Estates Shops? what now?

When I say that shops are only an option for the "wealthy elite" of Arkadia, I'm not referring to anyone's RL situation, but their in-game situation. Whether shop owners regard themselves that way or not... it is what it is. We have the list of shop owners available for all to see, and they're not average players. They are the players that can afford to pay exorbitant prices for shops.

And by the way, I'm not blaming you or other shop owners for anything other than wanting to own shops. MA has simply decided that Arkadia doesn't deserve affordable shops. The booths were a nice idea, but there are too few to make them affordable.

I do agree that shop and auction fees should be balanced, and I completely understand how the shop owners would feel cheated in their "investment" because their fees were not lowered as well. But if, as you say, shops were not worth the investment even before the fee change..... why in the world did shop owners pay such high prices to own one?

Shops are a big advantage. I max out my 30 auctions all the time on Arkadia. I lose tons of peds canceling good auctions just because I need to utilize their slots for more pressing items. I know of Arkadian crafters who are using so-called "partner" avatars to list their wares on auction. Owning a shop is one way to compete, but what can the rest of us so who don't own shops?

Maybe MA looked at these high shop prices and figured that since people were willing to pay so much for them, shop fees must be too low compared to auction... and so they lowered auction fees but left shop fees at their current level.

 

whatwhy people pay ... lol neil becuase they have it and think is fun this is entropia

 

The issue is that you can "BUY" these shops. I know I bid on the arkadia shops, but I was not going to pay 10k peds for a 200 point shop when my Mall location cost me just 7.5k. I am quite certain i get way more traffic in my mall then all teh shops combined do on Arkadia. Therefore I could not justify paying 2.5k ped more for less business.

The shops I do think are an issue on arkadia, and there is nothing we or Arkadia Studios can do about it. The only thing that can be done is to release like 100 shops. Then shop values dont matter, but how smart you are does. Chillix does have an excellent point though. Its very hard to compete with people that use more than 1 account.

Perhaps one day "shops" will be looked again. I say flood the market, kill prices. Then let the best shop be the best shop. IRL you can build a new building... in this game you cannot. Therefore controlling a monopoly on estates is quite easy for the "elite few" as you stated.

 

I'd be interested in testing this assertion. I get enough turnover that keeping my shops stocked takes a significant portion of my game time. I get the most business through my smallest and cheapest shop in the quarry. It's all about location. I made a concious decision to startup business in Arkadia rather than Caly because I thought I would have more opportunity to grow my business here and I think thats worth a little extra investment cost.

Er, lets not go overboard. Definitely in favour of growing the number of shops over time, but give the significant amount I have chosen to invest I would pefer to have time to adjust to changing market conditions. And I don't really want a repeat of Caly where a large proportion of shops are empty. Thats a real disincentive to browsing and I don't think anyone wants to try and operated a business where most of the other tenents are vacant. Ideally I would like to see 90% of shops in active use with something a little lower than that as a threshold for PP to plan to release some more.

 

Im not a shop owner but a customer, I personally happy with the price of arkadia shops. You can see even price range from 10k to 13k some people still waste their money on it to selling some TT+1 and basically useless craps, and many of them dont even take time to market and re-stock it at all. I cant image how muchmore shops like these would appear if the price being lower.
I have never owned a shop but I think to keep harbour shop full stocked some useful and really has demand equipment would stuck at least 5k and probably more, that is far morethan a average player in their ped card, so why should shops be affordable for them? More TT+1 shops? come on.

 

I'm so happy!! After years of sweating, eco hunting and mining on calypso i took a spaceship to arkadia and here i am, already one of the wealthy elite of arkadia!

I don't think changes in auction fees will have a lot of impact on auction prices. Do people really check what the auction fee is? I sell something at auction and look at the weekly markups and and the current supply on auction, a few pec more or less auction fees isn't going to affect my pricing, and i doubt it will affect the pricing of a lot of other people.

Even if the prices did change, in the end i don't care if shops are worth 1k or 100k, i have one and i'm having fun with it, it's just another part of the game for me.

On a side note though:
Neil i think you're wrong with estimating the values of shops, shopowners don't make tons of money from it. Sure some people might, but i doubt even kikkijikki who has a lot of turnover is doing well. I think most shopowners own one for the fun-effect. I'm sure i could make more peds if instead of a shop i would have bought CLD, An omegaton a204, a low level unlimited mining amp or a svempa xt blueprint. Prices are high because for a lot of people having a shop is a goal to aspire to. And what is a game without goals?


Note: the above is only half true, because i co-own the shop with Dave Ace Flyster.... but some day....

 

This is my point. As you say, most of the current owners only own them for the "fun effect" and of course because they have enough peds to burn that they could bid higher than the shops are worth on an economical scale. Therefore, there aren't enough shops, and the A-team needs to push MA hard for a lot more shops.

 

pls mods close thread