[ Feature Discussion ] Empire Shop Management System

I would like to add a few thoughts if I may.

I can see benefits coming from this. I wont be the first shop keeper to admit we spend ALOT of TIME and EFFORT into stocking and running our stores, here are the pro's in this new system.

1. When making a big building you can get all the items you need FAST!!!
2. The Prices will fluctuate ^^ Above some one wants a LOT of sandstone they will put in a higher buy order so they get the items first and FAST...
3. Because of Prices fluctuating people will be able to use items as a "stock" IE I can see there being a trend, when lots of people are online and selling the general price of say cobblestone will go down, I could then buy LOTs at this low price, then Friday comes people want to get online and build there is less Cobblestone available I then sell mine at a higher price. PROFIT

Dam Im sharing trading secrets before its even out....

I'm not sure I understand the vault aspect of this.

I can't log in right now so I can't count my shop chests, but let's say I stock 10 double chests of wool with most of them kept nearly full. That's 540 stacks right? I forget how many stacks my vault holds but in no way is it even close to 540 stacks much less what we'd find in some shops.

Also, unless the shop vault is multi-compartmented, I expect mine to be a mess unless I just put a few things in it. Say maybe one day I want to sell a bunch of wood, then I stick a bunch of sand in it. Or is it just gone? How do I organize and keep track of it and what if I want to change my mind?

If I understand correctly this sounds more suitable as an improvement on the current Marketplace and Auction section of the Forums than an overhaul of the current shop system. If it is, I'm all for it. Some Auctions and Marketplace sale threads get very messy. Some people don't understand the Marketplace rules and some just plain don't follow them. This would be a great way of forcing people to conform.

A couple things I think I'd miss is actually going into shops and the chat interaction surrounding running one. There are a lot of great residences but there are not a lot of reasons to actually go into any of them. Shops are one reason. You can tell a lot about who you are dealing with when you see someone's shop. A web based system would remove that and all the other interaction we get from shops. Shop talk does clutter town chat, but so do other things(You took my shovel!/Stop griefing my res!, etc). Separate chat tabs or the ability to turn on/off different chat channels would help with this.

I do also think some sort of money sink would be a good idea. Something like a income or residence tax. A cost per shop sign maybe. I've been away from my shop for about a month and I'm still making money so maybe if I were"swimming against the current", it might be more challenging for me.

I think I'd like to see the current physical shop system kept in place with improvements to the signs especially. A new Marketplace/Auction mechanism on the Forums linking them to the game could be a great addition rather than an overhaul many of us would dread.

Im going to leave you all with this

"Happys final thought"

We as humans dont like change, we get stuck in our little ruts and knee jerk if some one tells us other wise.. some times change is good change is for the best. if it was not for change we would still be sat in caves rubbing sticks together...

But there comes a time when too much change is bad (think coke lite)...
But when you find the fine line that golden moment occurs when change and the past combine into an amazing feat... I would like to call that feat Empire minecraft...

No matter what happens we will still be here building our buildings selling our wares, the 20 minuet cycle of day and night will go on and on..

So stay safe Minecrafters and most of all Be HAPPY

After much debate with myself I agree. Think of it as target it has a ton of stores but it also has a website which you can buy from. Just because it has a website doesn't mean every target store is now deserted. They use both

I'm only afraid of over-use, because that will get the stores deserted in the end. This needs a cap, and a good tax will fit in here greatly.

Maybe a 1 hour shipping time for trades to be completed would be a decent deterrant and give people a reason to still use chest shops.

Actually I believe it is not unfair. If I read it right you can trade over all servers, why would you not pay for a service which requires absolutely no effort, but gets you rupees? And even if it's just on one server, then still, you might aswell earn rupees by that system when you're not online. Aswell, that's a service which earns you rupees, while you have to do nothing for it. A tax prevents overuse and can also be used to drain money out of the market, just like /vault does.

That is a very good suggestion, I love it!

Excellent. But will you have to go exactly with the deal, or can you buy just some? In case that was confusing, ill set up a little example.

Mr.White wants 30 melon slices, for, lets say, 1 rupee each, to keep it simple. Out of the two sellers, Mr.Red, with 30 slices for 2 rupees each, and Mr. Blue with 45 for 1 rupee each, Mr.White wants to buy Mr. Blue's. However, he only wants 30. Would it be possible for him to only buy 30 of his 45, or would he have to settle with the much higher price of Mr. Blue?

Im pretty sure he can buy 30/45

Oh my cow. Jeremy is USING MY IDEA! *Faints*

Whew ...

Ok I made it through reading everything.

