Vendor fees

[Yadd of Legends]

Has there ever been any discussion of making vendor fees come out of the sale instead of daily fees?
I'm not opposed to losing a percentage of a sale when the item sells, but I can't afford to leave valuable stuff on my vendor because of the daily fees (600,000 a day for 100M worth of items ).
I know the system has been in place since game started, but the economy has changed drastically. With tons of 20M loot items available to sell now and not all of us having the bank balance to back that up, a change would help the little guys playing the game.

 

[BeaIank]

That would be pretty swell, indeed.

 

[TheScoundrelRico]

LOL, drop your prices and the fees won't be as high. Damned price gougers...la

 

[Angel of Sonoma]

I'd like to see that change! That's especially beneficial for lower populated shards. I have vendors on Sonoma and sometimes it just isn't worthwhile because the merchandise sits for weeks before it sells (and I have some of the lowest prices on the shard). All the while I am losing gold to the daily vendor fees. Maybe it would encourage more people to stock vendors. Also, it sucks to have to travel to Atlantic to buy what I need.

 

[cazador]

You could always sell for less..I think it's a fair trade. You wanna be rich, act like it


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[TheScoundrelRico]

You could always sell for less..I think it's a fair trade. You wanna be rich, act like it

He is, aren't the rich the ones always complaining about high taxes?...la

 

[Uriah Heep]

Yeah, a straight up set % would definitely be the fairest way to go. It would let us stock a few vendors with items that may not sell fast, but are needed to be available. One price, one fee, wouldnt matter then how long it sat before moving

 

[Smoot]

Daily fee is needed. I would definitely abuse a system thant just took a cut at the end by pricing things much higher. if they didnt sell, no risk no lost gold. take them off. bad idea imo.

 

[cazador]

I would be ok with a sell fee..maybe like 5%

2% to the house owner
(Housing Fee)
Remove Renting vendors
2% to the UO Gods
(Land Taxes)
1% to the city of the Vendor's Choosing
(Loyalty Taxes)

That would be a nice gold sink..profitable to the community, and the house owners would look for good salesmen, not whoever pays the price. Community building

That or something like it would get my vote

Example
Items sells for 10,000,000
2% house owner fee
200,000
2% UO Gods fee
200,000
City Loyalty Contribution
100,000

Seller
9,400,000


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[Smoot]

i just dont see how a sell fee would be good. Say i have 20 rares that would probably sell in a month priced @ 20mil without the vendor fee cutting away the majority of profits. with a "sell fee" why not price them at 100mil and just leave them up there forver? it could be years wouldnt matter. if one sells great, if they dont, its still free till the sale.

might be ok for normal, high demand items but bad news for people looking for decent deals on rares.

right now i price rares at a price they will most likely sell for in a month, if it was seller fee i would just load vendors with everything priced way high, leave it, come back a year later and see what sold for stupid prices.

I can see this driving the price of jewels up as well. If theres just a "sell fee" something can be priced sky high and just left to sit. Vendor fees are the only thing keeping many sellers prices "reasonable"

 

[Yadd of Legends]

i just dont see how a sell fee would be good. Say i have 20 rares that would probably sell in a month priced @ 20mil without the vendor fee cutting away the majority of profits. with a "sell fee" why not price them at 100mil and just leave them up there forver? it could be years wouldnt matter. if one sells great, if they dont, its still free till the sale.

might be ok for normal, high demand items but bad news for people looking for decent deals on rares.

right now i price rares at a price they will most likely sell for in a month, if it was seller fee i would just load vendors with everything priced way high, leave it, come back a year later and see what sold for stupid prices.

I can see this driving the price of jewels up as well. If theres just a "sell fee" something can be priced sky high and just left to sit. Vendor fees are the only thing keeping many sellers prices "reasonable"

The sell fee would not eat up your profits any more than the daily fee, because it's the same price, just taken out of the sale instead of a daily fee that prohibits some of us from even putting valuable items on vendors in the first place.
If something is priced too high, it won't raise selling prices - as you said, it will just sit there unsold.

