Limit to number of TC vendors you can "Co own"

[Johnny Warren]

So, there's always discussion about how hard it is to get a TC vendor spot. Now that you can see co owners there are some players that own/Co-own 5 vendors despite the real owners having not logged on in months... Is there a limit to how many vendors an active player can hold down for their friends? I understand keeping a friends vendor active if they are away on holidays for 2 weeks or so, but to indefinitely hold down that many slots seems... greedy? unfair?

Is there a plan to change the rules around this or is the idea that now that co owners are 'exposed' they right do the right thing of their own volition?

[Nick]

I am in the Army and often have to go away for 10-14 days... I lost 2 TC vendors because of this before I found someone trustworthy and willing to co-own my vendor and keep it from falling while I'm away training. I'm really grateful for their help I do have a rather well-stocked vendor that I regularly put mondaine goods on as a public service but the main purpose is to stock some of my dedo/event reward items and let them sit until someone wants them, when I do have time to dig through chests and ask around for whats a decent price.

I do agree that if the main owner hasn't been on in months it should fall to someone else but, the 1-week restocking rule would push me out of TC if I couldn't have a co-owner to cover for me when I go away for work.

FYI Nick's Man is North West most vendor in TC (and almost completely hidden be a huge gemstone on my neighbor's table) has free repair deeds, and a good assortment of Halloween rares. Feel free to stop in and feed my Yard item addiction with a purchase All proceeds go toward constructing fortress Nick deep in the mountians.

[Johnny Warren]

I agree Nick and think that there are genuine cases such as yours. I've helped a friend in similar circumstances before as well. I was referring to the player(s) who owns one and co owns 4 or 5 more, the players who own those 4 or 5 are not particularly active.

I was just starting a conversation about whether or not we need rules regarding this or if we just let it play out and with the new info available maybe those people controlling lots of vendors might try and be a bit fairer to the rest of the server, since we now know the name(s) of those gaming the system.

[+Colibri]

Yeah I'd say this is one of the problems with the TownCenter vendors, i'm guessing since it's a high-profile spot, there will be people trying to optimize it
I was just reading a ticket that was sent before this upgrade, asking whether restocking by co-owners counts in refreshing the vendor. It does, no matter if it's the co-owner or owner, if someone puts a new item on the vendor, it counts as a restock. Which means it's possible to rent out a vendor spot to someone else, while the actual owner doesn't do anything with the vendor. Or it's also possible for an inactive player to have a vendor, and the vendor just being refreshed for long periods of time by a friend.

As i was reading this ticket, and replying back "it's impossible to say which of these are legitimate and which aren't", I had an idea: a vendor could have a "quality rating", based on how many items it sold, and how many different players bought from it, maybe even where players can rate the vendor. Well, the "number of different buyers" is the simplest and hardest-to-cheat metric. And then instead of purging inactive vendors, every week the system would purge let's say 3 vendors with the worst rating

Though please keep in mind, i just finished these upgrades yesterday, and i don't plan to do more vendor-related tinkering very soon. But maybe something for a few months from now... We can still discuss things in theory
Also just want to put this out there, I'm not fond of the whole 3% tax thing. Not so much because it's so much better than the 0.6% daily fee that the vendor charges, but it encourages high prices for items, even if the item doesnt sell for months. Where as with the daily fee, if the item doesn't sell within 166 days, the seller has already sunk all of the item's price on vendor fees.

[acolyte]

On the subject of co-owners... it's simple and doesn't require any coding to say something general like, if the original owner hasn't logged on in 60 days then the vendor can be subject to drop at anytime.

The situation has improved significantly since I started playing again in May only a few months ago. At that time, no vendors, literally 0 dropped for about a month. I camped a vendor about to drop, it was mysteriously refreshed and someone PMed me about finding some vendors for sale on Discord which conveniently is outside of Excelsior chat logs. I also got PMed a few times on Discord and asked to buy a vendor. Coincidentally, this guy disappeared the exact day that 7+ vendors ended up dropping at the same time... I counted at least 7, the new people that claimed them were Eboj, DevouringRage, Jantra, Durocius, me, Opposite and RobRoy. His own vendor dropped after not being refreshed 10 days later and was claimed by Lust so that's a total of 8 minimum but I might have forgotten some.

99% of the people that trade don't have any issues, but it just takes one person who pushes it too far and sells a deco item for 500 ED that the buyer believes is an ethereal mount, then tries to hide behind the language barrier of not being a native English speaker and all of the sudden it's necessary to have a debate on the rules.

