[ Feature Discussion ] Empire Shop Management System

I really don't see how this is taking away the challenge. If implemented, there will still be the three main classes of rupee holders. This is simply offering an additional way to access your goods. I personally see this as a way for the new guys to get there shop name out there without having to spam town chat.
I'm not 100% for or against this idea, but I think if we continue to discuss a possible middle ground, we can make both sides happy. Being honest here, I started out very against this idea. After seeing all of the feedback and how flexible the mods/admins seem to be on this I'm leaning towards liking the idea since I can see this eventually coming to a middle ground that allows chat to have less shop spam and the big shop owners to continue receiving their repeat customers.

These are some of the goals we're trying to accomplish. There won't be much challenge remove in terms of what you do. You still have to obtain the item to sell. You still need to set an acceptable price and you still need someone to buy the item.

The first thought that came into my mind was Amazon. This is to our economy what amazon was to real life's market place. Before, we had to window shop and stalk advertisements to find good deals. Since amazon, I enter a URL and look at the prices of the vendors amazon lists. Amazon is not a supplier it is a catalogue. This proposed system as I take it, is a catalogue. There were protests when amazon came out and companies tried to shake the faith in the website on its launch but it persevered. All you mega-mall owners are trying to do that now, discredit a fresh idea because it will hurt you. And while I'm trying to see all angles, all I can discern is the fear of competition.

When I first joined EMC I wanted to build a house. I didn't have enough money so I ventured out in the wild and got my resources. I built a home and visited the "famous" shops to get the filler materials. I attempted to create a small shop to get rid of the excess items from mining. My options were to sell them to a shop for scraps or let them sit in my chests. I didn't know the ins and outs of advertising and spamming town chat. Which by the way is the number one complaint on EMC. So I ventured out and joined a wild community. I come back to town only when there is an item that would be too labor intensive to craft than just buy.

What I see happening if this is launched is the mega-mall bullies buying all the cheap items, some folks getting frustrated and gathering the materials in the wild and selling at a lower price. The cycle will continue until the bullies realize that competition is necessary in an economy, and the cake will be had by all.

TLDR
This will create the amazon of EMC, reasonable prices, and competition to be had by all!

Interesting example indeed. I honestly see it working in a similar way. Since we're keeping both systems, the mall owners are already on their toes to keep stocked. In this scenario, the small guys can put items in the market. The big shop owners can buy it and put it in their LIVE shops. I'm sure no small guy will ever be able to overcome a mall owner by simply using the market system since the mall owners will be the main ones buying the stock anyways. This just lets the small guy play in the game a little bit. They'd be the suppliers for the malls basically and earn some rupees for doing so.

Another idea Aikar and I were discussing is using this system/web platform to help the Live shops/malls as well. Imagine being able to buy advertising with rupees on the market pages for your shop.

Person A has a sell order for 64 cobblestone for x rupees. However an ad for YOUR live shop might also appear on that page. "Get your cobble at 1111111 for x rupees. Always in stock". Of course this can be discussed modified a bit to perfect, but can can combine advantages for the live shop owners as well WITHIN this system.

^^^ I like this a lot.

But, try this idea;

Charge a considerable premium for shopping via the website.

Give that option; you can have quick+easy [ie webshop]. Or you can have cheap+effort [shopping around]. Choose.

Diamond-users saying this would be good - for quick orders - meh; come on fam; you can pop to one of the three or four big shops and get it all, in 5 mins. Not the cheapest, no, but the quickest.

If you want a bargain - shop around.

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I've been here 3 months. My "shop" began as a chest on dirt, selling chickens for 15r. I spotted other shops all selling 'em at 15 or so; and I worked hard to breed lots, and made my "super offer: chickens, just 9 rupee!"

Then pigs, sheep, cows.

Then I saw cheap diamonds, sold 'em for a few r more than I paid.

I also spent 100's of hours mining. All part of the game.

After 100's of hours, I've got a decent reputation for my shop; it's slowly evolved, and my reputation is all about always having stock, at reasonable (not the cheapest) price. I've worked* really hard, to try to please my customers, get 'em coming back. * "worked" in the sense of playing the game; having fun

Please, please don't take away all of that.

I'm a miner, I diggy-diggy hole. But EMC has a whole other dimension - buying, selling, trading, wheeling-and-dealing. I love that.

Please don't take all that away.

This seems very reasonable to me.

To leowaste: The very idea you state is the reason this system should be considered. Are you telling me if teleportation was available you wouldn't use it? Of course you would if it was cheaper and more reliable than airplanes. Case and point, are you reading this on a type writer? No, computers came out and can out perform them so they are the way forward. You and the other folks against it ARE the airlines who will take the hit. I realize this seems harsh and I really don't intend it to be, but you gave an example that show cases the reason why it should be implemented and only wish you would see it.