 

[Smoot]

The sell fee would not eat up your profits any more than the daily fee, because it's the same price, just taken out of the sale instead of a daily fee that prohibits some of us from even putting valuable items on vendors in the first place.
If something is priced too high, it won't raise selling prices - as you said, it will just sit there unsold.

i dunno man, i can just see prices of mid grade rares, jewels and armor going way up because they can just sit on a vendor with no fee. Id much rather price something at a dumb price, say 50 mil when its really worth 10 just because i know someone will eventually buy it and i dont have to worry about losing $$ if it doesnt sell in a timely fashion. and thats a huge profit margin worth waiting for. Like, people pay dumb prices for stuff. but eventually someone buys it. if someone doesnt need the item to sell quickly, why not price it at 5 times the cost?

overall, good for sellers i guess. bad for buyers / players without alot of gold.

 

[The Zog historian]

i dunno man, i can just see prices of mid grade rares, jewels and armor going way up because they can just sit on a vendor with no fee. Id much rather price something at a dumb price, say 50 mil when its really worth 10 just because i know someone will eventually buy it and i dont have to worry about losing $$ if it doesnt sell in a timely fashion. and thats a huge profit margin worth waiting for. Like, people pay dumb prices for stuff. but eventually someone buys it. if someone doesnt need the item to sell quickly, why not price it at 5 times the cost?

overall, good for sellers i guess. bad for buyers / players without alot of gold.

Prices would not necessarily go up. Any upward pressure could very easily be offset by an increase in supply. If like in your example something went from 10 to 50 million, it would encourage those who would have sold the item or close substitutes for 10 million, except they didn't want the bother of a vendor and fees.

Even if the price of something did surge like in your example, 1) nobody is being forced to pay, and 2) when paid, it shows the true value that a buyer would have agreed on outside of a player vendor. Reduced consumer surplus, but increased producer surplus.

 

[HoneythornGump]

Why do I get a feeling the remainder of this thread is going to be filled with "Walls of Text" pertaining to Keynesian economics.

 

[HoneythornGump]

Has there ever been any discussion of making vendor fees come out of the sale instead of daily fees?
I'm not opposed to losing a percentage of a sale when the item sells, but I can't afford to leave valuable stuff on my vendor because of the daily fees (600,000 a day for 100M worth of items ).
I know the system has been in place since game started, but the economy has changed drastically. With tons of 20M loot items available to sell now and not all of us having the bank balance to back that up, a change would help the little guys playing the game.

An approach like this won't happen because it makes too much sense.

Plus, think how beneficial it would be to shards with low populations...therefore...it won't happen.

 

[cazador]

I think the issue for lower population shards right now is nobody puts items on vendors because it takes too damn long to sell, in which costs too much. So what ends up happening is mostly everyone after not being able to sell in gen chat catches a ride to ATL and sells there because it's a much more vibrant economy and sells much much faster.


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[Keith of Sonoma]

I'd like to see that change! That's especially beneficial for lower populated shards. I have vendors on Sonoma and sometimes it just isn't worthwhile because the merchandise sits for weeks before it sells (and I have some of the lowest prices on the shard). All the while I am losing gold to the daily vendor fees. Maybe it would encourage more people to stock vendors. Also, it sucks to have to travel to Atlantic to buy what I need.

Almost as low as mine Angel! HEHE

 

[HoneythornGump]

I think the issue for lower population shards right now is nobody puts items on vendors because it takes too damn long to sell, in which costs too much. So what ends up happening is mostly everyone after not being able to sell in gen chat catches a ride to ATL and sells there because it's a much more vibrant economy and sells much much faster.

I'd venture to say 90% of commerce/gold transactions takes place on Atlantic because your forced move your items there if you want them to sell.

This is also why Shard Shields have had a huge negative effect on those who don't have them and shards of low population. People can transfer for free while others have to pay through the nose....and the result has been vendors are practically empty on many shards because the items just sit there, never sells, and the vendor owner simply loses money over time.

Shard Shields have had a serious negative effect on UO.

