Player Vendors

Llama · Post by **Llama** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 11:58 pm

Another of my buildings ideas.

A player may 'hire' an NPC to stay at his house and sell things for him. The NPC doesn't take a wage or anything, instead he takes 5% of the selling price.

The NPC will only sell a limited amount of goods, the amount relative to the price of the house. For example, if you live in a small cottage, he might sell a maximum of 3 things, while if you have a large mansion, the number would be much higher.

The player gets an extra 'depot' in which he is allowed to put items. He then assigns a price to each item. (I don't know how this could be done... but I'm thinking, using the depot slots [numbered], and assigning a value to each number). An ITEM counts as anything which takes 1 slot in a depot space, so a sword would be 1 item, as would 250 ash.

A buyer will get the chance to examine the object being sold. If the object for example is a very good longsword, he'll see it as being a very good longsword. The buyer interacts with the NPC in the 'normal' way, but 5% of the coins which are used, 'disappear'.

I know this might be a drag on the other vendors, however consider
1) A very small amount of sellable objects
2) 5% works out to be quite a lot when dealing with a lot of money, an armour sold for 50 silvers, would give 2.5 of those silver to the merchant
3) It gives another reason for getting a building
4) It allows guilds to 'sell' their goods

Korm Kormsen · Post by **Korm Kormsen** » Sat Sep 08, 2007 1:09 am

well,
i say, your idea is very good!
(in fact as good, as the same idea written by me some weeks ago...)

xBaurusx · Post by **xBaurusx** » Sat Sep 08, 2007 5:01 am

Its the lazy mans eliza!!!! zomg this could be good or terrible.

honestly. i think its useless. but a neat addon if it were to happen.

Korm Kormsen · Post by **Korm Kormsen** » Sat Sep 08, 2007 6:45 am

well, stay around, and try to capt, what really changed.

we allways hear about the good old times, when everything was RPed.
(text-adventure style)

now illarion is a game with a lot of tecnical feautures.
with all advantages and disadvantages graphical games have.

by my understanding, we need to roleplay, what we can't show with the avatar.

example.
it would be foolish, to move the char into the tavern, and ME: me enters the barroom.
shure, it is needed, to: me is a pimpy looking little man with missing teeth.

if you move your char, nobody needs a: me goes to the counter. but we need a: me slips on one of the barstools

what i want to point out: neither the good old D&D style RP, nor the freelance message RP works in a graphik game.
we have to evolutionate.

Llama · Post by **Llama** » Sat Sep 08, 2007 10:10 am

Korm Kormsen wrote:(in fact as good, as the same idea written by me some weeks ago...)

Talk about great minds eh...

Baiyan Trading Company · Sat Sep 08, 2007 1:53 pm

I love the idea.

Mr. Cromwell · Post by **Mr. Cromwell** » Sat Sep 08, 2007 2:41 pm

Bad idea, as it is.

This would 1.) Increase the amount of sales for our fat-arsed craftsmen and merchants, making moneyhoarding even easier.
2.) They are already the problem of the economic-system, no more handouts for them, aye?
3.) Wanna sell your goods? Why don't you try to make a deal with some trader? Sure, you won't get as good profit, but you'll get more sales. Maybe if the amount of sales is large enough, you'll make more than before. Not the slightest need for programming, and it also works in the real world.

If someone decided to implement the idea:
A good merchant system would be such, where there was a 10-25s rent for the merchant, per each month. Totally regardless of the amount of sales. This way our precious leeches would actually risk losing money, if the sales were not large enough to cover the costs. That way not everyone and their grandmother will have their own merchant selling apples in the streetcorner. In addition to that, they also take 10-25% of the turnover for themselves.

This is basically an easy money scheme (like 90% of hadrian's ideas, it seems

). It just doesn't have to be that easy. If you have a static merchant, then your service is open to everyone at all times and your ability to roleplay has nothing to do with the amount of money you get in.

Sorry, I don't think it needs to be made that easy. For the sake of the few who actually "are merchants" (not too many of those ingame these days), those who are good at roleplay the selling and most of all for economical reasons.. let's not practically give free money to anyone who is willing to take it.

Fianna Heneghan · Post by **Fianna Heneghan** » Sat Sep 08, 2007 3:14 pm

I'm not opposed to the idea, though I agree with Mr. Cromwell that it should be more expensive. I also think it sounds an awful lot like the shared depots idea that we have been told is "impossible".

Fasizza · Post by **Fasizza** » Sat Sep 08, 2007 3:43 pm

Hmm, i think its a good idea... and it would indeed be great with "Shared Depots".

Korm Kormsen · Post by **Korm Kormsen** » Sat Sep 08, 2007 4:45 pm

as stated before, i am in favour of player vendors.

but cromwell has a point. they should not be too cheap.
(we won't make it possible, to sell the drinks too cheap, will we?)

