I am not sure, but making a lot of shops so almost everyone can afford them would be better than having just a few overloaded shops, I think? Some sort of "auction" or "locator" for shops would be AMAZING as well. Enter the "locator", type the item "Vindicator" and all shops with Vindicator items (armors atm) will show up where it can be found and at what price.. would love that!
My two pecs on shops. These have always been badly thought out. 1. Shops have a disadvantage over auction in that they are not available at every shop container on the planet. They also require more upkeep and advertising and cannot be used by multiple players to sell stuff. 2. Shops do not have a significant enough advantage to cancel out this disadvantage So to address this.... I would ask MA for the following changes (since MA is involved I see this discussion as kinda pointless btw... sorry) Clothes (and other items): It should be possible to try clothes on while in a shop. As soon as you walk out (without buying) they are taken off you. Items being tried on remain in the shop display (so many avatars can try on at the same time - weird but stops abuse) Items cannot be "fired" while trying on. I can see there being a real draw to a shop that allows you to try on shadow armour or similar without buying... maybe you will love it so much you just have to get it? In the mean time "ooh look cut price lyst, BUY!" Get the idea? No Rent or tax on sales. Seriously... We are trying to compete with the auction here remember. Give people a reason to either put stuff in their own shop or find a friend with a shop. Allow a sellers guest list: Like the cars. It should be possible to allow others to use your shop to sell things. Why? Well first it gets the shops more used and more regularly filled which brings back customers regularly. Second its not desirable to have too many shops and the ability to share them will help counteract an insane price hike on shops. Interface should allow my 50 item shop to allocate 10 items to a friend to sell stuff as they please. I own the shop so I can kick my friends stuff out back to him as an when I need to (I maintain control). I don't ever "own" his stuff. I cannot sell a shop without revoking all friend access first. (so I can't sell a shop with Bob's stuff in). Shop Directory? Maybe some sort of interface against items that tell you if they are on sale at a shop and where that shop is? The buying avatar must still travel to the shop to buy it. Hmmm think that will do for now Wistrel PS I can't seem to be able to change text size in ie9b (so you know)
i didn t read all the post but on calypso there too many shop , soma are in empty place and if the owner of some place can t finally make the spot attractive , shop inside are useless. so i can think about a big central mall with various item shop. working as an auction. means i need sell my gun i m going in the weapon shop talking with the npc auctionner and put my gun in auction , then it appear in the shop. so ppl can walk and have a visual of each things. with a double item limit /by player( like 10 item max in "auction" but 5 max /type of item). it will make shopping more cool and make street market more interresting. and last perhaps a computer with all item entry with rate etc. and the location of item, so player need walk in mall for buy it,more social interaction
That's a very interesting idea, thx. I'm picturing it as an added extra to the auction, so an option to have your item in the normal auction and as a premium service it is also displayed in a shop. Would take some coding, so don't expect it when we launch, but I'll look into it further.
First of all I hate the malls in Calypso, and I hate all the friggin shops in the apartment buildings. I do like the idea of a main street in the towns with shops. I think U need to have a mall directory, where a shop owner can say something about his shop and where it is located. You could even have it so shop owners bid to get there shop on the front page of the directory. But mainly a player needs to find a store quickly, if I am looking for a melee weapon, I do not want to be 2 hours running looking around through a bunch of shops. I want to look at a directory, find a melee shop quickly and then go buy the weapon, get back to the hunting feilds and start decaying that weapon, making you more money. Also some sort of outdoor booths that can be rented by the day or the hour would be nice, I have a crap load of stuff in storage that would be nice to be able to display it and see if I could not get rid of some of it.
Centralised shops that are set up as specific catagories IE weapon shop, mens cloths, Melee weapns shops, Ore miner shops..Generic shops are an epic fail as no one really can afford to craft or loot all types of items. Specialty shops in a street like environment ( I picture sort of a diagon ally feel to it all). A central listing of all shopsales like the auction listing at a central Kiosk within each city. An organised address system so the shop numbers are easily found without taking forever and a day. Sadly though we will STILL see the people with too much money snapping all the shops up and sitting on them with the curent system. To alieviate this I suggest that shopps are not owned but leased for a specific time. 6 months should do well for both the platform AND for the shop owners as they are not locked long term into a buisness should it not produce what they want from it. That will also allow for them to reup their lease should the buisness be doing well.