Then we have a new player join (Enter Shard Name Here EXCEPT Atlantic) and he goes around looking at vendors to buy some items but there's nothing for sale. The player then gets the impression that his shard is dead and thinks to himself "Man UO has really emptied out. I remembered when this shards was hopping. What happened to all the people? Where did they go? Guess I'll quit since no one is playing this game (see empty vendors) and go back to (Enter Name of Gamer here).

 

[The Zog historian]

Why do I get a feeling the remainder of this thread is going to be filled with "Walls of Text" pertaining to Keynesian economics.

You'd never see that from me, since I'm staunchly anti-Keynesian. But what I did point out is simple Micro 101 stuff about supply and demand.

 

[4gregu]

The problem with a fee only dependent on sale would be that people would use vendors for storage. One could fill every vendor with junk priced @ 175 mil a piece.

 

[Capt. Lucky]

The problem with a fee only dependent on sale would be that people would use vendors for storage. One could fill every vendor with junk priced @ 175 mil a piece.

That would be a minor side effect to the major problem we face on the lower population shards. Let vendor items count toward the total house storage and problem solved. I realize this causes some issues with vendor malls and such but with the search feature there's little reason to not end vendor malls anyway. Anyone can have a vendor out in the middle of no where and still have their items found and sold. If they wanna make BOD books not count toward storage or whatever that's fine with me.

 

[whiterabbit]

SO VENDORS ARE USED AS STORAGE LOCKERS?

 

[Olahorand]

Well, the storage abuse is one thing, we had in the past with overweight bags, so it is a real issue.
But ... why does Broadsword not sell additional storage upgrades, which can be applied per house and not per account?
Similar like the garden shed vet reward ... but connected to the house and not removable from it.

For the vendor issue: The final price (or a percentage of it) could also kick in, if the item is taken off the vendor again (that penalty thing).
Or the daily fee is capped at a certain level - which is higher than for an empty vendor, but does not cost an arm and a leg - in combination with the sale based fee.

*Salute*
Olahorand

 

[Yadd of Legends]

The problem with a fee only dependent on sale would be that people would use vendors for storage. One could fill every vendor with junk priced @ 175 mil a piece.

Can't you already store stuff on vendors by marking it NFS?

 

[4gregu]

Can't you already store stuff on vendors by marking it NFS?

There are only a handful of items that you can make not for sale (like books, empty containers and BOD books) everything else will automatically be priced at VDP.

 

[Yadd of Legends]

There are only a handful of items that you can make not for sale (like books, empty containers and BOD books) everything else will automatically be priced at VDP.

See, that goes to show you I've never had enough stuff to worry about storing it on vendors

 

[cazador]

Well the storage problem can easily be avoided.

Add a time limit of 30 days for sale.

I say easily loosely mind you, because apparently nothing is easy in UO according to the bench coders. But with that said...

The whole vendor system would need to be altered. When you place an item on a vendor a gump comes up that will show exactly where and how the money will come out. So six different spaces think of it as a excel spreadsheet.
Price (that you sell for)
House owner cut(house owners cut)
Loyalty Tax(how much of the sale goes to the town of your choice if NONE it defaults to the UO Gods)
Vendor Tax( the % that goes to the dark space, basically a gold sink)
Sale (what you'll get when it sells)
Time Limit (30 days to start)

Once the 30 day time period comes up you will be charged a "re-stocking" fee of 5% which goes directly to "black space" that's the price your paying to "store" or sell..

Now to change the price or remove an item, wether it's lowering or raising the price or removing the item. It's accomplished by single left clicking the item to get a context menu with different options (Move, Change Price, Remove)

-Move would be free
-Change price changes based on amount that would show the intial gump that alters all fields previously that would need to again be accepted. And have a % fee let's say 1% for the sake of argument. So if the price is 1,000,000 gold and you'd like to change the price to say 950k to sell faster you are charged a 1% restocking fee at that point directly out of the bank if no gold is on the vendor. So you would need to pay 10k to to that.
-Remove item - if you decide the item isn't selling and wish to remove it you are charged with a 5% Storage Fee. So again an example would be if the item is set at 1,000,000 gold a fee would come out of your bank or vendor depending on funds of 50k. Again that would go to the "dark space".