To ICC: I like the advertising idea, but like anything the big players will dominate the marketing field. I would recommend to balance it maybe use it as a reward for a weekly competition. Where the winner gets free top or second tier advertising for a prime advertising slot. And I wouldn't make it appear where you suggested. If it is as option maybe have different location sell points. For example:
Sell time/dates slots for the following
-Market Place forum
-Auction Forum
-A one line MOTD for when you access the in game market

Also I would set static prices so a new comer can't get DQ'd based on lack of exuberant funds. Also maybe have a limit as to how often you can buy the top rated slots. So if you are buying prime time on the MOTD this week you can only get second tier next week. I feel this would discourage some what but also make folks "strategize" when to advertise. Like holding off the week you know you'll have a huge haul of diamonds.

Yes, that sounds perfect.. but please please dont be gimmicky and put Mcedit auto uploads in place, that would be silly, or do you mean you create it in single player then upload the map it buys the items you need and then you have to go and make it?

Basically the idea would be this. (Not sure the details and this would be down the line)

You make a single player creation the way you'd want it to be on EMC. You would upload the schematic online. The web system would analyze what you need for that project. I'll make up numbers now:

350 cobblestone
200 red wool
40 torches
150 lapis blocks

You would be able to set how much you would want to buy those things for and it would auto create buy orders for each item until your order is done and you have EXACTLY what you need for the project. I'll just pretend you want to buy each one for 5 r each for sake of being easy.

You would have 4 separate buy orders in the market:

350 cobblestone @ 5r each
200 red wool @ 5r each
40 torches @ 5r each
150 lapis blocks @ 5r each

Now, let's say I have 200 cobblestone I'm willing to sell. I can sell to YOUR order (because I know you want it via the web system).

Now your order would automatically update itself and KNOW you only need 150 cobblestone. Anyone can fill your orders in whatever quantity they have to sell and you will never overbuy what you need because you set it to buy EXACTLY how many you wanted at EXACTLY the price you wanted.

It would basically be like a shop chest where you buy things, except you have COMPLETE control over it without having to put in dirt to prevent overbuying, etc.

So it would not build it for you? Because PT and I spent 20+ hours on my privet server making a complete replica of how it would look, im now copying that across manually lol I would hate it to be automatic since it takes the fun out of the game, Also ICC I would like to apologize and Im not scared to do it in a privet message. I said a few things that where out of line. I let emotion take over and brain took a back seat, Its a great idea and is morphing into an even better one.

No, it would 100% not be automatic build. The only thing it would do is determine what items you need TO build it and setup orders for them so others can sell them to you. You still have to build by yourself. It's okay. I understand some people put the blinders on to new ideas sometimes. I've done it myself in other situations. Once you get past that though and see the true value of the things you were putting down, great ideas can form from it.

So after having read through the whole thread, here are my thoughts, which are somewhat disordered.

I have been playing on EMC for a little over a month. In that time, I have claimed a res, unclaimed a res, claimed a res on another server, sold to shops, purchased from shops... These things are not that hard for a new player to figure out. I have not set up a shop but it's something on my list to do, I just enjoy mining and exploring caves so I spend more time doing that than digging out a res which can be pretty time consuming.

I find Aikar's focus on the system used by EVE to be a little bit disconcerting. Every game is different and copying what another game does without understanding the reasons why they do things that way can cause problems. The basic principle of a game economy has to do with sources and sinks of money (ISK in EVE, gold in WoW, rupees in EMC). Rupees are a little different in that they come from relatively few sources:
1. Logging into the game
2. Tutorial bonus [really just a one-time bonus to #1 for the first login]
3. Supporter bonus rupees
4. Voting for EMC

And there are relatively few sinks as well:
1. Locking chests/furnaces/etc in the wild
2. Accessing the vault
3. Purchasing items from the Empire shop / outpost

As far as inflation is concerned, buying from player shops doesn't add or remove rupees, it just moves them around. This is in contrast to a game like WoW or Diablo3 where the money is directly generated from killing mobs and you can go farm up tons of cash by slaughtering enemies, increasing the amount of cash in the economy. That is why their auction house is set up to have a percentage charge, because it's needed to sponge off all the cash that gets constantly generated. Rupees, in contrast, are earned at a largely fixed, per-day rate.

The Empire shop also serves as the limiting factor in the price of items as it can sell an unlimited number of items, but its prices are set high enough that it will act as a drain in the unlikely case that everyone on the server ends up with millions of rupees (this can't really happen because of the reasons I outlined above.)