Maybe that is easy.......remember the pets.....you could write a text on a tamed Mob, for your soc or for your shop.....the same you could make with the shopkeeper....a small field above with a special offer or with the things which can the shopkeeper buy
I would love to have a shop on Arkadia, and I believe community shops are vital for the planets economy to grow. One of my main reason is that I'm both a hunter and crafter, and can supply a part of the community with tools, weapons and material etc. Problem today is the overall auction system fee, which kills the 'free' market sort to speak. The Planet citizens not on Calypso, are pretty much left by their own, and if they should not spend all their time trying to sell their things by shouting around in the cities, shops will be an awesome way to get the business running. I like the new shops on both ROCktropia and on NI. You can easily see what's in them. Perhaps like little open sheds, where you from the outside quickly can see what's in them. They should be able to store much though, and there should be shelfs and a little ground perhaps to store them in. It should also be possible to attach a shop keeper or something similar for the bigger items To make sure people will buy the shops and get it all running, please considder NOT to make them too expensive. The price the malls on Calypso had in the beginning - and the price of those shops was just horrible - and if you also wish to get the new players on board, the price should not make it an issue. Rather make lots of shops (different kinds perhaps) - for different needs, and with different prices. Also, make sure the shops are located close to a tp/a town. and together. It is such an annoying factor when you have to run around a whole city's appartment floors to find the shops - or even a whole area etc. other than that ... yay shops
Some great ideas for the shops here. I particularly like Lykke's comments about the "open shed" visibility. I want to be able to get close to a shop and see what's in it. If the shops have to be smaller with lower item counts that's cool. Bigger than a booth though. Also, initial pricing shouldn't be too high and the shops should be sold individually, not as malls with one owner who then sets the selling prices of each shop. I would love a small shop to sell items i craft or loot. I'll gladly buy one on Arkadia as long as the price isn't stupid.
Thanks Just got the thought, that it would be awesome to have a place with a kind of 'basar' atmosphere. Some open sheds made of some pang colored cloth standing close together, lamps or torches around to give it a cosy feeling - only promise me NOT to have monkeys running around *wink*
Just want to say we are listening to your thoughts regarding shops. The shops that will be available at (or soon after) launch have been built already and are a proper shop. We are also considering a market booth option to try and have something for everyone. The shops are all at street level, so it's more like what the British term "the High street" type set up, rather than a mall. I won't try and describe them, you'll see them in game soon enough. Price is definitely a major factor we are looking at. The main aim is that they get used and are affordable. Still haven't decided what we will do in that regard, but I'll say it here that the design is such that there will be quite a large number of shops on Arkadia in time. This means that the speculative value of a shop should be more about it's location rather than any expectation that we won't be adding extra shops. We are working hard to try and make the real estate market on Arkadia interesting. This means we are trying to ensure that if an apartment or shop was listed in auction, then a prudent buyer would go and visit it before bidding because the location will be variable (ie how far from a tp, what level is it on and what features does it have).
I see two problems with any shps taht can or will be sold.... The same people with tons of money will snap them up and drive prices thru the roof like on calypso making many sit dormant as on calypso. Having "Real Property" in game is needed and a great idea..but I think there should also be shops that could be leased like as ststed ina bazar type setting. X number of ped per X days use. That way if someone stores up tons of things to sell they can rent a shop and sell. they dont need the major expense of owning a shop if they are not going to be a merchant by profession.
I agree with Cyborg Bill. What about having shops that people could just RENT. Lets say, first come, first served. One rented shop per person. 3 peds per day. And you could pay 3 months up front. That would actually be a small but steady income for Arcadia Lets say 10 shops x 30 days x 3 peds = 900 peds * 12 months = 10800 peds, lets say that only 80% of the time someone will be renting a shop = 8640 peds a year. Now lets say, you guys sell each shop for 3000 peds 10 x 3000 = 30000 peds of hard cash. Now after 1 year Sold right away: 30000peds Rented 1 year : 8640ped Now after 3 years Sold right away: 30000peds Rented 3 years : 25920peds Now after 5 year Sold right away: 30000peds Rented 5 years : 43200peds Depends on if you guys need cold hard cash, or you guys need just steady income. This can also be done with apartments, condos, soc HQ's etc. etc. Just think about it TJ
Kitten wants shop!!!! Dot put them at low buyout in auction though or some reseller *(%^$&#$ will buy them all hike up the prices and put them back in the auction -.- Better if interested parties each have option to buy one direct from an arkadia staff member or something so that one person not end up overrunning the whole thing I would make clothes and tools for sale XD and hopefully run soc shop like back on new oxford calypso XD I would LOVE a soc ownership or soc function panel to allow something like soc members tting things to the shop storage or something
I might be interested in a market shop depending on size and location ... doesn't have to be enormous, something like a newsstand ... I think you know where I'm going with this Dave. However, my first purchase will definitely and immediately be an apartment as soon as the real estate market opens up. Looking forward to seeing how all of this will look once Arkadia becomes inhabitable.
