Ways to Bring Back TC/MZ

[Devlin]

I posted some ideas in a thread concerning the vendors website regarding how to increase the importance/relevance of TC/MZ again, figured I'd make it a more prominent issue. The ID Stone to locate the vendor for you is a great touch, and the free listing on the vendors website should help increase the vendor count/traffic, but won't be enough to replace the new Shops. There was some talk of adjusting the daily fee for vendors there, so more expensive items could be sold with ease. For reference, an item listed at 1,666,666 gold will incur a daily fee of 10k on any vendor. Thats .6% of the item price going to the vendors daily fee, with a total of 4.2% going to the fee per week, assuming the item even remains up that long. In my opinion that's actually fairly beneficial to the seller. 10k a day to post an item for over 1.5mil seems pretty fair.

A different option would be to greatly reduce the price of increasing the item/weight limit of a vendor in TC. Most player run shops do not charge fees for players to put vendors there, meaning they can simply add another vendor should they reach the cap on weight/items. A player with a vendor in TC who wishes to stock more goods would be forced to pay large sums of cash, or do without the addition of more items. Charging half the price to increase these caps would allow vendors in TC/MZ to stock more items, which may have been a reason that people fled away from these areas. My old vendor in TC had at least 750k invested in increasing these caps, whereas my shop now has 6 vendors with the potential for dozens more, completely negating the need to pay these fees.

Also, maybe the number of vendors in TC could be reduced; this would potentially help reduce lag issues faced by many, as well as increase the significance of having a vendor in TC. Fewer vendors in TC might push up competition/desire for spots, as well as allow MZ to flourish, as those who cannot place a spot in TC would be left with the option of Tele Shops or MZ.

[Kevan]

I would love to see TC remodeled and have all vendors there removed completely. Place highly visible teleporters to both a new, off-screen customized marketplace to replace the removed TC vendors. The new location could be better spaced out to reduce lag with vendor costs decreasing as you move further away from the teleporters. One of those highly visible teleporters in the newly freed vendor area of the old TC marketplace would also take you to MZ. I feel like the MZ teleporter currently in TC is a bit easy to miss for newer players. Yes, the location of the teleporter is pretty centralized but it doesn't scream "step on me for more vendors!"

The entire vendor area currently in TC, while visually appealing as a whole, in reality is a bit cluttered and difficult to navigate even with the new ID stone.

In an off-screen marketplace, you could maybe even have a high roller market where the vendors have a minimum price point of, say, 100,000 gold. That way, players know that all of the items in this area are specifically for mid or even high-level character development. In the meantime, maybe vendors could be set up in other areas with a maximum price point per item of 4,000 gold, which would generally concentrate the suppliers of potion kegs, leashes, etc, in the same area.

If the vendor site ceased to exist completely, it would be very difficult to shop for a bonecrusher when you're forced to wade through 50 vendors selling 5-20k items. If I know that bonecrushers are only sold in a specific area, I may only have to vendor dive 4 or 5 vendors in order to find it.

[+Nyx]

I'm definitely in favor of decreasing the price to up a vendor's item/weight limits. 50k per pop (as I believe it is now?) is just kinda silly, particularly now that we are sinking gold from vendors in other ways.

The staff have been tossing around ideas for modifying how much an item charges per day based on its listing price. We all agree there needs to be some tweaking there, but we haven't really settled on anything yet. Coli is wanting to see how his current vendors changes go until February, and then revisit the matter at that time, so until then it's all just discussion for discussion's sake. I've thought a little bit about there being some sort of sliding scale, where if you have perhaps 10 items listed on your vendor for 1 mil a piece, your vendor's daily fee isn't literally 10 x .6% of 1mil or whatever it is now. I'd like to see it so there's a sort of "maximum" on how much a vendor charges per day, perhaps by levels. If your total listed prices for all items on the vendor are under 1 mil, your max per day is x. If you're over 1 mil and under 5 mil, it's y and so on, with there being a range of fees within each tier.

Another thought I've had but not yet suggested to Colibri is to modify the exex to accept more items, but only the high-priced ones. It should still accept all the same items it accepts now, but adding high-priced items (bone crushers, looted weapons over certain stat levels, things like that), and those carry a set % fee on sale. That way one could look there for all the big dollar items, and the vendors wouldn't have to charge insane rates. This one is the most complicated idea, with several drawbacks and potential problems, and I don't really even like it better than the other ideas suggested. But it'd be a fresh change for exex that alleviates some of the vendor woes.

Edit:
Related but also unrelated, +V and I are planning to create a new TC/MZ type place that would essentially eliminate them both. The discussions we've had about it thus far involve it being a large harbor over the water, that would be the sum total of all 'public' vendor slots for Excelsior. It'd probably include a small town with the basic NPC vendors, and then a large marketplace that had all of the player-run vendors laid out in an easily-navigated way. We have to get that one approved by Colibri, but I think he'll go for it since TC/MZ are outdated and cause a fair bit of lag for those entering these areas.