If the funds are not there for any reason you then have a 7 day grace period to retrieve or pay off your debt where the item is removed from vendor search, if the debt is not satisfied the item goes into another 15 day period of "not for sale" where then the owner can purchase item back for the fees accrued. If that is not done the item then drops to FREE. Happy hunting to the new profession "vendor idocers"


..now it all sounds very confusing at first but really read it and think about the effect it could have "positively" on Merchants, and the community at whole. It isn't an idea to bolster a sellers market or even a buyers, it's an idea and or thought to enrich the system currently to make it more user friendly, and less daunting of a task to sell lower end items. It's actually an incentive for people to sell their items on any shard. Not hoard them or move them to a more populated one.

..granted at this stage of the game it may be too little too late for such a small population. Like it or hate it, it's my idea and opinion. Take it as that rather than definitively haters



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[OREOGL]

Not a bad idea but ill pass. My things sell quick enough that the vendor fees would be lower than a set rate per item.

Id be losing gold in favor of this.

Eta: dont fix what isn't broken

 

[Angel of Sonoma]

I'm not sure how feasible this would be but a global vendor system would be awesome. A global vendor system as in ... when I search for an item, not only do I see the items on my shard but on all other shards. Instead of getting a map to the vendor location the gump could give me the buy option. I am sure this idea has all sorts of challenges like latency and refresh issues. But it sure would be beneficial to both buyers and sellers.

 

[FrejaSP]

I do believe vendor fee is to high, both for community vendors and PC vendors.
I do know the fee was made to stop players using their vendors for storage and Vendor Search did help vendors far from town and moongate.

Some items sell fast, other items take longer to sell. I would love to stock my vendors with suits for different templates and both for players who only want a cheap training suit and players who want a maxed out PvP or farming suit.
Some of the suits take longer to sell but they should still be there. My suits are from 10k to 200k so not expensive but I still pay alot in fee.

Same with furnitures and plants, there are alot of different kinds, if vendor fee was lower, we would see more well stocked vendors.

Community venders need to be added to Vendor Search and we need more of them, both on in other towns and in player towns

 

[silent]

I'm not in Luna so I don't show up on that search site and I don't think the UO vendor search is generating enough traffic. Just having my vendors filled with medium to low end armor is kill me on fees. Maybe a combination of lower fees and commission on sale to avoid people using them as storage?

 

[Smoot]

I'm not in Luna so I don't show up on that search site and I don't think the UO vendor search is generating enough traffic. Just having my vendors filled with medium to low end armor is kill me on fees. Maybe a combination of lower fees and commission on sale to avoid people using them as storage?

id get a luna vendor. a well placed luna vendor can sell things for sometimes three times the cost of the lowest priced vendor search item. the higher price more than covers the daily vendor fee / renter fee.

 

[Goldberg-Chessy]

Has there ever been any discussion of making vendor fees come out of the sale instead of daily fees?
I'm not opposed to losing a percentage of a sale when the item sells, but I can't afford to leave valuable stuff on my vendor because of the daily fees (600,000 a day for 100M worth of items ).
I know the system has been in place since game started, but the economy has changed drastically. With tons of 20M loot items available to sell now and not all of us having the bank balance to back that up, a change would help the little guys playing the game.

Huh? Makes no sense at all.
The economy has not changed drastically. For a very, very long time power scrolls and runic barbed armor alone filled up luna vendors at 10-20 million per. And many other things such as fairly common vet rewards and doom arties were all over the place at high prices.

Vendor fees seem right inline to me.
If you want to regularly sell a lot of items at 10-20 million per so that you can make hundreds of millions you should be paying some large fees.
I can't believe that anyone has been playing long enough to regularly amass 20 million gold items but can't figure out how to run multiple vendors or keep the fees paid on one. It is not difficult in the least. Bank boxes and vendors are not hard to manage.

No offense but it quite obviously seems like you are just cheap or do not know how to correctly price items so they are sitting instead of selling. Maybe stop trying to gouge your customers and your issues will go away?

 

[Goldberg-Chessy]

I'd venture to say 90% of commerce/gold transactions takes place on Atlantic because your forced move your items there if you want them to sell.