Lykke and me will definitly get us a shop or booth at Arkadia. I love the idea of the item queue that was suggested earlier. Would be a perfect way to keep shops from running out of stock. As for the problem with combatting resellers, why not introduce a system where vacant shops will get some form of mandatory rent forced onto them? I.e. all shop owners who have active shops, and thus pull in customers will be rewarded for their time and effort by not having to pay a fee, whereas speculators, sitting on top of empty shops hoping for prices to go through the roof will have to pay a tax for degrading the quality of the area. I also like the idea suggested by Wistrel of being able to fit clothes, but do not know if that is a feasible idea. But how about approaching MindArk and getting them to make it possible for anything sold in a shop to be shown at full QR? This would be a nice way to put some much needed interest back into the Tailoring profession, as the tailors really got royally screwed when MA introduced the "dirty decay". Apart from that, just making sure that real estate is conveniently located near Teleporters (and more importantly, that it will not suddenly shift, as it did when MA "relaunched" Calypso (our prime location booth suddenly could hardly be further away from the TP) would be a nice additional feature. If you focus on having prices be dictated by location, then please please please, for the sake of everything that is holy, do not move the locations afterwards), easily accessible, and possibly with multiple entries and exists would go a long way.
Over on pcf, it looks like the Medusa Head investor group is starting a "rental" program of sorts with their shops in which they will buy back the places for approximately the same price paid on them. I think that might be something your team could look in to doing on Arkadia. That way you won't run in to the problem that Calypso has that shop owners only bought to resell later so don't use the place, or bought, then could not meet the rent payments due monthly, so they gave up and just went inactive. That's one major reason I think Calypso opted to remove rent. Rent on top of sales taxes is a heck of a demand from a shop owner... especially if it ends up being as much on Arkadia as it was in on Calypso before the rent removal. I posted a lot on pcf before the rent removal over at http://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forums/showthread.php?190924-Pros-and-Cons-of-various-estates - might want to go take a look at it when thinking about how to make things a bit different on Arkadia as looking at what your competition was doing can help you figure out better strategies. Here's a breakdown of what the various rent fees used to be on Calypso About the above... shopkeeper decay is 10 pec per sale, not 10 ped, lol. Also, entropedia may not have been updated to reflect that yet? Prices might be higher in the above then it is now in Calypso, but not in all cases. The removal of rent has changed a lot in the real estate market on Calypso. It looks like Rocktropia still has rent though, so I suspect it's up to you as a planet partner if you want monthly rent on any estates in game on your planet, and how much you'll make them be. 3-14 USD lost monthly prior to any other overhead costs associated with running a shop was pretty darn steep in Calypso's malls, and I suspect that is why a lot of the mall shops were shut down til the rent was removed on calypso, and many of the owners there still might not have even logged in since the removal of the rent there, so that is still impacting the economy there... If you could make Arkadia rent free, that'd be awesome. If you could lose the taxes that be nice too, but it's understandable if that's not possible. As a shop owner on Calypso here's some of the major issues/ideas I see often that you might want look at working real closely with Mindark on... - Furniture needs to work. Right now things like the marble columns and tron towers don't function. Estate owners can't put items on top of the columns or the top parts of the tron towers, and can't put stuff on top of various other pieces of furniture either. This sort of thing is very fluky and changes from vu to vu. If you, as a planet partner, can make them focus on that sort of thing and the stability it will make shop owners on your planet have a lot fewer hassles then they do now on the existing planets. - Ad system in Calypso is fluky right now. I think in the malls the ad screens look like a mirror image of what they are intended to look like. Hopefully any and all ad terminals on Arkadia can be tested properly to make sure that does not happen prior to release. - a shop inventory listing like some have mentioned would be nice indeed. Perhaps, if you do put rent on the shops in game, you can account for that as part of the rent/maintanence fee, and make it optional instead of something that has to be paid monthly every month or the door closes and stuff in the shop is inaccessible. - Make the shops big and have large number of item points. If you do put booths in make sure they have a minimum of 12 item slots, which would facilitate 2 shopkeepers since they use 6 slots each. On calypso most booths start with 10 item slots. - If you plan on allowing "upgrades" of estates, announce