I guess my concerns would be the following...

1. You are referencing WOW a lot. I played WoW for a very long time. The reason that system works is because you have to go to the physical location to use it. You can not just pull it up wherever you are and use it. This is good because it pull the community together (people congregate in one place) This system is going to kill a lot of reason to communicate.

2)the WoW system is not a shop system. It is an auction house. You are setting up an auction house without bidding. This will cause prices on everything to bottom out. Everyone will have to sell what they have for less than whomever is selling it for the lowest price. So what happens is everyone starts placing the items up for .01 ruppes less than the person before them. It is all about getting your listing at the "bottom" of the price list. Eventually prices are driven dirt low -The reason this doesn't happen in the WoW system is because bidding evens things out. This new system makes it so you have no idea what people will pay for things. Also, in wow - there is a set bottom to everything. You can sell all items to vendors for a set limit. No one will sell an item on the AH for less than the vendors will pay you- so no one will undercut past that specific point. Also that system is in place, mostly for valuable (or large bulk buy) items only. (the equivalent to enchanted stuff on EMC) I like Pab's idea of making it only for the stuff put onto the auction forum.

3) I'm not a big shop advocate, however, you are killing the current shop system. Even if you leave it in no one is going to visit shops over using this system where you know you are getting the best price. Keeping the old system in place if the new system goes up is useless.

Well, that's what I thought at first, but from the sounds of it, there were complaints here of people who think that some people won't/won't want to use the new system, which is fine. We would leave the old one in to keep that group happy as well. Primarily for those who want to build a shop in game with clickable signs still.

I don't think it is about people not wanting to buy from it - it is people who don't want to sell using it. People who want to sell using the old system won't be able to - even if you leave it there. No one is going to go to those shops if they know they can absolutely find the lowest price using the new system.

A tax on trades in the new system, as discussed before, would probably prevent this from happening. I think that this new system should be used mainly for convenience by those who cannot find the item they're searching for in chest shops and by those wanting to buy items in bulk without having to find dozens of sellers manually.

I heard something about the cap on trade like a low and a high.. Rune Scape impliments this by setting a high and a low and a market price. These fluctuate depending on trade and demand and how many items in the market. This gives members a good idea on what to buy/sell there wares at. It also prevents players from screwing with the market but prices still change depending on demand and supply. If we could have a middle ground between EVE and RS I would have a cow, wait scratch that a pig (just not to offend my friend here).

It would have to be a huge tax in order to balance out.

Mostly I am just saying that I do not believe these two systems can survive simultaneously.

Well, all they would have to do is make their prices lower than what is currently on the online market system, just as they do now. In fact, this would make it easier for them. Right now they have to guess/go around and see what other prices are. This will show them the lowest price off the bat and what to price their things around.

Aikar mentioned a few ideas above that we can also do to improve the sign market system as well. After we keep on with this discussion for some time, I'll branch off a few sub-topics with that in mind for us to continue more specific discussions.

But then they'll have to change prices more often...
The chest shops, I mean.

No effort? Say that to the players out there who are chopping the trees, mining the sand, sandstone, cobble, etc, crafting and grinding just to bring you their product.

How would you charge a fee based on if someone wants to sell a jukebox versus someone who wants to sell 4000 stone brick? If you are dead-set on having some kind of fee, how would you make it fair? A per-transaction fee doesn't seem right. A sales tax-like fee based on total value of rupees paid charged to the buyer?

Aikar hasn't been given some magic button that he can put on whatever he wants, haha. Everything as it always has been is discussed in depth with the staff first. This idea is no different. Even had Aikar not been the one working on it, the idea came up nonetheless and it was something we got excited about. The new system won't hurt the people in town nor will it give benefits to those in the wild anymore than the current system does now.

People that live in the wild will still need to be in town to use the website system. If you are 100K in the wild and put in an order for a project you want to do out there, you need to still travel to town to GET those items and bring them back to your 100K base.

While we are primarily a town based server, which Justin and I personally are proud of, we do have to recognize that the wild players are starting to grow and exist. Aikar and I butt heads a lot about this. He wants more wild protection. I can agree to that, but we need to make sure it's all balanced out and not give powers/things that just pop out of nowhere. It's a good thing as we will eventually come up with something awesome, I know it. Good ideas don't always just spawn, but are created out of discussions/arguments about how things should be done.

I can see and agree that it does suck more to be a wild player than a town player on EMC. Justin and I have always been about Town, so our bias lies in that. However, having Aikar on the other end of the table to push for wild things will help us even out the server for both players AND allow us to keep it balanced for whichever style you wish to play.