AlexRose · Post by **AlexRose** » Sat Sep 08, 2007 5:30 pm

Fasizza wrote:Hmm, i think its a good idea... and it would indeed be great with "Shared Depots".

How many times has it been said that this is impossible? 300 perhaps?

Llama · Post by **Llama** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 10:48 am

AlexRose wrote:How many times has it been said that this is impossible? 300 perhaps?

THIS IS ILLARION!!!!!!!!!!
-

I was afraid that they'd need shared depots to work

Now the point is Mr Cromwell, that the amount of sellable items should be very limited (so you have to restock every day or so), and allright, perhaps 5% is too little, 10-15% would be better.

Plus, it'll have to be near a house. People don't automatically walk around houses, so it'll be quite rare that you get a customer, unless you advertise.

Lrmy · Post by **Lrmy** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 4:57 am

I like this idea. It would be nice for guilds that needed income. Have a merchant near your guild. The merchant takes a %(25 I'd say).

I hope they can find some way for something like this to work.

Korm Kormsen · Post by **Korm Kormsen** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 5:17 am

I hope they can find some way for something like this to work

it should be possible.
even, if i didn't take my Lua test yet, pure logic says it must be possible.

we have NPCs, who sell and buy limited amounts, depending their stock of goods or money.
we have NPCs, who hand out percentages of money recieved to "owners"(the teleport tax)

combining those abilities, there are two things left: make them receive orders, what wares to buy and sell, and for what price.

in javascript i would be able, to make that. (with enough time...)
so Lua being more programmer friendly, it should be possible.

the question is: is it desired, or not?

Keikan Hiru · Post by **Keikan Hiru** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 8:20 am

Each crash or reload of the scripts resets your vendor NPC, thus all the items you put "into" him are lost.
NPCs have no inventory that is saved somewhere.

Is that really desired?

Llama · Post by **Llama** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 9:56 am

Keikan Hiru wrote:Each crash or reload of the scripts resets your vendor NPC, thus all the items you put "into" him are lost.
NPCs have no inventory that is saved somewhere.

.: You create NPCs which have an inventory that is saved somewhere, hense the 'depot'.

Keikan Hiru · Post by **Keikan Hiru** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 10:17 am

I like to see someone thinking of how to improve Illarion (although I find your propsals thoroughly lacking deeper consideration), I'd rather like to see proposals that are doable right now.

Your propsal here needs someone putting hours over hours of work into server coding, and a probably complete change of how NPCs are handled by the server.

At this point we are back to "Is the effort less or at least equal to the gain?"
I don't think so.

Llama · Post by **Llama** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 11:08 am

Keikan Hiru wrote:I like to see someone thinking of how to improve Illarion (although I find your propsals thoroughly lacking deeper consideration), I'd rather like to see proposals that are doable right now.

I don't like proposing simple things which are 'doable right now', because they're usually so 'simple' that I'm sure the devs have already dreamt it up.

This is my proposal, I KNOW its ahead of its time and requires a lot of effort to implement, buts its just a proposal. Perhaps in a few years time a dev will change the ways NPCs work, and re-consider this.

Keikan Hiru · Post by **Keikan Hiru** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 11:12 am

What is the use of a proposal when you:
a) know its not possible at the moment
b) requires lots of work
c) when its doable, your propsal is probably outdated/forgotten/deleted ?

Llama · Post by **Llama** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 11:17 am

a) It can be stored for the future
b) Everything requires work. Perhaps at a day, we shall realise that its worth the effort to make somethign like this right now
c) That would be a shortcoming of the whole proposal system wouldn't it?

Korm Kormsen · Post by **Korm Kormsen** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 1:31 pm

Keikan Hiru hat folgendes geschrieben::
Each crash or reload of the scripts resets your vendor NPC, thus all the items you put "into" him are lost.
NPCs have no inventory that is saved somewhere.

please explain:
do the "tax-NPC" loose the tax money, when crashing?
if not, why not?

Keikan Hiru · Post by **Keikan Hiru** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 1:39 pm

Nitram used a work arround, that maybe works for a limited number of NPCs but I would not recommend it for more then a handful.
Also the number of "usages" of these NPCs is very very limited.

"Vendor NPCs" will probably have a higher number of accesses and might cause performance issues.

Other than that I don't like this proposal at all.

Illarion is designed as roleplay platform that encurages player-to-player interactions.
Having this "feature" will only promote the lonesome player, who logs in, does his work, unloads his stuff at the NPC, logs out, logs back later to withdraw the money from the NPC.
I do that in World of Warcraft (or any other PtP-game), I don't need this here.