Town NPC marketing system

[kalzaketh]

uh no thx, there are more than enough, worthless banksitters, I prefer the town of brit, being clear of ppl and useless lag, if ppl only log on to chat they should really check the sims online leave uo ;lag free.

 

[northwoodschopper]

i still asy if all towns were designed like luna, there'd be more activity in those towns in general. a central bank with every NPC vendor, a close moongate, a stable, and enough player housing surrounding the bank, it's win-win for every town to have this setup (except for the current luna residents, as this would severely devalue their housing).

 

[slavoie]

Don't touch player vendors. Leave them be!

Add to each town, I mean each and ever town out there, area's for player vendors. If you have player vendors at a house, you can not place one there. If you don't, you can have one player vendor per account per shard, in town merchant areas.

Vendors do not have to be specifc to town or location, so your blacksmith items can go at the mages shop in fel vesper if you like.

Oh and re-instate guard areas in fel cities.

City vendors are 10k a week, plus normal daily vendor rate.

I'm putting my vendor at garg city in ilish...

 

[popps]

Vendors do not have to be specifc to town or location, so your blacksmith items can go at the mages shop in fel vesper if you like.

I disagree.

I believe that Markets town vendors should be "themed" in order to bring life back to all towns and not just some of them.....

If players need Mage stuff they will need to go to Magincia or Moongllow but if they need Warriors and armors stuff they will need to go to Trinsic.
Need Leather armor or taming needs ? Skara Brae is the location.......
Are into rares or looking for that rare items ? Of course the solution is Britain, the capital, where expensive goods of all sorts can be found....
Need furniture or fishing needs ? Go to Vesper town market and find what thy need !

I think the way to have all Towns see life again is differentiating them so to give them a unique skin as the original Ultima Online wanted.
Trinsic was never a place for Mages, or Moonglow never for warriors.

Let's bring back this differentiation.

 

[pgcd]

This must be the first time I agree with popps =)

I'd love to see player items sold on themed city vendors (especially since I don't want to peddle my wares in Luna and I don't feel like running and stocking a full vendor at my home). But please, make it so there is some way of filtering stuff - make it so you can filter stuff in your containers as well, possibly: I have 6 boxes full of jewelry and looking for that specific ring or bracelet is not fun.

 

[Harlequin]

A very nice idea.



I would looove for them to open up the vacant houses in town and turn them into special player houses.

No customization, but you can lock down decor internally and host vendors.



Or turn them into special vendor houses like a bazaar. Instead of using existing NPC shops. Rentals lasts a month.

Each vacant building has a ballot box for merchants to bid for a spot. The goes into a queue. Each account can only ballot for a particular building once.

Winners will be chosen monthly.

Once you win a ballot, you will be give a spot and your name will be removed from the queue. You will not be able to ballot for a spot at the same building until 3 weeks later. While other folks without a spot there can still submit their ballots.

This gives a chance for other people to get a spot there if it's a popular spot, so no one can hog popular spots. And allows you a chance to keep your vendor there if the spot is less popular.



Giving each city a themes will be very nice too, I actually like it. But might be a bit difficult to manage (esp for players). Eg in Moonglow, you block the sales of weapons and armour. But what about Hat of magi? Reward glasses? LRC Armour? Mage weapons?

Then, there are misc items like statues, soulstones, tokens, powerscrolls etc.

Restricting to themes in this case might be a bit frustrating for players.

 

[slavoie]

My suggestion is geared to making this a do-able thing.

If you go makeing all kinds of things like ballot system, system checks on items placed on vendors to match areas, then your talking about a hugh project for the developers.

If you keep it simple then it's more likly to have a shot.

 

[Harlequin]

My suggestion is geared to making this a do-able thing.

If you go makeing all kinds of things like ballot system, system checks on items placed on vendors to match areas, then your talking about a hugh project for the developers.

If you keep it simple then it's more likly to have a shot.

I understand what you mean. My concern is fairly assigning the spots rather than limiting different types of goods to different towns.

Assuming that there will be limited spots neatly arranged instead of everyone haphazardly plonking down a vendor on any empty tile town.