that prior to release and what the exact details are, and you might work that in to in game play with a terminal or npc of some sort, or maybe work it in to the estate terminal. Right now, on Calypso, the upgrades listed at http://www.planetcalypso.com/opportunities/estate-development/ have to be done via email, and actually handing peds in game to the estate broker npc that fpc/see handles. That leads to major hassles for folks on different time zones, and also creates the possibility that someone might create an avatar that has a name that sounds like the estate broker's and end up doing some phishing or something, and stealing peds illegally via impersonation, etc. Also, the in game npc, etc. could make it possible to plan for the upgrades at any time 24/7... If you do have upgrades, tell up front what the costs are, what the limitations are, etc. For example, it's not listed on the Calypso upgrade page, but emails to FPC in the past tell me that the maximum upgrade level calypso will allow is 3 upgrades of any one estate, i.e. +60 item slots at 6k ped max. They also were going to allow the upgrades to booths too, and had that listed on the opportunities page there, but after a month or two, killed that idea since they thought it would lead to too much lag. It's important, if you do plan to do the upgrade thing to let it be known ahead of time so that participants know what costs will be and limitations of the system... because Calypso's +20 items for shops does not work on the outside display parts of shops there, is maxed at that 3 upgrade per estate limit I mentioned above, and is only applicable to certain estates (not booths right now)... and it's very important to note that on Calypso currently shopkepeers are going for around 3k ped, and the sk will give 20 slots, but take away 6 for total of 14 slot gain per shopkeeper... so the upgrade at 2k ped for a full 20 extra slots is cheaper, etc. Stuff like that is important for people looking to buy in to this stuff so they know their overhead costs, etc. - allowing items below 1 pec in value in shops would be nice. For instance, right now, on Calypso we can put 1 blazer nova or synthetic ME down on the floor of an apartment, but we can't do that in a shop since the items below 1 pec value can't be dropped... allowing other stuff to be "dropped" in estates would be good too. For instance, in the past, I could put my blueprint books in the estates my avatar owned to show off the fancy designs and things. Right now, Calypso's changed so you can't do that anymore for some oddball reason. Another type of thing like this is that vehicles can't be put in estates right now on Calypso. If avatars have any item, they should be able to put them in an estate their avatar has a deed to in my opinion... and I think that might be something you should aim for on Arkadia. The devil is indeed in the details, and I don't think Mindark or FPC|SEE has really - allowing all items to be sold in shops on Arkadia would be nice. For instance, as mentioned above, there is a 1 pec tt value limit on what can be dropped in shops, but not in what can go in a shopkeeper, so things like stackables below 1 pec in tt value cannot be put in a shop, but can in the shopkeeper... also right now estate deeds can be put in shopkeepers, but not in shops themselves. That is a problem if someone wants to sell a deed, but does not want to pay to buy a shopkeeper, or really high auction fees... - please make it so shopkeepers and manniquin pads and vehicles can be sold in shops. Since vehicles can't be dropped on Calypso, that's not possible with those right now over there, and since maniquin pads and shopkeepers can't have markup put on them, they can't be sold any other way then through auction or p2p trading. That makes them somewhat hard to sell items sometimes. - it would be nice if you could have them change the estate deeds to list number of item slots on the item info screens. Otherwise, folks that have not been there looking at the estate terminal at the time they are trading deeds or whatever have no clue how many item slots are really in the place... really big issue if you do go and put in an upgrade system. - right now as you might have gathered from posts I've made on other forums, the booths on Calypso are not working, and have not been since at least the first week of December when the Deer Mall shops went on the auction. That has nothing to do with Arkadia, but it does seem to be an ongoing issue with the system since this happened at vu 10, and lasted from about August 2009 - December 2009 back then too. That's over half a year that an estate my avatar has has not functioned properly. MAKE SURE that that sort of thing DOES NOT happen to the estates on Arkadia. Since it came around at vu 10, and when the deer malls and Medusa head came online, I suspect it has something to do with the developer tools that the planet partners are using when doing massive changes to the planets. Make sure they get that bug fixed prior to Arkadia's launch time. This bug allows avatars to claim a place, but not drop items in the estate because the system sees the estate as being a general location where any avatar can pick up any item put there. It mainly seems to affect booths... Might add more later. There is a lot of potential.
