recently about player vendors. A lot of these thoughts are based on SWG as i've played that heavily for months and have used it's player vendor feature extensively.
I've split it up into different categories. Perhaps some of the ideas people come up with would help KK with implenting this.
Player Shop Location
First and foremost, where can player shops be placed? If every player was allowed to place them anywhere in the world them most would opt for zones with high player population (i.e. Plaza 1/2/3/4 and TH). These areas would soon be filled up with vendors.
So other options are to either limit the number of vendors in a sector (screwing over those people who do not play 24/7 and cannot place a vendor as soon as a good plot becomes available) or to only allow players to place vendors in their own apartments. (i'll come onto advertising later)
Item Cost and Maintenance
A runner will want to specify the price of the goods his/her shop will sell. An interface would need to be developed to handle this.
Would a vendor stay there indefinately or would runners be required to pay some sort of running cost? I think players should pay a fee based on how many items are on the vendor and if your maintenance pool runs out then your vendor is destroyed (what happen to the items on it though?)
How does a player actually pay maintenance? (CityCom?)
How many?
How many vendors will players be allowed to have? Those players that play pure tradeskillers would want multiple to be able to mass produce and sell their wares. Those players with combat characters probably would want 1 vendor for loot sales. What decides how many a player can have? (skill based somehow?)
SWG has a good system i think. Every player can place 1 vendor in an allowed location. If you want multiple vendors, you need to spend skill points in the Merchant related skills thus reducing the number of skill points available for other skills.
Also under this category, how many items would be allowed on each vendor? To prevent it from getting out of hand, i would suggest a 50 item limit per vendor. At least this would save on database size.
Placement
Would a vendor be placed in the same way as furniture now? If so, where does a player obtain a "vendor item" and how does he set it up?
Advertising
Ok, painful one here in my opinion. Lets be honest, spam on the in-game chat channels is pretty bad already. I don't want to see 300 vendors automatically spamming their messages all the time on Trade-NC. I don't particularly want to see 20 vendors in local spamming messages either... it's hard enough to keep track of conversations when there is lots of people around. (It's the same problem in SWG)
Saying that however, players will want to advertise their wares. Even if it is just an apartment location and password so that runners can go and view the vendor. I'm open to ideas here...
Impact on the Faction System
Another problem maybe... Sooner or later, a player will set up a vendor offering bulk stock of items from the various FSMs. This vendor will be in a public place and in my opinion will completely undermine the whole faction system even further. Players will not need to interact with other players of opposing factions in order to get items they need.
Should the items that can be sold on a player vendor be regulated in some way?
My Idea
I have an idea (shamelessly stolen from SWG). Implement a Public Bazaar style idea ONLY. Place a public vendor in each major sector and allow each player the ability to offer a limited number of items for sale. Design the interface so that items are grouped by type to make easy searching.
Anyways, discuss...
I've been thinking recently about player vendors. A lot of these thoughts are based on SWG as i've played that heavily for months and have used it's player vendor feature extensively.
I've split it up into different categories. Perhaps some of the ideas people come up with would help KK with implenting this.
Player Shop Location
First and foremost, where can player shops be placed? If every player was allowed to place them anywhere in the world them most would opt for zones with high player population (i.e. Plaza 1/2/3/4 and TH). These areas would soon be filled up with vendors.
So other options are to either limit the number of vendors in a sector (screwing over those people who do not play 24/7 and cannot place a vendor as soon as a good plot becomes available) or to only allow players to place vendors in their own apartments. (i'll come onto advertising later)
Item Cost and Maintenance
A runner will want to specify the price of the goods his/her shop will sell. An interface would need to be developed to handle this.
Would a vendor stay there indefinately or would runners be required to pay some sort of running cost? I think players should pay a fee based on how many items are on the vendor and if your maintenance pool runs out then your vendor is destroyed (what happen to the items on it though?)
How does a player actually pay maintenance? (CityCom?)
How many?
How many vendors will players be allowed to have? Those players that play pure tradeskillers would want multiple to be able to mass produce and sell their wares. Those players with combat characters probably would want 1 vendor for loot sales. What decides how many a player can have? (skill based somehow?)
SWG has a good system i think. Every player can place 1 vendor in an allowed location. If you want multiple vendors, you need to spend skill points in the Merchant related skills thus reducing the number of skill points available for other skills.
Also under this category, how many items would be allowed on each vendor? To prevent it from getting out of hand, i would suggest a 50 item limit per vendor. At least this would save on database size.
Placement
Would a vendor be placed in the same way as furniture now? If so, where does a player obtain a "vendor item" and how does he set it up?
Advertising
Ok, painful one here in my opinion. Lets be honest, spam on the in-game chat channels is pretty bad already. I don't want to see 300 vendors automatically spamming their messages all the time on Trade-NC. I don't particularly want to see 20 vendors in local spamming messages either... it's hard enough to keep track of conversations when there is lots of people around. (It's the same problem in SWG)
Saying that however, players will want to advertise their wares. Even if it is just an apartment location and password so that runners can go and view the vendor. I'm open to ideas here...
Impact on the Faction System
Another problem maybe... Sooner or later, a player will set up a vendor offering bulk stock of items from the various FSMs. This vendor will be in a public place and in my opinion will completely undermine the whole faction system even further. Players will not need to interact with other players of opposing factions in order to get items they need.
Should the items that can be sold on a player vendor be regulated in some way?
My Idea
I have an idea (shamelessly stolen from SWG). Implement a Public Bazaar style idea ONLY. Place a public vendor in each major sector and allow each player the ability to offer a limited number of items for sale. Design the interface so that items are grouped by type to make easy searching.
Anyways, discuss...