I think their concern is that yes on a shard like Atlantic where stuff sells in a day or two it isn't a big deal to pay vendor fees, but when you live on a shard with a tiny population it will take much longer to sell anything because there are no buyers.
The same 100m item (doesn't have to be rares, could be a slither, a box of 120 power scrolls etc.) that would sell in under a week on Atlantic might take 3+ months to sell on a tiny shard like Legends or Origin, if it ends up selling at all.
So since the sellers won't make any money by running vendors due to how long it takes to sell things, there are no vendors. When there are no vendors, it makes it nearly impossible for new people to play there because they can't even find the simplest things like power scrolls or veteran rewards.
That leads to an endless cycle of dead shards becoming even more dead because new players can't play there, and all the merchants have to ship things off-shard to Atlantic to make any gold.
If vendor fees were reduced or eliminated the merchants might be willing to let items sit on their vendor for months, instead of sending it to Atlantic. Since there would be stuff on vendors, new people could come to that shard and find things to buy which allows them to stay and continue playing on that shard.
Actually spot on.
I run both.
I have 3 vendors on Atlantic, which I transfer stuff to to sell.
I have 10 vendors on Oceania which I try to keep stocked for 'local' players.
The items stocked on Atlantic sell within a day or two. The identical items on my Oceania vendor which are also 'cheaper' may not sell at all or take months to sell. An example of this is 'Books of Masteries' On Atlantic I can't keep them in stock, have to keep transferring over more books each time someone is going over (seeing as I am one of those people discriminated against as my account is only 12.6 yrs old) I sell them for 150k ea. Same item on Oceania sells slowly due to lack of pop, I sell them there for 50k ea. It is like this for ALL items, yet it costs me the same in vendor fees to stock on either shard. So not only am I making 1/3rd the amount I can sell on Atlantic for it works out to be even less as by the time something may of sat for 4 mths or more churning through vendor fees, the profit is vastly diminished.
The thing is you never know when someone on a smaller shard will want something so you keep it stocked at a loss in the effort to provide a service. Of my ten vendors in any given week I wil make a loss on 6-7 of them, a profit on the other 3-4 which may or may not offset the loss on the others. Luckily the need for 'imbuing resources' is pretty much the only item of comparable price and 'saleability' so sales on that tends to prop up the losses of all other items. I don't even bother selling those on Atlantic as the scripters have that pretty much covered.
I make 10 times more money on Atlantic than on Oceania yet stock a lot less. High end items I will 'float' on my Oce vendors for a week. After that time (and getting extorted on the vendor fee' I will remove it from sale and ship it where it will generally sell for double or more in a day or so. Sad thing is the following week someone will be asking for that item and I won't have it on shard any more as couldnt afford to keep stocking it not knowing when or if a buyer would come along.
I don't consider that I am over priced, sure I could keep dropping stuff til it was 100 gps but there comes a point where your 'time' has to mean something, and maintaining 10 stocked vendors takes time. Basically I don't stock anything for 5k or less accept a couple of easy items like mel machetes etc.
My vendor fees on 3xAtlantic vendors total on avg 1.5 to 2mil per DAY.
The fees on 10 Oceania vendors total on avg 480k per DAY.
All vendors are fully 'stocked' in that most cannot take any more 'items'. I make a huge profit on Atlantic, and break even/losses on Oceania. Am I tempted to just quit with the Oce vendors, YEP.
What is the solution.
The only one I can see is using a 'sale' fee which applied
on sale and/or 'removal' of item from the vendor. So if an item has been on a vendor for 6 hrs (give people time to change their minds or correct prices) then it will incur a flat fee when the item is removed from the vendor or sold. Not this current state of charging continuously for however long the item sits on a vendor.
But of course what may happen then is ppl will abuse it by using it as cheap storage, so there would need to be put into a sliding scale so items of higher value incur a higher fee to discourage it. ie: 0-50k 1%, 51-100k 2%, 101-500k 3% 501k-1m 5%, 1m-5m 7%, 5m-10m 10%, 10m + 20%. That would then stop people using vendors for storage but give a seller a known 'cost' incurred for an item sold, so for me to stock a book of masteries at 50k on Oceania would cost: 50k x 1% (500gps) ONCE, on Atlantic 150k x 3% (4,500) ONCE.
I could then 'factor' in the vendor fee when pricing and it wouldn't matter how long the item sat on the vendor, I would know that the book was gonna cost me between 500-4500 depending on location/price sold rather than how long it took to sell. Items that were 'worth' 10 mil I can sell on either shard as the cost to sell would be identical it wouldnt matter 'how' long it took and wouldn't cost me to do businiess on the small shard more than that on Atlantic.
The only drawback to the above would be if you stocked an item for say 5mil, which incurred a 10% fee (500k) and then wanted to 'reprice' it due to lack of sale you would be hit up the 500k but have no sale. I guess merchants would need to be careful with their pricing unless IDEALY they could code in a 'reprice' option where you could click on an item on a vendor and select 'reprice' so the price could be lowered or raised without affection the fee taken until the item was sold or removed from the vendor.
I know I would much prefer a 'flat fee' charged for selling an item, rather than this current system. Surely it wouldn't be that hard to code in. It would certainly make it fairer while maintaining the 'gold sink'. On really popular items that sell quick it would probably provide even more of a gold sink as 20% on 10m + items could prove to be more than vendor fees if an item sold within an hour or so of being put on the vendor.
Vendor fees are killing vendors on small shards, and it doesn't need to be so. I do not advocate no fees, but the above would surely be a fairer system and help all shard economies.
