Shop Changes - Economy

Orael

This is the plan to change up our shopping system and how they function. One of the major goals of the economy revamp is to create a system that allows for players to easily opt-out of it, and participate at a minimum but still get the items they need to participate in the game. The major way to accomplish this goal will be through the shopping system. This is why we want to allow every trade skill the ability to sell each of their products or services through a shop someway (see the TradeRevamp) for more details.

NPC Shops

To ensure that services and supplies are readily available at all times, we'll be introducing NPC shops that sell these items. NPC's will sell everything from herbs and comms to public designs. These NPC's will be selling things at a markedly higher price to allow players and encourage them to sell for less. They additionally will buy things for a fraction of the cost as well.  Prices will fluctuate depending on a variety of factors. 

For our artisan skills that sell designs made by players, these NPC mobs will also sell items from the public catalog.  We will potentially allow villages to sell more thematic items for their village as well as allowing orgs to have NPC's that sell items from their org cartels. They will sell these items similar to what we are proposing for player shops below.

Player Shops

Player shops will continue to function as they do now, where they place an item at the stockroom and price it, but we will add more mechanics to enhance the shopkeeper's abilities.

We currently have the following artisan trade skills that will benefit from this new functionality: Artisan(Carpentry), Bookbinding, Cooking, Brewmeister, Forging, Jewellery, Tailoring, and Tattoos.

All shops already come with one NPC shopkeeper that runs the shop while the player is not around. With this change, players will be able to assign this shopkeeper to a certain artisan trade skill. once this is assigned, the player will be allowed to select designs, either public or private, that they wish to sell in their shop. We'll likely start with a limit of 25, with the possibility to increase it. Cartel owners will be able to flag designs to not be sellable in shops at all.  Buyers would be able to buy these listed designs from the shop, and the NPC shopkeeper will make these items with the shopkeeper's proficiency.  Special commodities (such as corpses etc) will require the buyers to have in hand when making those designs, but the general commodities will be taken from the shop rift. 

Shopkeepers would price the designs they want to sell. 

Additionally, shopkeepers would be able to pay for additional NPC shopkeepers to help run their shop and be assigned additional trade skills. The cost to add these has not been determined yet, but would potentially be a yearly upkeep gold cost to maintain, scaling with how many additional shopkeepers/traders you have (the first one is always free). 

We will continue to allow shopkeepers to have others stock their shop, but we will now allow shopkeepers to allow these additional players to sell through their shopkeepers. Shopkeepers would be able to assign a player to a trade for an NPC, and that NPC would then make the designs/goods based on the assigned player's proficiency rather than their own. ie: Bob can assign Tammy to do all his jewelry sales because he's at 0% proficiency while Tammy is 100%, the NPC will make items based on Tammy's proficiency instead. Tammy will get to decide what jewelry designs she sells in Bob's shop, not Bob, as she is the jewelry expert (but Bob can always unassign her if he doesn't like what she's selling). This will allow players to have a one-stop-shop if they employ multiple players to help stock/run their shops. We will be looking at having a portion of the proceeds (determined by the shopkeeper) always go to the assigned player. ie If Tammy sells a cool necklace, she'll automatically get her cut of the sale and wouldn't need Bob to give it to her. 

We're considering adding ways that shopkeepers can purchase straight from an org rift or something rather than relying on having their own rift stocked up but will still need to work out those details.

Alexandria

Any plans to alter the way city shops work? Right now, they cost the city 5,000 gold per year in upkeep while open, and expansions are already highly expensive unless you've got a LOT of gold to work with. They're already too expensive for most newer players to deal with, just from taxes alone.

Aeldra

This sounds like intriguing changes and will make shops more interesting. I agree with Alexandria about the city shops, though and would love for them to be considered as well while touching shops.

Uilani

I posted a summary of my comments from Discord in the main economy thread to be found here.

Isser

the authors of public designs in the public catalogue should be pay royalties everything someone buys  their particular design in an NPC shop. it's a great way to encourage participation in the design system. (please over haul that too)

Xiran

I like these mechanics asynchronously connecting our community.

What happens to manse dwellers with the Shopkeeper add-on? Will they also be able to stand in for either the owner's or other assigned player's tradeskill?

Uzriel

A big hope on my end would be that the way enchanting works gets a bit of an overhaul here. I would really love if instead of enchanting jewelry items directly, you make an item which can be pressed onto the jewelry (by anybody) to apply the enchantment. The time it takes to fill a cube could also really use some love as well.

Edit: I meant to put this in another thread, that was more relevant but eh, it'll still get seen here.

Kerith

Xiran said:

I like these mechanics asynchronously connecting our community.

I agree, and I hope it will allow/encourage more participation from people in non-peak time zones, and allow them to feel connected to the community a little more.