This is also why Shard Shields have had a huge negative effect on those who don't have them and shards of low population. People can transfer for free while others have to pay through the nose....and the result has been vendors are practically empty on many shards because the items just sit there, never sells, and the vendor owner simply loses money over time.

Shard Shields have had a serious negative effect on UO.

Then we have a new player join (Enter Shard Name Here EXCEPT Atlantic) and he goes around looking at vendors to buy some items but there's nothing for sale. The player then gets the impression that his shard is dead and thinks to himself "Man UO has really emptied out. I remembered when this shards was hopping. What happened to all the people? Where did they go? Guess I'll quit since no one is playing this game (see empty vendors) and go back to (Enter Name of Gamer here).

Items are not being moved to Atlantic because players on other shards cannot afford to put them on vendors.
Items are being moved and sold on Atlantic because there are almost no players on other shards to need or buy them. The vast majority of items being moved to Atlantic are being moved by Atlantic players that have just created alt characters to farm all the other dead shards.
Any issues with vendor fees are not about shard population. They are about player greed.

I own a high end jewelry store that specializes in Rolex and Breitling watches that go from $5000 - $50000 per watch.
I can open up my shop in slum, pay a small rent, over price my watches, and hope they sell or I can move my shop to a nice mall, pay a high rent and know that my watches will sell. If I know my goods and do my homework I will price them correctly and will be in business for a long time.

 

[cazador]

Items are not being moved to Atlantic because players on other shards cannot afford to put them on vendors.
Items are being moved and sold on Atlantic because there are almost no players on other shards to need or buy them. The vast majority of items being moved to Atlantic are being moved by Atlantic players that have just created alt characters to farm all the other dead shards.
Any issues with vendor fees are not about shard population. They are about player greed

Ok I agree and disagree. I personally don't have a vendor on chessy other than to place an item on it to sell after I've spammed gen chat or Stratics. Solely because to keep any amounts of decent gear or items on a vendor costs far too much in the long haul compared to population/vendor fees. Now by adding a on sale fee would eliminate that for dead shards and may encourage shard local to fill up vendors with lower end armor/potions/resources/older artifacts things that generally sit on vendors for months and months on those shards. Now I agree with if your selling high end items you should be paying accordingly. But there are reasons all other shards minus ATL have problems selling items. So just because you can sell items on atlantic quickly doesn't make the system not flawed. Well honestly It actually may not be flawed, the issue is the population is so low it "DOES" need to be altered to cater to the shards that have **** for populations..or just merge all the damn shards already and we can spend more time fixing the BS 17 year old bugs/glitches/exploits.


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[Goldberg-Chessy]

In general on Atlantic vendor fees only hurt the cheesy resellers that want to spam at the bank all day buying too low so they can resell for a large profit. It is a free market so they can do what they want but they can also get burned and that is as it should be.
If a cincture on Atlantic regularly sells for 40 million and a person says in chat that they are selling a cincture for 38 million you never see these resellers buy it because to them 2 million is not a big enough profit. Shame on them.
If they resell the cincture through chat or bank spamming they paid no vendor fee and just made 2 million gold. If they instead put it on their vendor at 40 and it sits for a week they still make a nice little profit. Whats the problem?

If you are not a reseller and are farming your own items then you are making pure profit so how can you complain about vendor fees if you price your items correctly?
*shakes head*

 

[silent]

In general on Atlantic vendor fees only hurt the cheesy resellers that want to spam at the bank all day buying too low so they can resell for a large profit. It is a free market so they can do what they want but they can also get burned and that is as it should be.
If a cincture on Atlantic regularly sells for 40 million and a person says in chat that they are selling a cincture for 38 million you never see these resellers buy it because to them 2 million is not a big enough profit. Shame on them.
If they resell the cincture through chat or bank spamming they paid no vendor fee and just made 2 million gold. If they instead put it on their vendor at 40 and it sits for a week they still make a nice little profit. Whats the problem?