[dreamstalker]

i dont think limiting the number of co owners would do much and i hope i dont ever see the "Purge" (hate those movies lol) perhaps limiting the number of times a co owner can restock/refresh a vendor....which prolly wont work.. im just thinkin its not right to play against people that are playin on different shard or quit 3 years ago.....@Nick in da army bud i think something should be done to help you out to cover those deployments but my mind is blank as to what.......thank u very much for your service

[culichi]

As i was reading this ticket, and replying back "it's impossible to say which of these are legitimate and which aren't", I had an idea: a vendor could have a "quality rating", based on how many items it sold, and how many different players bought from it, maybe even where players can rate the vendor. Well, the "number of different buyers" is the simplest and hardest-to-cheat metric. And then instead of purging inactive vendors, every week the system would purge let's say 3 vendors with the worst rating

i dont like yelp in real life so i dont want to see it here. rating vendors sounds like a good idea but there is potential for groups of players to use that in order to penalize unpopular players. if such a rule is implemented i hope it isnt just one bad week and you lose your spot in tc that seems way to drastic to me. rules like that may hurt the exploiters but they mainly hurt people that didnt do anything to deserve those penalties i think.
i love that expensive items get stocked in tc at all even if some are priced way too high. it beats having to flood wc with wtb spam and the frustrating wait for a seller to respond. i think that a lot of times people price their items way too high in order to get a lower counteroffer by pm that they can then sell in person and avoid the vendor tax. thats an exploit and that should be punished with loss of vendor and maybe even a length of time before they can get another vendor in tc.

[Gaara]

I had an idea: a vendor could have a "quality rating", based on how many items it sold, and how many different players bought from it, maybe even where players can rate the vendor. Well, the "number of different buyers" is the simplest and hardest-to-cheat metric. And then instead of purging inactive vendors, every week the system would purge let's say 3 vendors with the worst rating

Number of different buyers or items sold is entirely reliant on what items are sold on said vendor and at what price. Someone could end up with a bad rating because they sell items only a few would buy (like high end gear/rare deco). This sort of system would need to categorize every single sellable item in the game to account for how popular the item is and take that into consideration in it's rating or else it wouldn't be fair. Also this sort of a system would affect prices heavily since people would sell items cheaper to get items flowing more for better ratings. Not to mention players voting on ratings can get corrupted fast (friends voting up yours, downvoting others...).

I don't really see this sort of competition necessary or good for the shard. This is a PVE shard after all. We're not playing against each other here.

[Johnny Warren]

It could be as simple as if the actual owner has not logged in for 90 days then the vendor will drop, similar to housing decay. They could apply for a once off extension to this if they know they are going to be away for longer. Otherwise, you have to be at least somewhat active to hold a much coveted TC spot. When it drops the person who co-owns and is actually using the vendor while the owner is inactive can have a shot at reclaiming the seat. If they already own a vendor then they should be fine but at least it is fairer for the rest of the server.

As I originally stated I feel like there's a bunch of seats that will never drop even though the owners rarely play and the one 'co owner' will keep like 7% of the TC spots locked up indefinitely. That just feels like it is gaming/cheating the system to me, and usually if something feels like it is cheating or underhanded, it usually is.

[Melkor]

I don't like the review system for dropping vendors, but I do like the Owner needs to log in every so many days or their vendor drops.

[Jantra]

The idea of a 'rating system' like that feels like it could just *so easily* be abused. People could purposefully tank someone's vendor rating to kick vendors out or hurt them because of drama.

[Johnny Warren]

I also don't like the idea of a rating system, or even an item sale count for the reasons already stated. I think some sort of "owner activity timer" could potentially work. Other players can still do the 10 day refresh but if the owner themselves is genuinely inactive they don't need the vendor. That way more players can have access to the coveted spots. There's really no need to have more than 1 vendor in TC, you can place a huge number of items/weight really.

[Wil]

the system would purge let's say 3 vendors with the worst rating

It's an interesting idea but my gut reaction is that I don't like making the ability to hold a vendor some sort of election or popularity contest.

AFAICT, the root cause of most of the TC vendor disagreements, at least the ones that upset players, is the scarcity factor. I don't really understand the reasoning behind maintaining the artificial scarcity here rather than solving the problems at the source.

[dreamstalker]

i have not been awake very long today but i had a thought (ya just 1) but if i am walking thru tc at all hours of the nite and i find 2 stools empty and i claim 1 of them can i then turn around and claim the other?? all is well and good if i can...if i cant then it means u can only have 1 tc vendor unless i am missin something so how would that not be skirting the rule of only 1 by being co owned to all the ones that the owner has stopped logging in to refresh which gives you as the co owner unlimited amount of vendors for life...then when u get ready to stop co own ur buds to them and they have the spots till they stop and so on and so forth..... how bout instead of alll these wild ideas with limits n purges n who knows what 1 simple rule would take care of it all..........
" YOU CAN ONLY REFRESH THE VENDOR YOU OWN"
other wise allow my co owners to refresh my houses, my boats and hell lets go all the way friends can refresh my account
ty all done

[dreamstalker]

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Dont i know how to kill a convo lmbohbo
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