That aside. There are certainly good reasons to look at what other games use as their market systems. Although most have a shop or auction system rather than a true market (City of Heroes is an exception here - they actually have a real market implemented as a consignment system, but the bid/offers are not public, only the most recent transactions.) It's also hard for a lot of players to understand how a market works, a shop/store system is much more familiar. And some players explicitly prefer not to participate in a market system - such as AlexChance / Dejaja which don't want players buying items from them only to resell and have banned certain players from their shops. Personally I have no issue with arbitraging but I understand that it can be challenging to keep a shop stocked.

I also strongly prefer for any system to be in-game rather than website based. I typically play with the livemap open at the same time myself, but that should be an option for players and not a requirement to interact with the system. It's okay if the system uses the website (more on this later.)

I have played mostly on smp2, smp6, and smp7. Here's my impression of the various servers:

1. smp2 - several massive shops, "malls" if you only shop at AlexChance's. The large shops buy and sell most items, the smaller shops usually only sell.
2. smp6 - lots of shops, /v random seems to have about a 50% chance of landing you in a shop. Many of them also buy items, and typically will buy diamonds even if they don't buy anything else. (I forget if dejaja is on smp6 or smp2).
3. smp7 - few shops, many lots where players have not logged on in weeks. Lots that have shops are likely to have a small selection and not purchase anything. I think this is part of the reason why Beaver/mogri did so well here.

While in the stage of "go to wild/nether and mine up rupees" the existence of shops that purchase items is vital. The alternative is to slowly accumulate rupees through the daily income. This is where finding someone's shop that you can sell 10 stacks of cobble to is useful.

There are definitely things that could be improved. The biggest thing would be a search, similar to EMCshops, that would show two things: 1. Where there is a shop that sells a given item 2. How many of that item are in stock. It isn't clear to me why this isn't possible, as the livemap shows all the residences and the website shows your entire rupee transaction history, so there is definitely a system already in place to do at least some of what would be needed.

The other thing that I can see being an improvement is a warning message when players place a sign that is inherently giving away rupees. I would not go quite so far as to disallow it as a player with lots of rupees may want to give away rupees in that manner, but when you see multiple chests of different items with "B 8:10 S" on the signs, it's clear that the player doesn't understand the system.

Your a good man for hiding those Lot names, People on here would have abused that with out a seconds thought

I agree that using the system AS IS on EVE (especially after much discussion here so far) wouldn't be a good idea. However, I do like (even more than the original idea in fact) the ideas we're coming up with for it working within the same world as the current chest shop plugins.

Right. Based on knowledge from research and experience (Justin's with Gameshow Network), it's fact that the more sinkholes the better. Something we can improve on. While to the average player, of course, it doesn't sound 'good', it's what keeps the economy/game stable.

To each their own on this one, but you will never be able to convince me that this is a good idea, haha. When I setup something to sell, the goal is to make x rupees from y product. I don't care who buys it or what they do with it as long as I get my x rupees. That's just the entrepreneur in me though, I guess.

With some of the molding we've done in this topic so far, I think we're getting to a point where this won't be a problem. It will never be mandatory to use with some of the ideas we have and be successful.

The system we're talking about would fit this idea much more. I asked about this in the past and was told it wouldn't be possible for a server that is somewhat active to do that. It would require the system to CONSTANTLY check every single chest in the town to see if it's a store. If it's a store it then has to send that to the website. Repeat thousands if not tens of thousands of times (per each chest) every second (since transactions can happen at any time). You'd end up with lag city.

100% agree with this. When we branch off from this discussion, I will make a thread talking about chest shop improvements. If I don't remember to add this, to the list at the start, please feel free to chime in again with it.

Rather than charge fees for the use of an central market clearinghouse (grand exchange) why not reserve this option for wholesale-style buying and selling. Make all sales be in multiples of one stack. So you would have to buy or sell at least a stack of something.

That way, if you want 5 diamonds, you have to go to a shop. But if you wanted a stack, or multiples of a stack, you could buy on the exchange.

You might even consider classifying various items into wholesale purchase requirements.

1 - Logs, sand, cobble, stone, sandstone, stone brick, coal, wool, etc - Minimum transaction of 10 stacks
2 - Diamonds, redstone dust, lapis, iron, gold, rail, powered rail, slime balls, glass, etc - Minimum transaction of 1 stack
3 - Jukeboxes, pistons - No limit

This would allow for a wholesale market that worked in tandem with residence-based stores and exchanges.

Edit:

You could go a step beyond and not require people to sell in multiples of stacks, but only to buy, thereby combining various offers for sale into one purchase transaction. This would allow people with small amounts for sale to still use the exchange.

Hmm, but, I can see that it'd be useful for...e.g.