How do you propose to assign the spots? First come first serve basis? And whoever got the spot can hold it forever as long as he can pay the 10k per week rental? From the existing vendor system, there are certain problems with players that have quit, but have left 10s of millions of gold on their vendors...

I'm not too cormfortable with that, I'd rather they do this as properly as they can the first time around.

I'd also like a system where everyone (including newbies and people that don't own houses) is given an equal chance to market their wares in town.

Not trying to be a wet blanket, I totally support this to bring life back into the towns. Just brainstorming my concerns.

 

[Beastmaster]

I'd also like a system where everyone (including newbies and people that don't own houses) is given an equal chance to market their wares in town.

I agree with all your concerns. After thinking about them that's why I opted for the use existing NPC approach. That way no vendor is tied to one player. The idea of theming vendors according to town has some merit, but I'm not sure it justifies the coding hassles.

If they redo the current vendor lists of acceptable items they only have to redo each type of NPCs list one time, say blacksmiths for instance, and then all the blacksmith NPCs would have the same acceptable list. Then give the bank NPCs an "all other" designation. If you try to give the bank NPC an item that is on another list you would be directed to use one of those NPCs, but if its not on any list then the bank NPC would accept it.

Only issue I see with this setup is how to fix it where not everyone can use the same NPCs which would leave us with another Luna situation where the most frequented town would become the default town you wish to sell in. If you limit the NPCs GP amounts or item counts then you have players competing for space again.

How about this? Example: Once the total inventory of all the blacksmith NPCs hit a certain threshold (GPs or items), then any further attempts to add to their inventory gets you a message that you can only add to the 3 lowest NPCs and gives there names and locations. There's nothing saying that those 3 are poor sellers, because they may have just sold a 10M sword dropping them to the bottom inventory wise.

 

[slavoie]

Ok, a couple of quick things.

I am in favor of a first come first serve thing.

I am not in favor of a any town tile. They would have to be assigned area's presumably near the existing town merchants.

I know the concern here is that a group will get the "good" spots and control them like Luna, but the beauty of this is all you have to do is get a group of people together and you can make a nice little vendor area where this is open space. How many towns are there??? Fel, Tram, Ilish (Garg city), Papua and Delucia in Lost Lands, Malas, Tok, and now Te mur or what ever its called. Each town would have 5 - 15 spots were these vendor areas would be, there should be space.

I don't think there will be crouding issues with the one vendor per account rule, and not if you have any house based vendors.

If your concerned about people leaving 10 million gold on the vendor and them staying there empty for ever the fix for that is to have a 14 day check to see if the owner has been to the vendor, if not the vendor is dismissed, the money and items goes to the players bank. If that causes the player bank to be over full, so be it, make it like it is on test where the bank can be overfull but you can't put items back in unless its right.

 

[Beastmaster]

I prefer the only advantage to be that the person who can sell the most, makes the most. There doesn't need to be any artifical barriers created to prevent Joe from selling more than Sally. When you design it so there are "best" spots, or spots that people can claim and use forever that is just what you are doing. If Sally can produce 135 taint a day and afford to sell it 10k cheaper than Joe who only produces 15, that is a fair market. When Joe is forced to place on a vendor in the gargoyle city in Ilshenar, or risk trying to stock his vendor in beautiful, bustling downtown Fel Yew, he isn't going to make a dime and will likely lose it all in the latter case.

And guess what just happened to Sally's price?

 

[UOKaiser]

As long as house venders are not touched. If they are how will all these ideas make it better and more convenient for the player to buy and sell there goods. How does this improve on the current player experience for all players of sosaria. How does this make it better than having vender malls,unique shops,able to sell anything at any price you want at any time in any place?
Will this make people want to play the game more? Will this inconvenience people more. Are populated shards gonna be harder to ever get a your items up compare to the empty ones?

 

[Beastmaster]

As long as house venders are not touched

This system is not for you. It will never suit you plain and simple. You are only in favor if doesn't upset your current playstyle. You are not alone. There are many others that will feel the same way. But, I contend you are in the minority based on the number of anti-Luna posters seen here regularly. People want a more equitable solution.