[Cornbread]

Edit:
Related but also unrelated, +V and I are planning to create a new TC/MZ type place that would essentially eliminate them both. The discussions we've had about it thus far involve it being a large harbor over the water, that would be the sum total of all 'public' vendor slots for Excelsior. It'd probably include a small town with the basic NPC vendors, and then a large marketplace that had all of the player-run vendors laid out in an easily-navigated way. We have to get that one approved by Colibri, but I think he'll go for it since TC/MZ are outdated and cause a fair bit of lag for those entering these areas.

If you can do this you'll be my hero. I've gotten so lazy with all the vendor lag in TC and other places that I just announce in global when I want to buy something. I used to actually enjoy going through and clicking on every single vendor to find a deal or that one piece I was wanting. Something that now is so annoying and that stupid vendor site has destroyed for me. Anybody have a tissue?

[+Nyx]

Well we can definitely build it. I'm planning to do it fully custom in the black area of Touria so it can be frozen to the map (and thus not cause lag). Now we just gotta convince Coli

[Yoda]

although I do quite enjoy having the shop at my house

the +nyx plan of modernization does indeed pique my interest in a really good way

[+Nyx]

Well, it wouldn't eliminate player run shops. Just TC and MZ.

[Yoda]

which when the shard started probably seemed like the ideal solution, but whats the expression "times change" after all this time with the shard running maybe now there is a better way.. go for it

[Gaara]

Edit:
Related but also unrelated, +V and I are planning to create a new TC/MZ type place that would essentially eliminate them both. The discussions we've had about it thus far involve it being a large harbor over the water, that would be the sum total of all 'public' vendor slots for Excelsior. It'd probably include a small town with the basic NPC vendors, and then a large marketplace that had all of the player-run vendors laid out in an easily-navigated way. We have to get that one approved by Colibri, but I think he'll go for it since TC/MZ are outdated and cause a fair bit of lag for those entering these areas.

If you can do this you'll be my hero. I've gotten so lazy with all the vendor lag in TC and other places that I just announce in global when I want to buy something. I used to actually enjoy going through and clicking on every single vendor to find a deal or that one piece I was wanting. Something that now is so annoying and that stupid vendor site has destroyed for me. Anybody have a tissue?

Reminds me of the water town in high seas expansion

Would love to see this ^^

[Larsa]

I'm definitely in favor of decreasing the price to up a vendor's item/weight limits. 50k per pop (as I believe it is now?) is just kinda silly, particularly now that we are sinking gold from vendors in other ways.

It is a good idea to ask the taxman to ease on the fees at TC. There was a time that I was just working for my vendor fulltime. High end items pays out a huge fee. I also vote for a new area were you can combine both TC/MZ markets.

[seoman]

I never liked TC or MZ, which were packed back in my first foray in the shard. Laggy, but the set-up was just... how to put this nicely... bland and blah. It didn't fit a fantasy setting.


Something that UO set up in Magincia was vendor stalls, so it was like an old open air market with the vendors all set up in stalls and you stroll around checking things out. Never liked TC/MZ being right on top of eachother.

I like +Nyx's idea of the Market Town.

[Xavian]

Vendor stalls is a good idea.. Add 3x3 houses to the server and set them up as a town house rental. Set it so the player can store one secure box and maybe a handful of lockdowns. This way high end items can be displayed on tables, lower end items on the vendor and restock items in the secure box. Gives that old world feel of an open air market, plenty of options for players to setup and sell a variety of items. Heck, you could even put a few random NPC vendors mixed in. Fruit vendor, Blacksmith shop, fancy clothing shop. Like a great big yard sale/flea market type deal. Would be kinda cool.

[seoman]

Give the stalls/small shops the ability to have crafting mechanisms (forges, spinning wheels, ovens, etc..), so does become a shop and would encourage the crafters to actually make their items there. So when walking around, have a chance to bump into the crafter and start a conversation.

Helps the immersion feel and open air market vibe.

[Xavian]

I doubt a lot players would use the facilities to make their goods. But not a bad idea anyway. I would say keep the shops small, but the NPC shops a bit bigger to allow for that if a player wanted to use it.

[+Nyx]

I actually really like the idea of a little 3x3 "house" rental for each vendor in the market. It wouldn't be able to work in the way of placing the house itself, but probably each stall would have a little rental sign similar to the townhouses. My main thought on this is that the viewing will be difficult. Given the angled nature of the game window, sometimes anything smaller than 6x6 is really hard to see things well since the walls are so close and such. I'll fiddle around with it when we get to designing the town itself (hopefully January - the holidays have snuck up on me and I didn't get the map edits for Elysium and Touria done in time to do a December booster patch... ). Excited!

Edit:
Since it's going to be a town, there will be NPC vendors that have things like forges and whatnot. As I mentioned above, it's difficult to make small stalls that will be nicely viewable, and then cramming things like that into them would make it even worse. It might be that the stalls are for rent, similar to a vendor stool in TC/MZ but only the counter can be "decorated" to prevent hoarder-like ugly stalls