Say, Sally is gonna build a piston-door for Jane. Sal knows exactly what's needed; doesn't want to waste hours finding it; has a shopping-list - 4 sticky's, a stack of red, a few repeaters, etc; nothing much.

I can see that, in such a case, this "insta-buy it for 1234r" system would be helpful.

And that'd be good economics too, for Sally and for shop-keepers. Sally is redstone-expert; her time is worth money, so she doesn't want to mess about with "Out of stock" nonsense. She just wants the stuff, and wants to know how much it'll cost.

We can accommodate that, but, Sally needs to pay a premium for the convenience.

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As regards "classifying" - it's a nice idea, but I always go for "keep it simple".

E.g. 10% 'delivery fee' for buying via this website-thing.

Wow, all I can say is that in the last few hours or so while at work today I sat back removed my self from the epicentre of this and looked at it from afar. All I can say is this should become one of the greatest innovations for this server and it should do no end of good.. So now I for one am Completely with this idea,

One last thing though ICC, you have the TNT Aikar has the fuse... get this party started already

I say we just wait and see what becomes of this "plugin" Aikar should start making it then do a Preview on a BETA server. like beta.empire.us make it supporter only and see if its good

It has honestly taken me a life time to read this whole thread, and I still don't have a great understanding on how this new system would work, but I'll try give my take on it in a calm and reasonable manner.

My initial thoughts are.. mehh, I'm on the fence with this one. I can see it being convenient for some players, but I can also see it ruining the experience for other players. I see that you want to keep the old system in place as well as implementing the new system. Will this not be quite confusing, and more time consuming for those who are looking for an item and can't originally find it on the website? Let's say that the bigger shops/specialist shops are offering a great sell price for gunpowder. Everyone starts selling it to them in-game, so there isn't really anyone selling it on the site. So then the person looking for gunpowder has to now look around the servers to find what they wanted from the shops that aren't advertising on the site. If that makes any sense whatsoever.

I definitely feel the larger shops are going to be disadvantaged from this change. One of the greatest things about when I owned a shop was everyone realising that although my prices may have been slightly higher than others I was 99.9% of the time in stock of everything you could need. It took me a long time to earn that respect and in fact, when I closed quite a few people were sad because I had a great set up going on to keep the economy at a good level. I feel that the new system would mean that it would become irrelevant if you are a big shop owner or just starting up because it's all done from the site and you have the ability to sort the prices from lowest to highest. Therefore anyone going onto the site will go straight for the lowest prices. You may say that these shops will be out of stock quicker, but there will likely be a lot more smaller specialist shops this way and they will be able to offer a lower price and always be picked first. This will mean that all the bigger shops will have to lower their prices or hope that other shops will be out of stock quickly so that they still have a chance. I also feel like what I was talking about before will lead to price wars. Everyone will be fighting to have the lowest prices so their items are bought. I may be completely wrong, but that's what I'm picking up for it.

Will we still be able to /r pay player amount? Just a curious question.

I really wish I knew what the vault system would look like. I haven't played WoW before or EVE, and I haven't looked at the link yet but it's just making my brain hurt trying to work it out.

What I think would have been my favourite implementation to the shop system would be the ability to edit signs without breaking the sign. When you clicked on it you could have the option to edit it, and maybe there could be a tab to see the average selling price at the time so new comers could price their shops more effectively. This could be implemented into the new system too if it isn't being already.

I don't really feel like any of what I have said makes sense, but I gave it a go.

I can say that I'm certain this won't be a problem. Some people will find they like using one over the other and simply get used to a style of "searching" for things what works for them. There are a lot of small shop owners that will likely start using the system who's shops get overlooked due to not being one of the big guys. If you have a shop you prefer to go to that's already established, you can continue to go there. The web system, I'm sure will just have things you didn't know existed in the Empire that you could also buy and would have never seen otherwise. If your favorite shop is out of something you NEED, go onto the web system and place an order for it. First person to see it gets to fill it for you and earn rupees.

This is actually one of the strong points to it. It will allow a much larger part of the community to participate in the market system. The large shop owners will likely, as I stated, buy out the small shop web orders anyways to keep themselves in stock, which is fine and acceptable. Being able to find the lowest price as a buyer is something that should be easier in my opinion anyways and will encourage less chat spam of: "WHO SELLS X CHEAAAPP!" From what I see in the chat, the major mall/store owners generally ignore those players anyways because they're "annoying" and having them go to the web system and getting used to that will simply help the chat out a bit in that area.

Yes. We're not changing rupees or how rupees work with this in the least.

There isn't really anything yet. We're waiting until we have an acceptable system with all the ideas in place before Aikar starts to actually work on it.

I plan on making a side thread after this one is more solid in what we're going to do on how to improve the current shop system. This idea will be a good one for you to post when that goes up.