If you are not a reseller and are farming your own items then you are making pure profit so how can you complain about vendor fees if you price your items correctly?
*shakes head*

This is all well and good for the Warren Buffets of UO, and granted there are many, but this logic does not work for the casual player who doesn't sell multi-million gold items on their vendor or have a place in Luna. There are simply not enough vendor spots in Luna for everyone to have a vendor in a high traffic area. From what I've seen the UO vendor search really isn't solving this problem either. Most of my items are listed in the thousands of gold not millions that combined with a vendor in a low traffic area equals items sitting a while and consuming fees.

This is just more of the same mentality in UO that will eventually drive people from the game, that if it works for me it must be ok for everyone.

 

[Zuckuss]

I think the daily fee is better for the economy. That makes the sellers a bit more competitive and urges them to price things to sell. Also as mentioned above, no daily charge will increase the probability that vendors will be used as storage. You are essentially paying someone a small fee to stand there 24/7 with an available item to buy. You are paying to not have to stand around Luna or spam general chat with "selling my uber wares!"

This is one system that I do not think needs fixing.

 

[Goldberg-Chessy]

This is all well and good for the Warren Buffets of UO, and granted there are many, but this logic does not work for the casual player who doesn't sell multi-million gold items on their vendor or have a place in Luna. There are simply not enough vendor spots in Luna for everyone to have a vendor in a high traffic area. From what I've seen the UO vendor search really isn't solving this problem either. Most of my items are listed in the thousands of gold not millions that combined with a vendor in a low traffic area equals items sitting a while and consuming fees.

This is just more of the same mentality in UO that will eventually drive people from the game, that if it works for me it must be ok for everyone.

No system will work perfectly for the casual and hardcore gamer whether it is vendor or pvm or pvp. But the current vendor system does work more than well enough for all.
There are always luna spots for rent if you spam and check signs at houses for owner contact info. And vendor search certainly works well enough for the casual vendor. I use it all the time to buy items so not really sure what you mean?
This isn't a mentality. It is simply an explanation of how things work.
What exactly is your issue as a casual vendor on Atlantic? Because you referenced not enough Luna spots so I assume we are talking Atlantic in your case.
It seems to me that you want a customized system that works just how you need it to?
And you believe that people are leaving UO because they can't set up vendor shops to sell items for almost nothing? Because other than consumables I am not sure who needs items in the thousands that currently is unable to get them?
New players do ofc but new players these days can get anything they need within weeks if they are really trying to catch on. If they are not than UO is most likely not the game for them anyway and that is a whole other discussion that has nothing to do with vendor fees no matter how you try to extrapolate.

 

[Smoot]

I can tell you one thing, "new player" vendors are not really viable anymore unless the stuff is extremetly cheap (usually below cost) With the amount and level of gear that you can either find on the ground, loot off public corpses, or be given as handouts i cant see anyone actually paying for much "noob gear" Ive made 75 sdi max hpi 70s resists 100lrc 2/6 40lmc suits on brand new startup characters for around 200k total. Bought legendary artifacts off vendor search for as low as 12gp. Point is, theres just not a market for "average" gear like there was even 6 months ago.

Dont get me wrong, providing a "new player vendor service" is a very noble thing, i just wouldnt expect to make profit off it. i would rather expect to lose money, but gain the satisfaction of helping out any fresh players to the game or shard.

 

[Bethany_lg]

As someone who runs vendors on a low pop shard, it's not the multi-million items that cause a problem. If I put a crimmy, a trinket, a mark or even a tangle on my vendor it's going to sell quickly because there are so few of them available to buy. Runics...I can't keep them in stock. I personally have made billions selling items on a "dead" shard.

The problem is for people who don't have the "goodies", but just want to sell potions or deco or whatever. Occasional sales of these items aren't worth the effort because you can't cover the fees. You end up stocking things for a service because you know someone will want it eventually and it sucks when they can't find it.

The high end items will always cover the cost, but average stuff...you gotta work to make a profit.

 

[Gidge]

I have considered putting an item (ie katana) next to the vendor and saying please contact me if you wish to purchase and put just a book on the vendor for some random price. The book would show when the word "katana" was sought and could describe the item and contact Gidge in Gen Chat with the free map they could come to your home and look at it, leave a note somewhere for you to contact them. Broaden your mind and be creative. it is a world with-in a world. The easier it is made for us, the more it slips away.