 

[slavoie]

I prefer the only advantage to be that the person who can sell the most, makes the most. There doesn't need to be any artifical barriers created to prevent Joe from selling more than Sally. When you design it so there are "best" spots, or spots that people can claim and use forever that is just what you are doing. If Sally can produce 135 taint a day and afford to sell it 10k cheaper than Joe who only produces 15, that is a fair market. When Joe is forced to place on a vendor in the gargoyle city in Ilshenar, or risk trying to stock his vendor in beautiful, bustling downtown Fel Yew, he isn't going to make a dime and will likely lose it all in the latter case.

And guess what just happened to Sally's price?

Part of my suggestion was to re-instate the guard zones in Fel towns. I'm not sure how a Fel vendor is at a disadvantage then a Tram vendor. You know there are reds who buy stuff, or better yet, there would be more reds that would just buy stuff with those chars then log onto blue alts just to go shopping. Remember your idea was to bring people back to towns, you didn't just mean tramm towns did you?

 

[UOKaiser]

This system is not for you. It will never suit you plain and simple. You are only in favor if doesn't upset your current playstyle. You are not alone. There are many others that will feel the same way. But, I contend you are in the minority based on the number of anti-Luna posters seen here regularly. People want a more equitable solution.

A big difference between anit-luna and anti vender houses. Anybody can rent a luna vender some are pretty cheap. I have 4 venders i rent in luna
#1 sells ingots,gems,smith runics,pof
#2 sells slayer spellbooks,scrolls,runebooks,emty bod books
#3 sells tailor rewards,leather,any item I might find that will sell,mining tools,powerscrolls for smith,tailor,sandles,tailor runics
#4 sells weapons, armors, I make it attracted by making sets "mr2 suits.100lrc suits,luck suits,self repair suits,70's suits,then some loose wep and armors that stand on there own to complete pieces because am a true old time blacksmith.

Outside of luna my alliance own 3 large homes next to each other. I have venders in one of the allaince buildings which I must go by the universal price list
I own 1 of the homes which my guild utilizes and sell mutiple of items but mostly leather which also has a unversal pricing making us suppliers.

I Rent a vender by despise which I sell items that will work for the dungeon like enhanced bandaids, potions,repair deeds,slayers for the appropiate creatures like lizards,ogres,stat enhancement items,bag of sending cause alot of people love to leather hunt there etc.

I rent a vender by the brit gate house sells a mix of the luna items for cheaper prices.
Rent another vender near by that sells kegs, plants, seeds and plant resources
Then on my home I have about 14 venders that sell mining tools,runics,tailor rewards,smith rewards,powerscrolls, etc.. for poor mans prices if people ever decide to visit me. Also home is heavyly utilized by my guild to supply me with items to sell and use my services.

rental fees- luna-100k,25k,25k,30k
Brit gate -20k
The rest are free.
Prices are marked up according to location and rent.

Now am I the enemy and others like me? Anybody can get this it's simple. I started small as well. Now this luna hatred I will never understand when anybody could just pluck a vender anywhere and have fun. But this proposal you trying to make is not to impact luna venders it's to impact every vender everywhere. If people don't own houses that mean they have another native shard somewhere where they do have a house. The people who do hate luna is only because they want there vender houses to be more relevent and this proposal aint gonna help them out either.
The only people I see this helping out are
1) Ones that are not from the shard
2)Lazy players
3)People that have no idea about being a vender
4)Full blown Red accounts and only by a little bit
Can't think of anybody else.Maybe the couple of new players with 1k to there name nah the rental fees of the town will pretty much stop that.
Just can't see it. Youre right it's definetly not for me. But you are wrong when you say the majority of players. The few people on uohall are a very small minority just very loud. Not even them want to see there vender houses and boomdock venders destroyed.
What ever proposal you try to brainstorm you must follow these rules for it ever to get anywhere.
1)Don't take from the players
2)Make it better for the players
3)Make it simple for the players
4)Out perform any system in place.


at lowa home outside of luna with venders maintained by my guild, 1 vender by despise, 1 vender by a house in